Page 82 of The Ghost of Exes Past

The way the light is hitting the room, it’s too bright, I can’t …

Then the altar.

The candles flickering. The priest smiling, book open and cradled in his arms. Someone coughs.

Then the shape of him. Wrong, all wrong. Timothy isn’t that tall.

I squeeze my eyes shut, grip my bouquet tighter, take smaller steps to stop my shoes rubbing so viciously at my heel.

Then he turns.

I stop walking.

‘Belle,’ my dad whispers, giving a slight tug on my hand. But I’m frozen. I take in the broad shoulders in front of me, the deep brown, tweedy suit. The silver bracelet on his wrist, the twig of lavender on his lapel. Then he opens his mouth.

‘There she is,’ he says, grinning.

There he is, at the end of the aisle.

Jake Marleigh.

He’s older now – there are lines at the corners of his eyes that weren’t there before. Specks of silver at his temples and in his stubble. As if he’s lived a life. But his grin is the same.

I step forward. Dad shakes his hand firmly then turns to me. He lifts my veil, presses a kiss to my cheek and then I’m passed over.

I look at his hands first. How his fingers weave their way into mine. Less calloused than they used to be. Not as bitten down.

I look up. Jake slow blinks at me, reassuringly.

Every wrong turn. Every person I’d loved. They all brought me here.

‘To the end?’ he says, squeezing my palm.

‘To the end.’

EPILOGUE

Some gardens hold the dead.

This one holds a climbing clematis that has twisted itself around a fence and a buddleia that was cut back three times and came back each time, but bigger.

There’s a terracotta pot tipped to one side, which nobody has got around to straightening yet, and an old, tall chimney pot covered with a grill, blackened at the edges, that has served as a barbecue for longer than anyone intended.

A cobbled path leads to a stone cottage, lined either side with flower beds, which are wild in parts. There are weeds, partly budding flowers, and twigs that somehow didn’t survive the winter.

A robin sits on the edge of a mossy stone birdbath, fluffing up its feathers, red belly proud. At the far end there’s a pergola. Woody wisteria, barely budding, winds its way to the top in long, reaching stems. Two mugs sit on a small table under the pergola, surrounded by mismatched garden chairs – three originals, one replacement, and one that arrived from somewhere nobody can remember.

Today there’s a pair of small Wellington boots sitting outside the cottage – mud-splattered, decorated with rainbow stripes – and, next to them, a broom leans up against the stone.

Inside, in the kitchen, Belle wipes her brow with the back of her hand. She hums quietly – some song without a name, more of a habit than a tune – as she stirs a teapot which is loaded with four bags of Yorkshire Tea, plucked from the sun-bleached jar on the windowsill.

She places the teapot on a tray, alongside a jar of milk and a pot of sugar, and walks out into the garden, still humming, but her pace has slowed down after having left the London tempo behind with her fifties.

‘The lavender survived the winter,’ Jake calls out, crouching to a planter, garden gloves on his hands as she places the tray next to the mugs under the shade of the pergola.

Belle joins him, bends forward, and brings her nose to the lavender. Eyes closed, she breathes in before audibly exhaling.

‘How is it that that still manages to take me straight back?’ she asks, cheeks plump.