AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Poor girl. Do you think she’s been jilted?’
I turned back to the bridal party, knowing they must surely have heard what had been said every bit as clearly as I had.
‘Perhaps you’d like to wait inside, my dear – somewhere a little more private?’ suggested the vicar kindly.
I shook my head, my veil catching on the breeze and billowing about me like a white cape. ‘No, thank you. I’ll wait out here until Finn arrives.’
I was still forty-five minutes away from accepting the devastating truth that Finn wasn’t coming.
*
The books and internet pages Dad had studied on being father of the bride hadn’t prepared him for this one. He could give an amusing speech and raise a toast with the best of them, but the issue of an absentee groom clearly hadn’t been covered.
When Doug offered to make an announcement to our guests, advising them there’d been a slight ‘delay’, Dad glanced my way for approval. I nodded sadly and only hoped the best man would deliver the news without the air quotes he’d felt the need to use when running it by us.
‘Why don’t we get into the car, and you can try to reach Finn,’ urged Hannah, pressing my mobile phone into my hand. I’m sure her suggestion was more to get me out of sight of the accumulated crowd, and I almost felt sorry for the onlookers when she glared menacingly at them over her shoulder as she climbed into the Bentley behind me. A few gawpers rapidly dispersed, leaving only a small group of die-hard rubberneckers.
‘I know what you’re thinking – whateveryoneis probably thinking,’ I said as the car door closed with a solid clunk. ‘But they’re all wrong. Finn wouldn’t do this to me. He just wouldn’t.’
Hannah was too good a friend to point out that all the evidence currently pointed to the contrary. ‘It does seem… puzzling,’ she conceded.
With one eye on my phone and the other on the street, watching out for Finn’s distinctive red-and-white retro Gran Torino, I called his number. The sound of his voice made the breath catch in my throat and it took a second or two for me to realise it was just his voicemail recording. The first message I left after the beep was so garbled it made no sense. Numbers two and three weren’t much better, but by the time he heard the fourth one he’d probably be able to decipher what I was trying to say. I sat with the phone nestled on my lap like an unexploded grenade as I waited for him to call me back.
The silence stretched like an elastic band, the kind that was going to hurt like hell when it eventually snapped. Hannah risked breaking it first.
‘Perhaps he’s in a bad signal area,’ she suggested.
‘Perhaps he’s been in an accident,’ I countered.
We considered each other’s suggestions. It was hard to decide which was worse.
‘William should be back any minute now,’ she said, checking the time on her own phone.
I smiled weakly. Hannah’s husband had been despatched to travel the various alternative routes between Finn’s flat and the church. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust that Finn’s friends had checked properly, I told myself, before realising that was, in fact,exactlywhy I’d asked him to go.
Hannah glanced worriedly in the direction of the church. ‘I hope your Aunt Helen doesn’t regret agreeing to keep an eye on Milly while he’s gone. Shecanbe a bit of a handful.’
It was hard to imagine anything capable of making me smile at that moment, but the thought of my adorable goddaughter almost managed it.
‘Why don’t you go and check she’s okay. I’ll wait here until Finn turns up.’
Hannah’s smile froze slightly, but she nodded and with a quick squeeze of my hand slipped from the car. It took only a few seconds for my father to take her place.
‘How are you holding up, kiddo?’
The old nickname almost toppled my self-control. ‘I’ll be okay when I know where he is.’
Dad nodded, but there was a set to his jaw that had never been there before where Finn was concerned.Not you too, Dad? Surely you’ve seen the way we are together? You must know he’d never walk out on me like this?
Dad looked down at his hands, finding it easier to talk to a hangnail on his thumb than face me. ‘The vicar came out a while ago to say that he’s really sorry but there’s another wedding booked for later this afternoon and unless things get underway very soon, there won’t be enough time to prepare for the next ceremony.’
I raised forlorn eyes towards the church. From behind a veil of tears that I refused to let fall, I saw Finn and me where we should have been right then: standing beside the lychgate, smiling hugely as the photographer snapped away; and then over there beneath the boughs of the sprawling old oak, holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes. I knew what we were supposed to be doing every single minute of this special day. It was all mapped out, but now the compass was spinning wildly and I had no idea where we were or where to go next.
‘Should we tell people to go home?’ Dad suggested tentatively. He was the only one who could have asked that question without me turning angrily on them.
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head so hard I felt my headpiece dislodge and slide down my hair. I took a deep, steadying breath. ‘No. Tell everyone to go on to the reception.’
‘Really, Pumpkin?’ Oh boy, he truly was bringing out all the old nicknames today. I hadn’t heard that particular one in over twenty years.
