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Did I mention I’m more of a cat person?
“Emerald,” she squeals, throwing her arms around me and enveloping me in a cloud of perfectly styled hair and Jo Malone perfume. “It’ssoamazing to meet you atlast! I just can’tbelieveit’s taken us this long! We were starting to think Jack had just made you up as a cover for some nefarious deal or other!”
“N… nefarious deal?” I swallow frantically, my breath squeezed almost out of my body by the strength of Sofa Woman’s hug. “What nefarious deal?”
“Oh my God, you’re ascream!” the woman shrieks, hugging me again. “Just like you said, Jack! Isn’t she adorable?”
“Well,Ithink so,” says Jack, blushing slightly. “But you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here, Rose? It can’t bejustthat you wanted to meet Emerald, surely?”
Rose! Of course! It’s his sister, Rose! I’m so pleased to finally be back in the loop that I barely even flinch at the suggestion that no one would come here “just” to meetme.
“Well, to help plan the wedding, silly!” Rose is saying, in her cut-glass accent. “Didn’t Mummy tell you? I’m an event planner now, silly! I’m starting my own company and everything. And you and Emerald are my very first clients!”
She beams at us both, as if she’s just given us the very best present imaginable, and I smile back. Now I know she’s Jack’s sister, and not yet another spanner in the works of our relationship, I’m feeling a bit more relaxed about her sudden appearance — and I’ve almost forgotten about the message I was supposed to be showing to Jack the second I got home.
I guess that’ll have to wait, though. Because not even I would blurt something like that out in front of my future sister-in-law. Well, not at our very first meeting, anyway.
“Wedding planner? No, she didn’t tell me that,” Jack replies, frowning. “I thought she said you wanted to be an interior designer?”
“Interior designer, event planner… it’s all the same thing, isn’t it?” shrugs Rose, making herself at home on the sofa again. “Ooh! Let’s have some champagne! We have to toast the future Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan, don’t we? The good stuff, Jack,” she adds, winking at me. “Not that supermarket stuff we picked up in Provence that time. Remember the look on Daddy’s face?”
She shrieks with laughter, before launching straight into another story. By the time the champagne has been produced and opened, we’re three “Do you remembers” deep into what appears to be an interminable episode of The Jack and Rose Show (Tagline: ‘You’d Had To Have Been There’), and my jaw aches from all the fake laughing I’ve been doing.
Oh, and I still haven’t told Jack about The Message. Every time I try to catch his eye, Rose jumps in with another “hilarious” anecdote, and the opportunity to steer the conversation into “anonymous message” territory never quite arises.
Whenisthe right time to tell your fiance that someone thinks he’s dodgy, though? Asking for… well, for me, really.
“You’ll be having the wedding in France, right?” says Rose. “When were you thinking? Autumn? Winter? Winter weddings are very on trend right now. And I expect you’ll want to avoid the sun, Emerald, won’t you?”
I consider telling her I’m a redhead, not a vampire, but I really want to get on with her — for Jack’s sake, as well as my own — so I wisely keep my mouth shut for once and glance at Jack, whose cheeks are slightly flushed from the champagne and the laughter. I’ve never really seen him like this around anyone other than me, and it makes me even more determined to like his sister.
“We want to do it as soon as possible, don’t we, Emerald?” he says with a smile that almost makes me melt right into the sofa. “I’d love to be able to combine it with the opening of the new development,” he goes on, abruptly putting a pin in the idea that he just couldn’t waitone more secondto marry me. “But that’s still a few months away, and I’m not sure we can wait that long, can we?”
He grins at me shyly, and I start melting again. There’ll be nothing left of me at this rate.
“You’re thinking New York, aren’t you?” Rose says, her eyes widening. “Oh, fantastic idea; New York weddings aresuperstylish. We could—”
I lean forward eagerly, but Jack cuts her off.
“No, of course not,” he says, laughing. “We want to do it here. At home. With all the people we love.”
He looks at me for confirmation, and I nod reluctantly. Idowant to have all the people I love at the wedding. Well,most of them, anyway. That goes without saying. But all the same, I’ve never been to New York, and…
“Here? In the Highlands?” Rose breaks into my thoughts with a shriek of horror. “But Jack, you just can’t! Think of themidges! And the fashion will be justhorrific!”
She leans forward conspiratorially.
“Do you know,” she says in a low voice. “I’m sure I saw a man walking a sheep down the road when I arrived earlier. Asheep! And he took it into a pub with him. Can youimagine? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I look at her, surprised — and not just because Jimmy’s sheep, Edna, has been banned from the pub for ages now, either.
“Haven’t you been here before, though?” I ask. “To Heather Bay? Surely you must have seen Jimmy and Edna if you have? They’re basically the village mascots. Well, sort of.”
“God, no,” says Rose, not bothering to look up from the screen of her phone, her fingers flying over the keys as she speaks. “I don’t reallydosmall villages. They make me itchy.”
“But… the estate?” I say, confused. “Isn’t it, like, your ancestral home or something?”
I turn to Jack for confirmation of this, suddenly uncertain.
