A Merry Mistletoe Wedding (15 page)

Thea decided to go for distraction rather than admit the truth. After all, what kind of daft prospective bride is so untrusting of her good fortune that she hasn't even looked for a dress to be married in, only two months before her wedding?

‘Well, Sean says he's going to wear a wetsuit and bring his favourite surfboard to be his best man. So obviously I have to wear something that will match.'

‘Hell, why not?' Sean interrupted. ‘Seems a good idea to me. My board is my best mate.'

‘And are you having bridesmaids, Thea, or keeping it uncluttered?' Sarah asked.

‘We want it to be very, very simple. There'll be both our families and you, of course, and friends of Sean's from the village but otherwise just … us, really. And all a bit – you know – sort of homemade and unfancy. I can't do
fuss
.'

‘Not even a best woman?' Paul asked. ‘Isn't that the thing women have these days?'

‘I …' To Thea's horror her eyes filled with proper big fat tears. ‘I was supposed to have my sister Emily. But …' And she couldn't say any more apart from, ‘She says she won't come all the way down here.' She sniffed. Sarah passed her a box of tissues and Sean put his arm round her.

‘She will, in the end. She will,' he said.

‘But why not?' Sarah exclaimed. ‘It's not as if it's … I don't know, Australia or something!'

‘She's just had a baby and she's not … not quite her usual self. But it's not only about that. Being so completely cut off by the snow last year had a really bad effect on her. She hated it; it really got to her. She was absolutely terrified! Really shaken by that isolation. Sam – that's her husband – promised her he'd never make her go away at Christmas again and she's making him stick to it.'

‘Oh heavens, snow? Is that all?' Paul said, laughing. ‘Seeing as that was the first proper snow in about a hundred years and made the national news, I think you can reassure her that she's more likely to drown in the eternal Cornish drizzle. You're her sister. She'll change her mind before the day, I bet you any amount of folding money.'

‘Is this the right way?' Thea asked Sean as they drove his old Land Rover out through the hall gates and turned left, which wasn't the direction they'd arrived from. ‘Are we taking a detour?'

‘It's a mile or so longer but I wanted you to see something,' he said to her. ‘It can't wait; I've been dying to show you ever since I first noticed. I was going to keep it for later in the week – not to mention in daytime – but I think you need to see it now. It'll cheer you up.'

‘I'm sorry about earlier,' she said. ‘Stuff's just been getting to me. School's tricky – the head is constantly on my case and Emily won't even talk to me. Mum says she's really depressed and I'm worried for her. It's kind of frozen any urge to get anything weddingy done at all. Maybe asking her to come down here at Christmas really is too much. But—'

‘It'll be fine, trust me. And if you don't trust me, trust this …' He turned the car down on to a narrow track in the woods and it bumped over potholes and rocks.

He stopped the car and told Thea to hop out and together they stood under the trees.

‘Look up there,' he said, pointing through the bare branches, black and stark against a pewter moonlit sky.

‘Ahhh – yes, I see it! Wow – huge clumps of it!'

‘And still growing too. So you see? The mistletoe was lucky for us last year; it will be for this. All will be well.'

‘Mummy. Mummy? Wake up, Mummy.' Emily felt a jabby little finger prodding her shoulder and as she opened a weary eye she found she was nose to nose with Milly. What huge, intense blue eyes she had, Emily thought as she surfaced from a deep doze.

‘What is it, sweetie?' Emily murmured, automatically gathering the sleeping Ned beside her into her arms. Milly could be a bit heavy-handed and had once got hold of the baby's wrist to drag him into place on the sofa so she could prop him up in a line with her soft toys.

‘I want to be in your bed too. It's not fair.'

‘You've got your own lovely bed with a pink princess duvet cover on it. You don't want to be in here. It's too crowded.' Emily yawned and glanced at the clock. It wasn't six o'clock yet and was less than an hour since she'd last seen it. She'd woken up to feed Ned at five and then hadn't been able to doze off again, as usual. Nights had become slow, monstrous hours of closed eyes but little sleep. It was as if every time she tried to let go, a zillion worries would take the chance to invade her head and shake themselves about, each one taking its turn at the front of her thoughts. Whenever she got close to banishing one, another would slot neatly into the vacant place until all she was left with was a frazzled, anxious gloom. It was, she decided in one of her more lucid midnight moments, like mixing paint on a palette. If you put too many colours in, you always ended up with mud brown. What sleep there was, was punctuated by the snuffling breath of Ned, his tiny wriggles, the jerking herself wide awake when he became still and silent, as she panicked that his breathing had stopped. And then there was Sam, who snored and shifted and was an ever-present danger to the baby of flailing arms and thoughtless turning. But if Ned slept in his crib, even though it was right by their bed, he might be taken. Emily wasn't sure what by, but the worst imaginings alternated between evil demonic sprites and bizarre cannibalistic burglars.

‘Having your baby in bed with you is safe enough if you're careful,' she had been told by the nurse at the clinic. It wasn't exactly the most enthusiastic endorsement. The implication was loud and clear that if anything happened to him, it would be entirely her fault. But Emily wasn't a smoker, or overweight (not by much, anyway; after all, who was at maximum slenderness two months after childbirth apart from the Duchess of Cambridge and Victoria Beckham?). She wasn't doping herself to a stupor with alcohol and as she barely slept between feeds and nappy changes nobody could accuse her of lack of vigilance.

‘There
is
room. Daddy isn't here.' Milly scrambled eagerly across Emily's body and flumped herself down on the far side of Ned. ‘See?'

So where was he? Sam wasn't a great one for early mornings and recently when he'd been doing the school run she'd had to shake him awake while the children brushed their teeth. Sometimes they'd be waiting by the door, coats on, and he'd be stumbling down the stairs still pulling on a sweater. ‘You look like those awful women you see in the tabloids who rock up to school in pyjamas,' she'd told him only last week.

‘You could always drive them yourself,' he'd grouched, his voice still just-woken deep and croaky.

‘And what about feeding Ned?' she'd snapped back, but they both knew that wasn't the reason.

Emily left Milly snuggled under the duvet, put Ned into his crib and went down the stairs. There was no sign of Sam in the kitchen but she could see through the half-closed slats in the plantation shutters that a light was on in his office and images on his computer were flickering. She left the light off, carefully opened the back door and, taking a deep breath and crossing her fingers in case of dangers, swiftly crept across the terrace to catch what he was looking at before he noticed her. She was being a bit sly and sneaky and she knew it, but sometimes, sometimes, you just had to keep an eye on things or they'd slide.

‘Sam? Why are you looking at property?' Emily whipped the door open and got her question out before he could close down the site. It seemed to feature a country cottage with the obligatory roses. The details would almost certainly mention ‘an abundance of charm'. Her head whizzed through possibilities in the milliseconds before Sam could come up with an answer. Was he leaving her? Running off to live somewhere more peaceful and sane with … well, who? He quite liked Kate, a magazine editor up the road – they laughed a lot about shared journalistic in-jokes. How about Charlotte? No – he was wary of her and had once said sex with her would be like shagging an emperor-size duvet, maximum tog. Emily tried to remember if he'd said this as if it were a bad or good thing. After all, duvets were soft and comforting, although even the heaviest wouldn't have the crush-potential that Charlotte had.

As she'd anticipated, the website was abruptly shut down and Sam wheeled round in his chair. ‘Do you have to creep up on me, Emily? I don't look at porn and I don't do online gambling, so can you please allow me my own space to diddle about on my own computer?'

Emily stepped inside and shut the door behind her – the morning air was close to icy and it was getting in and making her feel unsafe as if the slightest breeze could whisk her up to the clouds. ‘I wasn't prying. I just wondered why you were up. It's early.'

‘I couldn't sleep. You were extra-fidgety in the small hours.'

‘So it's my fault.'

‘I didn't say it was a “fault”,' he said, making quote marks in the air with his fingers.

‘No. But everything is, isn't it? My fault, I mean.'

Sam rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. It was thinning, she noticed with shock. Oh God, he was ageing. They both were. Here was a new thing to worry about. Getting older could mean getting ill. Dying, even. She'd felt safe from that as her parents were still alive and surely there was a natural order to these things, but perhaps she shouldn't trust in that after all? Who would take care of the children? She must add something about it to her will.

Sam sighed and reached for her hand. ‘Nothing is your fault. You're just not … yourself yet. If you'd only—'

‘I'm not taking pills, Sam. Not while I'm feeding Ned.'

‘Counselling then?' His voice was gentle but she could sense an underlying exasperation. She didn't blame him. She didn't like living with herself at the moment so there was no reason to expect him to like it either.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘About no counselling?'

‘What good would it do? It's not as if I'm unhappy. I'd feel guilty taking up the time that someone else could use. I've got nothing at all in my life to complain about apart from being scared of the area I live in.'

‘Oh, Em, come on now. You know it doesn't work like that. There might be some, I don't know, trick of some sort? Behavioural therapy?'

‘Next you'll be saying I should get one of those so-called adult colouring books to
relax
me,' she snapped. ‘I'm not six.'

‘I wasn't going to say that, of course I wouldn't. But, you know, whatever it takes. Let's try. Mindfulness might help, maybe? Or back to your yoga?'

‘Sorry,' Emily said again. She felt helpless and weak-light and when she tried to move towards the door she found she didn't seem to remember how to walk. She stood anchored to the spot, numb. It was cold. There was ice forming on the outside of the windows. She felt she might be freezing to a block and felt a small rise of panic.

‘No, don't be sorry, it's probably my fault for not being able to sort you out. I'm fairly useless, I know, but I've never been faced with something that seems unsolvable,' Sam said.

Emily tried a few deep breaths but could only manage tiny shallow ones. For a few long moments she couldn't feel her limbs, couldn't feel how her feet connected with the ground. Was she floating? The illusion passed when Sam stood up and gave her a hug.

‘I'd better go and get the kids off to school. On with the day and all that.'

‘But it's half-term,' Emily said. ‘Didn't you realize?'

‘Ah – forgot for a moment. Look, Emily, you're doing a great job with Ned but … you know there are two others as well. Alfie asked me the other day if you were going to get better soon. I could see what he meant. When he's ill he lies on the sofa under the purple blanket. And now you're doing it. Can't we … I don't know, take them to the park today or something? If I'm with you, you'll be perfectly safe, I promise.'

Emily gripped his hand tightly as he opened the door and led her back to the kitchen. ‘I'll try. OK, I really will try. This afternoon. But you have to tell me why you're looking at houses. Are you thinking we should move? Is it because I said I don't feel safe here any more? I don't mind moving. I could look at places with you. It's something we could do together …?' She realized she was gabbling and, strangely, half-adopting an idea she hadn't thought through. She hadn't written a list of pros and cons or thought about which bit of ‘not London' would be bearable to live in. And schools – what about schools? And work? She could move her office easily enough. Clients weren't remotely interested in where their accountant operated from, so long as they got the adding up right. Perhaps it would be a good idea. A village perhaps; nothing too remote or too tiny, because she'd want a few neighbours, but a proper, perfect little community with a school and a pub and a shop. In seconds, she had them all in a rose-covered former vicarage, planting out bean seedlings and playing with the … dog. Dog? Where had that come from? She didn't even like dogs. They smelled and they bit. No, she didn't want a dog. They'd get a cat. And maybe a pony, one day.

He was filling the kettle at the sink and he laughed, ‘Oh that! I was just idly looking for somewhere to rent down near Cove Manor for Thea's wedding. It seemed like a good compromise, somehow. We'd get to be just us on our own for Christmas like you wanted but Thea also gets us to be there for her wedding. What do you think?'

Oh, he looked so pleased with himself but Emily felt only a plummeting disappointment that was surprisingly physical. She could sense her face and body getting hot and anger was making her hands shake. Her breasts tingled with the familiar prickling sensation and she felt milk seep from them. Right on cue, from upstairs she could hear the little bleaty cry of Ned waking.