Across the Sands of Time (25 page)

Throughout the night the poem so beloved by Dominic had prowled her dreams. A few days before she had heard from him.
Nothing much. A postcard featuring an Irish racing print on one side and a hasty scrawl on the other, enquiring after the ponies and wishing her well.

She had received other such missives from time to time, an email or a text, and had geared herself to look upon them as tokens of friendship rather than anything more serious.

The words of the verse were with her still; dark, full of imagery, poignant.

‘Thea! The cars are here,' her mother's voice trilled from the hall.

‘Coming.'

Arranging the broad-brimmed wedding hat over her hair that was dressed in an elegant coil on the nape of her neck for the occasion, Thea took a few sustaining breaths, lifted her chin resolutely and, collecting her handbag from the bed, left the room.

As she did so, the first pealing of church bells drifted across the fields.

 

Inside the church, all was hushed. There was a mingled smell of flowers, perfume and old stone. Thea, her silk-clad back ramrod straight, sat with her family on a front pew. To her right were her brother and his wife. Next to them was her mother, her handbag occupying the space shortly to be taken by Chas.

Mum and Dad, Richard and Tracey, aunts and uncles and all the rest. Couples everywhere the eye fell, here to celebrate the joining of yet another union. Only she, Thea, sat alone. She glanced down at the space on her left that would remain just that throughout the ceremony. It seemed to mock her.

Beyond, the north aisle was shadowed, although in the available pews an assembly of villagers had congregated in smiling numbers to watch the proceedings.

On the other side of the main aisle, Geoff's fairish head and the darker one of his best man could be seen.

Please, please let me get through this
, Thea beseeched silently.

The organ started playing and Bryony was there, looking so ethereal and lovely that breath was collectively held as she drifted down the aisle on her father's arm. Chas cut a dignified and rather
distant figure in his uncharacteristic wedding finery, and was almost bursting with pride as he beheld his youngest child.

As Bryony gained the altar where her groom waited and the vicar intoned the opening phrases, Thea realized her hands were clenched. She was making a concentrated effort to relax, when all at once the church door creaked open to admit a latecomer, closing again with a small, distinct click.

Aware of movement behind her, a tip-toed step approaching along the worn red and blue carpeted north aisle, Thea turned her head to investigate … and her eyes widened in surprise.

Dominic slipped into the empty space beside her. Tall, good-looking, smart in charcoal grey, the riotous dark hair hastily tamed with a brush, Dominic's intensely blue eyes were not on the bride, but on Thea. He reached out, took her hand and, lacing her fingers tellingly in his, sent her a hesitant smile.

Thea's heart pounded. Such a lot could be read in that smile. Remorse, contrition, a degree of hope and above all, love.

It was as if a fog had lifted. He had come for her. Now, they could move on.

Everything was going to be all right, after all.