The Runaway Bridesmaid (7 page)

Now that she had tossed away everything she had worked towards since she left college nearly ten years ago, all she had to figure out was what she was going to do with the rest of her life when she returned to New York after her aunt’s funeral. She knew finding a soul mate was a non-starter – she had no intention of subjecting herself to that minefield again. Every foray she’d made into the field had blown up in her face. There were only so many hints that she was not ‘girlfriend material’ that she could ignore. Whatever her character flaws were, she harboured no masochistic tendencies.

Her cell phone buzzed into life, as she knew it would, and a smile played at her lips. Lauren.

Chapter Nine

‘Oh my God! What did you just do?’ Lauren’s voice was surrounded by a faint echo and Rosie knew her friend was crouched in the only sanctuary available at Harlow Fenton – the ladies’ restroom.

‘I know, I know. It’s only just beginning to sink in.’

‘But why? I tried to call you after I got your text about Giles and Freya, and I totally understand why you ran away,’ Lauren’s voice squeaked in outrage. She had never been a paid-up member of Freya’s fan club. ‘I didn’t think even Freya could be so vile! On her wedding day! Although to be honest, it’s completely within the scope of Giles’ questionable capabilities. But do you have to resign? Have you really thought this through?’

‘Yes, I do, and yes I have. Clearly Giles held me in so little esteem that he betrayed me
with my sister
!’

‘She’s livid, by the way. All the gossip about your mysterious disappearance meant she was no longer the centre of attention. She thinks you did it on purpose to spoil her big celebration; that you are jealous she’s found her soul mate and you haven’t and couldn’t bear to watch.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, that’s just typical of Freya. Has she conveniently forgotten that since Mum died she’s been my number one priority! I’ve done everything for her! Everything revolves around her and her happiness! Everything! And if I’m ever lucky enough to have something she doesn’t, she will stop at nothing until she takes it from me!’

‘I’m so sorry Rosie. How are you feeling?’

‘How should I be feeling? I go in search of the blushing bride so that I can deliver her to her handsome, successful, billionaire bridegroom, and where do I find her?
In the linen cupboard
in a compromising position with my boyfriend –- the faithless scumbag that is Giles Phillips.’

‘Oh, Rosie, I’m so sorry you had to find out about him like that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I’m not sure if this is the right time to tell you this, but you already know Giles has a reputation for dating a long string of women yet eschewing commitment like it’s the bubonic plague. I’m so sorry, Rosie, but I just found out after your call that Giles is in a relationship with CEO’s daughter! Has been for the last six months, but she’s been out of the country on an internship at a bank in Paris for the last three. She’s due back next week and George Harlow is apoplectic.’

Rosie’s knees wobbled, her chest heaved with each ragged breath and her eyes smarted from the shock. She crumpled onto her aunt’s chintz-covered sofa and waited until the waves of pain subsided.
The CEO’s daughter?
How could he treat her with such flippant contempt? A stop-gap until his girlfriend returned from her European secondment. It wasn’t so much that she’s scraped the bottom of the barrel with her choice of boyfriend but that she’d chiselled through to woodworm below!

She fiddled with the pearl earring at her lobe as she forced herself to replay the distressing closet scene in her mind’s eye.

‘I suppose it wasn’t as if Freya was doing this to me on purpose…’ she said to reassure herself, rather than the spluttering, indignant Lauren.

‘No, Rosie,
stop
this. Listen to yourself. Marshalling your arguments like a criminal defence lawyer, making excuses for her again. She
knew
Giles was your date. And Giles knew she was your
sister
, about to get married! They deserve each other – both of them are cheating idiots!’

Before Lauren had met Brett, and long before Rosie had fallen into her relationship with Giles, they had spent many an alcohol-infused night holed up in her apartment concocting a list of criteria for their prospective Mr Rights. Faithfulness and loyalty were the top essential attributes on both girls’ lists, qualities that brooked no amendment. But it seemed those characteristics were in short supply and they’d had to settle for the indulgence of some girly TLC – that trio of oestrogen solace – tea, Louboutins and chocolate.

‘Giles is a loser! Not satisfied with cheating on his girlfriend, he pursues anything that moves.’ Lauren, in her outrage, was unaware of the hurtful insinuation her comment held. ‘What’s up with men like that?’

‘Well, Toby did have a number of theories…’

‘I’m so sorry, Rosie, but you deserve better than Giles’ leftovers.’ Lauren’s hostility towards their boss glided across miles down the phone line. ‘He’s a player and a cheat who squeezes us all until the pips squeak. Giles is a scumbag, Rosie.’

Rosie could muster no defensive arguments to this accusation – guilty as charged. But Lauren hadn’t finished with her character assassination.

‘He’s a devious, disloyal, sly… We work like Trojans whilst he’s swinging around town like an alley cat. We’ve no time to pee but he has all the time in the world to…’ She paused, her voice softening. ‘Sorry, Rosie. But you do realise you dating him was borne out of convenience. Giles blazes his own trail in the world, discarding others without a glance in his rear view mirror, trampling on their dreams for his own gain. He sweeps around and sleeps around – you knew that before you marched, stilettos first, into his web.’

Rosie was fully aware she had been consorting with the enemy. After the event she was now able, under Lauren’s counsel, to look back and question her sanity. Giles was the most self-obsessed person she’d ever had the misfortune to meet, and that was from a pool of sharks that included Freya! His strategy was to milk every dollar from every client and to hog all the credit for the successful mergers and acquisitions their team advised on, even the intuitive choices of Lauren. Despite his unpopularity, he was strangely admired by those inhabiting the lower ranks of Harlow Fenton and praised for his business acumen by those whose positions he coveted.

‘Giles is relationship history, Rosie. Good riddance. Now you’re free to concentrate all your efforts on meeting a decent guy who will make you happy – like Brett. New York is a lonely town, I know. But you can do it. What did Freya say when you confronted her?’

Rosie mumbled something.

‘What?’

‘Well, I didn’t actually confront her as such.’

‘But why not? You’ve got to, Rosie. For all his faults, and he has many, Giles was your boyfriend!’

‘But it wasn’t a
serious
relationship, was it?’ Rosie squirmed under Lauren’s insistent questioning technique. She would have made a superb Gestapo officer.

Lauren was not prepared to let Freya off the hook as lightly as Rosie. ‘She was just about to get married to a great guy. She has a fabulous life stretching out before her. Jacob is her escape route, but he’s also yours, Rosie. At long last you can hand over the baton, relinquish your assumed responsibility for your adult sister, and get on with a life of your own. You’ve got to talk to her about this. Are you going to tell your father?’

Her response to this question would affect her whole future; her relationship not only with Freya but with her father. Jack idolised his youngest daughter, doted on her in an effort to make up for the loss of her mother at such a tender age. After all, Rosie had been about to turn eighteen when Rose had succumbed to the march of breast cancer, whilst Freya had been only eight.

‘No, it would destroy his sepia-tinted image of Freya and I couldn’t do that to either of them.’

Her heart flipped over for loading such pain on her friend’s shoulders when she had enough to think about with her IVF appointment only a few days away. Why should Lauren have to suffer for Giles’ despicable behaviour? She, on the other hand, deserved it. After all, she’d succumbed to a relationship with her boss. Heartache was the inevitable result.

And why should Lauren have been bullied into the role of bridesmaid for a girl she barely knew and had no respect for? Rosie’s fault again. Her inability to stand up for herself, especially in any matter pertaining to her sister, had led to another undeserved trauma. The realisation swayed Rosie’s balance and she was grateful she was sat down.

‘Rosie, I’m so sorry. But you don’t have to resign. In fact, that was the second thing I rang to tell you.’

‘Oh God, Lauren, I don’t think I can take any more shocks.’

‘It’s about the Baker-Colt deal you’ve just closed. At the finance meeting with George Harlow that took place immediately after you tendered your resignation, Giles tried to take the credit for your research and the purchase of those shares in the Wyoming Explorative Mining Company on their behalf.’

‘But how could he? He was always on his soapbox in the office about the ethics of investing in companies that engage in “ecologically questionable activities”. The company is currently engaged in a hydraulic fracking operation in Colorado in the hope of finding shale gas deposits.’

‘Well, it seems his environmental conscience doesn’t extend to situations where his monthly bonus is at stake. Giles only meets his monthly targets when he applies our figures to his own ledger, you know that.’

‘When he can get away with it,’ Rosie murmured.

‘That’s what I wanted to tell you. Toby was so furious after your resignation that he made sure George Harlow was in no doubt whatsoever that the Baker-Colt Trust was your deal and there had been no input, even supervisory, from Giles. He warned Giles that if he persisted in taking credit where none was due he would expose all his previous transgressions where the accounts were concerned.’

Rosie smiled as she conjured up a picture of Toby in full flow, squaring up to Giles, taking him to task for his misdemeanours. She knew Giles didn’t frighten him. In his frequently-expressed opinion, managers of meagre talents tended to belittle and denigrate others they recognised possessed superior ability. He saw Giles as a typical NYC shark, almost a cliché, and he’d no need, nor desire, to impress him. However, out of respect for Rosie, he had recently chosen to maintain his counsel on the subject of their boss. Like any close-knit family, her work colleagues knew when to steer a wide berth, when their support was required and when to turn up with a vanilla-spiced latte.

And Toby often offered her advice on the issue of love. ‘Don’t worry, Rosie. Logic dictates you’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince, especially now William is taken. But don’t despair, Harry is still available, if you like carrot tops! Sadly, your particular frog is of the Poison Dart variety, and I can assure you it will not have a happy outcome.’ Well, he had been right there, hadn’t he?

Whilst Rosie was grateful to Lauren and Toby for sticking up for her professional abilities, she was horrified at the extent of Giles’ contempt for her. Giles Phillips, someone she thought respected her professionally, had even been prepared to trample all over her dreams of promotion to line his own coffers. Not only did he hold her in such low esteem in their personal relationship but, it seemed, in their professional one too.

Clarity hit her like a sledgehammer. She had done the right thing. Now all she had to figure out was what she should do next.

Chapter Ten

She whipped back the lemon gingham curtains and flung open the window to the rear garden, allowing fragmented sunlight to filter its rays into the room. The view over the Belfast sink to the garden beyond was impressive but Rosie was alarmed at the state of its neglect. Her aunt was usually to be found on her knees, buttocks high in the air, tending her precious herb garden to the left of the kitchen window adjacent to the wooden decking, and the plants bemoaned her absence. An essential component had been erased from the intricate green canvas.

However, despite the horticultural chaos, there, at the bottom of the garden by the drystone wall marking the lodge’s boundary with Brampton Manor, rose the cherry tree in full candy-pink blossom. As the end of April approached, its burst of botanical joy seemed at odds with the dilapidation of the rest of the garden which was a veritable tangle of weeds – evidence, if Rosie should need it, that after death life continued to bloom and good things could still happen.

She fought down a rising lump in her throat as she recalled the evening when, after a few glasses of the local scrumpy cider, she and Bernice had danced under the confetti-like rain of the tree’s velvety pink petals. Again, the scene lacked its central character: her aunt resting in her deckchair, artist’s sketch pad in hand, picking out the stamen of a tulip with her pencil. Bernice had continued to pursue her love of illustration after her formal retirement as a children’s book illustrator and had graduated to the depiction of the herbs, flowers and plants growing in her Devonshire garden which she occasionally opened to the public.

No technique was spared as Bernice had tutored Rosie in a less-defined depiction of the sumptuous garden and its myriad gems in watercolours or pastels. Those afternoons spent together in companionable artistic silence had been some of the best of Rosie’s life and once again, as she filled the kettle and set it to boil, she was wrapped in a wave of melancholy at the apparent neglect of not only her aunt’s beloved garden and cottage but also of her aunt herself.

Those careless words uttered by her aunt’s solicitor floated back to her. Her aunt had died alone. Rosie knew her aunt had been discovered by Susan Moorfield, her best friend and the owner of the village shop and adjacent tearoom she had passed earlier. Had her aunt known that she was ill? That she had only a short time left? If so, why hadn’t she said anything?

As the kettle clicked off, there was a knock on the front door. Perfect timing – Rosie knew who her first visitor would be. Her spirits leapt and a smile stretched her plump lips as she grabbed her mane of golden hair and slung it over her shoulder – no requirement for its obsessive taming here in Devon.