Two Weddings and a Baby (19 page)

‘I’m sure we can do something,’ Gloria was saying as she gingerly picked through a heap of soaking-wet, muddy satin on the table. Tamsyn surmised that this was the remains of one wedding and five bridesmaids’ dresses. ‘Ah, here’s the expert.’

‘I design dresses,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I have never yet resurrected any from the dead.’

Alex’s laugh was dry, mirthless.

‘Look, it doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I don’t care if I’m wearing jeans and a jumper. If I get to marry Ruan the day after tomorrow, surrounded by my friends, then what does it matter if I’m wearing the only wedding dress that I could find that I loved, and that took months and months to choose, and which made me feel graceful and beautiful and special? What does it matter at all, really? After all, it’s not as if I am the sort of person to get superstitious about all the bad omens, or start to think that the whole thing is doomed, is it?’

Her voice rose with each word, finishing in a sort of strangulated shout of restrained misery. If this was her Bridezilla act, she needed to work on it a bit. Bernard had once designed a wedding gown for a countess who ripped out a large handful of the dresser’s hair after she accidentally stuck a pin in her. There had been a court case and a large payment made to the dresser, who gave up dressing and went to live on a yacht in Capri, but the countess was not the least bit repentant. Now
that
was Bridezilla.

‘Do you have a nice frock you can wear instead?’ Gloria said, gently, going to her daughter and sitting on the arm of the chair to embrace her. ‘OK, well, you don’t have any frocks, but I’ve got loads. You could wear one of those, perhaps. What about that nice little number with the leopard print?’

‘Yes, yes, Mum, I really want to get married in my mother’s cast-offs,’ Alex said unhappily.

‘Or the boutique,’ Lucy said. ‘What about Purple Hearts? They always have the most beautiful dresses in the window, although I have literally no idea who buys them or why anyone would need a full designer ballgown in a seaside town, but still. One of those?’

‘They don’t make designer dresses for women with breasts or hips,’ Alex said, taking a moment to narrow her eyes at Tamsyn, who had to admit that this was true.

She picked up what would have been a bridesmaid’s dress, the oyster-grey satin utterly ruined, and then looked at Alex’s dress, which was in an even sorrier state. It had been a plain ivory organza over satin, light, simply cut to make the most of her figure. It would have suited Alex, Tamsyn thought, but there was no way that any sort of cleaning would get the stains out now.

‘What’s going on?’ Jed appeared, and seeing Mo reposing in a baby rocker that Cordelia had brought down from the attic, picked her up and cradled her, kissing the tip of her nose.

‘Well,’ Sue said, ‘I was organising a little mood-raiser talent show for tonight, but then the girls returned from Gloria’s having found that a tree has left a whacking great hole in Gloria’s roof on its way through, and although the dresses were in her bedroom, they are totally ruined.’

‘So, oh dress designer of greatness,’ Keira said, keeping an eye on her boys as they chased a crazed Skipper around the courtyard, along with Sue’s children and a huge poodle. ‘Any ideas? Any miracle fixes?’

‘Well,’ she hesitated, not sure how to deliver the final death blow to all hope. ‘There are a few patches here and there that I could cut out, but even then I don’t think I’d have enough material to make one wedding dress. I’m so sorry, Alex, there’s not much I can do for these.’

‘It’s fine.’ Alex shrugged, the tears rolling down her face, so that Buoy heaved himself up onto his back paws and began licking her cheeks. ‘They’re only clothes, after all. I don’t even know why I care. Everyone knows I don’t care about things like dresses.’

‘You are allowed to care about your wedding dress,’ Gloria said gently.

‘Of course you are,’ Keira said. ‘Tamsyn, perhaps you could have a look at what we have got, dresses and things, and put something together, like a stylist.’

‘Maybe,’ Tamsyn said. ‘But Alex is right; to really look her best she needs something bespoke: she’s tall and curvy. She’s maybe a twelve on the bottom and, what, a sixteen on top? Her legs are long, and her arms … It’s unlikely that a borrowed dress is going to make her feel any better than she does in her favourite pair of jeans.’

‘Harsh,’ Cordelia said.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be harsh,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I just wouldn’t want you to feel uncomfortable on your big day.’

‘Could you make her something?’ Jed said suddenly. ‘I mean, I know you’re a designer, but can you sew too? We have a sewing circle in Poldore, and about eight machines, a whole host of embroiderers and seamstresses that I’m sure could help.’

Tamsyn looked at Mo, whose care she had just promised to commit to, and wondered if she could in all conscience take on a last-minute wedding-dress commission, even if she had the materials, which she didn’t.

‘You could do it with Mo at your side,’ Jed said. ‘And I can do feeds, and change nappies …?’

‘In between cleaning up the church?’ Tamsyn asked him.

‘I’ve got twenty volunteers on that already. They’re doing the first clean and then are coming up here for the show,’ Jed said. ‘And Keira’s already been down to have look at the church and made some drawings about what she is going to do with it.’

‘It’s going to be wonderful,’ Keira said, her eyes alight in a way that Tamsyn rarely saw these days.

‘But even if I could make six dresses in a day and a half, I don’t have the material, or any beads or crystals, or even a pen or a tape measure.’

‘I know exactly what you need,’ Sue said, triumphantly. ‘Follow me. For once again, I, Sue Montaigne, have the means to save the day.’ She positively smirked at Rory, who Tamsyn hadn’t even noticed was lurking in the corner, looking decidedly green around the gills, probably coming down with the Poldore bug too. ‘Hoarding, my arse,’ she said.

Tamsyn, Alex and Gloria followed Sue into the depths, or more accurately the heights, of Castle House once again, leaving Keira and Cordelia to attempt to wrangle the children, while supervising the roasting of several meats for an after-show party.

‘Rory might moan about it,’ Sue said. ‘But I’m glad I just can’t throw anything away. I think it must be a Montaigne trait dating back generations. Up here.’ At the end of the first landing there was a door secreted in the panelling, which opened on to a narrow, dark staircase that had to lead into some attic space, Tamsyn supposed.

‘I was only twenty-two when I officially inherited the old girl. Funny, I grew up in this house, but there were so many locked doors that even I’d never seen behind. Father was a dear, dear man, but he never could cope with the size of the place. He used to pretend he lived in a four-bedroom semi. Shut off rooms, whole wings even, covered stuff with sheets, it was terribly sad. Although a good deal cheaper. Anyway,’ she paused at the stop of the stairs looking down on her followers with a typical Sue-style sense of drama, ‘the first thing I did when I got the keys was to open every single locked door I could find. This room was the room I discovered last.’ She pushed the door open. ‘I think Mother must have been up here quite a lot; the latest period seems to be from the sixties.’

Tamsyn gasped as she walked into the dark, vaulted space, lit only by a few weak light bulbs and dirty windows, but she didn’t need to see better to know that she was in a room filled with clothes. There were racks and racks of clothes, and chests, too: old-fashioned ocean liner-style chests, as well as older-looking oak and leather chests that dated back even earlier, most of them emblazoned with the Montaigne crest, piled one on top of the other from floor to ceiling. This had to be how Howard Carter had felt when he’d opened Tutankhamen’s tomb, Tamsyn thought.

‘Oh my goodness,’ she exclaimed in sheer delight. ‘Oh, I’ve died and gone to fashion heaven.’

‘Well, I’ve spent a few happy hours up here,’ Sue said. ‘I think the earliest garment I’ve uncovered is perhaps Regency, but there is so much. Surely in here you’d find something you could update, adapt, customise, cut up even, to make the dresses?’

Tamsyn ran her hand down a rail of garments that looked as if they were from the 1950s. ‘It would be a sin to cut some of these up. Were these your mother’s? She had beautiful taste. I can see Dior, Chanel … simply stunning.’

‘Oh, they’re only old clothes!’ Sue said casually. ‘You can do what you like with them: take them in, let them out?’ she suggested.

‘No, that wouldn’t work. Women of that era were just smaller than us. But there’s so much here. I’m sure I can find some garments to work with, bring them new life.’ Tamsyn’s eyes glowed as she looked around the room. She felt her heart pumping, and even in her state of exhaustion discovered that she was filled with the most overwhelming joy.

‘I’ll need a big table,’ she said.

‘Dining-room table seats forty,’ Sue told her.

‘Very sharp scissors, and a pencil, 4B, sewing machines, helpers – lots of helpers, people who know their way around a pattern. But only the best ones, the ones that really care; I don’t want do-gooders, or amateurs. They will have to submit a sample of their work for me to OK.’

‘Good.’ Sue nodded approvingly. ‘Good.’

‘I need Alex and all the bridesmaids’ measurements, their actual ones. Not to the nearest centimetre, but to the last millimetre.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Sue said, with grim determination.

‘And I need some time alone in this room, to see what there is,’ Tamsyn added finally, although what she really meant by that was she needed time alone to dance around like a little girl who’d just been given the keys to a toyshop.

‘Right, come on, girls.’ Sue bustled Gloria and Alex towards the door.

‘Wait.’ Alex stopped and turned round. ‘Tamsyn, what’s happening?’

‘Alex,’ Tamsyn’s smile could have lit up the whole town, never mind the attic. ‘I’m going to make you a Tamsyn Thorne original. I’m going to make you the wedding dress of your dreams, and the first time you are going to see it will be on your wedding day.’

Tamsyn was sitting amid a whirlpool of fabric, having selected a half-dozen likely candidates for recycling during her initial rummage through the treasure trove of fashion, when Ruan opened the attic door, ducking to come in, and stood there in silence for a moment, taking it all in.

‘It’s like the mother of all jumble sales,’ he said.

‘Oh, it’s so much more than that,’ Tamsyn smiled, lifting a length of teal-coloured silk to her face and rubbing it against her cheek.

‘You look different,’ Ruan said, smiling a little.

‘It’s the hair, the revenge part two, and this time it’s beyond help. I think it’s taking its vengeance on me for so many years of straightening. This hair does not want to go back in the closet.’

‘I like it,’ Ruan said. ‘But it’s not that. You’re happy here, aren’t you? In your element. I’ve never seen you doing what you really love to do before.’

‘Although strictly speaking, rolling around on the floor in vintage dresses isn’t exactly what I do in Paris,’ Tamsyn said. No, Paris wasn’t nearly so much fun as this.

It was nice to have this conversation with him, as cautious and careful as it was, although the room soon fell into silence again, and Tamsyn wondered if now was the right time to say what she had to say. Did she have the courage? Was that why he’d sought her out, to try and lay their ghosts to rest?

‘Ruan, I’ve …’

‘The thing is …’ he interrupted her. ‘The reason that I came is that Mo’s missing you a bit. Jed must have walked her about forty-five laps of the kitchen table, but every time he sits down she starts wailing again. He won’t let anyone come and get you.’

‘Oh,’ said Tamsyn. ‘Well, I think I’m nearly done.’

‘Already?’ Ruan asked her.

‘No, God no. Choosing dresses and fabric to make into gowns … There’s so much here, Ruan. I could live up here; it’s just like when we used to play dressing up as kids. Do you remember when Keira and I dressed you up as a princess, and Lucy did your make-up? You were such a pretty girl!’

Ruan grinned. ‘Yeah, Dad was horrified.’

‘Oh, he wasn’t really,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I think Dad was a bit of a glam rocker in his day.’

‘Are you OK?’ Ruan asked her. ‘I heard about what you told the social worker about Mo. That you’re staying in Poldore with her until she’s properly settled.’

‘Yes,’ Tamsyn said as she began to fold the dresses she had chosen to work with into a neat pile. ‘I must admit, it took me a bit by surprise too. But it might not be for that long. I’m still hoping that her mum is going to turn up soon.’

‘You’ve wanted to leave Poldore for so long; you were always telling our friends not to get stuck here. I can’t imagine you wanting to be here a second longer than you have to be.’

‘Well, I won’t be,’ Tamsyn said, smoothing her hands over the pile to hide the unexpected hurt the comment had caused her. ‘What do you think of this blue? Isn’t it the exact shade of Alex’s eyes?’

Ruan crouched down beside her, touching the fabric.

‘It is,’ he said. ‘You are being very kind.’

‘No need to sound quite so surprised,’ Tamsyn said, a little sharply. ‘Just because a person is dedicated to her career, it doesn’t make her a monster. The sort of person who’d let her brother’s bride get married in jeans, or send a baby off to a faceless hospital ward without a second thought.’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Ruan stood up again, his demeanour cooling slightly.

‘So, what are you saying?’ Tamsyn asked him. ‘You’re about to get married to a woman who, as far as I can tell, is deeply in love with you. So if there is something you have to get off your chest, tell me. Tell me now.’

‘Did she talk to you?’ Ruan asked her, and Tamsyn knew who he was talking about at once.

‘Who?’ she replied, even so.

‘Merryn, did she talk to you before the accident?’

Tamsyn looked away, her brow furrowed. Now wasn’t the time to go back to that point, to that terrible day, not now. Not when he was about to get married, and everything in his life was going forward so perfectly. And if he knew, well, what good would it do, except to make Tamsyn feel better? And yet, she had always promised herself that if he asked her directly she would tell him the truth.