Two Weddings and a Baby (4 page)

‘He would have if he could,’ Keira said, dropping her gaze for a moment, and she twisted the wedding band on her finger. ‘He works so hard, and anyway, I don’t mind. In a way it’s more relaxing that he’s not here. You know what he’s like; always on email, hates wearing a suit when he’s not at work, always telling the boys to keep the noise down to a dull roar … This way, we can relax and enjoy ourselves.’

‘Enjoy … It’s a subjective term,’ Tamsyn said, returning the wink that Jago, Poldore’s oldest, grumpiest and often drunkest working fisherman sent her down the table, and raising her glass to him. ‘Anyway, you’re here, and I’m here, and …’

‘I’m here,’ Cordelia appeared at her side.

‘And we are in a pub, with alcohol, and we are all old enough to get served, so it will all be fine,’ Tamsyn said, grinning at her little sister. ‘Cordy, my, how you’ve grown. Which vampire bit you? Do you want me to stake him?’

‘You’re just jealous that I have my own sense of identity,’ Cordy said, tossing her black glossy hair off her shoulders, and Tamsyn had to admit that she really did stand out in her black skinny jeans and black fishnet t-shirt over a scarlet vest, all topped off with what could only be described as a cape, mostly because it
was
an actual cape. During her teens Tamsyn had bleached her hair and then dyed it pink, had got a secret tattoo of a butterfly on her left shoulder blade and pierced her own belly button with a needle, until it went septic and she needed a course of antibiotics, but she had never had the courage to wear a cape in the town that fashion forgot. That was one thing Cordelia wasn’t short of, courage … ‘Mum’s right,’ Cordelia squinted at her. ‘You are too thin – are you a size zero, or what?’

‘I’m a ten!’ Tamsyn exclaimed. ‘I’ve been exactly the same size since I was nineteen. I’m just tall and leggy …’

‘Rub it in,’ Keira laughed. ‘It’s really not fair that you were the only one to get Dad’s long legs. Well, you and Ruan, and he doesn’t even need them.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. They do come in handy, especially for running away from all of my sisters.’

Somehow Tamsyn had forgotten for a few minutes that the reason she was in Poldore in the first place was because of Ruan, for his impending wedding, and now that he was here, standing next to her, she discovered she had nothing to say, caught as she was between an impulse to hug him and to hide.

‘Sis,’ Ruan nodded at her. ‘Long time no see.’

‘No,’ Tamsyn nodded. ‘Right, well, you know how it is.’

‘Yep, five years fly by when you’re making dresses,’ Ruan said, that familiar storm brewing between his brows.

‘Well, I haven’t exactly noticed you beating down my door, asking to come and visit,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Mum did. Cordy, Keira and the kids did. Now I’m here, when have you ever been to Paris?’

‘Why would I ever want to come to Paris?’ Ruan asked her. ‘It’s full of French people.’

‘Xenophobe,’ Tamsyn said, her treacherously idiotic mouth betraying her before she could contain it. ‘Although why I should expect more of my brother, the country bumpkin I don’t know. Anyway, I see you found a replacement.’

‘You—’

‘—Are so kind for coming all this way.’

Tamsyn and Ruan broke their deadlock and turned to the newcomer. This had to be her, Alex, the woman that had got to Ruan. She was pretty, but not perhaps the siren that Tamsyn had been expecting. Lightly tanned fair skin, scrubbed clean of make-up, clear blue eyes and a thick mane of dark hair that looked enviably smooth and shiny. Pleasantly made, with hips and breasts, she was exactly the sort of woman who would never fit into one of Bernard’s dresses, which, Tamsyn realised as she took in her outfit of a pair of comfortable jeans and a t-shirt, she probably wouldn’t give two hoots about anyway. She knew Ruan had met Alex when she’d arrived to take on the job of Cornwall’s first female harbour master, but from what Cordelia had told her, it had been their roles as Mary and Joseph in Sue Montaigne’s Christmas pageant that had thrown them together, and then quite a lot of toing and froing had ensued, including Alex saving her brother’s life, before they finally got together. Alex looked like a real woman, an ordinary one, and despite certainly hearing Tamsyn refer to her as a ‘replacement’, she looked surprisingly friendly.

‘Well, of course,’ Tamsyn smiled. ‘Mum said if I didn’t come she’d kill me.’

A beat too late, she realised that what she said sounded incredibly rude, at exactly the same moment that Ruan looked like he’d quite like to tip the pint he was holding over her head.

‘Mums are very convincing that way,’ Alex laughed. ‘You should meet mine. I didn’t even know her for most of my life, then she turns up out of the blue, breaks into my home and now she’s organising my wedding. Funny, isn’t it, how just when you think there’s no hope for something or someone, everything changes? I wouldn’t be without her now.’

Alex’s smile was sweet, open, genuine, kind. She wanted this to work, Tamsyn understood. She had asked Tamsyn to be part of her wedding to bring her and Ruan together again, to heal the rift that had opened up between them on the day Merryn went out to sea. Whether she thought it was the only way to banish the last remnants of the ghost of Merryn that still hung in the air, Tamsyn wasn’t sure. But she was sure of one thing.

Alex Munro might know Ruan, but she didn’t know what had happened between them all those years ago that meant they’d never be close again.

‘Anyway, we’re really pleased that you’re here,’ Alex said. ‘And you’ve had a long journey, so have a drink, something to eat and relax. There will be plenty of time to catch up properly between now and the wedding.’

She gave Ruan a meaningful glance and, smiling once more at Tamsyn, she nodded in the direction of an older woman wearing tight white Capri pants and what looked suspiciously like a boob tube.

‘Now, I need to go and talk to my mother about some final arrangements with the florists. I’m so looking forward to getting to know you, Tamsyn.’

Tamsyn nodded, and then, catching Keira’s eye, said, ‘Me too, I’m looking forward to getting to know me too, I mean you, I mean us. I mean, I’m really looking forward to the whole massive wedding thing and all that it entails. Brilliant.’

Ruan watched his departing bride before turning to look at his sister for a moment longer, and then, turning on his heel, he went to the bar.

‘Nice work,’ Cordelia said, downing a glass of wine that Tamsyn was fairly sure didn’t belong to her. ‘Way to have a reunion.’

‘What?’ Tamsyn looked at her and then at Keira. ‘What?’

‘I just wish you could be, well, like you are really. I mean, you know, funny and kind and nice … Why can’t you just come across that way to people that don’t know you?’

‘I don’t even know what you are talking about,’ Tamsyn said, though she did.

‘It’s not her fault,’ Keira said. ‘Remember Dad?’

The three women were silent for a moment, as they thought of him here in one of the places that had been his favourite, the Silent Man. Every Sunday Mum would send one of them down here to prise him away from the bar to come home for dinner, and there he’d be, always standing in the same spot, his hand wrapped around a pint, talking to his small group of friends. But if you were new in town, if you were perhaps asking for directions or the way to the gents’, and it happened to be Alan Thorne that you approached, you could be certain that you’d quake and quiver under his monstrous, furious scowl that showed he absolutely didn’t have time to be dealing with a fool like you.

No one, no one but his very close friends, his wife and his children knew that Alan Thorne was one of the kindest, gentlest men that had ever walked the earth, and was very much missed.

‘We’ve all got a bit of Dad in us,’ Cordelia agreed. ‘Even Keira sulks like there’s no tomorrow, but you, Tam, you and Ruan – you’re the worst. And put the two of you together, and it’s like …’ Cordelia mimed something that Tamsyn supposed was an explosion. ‘World War Three.’

‘Well,’ Keira said, ‘now maybe, but once, the two of them, they were more like twins than the twins are.’

‘Things happen,’ Tamsyn said. ‘People change, they grow up. It’s not the law that you have to be best friends with your relatives.’

‘Yes it is.’ Laura Thorne sat down at the table. ‘It is the law, it’s my law and I want you and Ruan to get over this silly feud. He’s getting married, Tamsyn, to a lovely girl. And I know you want him to be happy as much as the rest of us, so whatever disagreement it was that started this whole thing off, get over it. In two days’ time you are going to be a bridesmaid at their wedding, and when you walk down the aisle I want to know that my children are united. Would you deny your mother that one happiness?’

‘No, Mum,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Of course not.’

‘So,’ Laura said, ‘you can forget this silly feud?’

‘It’s not a feud and it’s not silly,’ Tamsyn said.

‘What is it then?’

Tamsyn shook her head. ‘I’m going to the loo,’ she said, getting up. ‘I’d love a large gin and tonic if anyone is offering.’

How could she explain to her mother, to anyone, especially Ruan, that it was her fault? It was her fault that Merryn went out to sea and never came back.

Tamsyn grimaced as she stood in front of the mirror in the chilly ladies’ loo, and eyed the windows that had been so cruelly secured with iron bars. As she had made her way towards Poldore, she had had a vision of how things would be between her and Ruan. How they’d see each other and embrace, and he’d apologise (first) and she’d apologise and then everything would be the way it had been once before. Why couldn’t she bring the poise and professionalism she carried off so well in Paris across the ocean to Cornwall? She blamed her hair; it was like it had a personality of its own. When it was straight and sleek she could keep the worst aspects of her personality in check, but when the frizz got out, it was like the stylistic version of the incredible hulk: there was no telling what would happen next, and before you knew it she’d be walking down a road to melancholy music, hitching a lift.

Because, unlike the vicar, the soaking-wet look did not suit her. Her hair had already begun its inevitable contraction into a frenzied mass about her blurred and pinched-looking face, that was smeared with diluted make-up.

Collecting a bunch of paper towels, she damped them down and scrubbed her face, rather painfully, until her cheeks glowed pink, and dragged her fingers through her hair, for all the good it did.

‘You have to do better than this, Tamsyn,’ she told her reflection sternly. ‘You have to stop being accidentally bitchy, putting your foot in it with vicars and offending your brother’s wife-to-be. You have to put your best foot forward, you have to be …’ Tamsyn struggled to find a word that would fit her face. ‘Well, you have to try and be nice. Like you know you are, deep down. A really, really stupid-haired nice person.’

‘Only nice?’ A young woman appeared in the mirror behind her. ‘I always thought you were much more of a lovely.’

Tamsyn spun round and took in a familiar oval face.

‘Luke Godolphin! I mean … Oh God, I’m so sorry … Lucy, wow!’ Tamsyn couldn’t stop staring at the woman who stood before her. ‘I mean, wow. Mum told me you are a girl now. And you are gorgeous, you bitch, look at your hair! I always was jealous of your lovely smooth blond hair, even when you were a boy.’

Lucy laughed. ‘I think I was always actually a girl. Now I’ve just made the outside fit the inside.’

It was true. Back in the old days, Luke/Lucy had been the quietest of their group of friends, always hanging back even then, her long hair falling in her eyes, covering her face, keeping secrets. The boy … the human being she had known back then had worn black skinny jeans and pixie boots, used eyeliner and made friends with the girls instead of making out with them. Although there had been that one time, at a party, when Tamsyn had come across her friend hiding outside in the garden, silently crying. When Tamsyn had asked what was wrong, she had been grabbed and kissed with determination, if not exactly enjoyment. After the kiss had finished, the two of them had looked at each other for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

‘Let’s ditch this party,’ Tamsyn had said. ‘It’s full of dicks.’

And they’d gone to the woods instead, got drunk, stared at the moon flitting between the trees and talked about how one day the whole world would know who they were. That person, that lost ghost boy who’d never really been there, was entirely gone now.

Tamsyn paused for a moment to take her old friend in. There was the familiar face, the delicate features, the blonde hair that was always long and fine, but the main difference was that now her friend dressed with very good taste, and there something else behind her eyes that Tamsyn had never noticed was missing when they were both kids. It was happiness.

‘Yes,’ she said, her smile spreading. ‘Yes, you know what, it’s really odd, but you look exactly like I remember you, or the way that I should remember you. You do look like you! Oh Lucy, I’m so glad. I’m so glad it all fell into place for you.’

‘That’s what I’m talking about: lovely, so much better than nice. It’s good to see you, Tam.’ Lucy smiled and before Tamsyn knew it, the pair of them were enveloped in a hug. ‘And things are pretty good now, at least in Poldore they are, but life can get pretty tricky sometimes, still. Some people never want to move on.’

‘Who are they? Shall I beat them up?’ Tamsyn offered.

‘Too late, they’ve already run away,’ Lucy smiled. ‘And so, you’re back, finally, back to be a bridesmaid at your brother’s wedding.’

‘I know.’ Tamsyn turned to look at herself in the mirror. ‘It doesn’t seem real, somehow. I know I shouldn’t, but I just keep thinking about her.’

‘Merryn?’ Tamsyn nodded and Lucy went on, ‘You know she would have wanted Ruan to be happy, don’t you? And boy, is he happy, I mean seriously. I haven’t seen that sexy scowl of his in months. They make a good team, and if you give her a chance, you’ll like Alex. She’s become a good friend to me, the best kind, actually.’

‘I’d sort of guessed that when you got the head bridesmaid gig.’ Tamsyn bit her lip. ‘I’m sure if I tried I could like her, but will she like me?’