The Runaway Bridesmaid

Rosie registered Jack Hamilton’s lined, pale face wreathed in concern. His appearance was so suave in his charcoal-grey morning suit and baby-pink cravat – his back erect, his still-thick silver hair and beard neatly trimmed in honour of his youngest daughter’s wedding day. But he had a lot on his mind. Not only did he have the responsibility of walking his beloved daughter down the aisle but it was only the third day in twenty-five years that the Hamilton family’s hardware store had been closed to the service of Stonington Beach residents and curious tourists bemoaning the disappearance of such Aladdin’s caves in their home towns.

She recalled the pang of regret she’d experienced at the previous evening’s dress rehearsal when she witnessed her father’s slower, more deliberate movements. It had occurred to her that now Freya was to be married, she should maybe consider returning to Stonington Beach to take care of her father and help him in the store which, she’d noticed with a stab of concern, was looking a little shabby around the edges. Jack needed more help than Dot, now herself in her sixties. Would such a step-change relieve her of her constant anxiety about her father’s health, the stalking fear that she’d lose him too? Would it alleviate the weight of apprehension that pressed against her chest, maybe even allow her to make some of those human connections she found so elusive in Manhattan?

Gosh, no!

Having taken a year’s sabbatical to care for Jack and Freya after her mother’s passing, she had proceeded to squeeze every last ounce of knowledge from her studies at college and business school, squirreling away every morsel of offered wisdom into the recesses of her mind for future extraction. Why should she even be contemplating allowing it to drain away into a small town hardware store? New York City had many flaws, but she adored its vigour and vanity, its tenacity and traumas. The only tinge of sorrow that day was the absence of their beloved mother, but her presence would be with them all in the hollows of their hearts.

There had been no thanks from her sister for the long months of grief Rosie had endured in organising this spectacular occasion from one hundred and thirty miles away. For giving up numerous weekends to travel out to Connecticut to taste and select the menus, to advise on table décor and choice of linen, flower arrangements, wine lists, whilst Freya was just looking after number one.

A conversation with Dot popped into her mind; Dot had hugged her goodbye and noticed the deep hollows of tiredness around Rosie’s eyes. ‘I hope once this fiasco of a wedding has finally taken place, it won’t mean your visits down to Stonington Beach will be any less frequent, darling?’ Dot had said. ‘Jack adores having your sharp professional eye run over the store. No other business in Stonington can boast a high-flying New York City executive bestowing regular financial advice upon its eaves and coffers. We love you here, Rosie. Don’t be a stranger.’

A second wave of dizziness enveloped Rosie and she slumped down onto the pale blue sateen duvet. Her mind had suddenly seized. Her father managed a tight smile and joined her, resting his hand on her arm. She saw he was studying her as she fiddled with the huge gold hoop earrings Freya had presented both she and Lauren with that morning. Freya had mistaken Lauren’s look of abject horror as that of shock at the level of her generosity. Rosie prayed her photograph would never, ever appear in any publication covering the Jacob Bennett, Jr. and Freya Hamilton wedding. She would struggle to live down the fashion shame. She felt and looked like a gawky teenager.

‘All this will happen for you one day, darling. You’re so like your mother, worrying about everything and everyone. You’ve pulled off a miracle today, organising this wedding for Freya and Jacob.’ His eyes sought out hers. ‘She’s gorgeous, but so are you. You need to take some time for yourself now, darling. That crazy job of yours is squeezing all the sparkle from your eyes. I can see how tired you are, even if your mirror speaks differently to you. You career girls don’t understand what you’re leaving behind in your blinkered pursuit of corporate acceptance. Manhattan demands insane hours and produces crazy people, their dreams skewed by their ever-increasing obsession with stockpiling the dollars.

‘You need to slow down, Rosie. Take some time to smell those flowers you and your mother were named after. Get dating, meet your own Jacob who will love and nurture you. Goodness knows you deserve it.’

He held her to him, his familiar smell mingled with the tang of a forbidden cigar. Rosie didn’t trust herself to respond with any opposing argument.

‘I wish Mum were here to witness how proud I am of you both today. I’ve missed her every single day of the last fourteen years. But her love lingers on in the crevices of our hearts. The passage of time has no favourites, Rosie, it treats us all equally. But I knew your mum for thirty years before that disease stole her from her family and she would have wanted all this for you too – a happy life, not a slave to the accumulation of wealth for people who have more than enough to service several lifetimes already.’

Her father knew he’d struck a chord. ‘Promise me and your mum that it won’t be years before I walk down that aisle again? It was a promise I made to her before she left us that I would see you both settled before I, well… Hey, there are some great guys who come into the store. Want me to fix you up with a date?’

‘Dad!’

‘Look, Rosie, I’m sorry I can’t go to the UK for Bernice’s funeral. I would have loved to have seen Devon one last time.’ Tears threatened to mist Jack’s lashes for the first time on that emotional day. The sadness in her father’s eyes sent a shard of panic through Rosie’s heart. Was he hiding a health issue? Was there a secret he was protecting her from, another evil incursion by an incurable disease poised to steal away her only parent?

‘It’s okay, Rosie. I’m just tired. Long hours in the store, you know.’ Her father failed to see the irony of this last sentence, having spent the last ten minutes lecturing and berating his daughter against the vices of corporate Manhattan and her solitary lifestyle.

‘Rose adored Bernice, you know.’ His kind, wise eyes clouded as he grasped Rosie’s hand in his, its paper-thin skin stretched and liberally-flecked with age spots. ‘But she wished her sister had found a partner to spend her life with. Don’t end your days like Bernice, Rosie.’

‘Are you sure there’s no way you can close the store for the week whilst you go to the UK? Maybe the break from the routine will do you good?’

‘It’s not the store, Rosie.’ The look on her father’s face caused Rosie’s heart to contract and a giant fist squeezing the air from her lungs. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure I could manage the trip. It’s a long flight, and what with the jet lag and… well. I know how much Bernice meant to you, darling. I’m sure she would understand why we can’t attend the funeral, what with the store and Freya on honeymoon and your work commitments. The UK is more than an arduous car ride away.’

With huge effort, Rosie refocused on the present. She glanced down into her lap where her slender fingers were entwined with her father’s arthritic ones. Her heart ballooned with love for him and the support he had given her and Freya. She knew he had struggled at times with the gargantuan task of raising two young girls – Rosie was eighteen but Freya had only just turned eight – whilst coping with his own grief. Her unconditional love for him had been one of the reasons she had so swiftly slotted her toes into her mother’s shoes to care for Freya – to help to alleviate his suffering in any way she could.

And now Freya was to become a married woman. Rosie adored her sister. Throughout her childhood she had braided her hair, mopped her brow when she was sick, played hostess to her school friends, baked cookies, dressed her up in home-stitched Halloween costumes. She had protected her from every adolescent disaster she could, even forgiven Freya for ‘borrowing’ her favourite cocktail dress – which she had cut up for a fancy dress outfit.

She truly hoped Freya had found her soul mate. Jacob was a great guy – girls would ditch their grannies for a husband like him. When she had met Jacob, Rosie and Lauren had dragged out their personalised wish lists of essential criteria for potential dates and performed a meticulous comparison with Jacob’s plethora of assets: he’d scored favourably with both girls. He offered Freya a life she could only have dreamed of when she’d crawled home destitute from her extravagant exploits in the party capitals of Europe. Having expended every couch-surfing opportunity from the Atlantic to the Adriatic and squeezed every last ounce of enjoyment from her itinerant lifestyle, she’d been forced to return home to Connecticut.

Rosie would do anything to make life easier for Freya. She had endured more than her fair share of pain in her life and didn’t deserve to suffer further. And anyway, after her father, her little sister was all she had left of her family. But was she proud of what she had produced? Had she, and her father, over-protected her? Had they been complicit in preventing her from learning how to stand on her own two feet, how to deal with the grenades that life threw in her path?

‘Come on Dad. You go down to the garden to reassure Jacob and the rest of the congregation that Freya hasn’t run off with the best man and I’ll join Lauren in the search.’ She witnessed the look of horror gallop across her father’s tired features and regretted her flippancy. After all, Freya was a saint in her father’s eyes, not the flighty little madam Rosie had been covering for over the last ten years.

‘Joking, Dad.’ She rose from the bed and placed her hand on his shoulder whilst she stooped to drop a kiss on his cheek. ‘Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine.’

But still the butterflies played an active game of tennis in her stomach.

Chapter Three (#ulink_c9cdbbc5-9d21-5304-bec1-12c5a74143a2)

Jack and Rosie descended the impressive sweeping staircase to be met by a frantic Lauren, hopping from one foot to the other like a toddler in need of a visit to the bathroom.

‘No sign of her! It seems Little Miss Superior has melted into thin air, the selfish…’ Lauren flicked her eyes from Rosie to Jack and relented on her character assassination of the errant bride-to-be.

‘Don’t worry, Lauren. Will you escort Dad to the garden for me? Try and placate Jacob and the rest of the guests.’ Rosie checked her mother’s silver Tiffany watch – her most adored possession. ‘Technically the ceremony is not due to start for another thirty minutes so there’s nothing to panic about yet. I’m sure she’s just taking a quiet moment to prepare herself for the most important day of her life.’

Rosie heard the expulsion of air from Lauren’s lips and saw the smirk around her mouth. She swapped a grin with her friend. Freya adored being the centre of attention, had been milking every opportunity to loiter in the limelight. It was inconceivable that she would hide away for even a second. Rosie had been genuinely concerned that, despite her promises, her sister would be unable to resist a quick visit to Jacob’s suite in her bridal gown. Indeed, she suspected that was where she was now.

She shooshed Lauren and her father out of the French doors. Her eyes swept the congregation assembled on the lush, manicured lawn of Stonington Meadows Country Park Hotel, the venue Freya had dreamed of during her childhood forays into planning her perfect wedding celebrations. It had been an incredible surprise to Rosie when Freya had shunned Jacob’s offer to pay for their wedding to be held at the Plaza, but then, as Freya explained, everyone had their wedding there. To her right, in neat white picket chairs, every seat was occupied by Jacob’s extended family, friends and business connections. Their elegant attire, like the car park, oozed dollars. To her left sprawled a more eclectic gathering of those connected to the bride. Rosie spotted Arnie and Dot, her parents’ closest and dearest friends, along with a smattering of Stonington Beach friends invited to share his daughter’s special day.

She turned on her heels – a pair of five inch, ivory silk Louboutins that had cost almost a month’s salary but which she planned to mount in a glass case to appreciate as a true work of sculptural art after the wedding – and headed up the stairs to the bridal suite.

She knocked and when there was no reply, she pushed open the door. Gosh, her sister could bring chaos to an empty room! Her belongings were strewn on every available surface, she had even opened the drawers of the elegant, kidney-shaped dressing table to drape her discarded hosiery over. A quick sweep of her eyes told Rosie that Freya was not there.

Yet her wedding dress still hung in its plastic carrier on the front of the gaping wardrobe door. Where on earth was she? Wherever she was she must still be in the cream silk kimono Jacob had presented her with the previous evening, her hair in the huge Velcro rollers their hairdresser, Carl, had fussed over that morning.

Rosie dashed over to the window and peered down into the garden. Everyone was there now, and had taken up their positions ready for the imminent arrival of the bride. Even the minister, a local ginger-haired man with a comical comb-over who had christened both Rosie and Freya, was surreptitiously checking his fob watch.

‘Oh God! Trust Freya!’ muttered Rosie, her heart drumming at her ribcage and her breath quickening as panic began to swirl through her veins, depriving her lungs of essential oxygen. ‘The only thing she had to do was put on her bloody dress and turn up on time!’

Was that too much to ask? Yes, she guessed it was.

She sprinted out of the room and into the corridor, cursing as she wrenched her ankle running in her unfamiliar shoes. As she reached down to rub the pain away, a tinkle of laughter emanated from a door at the end of the corridor which Rosie had assumed was a linen closet next to the glass cube masquerading as an elevator.

She paused, straining her ears, and her heart softened. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. Freya was most likely snatching a few moments before the craziness of the wedding with the guy who had swept her off her feet. They must have got carried away and forgotten the time. Freya always had operated on a different time zone to everyone else. She replaced her smarting foot on the floor and tiptoed towards the door. As she drew nearer, her hand hovering over the ornate brass door knob, a deep-throated groan floated to her ears.

Rosie froze. Why had level-headed, reliable Jacob agreed to bunk off from his duties of herding his relatives for a snatched sojourn of delight with his fiancée, thirty minutes before the ceremony? Oh God! And here she was about to blunder in without even knocking!

Her face glowed with embarrassment as she cracked open the door and pulled it towards her. She stood immobilised in the doorway, mesmerised by the glistening bronzed back and the hint of incongruously white orb buttocks. She opened her mouth to announce her presence but words refused to form in her scrambled mind or on her lips which were parting like a gobsmacked goldfish. She began to retrace her steps until her shoulder bumped into the door jamb forcing out a gasp of pain, not from the collision but from the dawning recognition of the owner of the muscled torso.

‘God, Sis, don’t you ever knock?’

The man coiling his arms around her sister’s body twisted his head towards the interruption and mirrored Rosie’s horrified expression.

‘Giles!’

Chapter Four (#ulink_6d644376-ed19-5e12-aaf7-b3657db54f2d)

She was told later that it was the engagement of the fight or flight reflex – a mechanism that primes the body to attack when under extreme threat or to run away. A harsh whooshing sound reverberated through her ears and the urge to evacuate the contents of her stomach became almost irresistible.

Rosie spun on her heels, ignoring the splice of pain in her injured ankle and her shattered heart, and shot back down the corridor towards the staircase. Perspiration prickled at her armpits and beneath her breasts yet her mouth was dry as she struggled to swallow the rising bile. A clamp closed around her heart, squeezing out the air from her lungs until she was forced to pause on the landing to catch her breath.

Breathe, breathe.

Perhaps that solitary yoga session that Lauren had dragged her to would have some benefit after all. No, she was definitely going to vomit if she remained still. A tsunami of dizziness threatened to subsume her in its depths and a small part of her brain urged her to relent and to sacrifice herself to the desire for unconsciousness.

Think calm, breathe in, breathe out.