Runaway Bride: A laugh out loud funny and feel good rom com

My heart was still pounding when Jack arrived back from his walk with Sandy.

‘Something wrong?’ he asked, noticing my pale face.

‘Just a bit of a scare. Nearly had to talk to my mum.’

He came to sit on the bed, stroking my hair to calm me, and I rested my forehead against his chest. ‘Don’t let it get you too upset, eh?’ he said softly. ‘You’ll make yourself ill again.’

‘I’ll try.’ I focused on my breathing, forcing myself calmer, and my heart rate started to slow. Jack’s hand on my hair helped me feel safe.

‘Kitty, can I ask you something personal? I know we said we wouldn’t, but…’

‘Depends what it is.’

‘Why are you so scared your mam might find you? You’re an adult. She can’t make you go back if you don’t want to.’

‘You don’t know her,’ I muttered darkly.

‘You’re afraid of her. Aren’t you?’

His eyes were so soft and understanding. It might be a relief to confide in someone.

‘Not exactly afraid,’ I said. ‘It’s just, Mum… all my life she’s – well, she’d call it looking after me. My dad used to call it managing me. She managed him too, till he’d had enough and left her when I was eleven. After that I got a double helping.’

He frowned. ‘Managed you in what way?’

‘In every way, when I was a kid. Picking out my clothes – all my clothes, even when I was a teenager. I remember once I was allowed to go out shopping with my friends and came home with this dress I’d bought out of the pocket money Dad had given me. It wasn’t revealing or anything: just a nice summer dress for the hot weather. But she made me take it right back. Not because there was anything wrong with it, but because I’d picked it without consulting her.’

‘Sounds like a bully.’

I shook my head. ‘It was more complicated than that. See, with the clothes, it wasn’t that she didn’t want me to pick them. It was that she wanted us to do it together. Be our mum-and-daughter thing. And she was like that with everything, even down to the food I ate. Long after I left home.’

He looked shocked. ‘Seriously, she controlled your food?’

I tried to fight it but I couldn’t help it. I felt embarrassed. Jack was obviously appalled by what I’d just told him, and I knew that really, I should be too. And yet I felt the same way I had all my life: this desperate urge to shrug off behaviour that I knew, deep down, was unacceptable. To make excuses for the very person who for years had made me miserable.

Because she loved me, I’d always told myself, echoing the words she so often said when I challenged her. Everything she did, she did because she loved me. Tough love, right? That was the only real love. To protect someone from pain, you had to hurt them. Over and over and over.

‘Yeah,’ I said to Jack, the affirmative dropping from me with a great effort of will. ‘Whatever fad diet she was following, I had to do it too. I’ve been a vegan, a fruitarian, a macrobiotic… she just had to share every little bit of my life.’ It was a relief to finally let it all out. ‘God, Jack, it was suffocating – I mean, literally, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. A hundred times I wished I could’ve lived with my dad and Bernie. That was his second wife.’ I gave a bleak laugh. ‘But oh no, Mum couldn’t let that happen. And like a coward I never fought it. Just rolled over and surrendered.’

‘And your fiancé, what did he think of it?’

‘Ethan?’ My brow lowered. ‘He was no better. The two of them scrapped like cat and dog over me: who was going to get me on my birthday or Christmas, stuff like that. They were like two spoilt kids trying to share a favourite toy. And then when it came to the wedding… it was hell, Jack. They both wanted complete control over the whole thing, bickering constantly, and there I was in the middle. By the time the wedding day came – I mean, I loved him. But all I really wanted was for it to be over.’

‘Jesus. You do know that’s abuse, right?’

‘No, it…’ I hesitated. ‘I mean, I… I thought they acted like that because they loved me. It was stifling, yeah, but it was kind of flattering. To know you’re wanted that much.’

‘That’s not love, Kitty. Love isn’t obsessive. It heals, it doesn’t break.’

A tear trickled out as I remembered what I’d seen at the wedding. Ethan, handsome, charming Ethan, who I’d loved since I was sixteen years old, who I’d convinced myself was so completely, undentably perfect…

‘I know,’ I whispered.

‘Come here.’ He drew me to him for a hug. ‘It’s behind you now, Kitty. There’s a better future somewhere. As soon as you’re up and about again, we’ll find it.’

Chapter 7 (#ulink_7b06bb27-a8d4-5146-a444-f18a88ba70d7)

I stayed with Jack for two weeks after I was better. Not because I really had any excuse to, but because the little van, with its friendly human and canine occupants, had started to feel like home. I was stagnant, but I was safe.

Rule One was turning out to be a bit of a bugger though. There was clearly some mystery about Jack, something he didn’t want to share, and my curiosity was piqued. Because it wasn’t just the pyjamas he’d lent me. He had a whole stash of women’s clothes in the van.

‘Help yourself,’ he’d said when he’d given me a cardboard box filled with assorted tops, jeans, dresses and scarves. ‘Been meaning to drop them off at the charity shop for ages. You might as well get some use out of them, since they’re your size.’

I extracted a flowing top and a scarf and held them up in front of me. ‘Bit floatier than my usual style. Whose are they?’

He shrugged. ‘Yours, now.’

‘But who did they belong to before?’

‘Someone who’s got no use for them. Just take what you want and I’ll drop the rest off at Oxfam.’ He gazed absently out of the window at the shimmering mass of Derwentwater in the distance. ‘Should’ve done it years ago really.’

All signs seemed to point to some ex who was out of his life, and who he was perhaps still pining for. Still, he respected my wish not to talk about my personal stuff, so the least I could do was mind my own business too.

Living without TV was an experience. I read a lot of books in those few weeks. I learned a lot about my temporary roommate too – about his fatalism, his humour, his commitment to living one day at a time. And about how to care for a heavily pregnant dog.

I think board game night was my favourite new telly substitute. Jack liked Scrabble best, mainly because he always won. Embarrassing, given I was a professional editor. He was a terrible loser as well, and if you didn’t watch him, an opportunistic cheat. I’d never expected to find such a strong competitive streak in someone as laid-back as he was.

‘Come on, you, get on with it,’ I said during our second game. Jack had been staring at his letters for nearly five minutes.

‘Hmm.’ He frowned at the tile rack. ‘All right. Here then.’

I squinted at the random jumble of letters he’d assembled on the board.

‘That’s not a word. That’s not even a sound.’

‘It’s a Gaelic word.’

‘Yeah? What’s it mean?’

‘Old Irish blessing. I swear. Ask anyone from the old country.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Er… may the Force be with you?’

I pointed wordlessly at the tiles. He sighed and picked them up again.

‘Anti-Irish prejudice, that’s what it is.’