‘And where did you meet him, then?’ asked Nan. Her blue eyes were twinkling with delight.
‘He owns the butcher’s shop round the corner.’
‘The big grey-haired one with the smiley face?’
‘Yes,’ said Susan nervously. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Mind?’ Nan chuckled. ‘That’s the best news I’ve had in ages. Why would I mind? Of course I don’t mind. I’m thrilled to bits.’
‘I haven’t told Violet. Not yet. I didn’t know when I should tell either of you.’
‘How long’s this been going on?’
‘Eight weeks. We didn’t say anything until we were sure we wanted to be a couple. I was worried sick what you’d say.’
‘Our Jeff’s been gone a long time, lass. He wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone when you could have someone in your life making you happy.’
Susan slumped down on the chair. ‘We’re silly sometimes, aren’t we? Trying to keep secrets from those we should be confiding in most.’
‘Yes, we are.’ Nan’s hand closed over Susan’s and she squeezed it. So the angel was right about Susan. She smiled because it looked like the angel was real, then, and not conjured up from a batty part of her brain, after all.
Violet stood in the kitchen and let her voicemail take the call from Glyn, then she rang it to find out what message he had left.
‘Hi, Letty,’ he sounded weary. ‘I’m just ringing to see if you’re okay. I’ve come over a bit sick and wondered if it was something we ate or if I’ve got a bug. Can you let me know you’re fine. Bye, love.’
Violet shook her head. She knew, of course, that he was building up to a bout of sickness so that she would come home early. Well, she wasn’t going to fall for it this time. She didn’t want to go home early. She didn’t want to go home ever again, if the truth be told.
Oh Violet, what are you going to do? This wasn’t supposed to happen, said that voice inside her again. She knew what was supposed to happen, but it hadn’t and now she was trapped. Her feet were glued to an escalator and she was hurtling towards a place that terrified her and had her screaming herself awake in the middle of the night. Suddenly her chest was gripped with palpitations and she stood holding the side of the sink until they passed.
‘Violet, is anything wrong?’ Pav’s voice came from behind.
‘I’m fine,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I get skippy heart beats sometimes.’
‘You should see a doctor,’ he said. ‘Sign of stress, or too much coffee, perhaps.’
Pav’s gentle concern made her feel warm inside, quite different to how Glyn’s persistent cossetting did.
‘I can’t stop drinking coffee, though,’ said Violet. ‘Do you want one?’
‘I thought you would never ask me,’ said Pav and he winked. And Violet’s heart started to jump again, but in a very different way.
Did Pav think that Violet was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen? No. But did she make his heart smile? Did he think about her when she wasn’t there? Would he have pushed his hand into her silver-blonde hair and edged his lips towards hers had she not been wearing an engagement ring? Oh yes.
He loved working on this mural, more so when she was near, whisking and mixing in the kitchen, humming, trilling to a low-volume radio. He loved that she brought out to him spoonfuls of her ice cream to taste. He could have sat all day drinking coffee with her, staring into those violet eyes, which carried a weight of sadness in them that he couldn’t understand in someone about to be married.
Very soon now the horses would be finished and they would part company, and a sweet gentle part of his life would be over. He thought that her lovely face and those lavender eyes would stay in his mind for a long, long, long time.
Chapter 82
It had been three weeks since Bel had seen Richard as he had been away on a business trip. Or so he said. As she was getting ready to go to La Hacienda for dinner with him, it crossed her mind that she had only his word that he was away on business. For all she knew he could have been cavorting on a beach in Nice with a blonde. Trust, it seemed, really was a long way off yet.
‘And how would you feel about that if he had been in Nice with a blonde?’ she asked herself à la television reporter. And the honest answer was that she didn’t know. How odd. The thought of it didn’t stir any jealousy in her at all. In truth, she wasn’t even champing at the bit to see him after a three-week break either. She didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.
She couldn’t break out of that analytical mood all evening. It was as if she had taken a backward step inside herself to observe the date objectively. She thanked him for the roses but questioned if they made her feel warm and gushy inside and discovered that they didn’t, really. She asked herself if his beautifully cut Armani suit made her knees wobble, because she had always thought men looked fabulous in suits – especially someone as groomed and handsome as Richard. It didn’t. And at the end of the evening, when he kissed her lightly on the mouth, did she have any inclination to move towards him again and let his lips linger longer on hers? No.
What she did notice was that when she went back to her car there was a tall man nearby with dark hair in longish soft curls and a thin line of beard on his jaw, and for a moment she thought it was Dan Regent. It wasn’t, of course, but she climbed into the driving seat with a heart bumping around her chest like a giant Mexican jumping bean; she needed to sit for a few moments until it calmed down before she felt steady enough to drive.
Chapter 83
The next morning, Violet stood in the lovely silk wedding dress while Freya circled her, assessing the alterations she needed to make.
‘You’ve lost weight again,’ said Freya, pushing the white swoop of her hair out of her eyes.
‘I can’t have,’ said Violet. ‘The dress doesn’t feel any less tight.’ In fact it seemed to grow smaller every time Violet tried it on.
Freya remained silent but she knew why it felt wrong to the wearer.
‘How are the wedding preparations going?’ she went on, plac-ing a marker pin in the dress.
‘Everything’s done,’ said Violet, looking at her reflection and thinking how beautiful this dress was. She wondered how many brides had worn it before her. And if they had been happy.
‘Are you having a big wedding?’
‘Very quiet,’ replied Violet. She didn’t want to talk. It was an effort to converse. Even breathing was an effort at the moment. Her wedding was sixteen days away, her one and only chance to dress like a queen and say her vows. To love, to honour . . . To stay in every night, to lie with you in bed and endure you pawing me, to answer your phone calls sixty times a day . . .
Violet felt faint and had to take in some discreet long breaths to stop herself from keeling over. The tightness of the fabric wasn’t allowing her to do that very successfully.
‘The other women who wore this dress as well as you,’ she asked. ‘Were they happy? Do you know?’
Freya’s lips stretched into a soft smile. ‘I know that one of the women who wore this dress on her wedding day was very happy. And I know that another who chose this dress to wear is now very happy too.’
That was carefully worded, thought Violet. ‘Did the one who chose it not wear it, then?’ asked Violet, puzzled.
‘I like to think that all my dresses bring happiness,’ Freya answered her. ‘But not always in the way you might expect. This dress especially.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Violet, intrigued. Surely she wasn’t going to try to say her dresses were magic or nonsense like that?
Freya pointed to the mirror. ‘When you look at yourself in there, what do your eyes see? How can they see anything other than a pretty girl in a beautiful dress? But what does your heart see, Violet? Does it see the same?’
Violet’s head and heart were totally out of sync and she knew it. In the mirror her eyes saw the pretty girl in a beautiful dress; her heart saw a trapped bird in a tiny cage with not even
the room to sing for help. Violet tore her eyes away from her reflection and smoothed the few creases out of her dress at the front.
‘I thought for a minute you were going to say that your dresses were magic,’ said Violet, forcing some jollity into her voice. ‘If only they were. Wouldn’t that be lovely?’
Freya said nothing about that as she helped the ghost-pale bride out of the dress and took it to her sewing area at the back of the shop. She merely advised Violet that her gown would be ready to pick up and take home in seven days’ time.
Pav noticed at once that Violet had been crying recently, even though she was smiling when she entered the shop. Her eyes were shiny and bloodshot and her mascara had run underneath her left lashes. He decided against pointing that out, not wanting to embarrass her, but he felt very keenly that all was not well in her world and that pained him.
The cheery opening bars of ‘Mamma Mia’ sounded on her phone as Susan rang when Violet was boiling the kettle.
‘We’ve bought you a wedding cake. Now it’s no good you protesting because I won’t listen. You’re not getting married without cutting a cake.’
‘Oh Mum—’
‘It’s only a small one. It’s breaking Nan’s heart that she couldn’t make you one. You know how she would have loved that. And I know Glyn doesn’t want any fuss, but surely you can persuade him to go out for lunch afterwards. Or he and his family can come here and I’ll make something.’
‘I’ll ask him again,’ said Violet, but she knew that he wouldn’t.
‘You sound very down, love. Do you need help with anything?’
‘No, I’m just a bit tired,’ Violet affected a yawn.
‘Well, you know where we are.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
Violet put down the phone and hoped that she wasn’t going to get a call from Joy Leach saying she’d ordered three zillion flowers to tart up the caravan. She was so distracted that she poured the water from the kettle over her hand as she held the cup and her wounded yelp brought Pav running from the front of the shop. He grabbed her arm firmly and held it under cold running water.
‘That’s worse than the burn,’ winced Violet, attempting to pull her hand away.
‘You need to keep this under the tap for ten minutes,’ he held on to her but twisted the hot tap to warm up the water slightly. As he did so, she noticed the black hairs on his arms, the white paint on his sleeve from the horse he was painting – the last one. ‘If I let you go, do you promise to keep your hand there?’
‘I promise,’ she submitted grudgingly. Tears were swimming in her eyes and she stamped her foot in frustration at their appearance. They never seemed to be far away from the surface these days.
‘I think,’ said Pav, ‘that you are depressed.’
‘I’ve got absolutely nothing to be depressed about,’ snapped Violet, wishing he would shut up, because she was inches away from breaking down and any hint of kindness was likely to make her totally shatter into a million pieces.
Pav went back to his paints while she stood by the sink with her hand in the stream of water. He had been gone only a few minutes when he returned.
‘It’s none of my business of course,’ he said, ‘but you don’t seem like a very happy bride-to-be to me, Violet.’ He came up to her. ‘Look at me for a moment.’
‘No, it isn’t any of your business,’ said Violet, shaking her hand and twisting the taps off. She couldn’t look at him. She had to get away from him. From the way he said her name, from the way he made her heart bump around inside her chest. She grabbed her coat and her bag and pushed past him, hurrying out of Carousel, tears pouring from her eyes, ignoring that he was calling her name, asking her to please stay and talk to him.
When she got home, it was to find Joy and Norman there. They had brought their wedding present over: a hamper of his and hers towels, dressing gowns, mugs, cutlery . . . all sorts of things that must have taken her an age to collect. And she and Norman were apparently going to go down to the caravan at the weekend and decorate it for the newlyweds – she was tweeting like an excited bird about it. Outwardly Violet tried to appear pleased, but inwardly she felt as if another nail had just been hammered into her coffin.
Violet let her bride-happy facade drop when was in the bath. She prayed that Glyn would leave her alone and not come in offering to wash her back and, for once, he didn’t.
He had been about to when Violet’s mobile phone rang, but it was in her coat pocket so she didn’t hear it. Glyn did, though. It had clicked on to voicemail by the time he had found where it was. The screen said that it was P. Nowak – the painter. Why was he ringing her again? Why was he ringing her so late? Why was he ringing her at all?
Glyn replayed the message. P. Nowak’s voice was chocolate-rich and deep.
‘Hello, Violet, it’s Pav. I hope you don’t mind that I ring you at this time. I just wanted to make sure you are all right after what happened. Did I upset you? If I did, please accept my apologies. Okay, I will see you tomorrow. I hope. Goodnight.’
Glyn’s scalp prickled with a sudden rush of anxiety. This Pav was a bit familiar for a bloody painter, wasn’t he? He replayed the message, hunting for clues as to what his relationship was with Violet, then played it again and again. He foraged so deeply for evidence to substantiate his suspicion that something was going on between this Pav and Violet that he found it:the tenderness in his voice, the concern – and what did he mean by ‘I hope’? How had he upset Violet? What had happened? Had they slept together? Was he ringing her to make sure that she didn’t regret fucking him? He stabbed in the number 3, which deleted the message.
Glyn didn’t have the best sleep in the world with that voice circling in his head, his mind warping it over the hours so that ‘I hope’ sounded as if was delivered on a kiss. He built up an image of the man behind the voice; tall, dark, handsome, straight off the cover of a women’s magazine. Was he the reason why he and Violet didn’t have much sex; why she seemed so unresponsive to his caresses; why she spent so much time at Carousel? The scenarios he wrapped around that voicemail extended it to a full-length film.
‘Who’s Pav?’ he asked Violet, as he felt her throw off the quilt the next morning.
‘He’s the guy who’s painting the horses in the shop. Why?’
‘You were calling out his name in your sleep,’ Glyn lied.
He noticed that she blinked nervously before responding.
‘I don’t know why that should be.’ She might have shrugged, but he was in no doubt that he had shaken her with that fake revelation. And why was that exactly? He watched her take her clothes from the drawer and the wardrobe and walk off to the bathroom.
‘Why do you go in there to take off your nightdress these days?’ Glyn called, trying to suppress the rising anger and jealousy in his voice. ‘I’ve seen your tits before, you know.’
In the bathroom Violet shuddered. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him use the word ‘tits’ before. It stood out because he had never been a crude man or believed in swearing in front of women. He was too nice. He had always treated her like a princess, never abused her verbally or physically. God forgive her, but she wished he would slap her just once and give her a solid excuse for going. He was annoyed about something, most likely that she had been calling another man’s name in her sleep. She couldn’t blame him for being upset by that. She knew how his brain worked – he would obsess about that and store up a hundred questions for her about Pav. Pav who made her heart feel as light as a Chinese sky lantern, who filled her thoughts, whose touch made her skin sigh. She compared that with her feelings for Glyn. She had never loved him but she wasn’t sure she even liked him any more. His hand just whispering against her flesh made it crawl.
This was a huge mess of her own making and all exits from it were blocked.
Chapter 84
Violet had said she would be at the wholesalers this morning, and so far it looked as if she might be telling the truth, thought Glyn, as th
e taxi pulled up in the Maltstone Garden Centre car park. There was no sign of her pink mini, just a beaten-up red van with a roof rack.
‘Can you drop me here and wait a few minutes?’ Glyn asked the driver, then he got out of the taxi and crossed to Carousel. He peered through the window and saw a man painting on the wall. A dark-haired man with broad shoulders and a trim waist.
Pav Nowak.
The name slid into his mind like a deadly silent snake and he felt momentarily weak with fear.
He wasn’t as perfect as the image Glyn had formed of him, but he was still tall and young and real and thus even more dangerous. Glyn hated him. It was hard not to compare this painter man with his shorter, pudgier self.
He took a deep breath and knocked on the door. Through the glass he watched Pav stand up and saw how powerfully he was built. Glyn felt like a little fat old blob next to him.
‘Hello,’ said Glyn, hating himself for sounding so nervous, so unmanly. ‘Sorry to bother you but is the owner in?’
‘No, she is not,’ said young, fit Pav, with the strong, rich voice. ‘Can I pass on a message for you?’
‘Oh no, I’ll call back,’ said Glyn with nod of gratitude. ‘I’m a . . . a window cleaner. Like I say, I’ll call back.’
‘Okay,’ said Pav, with his paint-splattered apron and his handsome youthful face.
Glyn walked back to the taxi with shaky legs. He knew without any doubt that Violet’s head had been turned by him. He couldn’t lose Violet to that man. She was his. His whole life.
Violet steeled herself before pushing open the door to the shop, her arms full of boxes. She owed Pav an apology for snapping at him the previous day. It was overdue. She should have turned her car round after driving off from him and done it straight away. It was a big relief when he bounded over and smiled at her with his soft lips and blue, forgiving eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she gabbled. ‘I was so rude yesterday, Pav. I hope you’ll accept my apology. I know you were just trying to be nice . . .’
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