by Brigid Coady
"I've been playing Cupid," she said.
“You. Cupid?” Jack spluttered and ruined the photo.
"Can we all concentrate?" the photographer shouted as she leapt round like a frog on a hot plate.
Edie posed again and said out of the corner of her mouth.
“Why not? Everyone can change you know. Maybe I’ve decided that this love lark is worth something.”
She could feel Jack was looking at her and she guessed it was probably with an incredulous expression on his face.
He was going to ruin another photo.
"What happened to the Edie of yesterday? The one who didn't care that she'd ruined someone's career and life?" Edie flinched and she knew her smile slipped.
She felt as if he'd struck her.
"I went to see Rachel this morning and we’ve hatched a plan about getting her job back," she said.
"But that could ruin your career."
Edie nodded as she felt the smile coming back.
"There are more things in life than work, Jack. Haven't you learnt that yet?" she smiled and looked up through her eyelashes at him.
“Ha!” Jack smiled back bitterly and confused. “Who are you, and what have you done with the real Edie Dickens?”
“Maybe I am the real Edie Dickens and the other was just a bad dream?” Edie said.
He hummed and looked sceptical.
"How long does this version of Edie Dickens stick around for?” he asked.
Edie smiled sadly; here was someone else who wasn't buying her change. It wasn't going to be as easy as she thought. What she wouldn't give for Jack to be one of the people who believed in her. But she hadn't exactly given him any kind of idea that she would change. She'd been either kissing him or being a bitch for the past fortnight.
She turned her attention back to the photographer.
“She’s here for keeps,” she said and hoped he'd start believing her.
As the photographs drew to an end she looked at her phone.
Five pm.
Time had bled away and she realised with a sinking feeling that her plan to see her dad wasn't going to happen.
How had she ever thought it would?
Some of the fizz that she'd had went flat. She wasn't going to get her happy ever after just yet.
She stood slightly apart from the rest of the wedding party as they waited for the cars to take them to the venue.
She looked at them all.
Barry and Mel staring at each other with goofy smiles on their faces.
Maggie and Doug keeping a distance from each other.
Tom and Kitty clinging together but staring away in opposite direction, checking out who was watching them.
And Jack. Jack was watching her with a thoughtful but frowning look on his face.
She shrugged off the feeling of deflation. This wasn't about her. All she had to remember was to be the best version of Edie she could be.
And as she remembered that, the goofy grin bubbled up inside and spread to her face.
She moved towards the wedding cars that had finally turned up, carefully avoiding Jack. She didn't want to be stuck in an enclosed space with him. She didn't trust herself. She wanted to throw herself at him and it looked like he wanted to throw her out.
She watched as Sophie dragged Jack into the car next to her, telling anyone who would listen that they were old family friends.
"Edie."
It was her mum. She laid a hand on Edie's arm.
How had Edie forgotten she was here? Where had she been?
"I've been hiding out at the back of the church," her mum could read her mind. "I'm trying to be more positive but I didn't want to be the spectre at the feast."
Edie shivered at her mother's mention of ghosts.
"Edie, Maggie told me that your father called. Why haven't you gone to see him?" Her mum's voice was calm. The edge that was usually there when she mentioned Edie's father was absent.
"Because today is about Mel and I made her a promise. Also," Edie laughed as she covered her mum's hand. "I'm trying to be the best version of me I can be."
"That is what your father always said." Her mother sighed. "Maybe I should've remembered that."
They smiled at each other and Edie bent down and kissed her mum on the cheek, drinking in the smell of her, the scent of her perfume taking her back to her childhood. The childhood she now wanted to remember.
Chapter 27
"Edie."
The speeches were over and the dancing was about to begin, so she'd slipped out of the reception for some time on her own but it seemed everyone wanted to speak to her tonight.
There was only so much she could take, when all she wanted was to throw herself at Jack, and tell him she wasn't the bad person he thought she was. But she knew that words were hollow, easy to say. Hell, she was a lawyer.
She had to prove it to him. She had to fix the things she'd broken.
And after everything that had happened she couldn't blame Jack for not trusting her word that she'd changed. Show, don't tell.
So a bit of peace and quiet was what she craved before she went back. And the night was clear and warm, so it wasn't a hardship.
But someone didn't want her to be on her own.
Maybe if she moved onto the fairways? She started to move further down off the terrace and out on to the grass.
If it looked like she hadn’t heard them then maybe they'd leave her alone.
The music and the laughter and lights coming from behind Edie reminded her of that teenage wedding, so much nostalgia wove around her. She felt as if she was swimming in it.
"Edie," the voice called again.
He wasn't giving up; she was being haunted by more than Ghosts this weekend.
"Tom." She whispered his name, turning to look at him.
He hurried towards her onto the fairway. His morning suit looked so like the suit he’d worn all those years before. And in the darkness, the lines on his face melted away until he almost looked the same age he had when he'd rubbed her back as she threw up.
She looked around for Kitty. He was alone.
"Shug." He said his nickname for her and stood in front of her smiling the same old smile, the one that tugged up the corner of his mouth.
That smile stirred some residual warmth in her, like the embers of a coal fire flaring before dying down.
But what if he'd been wearing something else, looked less like the boy she'd loved. The flare wouldn't have been quite as bright.
"Doesn't it remind you," he began. She started to nod. "Of that first night we kissed at Justin Douglas' wedding," he finished.
Edie thought back to the night she'd only relived last week. And although that kiss had been amazing and had set her life on a different path, it was the other wedding that stuck with her. The one when they had been young and innocent, the wedding before her life had changed.
"I was thinking it reminds me of your brother's wedding," she said.
"The Hurling Incident." They said it together like it was the title of a film and laughed.
The echo of the laughter settled over them like a comfortable blanket and cocooned them as without speaking or agreeing, they started to walk together away from the wedding reception.
Tom was walking just a little too closely.
"Do you ever wonder what it would've been like if we'd stayed together?" he asked after a moment, as they headed towards a clump of trees that was silhouetted against the night sky.
This wasn't the man who'd been so bitter at the dinner party. This man wouldn't have called her the Ice Queen.
What had changed? Or had he said those things because Kitty had been there?
Her head hurt from trying to untangle all the possibilities.
"Why do you want to know?"
She knew why she'd been feeling nostalgic, she'd been neck deep in her past only a few weeks ago, but why was he? He had Kitty.
"I've always wondered that if I'd only tried harder, maybe s
tayed and fought for you, whether you would've calmed down on the work front and we would have worked."
The ‘what if’s’.
They could curse you. Anchor you to the past.
What could she say to him?
That she hadn't loved him enough to put him first. Hadn't thought him worth fighting for. Had shut down when he left, rather than change. Had kept herself anchored to the past.
She could blame her parents or even Ms Satis but really it came down to the fact she hadn't been ready, she hadn't cared enough. But that wasn't what he needed to hear.
She needed to set him free.
Then maybe he and Kitty would stand a chance.
"Part of me wishes you had stayed. Maybe it would've been different but we can never know," she said as she turned to face him.
He was close, looking down at her, his face was twisted in pain.
"But never mind the 'what ifs' of you and me, you have Kitty now. And too much time has passed; we're not the same people." He looked like he wanted to argue.
He was living in the past, wanting a ghost or a version of Edie that had never existed.
"You deserve to be happy, Tom." She stretched up on tiptoe, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed his cheek.
He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. She hugged him briefly back.
"Are you sure?" he whispered in her ear.
She felt sorry for him, and for Kitty; he was still chasing ghosts.
She needed to put this one to rest.
"Positive."
She pulled away. He let her go reluctantly. His hands lingered on her hips until she took a step back and they fell away.
She took his arm and turned him round. Pushing him back towards the wedding reception.
"The future is that way," she said.
With one last look over his shoulder, he walked away.
She watched him go, and a part of her wondered what would have happened if he'd asked that same question a month ago.
But he wouldn't have, because the Edie of a month ago or even yesterday would've acted like a harridan and been appalling.
"He's engaged, you know." The dark voice came from a tree to her side.
And here was someone who did know what an awful person she could be. Had been.
"Are you stalking me?" she asked.
Suddenly, she was angry that the one person she wanted to believe in her transformation, to see that she really had changed, couldn't.
She could've had her first love back but he wasn't the one she wanted now.
She wanted her last love.
Maybe this was purgatory? She was no longer going to be in the hell that was floating round in chains and glittery fairy wings, but she'd be paying by spending the rest of her life wanting Jack.
And never having him.
Her heart clenched.
So be it. If this is what loving unconditionally is. She had to take the rough with the smooth.
And maybe inner Edie would stop with the sexy fantasies one day.
"I came out for a breath of air and when I was coming back round those trees I find you wrapped around your ex." Jack said
He was as angry as she was.
He strode up to her and grabbed her arm. He was frowning down at her. Edie wished she could see better; had he completely lost faith in her?
And suddenly she could feel the anger drain out of her, as if a plug had been pulled and it poured out of her.
She felt so tired. Right down to her bones.
She'd been up since dawn trying to make things right. Getting the wedding back on track. Keeping the bride's parents from killing each other, and not making inappropriate passes at the wait staff or ushers. When she'd left the reception, all seemed well.
Making things right with Rachel.
Fending off Tom.
Missing her dad.
"Jack, I can't do this. Believe whatever you want. I've sent him back to his fiancée. What happens now is in their hands. I can't fix everything. I can't fix the fact I broke his heart all those years ago. I can't kiss it better and turn back time, even if I wanted to. If I'd loved him then maybe I wouldn't have got myself in the state I got myself in. But I've told him he's looking at a mirage. So think what you want but I'm done."
She turned to go. Inner Edie was silent for once.
"Damn it, Edie."
He grabbed her, twirled her round and pulled her into his arms.
He kissed her.
It was an angry kiss, as if he was pouring all his frustration with her into it. And she opened up and let him. Took all that anger that he had, but returned it with soft kisses.
And then he cradled her head and his kisses soothed and gentled until the kisses they exchanged were full of yearning.
Eventually they pulled away from each other, breathing hard.
He leant his forehead against hers.
Edie was gasping for breath. Her heart was pounding in her ears. Her stomach tied up in knots.
"Damn it," he whispered.
She could feel her lips shaking. And now that her barriers had been knocked down, the tears kept leaking out of her. She was a breached dam.
She could taste the salt on her lips, burning where they felt bruised and swollen.
She could fix everyone else's life but she not her own.
"Jack, please don't." She pleaded.
She pulled away from him. She couldn't stay and listen to him tell her why this was all wrong and how he hadn't meant to kiss her.
She walked back to the venue.
Each step away from him hurt and as she put one foot in front of the other, she felt the tears streaming down her cheeks.
Edie scrubbed her face.
She'd go in, grab her bag and escape to her room.
She couldn't let people see her like this. Make-up all cried off. She didn't care what anyone thought; but she knew it would upset Mel.
She'd done as much as she could, surely she could leave now?
Edie slipped back into the function room and threaded her way through the guests. The lights had dimmed and most people were drunk enough not to look at her in quite the same way they had earlier. Some even smiled fuzzily at her. And Edie smiled back even though inside her heart was torn. Her fragile pink heart that she'd only just found. But she wouldn't hide it behind a wall again.
She needed to live and if that meant having a torn heart, so be it.
"And before I throw the bouquet, I've got one more person to properly thank." Mel's voice boomed out over the PA.
Edie looked up from where she was trying to find her bag. It seemed to have got stuck under one of the chair legs.
Mel was on the stage in front of the emergency DJ that Barry had arranged. She had a death grip on the microphone. Barry stood beside her looking happy and proud and slightly embarrassed to be up in front of everyone.
Mel was tipsy, Edie knew. She recognised the slight tilt, but she looked beautiful.
This was what it had been about. Getting these two who were meant to be together together. Everything else was just window dressing.
"Oi, Edie! Where are you?" Mel shouted and the crowd all turned to look at her.
Edie hoped no one would be able to see the mascara she was sure was streaking down her cheeks.
"That's Edie over there." Mel waved. "She's been my best friend forever and even though she hates weddings, she agreed to be my maid of honour. And she has done an amazing job. If it hadn't been for her, there wouldn't have been a wedding. She made Barry and I see that we could overcome everything." She winked at Edie. "And I know that you gave up something huge to be here today. And I am so touched." Mel blew her a kiss.
Edie realised that Maggie had obviously told Mel about the phone call from Dad. "So I want you to give it up for my own guardian angel who made this day possible. Edie Dickens."
The crowd cheered and started to chant her name.
Edie felt the tears starting to leak from her eyes again. They turned
the lights into glitter and sparkle.
She heard a clatter, as if iron links were falling to the floor.
It eased the hurt that Jack didn't believe in her, even if he did want her. It eased many things. Whatever happened, she knew she'd done this. She could face the future and live it the way it was meant to be lived.
"And now the bouquet."
Edie watched, as the dance floor became a scrum. She smiled.
"Aren't you going to try?"
"Can't you leave me alone?" The words were torn from her, as her heart yearned to turn into his arms.
"I'm sorry," Jack said. "That is what I was building up to saying when I went out for a walk earlier. I was working out what to say, that I want to believe you've changed. I so want to believe, and I had a great speech worked out but when I saw you and Tom…" He shrugged and looked sheepish. "It seems I have a bit of a jealousy thing going on there. I didn't like the way he looked at you, as if he owned you.
Edie stared at him. Jack had been jealous.
Inner Edie started to do a happy dance.
Jack smiled and wiped under her eye with his thumb.
“Go, grab the bouquet and I promise I’ll be here to listen when you get back. And then maybe a dance?” he asked tentatively.
Chapter 28
Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) came blaring out over the sound system.
Edie jumped and then smiled.
Jack had been jealous.
“The bouquet is mine!” Sophie was in the middle of the scrum of screaming women.
At last she'd found something to distract her from chasing Jack for a few minutes.
“I think you can take her." Jack leant down and whispered in Edie’s ear, giving her a push.
Edie shivered.
This had always been the point of the wedding that she and Jessica had stood at the back, watching with their arms folded and lips pulled up in a sneer.
And now?
Edie could feel her hands itching.
Mel’s bouquet was beautiful. And Edie’s tender heart, the one that had been stripped and exposed, fluttered with excitement.
She let Jack's hand propel her forward and smiling, she joined the throng of women standing in front of Mel.
