About The Best Man
Is the best man always the right man?
With American fiancé, Henry Darrow, publicist Madeleine has at last found the yin to her yang – or whichever way round it is. The calm to her storm, the stillness to her constant motion. Balance.
Her boss, Liv, had to be talked into marriage, which predictably ended in divorce. She’s happy for Madeleine, but Liv is firmly of the opinion that she and her twins are better off alone.
However, when Madeleine meets Aiden, Henry’s choice for best man, and Liv has a spontaneous chat with a stranger, the settled lives these women thought they had finally achieved are thrown into chaos.
Aiden brings secrets with him and starts to unravel some of Madeleine’s. Liv’s growing relationship conjures up possibilities she thought she’d shut away forever.
May the best man win.
To the readers
who never stopped asking when my next book would be out, who cajoled, flattered, badgered and begged. You’re the reason I keep writing, so this book is dedicated to all of you, with much love and gratitude.
Happy 80th Birthday, Dad!
Contents
Cover
About The Best Man
Dedication
Madeleine
9.30 am
Liv
4 pm
Oatley
6 pm
Morning
Amblin Press
9.30 pm
Saturday
Sunday
Pittwater
Monday
5.30 pm
Friday afternoon
The morning after
Strathfield
Pittwater
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Trousseau
Thursday night
Amblin Press
One hour later
Opera Bar
Chippendale
Morning
Chippendale
St George Hospital
The next morning
Sunday afternoon
Monday morning
The Cake Walk
Amblin Press
4 pm
Chippendale
Morning
9.30 am
Amblin Press
2.30 pm
4 pm
The next day
Acknowledgements
About Dianne Blacklock
Also by Dianne Blacklock
Copyright
Madeleine
Finally, LANDED flickered over on the arrivals board for United flight 839 from LAX. Madeleine let out a little squeal. She looked up at Henry’s impassive face, her eyes shining.
‘Well, aren’t you excited?’ she said.
‘Of course,’ he said calmly.
‘You’d never know it. If I were you I’d be jumping out of my skin.’
‘I am, just on the inside.’
She grinned. ‘You can’t jump out of your skin on the inside. That’s not possible.’
He leant closer. ‘Just between you and me, it’s not possible to jump out of your skin at all.’
Madeleine screwed up her nose at him. ‘Anything’s possible in a metaphor.’
It didn’t matter, she was excited enough for the both of them. She was finally going to meet Henry’s lifelong best friend, Aiden Carmichael. Well, not entirely lifelong – they had been roommates in college back in the States, so it was more like half a lifetime. But Madeleine had never met anyone from Henry’s past. And from all accounts Aiden was going to be a lot more forthcoming than Henry, which wouldn’t be hard, given that Henry was one of the most unforthcoming people Madeleine had ever known. No, that wasn’t fair, that made him sound cold or aloof, and he was neither. He was always calm and supremely patient, while she was generally excitable and terribly impatient, which often provoked the observation ‘You two are so different!’, to which Madeleine wanted to retort, ‘Haven’t you heard that opposites attract?’ But she generally held her tongue these days; she didn’t need to have a comeback for everything, better to let some things just slide. Being with Henry had taught her that. He was the yin to her yang, or the yang to her yin, whichever way it went. All she knew was that Henry centred her, providing much-needed balance in her life, and now she couldn’t imagine a life without him. And that’s why she was going to marry him, in just a few short weeks.
Her phone suddenly started to ring inside her handbag. She used to have the old-fashioned telephone ring, to differentiate it from all the pop tunes everyone else had. But then everyone must have had the same idea, and Madeleine was forever diving into her bag until she realised it wasn’t her phone ringing. So she’d changed her ringtone to a rumba, or a tango, or the Macarena, something like that. And now she felt mortified every time it rang.
‘It’s not work, is it?’ Henry sighed and returned his gaze to the arrivals board as Madeleine rooted around for her phone. Henry hated the thing, and she could hardly blame him; it did go off an awful lot, and the rumba-tango did get pretty annoying. Henry’s phone rarely went off, seeing as she was about the only person who had his number.
She finally plucked it out of her bag and checked the screen. ‘Nope, not work – Mum.’ She flashed Henry a quick, appeasing smile before answering the phone, covering her other ear to block out the surrounding hubbub. ‘Hi, Mum?’
‘Yes, it’s me. How did you know?’
Madeleine had to go over this every second time her mother rang. She really should just answer with her stock greeting, ‘Madeleine Pepper’s phone’, but that usually elicited the response, ‘No need to be so formal, it’s only your mum.’
‘Your name comes up on my phone, remember?’ Madeleine explained now.
‘Oh, that’s clever,’ Margaret said. ‘How does it know?’
This was going to turn into one of those conversations if Madeleine didn’t rein it in now. ‘Listen, Mum, I can’t hear you very well, so I better not stay on long. What were you ringing about?’
‘Why can’t you hear me? Are you in the shower?’
‘No, Mum, you can’t take a phone into the shower.’ Madeleine thought it prudent to mention that little safety tip. ‘We’re at the airport, to pick up Henry’s best man, remember?’
‘Yes, I think I remember him. Pleasant-looking fellow, with the wavy brown hair?’
She was describing Henry. ‘No, Mum, you haven’t met Aiden.’
‘Who’s Aiden?’
‘Henry’s best man. His plane just landed. I haven’t even met him yet.’
‘Well, you’d better get off the phone and go and say hello or else it will look rude.’
‘It’s okay, he’s not through Customs yet.’
‘What was that?’
Madeleine had to put an end to this. ‘You’re right, Mum, I better go say hello. What were you calling about?’
‘I wasn’t calling you, I was calling your sister.’
‘Oh, did you ring my number by mistake?’
‘No, when Genevieve didn’t answer I tried you instead. I thought you might know where she is.’
Madeleine glanced at her watch. It was just before nine. ‘At this time of the morning she’ll be in a mad panic trying to get the kids out the door for school. I think she’d likely ignore the phone.’
‘But doesn’t she have one of those phones like yours, that tells her who’s calling?’
Of course she did, which explained why she didn’t pick up. ‘Was it important, Mum?’
‘Oh, no, not important . . . I didn’t mean to bother anyone . . .’
‘You’re not bothering anyone,’ Madeleine tried to reassure her. ‘It’s just that Gen’s usually pretty frantic before school. She p
robably thought she’d let it go to voicemail and then ring back later.’
‘But I didn’t leave a message. How will she know it was me?’
‘The phone will know it was you.’
‘Goodness, it’s a little creepy, isn’t it?’
‘I guess.’
‘Oh, I just realised . . . Is that why they call them smart-phones?’
‘It’s probably one of the reasons,’ said Madeleine. ‘Anyway, if that’s everything, Mum, I better go.’
‘Say goodbye to Henry’s friend for me,’ Margaret said. ‘We’ll see him next time.’
Madeleine decided it wasn’t worth trying to clarify things over again, so she said goodbye and hung up, turning off her phone this time before slipping it back into her bag.
‘Is everything all right?’ Henry asked.
She just gave him a shrug in reply.
Her mother had been like this ever since Madeleine’s dad died. Well, not immediately after; at first she was grief-stricken and wandered around the house in a daze. Madeleine had had to cook and clean, and basically pick up after her as though she was a child. Eventually the fog lifted, but after that she was easily confused, her thoughts scattered, her memory patchy. At Genevieve’s insistence, Madeleine finally took her for tests, but apparently there was nothing wrong with her, she didn’t have Alzheimer’s or dementia. The doctor had explained to Madeleine that as Margaret had always let her husband do the talking, make the decisions and generally deal with everything, she was probably just a little overwhelmed at having to do it for herself. Jonathan Pepper wasn’t authoritarian, not in the least; he was kind and articulate and wise, and they had all deferred to him to varying degrees. So really, Margaret just had to find her own voice. She would be her old self again in time, the doctor assured Madeleine. But nearly ten years had passed, and she was still not her old self. How could she be, when she’d lost her other half?
‘Any sign of him yet?’ Madeleine asked Henry, craning to see between the heads blocking her view.
‘The plane only landed five minutes ago,’ he reminded her. ‘He’ll be a while yet. Do you want to go get a coffee?’
‘No I do not,’ she said, horrified. ‘You can’t say for sure how long it’ll take. What if he was to come down the ramp, searching hopefully among the faces in the crowd, and we weren’t here? It’s unthinkable. We’re not budging from this spot!’
‘All right,’ Henry said, looking bemused. ‘Are you always this anxious waiting at airports?’
She glanced at him sideways. ‘You should see me when I’m waiting for you.’
He smiled, leaning closer to press his lips against her forehead. ‘We have had some significant moments in airports, haven’t we?’
‘Yes we have.’ Madeleine tucked her arm into his. ‘And this is going to be another. I’m just excited to finally meet someone from your side. It’s a big deal, like meeting family for the first time.’
‘But Aiden’s not family.’
She scanned his face for a hint of sadness, but as usual, Henry wasn’t giving anything away. It was only when they’d started to plan the wedding that Madeleine discovered there was no family on Henry’s side to invite. He’d never talked about his early life much. She knew that he was born in Columbus, Ohio, the only child of older parents who hadn’t been expecting a baby at that stage of their lives. Henry said they didn’t really know what to do with a kid. He was fed and clothed and schooled, but left to his own devices the rest of the time. So from a very young age he’d learnt to occupy himself, which was how his passion for drawing, and later painting, had developed. Madeleine liked to imagine a Robert Louis Stevenson–type scenario, a small, sensitive boy tucked away in his bedroom creating stories – or, in Henry’s case, pictures – and later becoming a renowned author and illustrator of children’s books. She wondered why some clever marketing executive hadn’t exploited that image ages ago, but Henry didn’t need it now, his books sold on his name alone.
Sadly, his parents were never to know of his success. His mother died of kidney failure in Henry’s first year away at college, and his father died some time after. Although Henry didn’t say much about it, Madeleine gathered that he and his father hadn’t had a great deal to do with each other in the intervening years. He’d had a grandmother, his mother’s mother, who’d sent him a birthday card every year, with a five-dollar note inside. And each summer he’d made the trek back out to the Midwest to visit her, until she’d died too. He had no other family that he was aware of.
‘Aiden’s the closest thing you’ve got to family,’ Madeleine pointed out. ‘You said he’s like a brother to you.’
‘Yes, but I also told you he’s nothing like me.’
‘Still, he knew you way back, longer than anyone else I’ve met.’
Henry looked at her. ‘Are you hoping to dig up some dirt on me?’
‘I won’t be holding my breath,’ she said drolly. She couldn’t imagine there being any dirt to dig up on Henry, though for some reason he did seem to have mixed feelings about Aiden coming to stay. Madeleine just put that down to the fact that Henry was an intensely private man, but she couldn’t help being curious to meet someone who had shared a little of his past.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘you know all my family, my friends, the people I work with. Don’t you think that gives you a greater understanding of me?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You’re not much like your mother or Genevieve.’
‘Oh yes I am,’ she begged to differ.
‘All due respect,’ he said, dropping his voice, ‘but they’re both a little crazy.’
Madeleine smiled up at him. ‘Don’t you remember what I was like when we met?’
She often wondered now if she’d been on the verge of some kind of breakdown. Perhaps that was overstating it, but it would certainly not be an overstatement to say that her life had been spiralling out of control. And it had probably been heading that way ever since her dad died. It was a devastating loss for their family, really for anyone who knew Jon Pepper, and there were an awful lot of people who knew and loved him. He’d been a high school English teacher for nearly thirty years, and he should have had many more years ahead of him. The good really do die young – and it wasn’t a cliché if it was true. Madeleine was always being pulled up for her overuse of clichés and metaphors; it was one of the drawbacks of spending your working life surrounded by authors and editors . . .
Anyway, where was she? (She was also frequently accused of losing track of what she was saying. Her mind just went into overdrive sometimes. Okay, often.) After her beloved father died, they’d all had to somehow find a way to go on without him. But Margaret had struggled, so even though Madeleine was twenty-five years old with two degrees under her belt and really should have been off finding her own feet, instead she had to stay around and help her mother find hers. By then Genevieve was already living out of home, and as far as she was concerned, Margaret was primarily Madeleine’s responsibility. Especially with the wedding coming up. Genevieve had promptly become engaged to her boyfriend after their father’s death, in a rather impulsive attempt to re-create the family she felt she’d lost, at least that’s how Madeleine read it. What else could explain the sheer madness of organising a wedding when everyone was still in the throes of grief? Madeleine was appointed maid of honour, of course – a dubious honour which apparently gave Genevieve the right to treat her like an indentured servant, but indentured servant of honour didn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Needless to say, the first year was tough. But with Genevieve safely delivered into matrimony, and Margaret becoming a smidge more independent, Madeleine was finally able to start thinking about her own future. Jonathan had instilled a love of literature in both his daughters, and so Madeleine found herself with both a BA and a master’s in English literature and no idea what to do with either of them. After finishing her bachelor’s degree she had only intended to take honours, but then her father got sick and she
was incapable of thinking of life beyond his next treatment, his next test result, his dwindling options. So Madeleine stayed at uni, where it was familiar and comfortable, and her honours thesis developed into a master’s. If her father had lived longer, she may well have ended up with a doctorate.
Jonathan had probably assumed she would follow the family tradition and become a teacher, just as Genevieve had, but the idea left Madeleine cold; the sheer patience required was beyond her. But what else was she going to do? The practical applications of her qualifications were limited, to say the least. Despite her obsession with books, she had no desire to write. Well, the truth was she couldn’t write. She could barely manage a page of so-so, derivative prose before she got bored. What she did love to do was read, and she read fast and prolifically, always impatient to get to the end of the story and start on the next on her to-be-read pile. She didn’t know of any jobs that paid you to do that.
But she had to do something. Eventually she registered with a temp agency so that she could gain some office skills, and after three excruciatingly dull and, frankly, mystifying placements in finance companies, she was sent to Amblin Press, a publishing house! Why hadn’t she thought of this before? Although at her level the work was tiresome and seemed to consist almost entirely of photocopying, she was surrounded by books and manuscripts – so many pages, so many words, so much to read! She was in heaven, and she was in an ideal position to figure out where she could possibly slot into such an establishment.
The role of publisher appealed, naturally – getting to read manuscripts and take authors to lunch, while delegating all the boring stuff. Plus they seemed to be the only ones who had offices with windows. But the other thing Madeleine soon learnt was that to be a publisher you had to work your way up the editorial ladder and earn that office with a window. She could think of nothing more tedious or thankless than combing the pages of manuscripts searching for typos and errors and making corrections and writing tiny little notes on tiny little post-its. Good for them, salt of the earth and all that, books wouldn’t be readable without editors . . . but it just wasn’t for Madeleine. She knew her limitations: she simply did not possess the patience gene, or the focus gene, or the attention-to-detail gene, for that matter. The more senior editors wielded a broader brush, but to get to that level you still had to do the tedious jobs first. There seemed to be no way to bypass that painstaking route.
The Best Man Page 1
