‘Perfect—’ Edna breathed.
Annie did not dare look at herself. Instead she stared out of the window. She could see the hawthorn tree where she’d fetched up in the flood.
‘Ann! Help me!’
She gasped.
‘What’s the matter?’ Edna asked. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing—nothing—’
Annie was shaking. There was no escape.
Edna gave her a little kiss.
‘You’re just suffering from nerves, dear. It’s only natural. Now—’
She fetched a shoe box and took out a pair of pink satin court shoes and placed them on the floor for Annie to put on.
‘Just think,’ she said, sitting back on her heels, ‘you’re going to be one of the Suttons! I still can’t hardly believe it. All these years I’ve known Mrs Sutton, ever since you and Beryl was born, and I never dreamt that one day you’d be marrying into their family. You and Beryl are going to be sisters-in-law.’
‘Yes,’ Annie said, because an answer seemed to be required of her.
Once, she would have thought it hilarious that Beryl would be forced to accept her as a relation, would have revelled in all the new opportunities it was going to give her to score points over her old enemy. Now it all seemed rather petty and childish. She had outgrown their rivalry.
Edna got down a hat box from the top of the wardrobe. Inside was a little cream hat with a tiny spotted net veil.
‘You’ll be able to go to all those lovely things that Beryl does,’ she said. ‘Tennis Club dances and Conservative dinners and all that. I’ll have to make you lots of pretty dresses. You’ll have such fun. You deserve it. You never had much fun when you was growing up.’
The thought of going to a Tennis Club do with Jeff and Beryl and Beryl’s creepy husband made Annie feel even more nauseous than she was already, but if Edna noticed, she only put it down to nerves. Still chatting happily about the wonderful life Annie was embarking upon, she settled the hat on her daughter’s head and arranged the veil so that it just covered her eyes. Then she fastened the pearl necklace that Jeff had given Annie only yesterday. Misty-eyed, glowing with pride, she gently turned Annie round so that she was forced to look in the mirror.
‘There,’ she said.
Annie looked at the stranger in the glass. A film star figure gazed back at her—elegant, ladylike, beautiful, dressed in the height of fashion. Ready for her wedding. She panicked.
‘Mum, I can’t go through with it,’ she cried.
‘Can’t what—? Not get married, do you mean? Why ever not?’ Edna stuttered. She looked appalled.
‘I don’t love him,’ Annie stated.
‘But—but—’ Edna cast about for something persuasive to say. ‘But he’s a charming young man. Lovely manners. And he adores you. You’ve only got to see the way he looks at you. I mean—why did you say—? You must be fond of him, surely, or else why—?’
‘I’m fond of him, yes—’
That was why she had agreed to all this in the first place. That was why she hadn’t backed out already. She couldn’t face the hurt it would cause if she said she had changed her mind, especially when he had stood up to his family and defended her from their insults.
‘But is being fond of someone enough?’ she asked.
She didn’t need her mother’s reply. She knew the answer already.
‘You’ll grow to love him,’ Edna said. ‘People do, you know.’ Annie didn’t ask whether this had been the case with her mother and Walter. She looked out of the window again. There was a black car coming up the track. Coming to take them all to the wedding. Panic gripped her again.
‘I can’t do it, Mum! It’s all wrong, I know it is. How can I get married when it feels wrong?’
Edna wrung her hands.
‘But you’ve got to! You can’t stop now; it’s all arranged. What would the Suttons say? There’s the register office and the lunch at the hotel and the honeymoon—I couldn’t face them, Annie, if it was all put off—You don’t mean it, do you? Not really? Everyone feels like this, darling. It’s only natural. It’s a big step, getting married. Everyone feels nervous. But they get over it. You’ll get over it—’
Annie hardly heard her. She was watching the car come through the open gate into the yard. Part of her observed that it didn’t have white ribbons fixed to it and that when the driver got out, he wasn’t wearing a uniform, but all she could think was that it was coming to take her away, and that she desperately didn’t want to go.
Voices could be heard downstairs—Bobby’s high-pitched one and a man’s deeper tones.
‘No,’ she said out loud, ‘no, no, no—’
Bobby’s small feet came pounding up the stairs. He burst into the bedroom.
‘Mum, Mum! Mr Featherstone’s here! He wants to see you.’
‘Mr Featherstone?’ Annie repeated.
She felt very cold. There was a ringing in her ears. A long way away, her mother and Bobby were talking. She shook her head and tried to focus her eyes. She grabbed Bobby.
‘What do you mean? Is he here, in this house?’
Bobby stared at her as if she was mad.
‘Yes. He’s downstairs, in the kitchen. He wants to see you.’
Annie tottered out of the room and across the landing. Hanging on to the handrail like an old lady, she wobbled down the stairs in her pretty new shoes. At the kitchen doorway, she paused. There was Tom, standing in the middle of the room, gazing at her.
‘Annie—’ he said. ‘You look beautiful.’
Annie steadied herself on the doorframe.
‘How did you get here?’ she asked.
‘I drove all night,’ he said. ‘I got your letter yesterday evening. I would have been here earlier but I nearly ran out of petrol and had to wait for a garage to open this morning. I was so afraid I was going to be too late.’
‘Too late?’ Annie repeated stupidly. Nothing was making sense.
Tom stepped forward and took her hands in his.
‘Annie, you don’t really want to marry Jeff Sutton, do you?’
It all slipped smoothly into place. Tom understood. Tom always understood.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’
‘Then don’t do it, Annie. Please. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’
It was as if she had stopped swimming against a strong current. The relief was enormous. She felt quite limp.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘It’s not too late, then. You don’t have to go through with it. You can phone, or send a letter—anything. Don’t marry him just because it seems sensible. Please? I married Moira because everyone seemed to expect me to, most of all her, but it hasn’t worked. Don’t make the same mistake, Annie.’
Her brain was beginning to work again, taking in all the consequences.
‘My mum will be so upset. She’s set her heart on it,’ she said.
‘It’s not your mam who’s getting married,’ Tom pointed out.
‘And it’s all arranged—’
‘It can be unarranged.’
Annie found herself smiling at him.
‘It can, can’t it?’
‘Of course it can.’
‘I knew I shouldn’t be doing it. It felt all wrong.’
‘It is all wrong.’
Bobby was tugging at her arm. ‘Mum, Mum, there’s another car in the yard.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Annie said. She looked out of the kitchen window. This time the car did have white ribbons and the driver was in uniform. And he was walking towards the door.
‘Tell him to go away,’ she said to Tom.
Now it was Tom’s turn to smile. ‘You bet,’ he said. ‘But first you’d better write Jeff a letter, and we can ask the driver to deliver it. It’s the least you owe the poor devil.’
It was the hardest thing Annie had ever had to write. While her mother begged her to think again, Tom made conversation with the wedding car chauffeur and Bobby wandered round d
emanding of everyone what was happening, Annie hurried off three garbled pages of apologies. None of it, she knew, was going to make Jeff feel any better.
‘I feel dreadful,’ she said as the chauffeur drove out of the yard. ‘Poor Jeff. I’ve let him down and I’ve made him look a fool in front of his horrible family. He’ll never forgive me.’
‘No, he won’t, and what will the Suttons say? How can I face them again?’ Edna wailed.
‘You’ve done the right thing,’ Tom said.
Bobby stamped his foot. ‘What’s happening?’ he yelled.
All three adults fell silent and looked at him.
‘Oh, darling—’ Annie swept him into her arms. ‘I’m sorry. It’s all such a dreadful muddle. We’re not going to the wedding. I’m not going to marry Uncle Jeff after all.’
‘Good.’ Bobby’s small face switched magically from the sullen anger he had worn all morning to his normal cheerfulness. ‘Can I put my other clothes back on now? These are stupid.’
Annie kissed the top of his head and let him go. ‘Yes, darling. Then you can go and play outside.’
She sat down at the kitchen table. She felt weak and shaky all over.
‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go. I suppose I’d better go and change too.’
Edna was crying quietly. ‘It was all going to be so wonderful, and now it’s all spoilt. I might have known it was all too good to be true.’ She looked resentfully at Tom. ‘You’re the airman, aren’t you? The one in the prison camp? You hurt her before.’
‘It was all a mistake, Mum. A stupid mistake. But this time he’s stopped me from making an even bigger one,’ Annie told her.
She could see that there was going to be no convincing her mother. In Edna’s eyes, nothing compared with marrying into the Suttons.
‘Why don’t you put the kettle on, Mum? I’ll be down in a minute.’
She hung the beautiful dress back in her mother’s wardrobe, put the hat and shoes back in their boxes and changed into her everyday trousers and shirt. Tom smiled at her when she came downstairs again.
‘You still look just as beautiful,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I think I could do with some fresh air.’
‘Good idea,’ Annie said.
Outside, the summer sun shone down on fields that were growing green once more. They didn’t have to consult as to where they were going. Automatically, they set out for the sea wall. Their hands found each other as they fell into step.
‘Are you all right?’ Tom asked.
‘Never better,’ Annie told him. ‘You stopped me just in time. I’m not sure whether I would have been strong enough to do it if you hadn’t arrived.’
‘You didn’t love him,’ Tom said.
‘No, I didn’t,’ Annie agreed.
‘Just like I didn’t love Moira when I married her.’
Through all the turmoil of her own broken engagement, Annie realised that something had happened to Tom.
‘What’s the matter? Is it Moira?’ she asked. She found it hard to even say the woman’s name.
‘Yes.’
For several long moments, Tom said nothing.
‘Come on,’ Annie prompted. ‘Tell.’
‘I’m going to get a divorce,’ Tom told her. ‘I decided on the drive down here. Moira’s been having an affair with one of the neighbours. At first I thought I could live with it, for the sake of Michael and our families, but thinking over it all, I saw that we were never going to be happy. She probably turned to somebody else because she knows deep down that I don’t love her. It’s always been you, Annie. There’s never really been anyone else.’
Above her, Annie was aware of a skylark singing its joyful song high in the clear blue sky.
‘There’s never been anyone else for me, either,’ she said. ‘Jeff, and Bobby Joe—I only ever looked at them because I thought I’d never have you.’
Tom dropped her hand and put his arm round her shoulders instead, drawing her close against him. Annie slid her arm round his waist. It felt so right.
They walked past Silver Sands, with Annie’s shiny caravans and their groups of happy families, scrambled up the sea wall, slid down the long coarse grass and tarred stonework the other side and sat down on the warm sand at the foot of the wall.
‘Remember how we sat here and looked through the barbed wire?’ Tom said.
‘We wondered if the Germans were going to march in over the farm. And your little cousins came and stared at us.’
‘Yes—my horrible little cousins. They’re quite civilised now. Meanwhile, we’ve survived war and floods and broken promises.’
‘And here we are still,’ Annie said, laying her head on his shoulder.
She felt the warmth and weight of his head against hers.
‘Will you wait for me a bit longer, Annie? It’s not going to be easy, this divorce business. If they know I have somebody else in my life, I might not get custody of Michael.’
Annie rested her hand on his knee. They weren’t kids any more. They had responsibilities.
‘You know I’ll wait as long as it takes,’ she promised.
ISBN: 978-1-472-09951-8
WE’LL MEET AGAIN
© 2008 Patricia Burns
Published in Great Britain 2014
by Harlequin MIRA, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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