The Chatsfield Novellas Box Set Volume 3
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Fiona Harper
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Chapter One
I stare in the mirror and think, I should have been Mrs Gareth Hollander for one whole week now.
But I am not. And no blushing bride is staring back at me. This woman looks tired. Older than her thirty-two years.
There is a loud knock at the bathroom door. ‘Sophie? You almost ready?’
I nod and then remember I’m supposed to speak my answer. ‘Almost,’ the woman in the mirror says, continuing to hold my gaze, but her voice seems disconnected from the reflection. It echoes off the tiles. I’ve never been in a bathroom so luxurious, with its marble floor and walls, soft fluffy towels, big roll top bath big enough to house a rugby team. I should be feeling pampered, special. Instead the echoey space feels as cold and empty as a mausoleum.
The door creaks open and Mel sticks her head round it. ‘Looking good!’ she says, after giving me the once over. ‘Ready to go and hit the town?’
I turn and nod. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’ Which isn’t very ready at all, but I’m not going to tell her that. I can’t help feeling that as I turn and follow her into the hotel bedroom that the woman in the mirror is still standing there, staring after me with her hollow eyes.
Vikki is waiting for us in the living room of the suite. It was her and Mel’s idea to come to London, to stay at The Chatsfield. I don’t even know if I agreed. I was so numb after Gareth didn’t turn up for our wedding that I’d have jumped off the church spire if someone had told me to. My two bridesmaids came up with the plan of going on the honeymoon anyway, with the two of them to keep me company. They’d make sure I forgot all about my runaway groom, they’d told me.
I know most people want to go somewhere warm and tropical for a honeymoon, and that certainly appealed, but I’ve always wanted to stay at The Chatsfield. I’ve dreamed of it since I was a little girl. So when Gareth asked me where I wanted to go after we’d got married, I said here. To live like a princess for a fortnight.
I regret that now. This isn’t a dream come true, a memory I can cherish when I’m old, but a slowly unravelling nightmare. My fantasies of The Chatsfield will always be stained by this now.
‘The Criterion for dinner,’ Vikki says, grinning at me, ‘and how about coming back to the bar here afterwards? Then we can plan which club we’re going on to later. Not only is the barman a total hottie, but the cocktail menu is amazing. Mel and I tried some out on Thursday after you’d gone to bed early.’
Great. A nightmare that involves sparkly shoes. And cocktails. What more could a girl want?
Even so, I nod. I don’t care. I’m not celebrating anything. I don’t care if there’s champagne or not. And staying out until three in the morning in this glorious city hasn’t taken my mind off my aborted wedding one bit. I float from one expensive venue to the next, pulled along by the sheer willpower of my should-have-been bridesmaids, but all I can think about is why.
Why did Gareth not even turn up to the church? Why didn’t he tell me he was having doubts? Why did he leave me, stranded, to face all our friends and family on my own, with no answers to give them? I hate him for it. But I ache for him, too.
You can’t switch that kind of thing off, can you? Even if you want to so badly it makes your eyes swim and your head pound. Okay, Gareth wasn’t the man of my dreams that I’d pictured as a teenager, all brooding dark looks and passionate declarations. Who was? But I’d been able to envision my life with him. He’s a good man, if a little shut down emotionally. I’d been convinced it was all buried in there somewhere, and I thought I’d have a lifetime to excavate it.
Seems I was wrong. Now I can’t envision any future at all. When I try to look forward, all I can see is a pearly smudge, like fog. How can there be anything else when the man I was preparing to spend all of my tomorrows with has stolen them from me?
A voicemail. That’s all I have to go on. He hasn’t contacted me once in the last week. Maybe he never will. How does a person deal with that?
Last Saturday, the fifth of July, I’d been standing in the vestibule of the church, waiting. Gareth’s car had got held up in one of the country lanes, I’d reasoned to myself. Probably a tractor or a flock of sheep. I’d imagined us joking about it after the service, saying something about it being the bride’s job to be late, not the groom’s. Not very funny, I know, but we wouldn’t have cared. The joy of the day would have made it hilarious.
But then my mother, who’d been looking after my bag, had handed me my phone. It had been buzzing repeatedly in there, she’d said, but she hadn’t wanted to disturb me just minutes away from one of the most important milestones of my life. But when the minute hand on her watch had got to ten past, and the service had been due to start at two, she’d given in and handed it to me.
It had been Gareth. A garbled message saying that he needed time and space. That he was sorry, that it was nothing to do with me, but that he needed to be sure. I was so stupid that at first I thought he just needed a moment to compose himself, that he’d be along soon, but as the minutes had dragged on and the congregation had started to whisper and fidget, I’d slowly realised the truth.
He was wrong, though. It clearly was something to do with me. Otherwise he’d have been standing next to me at the altar.
‘Got the key to the city?’ Mel asks gleefully.
She’s talking about Gareth’s credit card. It’s been a running joke all week.
He got me a second card on his account a couple of months ago, for wedding expenses. I shrug and pull the smart black sliver of titanium out of my purse and hold it up. If he wasn’t going to turn up for the wedding, my bridesmaids reasoned, he might as well pay for the honeymoon. He can afford it, after all.
It had been fun at first, watching waitresses and shop workers’ eyes light up when they saw it, knowing that a serious spending spree was about to unfold. But that had been earlier in the week, when my devastation had hardened into anger, threatening to consume everything. Maybe that’s the reason I feel worse today, like a wrung-out dishcloth. That useful, necessary fire is waning, leaving me bruised and shivering.
When I place the credit card on the restaurant table later that evening, it doesn’t feel like revenge anymore, but defeat. Suddenly all I want to do is crawl back to The Chatsfield, climb into my bed and burrow myself under the goose down duvet and never ever come out. The hotel may never be my dream come true anymore, not with the memory of Gareth’s defection stamped all the way through it, but for now it is my refuge.
