The summer wedding, p.70
The Summer Wedding, page 70
‘Great epitaph.’
‘Great life plan.’
‘Are you really that posh, or is it put on?’
‘It’s roughed off. Are you really that Welsh?’
Trudging beside them both, Chloe threw up her arms. ‘Do you two want to get a room?’
She spoke too soon as Griff pushed Dougie into a thorn hedge and he lunged back to hook a metal-clad leg around the Welshman’s ankles and tip him into some stinging nettles.
Sighing, Chloe hooked them out and marshalled them on.
‘It’s an old-fashioned cooking timer.’ Simon was not wholly impressed. ‘It’s not even new – there are marks on it. Just because it’s shaped like devil’s horns. I don’t really get it.’
Laney turned it over. ‘Look.’
‘It’s vintage Alessi.’
‘Not that – the inscription.’
Written on the base was TURN THIS ALL THE WAY ONCE A DAY AND UNWIND TOGETHER.
‘So?’
‘We gave it to them when they got married. It was all we could afford. You inscribed that with the dentist’s drill you’d bought to carve candles to sell at craft fairs.’
‘So I did.’ He admired it, dove-grey eyes looking at her over its horns as it began to tick. ‘Does this mean we’re starting over?’
‘I think you’ll find it means we’re eating our words, Demon.’ She kissed him. ‘The best times are yet to come.’
In Wootton’s walled kitchen garden, the Devonshires lost all sense of time as they sat together in the afternoon sun.
Jacinta had nodded off, snoring reedily, her mouth hanging open now that it was no longer glued together by toffee. Iris’s terriers were still on her lap, curled beneath her hands like two chicks under heat lamps.
Leo watched her indulgently, his own lap crammed with small dogs, his fingers laced through his daughter’s. ‘You won’t regret it,’ he told Iris for the hundredth time. ‘I am so proud of you.’
‘I’m taking up my place at university, Dad, not climbing Kilimanjaro.’
‘It’s what you should be doing: acting your age, not your socks off or your heart out.’
‘I am not going to give Griff up,’ she said. ‘Our love will last for ever.’
‘And Dougie?’
‘Will you keep an eye on him in LA? I don’t want him getting into any more trouble.’
‘You’re too loyal, Iris. Just like your mother.’
‘I loved him so passionately once. That means a lot. I’m starting to understand that you don’t always get a choice about who you fall in – and out of – love with, but respecting its power is everything.’
‘Frankie Goes to Hollywood said much the same thing – and Jennifer Rush.’
‘Are they therapists you see in LA?’
He laughed, eyes huge with affection. ‘Only Mia would get that joke.’
‘You do still love Mum, don’t you?’
‘Very much.’ He pressed her hand to his face. ‘Ivan’s always accepted that, and I love him so much for it.’
They both watched Ivan and Griff ambling behind the sweet-pea canes, talking animatedly about the likelihood of growing wild primroses in California. ‘Lito says that if you’re in love with two people—’
‘Johnny Depp is a great actor,’ Leo interrupted, ‘but, trust me, think twice before you take advice from an actor. Especially about how and when to live your life.’
Epilogue
The little balloon floated high over the Masai Mara, so utterly silent that its occupants were able to hear the hoofbeats below.
‘The river crossing will be any day now,’ Dom told Mia, as always keeping the scarred side of his face turned away when airborne, although it meant looking directly into the sun, his vivid blue eyes creased, hair spun palest gold in the light. ‘This will be the last outing for the horses until after it happens.’
‘I can’t wait.’ She shivered excitedly. ‘Neither can they.’
They looked down over the basket rim. Far below, two figures cantered on horseback through the tufted brush landscape back towards the camp, hurrying to return before the lengthening evening sun brought out the first big predators.
‘Our daughter.’ He chuckled, then reached for the burner lever to blast more heat into the balloon envelope to steady their descent. ‘Our clever, beautiful girl.’
Smiling, Mia tilted her face into the sun and waited for the roaring propane to stop. Then she said, ‘You’ll have to start getting used to the idea eventually. It’s been two years.’
‘I’ve waited her lifetime to make an honest woman of her mother.’ He stretched out his right arm and she curled beneath its foreshortened span, fusing to his hard, muscular side.
‘It never does to marry too young.’ She laughed as Iris stood up in her stirrups and waved at them, whooping, before racing her dark-haired companion along the riverbank. ‘We agreed I’m going to ask you on your twelfth birthday.’
‘Not sure I can wait that long.’ He turned his mouth to her ear, dropping his voice to that deep engine throb. ‘I’m a Yorkshireman, remember. We like to do the proposing.’
‘If you like your wives barefoot and pregnant, I’m your dream woman.’ She smiled fondly down at her bump, discarded Merrells and swollen ankles before snuggling closer in to his side. ‘When we get back to England, I’ll have another go at Leo about the divorce. He keeps saying we’ll do it after he’s finished the Lorca biopic, but that could take years to produce, particularly with Laney writing the script.’
‘We can wait until my twelfth birthday. We’ve waited a lifetime already.’
‘Life’s only just begun,’ she agreed, as he blasted more hot air into the balloon and they kissed again, heartbeats thundering in their ears long after the burner had fallen silent.
Fiona Walker, The Summer Wedding
