The Wedding Diary (Choc Lit) (11 page)

Cat thought, he’s so kind, so generous. Some people would have shouted at the man then driven on, not stopped to help.

‘Adam?’ she whispered.

‘Yes?’

‘What if Mr Moreley never pays you?’

‘Cat, it doesn’t matter. It won’t be very much. Less than a hundred, I imagine, or probably more like fifty.’

‘I’ll chip in twenty-five.’

‘You won’t!’ retorted Adam. ‘I might have killed you when we left the road and almost hit that tree. You’re not chipping in a single penny.’

‘We’ll talk about it later. Goodness, it’s so quiet here, apart from all the birdsong, obviously.’

‘I can hear a blackbird. Or I think it’s a blackbird, and what’s that making a tap-tapping noise?’

‘A woodpecker?’ suggested Cat.

‘A buzzard, cracking rabbit bones?’

‘A vulture?’ Cat said, smiling at him.

‘Or a golden eagle?’

‘Adam, don’t be silly, golden eagles live in Scotland.’

‘It must be a vulture then, or perhaps an albatross?’

‘You are an idiot, Adam,’ giggled Cat. ‘Maybe I should try to teach you not to be so funny? Maybe I should push you off this gate?’

‘Go on, then. I dare you.’

‘I didn’t mean it,’ Cat said hurriedly, now feeling flustered and embarrassed, sensing she had crossed some boundary, or tried to cross it.

Adam made no comment.

They sat a while in silence and listened to the birds.

Twenty minutes later, they heard the breakdown lorry. Mr Moreley woke and watched the men as they put Boudicca on to the truck and chained her down. Then he let the men help him into the breakdown’s cab.

‘Thank you, Mr – Langley?’ Mr Moreley peered at Adam’s card. ‘I don’t have my spectacles, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s Lawley,’ Adam told him, as he paid the breakdown men from a big wad of twenties.

Cat thought, why do builders carry so much ready cash? Barry had back pockets stuffed with tenners, twenties, sometimes even fifties. She supposed that, being in the salvage business, Adam and he were always on the lookout for a deal, an opportunity, a bargain.

They were like Boy Scouts, always prepared.

She and Adam got into the Volvo, Adam reversed it off the bank and then he and Cat went on their way.

‘I suppose we’d better get on the M40,’ Adam said. ‘I’m sorry, but we’ll have to bypass Warwick. We could go some other time though, make a day of it?’

‘That would be good,’ said Cat. ‘Let’s do it soon.’

‘One weekend next month, perhaps?’

‘You’re on.’

Cat stretched her legs out in the foot well, flexed her toes. She’d helped somebody else and it felt good. She now knew Adam Lawley just a little better and she liked what she had learned.

Adam was the sort of guy you needed in a crisis, who wouldn’t let you down, who would always know what he should do, what he should say.

They had almost reached the motorway when Cat heard a familiar jingle-jangle. She rummaged in her bag.

‘It’s probably just Tess,’ she said as she pulled out her phone and started scrolling down her texts. ‘God!’ she exclaimed.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Adam.

‘It’s a text from Jack.’ As she spoke, the sun was suddenly masked by banks of cloud, and then – as if on cue – a wind sprang up and raindrops pattered on the Volvo’s windscreen.

‘Bloody hell, he’s got a nerve,’ she muttered as she read Jack’s text. ‘He disappears for weeks on end. He doesn’t call, he doesn’t e-mail and his wretched phone is never on. But then, I get this text.
Miss you, babe, where are you?
’

‘Do you want to stop? Give him a ring?’

Cat started chewing at her lower lip. ‘Do you mind?’ she asked eventually. ‘Just for a couple of minutes? I won’t be very long.’

‘You take all the time you need.’

‘But aren’t we in a hurry now?’

‘Five minutes will be fine.’

Adam indicated left and pulled into a side road. By now, they’d driven through the shower, so Cat got out and walked a little way along the verge, tapping on her phone.

He watched her as she talked, as she gesticulated, as she threw her head back in – annoyance? In Christ-you’re-such-a-wanker irritation? In blood-and-thunder fury?

Jack was no doubt getting the third degree, decided Adam, and it served the bastard right.

He thought, when Cat comes back, and when we’re on the motorway, maybe I should tell her about Maddy? I could explain what happened, and then she’ll realise I understand?

Or would that be too much like comparing battle wounds? Look, mine’s bleeding more than yours? I’ve got a lot more stitches? Mine is going to leave a bigger scar?

If he started talking about Maddy, would he ever stop?

Cat was coming back towards the car, and he saw her face was one big smile of satisfaction. She’d obviously told Jack where he got off. Attagirl, he thought – I hope you gave the bastard hell.

‘You all right?’ he asked her, as she got back in. ‘You’re feeling better now you’ve cleared the air?’

‘Yes, much better, thank you.’ Cat was positively beaming. ‘Adam, could you drop me at the nearest station, please?’

‘I thought we were going to Wolverhampton?’

‘You’re going to Wolverhampton. I’m going back to Leyton. Jack has lost his keys.’

Adam dropped Cat off in Aylesbury where he reckoned she could get the fastest train to London Marylebone. It should take about an hour, he added. She would soon be safely home again.

As she said goodbye, she smiled at him.

He did not return her smile.

But she didn’t care.

As she sat on the train going back to London, she knew that she had never been so happy – so genuinely, gloriously happy. Jack still loved her, still wanted to be with her and was sorry he had ever left.

What the hell had she been doing, driving off to Wolverhampton with another man – with a man she hardly knew, who almost never smiled, who said he didn’t do relationships, who could have been a serial killer, serial rapist, anything – going off to look at some old house?

Or that was what he said they would be doing.

He might have meant to cut her up and throw her bits and pieces down a well. Then she would have made the
Daily Mail
, but not in the way her parents might have hoped to see their daughter in their favourite newspaper.

But he had helped that poor old man.

Oh, for goodness sake, she told herself – serial killer, serial rapist, good Samaritan or wolf in sheep’s smart casual, Adam doesn’t matter, anyway.

Adam might be the sort of man who’d make a great best friend.

But she didn’t need a great best friend.

She needed Jack.

Cat and Jack arranged to meet at Mo’s, a coffee shop a block or two away from Cat’s own flat where Jack could get a coffee while he waited.

As she came round the corner, she saw him lolling in a window seat. He had his feet up on a stool and he was reading, lost in a magazine.

She stopped to watch him, take him in. He was still astonishingly handsome. He still had that lovely, charming smile – she knew because he smiled at the waitress who refreshed his coffee.

Then, as if on cue, he turned, he looked straight through the window. As soon as he saw Cat, his eyes lit up. He was on his feet and at the door as she walked in.

Then he was holding out his arms.

She ran straight into them.

‘You’ve come home,’ she cried, and she was almost sobbing as she breathed him in, as his familiar scent assured her that he must be real – that he was in her arms, her life again.

‘Yes, sweet babe, I’m home,’ he said and then he stroked her hair back from her forehead, kissed her lightly on the temples.

Cat heard the waitress sigh.

He drew back then and gazed into her eyes. ‘Do you have a tenner, honeybee?’ he whispered softly. ‘Only I’ve run out of cash.’

Jack was back in London where he said he meant to stay.

He’d done a bunch of gigs in clubs up north. He’d even earned some money, so he said. He didn’t add how much, of course, and Cat sort of suspected he had spent it, anyway. When they stopped off at a supermarket to get in some supplies for the weekend, she’d been the one who paid.

But this didn’t matter, because to her relief and great delight he was thrilled about the competition.

‘So we can have champagne?’ he asked, after he and Cat had got to know each other again, which of course had taken several hours, and they were lying showered and exhausted on the sofa, looking through all the brochures while they played the DVDs, and Cat explained to Jack about the Melbury Court Hotel, about meeting Fanny and the others, and about Fanny saying she would get them in
Hello
.

‘We get the bridal suite, the five course wedding breakfast for what is it, fifty guests?’ demanded Jack. ‘This Supadoop Promotions lot, they’ll pay for everything?’

‘Well, not quite everything,’ admitted Cat, as she snuggled up to Jack and thought, my God, he’s gorgeous. I’m so lucky! ‘We might have to buy a suit for you. Or maybe we could hire one?’

‘I’m not getting married in somebody else’s trousers,’ muttered Jack. ‘I won’t know where they’ve been. Okay, what else?’

‘There’ll be our rings, of course, and then there will be outfits for the bridesmaids and the pageboys. That’s if we have pageboys. I’m sure my cousin Alice will expect me to ask her little boy, and I think we should, because he’s cute. You mustn’t worry, darling. Dad will pay for all that stuff.’

‘You reckon?’ Jack looked doubtful. ‘Your parents, honeybee – they don’t exactly like me.’

‘They don’t exactly know you.’ Cat smiled at him and kissed him on his lovely, lovely mouth, and then she ran her fingers through his hair, his heavy mass of corkscrew curls, all glossy and blue-black. ‘Once they get to know you properly, they’re going to love you.’

‘Do they know we’ve had this little blip?’

‘No, of course they don’t.’ Cat shook her head. ‘I don’t go running to my friends and my relations with every little thing. I know you sometimes need to take time out. But I also knew you’d soon be coming home again. You wouldn’t stay away forever. We love each other, right?’

‘Cat, you mentioned being in
Hello
.’

‘Yes, Fanny said she hoped she would be able to get us in the weekly magazines, and I think she has contacts at
Hello
.’

‘But we’re not celebrities,’ said Jack. ‘So how can we be in
Hello
?’

‘I’m only telling you what Fanny said.’ Cat could not stop touching Jack, could not stop kissing him. It was as if he were a power source and she had to be plugged into it. ‘My darling, it’s so great to have you home!’

‘When are you going to see this Fanny Gregory again?’

‘We hadn’t fixed a date, but I’ll call her now to say you’re back.’

‘But it’s Saturday evening, and it’s late.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Cat got out her phone. ‘She works twenty-four hour days. She’s been dying to meet you, and I know there’s lots of stuff she wants to do with you.’

‘But right now I have stuff to do with you.’ Jack took the phone out of Cat’s hand. ‘She’ll have to wait her turn.’

Adam drove on to Wolverhampton in a sort of daze.

It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t even boring old resentment, the unwelcome realisation Cat preferred to be with someone else, that was gnawing, chewing at him now.

What was it, then?

He didn’t know.

When it began to rain again, he welcomed it and drove on through the downpour, intimidating family saloons and even forcing lorries to give way by glaring at the drivers and flashing all his lights in a just-you-try-it-sunshine way.

He arrived in Wolverhampton, found somewhere to park and went to have a bit of lunch, then wished he hadn’t bothered because it felt as if he’d eaten ashes.

He met the man with the Victorian house which was much older than it looked. The house itself was fascinating. Beautiful, in fact – it was the sort of house he loved.

Originally Tudor, it had lots of Georgian additions and embellishments which had made it even more appealing, more attractive, given it more charm, more warmth, more light.

But some of these additions were overlaid with hideous Victorian improvements. Then, at some time in the 1960s, off-white polystyrene tiles had been glued to all the downstairs ceilings, no doubt covering up some lovely Georgian plasterwork. The place would certainly repay some sympathetic restoration.

But, in Adam’s present frame of mind, he was almost tempted to inform the owner it was nothing special, and – since by some planning oversight the building wasn’t listed – he was more than welcome to do anything he liked.

Put in double glazing made of bright white PVC, take out all the pretty Georgian panelling, replace the rotting staircase with one from B&Q? Or even level it, and build a modern house with decent insulation, central heating, solar panels, patio doors?

He didn’t envy Jack, he told himself, as he tried to concentrate on Mr Rayner’s interesting old house, and to tell him yes, to keep the Georgian staircase, he could easily find replacement spindles, that would be no problem, and woodworm could be treated nowadays, provided it was not too far advanced.

‘But that conservatory needs to go,’ he added. ‘It’s a great example of Victorian jerry-building on almost non-existent bad foundations. The ironwork’s rusted through and, if it isn’t knocked down soon, it’s going to fall down by itself.’

As he made some notes and took some photographs, he thought, it’s not as if I even know the guy. This Jack – he might be genuinely charming, and genuinely sorry for going off to find himself, for making Cat so sad.

But when he had seen her back in May, poor Cat had been so miserable. So wretched, so despairing. Who had any right to make somebody feel like that, especially when the somebody in question was as kind and generous as Cat? A girl who’d help a stranger whose stupidity might easily have killed them all?

‘Mr Lawley?’ Mr Rayner looked at him, his eyebrows raised. ‘I’d like you to help me, if you would? When could you fit me in?’

‘I’ll probably have some time in August.’ Adam scrolled through his diary, checking dates. He had that stuff in Scotland coming up. He didn’t really want any more work, and this would be a devil of a job. He’d have to find some sub-contractors, and he didn’t know a single one in bloody Wolverhampton.