The Winter Wedding
Read The Winter Wedding Online
Authors: Abby Clements
Abby Clements is the author of four previous novels,
Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
, the bestselling
Vivien’s Heavenly Ice Cream Shop, Amelia Grey’s Fireside
Dream
, and
The Heavenly Italian Ice Cream Shop
. In the winter months, she likes curling up on the sofa with hot chocolate and gingerbread. She lives in north London, where she grew
up, with her husband and son.
Also by Abby Clements
Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
Vivien’s Heavenly Ice Cream Shop
Amelia Grey’s Fireside Dream
The Heavenly Italian Ice Cream Shop
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2015
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Abby Clements, 2015
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The rights of Abby Clements to be identified as author of this work have been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-47113-701-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-47113-702-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For Ella, the winter baby
Prologue
Our journey started twenty-nine years ago, in Bidcombe, a village nestled in the English countryside, where everyone would come to know our names. Not due to any great virtue
or scandal – but simply through the fact that we weren’t like the other girls; Lila and I were two halves of a whole. Through the years, we began to separate, but we never really
stopped thinking each other’s thoughts.
At the start of the nine months, Lila and I shared a space smaller than a rosebud, nestled up against one another within the walls that cradled us. The two of us grew: to the size of a brioche,
a stack of freshly baked muffins, then a ballet shoe bag, with us – top to tail – the slippers. For those nine months, our own swirling, kicking limbs, and the blurred sounds of our
mum’s singing filtering in from outside, were the rhythms of our world. At the moment of the scan – when our parents’ hearts must have been racing with the news – one of us
was sucking her thumb and the other giving a regal wave. The scan is grainy, you can’t see much at all really, but that was Dad’s take on it. He said that, even though they knew it was
more likely after the treatment, he and Mum were in such deep shock at the news they were having twins that they didn’t know what to say. They’d wanted a baby for ten years and now,
responding to their call twofold, here were both of us at once.
We were born, squirming and squalling, in our local hospital on a frosty day. I don’t remember that bit, of course, but our mum, Alison, and dad, Simon, never tire of telling us about it,
showing us photos. They named me, Hazel Delaney, older by ten minutes – and then Lila, my twin sister.
Mum and Dad took us back to their house – a 1920s cottage perched on the outskirts of the village, where they still live. Bidcombe isn’t far from London – only an hour and a
half on the train – but it’s a world away. The kind of place people stop on the streets to talk to you, where the people who work in the bakery, post office, pub and library are your
friends. Mum and Dad had lived there as a couple since they were in their early twenties, and now they were returning, joyfully, as an instant family of four. The neighbours had tied balloons to
their gates to welcome us.
Mum said everything had been ready for months: our double pram, the matching cots, Winnie-the-Pooh high chairs – in our family photo album we were almost always side by side. Christmases
at our cottage were the most special time of year, and there were dozens of photos of those, Mum or Dad smiling and staring at us proudly, their glasses of fizz on the mantelpiece, and the two of
us ripping paper off our presents. Our grandmother was there too – Mum’s mum, Joyce. It was our Grandma Joyce who first taught me the pleasure of a kitchen full of baking smells –
and the joy of a Christmas snowflake cookie still warm, swiped from the cooling rack. Ben arrived when we were four. Mum and Dad were delighted – they hadn’t expected to have another
child after us, but we must have unwittingly kickstarted something, because he’d come along easily. No matter what else was happening in our lives, Christmas was a time for coming together as
a family, the everyday squabbles forgotten as we ate and drank, and played board games, and got on with our new Christmas Day squabbles over toys, and batteries, and the remote.
The cottage was a happy place for us to grow up into children, then to teenagers. Lila and I went to the same primary school, close by. We sat together in class when we could,
but at breaktime, Lila would be with the other girls playing French elastic, while I swapped Star Wars stickers with the boys, or showed them my newest comics. There was something irresistibly
clandestine about sharing the comics, because they weren’t bought with my pocket money, but with secret funds from my dad. Dad was an accountant, still is – trusted by his clients and
dedicated to his work. But I knew that deep down he wanted to be a superhero just as much as I did. And that’s why, even though it wasn’t age-appropriate – or whatever reason it
was that Mum used to justify denying me the books and magazines I wanted most – he sometimes helped me buy them.
As teenagers Lila and I stepped apart from one another – Lila spent her spare time in dance classes and I spent mine at the skate park with Sam, my best friend – we’d been
joined at the hip since Year 9. Sam was happy to have found someone who loved skateboarding as much as he did – even if I was a girl.
Lila and I stopped looking so alike. I dyed my half of our straight mousey hair a deep dark red, and cut a short fringe, Lila lightened hers with hints of blonde. My curves blossomed and
continued to, hers disappeared as soon as they’d arrived.
Our connection remained the same, a network of golden strands, each a memory of a whispered secret or a shared moment that linked us. We weren’t bound closely, Lila and me, our
togetherness freed us. As we grew from girls to teenagers, she would do her thing, and I’d do mine, but each evening, after dinner, we’d talk in our room until late, giggling together
and talking through everything that had taken place that day, or on other days talking about nothing at all. I don’t know if anyone else, outside of our family, really saw how much we relied
on one another. But I knew something, deep down – which was that losing Lila would be like losing the air I breathed.
Our A-level results came in, and Lila decided she definitely wanted to study ballet – and we faced the very real prospect that our paths might be diverging. But in the end, when we left
home at eighteen, we made sure they didn’t. We moved to London together, Lila went to dance school and I studied set design at Central St Martin’s college, but we’d come back home
to our rented east London flat in the evening, catching up over dinner and wine with friends or – often – just the two of us. Lila went out with friends to dance shows, I’d stay
in and watch movies. We were both happy. The flat had been an idea for a long time – as teenagers Lila and I had spent evenings talking about it, fantasising about living in the city in our
own place.
Today, I leaned back in my striped deckchair, and looked out across the canal and east London’s Victoria Park. I recalled how it had felt, flat-hunting with Lila,
wondering if we’d ever find anywhere we could afford, and that we liked enough. Then we heard about this place, a converted warehouse, and decided to have a look. The bedrooms weren’t
the largest, but the white-painted exposed floorboards brightened up the space, and both of the rooms had large windows. Our living space was cosy, and I say that in estate agent’s speak, but
that had never mattered to us; we were used to living in each other’s space. It was when I had looked out of the window and seen the green space that I’d really fallen in love.
Right now, bikes wove lines through the park, groups of people clustered around picnic blankets and benches, appearing the size of Playmobil figures from my vantage point. The distant sound of
reggae playing out tinnily from speakers drifted up to the balcony. The flowers that Lila and I had planted last year were coming back into bloom.
When Lila and I were living together, it might not have always looked like paradise to an outsider – but for us it was. We occasionally argued, sure. Lila would sometimes tidy things away
in the kitchen before I’d even used them, and that drove me nuts. As did her constant cushion-plumping while I was watching films. She’d occasionally complain about my singing in the
bathroom, or interrupt my midnight baking sessions – emerging from her room, bleary-eyed, asking what on earth I was doing, and couldn’t it wait till morning.
On reflection, she’d never really bought in to the idea of Pablo. Lila had, actually, insisted that getting a cat without consulting her was ‘completely unreasonable’. But his
nibbled ear and bent tail, patches of missing fur, all told the tale of a harrowing life as a street cat that I wasn’t able to ignore. I’d had to push that one through.