The Beach Hut Next Door (11 page)

She felt remarkably calm, all things considered. But once Elodie made her mind up about something, nothing much deterred her. She was very single-minded. And she knew just what it was she had to do. She ran through a mental checklist. Everything was planned. She had remembered every detail. There was nothing she had forgotten.

‘Just another hour,’ said Lilly, ‘and you will be Mrs Elodie Jukes.’

‘Yes,’ replied Elodie, and picked up her bouquet: more white roses from the garden.

‘Let’s go and find your father.’

‘You go,’ said Elodie. ‘I want a few moments on my own.’

‘Don’t be nervous.’ Lillie put a hand over hers. ‘This is your day.’

Elodie couldn’t meet her eye. If she looked at her mother, she wouldn’t be able to hold her nerve. She moved away, towards the window, and was grateful that Lillie didn’t press the issue, but left the room. She stood, looking out at the garden, where the trestle tables were already spread with snow-white cloths. Beyond, the sea was a sparkling sapphire blue, as perfect as if it had been chosen from a catalogue to blend in with everything else.

Her Everdene. The place that had encapsulated her childhood. A place of endless sunshine, games, laughter, happiness. A place of safety and security. And in one moment all that safety and security had been blown apart. She fingered the petals of the roses in her bouquet, velvet-soft. Their delicate scent filled the air, making her feel even more queasy.

There was a gentle knock and she turned to see her father in the doorway. He was smiling, handsome in his morning suit, another of the roses from the garden in his buttonhole. She wondered what, if anything, he suspected or knew.

He held out his arm. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The car’s waiting.’

It was his own Rolls-Royce they were using for the wedding car. The one he had bought four months ago, so plump were his profits, so successful had his investment in the Jukes’ crumbling empire turned out to be.

For the millionth time in the past twelve hours, she wondered about her parents’ marriage. Which part of it was real and which was a facade? How much did her parents really understand of each other and their needs? Had what had happened came out of calculation or accident?

She walked across the room and took his arm. He led her along the corridor to the top of the stairs. She held her head high as she walked down in her unaccustomed high heels, staring fixedly ahead.

‘Nervous?’ asked her father.

‘A little,’ she told him. In fact, she felt nothing.

They crossed the hall, opened the front door, and there was the Rolls, a driver at the wheel. He jumped out to open the door, and he and Desmond helped her into the back, making sure her dress wasn’t creased. She could smell the rich cream leather of the seats as she sank into the comfort.

Her father smiled at her as he slid in next to her. ‘I bought this for today, you know. I wanted the best for you, for your wedding day.’

Elodie wasn’t convinced. The car was obviously just another status symbol. Yet more proof of Desmond’s success for the benefit of the guests. But of course she didn’t say so. She just smiled.

The car set off, crunching across the drive and out of the gates, turning left towards the village. They could have walked, but that wouldn’t have been commensurate with the rest of the effort put into the wedding. Before long the car turned right into the tiny winding lane that led to the church, only just wide enough, a line of grass down the middle as if guiding them to the ceremony; the hedgerows bursting with cow parsley. Elodie remembered the times she had come down here with Mrs Marsh to collect blackberries as the summer reached its end, each fat, juicy berry plopping into the bottom of her bucket and landing with a thud.

She looked down at her bouquet, at a tiny greenfly wandering about the petals. It was as tiny and lost and aimless as she felt.

As she and her father stood in the church doorway, she felt overwhelmed by the faces turned to watch them. There seemed to be hundreds, all smiling at her arrival, their eyes dewy with the pleasure the first glimpse of a bride always gives people. It was like a roll call of her life. Aunts and uncles, cousins, friends, neighbours, people from the village; everyone who had ever been important to her and had a part in her upbringing. And in the far distance, in front of the altar, the billowing robes of the Reverend Peters, beaming at her, luring her down the aisle.

And in front of him, his back straight, his blond hair shining in the light from the stained glass, Jolyon. Her Jolyon.

Her betrayer.

She held her father’s hand tight. She was trembling with emotion. With fear and the thought of what she was about to do. As the organist threw himself into ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ with more gusto than skill, she glided down the red threadbare carpet that had been in the church ever since she could remember. Her mother, resplendent in grey crêpe de Chine, gave her a smile of such heartfelt fondness as she walked past the front pew that she wondered if perhaps she had dreamed it all; if perhaps yesterday had been a hallucination born of too much excitement?

Then she saw Lillie’s eyes flicker towards Jolyon’s back, and something in them, something hard and stony and greedy, told Elodie that no, it had not been in her imagination. And so, as she joined Jolyon at the altar, she didn’t meet his eyes, instead taking in the kindly gaze of Reverend Peters, who looked slightly puzzled at her coolness. It wasn’t like Elodie to be detached.

The reverend put it down to nerves and began the ceremony. He was delighted to see the little church so full, and to be presiding over the marriage of someone he was very fond of. He did so many more funerals than weddings these days, he was determined to make the most of this happy occasion.

‘Dearly beloved,’ he began, but Elodie suddenly stepped forward.

‘Can I stop you there?’ she asked.

He frowned. ‘Is everything all right? Do you feel faint? Perhaps some water?’

‘No,’ said Elodie. ‘I don’t need water.’

Jolyon looked alarmed. ‘What is it, El?’

Her father stepped forward from his place in the front pew and took her arm. ‘Elodie …’

There was warning in his voice. Yet not surprise. And when Elodie turned to look her father in the face, she recognized that he knew. There was no consternation or confusion in his eyes. From that moment, she was on her own.

She turned to face the congregation. When she’d made her plan, she had meant to wait for the Jane Eyre moment, the ‘just impediment’ moment, but she knew the longer the ceremony went on, the more her resolve would weaken. How much easier it would be to put her discovery behind her and go blindly into marriage, for part of her knew that Jolyon would do anything in his power not to hurt her openly. She suspected events had overtaken him; events which had been put into play by her mother.

Mother. The very thought of the word filled her with disgust. What Lillie had done to her was the antithesis of what motherhood meant. How could anyone do that to their own flesh and blood?

Her voice rang out, quiet but true.

‘There’s going to be no wedding today,’ she told the shocked congregation. She saw Mrs Marsh’s face crumple; there was pity in her eyes but, tellingly, not surprise. Had even Mrs Marsh known, or suspected? Or was it just that the staff were so aware of the rotten state of the Lewis marriage that nothing would surprise them? Was Elodie really the only person who’d been clueless?

‘I’m not going to tell you why.’ She turned to Jolyon. His face was as white as her veil. He was shaking his head, then he turned to the front pew with a look of pure hatred, directed straight at Lillie.

‘You told her,’ he said, in a monotone.

Desmond stood up and stepped forward. ‘Steady, lad.’ The warning in his tone was more than evident.

Next to him, Lillie stood up. To her credit, she threw back her shoulders and prepared to take her punishment.

‘Elodie,’ she said. ‘You misunderstand.’

‘I do not,’ Elodie said, ‘misunderstand. There is nothing to misunderstand.’

Desmond moved to his daughter’s side. ‘Sweetheart, let’s sort this out. I’m sure the reverend would give us a few minutes?’

He looked at Reverend Peters, who was ashen. ‘Of course.’

Elodie shook her father off. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re as much part of this as they are. You got what you wanted.’ She threw a look at Jeanie and Roger, who looked uncomprehending. ‘Lewis and Jukes. That’s what this is all about.’

‘Elodie …’ Desmond pleaded. ‘I don’t know what you think, but you are wrong.’

He turned to Lillie for support, but Lillie looked away. Jolyon said nothing, mute with fear. Elodie felt nothing but distaste for his inertia and lack of chivalry. She put her arms out and held up her hands, one either side of her, to stop anyone coming close. It was as powerful as she had ever felt in her life. Yet she had never wanted power. She had only wanted love. How fragile it was, she realized now. How deceptive. Every kind of love she had ever known had been taken away from her in one moment.

No one dared intervene as she swept back up the aisle, the faces that had greeted her arrival now frozen with shock. She threw the church door open, stepped out into the graveyard and broke into a run. It wouldn’t be long before someone found their head and came after her, and she didn’t want to be stopped. She fumbled with the latch on the lychgate and flew out into the road, where the taxi was waiting, as instructed, facing in the right direction.

As she reached the car, her father came up behind her. He grabbed her wrist.

‘Sweetheart. Please. If you go, then we all lose everything.’

Elodie turned. ‘How could you let it happen? How could you say nothing?’

Desmond shut his eyes and shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. You can’t understand. Everything I did, I did for us. You and me.’

By now, the driver had got out of the car and was coming to her assistance.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said to Desmond. ‘Let the young lady go or I will have to call the police.’

Elodie pulled her arm away and Desmond had no choice but to let it drop. ‘There is no us,’ she told her father. ‘There is no us any more.’

‘We would have had everything. We would have had it all.’

Elodie stared at him. ‘No, Daddy. I wouldn’t have. Can’t you see that?’

Desmond couldn’t look at her. He stared at the ground. Elodie was surprised that there was so little fight in him. He seemed utterly defeated. But she didn’t care, or want to hear any more of what he had to say. She pulled open the door and slid into the front seat. The driver walked round and got into the driving seat, giving her a reassuring smile as he started up the engine.

Desmond suddenly seemed to snap into action. He banged on the window. ‘Elodie!’

‘Go,’ she told the driver. The car pulled away, smoothly and swiftly, as if the driver was used to extricating brides from their wedding ceremony. She didn’t look back. She didn’t want to see her father staring after her. Her greedy, duplicitous, spineless father.

In the boot would be her honeymoon suitcase, crammed with as many clothes as she could manage. And a holdall, with everything else she thought she might need: her passport, her Post Office savings book, the cash from the pot in the kitchen her mother kept topped up and which Mrs Marsh used to pay the milkman, the butcher, the window cleaner … And some of the wedding money they’d been given by well-wishers. If it was stealing, she didn’t care. There were, after all, far worse things. She’d put them all together that morning at dawn and crept out of the house. As arranged on the phone the night before, the taxi driver had met her at the top of the lane. He hadn’t asked any questions, just taken the bags from her and received her instructions. The fact that Elodie was paying him more money than he made in a week ensured his silence.

As the car drove up the hill out of Everdene, she didn’t turn round. She didn’t want to look back at the sea that had been such a huge part of her life, or the house which had been her real home, or the hut where she had given herself to Jolyon and where he had proposed to her. She stared at the road ahead.

The driver looked sideways at her. ‘Don’t cry, love,’ he said, concerned. ‘Don’t cry.’

She hadn’t realized she was.

Elodie had instructed the taxi driver to take her to the next station along the branch line, because if she were to be followed the first place anyone with any common sense would go would be the station in Bamford. They crossed the moors, parched to a pale brown already by the summer sun. They stopped at a remote pub, where she changed out of her wedding dress and into a nondescript skirt and blouse. She hesitated, tempted to push the dress into the rubbish bin, never to be seen again, but she needed to be prudent from now on. She didn’t know what the future might hold; she might be able to get good money for it at some point. So she folded it up neatly and put it in her suitcase.

At the tiny station in Somerset, so small there was no ticket office or guard, the driver lugged her case onto the platform for her. And when she went to pay him, he waved away her money.

‘It’s all right, love,’ he said. He was visibly upset. ‘Good luck, eh?’

She hadn’t given him any details of her predicament, but he was clearly moved by it. And as he left her, Elodie had the sense that her last ally was gone, that now she was on her own. A plume of steam and a whistle heralded the arrival of the train: it swooshed in and glided to a halt, even though she was the only passenger.