White Wedding (20 page)

‘Good morning,’ he said with a bright smile. ‘What a gorgeous one it is too. Look – we have sunshine.’

Bel poked her head out of the door. It was a very promising start to the day – blue skies whipped through with just a few wisps of mares’ tails clouds. A day that proclaimed that
summer might finally be on its way.

They drove in Dan’s Range Rover, which easily took the dips and bends of the roads traversing the moors.

‘There’s a car park at the side of the parsonage,’ Bel pointed to the right to indicate he take the turning. ‘I’ll even pay for that.’

‘I fully expect you to,’ said Dan. ‘It’s my time to freeload today.’

His black-brown eyes were twinkling with amusement. A bus load of Japanese tourists were just alighting from a parked bus. They were strung with cameras like parodies of themselves. A
stern-voiced guide was trying to herd them towards the church that stood at the other side of the graveyard from the parsonage. He had a task and a half on as his group seemed intent on
photographing everything, even a woman walking a sable collie. ‘Lassie!’ they nodded with excitement as they clicked, upsetting the dog, who just wanted to poo in peace on the grassy
verge.

‘Quick, let’s go in before it gets overrun,’ said Bel, pulling at Dan’s sleeve. He had on a thick oatmeal-coloured jumper; it gave him the look of a renowned
explorer.

There were only two other couples in the parsonage, both heading upstairs when Bel and Dan walked inside and turned left into the dining room.

‘I’ve always thought that Branwell sounded like a healthy breakfast cereal,’ mused Dan as he studied the artefacts on the table.

‘Behave,’ chuckled Bel, looking up at the portraits on the walls.

‘No, really, I have,’ Dan continued. ‘Mind you, how old was he when he died? Twelve? Maybe not such a good product name, after all. Not much of an advertisement.’

‘I don’t think his death had anything to do with breakfast cereal,’ Bel returned, putting on a very mock-serious voice.

‘I hope not,’ Dan whistled relief. ‘Imagine the outcry there would be if it was discovered that bran was the devil incarnate and in fact “Golden Nuggets” were
really the key to immortal life.’

‘You’re insane,’ Bel remarked, following him across the hallway into Mr Bronte’s study. ‘You’ll be telling me next that the sisters all died young because
they overdosed on high fibre.’

‘A little-known fact of history,’ sniffed Dan, faux-imperiously, sweeping his hand out to the scene beyond the window. ‘They don’t call these the windy moors for
nothing.’

Bel laughed then clamped her hand over her mouth. The parsonage had a church-like quiet about it mixed with a little sadness and it felt wrong to be so jocular in it.

‘I’d love an office like this,’ said Dan. ‘I might convert a room and buy a quill and some ink.’

‘Where do you live now?’ asked Bel, picturing Dan in a swanky converted loft. Something very modern with a lot of chrome and glass.

‘Sheffield,’ replied Dan. ‘Large Victorian villa, currently up for sale if you’re on the lookout for something. Bargain-basement price for a quick sale.’

Bel presumed the house now had unhappy memories for him. There must have been some connection with it being for sale and his ex-fiancée because his next words were: ‘Cathy used to
remind me of Catherine Earnshaw.’

Bel almost said, ‘Was she was a totally selfish bleeder, then?’ before she bit it back. Her Bronte book of choice was
Jane Eyre
, though Richard had never reminded her of
Rochester. He had been more of a St John Rivers type:impossibly handsome, arrogant, serious, intense. Shaden had recently fitted into the story as Blanche Ingram: haughty, beautiful and
self-obsessed. Not dissimilar to Catherine Earnshaw – the flighty cow.

‘Anyway, that’s a closed chapter, if you’ll excuse the pun,’ smiled Dan, pulling himself away from those thoughts. ‘Where’s the kitchen? And do you think
they’ll let us put on the kettle?’

Bel followed him out of the room and down the hallway. They passed an old couple just entering arm in arm and they exchanged smiles.

People must suppose we are a couple too, thought Bel. She had a sudden moment of disorientation about being paired with a man she had known for no length of time, and yet strangely, too, she
felt as if he had been in her life for much longer than he had. Today they had butted together like a couple of old-standing, joking, totally at ease with each other. As if to demonstrate the
point, Dan turned round as they were about to enter the kitchen and said, at Brian Blessed volume, ‘Hurry up, woman. It’s nearly lunchtime.’

They walked up the staircase where Branwell’s portrait of his three sisters hung. There was a ghost of his own figure between them, washed out. Bel felt a sudden wave of sadness overcome
her.

‘All that passion inside them, gone to waste,’ she sighed. ‘Do you pour your heart out on to the page, Dan?’

‘Oh yes,’ he replied, scratching his head. ‘My writing has taken a very dark turn in the past months.’ They walked into Charlotte’s room, where lots of her work was
displayed in cabinets. ‘What do you do to exorcize your demons, Bel?’

‘I write poetry,’ she replied, and saw that she had shocked him. He probably expected her to say that she shopped. ‘I’ve never told anyone that. It’s private stuff,
not for publication.’

‘Recite some to me,’ Dan said.

‘Bugger off,’ Bel replied.

‘I didn’t have you down as a secret writer,’ he said, grinning a very lopsided grin.

‘Yeah, well, the feeling’s mutual,’ Bel smiled back because that grin was contagious. ‘Remember, I thought you were a homicidal maniac. Didn’t have you down as a
doctor either, for the record. But I bet you thought I was a rich bitch from the off.’

‘Well,’ began Dan, ‘I must confess that our introduction gave me the impression you were a –’ he searched for a diplomatic description – ‘a lady of
means.’

‘Oh yeah,’ sniffed Bel. ‘I might have a rich daddy and my own Mercedes-Benz but I’m currently living off Pot Noodles in a freezing cupboard and daren’t go home
because I dumped the groom who was knobbing my cousin. I’m living the dream, I am.’

She felt tears rising up inside her and turned away just as another couple came into the room. Bel concentrated on viewing the tiny-waisted dress in a cabinet. It looked more like the dress for
a doll than a full-grown woman.

‘I can see you in that dress,’ that Dan. ‘You’re as petite as a Bronte.’

‘I’m as petite as a Bronte-saurus, you mean,’ tutted Bel, batting away the compliment because she wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not. Richard wasn’t hot on
giving out compliments; she’d forgotten the art of accepting them from a man other than her dad.

The woman behind them smiled at their exchange and glanced wistfully at the serious-faced man she was with.

‘I mean it,’ said Dan, looking as if he did too.

‘Yeah, right,’ said Bel, still not quite trusting him. ‘Not even before all that cheese we had last night could I fit into that frock.’

‘Okay, you’ve said a food word.’ Dan clapped his hands together. ‘I can’t wait any longer. I need lunch. I’m a growing boy.’

‘Which part of you is growing, then?’ said Bel, without thinking how that might sound.

Dan raised his eyebrows and again the woman behind them silently chuckled as Bel playfully slapped him on his arm.

The woman continued to watch them as they walked out of the room and down the stairs, and wondered why she had settled for a man who never made her smile and had never been playful with her. It
had been a huge mistake. She made up her mind at that moment, watching the younger couple together and the warmth that was so evident between them, that she would leave Gerald when they got home
that evening and go to her sister’s house. Life could not be colder without him than it was with him. They had given her the final push she had needed for so long.

‘What time is it?’ asked Bel.

‘Don’t know. I forgot my watch and didn’t bring my mobile phone out with me,’ replied Dan. ‘I know that as soon as I’m in an area where there is any
reception, the damned thing won’t stop ringing.’

‘Ditto,’ Bel agreed. If the truth be known, she was enjoying this little bubble in which the world she didn’t want to know about was kept at bay.

‘It’s time for some nosebag, that’s all we need to know,’ said Dan.

‘I hope no one recognizes me as that sad cow in the newspaper,’ said Bel, feeling a sneeze coming on and pulling a tissue out of her pocket. She wished she had brought some
sunglasses and a hat.

‘That picture looked nothing like you,’ Dan whispered into her ear. ‘You’re much better-looking in real life. I’d put my life savings, all fifty pence of them, on a
bet that you are safe from any lurking paparazzi.’

‘Excuse me,’ said a woman from behind them, touching Bel’s arm. Bel stiffened. ‘You dropped this.’ The woman handed over a receipt that had fallen from Bel’s
pocket when she took out the hankie.

‘Thank you,’ said Bel. Then she and Dan looked at each other and laughed, he out of amusement, she out of relief.

Her kitten-heeled boots weren’t conducive to walking on the streets of Haworth, but they were the most suitable she had brought with her. Another cock-up on the packing front. She stumbled
on a cobble and Dan gallantly held out his arm, which she took gratefully. Richard never offered his arm. To Bel, it was a small intimacy that made her feel quite mushy. Men, she thought to herself
with a sigh, didn’t really have to perform grand expansive gestures to have a woman melt inside. A simple arm crooked for their use was the equivalent of at least a dozen bouquets.
Dan’s arm felt firm and solid and he didn’t seem unduly worried that he was linking arms with a midget.

At the top of Main Street was a pretty café tucked next to the Apothecary. Cathy’s Café.

‘This looks okay,’ said Dan, studying the menu in a glass case outside it. ‘We could explore further down the hill but I might die of hunger if we did. And you might break your
neck.’

‘Let’s go in here, then,’ said Bel, pushing opening the café door. She didn’t much care for the name of it, but it was marginally better than going arse over tit
on the steeply graded cobbles in front of the crowded Shirley’s Cake Shop.

They both chose Isabella’s Chilli con Carne. They chose this above Agnes Lasagne and Branwell Beef and Ale Pie.

‘This is a really clever menu,’ whispered Dan with such seriousness that Bel got an extreme fit of the giggles. ‘I think I went to school with Agnes Lasagne.’

Bel wiped the tears from her eyes with a serviette. ‘Stop it, you’re so mean.’

‘Have you seen the desserts?’ Dan leaned in close to her. ‘Wuthering Heights Bakewell Tart. How can you have that? It’s like saying you’ve got a Lancashire
Yorkshire Pudding?’

Bel pulled herself together. ‘I hope I have room for the Linton Trifle afterwards,’ she said, perusing the menu.

‘Oh Lordy, watch out: it’s Mrs Rochester,’ said Dan, as the waitress wended her way towards them. She happened to be an extremely white-complexioned woman with a hedge of long
greying hair. She was carrying a box of matches and struck one to light the tiny candle on the table. Bel thought she was going to burst from keeping her fit of giggles under control.

‘Tell me about chocolate,’ said Dan, after Bertha Rochester had taken their order.

‘Brown stuff. Comes in bars,’ said Bel, deadpan.

Dan tutted. ‘Cheeky. What do you do in the company?’

‘PR Director is my official title,’ Bel began to explain seriously, ‘but I end up doing a bit of everything because we are a “family firm” and all of us muck in
when needed. I often handle big sales because people like to deal directly with the family, but then sometimes I end up driving some chocolates over in Dad’s van if a client wants them, like,
NOW.’

‘Do you get a lot of freebies?’

‘Loads.’

‘Yowzah. Will you marry me?’

Under normal circumstances Bel would have laughed at that, but the words just didn’t tickle her funny bone because these were far from normal circumstances. Dan noticed her
non-reaction.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, cringing visibly. ‘Bad joke.’

‘It’s not your fault. It was funny. My sense of humour has a cog missing at the moment,’ said Bel, smiling kindly at him.

The chilli arrived. It was garnished with a swirl of sour cream and a couple of sliced jalapenos on top.

‘So, you like chocolate?’ asked Bel, reaching quickly for her glass of water as a jalapeno stung the back of her throat.

‘I love it,’ said Dan. ‘I think you really would have to go far to beat a huge bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut.’

‘Washed down with lots of coffee,’ smiled Bel.

‘Sitting in front of a roaring fire.’

‘Watching a Ricky Gervais film.’

‘Cathy wouldn’t eat choc—’ said Dan, without thinking. He bit off the word and shook his head. ‘Sorry.’

Bel recognized that dark, haunted look in his eyes.

‘Richard didn’t either, for the record,’ she said, pushing the rest of the jalapenos to the side of the plate. They tasted like they’d been marinated in nitroglycerin.
‘He was a bit of a food fascist, to be honest. He never got excited about meals out – food was fuel for him, not an indulgence.’

Dan nodded as if he understood. Bel had a picture of Cathy in a crop top pushing weights in the gym and eating whites-of-an-egg omelette. She could feel the cold vibes coming off the image in
her head to such an extent they were giving her brain-freeze.

‘In case you were wondering, I eat lots of chocolate,’ said Bel, taking the last forkful of rice. She picked up the dessert menu. ‘So, forget the Linton Trifle, I’m going
to have a piece of Brocklehurst Chocolate Fudge Pie instead.’

‘Oh sod it. I’ll join you,’ said Dan, visibly cheering. He waved over to Mrs Rochester. ‘Could we have Brocklehurst Chocolate Fudge Pies for two,’ he asked.
‘And two large cups of Grace Pool Coffee.’

Bel snorted back her laughter at the waitress, who was clearly wondering what the customer was talking about. Grace Pool Coffee? What a ridiculous concept.