It was coincidence! It had to be. If by some remote chance he had discovered that Sophy was his child, surely he wouldn’t have waited until today, until she was getting married, to claim their relationship?
The vice loosened its grip a little. She drew a deep, shaky breath, trying to control the trembling she could feel threatening her composure. It was just a horrible coincidence. He was John’s mother’s cousin, a coincidence…
Someone touched her arm and she turned her head to look into Sophy’s concerned eyes.
‘Are you all right, Mum? You’ve gone quite pale, and you feel cold.’
Momentarily she was the focus of the small group’s attention. This was Sophy’s day, she reminded herself fiercely, and nothing was going to be allowed to spoil it. Nothing. She could see that John’s mother was already beginning to frown a little, as though picking up the vibrations of shock emanating from her…the kind of shock that had nothing to do with a beloved daughter getting married.
‘It was colder than I’d expected inside the church,’ she managed, forcing herself to smile.
The outfit she had chosen for the wedding consisted of a black and white silk spotted dress with short cap sleeves, in a vaguely twenties style, with a plain white silk jacket and a white silk hat trimmed in black, the colours being perfectly acceptable since Sophy had chosen to wear a dress of heavy cream silk rather than the traditional white she had claimed would look awful with her olive-tinted skin.
Skin she had inherited from her father, Kate acknowledged, unable to resist darting another tormented look at the couple in the churchyard.
They were standing facing one another, Joss bending towards the redhead while she removed something from the lapel of his jacket. She was tall, almost as tall as Sophy, and he didn’t have to angle his head far to look down at her. When he had been with her… Her heart jolted frantically in her chest as memories she didn’t want came surging past the barriers of her self-control. Memories of the first time they had met on the cliffs beyond the windy Cornish fishing village, devoid of tourists during that wet cold summer. She had run into him, having got caught out in the rain. She had been running back to her mother’s aunt’s cottage, her head down, not looking where she was going.
He had caught hold of her as she staggered, and she had lifted her head to apologise and had promptly fallen fathomlessly in love, as only a girl of just sixteen could.
He had seemed so distant and sophisticated: almost twenty-two to her sixteen, a huge distance in terms of life experience. He was already a man, she still a child, but he had offered to walk back to her aunt’s with her, offering her a few personal details about himself as he did so. It was over a mile from the clifftop path to the village where her great-aunt lived, and despite the buffeting wind and icy rain she had wished it might be twenty.
When he had told her how old he was, she had lied about her own age, claiming to be nineteen.
He had almost caught her out, asking her what she was doing, what kind of post-school training, but she had fibbed that she was having to resit A levels and so was having an extra year at school.
She hadn’t known then what had made her lie about her age, only that she desperately wanted to be seen as his equal and not as a silly adolescent schoolgirl.
She had been speechless with bliss when he’d asked her out. He’d been working in Cornwall for the summer, a job with the National Trust, helping to maintain the cliff-paths. He’d been lodging in the village at a house not far from her aunt’s…and so it had begun.
‘Mama…the photographer’s ready.’
Sophy’s calm, firm voice broke into her private world. She blinked, and the vision of the tall, dark-haired young man who had charmed and delighted her so much was gone, and in its place she saw the reality of a man in his forties who, as Sophy had so rightly said, could easily have been mistaken for someone in his late thirties—a man who wore his obvious wealth and sophistication as casually as the boy she had known had worn his jeans.
The arrival of the photographer gave her a much-needed excuse to slip into the background and be alone. The shock of seeing Joss so completely unexpectedly had made her feel sick and faint. Long, long ago she had accepted that he was gone from her life and that it was right that he should have done so, so that to see him here today of all days was appallingly painful. The redhead must be his wife…and she, like Joss, looked younger than her forty-odd years. She gave another quick, hunted look at the woman’s immaculate make-up and hair. Her clothes were expensive, designer label most likely, but there was a petulant set to her mouth and a frown marring her forehead. Where was their child? Odd that she had never known whether it was a boy or a girl…Sophy’s half-brother or -sister. Her heart gave a frantic twist as the pain splintered inside her. Still, after all this time, when it should have long ago died.
She was starting to shake. Another moment and her distress would be so obvious that it would cause comment. There were still the photographs to get through, and then the reception. The day seemed to stretch endlessly in front of her, like some kind of refined torture.
What would happen when they met? Would he recognise her…and, if he did, would he acknowledge her…or pretend that they had never met?
The latter, most probably. And what about Sophy, standing there with John, laughing up into her bridegroom’s face? She would go through the rest of her life never knowing that John’s mother’s cousin was in reality her own father.
Her heart seemed to bolt with fright. If only her parents were still alive…If only she had someone to turn to…to confide in.
She felt a light touch on her shoulder and jumped in panic, but it was only Sophy’s godfather, James Phillips, the local doctor.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked her frowningly. Today he had stood in for the father Sophy had never had and the grandfather she had lost…giving her away…Tears rose and stung her throat and the backs of her eyes.
‘Just being sentimental and stupid,’ she assured him.
‘Ma…the photographer wants you,’ Sophy called, and distractedly she hurried over to join John’s parents, while James followed at a more leisurely pace.
It was a nightmare. It couldn’t be real…but it was, and sooner or later she was going to have to come face to face with Joss. She shuddered sickly, and the photographer frowned. It was normally the bride who looked faint and sick, and not her mother…although this particular bride’s mother was rather unusual, slim as a gazelle, and young enough to pass for the bride’s sister. It seemed impossible to believe the reality of their relationship. She must have been a child herself when she had had her, he reflected consideringly.
She was a very beautiful woman, and would have been more so if she had not looked quite so strained.
When the photographer had finished, Mary Broderick, who had seen three daughters married herself, went over to Kate and said quietly, ‘It’s awful, isn’t it? You know you should be happy for them…and yet you feel so lost, and you hate yourself for feeling like that. It does get better,’ she informed Kate with a smile.
Privately, when John had announced that he was getting engaged and had explained the circumstances of his new fiancée’s birth, she had been worried about the situation, but she needn’t have been. Sophy was everything she could have wanted in a daughter-in-law, and as for Kate…
Something
