to Cambridge, he’d done nothing about it, to her horror and distress. There had just been a terrible, deafening silence.
He hadn’t come to her when he’d had his next shore leave, as she’d expected, hadn’t tried to find out what was wrong, but had said nothing, done nothing for six whole months except send money to her account. She’d taken it because she’d had no choice, and she’d written to him begging him to come to her, to talk to her—anything, but there’d been no reply, and then at last there had been a letter asking for access to Jenni in their divorce settlement—a divorce that hadn’t even been on her agenda until he’d broached the subject. Shocked, devastated, she’d agreed to everything he’d asked, and the only contact they’d had since then had been over Jenni.
She’d hardly seen him in all this time— scarcely at all since Jenni had grown old enough to spend time with him alone without needing her, and certainly not at all in the last five years. They hardly even spoke on the phone any more. There was no need. If there was anything relating to Jenni, it was discussed with her directly, which was why his call today out of the blue had been so shocking.
She couldn’t remember the last conversation they’d had that had lasted more than a very few seconds, but she guessed they’d be having to talk to each other now, and the thought brought all her confused and tumbled emotions about him racing to the surface. Emotions she’d never dealt with, just closed off behind a wall of ice in her heart before they destroyed her.
She still loved him, she realised. She’d die loving him, but it was a one-sided, unrequited love that had never stood a chance. And she was far too old to be so foolish.
The phone rang again, and for a moment she stared at it, her heart pounding, knowing who it was, knowing what she was about to hear, but stalling anyway because until she heard it, it might not be true …
‘Mummy?’
‘Hello, darling. How are you?’
‘Amazing! You’ll never guess what—are you sitting down?’
She wasn’t, but she did. Rapidly. ‘OK. Fire away, what’s happened?’ she said, trying to sound fascinated and intrigued and enthusiastic instead of just filled with a sense of doom. She’d seen the look in Jenni’s eyes, and Alec reminded her so much of Rob as he had been—young, eager, in love—
‘Alec’s asked me to marry him!’
She squeezed her eyes shut briefly and sucked in a breath. Hard. Her lungs were jammed up tight, her heart was in the way and she wanted to cry.
She didn’t. She opened her eyes, forced a smile and said, ‘Oh, my goodness—so what did you say?’ As if she didn’t know what the answer would have been.
Jenni laughed, her happiness radiating unmis- takeably down the phone line. My baby. My precious, precious baby.
‘Yes, of course! What on earth did you expect me to say? Mummy, I love him! You’re supposed to be pleased for me! You are pleased for me, aren’t you?’
There was a note of uncertainty, of pleading, and Maisie sat up straighter and forced some life into her voice. ‘Oh, darling, of course I am—if it’s what you really want.’
‘You know it’s what I want. I love him, and I want to be with him forever.’
‘Then congratulations,’ she said softly. And then, pretending she didn’t already know, she added, ‘I wonder what your father will say?’
‘Oh, he’s really happy for us.’
‘That’s good.’ Her voice sounded hollow, echoing in her ears, but Jenni laughed again, unaware of Maisie’s inner turmoil.
‘Alec asked him first, apparently. They’re really close, and he wanted his blessing—it’s so like him. He really wanted to do it right, and I had absolutely no idea. It was amazing. He took me up to the ruin and got down on one knee— and I just burst into tears. I think he was a bit shocked.’
‘I’m sure he wasn’t, he knows you better than that. So, when are you talking about? Next year? The year after?’
‘As soon as I graduate—we thought maybe the third Saturday in June, if the church is free?’
‘But, Jenni, that’s only a few weeks!’ she said, her mind whirling. Surely not—please, no, that would be too ironic if Jenni, too.
‘Ten and a half—but that’s fine. We want to get it over before the really busy summer season, and the weather will be best then. If we wait until autumn the weather up here could be cold and wet and awful.’
‘Up there?’ she said, the timescale forgotten, blanked out by this last bombshell.
‘Well—yes, of course up here, Mum! It’s where I live now, where everyone is, except you. We’re all here.’
Jenni was right, of course, and she should have seen it coming. They all did live up there, light years away in the wild and rugged West Highlands. Everyone except her. Jenni’s fiancé Alec, his family, Jenni’s uni friends in Glasgow, Alec’s friends—and Jenni’s father.
Robert Mackenzie, Laird of Ardnashiel, king of his castle—literally. And she’d been nothing, a nobody; in the words of the taunting kindergarten rhyme, the dirty rascal, the girl who’d got herself knocked up with the heir’s baby and then, little more than a year after their wedding, had walked away. Why had he let her go without a murmur, without coming after her, without trying to fix what was surely not that broken? She didn’t know. She might never know.
And now her darling daughter—their daughter—was getting married, in the very church where she and Rob had made their vows over twenty years ago. Vows that had proved as insubstantial as cobwebs …
She shuddered and sucked in a breath, the silence on the phone hanging in the air like the blade on a guillotine.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes, darling. Sorry. Of course you’re having it there,’ she agreed, squashing the regret that she wouldn’t be married here, in Cambridge, from the home where she’d grown up. But that was unrealistic, and she was sensible enough to recognise that now. ‘Where else, when you’ve got such a lovely setting? But—only ten and a half weeks?’ she said, her voice perilously close to a squeak of dismay as she thought of the reasons that might exist for their haste. ‘Don’t you need longer to plan it?’ she hedged.
The lovely ripple of her daughter’s laughter made Maisie want to cry again. ‘Oh, it’s all planned! We’re having the wedding here in the church, of course, and the hotel in the village can do the catering. They’ve got a brilliant restaurant, so the food will be great. And we’ll have a marquee on the lawn and if it rains there’s plenty of room inside, and we can have a ceilidh in the ballroom— it’ll be wonderful! But you have to come now, because I need a dress and I’ve only got a week and a bit before I have to go back to uni, and you have to help me choose it. And we have to look for something for you, too—you’ll need something really lovely, and I want to be there when you choose it. I need you, Mum. Say you’ll come.’
Her voice had dropped, sounding suddenly hesitant, and Maisie knew she had no choice. Wanted no choice. This was her baby, her only child, and she was getting married, whether Maisie liked it or not.
‘Of
