Page 75 of Wedding Crasher

He pulled her against his chest and laughed softly. ‘And you thought these guns were just for show.’

‘You’re my hero.’

‘Well, he certainly wasn’t, was he?’ Jonny said with a grim nod towards the door.

Marla shuddered in revulsion. She hadn’t expected Rupert to take it on the chin and shake hands, but she’d never have imagined he would turn on her like that. She’d glimpsed a darkness in him that he’d never let her see before, and she felt completely relieved to be free of him. A shaft of sunlight bounced through the window, and the glint of metal caught her eye. His keys. He’d left them on the chair. A quick double-check outside confirmed that he was too scared of Jonny to come back in and retrieve them. He had scarpered without his car.

‘Leave it to me, sugar, I know the perfect place for that little beauty.’

Jonny grinned as he pocketed the keys, already thinking about the hot guy who worked at the local scrap yard. It was a warm, sunny day. With any luck he’d be shirtless and oily.

Over at the funeral parlour, Melanie sat at her desk, watching the events unfold with interest. A knife had twisted in her gut when Rupert ignored her on the doorstep earlier, so to see him upended on his backside a few minutes later brought a certain karmic pleasure. She’d been stewing over what to do about him for a while now. Hats off to him, it had been a bold move to propose to Marla right in front of her when she could so easily have spilled her guts about their affair. His physical ejection from the chapel just now, however, indicated that things were no longer rosy between Marla and Rupert, affording Melanie pleasure and pain in equal measure.

On the one hand, it served him right. May the pain of rejection hurt even more than his nose, which rather looked like it was broken. But on the other hand, Marla had better not look towards Gabe for a shoulder to cry on. Melanie stabbed her pencil repeatedly into the mouse mat until the nib snapped, leaving a latticework of holes across the sponge surface.

She’d seen Marla Jacobs off once, and she’d do it again in a New York minute.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Dora opened Ivan’s wardrobe, determined to fill the charity bag with clothes. His cupboard was stuffed to the gunnels with clothes than hadn’t seen the light of day for at least ten years. He wouldn’t even realise that she’d thinned it out.

Ivan’s distinct and comforting smell floated out as her fingers skimmed several immaculate suits from times long gone. She lingered as she recalled happy memories of carefree days. Of weddings and tea dances. She couldn’t toss those out.

Daunted, she moved on to the shelves. She could always come back to the suits again afterwards.

Up on the top shelf, she moved aside his gardening pullovers and threadbare checked shirts to feel around in the back. Belts and braces. A shaving brush. A chipped shoehorn.

Dora tutted. It was no wonder Ivan could barely close his cupboard doors. The ridiculous man hoarded everything.

A square edge bumped against her fingers, and she dragged the package forwards to get a better look. The sight of the yellowing bundle of envelopes held together with a frayed blue ribbon made her sigh. It had been a good many years since she’d last looked at these, and many more again since she’d written them.

She sank down on the edge of their neatly made bed and stroked the ribbon with her arthritis-riddled fingers. The liver spots and wrinkles that covered the back of her hands hadn’t been there when she’d penned the letters. She’d been young, and strong, and madly in love with her handsome soldier.

A faraway smile curved her lips as she touched the top envelope, date stamped 1943. She could still picture her younger self so clearly, full of excitement about the dress her mum had given her as a seventeenth birthday gift. Sunshine yellow, a deft alteration of one of her mother’s favourite evening dresses. Dora had loved it with a passion, and had waited impatiently for Ivan to come back on leave to see her twirl in it. She’d worn it the evening he proposed.

She still owned that dress. It was wrapped carefully in tissue paper in a box at the back of her own wardrobe, along with a very similar bundle of letters.

Her replies from Ivan, tied with an equally frayed yellow ribbon.

It had always been her favourite colour, and even now Ivan grew only yellow flowers in their front garden as an unspoken expression of his love. Daffodils in spring, and glorious, huge, double-headed roses throughout the summer months. Even in wintertime, the garden blossomed with the heavy scent of lemon wintersweet and fragile, yellow hellebores. He wasn’t a man for overblown speeches or big romantic gestures, but from the moment they’d met, Dora had felt cherished and loved beyond measure.

He’d never wavered an inch.

She hauled herself onto her feet and tucked the letters back into their place at the back of the shelf without reading them. She knew them well enough anyway. Just holding them in her hands had been sufficient for today.

She closed the doors of Ivan’s wardrobe without throwing out a single thing.

He could keep every last moth-eaten shirt if it made him happy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

‘Gabriel, hello again!’

Cecilia sparkled at him as they collided in the flower shop doorway a couple of weeks sincethatdinner. He’d popped in to settle his monthly bill, and Ruth had been only too eager to fill him in on the scrap between Jonny and Rupert on the chapel lawns. She’d obviously hoped for further embellishments of the story from him, but as far as he was concerned it was all fresh news. Worrying on one hand in case Marla was upset, but welcome, too, if it meant that Rupert was off the scene.

‘Cecilia, good to see you again.’

He smiled and dropped a kiss on the cheek she proffered, and then the other as she turned her head expectantly. He nodded at the huge armful of flowers she’d chosen from the buckets outside the door.

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