Page 143 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
He stopped right in front of Sonia, who cowered back, and he said, furiously, ‘The police cleared me! There was no way I had anything to do with Amy’s disappearance!’
‘It’syou!’ gasped Sonia, now clutching the journalist’s arm. ‘I don’t know how you dare to show your face here, Len Paget. And Iknowit was you who sent me that anonymous threatening letter, too, trying to get me to stop Amy’s dress going on exhibition or telling her story.’
He frowned, staring at her, fists balled at his side. ‘What letter? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. And I never harmed a hair of Amy’s head!’
‘Deep breaths, Len,’ I heard the woman with him murmur soothingly, laying a hand on his arm. ‘Deep breaths!’
He glanced at her, relaxed slightly, and said more quietly, ‘It wasn’t me, Sonia, and although I’d rather it wasn’t all raked up again, I’ve moved on. In fact, Pippa and I are married.’
He turned his head and smiled at Pippa, who patted his hand and, with the expression of an approving nanny, said, ‘That’s right. Len came to me for help with anger management – and we just clicked!’
Sonia seemed nonplussed. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said uncertainly.
‘It’s quite true,’ said Pippa. ‘And I’m happy to say Len’s anger and jealousy issues are entirely a thing of the past.’
‘Well, they weren’t when he and Amy were living together, because she told me he was jealous and controlling – and I still think you had something to do with her disappearance,’ she added to him, accusingly.
‘Oh, come off it, Mum!’ loudly exclaimed an entirelydifferent voice, and out of the enthralled circle of watchers crowding round the doorway stepped a tall, leggy, young woman with long black hair, who was wearing, rather oddly for indoors, dark glasses. She whipped these off now, revealing large blue eyes.
Sonia went so white her makeup stood out like a mask and then she clutched at her heart.
‘A-Amy?’ she stuttered.
‘Yes, it’s me.’ She pulled off her dark wig and her hair underneath was golden-blond and cropped short.
‘And don’t try to pretend you’re amazed to see me, because I left you a letter so you’ve known all along I was alive. But then, you’d do anything to get your picture in the paper and a moment of fame, wouldn’t you?’
‘I never got a letter,’ said Sonia quickly, then rearranged her features into an expression of delighted relief and held her arms out towards her daughter.
‘Darling Amy, I’msooverwhelmed to see you again that I hardly know what I’m saying! Do come and give your mother a hug.’
‘You keep off,’ warned Amy. ‘Save your play-acting for those stupid enough to be taken in by it. I didn’t run off just because I’d decided I couldn’t face having Len organize the rest of my life for me, but because I was fed up with you as well, always wanting to hang out with my friends when I lived at home, and borrowing my clothes, as if you were my sister and not my mum! And I said all that in the note I left, so maybe that’s why you didn’t want to show it to the police?’
The journalist, who had been scribbling away, now looked at Amy with interest. ‘So, your mother has actually known all along that you left of your own accord?’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Amy. ‘I didn’t tell her where I was going, though.’
At a nudge from his wife, Len now cleared his throat and said, ‘Amy, I want to sincerely apologize for the way I treated you. Pippa helped me to understand what I’d done and why, and I’m a changed man.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ said Amy crisply, then looked at Pippa, who was nodding approvingly at her husband, in that severe-but-kind nanny way, and added, with a faint grin, ‘I’m sure you’ve married the perfect woman for you.’
‘So, howdidyou get away and stay hidden for so long?’ asked the journalist. ‘And why was your wedding dress bloody?’
‘I planned the disappearance with my best friend, my bridesmaid, Daisy. We taught at the same sixth-form college. I had a mobile phone Len didn’t know about. I came into the house after the hen party, changed into some old clothes I still kept there, put the note on my mother’s pillow and left by the back garden. I just had to walk down a lane to some allotments and then my friend’s brother, Huw, was waiting there to pick me up.’
She turned to the watchers and beckoned a stocky, weather-beaten young man to join her.
‘This is Huw and I’ve been living on his farm in Wales ever since – and now we’re going to get married and I’m tired of wearing a wig and pretending I’m someone else, so we might as well put the record straight now.’
‘And she hasn’t done anything illegal by running off, so the police can close the case,’ Huw put in.
‘But what about the blood on the dress?’ the journalist persisted, gesturing at the spattered wedding gown in the case behind him.
‘The dress was hanging on the outside of the wardrobe andI threw it on the bed so I could open the door and get at the jeans and sweatshirt I had in there. I remembered I’d pinned an old sapphire bluebird brooch that was my gran’s inside the bodice before I made up my mind I couldn’t go through with the wedding – something blue, you know? – and managed to jab the pin right into my finger, getting it out. The blood dripped on to the skirt and … it was sort of fascinating against the white, so I sprinkled a few more drops on it.’
‘Right,’ said the journalist, scribbling. ‘When you saw the publicity about your disappearance and realized your mother had concealed the note you left, didn’t you think it was cruel to let your ex-fiancé be under suspicion?’
‘No, he deserved it. For ages I was afraid he might track me down.’
