The Bridesmaid Page 3

  We walked out of the iron gates, turned left and I saw our little cottage through the eyes of someone else for the first time since we had arrived here. I felt conscious of the size of our house compared to the Clemontes’ twelve-bedroom sixteenth-century manor house. I glanced over at Caitlin’s smock dress which, although wasn’t an item I would have ever chosen myself, looked new and smart, and then compared it to my frayed shorts, which I had thought quite trendy but now seemed tired and a little dated.

  We carried on past the cottage and across the wildflower meadow, which was in full bloom and bursting with every coloured flower; bees and butterflies flew all around us. Suddenly I felt the unfamiliar sensation of a hand in mine and turned to my left to see Caitlin grinning at me. I couldn’t remember holding hands with any of my friends since Martha Braithwaite in Year Three, but something about this moment, with Caitlin’s hand in mine, felt right. It was oddly freeing, just the two of us encased within acres of land; this moment was for Caitlin and me, and no one else. I wasn’t worried that someone would see us and think us babyish, I just thought about how much I enjoyed the sensation. With Caitlin’s hand in mine, I felt not only a connection to her, but to Saxby and everything it offered.

  She broke into a trot and I began to run too, our legs falling out of sync, the picnic basket she was carrying tossing from side to side in her hand. As we ran, I could feel the stalks and leaves of the wildflowers tickling my arms and legs. Suddenly Caitlin stopped running, but she kept hold of my hand for a few seconds before she let go of it. She sped up so she was in front of me and began pulling the heads off flowers. I wanted to say she wasn’t allowed to do that, but I thought better of it. This was more her home than mine.

  As her hand struck the stalks, I could hear Caitlin saying something, but her voice was travelling forward in the light breeze, out of earshot. As I had never ventured out this far on my own, I wondered if she was trying to tell me where we were going next, and because I didn’t want to miss a wrong turning, I called up ahead after her. ‘What did you say?’

  She stopped walking and turned and looked at me, and everything suddenly became amplified as Caitlin studied me with an intense curiosity. I could hear the birds chattering and the crickets in the grass as though they were talking only to us. The light breeze that was there a moment ago was no more, and the heat was palpable. I heard the roar of a plane flying above me. I waited until Caitlin turned back towards the woods, which seemed to be where we were headed and then I looked up at the sky, wondering if whoever was up there peered out their windows, would I be visible in the middle of this field? I turned back to Caitlin, but she had begun walking and was now a few feet ahead of me. I felt a strangeness in my tummy because she hadn’t answered my question and it felt like when I’d finally got the confidence to speak up in class but my teacher didn’t hear me. I tried to put it out of my mind, but as we carried on walking in a single file, I could hear Caitlin speaking again. This time it sounded even quieter. I skipped a few steps, so I was just behind her. Caitlin was muttering under her breath, and then I was sure she laughed. I saw that the flower meadow had come to a natural end, and we turned left down a small path with bushes on both sides; the woods were just ahead.

  ‘Ow.’ I bent down and rubbed at the right side of my calf where a sharp pain was biting at my skin.

  ‘What is it?’ Caitlin stopped and turned around. She put down the picnic basket and bent to look at my leg. Her face was precariously close to mine, and I could see the freckles on the bridge of her nose, a tiny dot of something red, maybe jam, near the indent of her mouth. ‘Looks like a nettle sting. Quick, let’s find a dock leaf.’

  ‘Does that actually work?’ I asked, standing up and watching Caitlin scan the area. ‘I thought it was just an old wives’ tale.’

  ‘What? No. Good Lord, you are a proper townie, aren’t you?’ Her voice became strained as she bent down and looked amongst the nettle bushes. ‘Nature has an amazing way of healing us – where there is illness, there is sure to be a cure nearby.’

  It sounded like a very adult thing to say, and I felt inferior; there were probably lots of things that Caitlin knew that I didn’t.

  She strode into the brambles. ‘Ah, see, here we are.’ She plucked a long, green leaf and pressed it to my leg and rubbed it up and down a couple of times.

  She stood up and threw the now crumbling leaf into the bush. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Erm, better.’ I scratched my neck, amazed at how she seemed to have magically cured me.

  ‘Not such an old wives’ tale now, is it?’ She gave her head a tilt to one side as if to further prove her point, then she scooped up the picnic basket and set off walking down the clearing towards a vast stretch of wooded area.

  I quickened my pace to fall in line just behind her so I wouldn’t sting my leg again and so I wouldn’t miss out on anything else she said just out of earshot.

  We were almost at the start of the woods when I heard a rustle in the bushes to my right. I stopped dead in my tracks. My heart jumped right into my throat as I looked at the man standing in front of me. His face was a mass of grey stubble and red cheeks, and he looked older than my dad but not as old as my grandad. Some of his skin was a little cracked in places. He was wearing a blue T-shirt, baggy jeans and brown boots. They were the same as the ones my dad had been wearing recently and he swore they were the best investment he had ever made. Suddenly I wanted my dad more than ever. The man was breathing heavily, and I felt my heart thud in my chest. I was used to moving away from unsavoury-looking sorts in Hackney – it was inbuilt into my system – but I couldn’t understand why my legs wouldn’t let me move. I looked back towards the main house. I wanted to run, but my legs felt like heavy weights.

  The man took a sidestep so he was now further out of the bush but closer to me.

  A choked noise erupted from my throat, which must have been loud enough to attract Caitlin’s attention because she stopped and turned and walked the few paces back so she was standing next to me, and was now looking at the man as well. I looked at her to gauge her reaction. Was this man safe or dangerous?

  ‘Oh, Hackett. You’re back. I trust you’ve had sufficient rest?’ Caitlin’s voice was calm, and I felt an immediate surge of relief. She knew the man. I was still getting used to the enormity of Saxby and discovering new places all the time. Even now, I felt alarmed when I saw someone appear suddenly. Where I used to live in Hackney, I knew each and every corner and exactly who I would see where and at what time.

  Caitlin plucked a flower from a hydrangea bush, one of my dad’s favourite plants, and drew it in towards her nose. She made eye contact with Hackett over the purple bloom. It reminded me of something I had seen in a film, a romantic gesture. Hackett stood statue still opposite Caitlin, his facial expression unchanged. I waited for him to speak, to say hello, anything, but his mouth remained tightly shut. Then, ever so subtly, I saw Hackett’s eyes narrow and his lips quiver, as though he was trying to form words that wouldn’t come, or perhaps trying to smile. Caitlin and Hackett continued looking at one another. Caitlin still held the flower in front of her, and I could now sense a strange sort of energy that wasn’t from the heat of the afternoon.

  When she finally dropped the flower away from her face, I watched it fall to the floor. Hackett’s eyes followed the falling bloom too.

  Caitlin grabbed my hand and pulled me past Hackett. As she did, my arm brushed against his. I looked back at him and saw that he was still looking right at me.

  She held on to my arm as she led us towards the forest, her hand still clutching mine, an act I had quickly become used to. I saw a clearing up ahead and I hoped we would stop. Surely we had gone far enough away from the main house by now? This was the furthest away I had been from our cottage.

  When Caitlin stopped at the edge of the clearing and dropped my hand and the picnic basket, I felt relief flood my body. I glanced back. I could just about see the edge of the cottage and that gave me a small s
ense of security. At the border of the woods, I could smell the coolness of the air coming from within: a mixture of earth and pine. A squirrel darted up a tall tree to my right and I jumped at the sound. Caitlin looked at me and laughed.

  ‘Come on, it’s cool in here. I know a delightful little spot we can picnic.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, taking a final peek back at where we had come from. I reminded myself I could go back at any point; I didn’t ask how much further we were going to walk. I didn’t want Caitlin to think I was acting like a baby.

  I took a deep breath and followed behind Caitlin.

  ‘Your mum won’t mind. This is all Saxby land as well – we’re perfectly safe.’ Caitlin swung around to look at me, then turned back. ‘You look like a rabbit caught in the headlights! Do you know we have over fifty acres of land here including all the woods? That’s a lot of land. I’m glad you’re here. Last year, when Mama let me start exploring a bit, it was stiflingly boring on my own. But now you’re here, I think we are going to have a most excellent time.’ Caitlin was speaking quickly as though she had been holding in her words for someone like me. Her words came at me with an alien tone, but one that was pleasant to listen to. I thought about all my friends back in Hackney who would probably laugh at Caitlin’s voice, but I didn’t want to laugh. I wanted to listen and maybe I could make my voice sound like that too.

  I knew my voice had a slight Cockney twang, but Caitlin was from a different part of London and her voice was something different altogether. She pronounced every letter in every word and didn’t drag the middle parts.

  I let myself smile because I was actually glad that I had someone to hang around with now, but I wasn’t sure if I was the sort of friend Caitlin was looking for. I only had to look at what we had and what she had. We didn’t even own a house of our own. Ours had been given to us for free as part of my parents’ position on the family’s staff. I felt weird about that, that my family worked for her and because of that, in a way, I was beneath her. I felt like I wanted to speak those words, but it would mean organising them in a certain way so they sounded normal and I didn’t know how to. So they fizzled on my tongue before I swallowed them down. I would feel them bobbing around in my stomach for the rest of the afternoon.

  The incident with the man at the edge of the woods and the way Caitlin had watched him had made me feel uncomfortable. I wanted to tell Caitlin, but she had begun busying herself, pushing old leaves and ferns aside to make more space before she sat down. It looked as though other activities had played out here – camping, den-building and fires – as there were plenty of logs and branches which didn’t look as though they’d fallen or arrived by chance. It was pretty messy but already I envisioned this being mine and Caitlin’s special hideaway spot, somewhere we could make into a proper camp.

  I sat down opposite her; the ground was scratchy on my legs, one leg still felt a bit itchy from the nettle sting.

  I suddenly felt very thirsty after our dash through the fields in the summer heat and thought about the lemonade I had seen in the picnic basket. Caitlin pulled out the bottle and I felt a swell of joy rise from my gut to my chest. It was as though she had read my mind.

  She pulled out the cork and took a long drink then handed it to me. I was used to passing a bottle around, but I expected Caitlin to not want to share germs with me. She didn’t seem like the type of girl to swig straight out of a bottle, but she surprised me.

  I took a long drink of the lemonade which was an intense combination of sweet and bitter; it tasted home-made like the elderflower cordial Mum made.

  ‘So who was the man, just then. Do you know him?’ I finally asked.

  ‘Hackett? He works here. He’s staff, like your papa.’

  I felt her words cut me; here we were swigging from the same lemonade bottle like two equals, but for Caitlin to suddenly refer to my dad as ‘staff’ felt as cold and as hard as the forest floor. I swallowed down my disappointment with another drink of lemonade then handed it back to Caitlin.

  ‘So why wasn’t he here before? Hackett.’ The novelty of the name played out across my lips.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I moved in a few weeks ago and my dad’s the head gardener, but he’s never mentioned him.’ I made sure to put some emphasis on the words head gardener but Caitlin seemed unfazed.

  ‘He goes on extended breaks from time to time. It’s some arrangement he has with Granny.’

  Caitlin put the bottle of lemonade down, stood up and sat down close to me. I felt my body go rigid, unsure how to react to the sudden intimacy.

  ‘Right then, if you and I are going to be friends, you need to tell me everything about yourself. I need to know your deepest, darkest secrets.’ Caitlin raised her eyebrows and wiggled them up and down.

  I felt my cheeks redden and I wasn’t sure why I felt so hot.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. You can trust me, your secrets will be safe. Friends forever?’ Caitlin held out her hand, a wicked little smile played out across her lips. I held her wide-eyed gaze for a moment, looked down at her hand, then I took it in my own, and as I did, I felt a fizzle in my gut. It felt like the sort of excitement I got the night before a school trip. It had an edge to it, as though my body was telling me anything could happen. I had been living at Saxby for months and so far nothing nearly as interesting as Caitlin had happened to me. I took her hand and shook it, for what did I have to lose?

  ‘Friends forever,’ I said.

  5

  London, June 2009

  Three months until the wedding

  * * *

  I arrive back in Fulham, to an empty house, just before 7 p.m. It’s funny how I ended up living where my dad grew up. I find the area fitting; and I believe one day I will own one of the handsome period properties. Right now we make do with our three bedroom pokey terraced house. Quite often we have to park in the next street and so I never know if Oscar is home. I call my boyfriend’s name as I walk from room to room, but it’s obvious he isn’t here. I flop down into the plush grey sofa and kick off my black pumps. I think about the bottle of gin I was gifted by a client that I’d stashed in the back of the car, but I still can’t get on board with the idea of a drink after work or before dinner like most people I know. I just don’t get the urge. Instead, I really fancy a cup of tea, so I go into the kitchen, which is just big enough for a small dining table against the wall, and fill the kettle.

  Even though I have finished work, my mind is now running on overdrive. I’ve a new idea for wedding favours and I want to run it by Caitlin. I rushed home so I could have a long chat with her about it from the comfort of my sofa, but since Greece, Caitlin has been almost permanently indisposed. It is quite like her, so I’m not fazed. Sometimes we go weeks without speaking, but at this stage, this close to the wedding, it’s plain irritating. But that still doesn’t put me off, because this sort of organisation is my forte. I guess I take after my mum in that sense. Organisation is my place in life and when Caitlin asked me to be her bridesmaid after Chuck proposed, I fell straight into my element. Despite all the things I know and am, by now, unwillingly clinging to, I have always felt it my duty to protect Caitlin. I knew I had to give her the best wedding day I possibly could.

  I don’t know what I was thinking when I was in Greece, the way I had been on that last night. Looking back now, I wondered if Caitlin had some sort of inkling that I was going to drop a bombshell. I was in the midst of an early-evening hangover from the damn daytime drinking, so my perception had been slightly off kilter. I later realised that when I had mentioned to Caitlin I had something to say, she had been stalling me. I had seen her do it when we were kids; when she didn’t want to do something, she had a clever way of taking whoever was talking to her completely away from the subject, usually without them even realising. And so all the words I had wanted to say to Caitlin still remained within me. Since that night, I have started to think that I’ll be cursed with them forever because the one person I need to
tell would never want to know. She is such a hardened woman, who has become even more so over the last year since Josephine died.

  It is a matter of months now until Chuck and Caitlin are to be married. Chuck had been flitting in and out of Caitlin’s life for years, so when they had finally decided that they were going to tie the knot, I was mildly surprised. I didn’t think Caitlin would really see it through, but Caitlin had never really opened up about her feelings for Chuck. I had asked her many times, even when we were young, and her response had always been the same. She and Chuck were close friends. Close friends with benefits as far as I could understand. But was that enough to build a marriage on?

  When Caitlin and I were twelve or thirteen, we used to discuss potential boyfriends and drool over hunks in my magazines. Caitlin was never allowed Jackie, so whenever I got my copy, she would snatch it from my hand the second she saw me. I began to make sure I had read it cover to cover before she got to it. It was one of the only times I felt I had the advantage over her in something, and it felt good.

  In a way, we had been mentally preparing for Caitlin’s marriage since we were children and had discussed and rehearsed this part of our lives so many times, it was no wonder it had manifested itself. I had played the bridesmaid once already when we were kids. Even though Caitlin refused to admit it, her getting married and me being the bridesmaid had been part of her plan since the beginning. I hadn’t always recognised it at the time, but it was just one more subtle power move that Caitlin had successfully executed.

  Families like Caitlin’s moved in relatively small circles. Everyone seemed to know everyone, so it was inevitable that she would marry someone they considered a close friend of the family. I would often revisit those long Saxby summers in my mind. What did I remember about those days? The sweet scent of Chuck’s shampoo, the soft skin of his hand in mine, but never when Caitlin was around to see. I was a young girl, two years his junior, and I had never been in such close proximity with a boy who was older than me. The older lads at my school stayed away from us younger girls, but Chuck was different. He was so inclusive. He wanted to spend time with us. With me. And I remember how special I felt when Chuck gave me all of his attention.