Jonas’s father and Vanessa’s mother were both to attend the ceremony, and then they were all coming back here to the house for a celebratory meal. Sara had spent the past few days carefully checking with Mrs Lyons that everything would go well. Jonas was someone she had barely seen; he was up early in the morning and in late at night—often after she was in bed and asleep. Her pregnancy was making her feel very tired, although as yet it did not show.
She had bought a new outfit for the wedding. A peach-coloured suit in a slub-effect straw silk. The skirt, although straight, was a size larger than she normally wore and slightly tucked at the waist, which meant it discreetly concealed the very small swell of her stomach. It had a matching sleeveless top, but it was the jacket that had caught Sara’s eye
.
Loosely styled, it had long batwing sleeves ending in tight cuffs. The shoulders were cleverly padded, the jacket falling from stitched-down pleats in an attractive unstructured fashion, the bottom slightly curved like a man’s shirt-tail. She had found a hat in a deeper shade of peach edged with white, which luckily meant that she could use her existing white shoes and handbag.
The wedding was to take place in the small local church. Jonas was going to be Sam’s best man, while Vanessa, purely to please Carly, had decided to have the little girl as her one bridesmaid.
Sara was just putting the finishing touches to her appearance when she heard a car draw up outside. Jonas was already over at the cottage. Because of the circumstances, he was to drive both Sam and Carly to the church, while she would take Vanessa.
She looked out of the window and saw an unfamiliar car.
The parents,’ Vanessa breathed behind her. ‘Bang on time. That will be Ma, of course. Oliver is hopeless about time.’ She gave a small chuckle. ‘Come on, we’d better go and let them in.’
For a bride-to-be, Vanessa was amazingly calm, much calmer than Sara herself had been, but then Vanessa was marrying a man who she knew beyond any doubt loved her, Sara acknowledged miserably.
She had been dreading meeting Jonas’s parents, feeling sure that they must think that her pregnancy had forced Jonas into marrying her.
But if those were their feelings they certainly didn’t betray them when Vanessa opened the door to them and urged them inside.
Oliver Chesney was amazingly like his son; older of course, and rather stooped, his hair silver and not black. His eyes weren’t like Jonas’s. They were a faded blue, and very kind, if somewhat vague. He acknowledged Vanessa with a smile and shook hands warmly with Sara—she was to learn later that he was not a demonstrative man—and then almost straight away started to comment on the ducks he had noticed swimming on the village pond.
‘Unusual that, to see them here at this time off year. They should be in Iceland. Of course, we did have some bad spring gales which could have blown them of course.’
‘Oliver, we’ve come to see Vanessa getting married, not birdwatch,’ his wife reminded him with patient firmness.
‘Of course. Of course…’ The blue eyes focused and he smiled charmingly at Sara. ‘Forgive me, Sara, I do tend to get rather carried away with my hobby at times, I’m afraid, as Vanessa already knows.’
‘Too true,’ groaned Vanessa ruefully. ‘While all my schoolfriends were holidaying in Spain and Greece, we were chasing off after birds or plants, invariably somewhere cold and wet.’
‘You’re exaggerating, darling,’ her mother protested. ‘What about that lovely holiday we had in Switzerland?’
‘You mean the one when Oliver got stuck half-way up a mountain trying to photograph a rare flower?’
Her mother laughed, and then turned to Sara. ‘We’re being very rude, reminiscing like this, Sara. I’m sorry we couldn’t make it to your wedding, but Oliver was just putting the final touches to his latest book, and his publishers were screaming out for it.’
Vanessa had already told her that in retirement Jonas’s father had turned to writing about his favourite subjects, and had already had two books published.
‘What time are we due at the church?’ Jennifer Chesney asked, automatically taking charge.
When Vanessa told her, she said calmly, ‘Good, that leaves us time to have a cup of coffee. No, Oliver, you are not to go out and lose yourself in the garden,’ she checked her husband, seeing him wandering in the direction of the French window. ‘Vanessa, you go and make us all a drink while I get acquainted with my new daughter-in-law.’
‘We weren’t totally surprised by Jonas’s news,’ she announced. ‘Vanessa had already told us about you, and hinted that Jonas was showing a far more than neighbourly interest in you. I must say that I’m delighted that he’s finally fallen in love and married. Both of us have been worried about him for some time,’ she added, glancing affectionately across at her husband who was still looking wistfully out into the garden. ‘As Oliver would be the first one to admit, he isn’t the best person in the world at personal relationships. He was brought up by a bachelor uncle and went through the traditional public school system, so when Jonas’s mother died, poor Oliver didn’t really have the faintest idea of how to comfort or bring up his son.
‘Jonas was at a particularly vulnerable age when he lost his mother, and naturally he wasn’t able to turn to me. I was the intruder who had taken his mother’s place. We’ve talked about it since, and he says that the hardest thing was not coming to terms with the fact that his father had found a second wife, but that he himself actually liked me. He said that made him feel doubly guilty, as though he were in some way betraying the memory of his mother. Those are very strong emotions for a boy of fourteen to try to handle, and although everything has resolved itself now, they have left scars. I’ve noticed how very withdrawn he’s always been with his girl-friends—and there have been plenty of them,’ she added drily. ‘He’s a very attractive man, but I could sense that he was always holding something back, and I must confess I’d begun to worry that he’d never let himself fall in love.’
As Vanessa came in with the coffee, Jennifer Chesney changed the subject to ask her daughter about her wedding dress, and Sara tactfully suggested that she stay and keep her father-in-law company while Jennifer went upstairs to help Vanessa get ready.
The silence that fell after they had gone was not an uncomfortable one. In fact, Oliver Chesney was one of the most restful and placid people Sara had ever been with. He had a sweet naïveté about him that Sara couldn’t help contrasting with Jonas’s far harder exterior.
And yet Jonas had known pain and loss, just as she had herself. Had, if she was to believe Jennifer, experienced feelings about his relationship with his stepmother that were very close to her own emotional turmoil when she intially met him.
Surely, in the circumstances, he would understand if she tried to explain to him exactly why she had so determinedly clung to her memories of Rick? But why should she explain? What was the point?
The point was that within a very short space of time she and Jonas would be the parents of a child—a child who had a right to expect love and security from them. The love she sensed their child already had—from Jonas as well as herself—but the security? Being honest with Jonas would not change his lack of love for her, but surely it might at least open the way to a better understanding between them? To a relationship at least founded on something more solid than their present precariously vulnerable foundations.
But did she have the courage to do it? Could she actually find the words to admit to him that she had clung so desperately to the protection of Rick because she had been frightened by her response to him; that she had hated and resented him because paradoxically she had known even then how much she could love him?