The Secret Mistletoe Promise (The Secret Bookshop #2)

Chapter One

She looked like she’d chosen to be a Christmas snowflake for a fancy dress party, pure white and glittering, except that it was only Halloween and she was drastically out of place.

Imogen Rowsell sank lower in her train seat, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. She had commandeered a window seat at a table, but the skirt of her dress was fighting a battle with her allocation of space, and was puffing over the table and spilling out into the aisle.

She wished she could fold it up tight and tiny, like the expensive, windproof jacket Edmund had bought her last Christmas that had its own bag and could easily slip inside a rucksack.

Unfortunately, none of the wedding dresses she’d looked at had advertised themselves as compact, though there had been that scrap-like slip that only worked if you were Audrey Hepburn.

Imogen was five foot seven, a little taller than average, but she wasn’t Audrey Hepburn, and she had wanted all the flounce, the acres of white satin and glittering gems, because if she was getting married then she was doing it properly.

But now, smoothing her hand down the fabric and encountering the hand-sewn jewels only increased her panic, and the red blazer she had on over the top, trying to make herself less noticeable, was just another thing to feel guilty about.

It actually belonged to her aunt Marjorie – her dad’s sister – and had been flung over the pew at the back of the church.

This was the pew that Imogen had made it to when she’d walked in there on her father’s arm.

At that moment everyone had turned their heads towards her, like a horde of ravenous zombies sensing warm blood, and in the distance she’d spotted Edmund, standing next to the altar, looking more handsome than ever in his morning suit.

A tsunami of panic had risen up inside her and she’d slipped her arm out of her dad’s, grabbed the red jacket and fled – as fast as the flouncy dress would allow her – back to the limo.

‘London Liverpool Street!’ she’d shouted to the driver, as if

she was in a heist film and he was her getaway; except it was

Seth, her best friend Nikki’s boyfriend, stepping in to

chauffeur at the last minute because the original driver had come down with food poisoning.

If it had been the original driver, she wouldn’t have got away with it.

He would have refused to budge, and she would have had to get out of the car and explain why she’d run away.

Her mum and dad, Edmund and his family – his mum with her eternally pinched expression – would have talked her down, and right now she’d be married.

She would be Mrs Goddon, sitting down to an extravagant wedding breakfast in a fancy London hotel, drinking champagne and thinking what the fuck?

She was still thinking what the fuck? but for a very different reason.

She’d done it. She had trusted her instincts and escaped, and now she was on a train to Norfolk on Halloween, the sky a crisp, cloudless blue, the inner-city landscape slowly giving way to outer suburbs, to green spaces and school playgrounds, family neighbourhoods with cars and colour.

There was a woman in the seat opposite her, her dark-framed glasses slipping down her nose, a hefty tome on the table in front of her, who was clearly bursting with questions about why Imogen was on a train, on her own, wearing a wedding dress.

Imogen dreaded to think of all the messages and missed calls on her phone.

She’d had to switch it on briefly to pay for her train ticket (it had been off, in her pearly clutch bag, so no junk mail WhatsApp pings would interrupt the vows) but now the screen was dark again so she could remain oblivious to the true extent of the trouble she’d caused.

‘Oh, my God.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘Oh my God oh my God.’

‘This isn’t your wedding vehicle of choice, then?’ the woman sitting opposite asked. Imogen was surprised she’d held out this long. ‘You’re not an avid trainspotter with a nostalgic reason for getting a Greater Anglia London to Norwich to the church?’

‘No.’ Imogen’s voice came out more strongly than she had expected. ‘No, I ran away.’ Saying the words out loud sent another powerful bolt of panic through her. ‘I didn’t want to do it.’

‘Lots of people get cold feet,’ the woman said calmly, as she slid her bookmark into her book and closed it.

Imogen saw that it was A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.

Her friend Nikki had read it in anticipation of seeing the stage show, and said it was the most depressing book in the world, so Imogen had steered well clear.

‘I went cold all over,’ Imogen said. ‘It wasn’t just my feet. Fingertips, too.’ She waggled them. ‘I couldn’t do it. I ran away from my own wedding.’

‘And got the first train that was leaving the station? That’s very dramatic. At least it’ll be a story to tell your grand-children one day.’

Imogen shook her head. She could feel her intricate up-do starting to slip, her shoulder-length, dark brown hair escaping the diamanté clips now there was no reason to be fancy.

‘I had a specific destination in mind.’ She had been thinking of her grandmother more often recently, guilt gnawing at her because she hadn’t seen her for over five years.

Bernadette Maddox had long been persona non grata to her own daughter, Imogen’s mum, for reasons Imogen didn’t entirely understand.

She and Bernadette – Birdie – emailed each other and spoke on the phone, but Imogen hadn’t been to north Norfolk to see her for far too long.

In Imogen’s teenage years they had gone away together every summer, travelling around the countryside in a campervan that must have rusted out years ago, but then Imogen had grown up and life had got in the way, and one missed holiday had turned into two, and then more.

Then Imogen’s mum had said that under no circumstances could Birdie come to the wedding, and Imogen had been horrified.

It was her wedding, and she wanted her grandmother there.

She had disobeyed her mother’s wishes and invited her, but Birdie had said she wouldn’t come because she didn’t want to upset the apple cart.

It had made Imogen even less certain about what she was walking into. And now …

‘Escaping to the other man?’ the woman opposite asked, and Imogen couldn’t help laughing.

‘Oh God no. There isn’t anyone else. I would never do that to Edmund.’

But she had just left him at the altar, and wasn’t that almost as bad as cheating? She felt feverish, a cold wash of fear at what she’d done, and what she’d be faced with when, inevitably, after a couple of days, she went home to face the music.

‘I’m not really reckless,’ she said, needing to explain. ‘I’m not … I follow the rules. It’s easier, isn’t it?’ She tried to smile, and knew it wasn’t convincing.

‘Except today, it seems.’ The woman took off her glasses and pointed them at Imogen, and Imogen wondered if she might be sick. She scrabbled in her clutch bag and took out her phone. She went to turn it on and the woman said, ‘Are you sure? You don’t want to see this through?’

Imogen looked at the dark screen. No photo of her and Edmund grinning at the camera, wellies on and hair windswept on a biting spring day down in Sussex. ‘I don’t know if I can see it through.’

‘You must have had a reason for running. It takes guts to do something like that.’

‘Or pure stupidity.’

‘Maybe a bit of both,’ the woman said, and Imogen thought that was fair.

She wanted to speak to her best friend Nikki, who would be jumping for joy that Imogen hadn’t gone through with it.

Nikki had never liked Edmund, had straddled the line between being honest about what she thought of him and being supportive of Imogen’s choices.

But she couldn’t turn her phone on because it would explode with the force of all the notifications.

Had Seth given away her destination when he’d driven the limo back to the church?

She hated the thought that she might’ve got him in trouble.

‘OK.’ Imogen rested her head against the headrest, watched the houses melt away in favour of golden fields edged by trees as the train reached Essex.

‘Not pure stupidity, but some stupidity. But also instinct. There was some of that going on, too.’ She closed her eyes and the woman didn’t reply, probably deciding that Imogen wanted to be left alone with her thoughts, or have a stress nap.

She wished she could sleep, but she didn’t know if that would be possible ever again.

She opened her eyes and looked at the scrolling information screen attached to the ceiling.

‘I could get off at the next station. Turn around and go home.’

She waited for the woman to tell her what to do, but she just looked at her over the top of her miserable book.

Imogen was on her own. She had run away from her family and friends, all of Edmund and her dad’s lawyer colleagues, the wider Goddon family who were so traditional, and …

Birdie’s last email flashed into her head, the snippet Imogen had read so many times she knew it off by heart.

This is your life, darling, and you must live it how you want.

There’s no point worrying what other people think, or canvassing friends and family for the answer, because if it’s not right for you then, sooner or later, you will realize how miserable you are.

If Edmund is the man of your heart, you must marry him and not worry a jot that I’m not there.

All I want is for you to be happy. Go forth and have those wedding bells. Live joyfully!

Birdie had been telling her to get married, not to fret that she would be doing it without her grandmother there, but that wasn’t what had stuck in Imogen’s mind.

If Edmund is the man of your heart. From the moment that email had pinged into her inbox two weeks ago – but in fact for a lot longer than that, if she was honest with herself – Imogen had been asking herself: Was he?

The more she thought about it, the more she doubted it.

It was pretty terrible to finally alight on the answer as she was standing at the back of the church, having spent the previous twenty-four hours replaying the conversation she’d overheard between her husband-to-be and her father.

‘Great costume. What is it, Corpse Bride? Could go a bit heavier on the dead person makeup, but I like the mascara tracks.’

The man standing in the aisle was wearing a baseball cap backwards and what looked like three T-shirts layered over each other, the sleeves all different lengths.

‘Thanks,’ she said, because Halloween Corpse Bride was a simpler explanation than Genuine Runaway Bride. The man gave her a cheeky wink and sauntered down the carriage.

Imogen took out her compact and saw that he was right about the mascara tracks.

Her dark blue eyes were surrounded by black smudges, presumably from the initial shocked burst of crying she’d done in the limo when she’d escaped, and the complexion her mother sometimes described as ‘porcelain’ was a couple of shades paler than it should be.

She licked her finger and rubbed at the marks, and felt slightly better when she got most of them off.

‘Who are you going to see?’ the woman asked her.

‘My grandmother.’

‘She wasn’t at the wedding, then?’

‘She wasn’t allowed. It’s a long story,’ she added, at the woman’s bemused expression. ‘But I’m sure she’ll know what to do with me.’

‘Find you warmer clothes for a start.’

Imogen glanced at her suitcase on the rack above.

It had been in the limo, because she and Edmund were supposed to go straight to the airport from the reception.

It was full of clothes appropriate for three weeks in Mauritius, wall-to-wall sun and white sand, rather than a north Norfolk village with mud and frosty mornings.

‘Birdie’s a great knitter,’ she said. ‘If she hasn’t got any clothes for me to borrow, she’ll knock up a jumper in a few hours.’

‘She sounds wonderful.’

Imogen’s throat thickened. ‘She is. I can’t wait to see her.

’ She stared out of the window and tried not to imagine the scene that must have played out at the church.

She remembered her dad’s, ‘What’s going on?

’ when she slipped her arm out of his, and she thought Edmund had called her name, but she hadn’t hung about and Seth hadn’t either, once she’d told him in a low, breathless voice that he needed to go right now.

She was absolutely certain that in her thirty-one years on this planet, she had never caused so much upset.

She just hoped that, when she finally made it to the Norfolk village of Mistingham and her grandmother, she would be met with kind words and a hug, perhaps a cup of tea – not regular tea, but a Birdie special concoction – and she wouldn’t be forced to turn around and go straight back to London.

Imogen wasn’t used to causing a whole lot of trouble, and now that she had, there seemed only one thing to do: try and avoid the consequences for as long as she possibly could.