Chapter Thirty-Three
Belle
I have a lump in my throat, a sore head, and a hole in my heart. I woke to an empty room, cold sheets, and silence.
Did we even say goodbye?
Then it starts, the constant knocking at the door.
I pull the bedsheets tight around me as I stumble over cushions littering the floor after being tossed from the bed.
I rub my eyes wearily as I open the door, still adjusting to the light of the winter sun filtering through the windows.
We’d forgotten to shut the curtains last night.
It’s Jules at the door, here to help me get ready.
For my wedding day. With Timothy. Right. Shit.
‘Aye, love!’ she squeals at the state of me. I bring my hand to my hair and notice I can’t pull my fingers through it, it’s so knotted.
‘Bring me back to life, please, Grandma,’ I say, peering behind me to the mirror.
I half-expect to see Jake in the reflection, but instead it’s just me, my makeup smudged and lips pale.
I rub my head and drag myself towards the bathroom, bedsheets trailing behind me as Jules whizzes around the room, a gust of energy and excitement.
‘Great party last night, eh, hen?’ Jules says, noting the half-drunk bottle of whisky on the coffee table. She marches around, picking up pillows, last night’s dress, and knickers from the floor. I cringe.
It’s then that I notice. Outside – it’s white. Snow.
I rush over, both hands to the window, fumbling to open it as the bedsheets fall open.
It’s actually settled, the snow. My breath steams up the glass as I scan the surroundings.
The whole of Whitby is muffled under it.
The rooftops, the pirate ship docked in the bay, the many gravestones on the churchyard clifftop – all of it blurred and softened and still.
The abbey in the distance now looks like something from Narnia, instead of Dracula.
The sky behind it is the particular white of an English winter morning that isn’t quite dawn and isn’t quite day – just a pale, held breath of light.
The cold whips my face and chest but I don’t step back from it.
I let it come in. It smells of salt and something mineral, the sea turning itself over anew.
I almost spot him then, standing there in the snow under the oak tree below. Jake, looking up at me from the grounds. But I blink and he’s gone.
Just the courtyard and the snow, unmarked.
I laugh weakly, shaking my head.
I finally got it, then, the white wedding I always dreamed of.
‘You’ll freeze,’ Jules says behind me.
I leave the window open for a few more seconds anyway, the cold coming in sharp, and I breathe it in until my eyes water. Then I pull the window shut and turn back to the room.
Timothy will be pleased. He knows how much I wanted this.
After a shower, a scrub, and a lot of tap water downed (note to self: why does water in Yorkshire taste so much better than in London?), I’m sitting on the stool in front of the dressing table.
It wobbles underneath me, feeling somehow a little less stable than it did yesterday.
Jules stands behind me, curling my hair.
‘Do you remember, sweetie, how I used to do your hair before school sometimes?’
‘I remember.’ I smile up at her reflection.
‘You always looked like a wee gremlin who’d been dragged through a hedge … And now look at you,’ she says, welling up.
I feel fourteen again for a moment. Except I watched fourteen-year-old me last night. I’ve watched every version of me, stumbling around, convinced she knew what she was doing. Now the only thing I know is that I’m doing my best with what I’ve got.
‘He always said you’d have the most beautiful wedding.’
‘Who did?’ I look up to her reflection in the mirror.
She stays focused on my hair. ‘Your grandad, of course. Said it when you were about seven. Every time you put on a fancy dress.’ She exhales, not quite a laugh. ‘His beautiful Belle, he’d say.’ I pinch my arm under my robe, willing myself not to cry.
Neither of us says anything for a moment. I reach up and put my hand over hers, where it rests on my shoulder. She gives my fingers a quick squeeze and that’s that. A deep breath, then back to the curling. I’m back to the mirror, blotting my lipstick.
‘He’d have ironed that suit three times this morning. Would have driven everyone absolutely daft.’
I laugh properly. ‘He really would have.’
The curling tong hisses.
‘Are Mum and Dad okay? Are they down there already?’
‘Your mother has been ready since half past six,’ Jules says, wrapping a strand of hair around the barrel of the tongs. ‘She’s on her third coffee and has already cried twice.’
I can picture it now: Mum unable to sit still, flapping around, offering everyone tissues when in fact it’s her who needs them most. She did offer to help me get ready but I convinced her to focus on herself, insisting that I needed a calm presence in the shape of Scottish Grandma to help me this morning.
‘And Dad?’
‘Ha!’ she bellows. ‘Well, I pretended not to see the hip flask of whisky he’d hidden in his suit pocket.’
‘Right.’ I roll my eyes, which then drift to the whisky bottle on the coffee table. I look away.
Did yesterday really happen? Was it all a dream? Am I having a breakdown?
Pull yourself together, Belle. Before yesterday, this was everything I ever wanted. Safety, security. Someone who cherishes me.
I open my travel jewellery box on the dressing table.
The earrings from Timothy are on the top – the ones he got me last Christmas – still in their pouch.
Elegant pearl drops, exactly right for today.
I put one in as Jules mists my hair with hairspray.
I look at myself in the mirror and take the earring back out.
At the bottom of the small box, tangled in a chain, are the gold hoops I’ve had since I was twenty-two. I put those on instead and don’t look at them twice. Jules coughs as the mist surrounds us.
Timothy might not know that sometimes I stay up till midnight, researching cult leaders, or that for some reason, being in a library or bookshop brings on sudden bowel movements.
But he does know that I need chocolate when I’m on my period and he always goes out of his way to get me some when I need it.
He knows that I secretly love a dollop of mayo with every meal – even spaghetti, much to his dismay.
He’s the guy who irons his shirt on a Sunday evening and will also do mine at the same time, without even mentioning it.
I nod to myself as I peel the backing off a sticky chicken fillet and press it to my left breast. He’s a good man. Things could be considerably worse.
I’m not thinking about last night … I’m not.
I force the thought down. Then another thought appears: a memory of dancing in the snow with Jake.
How my puffer jacket squeaked as he twirled me around, how passers-by tutted.
My trainers had soaked through within ten minutes.
He didn’t say anything, just crouched down in front of me on the pavement and waited for me to climb on.
He’d walked me all the way home like that, me singing, ‘Piggybacking home for Christmas …’ and him beatboxing along.
I meet my dad at the doors to the church. He wipes a tear from his eye as he sees me and my heart clenches.
‘Don’t be nervous, it’ll be perfect,’ he says, beaming. I nod.
From behind the doors, I can hear the murmur of guests over the beat of the music. Plucky strings, a live harp. We both notice at the same time that my hands are shaking. He scoops them in his and nods.
‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes.’
Am I?
Dad pulls my veil over my face and straightens it as a wedding coordinator I don’t remember ever meeting hands me my bouquet. It’s still dripping slightly at the stems. I hold it away from my dress.
The wedding march starts. Classic, typical, a formal tradition we’d kept.
Then the coordinator nods to us and puts their hand on the doors.
My dad’s hand in mine, knuckles white around the bouquet, my vision hazy behind the white tulle. I can’t remember the last thing I said to Jake. I fell asleep when—
The doors open.
My bouquet drips on my dress. Beneath my veil, I watch the water darken the white silk and it’s then I realise I can’t do this.
I cannot say yes to Timothy.
But I can’t leave him up there alone. I need to tell him to his face.
My dad ushers me onwards and, in a daze, I take a step, hand in hand. The first thing I make out is the chapel’s domed ceiling. The sun beaming in, casting glints of gold on the red stone of the aisle. I take a deep breath – saltiness from the sea air, old wood from the pews.
One real thing. Even for a short time.
My legs don’t stop moving.
We pass a display of white flowers – they’re all different, wrong … I push it away. My dad grips my hand tighter, and I realise I’m walking quicker than him now. I squeeze his hand in silent reply.
Don’t look at me like that, Dad.
A flash of purple catches my eye. A hat – big, garish – blocks the view of the people behind it. I don’t see their faces. Maybe Aunt Susan?
The way the light is hitting the room, it’s too bright, I can’t …
Then the altar.
The candles flickering. The priest smiling, book open and cradled in his arms. Someone coughs.
Then the shape of him. Wrong, all wrong. Timothy isn’t that tall.
I squeeze my eyes shut, grip my bouquet tighter, take smaller steps to stop my shoes rubbing so viciously at my heel.
Then he turns.
I stop walking.
‘Belle,’ my dad whispers, giving a slight tug on my hand. But I’m frozen. I take in the broad shoulders in front of me, the deep brown, tweedy suit. The silver bracelet on his wrist, the twig of lavender on his lapel. Then he opens his mouth.
‘There she is,’ he says, grinning.
There he is, at the end of the aisle.
Jake Marleigh.
He’s older now – there are lines at the corners of his eyes that weren’t there before. Specks of silver at his temples and in his stubble. As if he’s lived a life. But his grin is the same.
I step forward. Dad shakes his hand firmly then turns to me. He lifts my veil, presses a kiss to my cheek and then I’m passed over.
I look at his hands first. How his fingers weave their way into mine. Less calloused than they used to be. Not as bitten down.
I look up. Jake slow blinks at me, reassuringly.
Every wrong turn. Every person I’d loved. They all brought me here.
‘To the end?’ he says, squeezing my palm.
‘To the end.’