Chapter 1
Chapter One
Pippa Bell had imagined her wedding day a thousand different ways, usually involving a clock tower, cherry blossoms, and the faint chime of something historic and significant in the background.
She had never, not once, pictured waking up on her wedding day with a knot of dread wedged under her ribs like a jammed cog.
‘You’re being weird,’ Rose said, narrowing her eyes from across the dressing table. ‘You always get chatty when you’re nervous. This is different. This is unnervingly quiet.’
Rose had been Pippa’s best friend since primary school, their bond ignited the day Pippa showed up at Show and Tell with a broken carriage clock and tried, very seriously, to explain how escapements worked, while the rest of the class slumped over their desks, wishing for home time.
Rose had been the one person to show interest in the carriage clock, and her smile had buoyed Pippa even as the energy in the classroom drained.
Most seven-year-olds collected stickers or dolls.
Pippa had collected clock keys. Real ones, usually small, metal, and heavy for their size.
She liked how they felt in her hand, and the fact that each one was different.
Some were shiny, some scratched, some slightly bent.
She didn’t know where most of them belonged, only that they were made to turn something and make it work.
During rainy lunchtimes, she could usually be found with her nose buried in her dad’s clock magazines, smuggled into her school bag like top-secret documents. She loved ticking mechanisms, impossible problems, and the big, beautiful ‘why’ behind how things worked.
Rose, on the other hand, was loud and fearless, drawn to games with simple rules and instant victories, and yet she’d been utterly captivated by that stubborn little clock that refused to tick, and the way Pippa simply refused to give up on it.
They were chalk and cheese, but that first shared moment of curiosity over gears and springs scattered across a classroom desk sparked something lasting: a friendship forged in clockwork chaos, destined to tick on for years to come.
Even through secondary school, when Rose got into eyeliner and attitude, whereas Pippa joined the local horology club, they stuck together like clock hands on the same spindle.
When it came time for university, they went their separate ways – Pippa to study historical restoration (with a heavy bias towards timepieces), and Rose to tackle law like it was a personal battle – but they never lost touch.
Weekly phone calls turned into more frequent crisis calls, voice notes, then celebratory drinks whenever they could get together, and shared commiserations through heartbreaks, dodgy landlords, and existential wobbles.
Pippa had once said that Rose was like a quartz battery in her life – steady, reliable, and annoyingly precise – and now here she was, on the morning of Pippa’s wedding, armed with chocolate, a spare pair of Spanx, and a raised eyebrow that said, ‘I know you better than you know yourself.’
Pippa blinked at her reflection. Her hair was curled into soft vintage waves, her makeup had been declared ‘flawless’ by a very expensive stranger named Naomi, and her satin wedding dress with its hidden layers of tulle, chosen in a haze of indecision and prosecco, hung on the door like it knew this wasn’t going to be her happy ever after.
‘I’m just … thinking,’ Pippa replied, trying to sound like someone whose life was perfectly on track and not someone with an alarming heart rate and a rising urge to flee the country.
Rose, wearing a lilac bridesmaid’s dress and armed with a lipstick the shade of righteous support, perched beside her.
‘About Rob?’
‘No. Yes. No.’ Pippa fiddled with her earlobe. ‘Sort of. I don’t know. I just keep thinking about clocks.’
Rose gave her a look. ‘Of course you do. You think about clocks like other people think about lunch. It’s your thing.’
‘I wanted to get married at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, under the iconic Shepherd Gate Clock,’ Pippa mumbled. ‘It’s the birthplace of timekeeping as we know it. It would’ve been romantic. Symbolic. He said no.’
There was a pause as Rose began applying glue to a set of false eyelashes. ‘Pip. If you’re freaking out, this is your window. I’ll lock that door, turn off your phone, and tell everyone you’ve changed your mind.’
Before Pippa could respond, Rose accidentally glued a false eyelash to her own elbow.
‘Right,’ Rose said, fanning her one eye that actually did have the false eyelash in place while inspecting her arm in the mirror. ‘They’re on. Just not necessarily in the right location.’
Pippa laughed, twisting the corner of her dressing gown. ‘I don’t think I can do this.’
Rose blinked. Or tried to – her left eye was a bit … sticky. ‘Do what? Get married, or help me with this eyelash?’
‘Either.’
Rose sank onto the bed, scattering a tray of pastel macarons someone had thoughtfully delivered that they’d entirely forgotten to eat.
‘Every bride panics,’ Rose said firmly. ‘It’s part of the process. Veil. Vows. Vomit.’
Pippa didn’t answer. Mostly because she was genuinely considering the vomit part. Not from nerves, but because deep down she knew she shouldn’t be wearing this dress. Or this ring. Or marrying this man.
‘You don’t have to go through with this,’ added Rose, full of reassurance.
Rob was lovely. He was kind and practical.
A man with excellent dental hygiene and a hatred of themed parties.
But he didn’t get her. Not really. He thought her passion for antique clocks was ‘quirky’, which was code for ‘annoying but tolerable’.
He didn’t understand why she cried during horology documentaries.
He thought her dream of getting married under the famous clock tower was ‘silly’, and every time she mentioned her favourite clockmakers – the Vale Brothers – his eyes would roll.
‘We are getting married in the UK. The weather isn’t guaranteed in July and no guests will want to be standing outside in the inevitable rain with umbrellas. It’s daft and an extra stress,’ he’d said when she’d suggested it.
So they weren’t getting married under a clock tower. Instead, they were getting married in a beige hotel ballroom with a beige carpet and no doubt beige biscuits being served to the waiting guests in the foyer.
Pippa stood and padded to the window, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Outside, the rain hammered down in wild sheets, just as Rob had predicted. Inside, her thoughts were no calmer than the storm, swirling and crashing just as fiercely on this dismal day.
Rose came to stand beside her, pulling her robe tighter. ‘Is it just nerves?’
Pippa hesitated, then nodded.
* * *
An hour later, the Bentley glided along the country lanes, its glossy black frame cutting through the steady July rain.
Satin ribbons trailed from the bonnet, damp and fluttering, their shine dulled beneath a low, grey sky.
Inside, Pippa sat rigidly in the back seat, her dress spilling all around her as she looked out the window.
The hotel loomed nearer. It wasn’t the venue she’d wanted, and she couldn’t shake that from her mind.
‘Are you okay?’ her father asked gently, taking her hand in his and giving it a squeeze. George Bell wasn’t a man prone to speeches, but he had a sentimental side and the sight of his only daughter in a wedding dress had left him watery-eyed and very proud.
‘I think so,’ Pippa said, although her stomach quivered like an antique clock about to strike the hour.
‘I have something for you,’ said George, reaching into his pocket with a nervous kind of reverence.
‘Something old. This was your grandfather’s gift to your grandmother on their honeymoon.
They gave it to me on my wedding day, and I gave it to your mum just after we married.
It’s been passed down through the family, and I know she would want you to have it today.
I’m also sorry your grandfather wasn’t well enough to leave the care home today.
’ He passed her a small, square box. Pippa blinked back tears and her heart gave a painful thump at the thought of her mum.
She opened the lid slowly. Inside, nestled in velvet, was a delicate pocket watch.
‘Now, you know how much I love clocks, but this one has always been a mystery. It’s never worked and we were always planning to get it restored, but your mum just liked looking at it and wasn’t in a rush to send it away for repair.
She said it was too precious to take out with her, so it didn’t matter whether it was working or not.
It was a thing of beauty … just like your mum, and just like you.
’ He smiled softly, eyes shining. ‘Maybe it’s something you can look at after the wedding? ’
‘It’s beautiful. I’m sure I can get it working again.’
‘Your mum would be proud of you,’ her dad said, clearing his throat.
Pippa had been twenty-two when her mum died.
Caroline Bell had been her daughter’s anchor: witty, warm, and wonderfully eccentric; the kind of woman who wore perfume to bed and read poetry out loud while making toast. She was the one who’d first nurtured Pippa’s love of clocks, taking her to antiques fairs and flea markets, slipping her old watch parts to tinker with as a child, and giving her a delicate gold watch with the message Time is what you make it etched inside for her eighteenth birthday.
Caroline was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer just a few months after Pippa finished Cambridge University.
It was aggressive, and by the time they found it, there were few treatment options.
Pippa moved back home immediately and spent the next six months by her mum’s side, reading to her, caring for her, watching her fade in ways she wasn’t prepared for.
Near the end, when the days had long since blurred into one another, Caroline had asked Pippa to lie beside her on the bed.