CHAPTER TWELVE – SYLVIE
The worst part about Christmas, by far, was being single.
All right, so it wasn’t. There were many things one could criticise about the season in this day and age, but it wasn’t like I could change the barrage of adverts shoving their sales down my throat or the crazy commercialism that had taken it over, so what was the point?
Better to complain about things I could change while actively trying not to do anything about it.
Yes. That was a far better use of my time.
In my opinion, anyway. My mother would strongly disagree, but then she had a tendency to do that in general.
She hadn’t agreed with my degree choice, she hadn’t agreed with me moving away, she hadn’t agreed with anything except the time I’d loosely mentioned that I was thinking about adopting a cat.
She had, however, disagreed when I’d decided it was a bad idea.
The only thing she’d ever voiced active support for was me purchasing my grandparents’ house, especially after Hazel had made it known she didn’t want her share and would rather have the money to invest in her here and now.
To her credit, she’d invested it very well thanks to advice from Julian’s dad, and it was paying off for her.
I was happy to have the house.
Despite what I’d said to my parents about my single life, I had long ago daydreamt about moving back to Castleton and raising my family in the house I’d basically grown up in. This house was full of many happy memories for me, and there was so much life left in it.
I hadn’t told my mother that.
If she agreed with two major life choices in one decade, I was afraid she’d spontaneously combust.
It wasn’t that we didn’t get along. We did—spectacularly well. She just wasn’t shy about sharing her opinion. To her credit, she was more than happy to admit when she’d been wrong about something, and she’d had to do an awful lot of that over the past ten years.
She’d even bought me chocolate every single time. You can imagine how confused I’d been to receive a two-kilo box of Celebrations chocolate from out of the blue one day until she’d come clean.
Man, that was a good day for chocolate.
Except Bounties.
Bounties could fuck off.
Controversial, I know, but if you asked me, the only thing a coconut was good for was drinking cocktails out of.
It did not belong in my chocolate. A bit like pineapple on pizza.
The only kind of pineapple I wanted with pizza was a Pina Colada.
I liked cocktails. Sue me.
Still, of all the things I could change about Christmas, it would be my relationship status. Every movie I watched was filled with small towns and happy families and some big hotshot city girl coming home to fall in love with a small-town boy in this year’s variation of a checkered shirt.
It was all happy go-lucky, lovey-dovey nonsense that just made me sad about being alone.
Not that I was alone. Not really. At least not this year.
I had my grandparents, my parents, my sister, and I was about to gain the brother I’d always wanted.
I’d always assumed having a brother meant I’d have a sibling who wouldn’t steal my makeup, and that was much more preferable than having one who did.
In a way, it almost made it worse. I was happy for Hazel, of course. As much as we sniped at each other something, she was still my baby sister, and I wanted nothing more than complete happiness for her, but it was the reminder that I was two-and-a-half years older than her and… not all that happy.
I hadn’t been prepared for the realisation of just how much I’d missed Castleton. I’d never considered that coming back for this long would ignite such melancholy within me. It wasn’t just that I was spending more time with my family than I had in years, but that I was spending time here.
In a place I hadn’t realised I’d loved so much.
The small, winding country lanes. The trees that reached one hundred feet into the sky but somehow never blocked out the sunlight.
The warm, community spirit of the locals who were always happy to see you no matter how long it had been.
The clearness of the sky at night that revealed endless twinkling stars.
The Christmas.
The wedding.
The reminder that I was so, so very alone, and didn’t even have any dating options. Not one.
Maybe it was time to open Tinder.
Jesus, no. I wasn’t that desperate.
I wanted a date, not existential trauma.
I blew out a long breath and reached for my laptop from the drawers, then pulled it onto my lap. I adjusted my pillows at the head of the bed and moved accordingly, getting comfortable before I opened the laptop lid and checked my emails.
Three. Hundred. Emails.
Where the bloody hell had they come from?
Ah, yes. It was Christmas. Time for thrice-daily emails screaming about twenty percent off on items that were forty percent more expensive than they were six months ago.
I went through the emails and deleted all the spammy messages that counted as sales tactics these days, then settled down with my much more reasonable twenty-eight legitimate emails.
I spent the next two hours working in a less than ergonomic position, slowly slinking down the bed until I was basically lying down with my knees bent, laptop resting on them, and my wrists screaming at me to please sit up like the adult the birth date on my passport said I was.
“Sylvie!” My bedroom door slammed open as my sister screamed my name, and I jumped so hard I almost threw my laptop onto the floor.
“Oh, my God!” I shouted, gripping onto the computer to stop it going flying across the room. “Don’t you knock?”
“There’s an emergency!”
My heart thundered against my ribs right before it launched itself into my throat.
I tossed my laptop onto the quilt beside me and scrambled to sit upright. “What? What’s happened? Is it Nana? Gramps? Heck, the pig?”
“There’s been a huge crash on the motorway!”
She may as well have thrown me out of the window into the snow, because my blood was running ice-cold.
“Mum and Dad?” I asked, scrambling to my feet.
“No! My veil!”
Her… veil?
I blinked at her, taking a second as the deafening boom of rushing adrenaline in my ears petered out. “Your veil?”
“My veil!” Hazel fisted her hair and paced the length of my room. “My veil was on the delivery truck that got crashed into by some bastard using his phone in a lorry!”
Well, this was a new one. Even for me.
I couldn’t say this was a problem I’d ever encountered before.
“Right, okay,” I said slowly. “Hazel, take a deep breath, and I’ll sort this out, okay?”
“How? How can you sort this out? That was a handmade veil, Sylvie! There’s nothing else like it in the world! You can’t get another one made between now and the wedding!”
An excellent point.
“Okay, I know, but all you’re doing is getting yourself into a tizz, and that’s not helpful for anyone.” I grabbed her shoulders and guided her to bed. “Lie down. Put your feet up on the wall. Close your eyes. Let me see what I can find out, all right?”
Hazel did as I said, and I could see her hands shaking as she pressed them against her stomach. “My veil,” she whimpered.
I picked up my laptop and left her lying there, closing the door behind me.
Nana was going to have to calm her down.
There was no chance I’d be able to do it.
Besides, right now, she needed wedding planner Sylvie, not big sister Sylvie.
***
“All right, yes, thank you… Thanks, bye.” I hung up and stared at my phone screen, pressing my lips together.
Gramps handed me a cup of tea. “Well?”
I met his gaze. “Can you put some booze in that tea?”
“That bad, huh?”
“Unfortunately, yes. The veil was due to be delivered to Polly’s dress shop like Hazel had requested, but the van is nothing but a burnt shell.
The driver is in intensive care due to his burns.
Thankfully he should be okay with time and some surgeries, but the van and everything in it was destroyed in the fire.
” I sighed and leant against the kitchen counter, putting my phone down so I could cradle the mug for something to focus on.
“Veil included. There’s no way to get it or even think about salvaging it. ”
An uncomfortable silence settled over the kitchen as my words sunk in. Two weeks until the wedding, and my sister’s personally designed, handmade veil was currently a pile of ashes on the M65.
I was heartbroken for her. She’d wanted it specifically to tie in aspects of our family and Julian’s, and it was almost as important to her as her dress was.
If not more so.
She could find another dress like the one she’d chosen.
There would never be another veil like that one.
“Bugger it,” Gramps said after a couple of minutes of silence.
That was weirdly appropriate.
“Indeed,” I replied. “Now I have to break the news to her and try to figure out a replacement. There’s no way she’s going to be in any emotional state to fix it.”
He nodded slowly. “There’s only way to tell her, pet. Rip it right off like a plaster.”
“I know you’re right, but it doesn’t feel like the best thing to do. She’s going to be heartbroken.”
“And it’s not your fault. You aren’t responsible for it. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I know, I just…” I trailed off when movement in the doorway caught my eye.
Hazel was standing there, cradling Beatrix Trotter. Her eyes shone with tears, and my stomach plummeted right through my legs and through the kitchen tiles to the centre of the Earth.
“It’s gone, isn’t it?” she asked softly.
“I’m so sorry, Hazel,” I replied quietly. “I just spoke to Eliza. The van is completely burnt out. It was a fireball after it was hit.”
She swallowed, scratching Beatrix behind her little multicoloured ear. “Is the driver okay?”
“He’s in hospital, but he should be completely fine in time,” I assured her.
“Okay. Good. That’s the most important thing.” She looked down at Beatrix, but the dipping of her chin didn’t hide the fact a tear dripped onto her cheek.
I went to move towards her, but Gramps put down his mug and moved before I could. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in, and she put Beatrix on the floor before she fell against him and let it all out.
The most gut-wrenching sob erupted from my little sister, and my heart cracked firmly in two.
This was the one thing I couldn’t fix.
I couldn’t order another one with next day delivery like I’d done for a bride last year whose shoes were missing in action.
I couldn’t knock on hair salon doors with an open chequebook to replace one who went down with pneumonia a week before the wedding.
I couldn’t source another bridesmaid dress after one of a groom’s jealous stepsisters had ruined a dress.
There was no last-minute sourcing of a new mother of the groom dress because her original was white. There was no pulling the right colour of nail polish out of my bag of tricks. There was no grabbing a hair curler to make sure everyone was out of the door on time.
This…
This was an unsolvable problem. Not even I could find a way to condense three months of custom work into two weeks to replace her veil. It was the very definition of irreplaceable, and there wasn’t a thing I could about it.
And it was for the one wedding I cared about more than anything.
My sister’s.
The most important wedding in my life thus far.
I hugged my mug of tea to my chest and peered over at her.
Gramps was still holding her, swaying side to side as he stroked her hair and murmured placations in her ear.
To anyone else, this would be the most dramatic thing in the world, but the veil was meant to honour the joining of our families and was so important to her.
I couldn’t fix this, but I had to.
I had to find a way to make this right, and I didn’t have a lot of time in which to do so.
But how would I? How could I? Was it even possible to fix it?
I didn’t know.
All I knew what was if there was a way, I would figure it out.
I had to.