Chapter 34
‘See you in church,’ she’d said. Of course, for Jax, who’d been married before and who would never marry in conventional style, it was a deconsecrated church that she’d had in mind.
Jax and Robin had met years ago in London; she’d been a third-year medical student, he a set builder at the National Theatre.
He thought he’d found the one, the woman he’d grow old with; he’d fallen helplessly, hopelessly in love.
She’d loved him too, at least she’d said so and he’d never known her lie.
But then she’d been transferred to a hospital in the North.
He’d been willing to go with her, leave his job and start again.
He’d have done anything to be with Jax. She’d told him no, said all the right things about not wanting him to sacrifice his own career for hers; she’d insisted she’d be working around the clock, would have no time for him.
Eventually, even he got the message: Jax was actually glad of the excuse to leave him behind.
Maybe she’d even requested the transfer in the first place.
Jax had gone out of his life.
And then, some five months ago, she’d called him out of the blue to say she was in discussion with several wedding planners and was he interested in being one of them.
Robin had been awash with misgivings. Jax wasn’t someone you forgot, or got over completely, but in the two decades since he’d last seen her, he’d managed to push her firmly to the back of his mind.
And now she wanted him to organise her wedding?
Knowing it could lead to disaster, he simply hadn’t been able to resist. Besides, a deconsecrated church? – well, he knew the perfect place.
The former church of St Michael the Evangelist overlooked the ocean not far from St Agnes.
Run by the National Trust, it wasn’t a huge space but would be perfect for the sixty guests Jax and her fiancé were planning.
It had pointed arches, flying buttresses, ribbed vaults, stained-glass windows, ornamented stonework and more leering gargoyles than you could shake a stick at.
Robin had arranged to meet her one evening in early May. The car park was empty when he arrived, apart from the Nissan Leaf that the manager drove and a motorbike. Knowing he was ten minutes early, he’d walked towards the clifftop.
Below him, on the beach, light and colour had fled, leaving an expanse of black, dappled sand and rock pools gleaming like oil slicks. The ocean, though! The ocean was a churning, bouncing mass of colour.
A storm had blown in overnight, leaving a turbulent sea in its wake. Giant waves were rolling in and the ‘white horses’, the name given to the spray that topped those about to break, had turned a deep shade of pink. From the sun, now low and huge on the western horizon, shone a path of gold.
‘It’s perfect,’ came a voice from near his feet, and Robin looked down to see a woman on the cliff path.
She was as tall as he remembered and still slender; her silvery hair flew across her face and at the sight of her he felt hands twisting his heart like damp washing.
‘I want to get married at sunset,’ she went on.
‘Whatever time it happens to be in October.’
She walked towards him with her arms held out. ‘Hey, stranger,’ she said. ‘How dare you get even better looking?’
‘Well, I could say the same about you,’ he had the presence of mind to reply as she stepped into his arms and his head reeled with the scent of her. Inside he was thinking, Oh, God, please no.
She was back – in his life and in his gut – and this time, there was no getting her out again.
Robin arrived at the church ten minutes early, by design this time.
Once again, Jax’s motorbike was waiting in the car park.
No sunset this time. The sky was overcast, the beach in darkness.
In the poor light, the sea looked millpond flat.
Jax was standing on the clifftop, her back to him.
Knowing she’d hear the crunch of his feet on the gravel, he approached slowly and stood by her side.
He said, ‘The luckiest man who walks on this earth is the one who finds true love.’
‘And that one I know,’ she replied. ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula.’
She’d turned her head to smile at him, but he didn’t let himself look directly at her. As he’d crossed the car park, he’d known what he was going to do, and if he met her eyes, he might chicken out.
‘It isn’t true,’ he went on. ‘Because I love you. I never stopped. And that makes me the least lucky man in the world.’
He waited for her to laugh, to tell him he was a jerk, that this was completely inappropriate, to ask him what the hell he thought he was about. She did none of those things.
‘I love the darkness in your soul because it cries out to mine,’ he said. ‘I love the sadness I see in your heart because I know I can chase it away.’
His eyes fixed on the dark sea, Robin found the words came easily.
‘I love your bitchy sense of humour and your absurd sentimentality when it comes to animals. I love that you care passionately about the planet and that you still dream of living on the moon. You’re the weirdest, most wonderful human being ever born and every hour I spend without you hurts. ’
Still nothing. He let his eyes drift sideways. She was still there.
‘If you’re a hundred per cent sure of what you’re doing, if you love Neil as much as I love you, then say the word.
You’ll never hear this again and your wedding in a couple of weeks will go without a hitch.
You may even wonder if you dreamed it. But you didn’t dream it, Jax, it’s real and I had to say it. ’
‘I think I knew.’
He turned to face her then. She was looking directly into his eyes. Robin took a step closer and gave her a second to move away. She stayed where she was. Jesus, was this actually happening?
‘I think that’s why I got in touch with you again.’
Her jacket was cold and unwieldy, but her breath was warm against his face.
Her lips were soft and slick with lip gloss and her hair wrapped itself around both their faces.
She pressed against him and he thought perhaps he might lose his balance and that the two of them would tumble over the edge and die together on the rocks below.
He had no problem with that.
Abruptly, she stiffened and pulled back. At that moment, he heard what she must have. Maybe she’d been listening out for it, whereas he’d never been so totally and completely wrapped up in a moment before. A car was approaching the church.
They both turned and a second later Neil’s blue BMW appeared round a bend in the road.
‘Now what?’ she said.