Wedding Tiers. Trisha Ashley

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СКАЧАТЬ suppose he’s good-looking?’

      She considered. ‘You might not pick him out in a crowd straight away, but once you did, you’d wonder how you missed him. He’s about six foot and slim, not exactly handsome, but he’s got lovely, light grey eyes and long, long black eyelashes…His smile’s sort of quirky and goes up at one side too…and his hair’s almost black and goes curly if it gets damp.’

      ‘You sound half in love with him yourself!’ I said, dismayed at this apparent lack of loyalty to Tim.

      ‘Not me! You know I’m a hard-headed, marriage-or-nothing kind of girl!’

      ‘Maybe, but you moved in with Tim the day after you met him,’ I pointed out.

      ‘Yes, well, that’s different. And he proposed to me before I moved in, don’t forget.’

      ‘Come on, you were so love struck you would have done it anyway.’

      ‘Maybe, but so was Tim, so it doesn’t matter.’ She smiled happily. ‘Oh, Josie, it’s such bliss! I only hope Pia does come to the wedding and realises how nice he is, then she’ll soon get over her huff and we can be one happy family.’

      I thought this was more than optimistic. ‘You can see her point, Libby. She adored Joe, he was a father to her in every sense. And I think girls often get on better with their fathers than their mothers, until they get older. You were fine until she was thirteen or fourteen, and then she started seeing you as competition.’

      ‘She was lovely when she was little,’ she agreed. ‘Then—bam!—in kicked the hormones and she turned into a sulky monster in a permanent strop.’

      ‘She’ll turn back into a human being again any minute now,’ I assured her. ‘And if she surfaces in London, Maria Cazzini will make her come to the wedding.’ Maria, the formidable matriarch of the family, had married the cousin who now ran the family restaurant business. A thought struck me. ‘You have invited your mother and sister, haven’t you?’

      ‘Tim said I had to,’ Libby said unenthusiastically. ‘I’ve told Daisy she’ll have to keep Ma off the sauce the whole day. I’m trusting her, but I’ll have a hire car on standby to whisk them away if she goes off-piste. I’ve booked them into a Travelodge, where I expect they’re used to getting all types, including drunken mothers of the bride.’

      ‘But I thought she’d joined AA and gone teetotal?’

      ‘That’s what she says, but Daisy reckons she’s just got more cunning about where she hides it.’

      ‘It was very kind of Daisy to move her down there and look after her.’

      Libby gave me a scathing look. ‘It was Joe’s idea. He bought them the house and paid the bills. Now I send money every month and that’s another drain on my income, but at least I know Mum is eating properly and living respectably, because Daisy has control over everything.’

      It was some years since I’d seen Libby’s mother, but even semi-reformed, she was still likely to add a lively touch to the wedding proceedings, not to mention raking up the past in the minds of those villagers who were still finding it hard to accept that any daughter of Gloria Martin could possibly marry a Rowland-Knowles, so I could quite understand why Libby was reluctant to invite her. But Tim was right—it had to be done!

      I emailed Pia and that night she phoned me. It was such a relief to hear her voice, even if she was in a strop.

      ‘How can Mum get married so soon?’ she demanded. ‘She can’t have loved Dad at all. It’s indecent!’

      ‘But she did love Joe very much, Pia, really she did. And it’s more than a year now. She and Tim just fell in love at first sight, that’s all.’

      ‘She’s too old to fall in love,’ she stated disgustedly.

      ‘Oh, I don’t think you’re ever too old, darling. And Tim is lovely—quiet and kind. You’ll like him, honestly.’

      ‘She doesn’t care if I’m there or not. She probably doesn’t want me coming along and making three.’

      ‘There you’re quite wrong. She does worry about you, and Tim is really looking forward to meeting you. He hopes you’ll make your home at Blessings with them.’

       ‘Blessings?’

      ‘That’s the name of his house. It’s Elizabethan, and Libby’s currently designing your bedroom in one of the original chambers, so if you don’t want to find yourself in a flowery bower, with the gilded rococo bed with cherubs she is talking about shipping over from Italy, you ought to get down here and tell her so.’

      ‘Cherubs?’ she said, horrified. Then she collected herself and said tersely, ‘It doesn’t matter: I’m not coming.’

      ‘Where are you now?’

      ‘Pisa, with Gina. But she says they’re coming here for their honeymoon, so I’ll have to clear out to London then.’

      ‘Look, do come just for the wedding, Pia,’ I cajoled. ‘Some of the Cazzinis are—your aunt Maria, for one.’

      ‘Aunt Maria’s coming?’

      ‘Yes, she’s already sent an enormous Gaggia coffee machine as a present, so I think you can take it that she approves! I’m sure she’ll be disappointed in you if you don’t come—and your mum will be deeply, deeply hurt.’

      There was a small silence. ‘I might come up from London with Aunt Maria, just for the wedding,’ she conceded sulkily.

      ‘I think that would be a very kind and generous thing to do,’ I said encouragingly. ‘And perhaps you could ring your mother and tell her? She’d love to hear from you and—’

      ‘No!’ she said explosively and slammed down the phone, her volatile and passionate Italian side clearly getting the better of her good manners. But I was sure Maria Cazzini would manage to persuade her at least to turn up on the day and be polite. I hoped so, because otherwise Libby would be devastated and it would ruin her big day.

      I rang her straight away and gave her an edited version of what Pia had said, because I knew it would be a huge relief to Libby just to know she was safe and well. Whether Pia turned up for the wedding would all depend on Maria Cazzini’s persuasive skills.

      At dinner last night (Spanish omelette followed by a blackberry version of Eton mess), I said to Ben that he seemed to have an awful lot of calls on his mobile lately, and was everything all right?

      I could tell something had been on his mind since he’d come back from London, even after he told me about Mary being pregnant, but I thought perhaps it had to do with his parents. He tends not to mention them to me; they’re a thorny subject.

      He took a deep drink of elderberry wine and said, Actually, darling, there is something worrying me and I haven’t known how to tell you. In fact, I thought it would just sort of…well, fizzle out on its own.’

      That was typical of Ben. He’d let problems slide in the hope they’d either simply go away or I would sort them out for him, by which time they had generally escalated.

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