Chapter 42

42

APRIL

Lena didn’t want to get married. At least, she didn’t want to get married at High Elms, with the poached chicken in tarragon sauce and a load of terrible speeches and Annabelle Huntley making disparaging comments about her dress.

His mother had only said it as a joke, Tommy insisted. But that had been the final straw. They’d been up in Berkshire on a visit and Annabelle had badgered Lena about her wedding dress, asking to see a photo, saying it would be ‘their secret’. ‘We don’t want our outfits to clash, do we?’ she’d said. Heaven forbid, Lena thought darkly. And finally she’d given in and shown her a picture of the beautiful knee-length velvet dress she’d chosen, with the help of Shelley and Pearl, in a little vintage shop in Hackney.

Get married in red, wish yourself dead.

Lena was glad, actually, that she’d said it because her mind was made up then. The High Elms wedding was cancelled and, with Tommy in full agreement, they planned a small, casual ceremony at the registry office in Hackney Town Hall. Tommy’s parents refused to attend but he said sod them, silly fools. ‘We’ll have a far better time without them there. Let’s do it our way.’

And that’s what they’re doing on this bright and blue-skied April morning. Pearl stands next to handsome Brandon as confetti flies all around them like snowflakes. He and Abi broke up at Christmas. Although Pearl has managed not to grill him about it, she gets the feeling that Brandon had been swept along into a living-together situation, way before he was ready. Perhaps he’d been flattered that someone as loud and confident as Abi had wanted to be with him. But he’d seemed overshadowed, she realises now. He is obviously happier now – more like his old self – and is busily applying for better paid jobs with the plan to move into a house with his mates in the summer. Pearl will miss him of course, but it’s time. He is twenty-two now and the image of his dad. He loves Abi as a friend but he’s ready to do things his way now.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ he said, after Abi had moved in with a girlfriend.

‘What for?’ Pearl asked, although she knew of course. A week or so later a brand new Tom Ford lipstick arrived in a jiffy bag addressed to Pearl. Love A xx , was all the note said. But it meant so much more.

After the wedding ceremony everyone adjourns to a bar where they’ve booked a room for the reception. There’s a casual buffet and everyone drinks and laughs and Shelley makes a brilliant speech, kicking off with reminiscences about when the three women met, on a magazine in Soho, when the world was at their feet.

‘That was really good, Mum,’ Fin murmurs when she sits back down.

‘You think so?’ Her eyes are shining with tears.

‘God, yeah. You were amazing. I never knew you could speak in public like that!’

Martha beams at her and Shelley squeezes her hand. The party revs up then, growing more boisterous as dusk falls because, even though they’re all grown up now, everyone still loves to party. Lena’s parents and brothers and sisters especially. There’s no stopping the Manchester contingency tonight. Pearl dances with Lena’s dad, and Shelley dances with Lena and Tommy and Brandon and Daisy. Then suddenly it’s Pearl and Niall who are dancing together. He protests that he’s not much of a dancer, but is giving it a go anyway. And Shelley, ever keen to document everything, takes photos with her phone and sends them immediately to Michael at Shore Cottage. He replies straight away.

Michael

Looks brilliant! Really looking forward to seeing you next week and meeting the kids. Sure they’ll be okay being stuck out in the wilds for a week?

Shelley

They’ll love it.

And they really will, she thinks. Because the Highlands in winter was beautiful but Michael has assured her that it’s gorgeous in springtime too: lush and verdant, so different to how it was in the snow. Just as Shelley ‘showed’ him London via her instructions, he is looking forward to showing her his wild and untamed landscape, properly this time. Michael has mentioned that the Sampsons are keen to visit again too, as apparently Theo has talked of little else since Christmas. ‘Perhaps we won’t coincide this time,’ Shelley laughed.

Will anything happen between her and Michael? Not this time, she thinks. This trip is about her and the kids doing something fun together. But she feels that something is there, and that they have grown close over the past few months. And the thought of seeing him again fills her with happiness.

And now Lena and Tommy are leaving amidst cheers and frantic waving, heading off on their honeymoon to a little cottage on the Cornish coast. The party disperses with hugs and tears, and suddenly it’s all over.

Outside the bar now, Pearl takes Niall’s hand. ‘Shall we do it then?’ she asks.

He nods. ‘Yes, let’s do it.’

She grins broadly. ‘You really want to see it?’

‘Of course I do,’ he says. So they take a bus into Soho and she looks out as they pass the scruffy old bar where Dean proposed to her. Then they get off the bus, and they wander the streets together, hand in hand, and she shows him the magazine office where she met her best friends so very long ago. It’s not a magazine office any more. It’s a smart boutique now, but that doesn’t matter because she can still feel it: her young life, her past.

They stop at a newsagent where Niall buys a copy of the travel magazine and shows his Highland supplement to Pearl. Shore Cottage is featured prominently, illustrated by Niall’s own photographs. The perfect hidden bolthole, he’s written. A secret nook on the shores of the sparkling loch. ‘He’s going to love this,’ she enthuses.

‘I hope so.’ Niall smiles. ‘It was pretty special up there, wasn’t it?’

She nods. ‘It really was.’ Then they stop and kiss, right there on a warm evening with people milling all around. Kissing like young people. Like they never want to stop. And then they do stop and Niall says gently, ‘That thing you said, when Theo asked where Brandon’s daddy is now. D’you remember?’

‘Yes.’ She nods. And then wordlessly she looks up to the night sky. There are no stars to be seen because this is London, not the wild landscape around Shore Cottage. But Pearl knows, as she squeezes Niall’s hand, that just because she can’t see them, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Because the stars are always there.