Page 5 of The Island Villa

Her father had changed his life after the divorce. He’d given up his job in the city and spent his days focused on Adeline and his hobby, painting. He turned one of the bedrooms into a studio and spent all day splashing paint onto canvases while she was at school. Adeline didn’t know much about art, but those paintings had seemed angry to her. Part of her envied the fact that her father had an outlet for his misery. It had been an awful time.

Originally from Boston, her father had stayed in London for the duration of Adeline’s childhood, but the moment she’d left for college, he’d sold the family home and with the proceeds bought a small apartment so that they had a base in London, and a beach house on Cape Cod. He’d made that his home.

It had been a strange, unsettled childhood, but through all of it she’d never doubted her father’s love. It had been her father who had helped her with homework; her father who had cheered her on at the school sports day and tried to make her a costume for a Halloween party. Her father was the one constant in her life and even though they were no longer living in the same house, or even the same country, she always felt close to him.

Unlike her mother, he’d never married again, and that made her sad. She desperately wanted him to find someone special, someone who deserved him. But he’d stayed resolutely single, and she couldn’t blame him.

Being married to Catherine Swift was surely enough to put a man off marriage for life.

Still, she hated the idea that he’d never recovered from his relationship with her mother.

That was the reason she didn’t want to make this call. However she phrased it, this news was going to upset him. She was about to rip a hole in the life he’d carefully stitched together again.

She waited, holding her breath, and was almost relieved when he didn’t answer because she had no idea what she was going to say.

How was she going to tell him that her mother was getting married yet again?

How could she break the news in a way that wouldn’t cause him pain?

He’d been divorced from Catherine for more than two decades, but Adeline knew he still felt the hurt keenly. He still talked about her mother. Whenever he saw one of her books in a bookshop, he’d pause, pick it up and read the back.

“You can’t switch love on and off, Addy,” he’d said to her once when she’d asked him how he could possibly still have feelings for a woman who had treated him so badly.

Adeline hadn’t pointed out that Catherine seemed to have no problem switching it off.

And here was more evidence to support that. Another wedding. Another victim.

She ended the call without leaving a message. On impulse, she grabbed the letter from the table, stepped back into her apartment and dropped it into the trash on top of a pile of potato peelings and yesterday’s empty yogurt container.

One of the advantages of being an adult was that you could make your own decisions. And she’d made hers.

She wouldn’t be going to the wedding.

There was no way, no way, she was spending two precious weeks of her summer watching her mother make another huge mistake. It would be too difficult. It would unravel everything she kept tightly wound inside her. And the one thing she didn’t need in her life was another stepfather.

She’d send a regretful note, and her good wishes to the bride and groom, even though she didn’t even know his name.

His identity didn’t matter.

Whoever Catherine Swift was marrying this time, she felt sorry for him.

2

Cassie

“Two cappuccinos, one Americano and an Italian hot chocolate.” Cassie delivered the order to the noisy group who had bagged the table in the window.

She couldn’t stop smiling, and that was entirely due to the envelope tucked into the back pocket of her jeans. Her mother was getting married again, and how exciting was that? She was truly an inspiration. Cassie kept pulling the letter out of her pocket to read it.

Dearest Cassie, I’m writing because I have some exciting news that I wanted to share with you. I’m getting married again.

The fact that there was no mention of who her mother was marrying made it all the more romantic and mysterious. Why hadn’t she said something? They talked about everything, so why hadn’t her mother told her she was seeing someone? Maybe it had been a glorious whirlwind. Either way, Cassie was happy for her and couldn’t wait to hear the details.

Go, Mum, Cassie thought to herself as she moved a guidebook aside to place one of the cappuccinos in front of the group.

The moment they’d walked in, she’d thought tourists, and judging from the way they were studying maps on their phones, she was right. On the table next to them was a guide that offered advice on how to make the most of Oxford in twenty-four hours.

You can’t, Cassie would have said if one of them had asked her opinion on the matter, but they didn’t so she simply delivered their drinks and the two slices of lemon-drizzle cake (four forks, which meant they were either watching calories or cash) and returned to the counter where her fellow barista Felicia was entertaining herself by creating the perfect foam heart on the top of a cappuccino. Felicia was from Rome, and she’d been studying at Oxford for two years. She and Cassie had become friends the previous summer when they’d worked in the café together.

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