Page 38 of Finding Love at Roseford Blooms
‘I’m just glad someone else is doing the catering!’ Lucy joked. ‘It’s nice to be able to relax and enjoy myself.’
‘Amen to that,’ Finn replied. ‘And it’s great to see Serena and Montana so happy.’
‘It is,’ Simon replied. They took another moment to observe the newly-weds, arms around each other, talking to a famous director and her husband, and the lead actor in the last film that Montana had co-starred in. ‘They look absolutely lit up, even after a night partying.’
‘They’re not the only ones,’ Lucy observed, a twinkle in her eye.
Simon, Lizzie noticed, didn’t answer, but he shifted a little closer to her. She was grateful for his presence, and reassured that she was being accepted into this group of friends.
As if on cue, Sarah Treloar joined them. Lizzie tried to stop her heart from racing, but she still couldn’t help tensing, and Simon clearly noticed, he was already so good at reading her.
‘Hi,’ she said as she turned to Lizzie. ‘How are you doing after the last couple of days?’
‘Oh, not too bad,’ Lizzie replied, trying to keep a light tone in her voice. ‘It’s been lovely to be a part of it.’
Sarah regarded her thoughtfully, and as the others began to make conversation, she drew a little closer to Lizzie. ‘Look, can we have a word when you’re ready?’ she asked in an undertone.
Lizzie nodded. She’d half suspected this moment would come, once she’d told Simon what had happened to her, and his sister’s part in it. ‘Sure.’
‘Thank you.’ Lizzie looked directly at Sarah for the first time, and was shocked to see the relief and gratitude in the other woman’s eyes. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be such an awful conversation, after all.
33
A couple of minutes later, Lizzie and Sarah walked outside to the pretty walled garden at the back of the pub. The sun was out in full force now, but thankfully Dave, the landlord, had had the foresight to pull out the canopy shade attached to the building and open up a few of the parasols on the generous wooden pub benches.
Simon, realising that this was a moment that the two women needed to navigate on their own, had excused himself on the pretext of going to get something from the very generous buffet lunch that had been provided by the brides. He had, however, tacitly checked in with Lizzie with a gentle touch in the small of her back and a kiss on the cheek before wandering away. She was sure she hadn’t imagined that whispered ‘good luck’ that had tickled her ear as he’d moved away once again.
The two women sat down at a table a little away from the rest of the guests who were seeking sunshine on that glorious lunchtime. Lizzie noticed that Sarah looked nervous and suddenly felt an absurd need to be the one to reassure her. Given their history, this was ridiculous. If anything, Lizzie was the one who should need the reassurance, but something about the way Sarah kept twisting the stem of her champagne flute suggested she was the one on the back foot.
‘I’m sure you can guess what it is I wanted to talk to you about,’ Sarah said after taking a deep breath.
‘I assume that Simon has been talking,’ Lizzie replied as she took a quick sip of her own glass of champagne. ‘I suppose I should be angry with him for breaking confidences, but under the circumstances, and after all this time, it feels pointless to get cross about it.’
Sarah stared down into her glass for a long moment before she spoke again. ‘Until he reminded me about that night, I’d forgotten it had ever happened. That’s kind of how it is with school, isn’t it? You don’t forget the things that affect you, but you don’t recall the things that affect other people, even if those things were terrible.’
‘Funny,’ Lizzie replied. ‘I seem to be able to recall pretty much everything about you and your gang of friends. The clothes you wore, the hairstyles you had, the boys you fancied and the things you did to make my life so difficult.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘But I take your point. I’m sure you don’t have any memory of me.’
From the flushed expression on Sarah’s face, Lizzie knew she’d hit the nail on the head. ‘But that’s what it’s like on the outside. I bet you can recollect all about my sister, Georgina, though. She was, after all, one of thechosen ones.’ Even Lizzie was surprised by the bitterness in her own voice as she mentioned her sister’s name.
Lizzie saw something flaring in Sarah’s eyes at that last remark.
‘Oh, Georgina. I remember the way everyone looked at her and how bloody jealous I was of her. How I only invited her, and you, of course, to my party because then I knew the St Jude’s boys were guaranteed to turn up.’
Lizzie felt a flare of defensiveness about her sister, and it was a sensation that surprised her. She’d always resented Georgina’s popularity; why did it rankle, therefore, that Sarah had openly admitted that she too had been taken advantage of for Sarah’s own ends?
‘So you were using her, then?’ Lizzie said quietly. ‘You weren’t really her friend?’
‘Was anyone anyone’s friend back then?’ Sarah said bleakly. ‘Weren’t we all just trying to survive?’
‘Oh, don’t give me that!’ Lizzie retorted, fired up by the conflicting feelings about her sister andfinallytalking to Sarah about that night that haunted her. ‘Your notion of survival at school is a whole lot different from mine, I can assure you of that.’
Sarah sighed. ‘For the record, I’d no idea Nina was going to humiliate you like that. But she’d pressured me to invite you to the party as well as Georgina, and, like an idiot, I went along with it because I wanted to please them. I was young, and stupid, and I’m deeply ashamed that what happened to you happened in my family home. And for all that, I’m sorry, Lizzie. I really, really am.’
For years after it had happened, Lizzie had rehearsed how she’d react if she ever came into contact with Sarah or her friends again. She’d imagined that she’d be full of cutting remarks, desperate to hit back against Sarah for the trauma she’d endured that night, for being embarrassed in front of everyone, in that awful dress and terrible make-up. But now, she merely felt a kind of calm emptiness. It didn’t seem to matter any more to get back at Sarah; they were both adults, and they’d both lived twenty years of their lives in between then and now.
Finally, realising that Sarah was waiting for some kind of a response, Lizzie spoke again.
‘It was a horrible thing,’ she began. ‘And you and your friends had so much power to stop it from happening, if you’d bothered to. But you didn’t.’ She took a sip from her nearly empty glass just to break the moment a little before she continued. As Sarah tried to interject, Lizzie held up a hand. ‘No. I’m not finished. Twenty years is an awfully long time to wait for an apology, but, to be honest with you, it’s not as if I’ve been wasting my life because of it all. Simon did a lot that night to try to repair things, even though, bless him, he hadn’t a clue what had happened. And I’ve gone on and done what most people try to do: lived my life on my terms. Being back in Roseford has made me face it, but it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference to my life as it is now.’
