Page 1 of The Secret Mistletoe Promise
Chapter One
She looked like she’d chosen to be a Christmas snowflake for a fancy dress party, pure white and glittering, except that it was only Halloween and she was drastically out of place.
Imogen Rowsell sank lower in her train seat, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. She had commandeered a window seat at a table, but the skirt of her dress was fighting a battle with her allocation of space, and was puffing over the table and spilling out into the aisle.
She wished she could fold it up tight and tiny, like the expensive, windproof jacket Edmund had bought her last Christmas that had its own bag and could easily slip inside a rucksack. Unfortunately, none of the wedding dresses she’d looked at had advertised themselves as compact, though there had been that scrap-like slip that only worked if you were Audrey Hepburn. Imogen was five foot seven, a little taller than average, but shewasn’tAudrey Hepburn, and she had wanted all the flounce, the acres of white satinand glittering gems, because if she was getting married then she was doing it properly.
But now, smoothing her hand down the fabric and encountering the hand-sewn jewels only increased her panic, and the red blazer she had on over the top, trying to make herself less noticeable, was just another thing to feel guilty about. It actually belonged to her aunt Marjorie – her dad’s sister – and had been flung over the pew at the back of the church. This was the pew that Imogen had made it to when she’d walked in there on her father’s arm. At that moment everyone had turned their heads towards her, like a horde of ravenous zombies sensing warm blood, and in the distance she’d spotted Edmund, standing next to the altar, looking more handsome than ever in his morning suit. A tsunami of panic had risen up inside her and she’d slipped her arm out of her dad’s, grabbed the red jacket and fled – as fast as the flouncy dress would allow her – back to the limo.
‘London Liverpool Street!’ she’d shouted to the driver, as ifshe was in a heist film and he was her getaway; except it wasSeth, her best friend Nikki’s boyfriend, stepping in tochauffeur at the last minute because the original driver had come down with food poisoning. If ithadbeen the original driver, she wouldn’t have got away with it. He would have refused to budge, and she would have had to get out of the car and explain why she’d run away. Her mum and dad, Edmund and his family – his mum with her eternally pinched expression – would have talked her down, and right now she’d be married. She would be Mrs Goddon, sitting down to an extravagant wedding breakfast in a fancy London hotel, drinking champagne and thinkingwhat the fuck?
She was still thinkingwhat the fuck?but for a very different reason. She’d done it. She had trusted her instincts and escaped, and now she was on a train to Norfolk on Halloween, the sky a crisp, cloudless blue, the inner-city landscape slowly giving way to outer suburbs, to green spaces and school playgrounds, family neighbourhoods with cars and colour.
There was a woman in the seat opposite her, her dark-framed glasses slipping down her nose, a hefty tome on the table in front of her, who was clearly bursting with questions about why Imogen was on a train, on her own, wearing a wedding dress.
Imogen dreaded to think of all the messages and missed calls on her phone. She’d had to switch it on briefly to pay for her train ticket (it had been off, in her pearly clutch bag, so no junk mail WhatsApp pings would interrupt the vows) but now the screen was dark again so she could remain oblivious to the true extent of the trouble she’d caused.
‘Oh, my God.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘Oh my God oh my God.’
‘This isn’t your wedding vehicle of choice, then?’ the woman sitting opposite asked. Imogen was surprised she’d held out this long. ‘You’re not an avid trainspotter with a nostalgic reason for getting a Greater Anglia London to Norwich to the church?’
‘No.’ Imogen’s voice came out more strongly than she had expected. ‘No, I ran away.’ Saying the words out loud sent another powerful bolt of panic through her. ‘I didn’t want to do it.’
‘Lots of people get cold feet,’ the woman said calmly, as she slid her bookmark into her book and closed it. Imogensaw that it wasA Little Lifeby Hanya Yanagihara. Her friend Nikki had read it in anticipation of seeing the stage show, and said it was the most depressing book in the world, so Imogen had steered well clear.
‘I went cold all over,’ Imogen said. ‘It wasn’t just my feet. Fingertips, too.’ She waggled them. ‘I couldn’t do it. I ran away from my own wedding.’
‘And got the first train that was leaving the station? That’s very dramatic. At least it’ll be a story to tell your grand-children one day.’
Imogen shook her head. She could feel her intricate up-do starting to slip, her shoulder-length, dark brown hair escaping the diamanté clips now there was no reason to be fancy. ‘I had a specific destination in mind.’ She had been thinking of her grandmother more often recently, guilt gnawing at her because she hadn’t seen her for over five years. Bernadette Maddox had long been persona non grata to her own daughter, Imogen’s mum, for reasons Imogen didn’t entirely understand. She and Bernadette – Birdie – emailed each other and spoke on the phone, but Imogen hadn’t been to north Norfolk to see her for far too long. In Imogen’s teenage years they had gone away together every summer, travelling around the countryside in a campervan that must have rusted out years ago, but then Imogen had grown up and life had got in the way, and one missed holiday had turned into two, and then more.
Then Imogen’s mum had said that under no circumstances could Birdie come to the wedding, and Imogen had been horrified. It washerwedding, and she wanted her grandmother there. She had disobeyed her mother’s wishes and invited her, but Birdie had said she wouldn’t comebecause she didn’t want to upset the apple cart. It had made Imogen even less certain about what she was walking into. And now …
‘Escaping to the other man?’ the woman opposite asked, and Imogen couldn’t help laughing.
‘Oh God no. There isn’t anyone else. I would never do that to Edmund.’
But shehadjust left him at the altar, and wasn’t that almost as bad as cheating? She felt feverish, a cold wash of fear at what she’d done, and what she’d be faced with when, inevitably, after a couple of days, she went home to face the music.
‘I’m not really reckless,’ she said, needing to explain. ‘I’m not … I follow the rules. It’s easier, isn’t it?’ She tried to smile, and knew it wasn’t convincing.
‘Except today, it seems.’ The woman took off her glasses and pointed them at Imogen, and Imogen wondered if she might be sick. She scrabbled in her clutch bag and took out her phone. She went to turn it on and the woman said, ‘Are you sure? You don’t want to see this through?’
Imogen looked at the dark screen. No photo of her and Edmund grinning at the camera, wellies on and hair windswept on a biting spring day down in Sussex. ‘I don’t know if Icansee it through.’
‘You must have had a reason for running. It takes guts to do something like that.’
‘Or pure stupidity.’
‘Maybe a bit of both,’ the woman said, and Imogen thought that was fair.
She wanted to speak to her best friend Nikki, who would be jumping for joy that Imogen hadn’t gone through withit. Nikki had never liked Edmund, had straddled the line between being honest about what she thought of him and being supportive of Imogen’s choices. But she couldn’t turn her phone on because it would explode with the force of all the notifications. Had Seth given away her destination when he’d driven the limo back to the church? She hated the thought that she might’ve got him in trouble.
‘OK.’ Imogen rested her head against the headrest, watched the houses melt away in favour of golden fields edged by trees as the train reached Essex. ‘Notpurestupidity, but some stupidity. But also instinct. There was some of that going on, too.’ She closed her eyes and the woman didn’t reply, probably deciding that Imogen wanted to be left alone with her thoughts, or have a stress nap. She wished shecouldsleep, but she didn’t know if that would be possible ever again. She opened her eyes and looked at the scrolling information screen attached to the ceiling. ‘I could get off at the next station. Turn around and go home.’
She waited for the woman to tell her what to do, but she just looked at her over the top of her miserable book. Imogen was on her own. She had run away from her family and friends, all of Edmund and her dad’s lawyer colleagues, the wider Goddon family who weresotraditional, and … Birdie’s last email flashed into her head, the snippet Imogen had read so many times she knew it off by heart.
This isyourlife, darling, and you must live it how you want. There’s no point worrying what other people think, or canvassing friends and family for the answer, because if it’s not right foryouthen, sooner or later, you will realizehow miserable you are. If Edmund is the man of your heart, you must marry him and not worry a jot that I’m not there. All I want is for you to be happy. Go forth and have those wedding bells. Live joyfully!
