Page 2 of The Secret Mistletoe Promise
Birdie had been telling her to get married, not to fret that she would be doing it without her grandmother there, but that wasn’t what had stuck in Imogen’s mind.If Edmund is the man of your heart.From the moment that email had pinged into her inbox two weeks ago – but in fact for a lot longer than that, if she was honest with herself – Imogen had been asking herself:Washe? The more she thought about it, the more she doubted it.
It was pretty terrible to finally alight on the answer as she was standing at the back of the church, having spent the previous twenty-four hours replaying the conversation she’d overheard between her husband-to-be and her father. ‘Great costume. What is it, Corpse Bride? Could go a bit heavier on the dead person makeup, but I like the mascara tracks.’
The man standing in the aisle was wearing a baseball cap backwards and what looked like three T-shirts layered over each other, the sleeves all different lengths.
‘Thanks,’ she said, because Halloween Corpse Bride was a simpler explanation than Genuine Runaway Bride. The man gave her a cheeky wink and sauntered down the carriage.
Imogen took out her compact and saw that he was right about the mascara tracks. Her dark blue eyes were surrounded by black smudges, presumably from the initialshocked burst of crying she’d done in the limo when she’d escaped, and the complexion her mother sometimes described as ‘porcelain’ was a couple of shades paler than it should be. She licked her finger and rubbed at the marks, and felt slightly better when she got most of them off.
‘Who are you going to see?’ the woman asked her.
‘My grandmother.’
‘She wasn’t at the wedding, then?’
‘She wasn’t allowed. It’s a long story,’ she added, at the woman’s bemused expression. ‘But I’m sure she’ll know what to do with me.’
‘Find you warmer clothes for a start.’
Imogen glanced at her suitcase on the rack above. It had been in the limo, because she and Edmund were supposed to go straight to the airport from the reception. It was full of clothes appropriate for three weeks in Mauritius, wall-to-wall sun and white sand, rather than a north Norfolk village with mud and frosty mornings.
‘Birdie’s a great knitter,’ she said. ‘If she hasn’t got any clothes for me to borrow, she’ll knock up a jumper in a few hours.’
‘She sounds wonderful.’
Imogen’s throat thickened. ‘She is. I can’t wait to see her.’ She stared out of the window and tried not to imagine the scene that must have played out at the church. She remembered her dad’s, ‘What’s going on?’ when she slipped her arm out of his, and she thought Edmund had called her name, but she hadn’t hung about and Seth hadn’t either, once she’d told him in a low, breathless voice that he needed to goright now.She was absolutely certain that in her thirty-one years on this planet, she had never caused so muchupset. She just hoped that, when she finally made it to the Norfolk village of Mistingham and her grandmother, she would be met with kind words and a hug, perhaps a cup of tea – not regular tea, but a Birdie special concoction – and she wouldn’t be forced to turn around and go straight back to London.
Imogen wasn’t used to causing a whole lot of trouble, and now that she had, there seemed only one thing to do: try and avoid the consequences for as long as she possibly could.
Chapter Two
Imogen hauled herself, her flouncy skirt and her suitcase off the train when it reached Norwich, a little after lunchtime.
Her stomach rumbled but she couldn’t face eating anything, not just because her bodice was tightly fitted, but because her insides were knotted with anxiety and guilt. She had never believed it in books when characters were too upset to eat – she always went straight for food – but now she discovered it was a real thing, and that made her feel even more disappointed in herself.
‘The next train for Mistingham leaves from platform three in ten minutes,’ announced the disembodied voice of the loudspeaker, and Imogen cursed quietly, picked up her skirts and her case and shuffle-ran around to the ticket machine, then platform three.
This train was much smaller than the London train and mostly empty, and Imogen breathed a sigh of relief as she squished herself and all her layers into a seat. Asit juddered away she watched the low-slung October sun dusting the bulky Norwich buildings, then the fields and rivers of the Norfolk countryside, with its golden light. She should find Birdie’s landline number and warn her she was coming, but the relentless beeping when she’d turned her phone on again to buy her Mistingham ticket had not been encouraging, and she felt safer with it off. It was an hour up to the coast, and then she would feel better, or – at least – less alone in her misery.
She must have drifted off, because she woke with her forehead pressed against the cold window, the announcer telling her they had reached the end of the line. She hauled her stiff, constricted body up and jerkily carried her suitcase to the door, and thought she must look like the full, authentic Corpse Bride right now.
The wind whipped around her as she stepped onto the platform, and the sea scents in the crisp air gave her such a strong pang of nostalgia that she smiled for the first time in hours.
The tiny, Toytown station was deserted, and it was a little way out of the village, so she knew she had a twenty-minute walk to get to the centre of Mistingham, unless by some miracle there was a taxi idling outside. Grinning at the hopefulness of that thought, she made her way through the empty foyer and out of the front of the station.
Ahead of her was a single-track road, the tarmac dusted with mud, a tall, leafless hedge flanking it on the other side. Beyond that there was nothing – no buildings or trees visible above the tangle of dark branches; no hills. This was wild, flat, beautiful north Norfolk. Imogen waited for the calm of being back here to hit, but the temperature was droppingand her aunt’s red blazer wasn’t that warm. She silently thanked the wooden signpost reminding her to turn right for the village, extended her suitcase’s handle, and started walking. She tried not to think about the mud and the delicate silk covering the low heels of her wedding shoes, the floor-length hem of her expensive dress. Could she return it, or save it for next time, perhaps?
‘You are OK, Imogen Rowsell,’ she said aloud, projecting her voice in the way her old drama teacher, Mrs Bligh, had taught her. A blackbird screeched and flew out of the undergrowth, and Imogen startled as it almost collided with her pink suitcase. She took a breath, then kept going.
‘You. Are.Fine.’ She enunciated each word, aiming for Tom Hiddleston in one of his serious roles. ‘This is a bump in the road, and at least you made adecision.For yourself. Even if it was at the very worst time, and … possibly the wrong one.’ She’d lost the Hiddleston diction pretty quickly, and as she turned left, following another signpost, she faltered. There was something up ahead, a glint of red in the afternoon sun. She took another step and saw that there was a bicycle leaning against a hedge. Imogen looked around, but couldn’t see anybody. She kept going.
‘You have given yourself breathing space,’ she went on, the steady rumble of her suitcase’s wheels a backing track to her pep talk.
‘From what?’ a voice said.
Imogen’s heart missed a beat and she came to an ungainly stop, her suitcase rolling over her hem. She turned around. There was a girl standing there, with long, curly dark hair and curious dark eyes, wearing a thick red parkawith a fur-lined hood. She had a tiny dog on a lead, a caramel-brown scruffy thing that couldn’t be more than six months old.
‘Hello,’ Imogen said. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’ Which was ridiculous because the girl had startledher.
