‘Yes,’ she said. At last she would be part of a family; she couldn’t wait.
The street lamps had ended. They were driving along narrow, dark country roads between hawthorn hedges beyond which lay fields full of black and white cows which had a ghostly look as they moved, flickering and dappled, over the grass they grazed on. Here and there one saw a frilly-leaved oak tree, or an elm vaguely outlined against the night sky.
Pippa sleepily thought about her wedding dress, which would soon be finished. The village dressmaker was hardly what you could call rapid—indeed she worked at a sloth’s pace, whenever she felt like it, Pippa had decided—but the dress was exquisite, a vision of silk and pearls and cloudy fullness. Pippa had a final fitting tomorrow morning. She couldn’t take time off work; her fittings had to happen at weekends. Of course, Tom had never glimpsed the dress; everyone insisted that that would mean bad luck.
She already had her veil, but she had yet to buy the coronet she would wear to hold her veil down. She had been looking for exactly what she wanted for weeks, without success. Then on Friday evening, as she’d walked to the tube station, she had seen a coronet of pearls and amazingly lifelike white roses in a wedding shop in Bond Street. Unluckily the shop had shut at six o’clock, so she hadn’t been able to buy it. She would go back on Monday, during her lunch hour.
It had taken months to plan everything. She had often wished she had a mother to help her, but, being an orphan without any relatives, she had had to manage alone. The wedding had eaten up half her savings as she had no family to pay the costs. Tom had generously insisted on paying half, making himself responsible for the reception, the white wedding cars and the flower arrangements in the church.
Her green eyes slid to his profile, half in shadow, half lit now and then by moonlight, showing her a straight nose, floppy fair hair, a still boyish face. He was a wonderful man: tender, caring, warm-hearted. She had known him for four years and the more she learnt about him the more she liked him.
And yet… She sighed. And yet, she was still uncertain, troubled. He had first proposed two years ago, but she had gently refused that time, and the next two times he had asked her to marry him. Marriage was an important step; it meant far more than living together, or sharing a bed. She hadn’t had a family or a home as a child. She had been brought up in foster care, never feeling she belonged to anyone, or anywhere, envying other children who had parents who loved them.
She had no idea who her parents had been, in fact. She had been left outside a hospital one rainy spring night. Nobody had ever come forward with information about her background. Enviously she had watched other children at school who had a family, a home, something she was never to know.
In consequence she took marriage and family very seriously. To her, marriage meant committing to spending the rest of your lives together, and she wasn’t sure she could face that with Tom.
Oh, she liked Tom a lot, found him very attractive, knew him well. He was her boss. They had worked together every day in the same London office for four years, and had always had a good working relationship. Pippa enjoyed his company; he was a good-looking man, and when he kissed her or touched her she wasn’t repulsed. If they had not slept together it was because Tom had never insisted. Oh, they had come close to it, yet he had always drawn back, saying he wanted to wait until they were married. He wanted their marriage to mean something deeply important, and she was impressed by his personal integrity. She saw marriage in the same light. Sex was easy. A life commitment was hard.
And yet… She gave another sigh. And yet, something was lacking between them. She knew very well what it was: that vital ingredient. She had been honest with Tom from the beginning, telling him the truth about how she felt. She was not in love with him, even though she liked him so much, and to Pippa it was vitally important to love the man you married.
He had said he understood, accepted that, but he believed she would begin to love him once she was his wife, once they shared their lives fully, and maybe she would. She hoped so.
The car put on more speed. They were coming closer to the little cottage where Pippa lived. Tom came very fast round the final corner just as another car came out of a narrow lane to the right.
Pippa gasped, sitting upright, as tyres screamed on the road surface. Tom put on his brakes and tried to spin the wheel to avoid the other car, but it was too late. The cars hit each other with a violence that threw Pippa forward; she would have gone through the windscreen if her seat belt had not held, and if the airbag had not ballooned outward to cushion her fall.
For a moment or so she was too shocked to move or think, could not remember what had happened. Then she dazedly began to fight her way out of the billowing folds of the airbag, to sit up and take stock. At her side, Tom had also been cushioned by his own airbag, but he had already recovered enough to undo his seat belt and open the car door.
‘Are you okay?’ she shakily asked him.
‘I think so. Stay here,’ he muttered.
The other car, a long red sports car, was skewed across the road, its nose buried in the hedge.
Had the driver been killed? she anxiously wondered, as Tom began unsteadily to walk towards it, but then the sports car’s door opened and the driver emerged, a tall, lean man, whose immaculate evening dress seemed incongruous in this situation.
Pippa stared, her body pulsing with shock, her heart beating too fast inside her ribcage, her skin cold, her limbs trembling.
The two men faced each other, inches apart. ‘Are you hurt?’ Tom asked.
A deep voice answered curtly. ‘Just cuts and bruises. No thanks to you. What the hell were you doing, driving at that speed?’
Defensively, Tom countered, ‘Why did you pull out like that, without looking?’
‘I stopped to make the turn. When I looked left the road was empty. I started to come out, then you appeared at about seventy miles an hour. I had no chance to avoid you.’
It was true. Tom had been driving too fast; he should have slowed as he approached the junction. That was what he normally did, but at this time of night he hadn’t been expecting to see another vehicle turning out. It was pure luck that the accident hadn’t had worse consequences. They could all have been killed.
Tom didn’t argue; no doubt he realised he wasn’t entirely blameless. He was usually such a careful driver; it wasn’t in character for him to take risks.
Glancing past the other man at his red car, he asked, ‘Is there much damage to your car?’
They stood with their backs to Pippa, who huddled down inside her black velvet evening jacket, shivering, but not taking her eyes from them. Tom bent down to peer at the sports car’s long, sleek bonnet.
‘I’m afraid there are a lot of scratches on here.’
‘Yes,’ the other man agreed angrily. ‘It will cost the earth to have the paintwork renewed and the car is new. What about your car? Is that badly damaged?’
He was over six foot, with a long, supple back and even longer legs. As he half turned to glance back at Tom’s car she saw his strong features: hard, sardonic, an imperious nose, a generously cut mouth, heavy-lidded eyes, and the way his dark hair curled behind his ears.
He glanced at Tom’s car. ‘I see you have a passenger,’ he murmured. ‘An eye witness. A woman? I hope she’ll tell the truth if we have to go to court.’
‘Don’t be offensive,’ Tom snapped. ‘I admit, I was driving too fast, but I was on the main road. You were coming out of a small lane; you should have waited, let me go past. I’ll pay your garage bills; there will be no need to involve the police, or go to court. But if we did my fiancée would tell the absolute truth; I wouldn’t ask her to lie.’
The other laughed curtly, his manner making it plain