Yet her wedding dress still hung in its plastic carrier on the front of the gaping wardrobe door. Where on earth was she? Wherever she was she must still be in the cream silk kimono Jacob had presented her with the previous evening, her hair in the huge Velcro rollers their hairdresser, Carl, had fussed over that morning.
Rosie dashed over to the window and peered down into the garden. Everyone was there now, and had taken up their positions ready for the imminent arrival of the bride. Even the minister, a local ginger-haired man with a comical comb-over who had christened both Rosie and Freya, was surreptitiously checking his fob watch.
‘Oh God! Trust Freya!’ muttered Rosie, her heart drumming at her ribcage and her breath quickening as panic began to swirl through her veins, depriving her lungs of essential oxygen. ‘The only thing she had to do was put on her bloody dress and turn up on time!’
Was that too much to ask? Yes, she guessed it was.
She sprinted out of the room and into the corridor, cursing as she wrenched her ankle running in her unfamiliar shoes. As she reached down to rub the pain away, a tinkle of laughter emanated from a door at the end of the corridor which Rosie had assumed was a linen closet next to the glass cube masquerading as an elevator.
She paused, straining her ears, and her heart softened. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. Freya was most likely snatching a few moments before the craziness of the wedding with the guy who had swept her off her feet. They must have got carried away and forgotten the time. Freya always had operated on a different time zone to everyone else. She replaced her smarting foot on the floor and tiptoed towards the door. As she drew nearer, her hand hovering over the ornate brass door knob, a deep-throated groan floated to her ears.
Rosie froze. Why had level-headed, reliable Jacob agreed to bunk off from his duties of herding his relatives for a snatched sojourn of delight with his fiancée, thirty minutes before the ceremony? Oh God! And here she was about to blunder in without even knocking!
Her face glowed with embarrassment as she cracked open the door and pulled it towards her. She stood immobilised in the doorway, mesmerised by the glistening bronzed back and the hint of incongruously white orb buttocks. She opened her mouth to announce her presence but words refused to form in her scrambled mind or on her lips which were parting like a gobsmacked goldfish. She began to retrace her steps until her shoulder bumped into the door jamb forcing out a gasp of pain, not from the collision but from the dawning recognition of the owner of the muscled torso.
‘God, Sis, don’t you ever knock?’
The man coiling his arms around her sister’s body twisted his head towards the interruption and mirrored Rosie’s horrified expression.
‘Giles!’
She was told later that it was the engagement of the fight or flight reflex – a mechanism that primes the body to attack when under extreme threat or to run away. A harsh whooshing sound reverberated through her ears and the urge to evacuate the contents of her stomach became almost irresistible.
Rosie spun on her heels, ignoring the splice of pain in her injured ankle and her shattered heart, and shot back down the corridor towards the staircase. Perspiration prickled at her armpits and beneath her breasts yet her mouth was dry as she struggled to swallow the rising bile. A clamp closed around her heart, squeezing out the air from her lungs until she was forced to pause on the landing to catch her breath.
Breathe, breathe.
Perhaps that solitary yoga session that Lauren had dragged her to would have some benefit after all. No, she was definitely going to vomit if she remained still. A tsunami of dizziness threatened to subsume her in its depths and a small part of her brain urged her to relent and to sacrifice herself to the desire for unconsciousness.
Think calm, breathe in, breathe out.
With a gargantuan effort to hang onto her breakfast, she reached her suite, groped for the handle and pushed her way in. The cloying perfume of the stargazer lilies Freya had insisted adorned every available horizontal surface assaulted her nostrils and scattered her senses further. She swooned and slumped down onto the bed.
What was she going to do? She had orchestrated every aspect of the forthcoming nuptials, personally supervised every aspect with as much attention to detail as she applied to any work project, right down to the texture of the table linen and even the bride’s honeymoon lingerie. Every second that she had not spent nose-to-screen, swinging through the corporate jungle where money is king and its accumulation the only goal worth pursuing, she had spent scouring the cathedrals of bridal consumerism. The day would run like clockwork, or it should if only her miserable, self-centred sister could keep her eye on the ball and her crazy libido in check.
A cold tremor invaded her chest as the full realisation of the treachery of the man she had given her heart to dawned on her. Freya was about to get married! How could he?
But worse than that. Freya was her sister! She knew Giles was her date for the wedding. She also knew how much Rosie had been looking forward to spending the day on the arm of the most eligible man this side of the Hudson River. Did Freya have to steal everything she had, including her boyfriend? Unbidden, her thoughts flicked back to the last incident when Freya’s selfishness had swept her breath away and the scolding she had taken from Lauren about not standing up for her right to pursue her own dreams without Freya’s taking precedence.
. She had been heartbroken when she found her mother’s eternity ring missing from her antique silver jewellery box which she still kept on her dressing table in her childhood bedroom above Hamilton’s Hardware Store where she grew up. But she had been even more devastated when she discovered that not only had the ring been removed by Freya, she’d had it remodelled to her own tasteless specifications as her wedding ring.
Was this despicable, self-centred behaviour her fault, too? She’d really struggled to forgive Freya for her truly contemptible behaviour this time. Her sister had known how much that symbol of her parents’ happy marriage had meant to her, that she herself had planned to wear it when she eventually found someone to spend her life with, someone as dependable, honest and considerate as her father.
When she had disclosed Freya’s deplorable, insensitive actions to Lauren she had been clear in her diagnosis that if she didn’t get a grip on her doormat tendencies with her sister and put herself first for a change, she would be looking at her sanity in the rear view mirror. Her best friend was right.
Her body had begun to shake and sweat had caused the man-made fabric of the hideous bridesmaid dress to glue to her skin. A spasm of humiliation shot down her spine as the full realisation of Freya’s betrayal slapped her square in the face. How could she possibly endure this blissful day after the horrific scene she had just witnessed? She knew the image would remain imprinted on her mind’s eye like a photographer’s negative for the rest of her life. How could she smile as her little sister married her handsome ‘prince’ with this knowledge bouncing around her head? It should be an occasion to wholeheartedly rejoice in, for a multitude of reasons, and now it would be a nightmare of averted glances and false smiles. All that hard slog organising every last perfect detail had been spoilt.
And how could she look Jacob in those dark brooding eyes of his with honesty and integrity when she congratulated him on becoming attached to her sister? Surely her expression would give her away; performing arts had never been her forte.
Why did this have to happen, especially today, especially when she had only just learned of the demise of her beloved aunt? She had not even been able to start grieving for her, so anxious were they to protect Freya from any distress on her special day – the best day of her life! Freya had certainly excelled herself this time.
Enough was enough!
She made a decision, and if she failed to act upon it immediately