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Maybe meet someone and have more to offer than…
My gaze lands on my battered old Land Rover in the car park for a moment before sliding to the school building. The workmen started early this morning, like me, to get this school ready for Monday morning. Now there’s no sign of any of them. I do glimpse Charles taking the long way round the woods to his home, and that’s a good reminder for me to get busy.
The most direct path for him still needs clearing.
I’ll take these branches down and get to it next.
That’s what I intend to do, only I catch sight of Luke Lawson outside the school chapel. He’s joined by my noisy housemate’s boyfriend. I see the bright yellow of his construction hard hat for a moment between leaves. Maybe they’re discussing a contract issue about working on the weekend, and that’s why all the workers have downed tools when there aren’t many hours left.
I don’t have the same time to waste, so I get busy with my chainsaw, roaring and sawing, but maybe Luke Lawson shouldhave added an extra clause to my own contract about something I’ve done once already today.
I broke a toddler’s heart first.
Now I break a bride’s by ruining her wedding.
At least that’s what I assume when a bride runs below me. I glimpse a white veil streaming out behind someone in a hurry and instantly guess why.
Fuck. Luke said he was meeting guests at the chapel.
Did he mean at an actual wedding?
My chainsaw drops on its rope, plummeting like my heart does.
I chainsawed through her ceremony?
No one warned me.
Times like this, I wish I wasn’t locked into a perpetual team of one. If I worked shoulder-to-shoulder with my friends, I’d ask them if brides running away like this is normal. Stefan and Marc would know after hosting weddings on their farmland. That pretty headland of theirs with its sea view has seen a lot of happy-couple action.
As for me?
I’ve no clue about matrimony. Not that I’m a ball-and-chain avoider, but meeting anyone for more than a one-nighter is a challenge because here’s the problem with having to make hay while the sun shines. When I do have free time in winter, Cornwall turns into a dating Marie Celeste. A hot-guy Bermuda Triangle. Plus, there’s only so much rejection one person can take. Not that I blame Marc for choosing that handsome bastard Stefan. Or Stefan for locking Marc down before I got the chance to. I’m the fool who helped them get together, but they’re the romance experts, not me.
I still can’t help following my own heart by lowering myself down to the ground to head after someone whose veil billowslike the meringues Stefan’s mum makes for all of those pretty headland weddings. I also yell, “Hey! Are you okay?”
That runaway bride doesn’t answer or slow down, which is a problem as she heads down the one path I haven’t cleared yet. It’s a snarly jungle full of briars, sticky burrs, and brambles. She’ll get scratched to hell if she keeps going, so I yell even louder.
“Stop!”
She doesn’t.
I run, but my tool belt is fully loaded and heavy. I can’t catch her, not after she puts on a spurt of speed, but I guess I’d break land speed records as well if a shouting stranger speckled with bird shit and armed with blades was chasing me.
I grind to a halt then.
A big axe does hang from my belt. A bramble cutter too. Would I want my sisters to stop and chat in the same situation?
No, I fucking wouldn’t.
My chest heaves while I think. I’ve already ruined her big day by being noisy. Making it worse by chasing her can’t be an option. My only reason for unsheathing that wicked-sharp bramble cutter is to hack my way towards a glimpse of floaty whiteness.
She lost her veil.
It’s well and truly snagged, and freeing that gauzy fabric is near impossible when my hands shake, and I’m exactly as bad at saving this veil as I was at saving shots on goal when I was in too much pain to play through. I still try to rescue part of this day all the while wishing I had caught up with her.
To say sorry.
Because here’s the thing—sounddoescarry a long way in this valley. In contrast, this silence is awful. Even the wood pigeons who shat on me shut up while I scan the woods for someone who should stand out like a beacon if her dress is as white as this veil.
