Page 98 of Unwanted Bride

She ran into him outside the bathroom. A bathroom that had not existed two weeks ago. It now had a large shower cubicle, gleaming blue tiles, and someone had placed a bundle of new towels tied with a ribbon.

“George? Lord M?” he asked.

“They had nothing to do with it.” The lad with the hammer had followed them in. “Well, except the bedroom.” He pointed. The biggest bedroom had a brand new mattress on the floor, still in its polythene cover. A note sellotaped to it read,We thought you would prefer to choose your own furniture but this is a start.

There was also a stack of folded yellow silk damask; Laura recognized it as some of the unsold stock from the Casemate’s previous work. The little card on it said,We think you need curtains here.

“There’s still a bit more work to do,” Evans said. “But we wanted you to see it.”

Lura was remembering the moment outside the church after the wedding when Evans having a quiet smoke as she and Adam discussed him losing his money.

“You paid for this?” she asked him, almost afraid of the answer.

He shook his head. “There is not one plumber, or roofer or carpenter on this island that doesn’t have a wife, a sister or a daughter. They will all need the mother-and-baby clinic one day. We know what he had to do and that he lost his own money to do it. We look after our own here.”

It took Adam several minutes to be able to speak and then all he could say was, “Thank you.”

They walked around the empty rooms. One day they would buy or make furniture to fill it. In the large living room on the mantel piece above the clean fireplace, a set of large printed photographs stood propped against the wall. One was of Laura and Adam outside the tea pavilion on the wedding day. Emmett must have taken it without their realizing. They were both smiling, looking into each other’s eyes as if nothing else in the world existed.

“Do you think it would be too narcissistic to frame this and hang it on the wall?” Laura glanced back at Adam.

“Why not? But perhaps you could also frame some of your flower and grass paintings.”

Laura laughed. There was nothing to sit on yet, but the walls would be fully decorated.

There was a discrete cough from the door. “I’ll take you home now,” Evans said.

Adam looked down at her. Somehow he seemed to have her in his arms. “If you don’t mind sleeping on a mattress with no sheets.”

“We have silk curtains for sheets, what could be better?”

“Then,” he told Evans, “I think wearehome.”

Laura laid her head on his shoulder. “Yes we are.”

The End