Jessica Hart - Hitched!

‘Thank you,’ I said at last, forcing the words out. ‘I’d be very glad of a lift.’

‘My pleasure,’ said George.

To my annoyance, his engine leapt into life without so much as a murmur of protest. I cast a reproachful look at Audrey as George reversed out behind her, and changed gear.

‘You know, you could invest in a reliable car,’ he said, a ghost of amusement in his voice.

‘I couldn’t get rid of Audrey,’ I said, instantly on the defensive. ‘She’s a great car. It’s just that she can be a little...temperamental.’

Or downright contrary, at times.

George raised an eyebrow. Have you ever met anyone who could actually do that? Raise one brow? George could.

‘Audrey?’ he said.

‘She’s named after Audrey Hepburn. Because she’s so glamorous,’ I added when George seemed unable to make the connection.

‘Right.’ He glanced at me and then away, shaking his head a little, but I could see the curl at the corner of his mouth.

I pushed my seat belt into place with a firm click. ‘She’s got style,’ I said defiantly. Vintage, perhaps, but definitely style.

‘Lime green is an interesting choice of colour,’ George commented.

‘It’s not everyone’s first choice, I know,’ I said, ‘but she was the only car I could afford when I bought her. I washed dishes for three years to pay for a car of my own,’ I told George. ‘Audrey’s a symbol as much as a car.’

George swung the Land Rover out of the site gates and onto one of the narrow lanes that criss-crossed the Whellerby estate. ‘I’m surprised to hear Kevin Taylor’s daughter had to buy her own car,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t your father buy you one? It’s not like he can’t afford it.’

My face closed down the way it always did when I had to talk about my father. I hugged my arms together and looked out of the window. I hadn’t taken a penny from him since I left school, and I wasn’t about to start now.

‘I pay my own way,’ I said. ‘I always have, and I always will.’

TWO

‘I didn’t even know Kevin Taylor had another daughter,’ said George.

I kept my eyes on the hedgerow brushing past my window. ‘Few people do,’ I said. My voice was perfectly even, the way I had trained it to be when I talked about my father. ‘I’m not sure he even knows himself any more.’

‘How long is it since you’ve seen him?’

‘Six years. I made the mistake of asking if he’d come to my graduation,’ I said. ‘He went to New York on business instead.’

As soon as I said it, I regretted it. I couldn’t think what had possessed me to tell George Challoner of all people about that bitter memory. I tensed, waiting for the sympathetic noises, but he surprised me.

‘I haven’t seen my parents for four years,’ he said, and I slewed round in my seat to look at him in surprise. He was so golden, so effortlessly charming. I couldn’t imagine him falling out with anyone.

‘Why not?’

‘We had an...er...disagreement,’ he said, lifting one hand from the steering wheel and spreading it in an eloquent gesture of resignation. ‘It culminated in one of those never-darken-our-doorstep-again conversations, and so I haven’t.’

‘I know what those are like,’ I said, unprepared to find myself sharing some fellow feeling with George.

‘Fun, aren’t they?’

‘Fabulous,’ I agreed. ‘Can’t get enough of them.’

‘Still, at least you’ve got your sister,’ said George. ‘I did family estrangement as a job lot. I haven’t seen my brother since then either.’ He spoke lightly, but I sensed the pain lurking, and I looked away.

‘Perhaps I should be grateful for Saffron, then,’ I said, keeping my tone light to match his. ‘Although if she upsets Lord Whellerby and anything goes wrong with Hugh’s contract, I will personally strangle her and then I’ll end up without any family either.’

‘Don’t worry about Roly,’ said George reassuringly. ‘He’s really not the grudge-bearing type.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ I gnawed fretfully at my thumbnail.

‘Is your sister really going to marry Jax Jackson?’ George asked to distract me after a moment.

‘Half-sister,’ I said automatically. ‘And so she says. I’m not really sure what it’s all about,’ I confessed, shifting back with a sigh to look out of my window where the hedgerows were a blur of spring green.

‘As far as I can tell Jax was a mediocre pop star until he started dating Saffron and became a celebrity. Now he’s on the cover of all those glossy magazines you get at the checkout in the supermarket. He seems to spend most of his time on tour, but Saffron’s so thrilled by the idea of getting married that he appears to be incidental to the whole process.

‘It’s going to be the wedding of the century, I gather,’ I added with a sigh. Ever since Saffron had announced her engagement, she had been in a frenzy of wedding plans, and if I never heard the word wedding again right then, I’d have been more than happy.

George glanced at me. ‘So are you going to be bridesmaid?’

‘No, thank God. Saffron did ask me, but obviously only because she thought she should, and when I said I didn’t think I’d fit with her other bridesmaids and would rather just be happy for her on the sidelines, she was so relieved it was funny. I really don’t blend with Saffron’s décor,’ I said to George. ‘She’s a socialite and I’m an engineer...you can probably imagine how much we have in common!’

‘I’d certainly never have guessed you were sisters,’ he agreed. ‘You don’t look at all alike.’

‘No, Saffron’s gorgeous,’ I said without rancour. ‘Her mother was a model, and Saffron gets her looks from her, not my father. Saffron’s blonde and bubbly and beautiful, and I’m...not.’

I wasn’t looking at George, but I could feel the blue eyes on my profile. Instinctively, I lifted my chin a little higher to show him that I didn’t care.

‘No one could argue that you were blonde,’ he said. ‘And I’d put you down as prickly rather than bubbly, but otherwise I think you underestimate yourself.’

‘You don’t need to be polite,’ I said, in what he probably thought was a very prickly way. ‘I know I’m not beautiful. I’m not ugly either. I’m just...ordinary. As my father never tired of telling people when I was younger, Saffron got the beauty, and I got the brains.’

‘Ouch.’

‘It’s true.’ I shrugged. ‘Saffron and I are so different it’s almost comical when we’re together, which isn’t very often.’

‘And yet it’s you she rings when she’s upset.’

‘That’s because she doesn’t have a mother. Tiffany ran off with her personal trainer when Saffron was a baby, and she died a couple of years after that. I always felt sorry for Saffron. She was the prettiest little girl, and she’s always been the apple of my father’s eye, but nobody really had any time for her.’

‘So you’re the big sister?’

‘That’s right. I was seven when my father decided a model suited his image better than my mother. Mum didn’t want a divorce, but when Tiffany got pregnant, Dad insisted. His company wasn’t as successful as it is now, so the settlement was fairly modest, and Mum and I had a very ordinary life. We lived in the suburbs and I went to the local school.

‘It was fine,’ I said, pushing away the memory of my mother weeping at night when she thought I couldn’t hear her. It hadn’t been fine for her. ‘But I had to spend two weeks every summer with my father, who was super rich by then and kept getting richer. It was like being dropped into a whole different world. I hated it,’ I said.

I sighed. ‘And then Mum died when I was fifteen.’