Katrina Cudmore - Second Chance With The Best Man

Downstairs she busied herself with staring at the landscape paintings of country scenes hanging in abundance in the hallway as she waited for him, and when his footsteps tapped, tapped, tapped on the marble stairs as he jogged downwards, she realised how much she missed his endless energy and enthusiasm for life. She gave him the briefest of smiles when he came alongside her, tried to ignore how good he looked with his damp hair, his pale blue shirt open at the neck worn over lightweight navy trousers, tried to ignore how his freshly applied aftershave flipped her heart with the memory of waking to find him crouched beside her, dressed for work, a cup of tea in one hand, a plate with toast in the other, his brilliant smile turning her weak with happiness.

‘Ready to go?’

She nodded to his question and followed him to the front door. As he was about to pull the ancient handle that opened one side of the heavy double oak doors she could not help but ask, ‘Will he be out there?’

He turned, confused at first by her question, but then reached out as though to touch her forearm. Hannah jerked back, unable to bear the thought of him touching her. Afraid for how she would react. For the briefest of moments he looked thrown by her reaction before he dropped his hand. Opening the door, he answered, ‘No. Bleu knows to stay in his kennel when I send him there.’

Tentatively she followed him out onto the gravelled driveway. ‘Did you inherit him from your parents?’

He walked to the side of the château, past a parked four-by-four, and opened the doors of one of the five stone-crafted single-storey outbuildings that were set back from the château. Daylight flooded the building to reveal a silver sports car. Hannah swallowed the temptation to exclaim at its beauty.

‘I didn’t inherit Bleu but this car I did inherit. My father is an avid vintage-car collector. He moved most of his collection to an outbuilding at the lodge but left this car here as there wasn’t enough room for it. He wanted to sell it but my mother persuaded him to keep it within the family. I don’t get to use it as much as I’d like to...’ he paused and glanced out at the blue, cloudless evening sky ‘...but this evening is the perfect night to take it for a run.’

Hannah watched him manually lower the soft top of the car, the pit of disappointment in her stomach at his answer having her eventually ask, ‘So where did you get Bleu?’

In the initial days and weeks after Laurent had returned to France she’d held out vain hope that he might call, change his mind, her heart slowly splintering apart, but after a month of silence, her heart a void, she’d accepted that it was truly over between them. But somehow, the thought of Laurent choosing Bleu, knowing her fear of dogs, spoke more than a year of silence of him moving on from her.

After he’d left she’d been numb, but eventually, when she’d grown exhausted by the emptiness inside herself, she’d insisted that her heart mend. She’d worked harder at fixing her heart than at anything she’d ever tackled before. She had thrown herself into her work and her training course to become a wedding celebrant. She’d filled every minute of every day with work and exercise and reading and meeting up with friends and family.

Only once had she slipped up and shown just how deeply devastated she was. She’d taken her newly acquired wedding celebrant certificate to show to her parents on the day she graduated from her course. Her dad had been out at the weekly livestock market in their local town, but her mum had made a fuss of her achievement, even opening a celebratory bottle of champagne. In the comforting cocoon of her childhood home, once the euphoria of achieving the qualification had worn off, she’d realised how tired and lonely she really was. And when her mum, with her usual gentle perceptiveness, had asked how she was, the tears had come. Hannah had fought their spilling onto her cheek, not wanting to upset her mum. She’d just nodded instead at what her mum said in response to her hiccupped short explanation before quickly changing the subject to a much happier topic—her sister Cora’s pregnancy and the much-anticipated arrival of the first grandchild into the family.

Later, back in London and alone in her apartment, she’d reflected on what her mum had said and taken some solace from her observation that at least she was risking her heart now and living life as she should be, with its invariable ups and downs, joy and disappointments. Hannah had been taken aback; she hadn’t realised that her mum saw through how much she was protecting herself. Which was silly really—her parents were the most empathetic people she knew. Of course they understood why she struggled so much to trust others.

She’d met her parents when she was seven. She hadn’t wanted to be in their house; she hadn’t wanted their smiles, their kind voices. Their encouragement to eat her food, to play with their daughters, Cora and Emily. She had wanted to be back in her old house. With her birth parents. But the police had taken her away and now she had to live with new people. She’d been so scared. Above all else she’d hated change. Because it meant things might get even worse. She’d known how her birth parents operated, but not these strangers.

Now opening the passenger door for her, Laurent moved to the other side of the car. It was only when they were both seated inside the car that he turned and answered her question. ‘I found Bleu one night when out running in the woods of the estate. I heard his whimpering first—the vet believes he ate some poison a local farmer may have put down. He was already an undernourished stray. We didn’t think he’d pull through. But he did. He’s a gentle giant. But I’ll make sure he’s locked away while you’re here.’

Hannah swallowed at the tenderness of his tone, at the emotion in his eyes. Torn between her deep fear of dogs and the guilt of locking away this poor animal who had been through so much already, she answered, ‘No, don’t, that’s not fair on him. I’ll keep out of his way.’

Turning on the engine, which started with a low throb, he turned and regarded her. ‘I can introduce him to you if you want.’

She jerked in her seat, instantly terrified. ‘No, don’t.’

He gave her a concerned look before backing the car out of the garage. When he’d turned it in the direction of the drive he said, ‘You never really explained to me why you’re so scared of dogs.’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve always been petrified of them, it’s just one of those things.’ Which wasn’t true. She could remember a time when she wasn’t scared. But like so much of her early childhood, the story of why she feared dogs was one she’d locked away inside herself years ago.

Laurent’s gaze narrowed. For a moment he looked as though he was going to probe further but then, putting the car in gear, he sped off down the drive and out onto the narrow lanes of the Cognac countryside.

The wind whipped against her hair. She tied it back with an elastic band from her handbag. Despite her anxiousness about the entire weekend, for a moment she felt exhilarated as they zipped along and she smiled to herself as the force of the warm air blasted against her skin. The car was small. Laurent’s thigh was only inches away from hers. She tried to focus on the low hedges they sped by, the endless bright fields of smiling sunflowers, the gorgeous order of vineyards with their row upon row of vines, and not the way Laurent’s large hands clasped the wheel, the assured way he handled the car. They slowed behind a tractor. Hannah felt a jolt of nostalgia for her Shropshire childhood. The rides with her dad out on his tractor. The carefree days filled with her dad’s laughter, the late evenings of drawing in bales of hay. But even then a part of her could not help wonder how she’d managed to escape from what came before, wondering if one day she’d have to go back to it.