Trisha Ashley - Wedding Tiers

Aggie made another throaty crooning noise and he lifted his camera—an old-fashioned one, I noticed, not a new digital job—and clicked the shutter.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘Sorry—habit. Do you mind?’ He had a very charming, apologetic smile that tilted upwards at one corner, but I wasn’t at all beguiled.

‘Yes, I do mind!’

‘Once a photographer…’ he drawled, looking at me assessingly with half-closed eyes. ‘And you do make rather a unique picture, standing holding that hen.’

I became conscious that my hair was blowing out in the wind like a banner, my feet were bare and frozen, and my red rubber gloves did little to add to an ensemble that consisted of a rather pulled green fleece over torn dungarees. ‘Maybe, but you should ask permission first!’

‘Sorry, it really was just impulse. Actually, I’m looking for a house called Blessings, if I have the name right. It sounds a bit unlikely.’

‘Blessings?’

‘Yes. You’ve heard of it?’

‘You’re practically next to it. It’s that Elizabethan pile over there. Are you…I mean, do you know Tim Rowland-Knowles?’

He looked that type—sort of minor public school, comfortably off and assured.

‘Not yet. But an old friend, Libby Cazzini, says she’s going to marry him, so, since I was passing nearby, I thought I’d pop in on my way back to London.’

‘You’re an old friend of Libby s ?’ I gazed at him like the halfwit he patently thought me, while my brain digested a couple of things. ‘Oh…then would you be that photographer she told me about—Jonah somebody?’

‘Noah. Noah Sephton.’

‘I knew it was biblical. And you’re out of luck, because Libby’s actually on her way to London, to buy her wedding dress. Maybe you’ll catch up with her down there, though she’ll be a bit pushed for time since she’s coming back tomorrow.’

He smiled again, rather attractively. And I suppose you wouldn’t be the mad friend who chose to stay in Neatslake when she could have lived in London, by any chance? I can’t remember your name at all, biblical or otherwise.’

‘Josie—Josie Gray,’ I said, wondering what on earth Libby had said about me. ‘Does she talk about me?’

‘All the time.’ He offered a long, slim hand and, hampered by the hen, I shook it awkwardly. Then he turned to survey the Green and the church behind it, with its strange, rather squat tower and said, ‘Well, it’s a pretty enough spot, but I always thought she’d had a dodgy start in life here and never wanted to come back again.’

‘So did I, but she always loved Blessings and now she loves Tim Rowland-Knowles too, so that’s the reason she’s coming back.’

I wondered if, perhaps, he had become more than just a friend since Libby’s husband had died (I knew her too well to think she would play around while she was still married); but he didn’t look upset or even slightly jealous, just interested.

‘So it’s really love, purest love?’

‘Definitely. Tim’s such a sweet man,’ I assured him. ‘They fell for each other the minute they met…or met again, because we’d played tennis with him when we were teenagers. I didn’t think he would remember us, because he’s a few years older and we were just tedious, giggly fifteen-year-olds at the time, but he says he does.’

‘Oh, well,’ he shrugged, ‘it seemed a bit sudden, but she’s old enough to know what she’s doing. Maybe I’ll see her in London, as you say. I’ll give her a ring. Should have done before I called in, only I was so near. And I did meet you, after all. I expect I’ll see you at their wedding?’

‘I suppose—’ I stopped, for the Jaguar’s passenger door had swung open and a girl with tousled blonde hair and the longest legs I’d ever seen got out. Even dishevelled, without makeup and in Ugg boots and a crumpled denim miniskirt, she looked beautiful. She just had to be a model, she had that ‘look at me !’ air about her.

‘Are you going to be much longer, darling?’ she asked Noah, ignoring me. ‘I’m freezing.’

‘Get back in the car then,’ he said shortly.

Behind her, Ben suddenly appeared in the cottage doorway, tall, tousled and chunky, a smear of ochre paint up one cheekbone. As always, I felt my face break spontaneously into a smile and my heart melt.

Noah, looking bemused at this sudden transformation from the half-propitiated virago of a moment before, moved aside as I wished him an absent goodbye and went in, hen and all—though not before he had whipped that camera up again.

I heard the whirr of the shutter and sincerely hoped he had forgotten to load it with film, or I might just appear in one of his exhibitions as ‘Portrait of the Village Idiot’.

When I told Ben who I’d been talking to, he was cross that I hadn’t introduced him.

‘He’s very well known and he’s photographed a lot of famous writers and artists. If he’d known who I was, he might have taken my picture and it could have done my career a bit of good!’

‘He seemed to be more interested in taking mine,’ I pointed out, ‘and Aggie’s.’ Under my arm, Aggie crooned agreement.

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