Two Weddings and a Baby Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Scarlett Bailey

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Sneak Preview of The Memory Book

  Copyright

  About the Book

  From reluctant bridesmaid, to accidental mother...

  Tamsyn Thorne has not been back to her home town of Poldore for five long years.

  But now her brother, Ruan, is about to get married and she has no excuses left.

  Her plans to arrive in Cornwall looking chic and successful are dashed when a huge storm turns her from fashion goddess to a drowned rat. Worse, she ends up insulting the local hunky vicar – and then finds a tiny baby abandoned in his churchyard…

  About the Author

  Scarlett Bailey has loved writing stories since childhood. Before writing novels she worked as a waitress, cinema usherette and bookseller. Passionate about old movies, Scarlett loves nothing more than spending a wet Sunday afternoon watching her favourite films back-to-back, with large quantities of chocolate.

  Scarlett also writes novels under her real name Rowan Coleman. Currently she lives in Hertfordshire with her husband, five children and a very large collection of beautiful shoes.

  To find out more, visit her website at: www.rowancoleman.co.uk

  Facebook or Twitter: @rowancoleman and @scarlettbailey

  Also by Scarlett Bailey:

  Just For Christmas

  Married by Christmas

  Santa Maybe (digital short)

  The Night Before Christmas

  Writing as Rowan Coleman:

  The Memory Book

  Dearest Rose

  Lessons in Laughing Out Loud

  The Happy Home for Broken Hearts

  The Baby Group

  Woman Walks Into A Bar

  River Deep

  After Ever After

  Growing Up Twice

  The Accidental Series:

  The Accidental Mother

  The Accidental Wife

  The Accidental Family

  Praise for Scarlett Bailey:

  ‘Festive fun from the Queen of Christmas chick lit’ Fabulous Magazine, Sun on Sunday

  ‘A delicious Christmas read!’ Tricia Ashley

  ‘I LOVE it! It was funny, romantic and the perfect book to snuggle up with – Scarlett Bailey does it again!’ Miranda Dickinson

  ‘Endearing and funny, we loved this gorgeously Christmassy romcom’ Closer

  ‘A light, fun and fast-paced chunk of chortlesome chick-lit’ Heat

  ‘An awesome Christmassy read with a lot of twists and turns... you can’t put it down’ Chicklit Club

  For Debbie Ann Pokorny and Joel Llande

  June 2014

  Dear Debbie

  Since the moment I met you, I have wanted to be with you, and it only took me eight years to make it happen! You have made me so happy, and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you, and our children.

  So, Debbie, will you please make me a very happy man, and marry me?

  With all my love, always,

  Joel

  xxx

  Chapter One

  It was raining, which seemed appropriate. Tamsyn Thorne’s home town of Poldore was welcoming her back in exactly the same way it had bid her farewell more than five years ago – under a cloud.

  ‘Nice day for it,’ Tamsyn told the cabby, who’d picked her up at the train station, as she wiped away the condensation from the side window and peered out at the grey, wet Cornish town, shining in the summer rain. Poldore looked, as ever, as if it was tumbling down the hill towards the Atlantic – as if one good nudge might be enough to send it floating out to sea, like a sort of picture-postcard Atlantis.

  ‘They reckon it’s going to get worse before it gets better,’ he mumbled. ‘They were saying something about a super-storm on the news, whatever that is. Apparently we’re getting all of everyone’s weather in one go …’ Tamsyn wasn’t really listening. She was too busy looking, and taking it all in.

  Poldore, the place where she had grown up, not knowing or caring about what world lay beyond the moors and the woods she roamed with her sisters and brother, when they were all little. And then later the place where she had first fallen in love, first kissed a boy in what was known as Kissing Alley behind the church. It was where she’d first stayed out all night at a party after telling her mum she was at a sleepover, lost first her father, then her best friend, then her brother, who had once been her closest sibling and who now barely spoke to her from one year to the next.

  This was Poldore, and Tamsyn was back, against her better judgement, for a wedding, for her younger brother’s wedding. Ruan Thorne, so close to her in age that he had felt like a twin for much of her life, was getting married.

  Tamsyn was fairly amazed that she had been invited at all, never mind been asked, or rather told by her mother, who had expertly wielded all the emotional-blackmail weapons she had in her considerable armoury, that she was going to be a bridesmaid.

  ‘You’re sure Ruan wants me to be a bridesmaid at his wedding?’ Tamsyn had asked Laura Thorne as she’d gazed out of her Parisian office window the day her mum called to tell her the news.

  ‘He’s having you as a bridesmaid,’ Laura had told her. ‘All of you girls, plus Lucy is going to be chief bridesmaid – you know she and Alex are best friends now? It’s going to be so lovely. All my children back together in one place, first time in years. And as you know, it’s my first proper visit back since, well, since we lost your dad and I moved to Suffolk with Keira. I need you all there for me, Tamsyn. And there’s nothing like a wedding to smooth things over, I always say.’

  ‘Do you always say that, Mum?’ Tamsyn had asked her. ‘I’m fairly sure I’ve never heard you say that, and also, if you remember Keira’s wedding, that was when Aunty Jean told Esther Hamble that she was a harlot and they haven’t spoken to each other since, except to issue death threats and slanderous rumours.’

  ‘Well, that’s different and you know it,’ Laura had said, and the tone in her voice was enough to tell Tamsyn that she was not about to be bested. Tamsyn had heard that tone a lot during her life, and for a good deal of her life she had ignored it and done what she pleased anyway. It wasn’t until fairly recently that she had realised that when her mum spoke to her that way, it wasn’t to try and contain or oppress her; it came out of a deep-seated worry for her child. God only knew that Tamsyn had given her enough to worry about, living out her role as the family’s black sheep with quite some commitment, and yet her mother had always been there for her, whatever she’d done. Still, being a Thorne, she couldn’t entirely shy away from an argument.

  ‘�
�He’s having” is quite a lot different from “He wants”, Mum,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Well, Alex wants you all there,’ Laura said. ‘And Ruan would never say no to Alex about anything. That girl – she’s made the world of difference to him, Tamsyn. Maybe now is the time to set things right between you two. He’s happy and settled, and so are you at last – it’s all water under the bridge now, surely?’

  Tamsyn had known there was no point in hesitating. If she’d said no at that moment, she would only eventually say yes at some point later in life, but it was more than the impossibility of saying no to her mother once she had her mind set on something. She missed Ruan, she regretted what had happened, and that was why she had left her highly successful and fashionable life in Paris and travelled all the way to Cornwall to wear a shop-bought, off-the-peg bridesmaid’s dress which her sisters had gleefully told her entailed puff sleeves, and – God forbid – a great big bow. But it would be worth it, it would all be worth it, if she could know that Ruan had forgiven her. It was time, more than time to make amends to her brother. There was only one very slight obstacle standing in their way. It just so happened that in keeping with the family tradition, Ruan and Tamsyn Thorne were two of the most stubborn people ever to be related to each other in the history of mankind.

  ‘You can drop me here,’ Tamsyn told the cabby as they reached the top of the town. The Poldore Hall Hotel was where the wedding reception was due to be held, and where she had booked herself a room, politely declining the offer to stay with Alex or in Alex’s mother’s cottage. (According to Keira, Alex’s mum, Gloria, was something of a force of nature.) The hotel was situated high on the hill overlooking the estuary with views out to sea and only a couple more minutes’ drive away. Tamsyn was already late for the family dinner in the Silent Man, however, and she knew from experience that walking the steep and narrow streets of Poldore was always much quicker than trying to drive them. She was nervous enough about the prospect of being back in the fold of the whole family once again, and turning up late could easily be misconstrued as something ‘old Tamsyn’ would have done, the girl who didn’t care about anyone or anything, including herself.

  ‘You sure? It’s really coming down out there now.’ The cabby peered out of his window, as if rain rather bemused him. ‘Seems like no one told the weather it’s meant to be June. Forecast says it’s going to rain like this for a week; there are even flood warnings in place, and they reckon it’s going to get really bad tonight. Just hope the flood defences hold.’

  ‘Shame,’ Tamsyn said, smiling briefly as she handed him some cash. ‘Not exactly wedding weather, is it? Still, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you thornier …’ She smiled at what had become the unofficial Thorne family motto.

  ‘Or gives you a nasty cold,’ the cabby smiled at her. ‘Enjoy your stay in beautiful Poldore.’

  ‘“Enjoy” is probably not exactly the right word,’ Tamsyn muttered to herself as she slammed the car door shut and the cab pulled away. Well, this was it; there was no turning back now. It was time to face the music.

  Pulling the collar of her white 1950s Chanel raincoat up around her neck, she snapped open the handle of her Louis Vuitton suitcase and took a moment to pause and look down at her home, its edges blurred by the rain. It almost seemed as if, the moment she stepped out of the cab, she’d stepped back in time and she felt exactly the same as she had as a teenager, kicking against the constraints of her Cornish life, desperate to break out. She couldn’t wait to be free.

  Hunching her shoulders against the rain, Tamsyn set off towards the harbour and the pub. Five days: that was all she had to make things right with Ruan. Five days, and then it would be back to Paris, back to Bernard du Mont Père, back to her career as a junior fashion designer at a leading cutting-edge label and back to her real life. And five days wasn’t very long to fix a rift that had lasted five years, but she was going to try. Five days wasn’t so very long at all. Especially if she could spend most of it drunk.

  Her hopes of arriving at the family dinner in the local pub as a sleek, beautiful, totally transformed Paris fashion plate were being comprehensively dashed by the persistently heavy rain and the brutal wind that grabbed handfuls of rain and hurled them gleefully in her face. By the time she got to the Silent Man her hair, twisted into a chignon at the nape of her neck, would be frizzing itself into a wild frenzy and her black eyes, carefully lined with kohl, would soon mostly resemble the style statement of a panda. Oh well, Tamsyn thought, I’ll always have my Louis Vuitton case – they can’t take that away from me.

  Her intention had been to go straight down to the pub, and not even look at Poldore’s central church. St Piran’s stood in the centre of a small graveyard, at the intersection of three roads, all of which eventually led back to the same place. Tamsyn started to hurry by, averting her eyes from the ancient building, as if somehow even acknowledging it would change things. But when the moment to walk past it actually arrived, she discovered she couldn’t do it. It was impossible to pass by, her pace slowing even as she determined to hurry, rivulets of running water swelling into little streams around her feet. Eventually she came to a standstill.

  How could she not say hello to her best friend? Her best friend, whose empty grave was one of the most recent in the graveyard, the last to be dug before the diocese declared that it was full.

  Tamsyn stopped noticing the water drenching her as she remembered the day she’d heard the news that her friend was lost at sea.

  There had been a fight, a fight between Merryn and Ruan, and Merryn had gone out on her boat to calm down. It was something she had done a thousand times, a million times before. Like all of them back then, Merryn had learnt to sail practically before she could walk. Most kids in Poldore spent their lives on boats the way other children spent them on bikes. No one could have known that when the weather turned suddenly she would be taken by surprise. And even then no one would have guessed that Merryn – bright, funny, clever Merryn – the girl that used to make Tamsyn laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe, would never come back from a quick little trip out around the harbour.

  Tamsyn bit her lip as she found her way to Merryn’s gravestone, the white marble shining like new amongst the old mossy stones that surrounded it. It was in a peaceful spot, set in the ground beneath the cedar tree. And there had been no coffin, just a small metal box of some of her favourite things, mementos that her family and friends had collected. Tamsyn had put a few things in, including a photo of the two of them as teenagers, sitting under this very same cedar tree. It had been on this very spot where she and Merryn had first tried their hands at smoking, where they used to drink cider on a Friday night, waiting for the boys they liked to walk by. Oh, how they had riled the vicar; he’d sent them packing a hundred times, but they would always come back. Hanging around in the graveyard, kissing boys in the alley that ran behind the church. The vicar had never been particularly sympathetic to their claims that it wasn’t their fault, they didn’t have anywhere else to go and it was impossible to get served in a pub in a town where everyone knew your name. They had been tearaways, the two of them, it was true. But they never meant anyone any harm; they had just been trying their hardest to feel alive.

  For a moment as she looked down at the stone at her friend’s name, etched into the marble, Tamsyn didn’t care about rain, or the cold. Just for a moment it was that warm spring evening again, the evening Ruan had first noticed that Merryn – newly crowned the Queen of the May – wasn’t just his big sister’s sidekick any more. And it was here, under this very tree, where her brother had fallen hook, line and sinker for her best friend. At first Tamsyn had been a little jealous, but soon enough the three of them became a little unit, a band of dreamers and adventurers leading the town’s youth astray, making campfires in the woods, forming new bands from week to week, writing terrible poems and reciting them under a full moon. Tamsyn had drawn a portrait of each and every one of her friends in black charcoal, and she still h
ad them in a folder somewhere, all except one. The one she had drawn of Merryn was buried beneath Tamsyn’s feet.

  They’d had this idea that they were the first children of Poldore ever to really understand the world and what it was about. They thought that all of the generations before them had simply been sleepwalking. But even then the differences between Tamsyn and her brother had started to grate. She was always plotting ways to leave, and Ruan was always thinking of ways to keep Poldore alive. When their mother declared that she was leaving Poldore for Suffolk, to be near her eldest daughter Keira, who had been barely more than a child bride, nineteen-year-old Tamsyn had jumped at the chance to go with her. Soon after, she had escaped to university and then to Paris. Whereas Ruan had stayed, even taking on the responsibility for their baby sister Cordelia, despite the fact that he was only eighteen. It was inevitable, Tamsyn supposed, as she looked down at the plaque, that someday Merryn would have had to choose between them. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to hide the tears that merged with the rain, even though there was no one there to see them.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, standing there in the pouring rain?’ A male voice, followed by a hand on her shoulder, startled Tamsyn so much that her wet, irresponsibly shod feet skidded out from underneath her for a moment, so that she wobbled like a baby gazelle, and was as much reliant on her captor to steady her as she was keen to be out of his clutches.

  ‘What? What do you want?’ she demanded, spinning to face the stranger, taking an unexpected slippery step towards him as if she was indeed fronting up for a fight.

  ‘Oh, oh God, I’m sorry …’ he said, squinting in the rain as he took in her face. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

  Tamsyn narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s your trick, is it? See a woman, standing alone in a graveyard, for God’s sake, and use the old “I thought you were someone else” excuse as a trick to try and feel her up? What kind of a pervert are you?’