The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [104]
His eyes were glowing and I said yes to everything, agreed to everything, even though a part of me still wanted nothing to change, or to change more slowly. But it was too late for that. We had jumped off one cliff, and when we were married, there would be another cliff to fall over, farther, faster.
The next morning Vicky behaved as if the previous day’s conversation had never occurred—the weather was awful; would I be sure to give the hens more shells—but I caught her studying my waistline. Before I came to lunch, I took off my pullover and tightened the belt on my trousers. I was not one of those sudden girls, like Mrs. Marsden.
For all her silence to me, I soon discovered that Vicky had spread the word. When I ran into Nora, polishing the piano in the hall, she dropped the duster and seized my hands.
“I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,” she said. “You and Mr. Sinclair getting married. What a slyboots you are. Who’d have thought of him marrying one of us? It’s like something out of a fairy tale. Todd will be on the floor when I tell him.”
“Thank you,” I said, uncertainly.
“Oh, I’m forgetting myself.” She swung our hands, smiling. “Congratulations. I hope you’ll be very happy and not forget your old friends.”
“Of course I won’t.” But even as I spoke, I knew that my days of playing games in Nora’s living-room were over.
Her smile fading, she released my hands. “The thing I can’t help wondering, Gemma, is do you really love him? Money isn’t everything, and he’s so much older. Won’t you miss having fun?”
How could so few sentences contain so many insults? Last week I would have told her it was none of her business; did she really love her gullible fiancé? Now, as the future Mrs. Sinclair, I did my best to conceal my anger. “I think we’ll suit each other fine,” I said, handing her the fallen duster and hurrying away.
After lunch I sat down and wrote to Miss Seftain, telling her that, much to my surprise, I was going to be married next week. “It’ll be a small ceremony in Kirkwall,” I wrote, “just in the registry office. Later I hope we’ll have a proper church wedding and you can come. Don’t worry! I still plan to go to university. Mr. Sinclair says he’ll help me take the exams and apply.” Before I could change my mind, I addressed the envelope and fetched Nell. Together we bicycled to the village and she slipped the letter into the pillar-box. I heard the soft sound of it landing, already as far from me as if it had travelled a hundred miles.
That evening, sitting on the bench under the beech trees, Mr. Sinclair told me we would be married at the registry office at 11 A.M. the following Monday. We would catch the afternoon flight to Edinburgh.
“Why would we go to Edinburgh?” I asked. Above our heads the white scar left by the broken branch shone, and all around us the wind was shaking the plants and trees.
“For our honeymoon, Gemma. People don’t just come back to the house where they’ve been living as though nothing has changed. Wouldn’t that feel odd to you? Vicky and Nell wondering what we were up to?”
“Everything feels odd. How long will we be away? I have to make plans for Nell.”
Then he explained, as if it had been understood all along, that we wouldn’t be coming back. We would go directly on to London. His house was in a neighbourhood called Holland Park. It had four bedrooms, a garden; there were shops and restaurants nearby. Of course I knew he was needed at his office, but I had pictured us spending a few more days on the island. And then my visiting him in London, getting my bearings, before Nell and I moved there, irrevocably.
“But I won’t know anyone,” I said. “And what about Nell?”
“I have to work. All this”—he gestured towards the house in front of us, the fields behind—“costs a pretty penny. It’s not Seamus’s fault, but every year the farm loses money. As for Nell, she can come too, if that’s what you want.”
“Isn