The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [156]
Diane took a deep breath. ‘There’s been someone else,’ she told him, striving to keep her voice light. ‘He…I…He is married and so, because of that and because…because I couldn’t bring myself to share with him what somehow I still felt belonged only to you, we didn’t go through with it. But I planned to, Kit, and I wanted to,’ she told him with painful honesty. ‘And I’d be lying if I said anything else. Kit,’ she protested as he crossed the space between them and took hold of her, wrapping his arms around her.
‘Now I’ll tell you something,’ he said hoarsely. ‘All those other girls – it was all just a great big sham, Di, a lot of talk and noise in public but nothing in private, because, like you, I just couldn’t, not with anyone who wasn’t you. Please tell me you’ll take me back.’
For her answer Diane laced her hands either side of his face and held it tenderly whilst she raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him.
For a few seconds he let her, and then he took the control from her, holding her and kissing her with fiercely thrilling sweetness that melted her bones and dissolved all of her pain.
‘My landlady will be back in a few minutes,’ she warned him breathlessly, half an hour later.
‘Good. She can be the first to congratulate me on our re-engagement,’ he teased her. ‘Which reminds me. Your mother said to tell you that she’s had a word with the vicar and he’s said he’ll have a talk with us on Sunday about a date for the wedding.’
‘A date for the wedding. Is that all? I thought she’d have had the wedding dress, the cake and the whole thing sorted out by now,’ Diane laughed.
As he bent his head to kiss her, Kit told her softly, ‘She has.’
EPILOGUE
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Jess marvelled, easing off her shoes and wriggling her toes in front of Ruthie’s mother’s parlour fire. ‘Who’d have thought that first time me and Ruthie met up wi’ you at the Grafton, Diane, that we’d all be here now wi’ all three of us getting wed before Christmas?’
‘It just goes to prove that you never can know what’s round the corner,’ Diane agreed. ‘Especially in wartime. You’ll be the first of us to be married, Ruthie.’
With only a week to go before Ruthie and Glen’s marriage, the three girls had been busy all day checking all the arrangements, and now they were relaxing over the much-needed cup of tea and some toast, which Ruthie’s mother had made for them, before going round to spend the evening with her neighbour.
‘Your mam’s come on ever such a lot just recently, Ruthie,’ Jess commented. ‘You’d never know her for the same person now.’
‘No, I know. Our doctor says it’s a little miracle. He reckons that having Glen around, and me and him getting married, has done her the world of good. Time was when I was that worried about her, I even got to thinking that she might try to do away wi’ herself or summat.’
‘Well, you don’t need to worry any more,’ Diane to her gently. ‘Not now you’ve got Glen.’
‘I still can’t believe my own good luck,’ Ruthie smiled happily, before adding, ‘It’s ever so nice of you to put off taking up your transfer back down to where your Kit’s stationed so that you can come to me and Glen’s wedding.’
‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ Diane assured her. ‘It was really kind of you and Glen to include Kit. He’s going to come up on Friday, and then we can travel back down to Cambridgeshire together afterwards. Don’t forget, will you, that Kit and I want you all to come down to our wedding?’
‘And then you’ll have to come back up here for mine,’ Jess reminded her, before turning to Ruthie to say, ‘I’m going to miss you when you go off to America.’
‘That won’t be