silence
followed them into the car, wrapped them round as they drove the few
miles to the Bosworths' house. Nick showed no inclination to break it,
and Alison didn't know where to begin. Perhaps they would never
exchange another word for the rest of their lives, she thought, a little
hysterical bubble of laughter welling up inside her.
She was glad Aunt Beth had prepared a buffet lunch, instead of a
formal meal round the long mahogany table in the dining room. That
way, she could pretend to eat and no one would notice.
There was only one couple at the reception she hadn't met—Nick's
cousin Judith, and her husband Alan.
'Welcome to the Bristow clan,' said Judith, her eyes fixed on Alison in
candid assessment as they shook hands. 'You look pole-axed!' she
added with a grin. 'I remember it had much the same effect on Alan
when it happened, and I'm much less formidable than Nicholas!'
'Don't you believe it,' her husband put in. 'We should have met before,
Alison, so that I could have talked you out of it. You're clearly far too
nice a girl to fall into the clutches of a hardened reprobate like Nick.'
Alison joined in the general laughter, forcing the muscles of her face
to smile until they ached. They were being kind, but she could sense
the astonishment underneath. They were wondering why the wealthy,
glamorous Nicholas Bristow had saddled himself with such a
nonentity, when he could have chosen almost any woman he wanted.
They were his friends as well as relations. They moved in the same
social circles in London. They would know his usual girl-friends—be
aware of what he looked for in his women. And for the life of her she
could think of no feasible explanation which would satisfy them.
Even her mother had adapted to the new situation with the speed of
light. She had stopped calling Nicholas 'that man' from the first day of
the engagement, and had in fact behaved as if the whole thing was a
love match engineered by herself in some way. Alison sighed
inwardly. Her mother had decided that long fraught encounter
between them had never happened, it seemed. And how nice it must
be to be able to ignore reality when it became inconvenient!
And reality was here and now in the shape of Melly, telling her that it
was time she went up to change.
'Are you going to leave your hair up?' Melanie asked as Alison
carefully took off her wedding dress and began to put on the soft coral
silky two- piece she had chosen as her going-away outfit.
'I don't think so.' Alison smiled rather carefully as she fastened her
zip. 'It was a nice effect for the occasion, but now I think I'd better
revert to being me again. And it's very much casual clothes and
relaxation on the cruise. He—Nick—stressed that,' she added, aware
of how difficult she still found it to say his name. 7, Alison Mary, take
thee, Nicholas..."
Melanie sighed luxuriously. 'The GreekIslands—how truly
envy-making! It'll be perfect now—all those wild flowers.'
'Yes, it should be lovely,' Alison agreed with deliberate neutrality.
Melanie picked up her wedding dress and began to replace it on a
padded hanger, her face pensive. She said suddenly, 'Ally—you are
happy, aren't you? It's all been so sudden and—miraculous, from my
point of view anyway, with Nick stepping in like this and taking over
all our lives. I suppose I've just taken it for granted that it's what you
want too. But it is, isn't it?'
'Of course.' Alison unpinned her hair and began to brush it with
smooth rhythmic strokes back into its usual shining neatness.
'Thank heavens!' Melanie hung the dress on the wardrobe door, and
spent a few minutes arranging and rearranging the folds of the skirt.
She said suddenly, 'I'm really sorry I said all those bloody stupid
things about Nick—and all that stuff in the paper. There was probably
nothing in it, you know. In fact in Sunday's paper, it said that Mrs
Monclair had gone back to her husband, and they'd had a
J. S. Cooper, Helen Cooper