Free Bridesmaids Revisited by Dorothy Cannell Page B

grandmother Sophia was married off all in a hurry to William Fitzsimons.”
    What was she implying?
    “Poor lass! Didn’t get the white wedding that was planned,” said Frank.
    “Meaning?” Irene radiated a blue-eyed interest.
    “On account of her father dying so sudden.”
    “Couldn’t have been any other reason.” Tom gave me a smile that bordered on the benign. “Not with her being a vicar’s daughter. Bound to have been too busy doing the altar flowers and helping her mum entertain the ladies of the Women’s Institute to get up to tricks. Besides, she was your very own grandmother, wasn’t she, love?” he added as if this put the seal on it.
    “It’s very interesting getting a sense of Knells’s past and present,” I said, “but I really should be doing something about getting my car out of that ditch.”
    “Allow me.” Tom sounded like Sir Walter Raleigh preparing to spread his cloak at my feet, where there happened to be a puddle remaining in one of several potholes in the lane. The sky showed patches of blue. There were only a few clouds to be seen and even they were drifting away over the fields like threadbare underwear blown off a clothesline. I wondered what the weather was like in Norfolk, and if Ben and the children had managed to get out on one of the nature walks so prominently featured in the Memory Lanes brochure. When I refocused, it was to see that Irene, Susan, and Frank had gathered alongside the ditch, heads nodding, arms waving, as they issued a stream of instructions to Tom on how to back up without running one of them over.
    Shadow, the dog, pawed at my raincoat, and being the rangy mutt he was, he managed to leave muddy prints from hem to collar. I was tempted to turn around and let him do the back as well. That way, the bridesmaids might think I was wearing a smart, up-to-date leopard print, which I could later give to Mrs. Malloy, who was partial to the safari look. But the woman with black and orange hair was at my elbow, talking to me.
    “This must be a real trip down memory lane for you, Mrs. Haskell.”
    I felt a chill, which had nothing to do with the breeze blowing strands of hair across my cheeks. “Susan said something about...” I watched the cottagers scatter as the car jerked out of the ditch. My voice was doing the same thing—coming out a lurch at a time. “Do you really have them ... psychic powers, I mean?”
    “Why?” She was looking at me intently and there was something about her perfume, softly floral—like violets on a windowsill—that set me further off balance.
    “It was only that I was thinking just seconds ago about my husband and children.” Shadow sat at my feet, one ear cocked as if eager not to miss a single word of what he clearly expected to be a fascinating disclosure. “They’re staying at a holiday camp place called Memory Lanes. You’ve probably heard about them. They’ve been springing up all over England over the last few years. The way Butlins’ did years ago. My parents thought they were awful. All that raucous ‘let’s have fun’ and the beauty pageants, the worst thing since sliced bread. Or were they around before that?”
    Now I was talking too fast, one word toppling over the other. “Of course it was the logical thing for you to say, about my taking a trip down memory lane, I mean. After all, you do know I’m here to visit people I haven’t seen in years, who live in the house where my grandmother and mother grew up. But, well ... are you psychic?”
    “Do you believe people can be?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    She smiled and it was as though she drew me inside herself, back to a place I knew and loved. This stranger with the weird, wild hair. And the eyes that had me feeling as though I were looking into a kaleidoscope of fractured memories. Part of me wanted to climb into the car that Tom now had back on the road. The rest of me needed to stay right where I was, rooted not only to the past and present but also to