‘I can’t believe we have to go already,’ I say, folding up a dress and putting it into my suitcase.
‘I know,’ Rohan says. ‘I wish we could stay longer. It’s like a little bubble here. I don’t want it to burst when we get home.’
I know exactly what he means. Since Amy and the wedding party left on Saturday, we’ve been the only guests at the B&B again, and now it’s Monday – three weeks to the day since we arrived.
And it’s been a little cocoon of happiness. For once, we’re not pretending to be a couple – we actually are. And when we get home, it’s not going to be the same.
What if it fails once we’re back in London, back to being apart every day, back to Two Gold Rings versus The Man Land? Neither of us have got any proof about the church one way or another. Neither of us have done what we set out to do. We haven’t got to the bottom of the story, and now we both have to put the essence of Edelweiss Island into words that our bosses are relying on to kick each other out of a job.
I don’t even mind if he never wants to get married. I don’t mind if he hates weddings. I just like being with him. Everything feels right in the world when I kiss him. And I don’t want to lose that when we get back home.
But we can’t stay any longer. Oliver has been on the phone asking questions about what I’ve found out and how much longer it’s going to take, and Rohan’s boss has been doing the same. And there doesn’t seem to be much point in staying. We know about their wedding packages now, we’ve seen inside the church, we’ve got photos, we’ve got all the inside scoop there is to get on this island. There doesn’t seem to be anything else to find. And if there is, maybe it’s for the best that we don’t find it. Edelweiss Island feels magical – a kind of magic that everyone who gets married here should experience. I don’t know what Rohan’s going to write, what exactly he thought he was going to find by sneaking around the church the other day, but I don’t want to ruin the enchanted feeling and the charm of the island.
‘Do you want to run up the hill and say goodbye to Puffin with me?’ Ro asks.
I look at the clothes folded in piles across the bed. ‘The boat’s leaving in less than an hour and I’ve left packing too late. Besides, I wouldn’t want to intrude on such an emotional goodbye. Give him an extra kiss from me.’
‘Ahh, I’ll take any excuse to kiss that gorgeous dog.’ He kisses my cheek and backs out the room. ‘Won’t be long.’
I look at the closed door behind him, my mind wandering to R.C. Art again, wondering if he’s really going up there to say goodbye to Puffin or if it’s only an excuse to do more snooping. What was he expecting to find when he snuck off in the middle of the non-wedding on Friday? Is he still looking, even an hour before we leave? Am I ever going to trust him not to be R.C. Art?
No matter how many times we’ve kissed, no matter how good it feels, he’s still an anti-marriage columnist, and we’re never going to agree on what he writes and vice versa. He still wants to disprove the myth of no-divorces, and even as his girlfriend, I can’t stop him. Not that we’ve actually put a label on it yet, but girlfriend seems most appropriate, apart from fiancée, which feels right but also a bit wrong now we’re actually dating. It’s just because we’ve been ‘engaged’ for the past three weeks – that’s all. Habit. What you get used to and all that.
I have to stop thinking about Rohan and get on with packing. I get things out of the wardrobe and fold them neatly on the bed. Ro’s bag is open on the floor, clothes pouring out of it in screwed-up balls. The blue shirt I threw red wine across that Clara cleaned for him is still in the wardrobe and he’s obviously forgotten about it. I take it off the hanger, fold it neatly, and crouch down by his bag, pulling out a screwed-up pair of jeans and a pile of T-shirts.
I roll my eyes at his terrible packing and start folding them, pulling out the tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt he’s been wearing as pyjamas, stuffed into the bottom of the bag. I start folding everything up, thinking about him at home alone tonight unpacking this bag. Hopefully it’ll make him think of me. I’m trying not to think about how lonely it’ll be when I get back to my flat after sharing a room with him for the past three weeks.
I go to put his folded clothes back in his bag, but a piece of paper catches my eye, buried under his toiletries at the bottom, under his notepad and pens, being kept flat. I know I shouldn’t touch it, but I remember what he said about writing on pen and paper, and I’m sure it must be his article. And I have to know. I have to know if he’s really changed as much as he seems to have since that first boat ride. I have to know if he’s still going to be R.C. Art, if I can trust him when he says he’s not writing anything bad.
The edges are crumpled when I pull it out, like he’s used it a lot. It looks like the pages of notes I scribble down when writing articles. I refer back to them again and again and the paper ends up looking well worn by the time I type my article up on my laptop.
I know I shouldn’t have pulled it out in the first place, and I know I shouldn’t read it, but his neat handwriting draws me in, and once I’ve read the top line, I can’t stop myself.
Because it’s exactly what I dreaded it would be.
I don’t even need to read the whole thing. My eyes automatically pick out the highlights.
‘Miracle’ chapel that attracts pathetic women in droves.
Sad sacks flock to this contrived island, revelling in the daft belief that the building where their wedding takes place will somehow influence the happiness of their marriage.
Desperate women in their mid-thirties, feeling the tick of the biological clock, desperate to marry the man of their dreams in a church that promises them a happily ever after. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.
How foolish do you have to be to believe this crap?
Somehow, the con-artist of a vicar has managed to sell out weddings in this church – a marriage there as hard as getting Adele tickets, but much less fun. I’d rather spend seven hours on the phone with hold music playing in my ear and a robotic voice thanking me for my patience every four seconds than suffer another person telling me how magical Edelweiss Island’s church is.
Women who have been planning their weddings since they were ten years old and making Barbie walk down the aisle with Ken. Adult women who still believe in Prince Charming. Women who are tragic enough to buy their own wedding dresses when they’re not even dating anyone. You have to wonder what goes on in their minds. Why are they so frantic to get married? Why are they so keen to take an easy route?
The whole island is set up to part you from your money and turn your previously sane other half into a happy-clappy ‘Church of No-divorces’ devotee.
Run away, men. If you hear someone talking about the meaning behind an ugly white flower made famous by The Sound of Music.
Run away if your girlfriend starts sympathising with the salespeople who live on the island, and believing them to be anything other than personas invented to invoke sympathy and sell, sell, sell. It’s the equivalent of believing the dodgy used car salesman who tells you he has the same model of car himself and has never had a moment’s trouble with it.
But worry not, we’re here to uncover the truth behind this genius wedding con and hear the inner thoughts of the saddos who think it’s all for real. The loser brides so desperate for a happily ever after that they’re willing to believe in anything, even something as phony as a magical church.
What a sad life these people must lead to fall for it. We extend our sympathies to any men who get involved with them.
I don’t realise I’m crying until tears splash onto the paper and blur his words.
I knew it was too good to be true. I knew he was too good to be true. And there it is in blue ink on white lined paper. The truth. What he really thinks about the church, the islanders, and me. Because that’s me in those lines of biro scratched across an A4 refill pad. The woman so desperate that she bought a wedding dress without a wedding in sight. The woman who’s dreamed of getting married since she was ten and holding her own doll weddings. The woman desperate enough to believe anything.
Even that there was something real between us.
That’s what hurts the most. I honestly thought he could be my Prince Charming. Maybe not in the way I’d always imagined but who am I to argue with fate when it throws two people into each other’s paths like it did with me and Rohan? It’s never been about the big white wedding – only about finding someone who wants to spend the rest of their life with me. And I’d started to think that person might be him.
I look down at the pages in my hand. This is it, isn’t it? This is all he wanted. The inside scoop on Edelweiss Island and an inside look into the mind of one of the sad desperados who’d love to get married here. And I’ve served up both on a silver platter with a sprig of parsley. I pretended to be engaged to him to gain access to the church, I shared my feelings with him, and now this is what he’s going to publish, a typical R.C. Art column making fun of the church and the people who love it…
And what’s worse is this will undoubtedly be a reader-winning angle for The Man Land. It’ll be the end of Two Gold Rings. How can I out-write him? There is no evidence that the church is anything but a con. People want to believe that it’s a con. You don’t need evidence to convince them. However, I’d need some pretty solid records of no-divorce statistics to prove otherwise, and what have I got? Nothing but a feeling, a stupid, intangible sense of romance on the island. Am I everything he says I am? Just sad, lonely, and pathetic enough to believe in something that’s clearly designed to sell, sell, sell. Just like R.C. Art said from the moment I met him.
Because he will always be R.C. Art, won’t he? It’s almost ironic the number of times I’ve thought it since we met and told myself that R.C. Art was just a character and Rohan was different, and he’s always said it was the real him, and he wasn’t lying about that, was he?
I shake myself and stuff the pages back into his bag, ramming his clothes in on top of them and shoving everything down.
I’ve got to get out of here. The honeymoon suite I shared with him is suddenly suffocating, and I throw the rest of my clothes into my suitcase, not worrying about neatness or folding them nicely now. I do one quick scout of the room and run, dragging my suitcase as fast as I possibly can. I don’t want him to come back while I’m still here. I don’t want to have to face him. I don’t want to tell him what I know. If I see him, I won’t be able to pretend I didn’t find those pages.
Clara’s polishing the banisters at the bottom of the stairs when I get down to the reception area.
‘Bonnie!’ She takes one look at me and her face falls. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, Clara, I’m fine,’ I say so chirpily I could rival a sparrow at daybreak. ‘Just checking out!’
‘You and your lovely fiancé?’ She puts her polish and duster down.
‘No, just me. He can do whatever he wants.’
Clara puts her hands on her hips. ‘I knew there was something wrong. What’s happened?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, trying to pretend she didn’t hear the wobble in my voice.
‘Tea!’ she exclaims. ‘Tea and chocolate biscuits. Now. Come on through.’
‘I can’t, Clara. The boat—’
‘The boat doesn’t leave for over half an hour. You’ve got time for a cup of tea with an old woman who knows when something’s going on. What’s he done, dearie?’
The affection in the pet name is too much and my eyes fill up despite my best efforts. Clara’s at my side in an instant, embracing me, her warm and comforting sandalwood scent surrounding me, and it’s too much, and I feel myself sobbing as every bit of strength leaves me.
Clara leads me through the door behind her makeshift reception desk and into a private living room area. She deposits me into a squashy leather armchair in a manner that says she’s one step away from telling me to sit and stay.
‘What’s he done?’ Clara hands me a cup of tea so quickly it’s like she had just magicked one to appear from under her arm. It’s in a dainty little china teacup and saucer with three chocolate biscuits on the side.
‘He hasn’t done anything, Clara,’ I say. ‘He’s exactly who he’s said he is all along. It was me who thought he’d changed.’
‘Changed from what? The columns he writes?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ I lean heavily against the wide side of the olive-green armchair. ‘I thought he was feeling something for me and I was feeling something for him… but he’s not. And I’m not.’
‘He’s crazily in love with you, Bonnie. And you with him.’
I go to protest but she cuts me off. ‘And don’t tell me otherwise. I’ve seen a lot of love come through the B&B’s old doors, and I’m never wrong. You’re such a lovely couple, I could tell from the moment you walked in three weeks ago.’
I give a bitter laugh at how deluded she is. ‘We’re not…’ I stop myself and wonder why I stopped. Why don’t I just tell her the truth? She’s going to find out anyway, particularly when Rohan publishes his article. She deserves to know the truth, and she should hear it from me before it ends up in print. She’s been nothing but nice to us since the moment we got here, and I hate the fact that we’ve betrayed her, but I’ll hate myself even more if I still keep up the lie.
‘We’re not a real couple,’ I admit, tears filling my eyes again as I say the words out loud. Tears for how happy I’ve been since Friday night on the beach. Tears because for a couple of days, we were a real couple. ‘We met on the boat on the way over. No reporters had been getting anywhere and neither were we. We decided that instead of going home empty-handed, we’d pretend to be engaged to get access to what was really going on here. I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to deceive you, but our magazines are in this stupid competition with each other and we were both in trouble with our bosses and—’
‘Oh, dearie.’ She reaches over from her seat on the sofa and pats my leg. ‘Do you honestly think we don’t know that?’
‘You know?’ I say, expecting her to snatch the teacup out of my hand and throw me out the door with a flourish of her feather duster.
‘You don’t really think you’re the first reporters to try it on, do you?’
‘I… yeah, we did actually. Ro suggested it and I thought he was a genius to have that kind of imagination.’
She laughs, a little tinkle of a sound that bounces around the room. ‘People have been writing about “the little cathedral of Edelweiss” for years now. Many reporters have come and gone after trying every trick in the book.’
‘How come no one’s ever written the truth about it then?’
‘We don’t entertain fake couples. Between us all, we have a superpower of instinct. We work together and combine our knowledge, and between us, it’s easy to sniff out the real from the fakes.’
‘But… us?’ I say, wondering if we were good enough to fool their hive mind.
‘I’ve seen a lot of false affection and fake kisses over the years, Bonnie. Not one of them from you two.’
I shake my head, unable to take this in. Is this why Amabel didn’t bat an eyelid in the church the other day? Because she knew we were faking it all along? How could they possibly have known when even I had started to think that things might be real? ‘I know there was a borderline between real and fake and I thought we’d crossed it, but obviously not.’
‘Oh, please, dear. You’d crossed it before you even got off the boat. I could tell from the moment you walked into the B&B. The chemistry was buzzing between you.’
‘I thought that too,’ I say. ‘But then I found out who he is, who he still is, and he hasn’t changed. None of it was real, not from his side.’
‘What’s he done, Bonnie?’
I relate the whole sorry story of the article I’ve just found.
‘There could be an explanation,’ Clara says when I’ve finished.
‘Yeah. He’s the delusional twat I thought he was from the very first moment on Twitter. No further explanation needed.’
‘Maybe he’s in more trouble than he’s letting on and he has to produce something, maybe he’s—’
‘Clara, he’s a horror of a man, and that’s all there is to it. I know you’re fond of him, but…’ I trail off, a sudden pang in my chest because I was fond of him too. More than fond of him.
‘Don’t forget he’s been hurt in the past. Men have so much of that pesky testosterone racing around their bodies that we forget how long it takes them to get over things. Despite his macho pride and the way he tries to deflect emotions with humour, it’s obvious that someone’s done a number on him when it comes to love.’
‘Pah. Love. There’s no such thing really, is there?’
‘Bonnie…’
‘No, he’s been right all along. Love is a con that people sell to get what they want. Look at Amy and Keiron. Together eight years and he’s at it with her best friend. I was blinded by their love when we went out with them the other night but Ro saw through it. He was right then and he’s right now. Love and marriage are things best avoided at all costs.’
‘You’re one of the last true romantics, Bonnie. I don’t like to hear you talking like this.’
‘I don’t know what else to say. He’s right again – how can I believe in love when I’ve never felt it? These past few weeks… this is the closest I’ve ever come, and even that has turned out to be a con. He’s used me to write the very thing that will put an end to my own job and the magazine I love, and I’ve helped him, like those snakes that eat their own tails when they get stressed out.’
‘I’ve met so many men like him. His feelings for you have been terrifying him. It’s plain to see. That day you were waiting for Carol to wrap the cake samples and I went off to get a picnic basket. When I came back, he was cuddling you and the look on his face was pure bliss. He was lost, Bonnie – lost in what he was feeling for you, and it was only when I interrupted that he jumped back and realised what he was doing. Nothing about that was part of an act.’
‘I wish that was true… You have no idea how much I want that to be true, but there’s an article upstairs that says otherwise, and that’s what’s real. Cold, hard, pen-on-paper fact. You can’t rely on interpreted facial expressions and words and feelings and… love. He’s right on that too. Love is just something people use to get what they want.’
‘Bonnie…’ she says again, looking like she wants to say something but she doesn’t know what.
‘I’d better go, Clara.’ I stand up and set my empty teacup down on the mahogany side table. I’m welling up again and Rohan’s going to be back from the church any minute, and I’ve somehow got to face him, got to get the boat back to the mainland with him, and I don’t want to do that as a sobbing wreck. I don’t want him to know what I felt. I don’t want him to know how much he’s hurt me. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of breaking the desperado bridezilla tragic enough to believe in fairy-tale endings.
Clara stands up too and comes over to give me a hug. ‘It’s been lovely having you both. All I can say is I wish I had a magic wand to wave and make this all better.’
‘Magic wands and fairy godmothers and enchanted churches are all more realistic than what I’ve believed in for the past thirty years,’ I mutter.
‘I hope you work it out, Bonnie. Take it from an old woman who’s seen just about every type of relationship breakdown in her years. There was nothing fake there.’
‘There’s nothing to work out. There was nothing between us. It was all an act to get an article. It’s not even his fault. It’s me who got it wrong. It was me who let myself feel something for someone who I knew didn’t believe in love. It was never anything more than an act and it’s me who’s let myself get so involved.’
Clara shakes her head but she doesn’t say anything else. We stare at each other for a few moments before I realise what I’m waiting for. I’ve just revealed our secret, told her we’re reporters and we’re writing articles that do the opposite of what they want, and she’s still being nothing but nice to me.
‘And you’re just going to let me go?’ I ask quietly. ‘You’re not going to tell me not to write the article? Not to reveal the secret of Edelweiss Island?’
She gives a soft snort. ‘What secret?’
I go to answer but nothing comes out.
‘There is no secret, Bonnie. There is no scandal to uncover, no clandestine intelligence that you’ve found out in your stay here, because it doesn’t exist. There is no secret to our church. It is just a church. A building that’s filled with love and loved by the people on this island and the visitors who come to get married in it. There is no scam or con. It’s just a little place full of nostalgia that’s got… lucky, I guess. Lucky that the people who find themselves drawn to it are the ones willing to put love and effort into their marriages.’
Yet more tears spring to my eyes. It’s the opposite of what Rohan’s been saying, and it makes my heart beat faster and my eyes well up again, because I thought I was one of the people drawn to it. I was actually stupid enough to believe that I could get married there one day. Stupid enough to think I felt the same thing I felt when I saw that wedding dress in the shop window in Marble Arch – that it was ‘the one’. The place I’d get married in one day.
The desperate, deranged woman that I am, as always. Focusing on the wedding rather than the inconvenient fact of not having anyone to marry.
‘And I have a sneaking suspicion that neither of you are going to write those articles,’ Clara says.
‘Oh, he won’t let this one go. It’s a Man Land classic. It’ll get people talking and make his loyal readers laugh all the way to the shop shelves. I think you could decapitate Rohan and his headless body would still be crawling around scribbling nastiness in his columns.’
Unless he was right on the first day and she really is planning to chop him up and put him in the freezer. That’d stop him. And it would serve him right. I debate asking her if she’d like me to sharpen her chainsaw.
‘Thanks, Clara. For everything.’ I hug her again. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to face the boat ride now. He’s bound to be on it.’
She pats my arm. ‘Don’t worry, dear. I’ll sort him out.’
Maybe she really is going to chop him up and put him in the freezer.
As I pull the door open, a large man is on the other side of it and I walk smack bang into his chest.
‘Ooh, Hector, you’re early,’ Clara squeals.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble, looking up at the huge man. He’s got a glowing red nose and a wrinkled face, and more wiry grey hair growing out of his ears than there is on his bearded face. I’ve never seen him before, he can’t be an island regular.
‘This is my husband, Hector,’ Clara says. ‘He’s the captain of the passenger boat. He does the morning and evening trip from the mainland every day. He stays there and only pops back at night or on his days off.’
He comes into the room and gives Clara a kiss on the cheek. ‘But I always pop in to see my lovely wife if I’ve got a bit of time to kill before the next departure.’
The urge to laugh at all the things we thought about Clara’s husband is instantly replaced with a twinge of longing to tell Rohan. How weird it is that after all these weeks, I’ve finally found the answer to where Clara’s husband is. How funny it is that he was the captain sailing the boat that brought us over. He even stood up and saluted us as we got off. Far from chained up in the basement or in pieces in the freezer, we’d already met him and we didn’t know.
‘You wouldn’t mind running Bonnie over a little early, would you?’ Clara asks him. ‘There’s no one else waiting to board today.’
‘But Ro…’
‘Will just have to catch the morning crossing,’ Clara finishes for me. ‘I want the two of you to sort things out but I’m not sure a boat is the best place to do it, considering his seasickness and how much you look like you want to push him overboard.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, as I realise what she’s doing – saving me from having to face Rohan when I’m this much of a mess.
‘Bonnie, come back sometime. You’ll always be welcome here.’
I smile at her sadly as Hector takes my suitcase and disappears through the door with it. ‘I don’t think The Little Wedding Island is really the place for me, do you?’
‘I think it’s the place for anyone who believes in love.’
Tears spill over and roll down my face. ‘He’s the only man I’ve ever thought I could fall in love with. The only man I’ve ever been able to imagine marrying. I have to face facts, Clara. If love exists, it’s never going to happen for me.’
I close the door to the B&B sadly behind me. I can’t help remembering the first day we came here – Rohan holding the door for me, that fizzle of excitement, those butterflies, that feeling of this being something special.
Even now, as I rush down the paths following Clara’s Captain Birdseye-esque husband, crossing every crossable part of me that Rohan won’t come back from the church early and catch me in the act of running away.
Hector goes to start the engine. The deckhand takes my suitcase and helps me down from the ladder onto the deck and doesn’t even question why we’re leaving early without waiting to see if there are any more passengers.
I still want Rohan to come running down the steps to the jetty and tell me it’s a mistake. Tell me I read the pages wrong, that it’s someone else’s writing, that it was a joke. Something. Anything just to make this not be over yet.
The jetty remains empty as we zoom across the sea, leaving Edelweiss Island behind us in the distance, and I wish, above all things, that I was back on this boat with Seasick Man, and we could undo everything that had come before and everything that happened afterwards.