Bridal Bargains

Then other, far more immediate concerns began to take precedence, not least the way Suzanna grew quieter and more withdrawn as their three weeks raced towards their imminent conclusion.

Carol found Mia one evening, weeping over Suzanna’s school trunk which Mrs Leyton had had sent over to the house that day.

‘Oh, Mia.’ Carol sighed, and knelt to put her arms around her. ‘Don’t do this to yourself,’ she murmured painfully.

‘I can’t bear to leave her,’ Mia confided wretchedly. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do it! She hates that school!’ she sobbed. ‘She hates being away from me! It’s going to break her poor little heart and it’s going to break mine, too!’

‘Oh, dear God,’ Carol groaned thickly. ‘I can’t cope with this. Mia, listen to me!’ she pleaded. ‘You—’

‘Carol …’

It was the flatness in Leon’s tone that stopped Carol from saying whatever she’d been about to say.

‘Don’t meddle,’ he warned.

‘But, Leon!’ Carol cried. ‘If Alex knew how—’

‘I said, don’t meddle,’ he repeated.

He was standing in the open doorway to Mia’s bedroom, and he sounded so formidable that when Mia glanced at him through tear-washed eyes she thought she could see Alex standing there.

Alex, grim with resolve.

She shivered. They had a bargain, she and Alex, she reminded herself staunchly. A bargain that was too important to both of them for her to stumble at one of the very last hurdles.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, pulling herself together so that by the time she had pulled herself to her feet all that cool dignity she had used to bring her this far was firmly back in place. ‘I’m all right now.’ She smiled a brittle smile at the tearful Carol as she also straightened. ‘But thank you for caring.’

‘We all care, Mia,’ Carol murmured anxiously. ‘Though I can well understand why you wouldn’t believe that.’

The next day Suzanna’s trunk left for the school by special carrier. The morning after that, pale but composed—they’d both been through this many times before, after all—Mia and Suzanna came down the stairs together, the child dressed in her dour black and grey school uniform and Mia in a sober grey long-jacketed suit, prim high-collared white blouse and with her hair neatly contained in a rather austere, if elegant, French pleat.

She expected to find Alex’s chauffeur waiting for them, but she had not expected to see both Leon and Carol standing there also.

‘We’re coming with you,’ Carol explained. ‘Alex’s orders.’

Alex’s orders. She almost smiled at the phrase, only she couldn’t smile.

The journey to Bedfordshire was utterly harrowing. Suzanna sat between Mia and Carol in the back of the car while Leon took the front seat next to the driver.

One of the little girl’s hands was locked in Mia’s and, clicking into a sort of autopilot, Mia talked softly to the child as they swept out of London onto the motorway and kept on talking as the car ate up the miles far too quickly.

As they left the motorway Suzanna began to recognise her surroundings and grew tense, her hand clinging all the tighter to Mia’s. A couple of miles away from the school entrance the tears began to threaten. Carol muttered something very constricted, then reached out jerkily to grab at Suzanna’s other hand.

‘Hey,’ she said, with very forced lightness, ‘this is an adventure for me. I’ve never been this way before!’

‘I hate it,’ Suzanna whispered.

‘But look!’ Carol urged. ‘There’s a private airfield over there! I can see a beautiful white plane sitting on the tarmac.’

Airfield.

Mia shivered. It ran through her like a dousing from an ice-cold shower.

‘You know,’ Carol was saying brightly, ‘Alex has a plane just like that one! Do you think he may have come to—?’

‘What’s going on?’ Mia interrupted sharply as the car suddenly took a sharp right turn. She leaned forward, staring out of the car window. ‘Why have we turned here?’ she demanded.

To her confusion, Carol chuckled. ‘A magical mystery tour,’ she chanted excitedly.