The Best Man And The Bridesmaid

It never seemed to occur to him that she might have something else planned, and for just a moment it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she was busy on Saturday night. There was only one problem with that. In all her life, since she was old enough to toddle after her brother and his best friend, she had never been too busy for Robert. ‘Make it nine-thirty,’ she said, forcing herself to be a little difficult. Just to prove to herself that she could be.

‘Nine-thirty?’ His dark brows twitched together in gratifying surprise.

‘Actually ten o’clock would be better,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to give dinner a miss, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh? Are you sure you can manage the party?’ The edge in his voice gave Daisy rather more satisfaction than was quite kind. After all, she’d chosen the path she was treading. ‘You haven’t gone and got yourself a boyfriend, have you? You’re my girl, you know.’

‘No, I’m not,’ she said, putting on her sweetest smile. ‘I’m your friend. Big difference.’ His girls lasted two, three months tops, before they started hearing wedding bells and he, with every appearance of reluctance, let them go. ‘But I was going to Monty’s bash anyway and I’ll be glad of the lift.’ Just occasionally he needed to be reminded that she wasn’t simply there at his beck and call. Just occasionally she needed to remind herself, even if it did mean passing on dinner at some fashionable restaurant and dining alone on a sandwich.

Then, having made a stand, having started a tiny ripple in his smoothly ordered world, she held up her cheek to be kissed, punishing herself with the brief excitement of his lips brushing her cheek, the scrape of his midday beard against her skin that did things to her insides that would rate an X-certificate.

It would be so easy to prolong the hug, just as it would have been easy to indulge herself and stretch out lunch over coffee and dessert. But Daisy’s little-sister act had its limitations; too much close contact and she’d be climbing the office walls all afternoon.

Besides, keeping him at a distance was probably the only reason he didn’t get bored with her.

‘Thanks for lunch, Robert. I’ll see you on Saturday,’ she said briskly, making for the restaurant door and not looking back once. It had been harder today. Much harder. Today he was unattached, momentarily vulnerable in a way she hadn’t seen before. Maybe that was why she had made such a fuss about the bridesmaid dress. Not to amuse Robert, but to distract herself.

It would have been far too easy to forget all about the fitting, to suggest he walk her across the park, linking her arm through his, inviting him up to her flat with the excuse that she wanted to show him her new computer, plying him with coffee and brandy.

The trouble was she knew Robert too well. All his little weaknesses. Today, dumped by a girl with the wit to see through him, with his self-esteem needing a stroke, he might have been tempted to see what Daisy Galbraith was really made of beneath the trousers, the long skirts, the carefully neutral, sexless clothes she wore whenever she met him.

The trouble with that inviting scenario was tomorrow. Or perhaps next week. Or maybe it would be a month or two before someone else, someone elegant and beautiful, someone more his style, caught his roving eye. And after that nothing. No more precious lunches. No more of those early Sunday mornings at home when he dropped by with his rods to suggest they might go fishing, or take the dogs for a run. No more anything but awkwardness when they met by chance.

Worse, she would have to pretend she didn’t care, because her brother would never forgive his best friend for breaking his little sister’s heart.

While a treacherous part of her mind sometimes suggested that an affair with Robert might be all it took to cure her of his fatal attraction, Daisy had no difficulty in ignoring it. She might be foolish, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d been in love with him since she had gazed from her high chair at this seven-year-old god who had come home with her brother for tea. The very last thing on earth she wanted was to be cured.

‘More coffee, sir?’ Robert shook his head, retrieving his credit card from the plate and, on an impulse, heading quickly for the door, hoping to catch Daisy so that they could walk across the park together. She always walked, but then she always wore good sensible shoes, or, like today, well-fitted laced ankle-boots, even in London. She was so easy to be with. Always had been, even when she was a knobbly kneed kid trailing after him and Michael.

Then he frowned. Yellow? What was wrong with yellow? What was wrong with ‘cute’? What was wrong with ducklings, come to that?

From the pavement outside the restaurant he could see her bright froth of hair bobbing along in the distance as she strode across the park, and he realised that he’d left it too late to catch her. Oh, well. He’d see her on Saturday. And as he hailed a cruising cab, he frowned. Ten o’clock? What on earth could she be doing until ten o’clock?

Being stripped to her underwear, with her reflection coming back at her from a terrifying array of mirrors, was doing nothing for Daisy’s self-confidence, and she was almost grateful for the covering of yellow velvet despite the fact that it emphasised her own lack of curves.

The seamstress attacked the spare material with a mouthful of pins, tucking it back to fit Daisy’s less generous curves. Once satisfied, she nodded. ‘All done. Can you come back early next week?’

‘I couldn’t bribe you to spill something indelible on it, could I? A pot of coffee? A squirt of ink?’

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?’ The woman seemed surprised.

‘With my colouring? Yellow would not be my first choice.’

‘Well, there’s a first time for everything.’

‘Yes. And a last.’

‘It’s just different, that’s all. With the right make-up you’ll make a really pretty bridesmaid.’

Oh, Lord, that, if anything, was worse. Prettiness was her mother’s fantasy; she had known better than to attempt it. She certainly didn’t want to look as if she were competing with the other bridesmaids.

‘Daisy!’ Ginny burst through the door with the rest of her adult attendants in tow. Dark, glossy and gorgeous to a girl. Robert was going to have a ball, she thought with that detached part of her brain that dealt with everything Robert did when he was not with her. It was just so much easier when she wasn’t part of the show. ‘You’re early!’

‘No, darling, you’re late.’

‘Are we? Oh, Lord, so we are. We’ve been having facials,’ she giggled. ‘You should have come.’

There was more than one way to take that remark, Daisy decided, but was sure that Ginny hadn’t meant it unkindly. Ginny didn’t have an unkind bone in her body and, while her figure might leave something to be desired, Daisy knew there was nothing wrong with her skin. There was, unfortunately, precious little that a facial could do about an over-large nose or mouth.

She arrived back at her office, breathless and feeling just a bit low. ‘Ah, Daisy, there you are.’

Yes, here she was. And here she’d probably be for the rest of her days; Robert’s best friend and standby date. She pulled herself together; feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to help. ‘I’m sorry, George, I did warn you I might be late.’

‘Did you?’ George Latimer was nearing seventy, and while few could challenge his knowledge of oriental artefacts, his short-term memory was not quite what it might be.

‘I had to be pinned into the bridesmaid dress,’ she reminded him.

‘Ah, yes. And you had lunch with Robert Furneval,’ he added thoughtfully. In the act of hanging up her jacket, Daisy turned. She’d said she was lunching with a friend; she hadn’t mentioned Robert. ‘Your clothes give you away, my dear.’

‘Do they?’

‘You’re covered from neck to ankle in the most unattractive brown tailoring. Tell me, are you afraid that he’ll get carried away and seduce you in the restaurant if you wear something even moderately appealing when you meet him? I only ask because I get the impression that most young women would enjoy the experience.’

Her feigned surprise had not fooled him for a minute. His short-term memory might be a touch unreliable, but there was nothing wrong with his eyesight. And noticing things was what made him so good at what he did.

‘I didn’t realise you knew Robert,’ she said, avoiding his question.

‘We’ve met in passing. I know his mother. Charming woman. She’s something of an authority on netsuke, as I’m sure you know. When she heard I was looking for an assistant she called me and suggested I take you on.’

Daisy sat down rather quickly. ‘I had no idea.’ Jennifer Furneval had always been kind to her, taking pity on the skinny teenager who had hung around hoping to be noticed by her son. Not that she’d so much as hinted that she knew the reason why Daisy had developed such a fervent interest in her collection of oriental treasures. On the contrary, she had loaned her books that had been a blissful excuse to return to the house, to hang around, ask questions. And she had eventually pointed her in the direction of a Fine Arts degree.

Of course, she’d stopped hanging around for a glimpse of Robert long before then. She stopped doing that the day she’d seen him kissing Lorraine Summers.

She’d been sixteen, all knees and elbows, an awkward teenager whose curves had refused to develop and with an unruly mop of hair that had repulsed every attempt to straighten it—assaults with her mother’s curling tongs leaving her with nothing but frizz and the scent of singed hair to show for her efforts.

Her friends had all been developing into embryonic beauties, young swans while she’d seemed to have got stuck in the cygnet phase. The archetypal ugly duckling. But she hadn’t minded too much, because while the swans had made eyes at Robert they’d been far too young to win more than an indulgent smile. Daisy, on the other hand, had kept her eyes to herself, and had never asked for more than to sit and watch him fishing.

Her reward, one blissful summer when Michael had been away on a foreign exchange visit, had been to have Robert give her an old rod and teach her how to use it.

That, and the Christmas kiss he’d given her beneath the mistletoe. It was the best present she’d had that year. The glow of it had lasted until June, when she’d seen him kissing Lorraine Summers and realised there was a lot more to kissing than she’d imagined.

Lorraine had definitely been a swan. Elegant curves, smooth fair hair and with all the poise that a year being ‘finished’ in France could bestow on a girl. Robert had just come up from Oxford, a first-class honours degree in his pocket, and she had gone racing around there to just say hello. Congratulations. Will you be going fishing on Sunday? But Lorraine, with her designer jeans and painted nails and lipstick, had got there first.

After that she had only gone to see Jennifer Furneval when she’d been sure that Robert was not there.

He had still dropped by, though, when he’d been home. Her brother had been in the States, doing a business course, but Robert had still called in early on a Sunday morning with his mother’s dog, or with his rods. Well, he’d always been able to rely upon Daisy to put up some decent sandwiches and bring a flask of fresh coffee, and maybe Lorraine, and the succession of girls who had followed her through the years, hadn’t cared to rise at dawn on a Sunday morning for the doubtful honour of getting their feet wet.

‘She worries about him, I think,’ George Latimer continued, after a moment’s reflection.