This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Author Scarlett Bailey is usually a Christmas staple for us. We’ve devoured her numerous festive novels every year and were absolutely delighted to discover she was set to release a summer novel in 2014. Better yet, the book promised a delicious West Country setting and an even more delicious hunk of a local vicar. Two Weddings and a Baby is finally here and we thought we’d treat you to a little excerpt. Enjoy!
It was raining, which seemed appropriate. Tamsyn Thorne’s home town of Poldore was welcoming her back in exactly the same way it had bid her farewell more than five years ago – under a cloud.
‘Nice day for it,’ Tamsyn told the cabby, who’d picked her up at the train station, as she wiped away the condensation from the side window and peered out at the grey, wet Cornish town, shining in the summer rain. Poldore looked, as ever, as if it was tumbling down the hill towards the Atlantic – as if one good nudge might be enough to send it floating out to sea, like a sort of picture-postcard Atlantis.
‘They reckon it’s going to get worse before it gets better,’ he mumbled. ‘They were saying something about a super-storm on the news, whatever that is. Apparently we’re getting all of everyone’s weather in one go . . .’ Tamsyn wasn’t really listening. She was too busy looking, and taking it all in.
Poldore, the place where she had grown up, not knowing or caring about what world lay beyond the moors and the woods she roamed with her sisters and brother, when they were all little. And then later the
2 • Scarlett Bailey
place where she had first fallen in love, first kissed a boy in what was known as Kissing Alley behind the church. It was where she’d first stayed out all night at a party after telling her mum she was at a sleepover, lost first her father, then her best friend, then her brother, who had once been her closest sibling and who now barely spoke to her from one year to the next.
This was Poldore, and Tamsyn was back, against her better judgement, for a wedding, for her younger brother’s wedding. Ruan Thorne, so close to her in age that he had felt like a twin for much of her life, was getting married.
Tamsyn was fairly amazed that she had been invited at all, never mind been asked, or rather told by her mother, who had expertly wielded all the emotional- blackmail weapons she had in her considerable armoury, that she was going to be a bridesmaid.
‘You’re sure Ruan wants me to be a bridesmaid at his wedding?’ Tamsyn had asked Laura Thorne as she’d gazed out of her Parisian office window the day her mum called to tell her the news.
‘He’s having you as a bridesmaid,’ Laura had told her. ‘All of you girls, plus Lucy is going to be chief bridesmaid – you know she and Alex are best friends now? It’s going to be so lovely. All my children back together in one place, first time in years. And as you know, it’s my first proper visit back since, well, since we lost your dad and I moved to Suffolk with Keira.
I need you all there for me, Tamsyn. And there’s nothing like a wedding to smooth things over, I always say.’
‘Do you always say that, Mum?’ Tamsyn had asked her. ‘I’m fairly sure I’ve never heard you say that, and also, if you remember Keira’s wedding, that was when Aunty Jean told Esther Hamble that she was a harlot and they haven’t spoken to each other since, except to issue death threats and slanderous rumours.’
‘Well, that’s different and you know it,’ Laura had said, and the tone in her voice was enough to tell Tamsyn that she was not about to be bested. Tamsyn had heard that tone a lot during her life, and for a good deal of her life she had ignored it and done what she pleased anyway. It wasn’t until fairly recently that she had realised that when her mum spoke to her that way, it wasn’t to try and contain or oppress her; it came out of a deep-seated worry for her child. God only knew that Tamsyn had given her enough to worry about, living out her role as the family’s black sheep with quite some commitment, and yet her mother had always been there for her, whatever she’d done. Still, being a Thorne, she couldn’t entirely shy away from an argument.
‘“He’s having” is quite a lot different from “He wants”, Mum,’ she pointed out.
‘Well, Alex wants you all there,’ Laura said. ‘And Ruan would never say no to Alex about anything. That girl – she’s made the world of difference to him, 4 • Scarlett Bailey
Tamsyn. Maybe now is the time to set things right between you two. He’s happy and settled, and so are you at last – it’s all water under the bridge now, surely?’
Tamsyn had known there was no point in hesitating. If she’d said no at that moment, she would only eventually say yes at some point later in life, but it was more than the impossibility of saying no to her mother once she had her mind set on something. She missed Ruan, she regretted what had happened, and that was why she had left her highly successful and fashionable life in Paris and travelled all the way to Cornwall to wear a shop-bought, off-the-peg bridesmaid’s dress which her sisters had gleefully told her entailed puff sleeves, and – God forbid – a great big bow. But it would be worth it, it would all be worth it, if she could know that Ruan had forgiven her. It was time, more than time to make amends to her brother. There was only one very slight obstacle standing in their way. It just so happened that in keeping with the family tradition, Ruan and Tamsyn Thorne were two of the most stubborn people ever to be related to each other in the history of mankind.
Two Weddings and a Baby is out now.