in the barn and her golden face on the hill and he almost choked with misery.
Jake watched with pride as his son led Federica up the aisle and wiped a damp eye at the recollection of his daughter’s wedding that he had missed. Helena caught her breath, for Federica floated on the arm of her brother like a princess with diamonds in her hair and a choker of diamonds and pearls about her neck. The ivory dress shimmered in the heavenly light that flooded in through the stained-glass windows and her skin seemed to glow with a translucence not of this world. Helena thought of Ramon until the tears stung her eyes and the memory of him became so strong that she could almost smell him. Arthur squeezed her hand, which wrenched her back to the reality of her dull marriage and the tears flowed more abundantly.
Arthur wanted to cry too - tears of fury and frustration, but he could not, so he sat with grim resignation as his stepdaughter walked past to embrace her destiny.
Ingrid’s heart sighed at the beauty of the music and Inigo abandoned himself to the positive vibrations of God’s house and took his wife’s hand in his as he remembered their own wedding all those years ago.
But Nuno watched Sam. He understood his grandson better than the boy
understood himself. He saw the anger in the line of his petulant mouth and the hurt behind his stormy grey eyes and wanted to tell him that everything comes to those who wait.
Sam felt he was watching a public hanging; the sacrifice of the innocent. He watched Torquil with the eyes of a predator, studying his every move, his every blink. There was something sinister in the shine of his shoes, the spotless coat, the starched shirt, the gold watch on the perfect chain, the emerald cufflinks. Not even a strand of hair disobeyed him and strayed over his forehead. Sam watched Federica, tremulous and radiant, in the dress Torquil had chosen for her, the jewels he had given her - only her shy smile was still hers, but Torquil grinned down at her, poised to possess that too.
Julian had returned to his place on the end of a pew after having taken the photographs outside the church. He put his camera under the seat and proceeded to watch the ceremony. After a while his attention was caught by a darkhaired woman seated on the other side of the aisle to him. She was sleek and confident in a tight, duck-egg blue suit with her long brown legs crossed, tapping her manicured fingers along to the music. She sensed she was being watched and glanced at him from under her wide-brimmed hat. When she saw
it was Julian, she smiled. ‘I still have your shirt,’ she mouthed. He shuddered as he suddenly remembered where he had seen Torquil before. Those two painfully self-satisfied people he had taken great trouble to forget now surfaced in his thoughts. But it was Federica’s wedding day, neither the time nor the place for negative recollections. Perhaps Torquil had grown up since those days, he certainly hoped so. He watched as the ring was slipped onto Federica’s finger and Reverend Boyble declared the happy couple man and wife. She belonged to him now. She had left the cove for the wider sea.
Sam lowered his eyes in defeat and noticed Mr Toad staring up at him expectantly from the stone floor. He bent down and gathered the blinking creature into his hands where he held him steadily. ‘It’s just you and me now,’ he said quietly, shaking his head. Then as he watched Torquil’s stepmother walk by he changed his mind and placed the sleepy toad onto her hat and grinned.
He hadn’t been able to stop the wedding, but this small act of sabotage gave him a shallow sense of pleasure.
Chapter 34
Sam returned to his meaningless job in the City and Helena to the dry residue of her marriage, but for Federica, life would never be the same again.
As soon as she returned bronzed and happy from her honeymoon, she rang up Harriet and booked in for lunch. Slipping into the waiting Mercedes in a new Gucci trouser suit she told the driver where to go, then sat back and savoured her new affluence. The seats were leather, the dashboard polished wood. Federica had never learnt to drive. Torquil didn’t encourage her. He insisted she have a chauffeur and organized a car for her. ‘I want you to have the best of everything,’ he had explained. ‘Because I love and cherish you.’ She rolled the window down and watched the sweltering, dusty city from the cool comfort of her car. She felt sophisticated and glamorous and her spirits floated on the sweet air of her expensive perfume. She fingered the large emerald ring that Torquil had given her and smiled to herself with perfectly painted lips. She was Mrs Torquil Jensen. To Federica the sound of that name had a glorious resonance and she whispered it to herself a few times, Mrs Torquil Jensen, Mrs Torquil Jensen. How far she had come from her uncertain beginnings in