They looked wonderful. They all looked wonderful.
And Darcy would look more wonderful still.
Ally couldn’t see him yet. Sergeant Matheson was holding the big oak doors firmly shut until just the right moment, when he’d swing them wide to let the bride start her walk. But Ally could imagine how he’d look.
Darcy. Her love.
He looked younger, too, she thought. The lines of strain around his eyes had eased. She was working beside him as a doctor now, sharing the burden that no longer seemed a burden. Medicine was fun. Life was fun.
She was still giving massages, but only to special clients-clients her mother worried about, or clients who really wanted Ally.
Like Darcy.
He was her favourite client.
As she was his.
Never fall in love with your clients, she thought. First rule of medicine. First rule of massage.
Too late. She’d fallen for him and the only way to make the whole thing equitable had been to have him massage her in return.
Luckily he was a very fast learner.
It was just perfect, she thought. Perfect.
Even the news of Jerry was good. He’d recover, which meant that Kevin could be cared for as a psychiatric patient without the stigma of murder to make his carers treat him with fear. Jerry himself was facing the first of many court cases. He’d be in jail for a very long time.
But enough of Jerry. He could be forgotten as a bad memory-a nightmare of a past that could no longer affect their future.
The music was starting now. Mendelssohn’s Wedding March was being played-appallingly-by Doris on the church’s hundred-year-old organ. It didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered.
The doors were swinging wide. Her twitter of excited page-boys and flower girls started throwing rose petals, and her mother squeezed her hand.
‘Are you ready, love?’
Ally smiled at her mother. Then she lifted her head and gazed down the long church aisle.
Darcy was waiting for her.
Darcy was smiling. He was smiling and smiling. Her love. Her future.
‘I’m ready,’ she whispered, and took her first step forward to her beloved. ‘Let’s begin.’
Marion Lennox
