The Wedding Cake Tree (23 page)

‘Paul?
Yes, he’s a very good friend.’

‘Is he single?’

Where did that come from?

‘Yes.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘He’s a features
journalist. We team up from time to time for work. We spend a lot of time together socially too.’

‘H
mm,’ he murmured, ‘he’s gay then?’

My jaw fell open. ‘Alasdair!
No, he isn’t gay. And don’t go getting all judgemental on me again. You made it perfectly clear how you feel about my line of work when we were in the hut, but don’t drag Paul into this, he’s a good writer.’

Alasdair twitched
in his seat before finally turning to face me.

‘Are you two an item then?’ he asked gently.
I smiled.

‘No, we’re not.’

‘But he’d like it if you were?’

‘
Maybe …’ I stuttered. ‘Possibly. I’m not sure.’

He lowered his voice
and whispered into my ear.

‘
Grace, he’s a single, straight man who spends a great deal of time with you, and who clearly cares. Bottom line, he wants to get you into bed, it’s obvious.’

I shook my head and smiled.
Paul had said the same thing about Alasdair, and yet my sex life remained non-existent.

‘Well,’ I responded smartly
, looking him straight in the eye, ‘
you’re
a single, straight man who has spent a great deal of time with me lately and who is clearly caring, so what does that mean?’ I held his gaze. His lips – achingly close – twitched into a wicked smile.

All I needed to do was to edge my face forwards a
nd allow his lips to brush mine. But I bottled it, glanced forwards towards the hostess who was closing the overhead lockers and said, ‘Anyway, do you think they provide a meal on this flight? Because I’m absolutely starving.’

Part
Four

Zagreb

Croatia

28
–29 May

Chapter Twenty-Five

I felt cold as we boarded the aircraft in Scotland. Zagreb, on the other hand, basked in glorious sunshine. After grabbing our luggage from the carousel, Alasdair rushed over to the airport information desk ahead of me and spoke to the receptionist. I caught up with him and we headed to the exit.

‘
What was all that about?’ I asked.

‘
Just a little surprise.’

I stopped the trolley
he was pushing as we exited the terminal.

‘
Alasdair Finn, what the hell’s bells are you up to now?’

He whistled for a taxi
, turned to me and said, ‘We’re going to do something a little different today, right now in fact.’

‘
Mum’s idea?’

‘
Oh yes. Trust me, only Rosamund could come up with this one.’

‘
So? What is it?’

His ans
wer was delayed momentarily by the arrival of a taxi. Once inside, he turned to me with his trademark grin and said:

‘
I’m taking you on a tandem sky-dive.’

Our conversation on the way to Zagreb Flying and Parachuting School was fairly animated. It consisted of me flailing my arms about and screaming out fragments of sentences like, ‘My mother is trying to kill me … to
kill
me for Christ’s sake! The bloody woman was unhinged.’ And, ‘I don’t care what you say Alasdair’—not that he had said anything at that point—‘I’m Just. Not. Doing. It!’

The taxi halted
outside the flying school. Alasdair turned to me and said, quite calmly, ‘You’re right. Rosamund was expecting too much. There’s no way you should do it, it’s not your kind of thing.’

My countenance drop
ped a little. I expected him to try to persuade me to do it, and was disappointed when he assumed I wasn’t woman enough to take the challenge on. But really, this was crazy.

‘
But,’ he continued, ‘the jump has already been paid for, and they’re expecting us at the school. I’ll jump on my own and you can wait in the crew room.’

Alasdair paid the taxi driver and touched me on the arm as we climbed out of the car.
‘Come on, no need to worry. You can watch.’

We
were directed into an aircraft hangar. Alasdair spent much of the time talking through the jump and inspecting the kit. He handed his parachuting documentation over to the instructor – which as far as I was concerned also substituted as certified proof that he was clinically insane – and, once the instructor was happy Alasdair was capable of throwing himself out of an aircraft safely, and once Alasdair triple checked the parachute was packed properly, he was ready to go.

I sat on my hands on an uncomfortable chair in the corner of the hangar.
Alasdair’s words were running through my mind.
Not your kind of thing … just watch.

The more I thought about it
the more disappointed in myself I became – which was exactly how I felt when I said I wouldn’t sing at the wedding. But I
had
sung and it was a fantastic experience. And maybe – just maybe – I was about to miss out on something equally as thrilling. My romantic sensibilities took hold of me again, and I realised I was about to make a reckless decision.

Alasdair smiled
at me from across the hangar. The instructor was helping him into a harness. He looked relaxed – a good sign surely. I could hear an aircraft running up its engines outside the hangar.

‘
Alasdair, wait,’ I shouted. ‘I’ll do it.’

Within twenty minutes I was harnessed up and sitting on the aircraft side by side with Alasdair, which is when the realisation of what I was about to do hit me and blind panic set in.

The
tiny aircraft was powered by propellers rather than real engines, and I half expected us to be positioned at the end of the runway and catapulted off with a giant slingshot. I expressed my concern to Alasdair as we taxied to the holding point.

‘
All that jetting around the world and you’ve never been on a prop-job before?’ He leant across me to look through the window – the embodiment of calm. It was obviously a front.

‘
If I’d been on a “prop-job” before, then I wouldn’t have jetted now would I?’

The pilot
was instructed to hold the aircraft on the taxiway until a passenger aircraft landed on the runway ahead of us. I was glad of the delay.

‘
So, aren’t you supposed to brief me on hand signals or something?’ I had been trundled onto the aircraft without so much as a safety drill.

‘
No need. You’ll be strapped to me so all you have to do is enjoy the ride’—he raised an eyebrow—‘so to speak.’

Enjoy it?

If my mother hadn’t been dead already I would have killed
her there and then with my bare hands.

‘
Alasdair …’

‘
Yes.’

‘
How absolutely certain are you that we aren’t actually going to die? Give me a percentage.’

He thought about it for a second
and said, ‘About ninety-nine per cent.’

‘
What?
So there’s a one per cent chance we actually might die? I don’t like those odds.’ My eyes, wide with fear, were fixed to the front of the aircraft.

‘
There’s a degree of risk in everything we do. You don’t ask me the percentage chance of death every time we get into a car, do you?’

I glanced around the aircraft anxiously.

‘I feel really sick. I don’t think I will jump after all.
You
do it.’

He turned his head
to face me, smiled and took my hand.

‘
There is no reason on earth for you to do this jump with me if you don’t want to. But, at the same time, there’s no reason on earth for you
not
to do it either.’ My eyes remained wide as he spoke. ‘I promise, with every fibre of my body, that I won’t let anything bad happen to you. You’ll be strapped to me the whole time, and it will be wonderful. I’ve done this a thousand times and I’ll probably do it a thousand times more.’ He touched my face tenderly. ‘Trust me.’

I nodded, smiled
and fought back the urge to vomit.             

The aircra
ft started on its take-off run and my hands left cartoon imprints in Alasdair’s arm.

‘
Jesus Christ, it’s loud.’ I shouted, tucking my head into his chest.

The heap of tin made it off the runway – just – and we felt every little bump and tumble as the aircraft climbed slo
wly through clear air turbulence.

Eventually
the aircraft entered into a smooth phase of the flight, and I lifted my head to face Alasdair. Slightly embarrassed by my outward display of fear on take-off, I felt the need to explain.

‘
I’m more of an Airbus A380 kind of a gal. I don’t really like these … what type of aircraft is it?’

‘
It’s a Fokker.’

I laughed out loud.
‘You can say that again, I should imagine wearing a parachute is compulsory!’

And then
my brief respite from bowel-loosening fear was over. The instructor stood up, Alasdair followed suit and they both looked at me pointedly as if to say, ‘You too kid.’

The instructo
r manhandled me towards the door, then Alasdair positioned himself directly behind, as if we were standing in a queue that was a particularly tight squeeze. He didn’t allow the instructor to buckle our harnesses together, but insisted on checking the harnesses himself.

Alasdair
leant his head forward to speak into my ear.

‘
Promise me one thing,’ he said.

I turned my head
towards his.

‘
I’ll promise you anything –
anything
– if it concerns staying alive.’

He took my hand and squeezed it
.

‘
Don’t close your eyes.’

And then the door opened.

Alasdair didn’t give me time to catch my breath, or to look down, or to do anything at all
. The sensation of having been caught with my mouth open in an air compressor manifested itself a thousand times as Alasdair pushed me forwards and I found – to my horror – that I was falling through the sky.

I wanted to scream, but found it physically impossible
to do so. I wanted to enjoy the exhilaration of the free-fall phase and tried to look around the landscape as we tumbled to earth, but I was experiencing only one emotion – fear. The only thought somersaulting over and over in my head was, ‘please let the parachute open, please let the parachute open.’

It did open, but
every remaining ounce of oxygen was taken away by the force with which we were whiplashed in an upwards motion as the parachute filled with air.

But
then miraculously the world slowed down to a dream-like pace. We drifted gently back down to earth and I felt calm, I felt at peace, and yet, conversely, I felt the invigorating sensation of being alive at the extreme edge of living.

We landed gently
, expertly, and I stood in a trance while Alasdair unclipped the harness and the parachute. I turned to face him. He was smiling the warmest smile I had ever seen.

I wanted to say a thousand things
to him, but all I managed to scream as I flung my arms around him was, ‘I kept my eyes open.’

We sat side by side in the back of a taxi. Somehow I managed to venture back down to earth during the ride into the centre of Zagreb. The city disappointed initially, it seemed to be no more than a Cold War concrete jungle. The taxi halted at traffic lights. A tram crossed our path on the road ahead, which is when the reality of why we had travelled to Croatia hit me.

‘You’re worrying about
the next letter aren’t you?’ Alasdair asked, glancing across at me.

‘Yep.
She seems to be building up to something big, all that stuff about Geoffrey and her life being about to change. Also, we’re getting to the point in her life when she conceived me, and I’m just wondering what giant skeletons there are in her closet, that’s all.’

‘I wouldn’t worry,’ he said, knocking my shoulder with his.
‘I don’t think anyone has discovered the skeleton of an actual giant yet so you should be okay.’

I laughed.

‘Rosamund seems to have had a clear purpose in everything she’s done so far – has made
you
do so far – so I wouldn’t worry.’

We returned to our occupation of staring out of the window as the taxi moved on.

‘Have you been to Croatia before?’ I asked.

‘Yes, b
ut in less salubrious surroundings than this.’

I was confused momentarily but then realised what he meant.
‘Ah, the Balkan thing you mean. I’d forgotten about that.’

‘I was m
ainly in Bosnia. I came out here just after I joined up.’

‘What was it like?’

‘Like?’

He
thought for a moment.

‘
Crazy. Neighbour on neighbour, years of hatred whipped up into a frenzy, nationalism, religion, economics and egos. One – or all – of those bad babies are usually involved.’ He smiled across the seat at me. ‘But I loved it, bizarrely. Loved being caught up in the throng, always have.’ He paused, looked away from me to glance out of the window and murmured, ‘Not sure what that says about me though.’

We passed through the centre of the city and
headed up a slight rise. The road narrowed and the architecture altered.

‘
This is more like it,’ I said, peering at pretty houses no more than three stories high and at least two hundred years old. Alasdair nodded in agreement.

‘
This must be the old town,’ he said. ‘Our hotel is in this area.’

T
he taxi came to a final halt and I was pleased that our hotel was equally picturesque. We climbed a few steps up to the hotel entrance. Alasdair looked at his watch.

‘
What time is it?’ I asked.

‘
Five o’clock. Croatia is an hour ahead.’

‘
Five o’clock already? The day is almost over!’ Alasdair smiled at my disgust that time was running away with us. He stepped aside to let me enter the door ahead of him.

The hotel foyer belied the
simple ‘gingerbread house’ frontage. It was plush, lavishly upholstered and very shiny. I had a distinct feeling of déjà vu as we entered key cards to open the doors to adjacent rooms. Alasdair looked across at me.

‘
Don’t worry, I can guess,’ I said, ‘you need to do some work?’