Chasing Rainbows
Part Twenty One

“Coren! You got my message! Sometimes you are the hardest man to locate!” There was no sign in Andy’s demeanour that he had an inclination of the chaos his message had caused.

Jacob sighed, “you have no idea what you’ve done French, you really don’t!”

His friend was quiet for a moment, “what the hell has happened now?”

Jacob sighed and explained how one phone call had dramatically changed his future. At least Andy had the decency to sound a little awkward, but his reluctance to accept that he was serious about Emma, that he wanted to be married to her was still a bone of contention and they hung up on frosty terms. It left Jacob to his own thoughts and memories, not a great place.

Emma had managed to avoid her best friend for three days with avoidance and elaborate excuses, but as she opened a bottle of wine, ignoring the fact that she’d needed one every night since she’d come home from San Francisco, on the third evening, the door bell rang, and she was a rabbit caught in the car headlights!

Isobel was leaning against the door frame holding another bottle of wine, a wry smile on her face, “so if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain...”

Sighing Emma wafted an arm into the hallway, inviting her friend in.

Isobel lifted her nose and walked into her home in a fake haughty manner, stopping in lounge when she spotted the open bottle of wine on the coffee table. Turning back to her friend she held out her hand and counted on her fingers, “One - drinking wine alone, two - not seeing BF since returning from a twenty four hour trial with your husband, three - looking like shit! So are you going to tell me just what the hell happened girlfriend? And I won’t accept the ‘fine’ comments you’ve been giving me by phone!”

Emma visibly crumpled into a chair, and suddenly all of Isobel’s fears came true and she rushed to help her friend into a seat.

“I couldn't see you, because I couldn’t think about it, I didn’t want to have to say...”

Isobel held her friend as she saw tears course down her cheeks, “you can tell me anything, and if you’re not up to it just tell me that! All I want you to know is I’m here for you darling. You know that?”

Emma nodded, “I know that, and it’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s just too painful!”

Isobel sighed, “Some things in life aren’t easy Ems, you know that. How about I pour us some vino and tell you all about Nathan’s mother’s plans for the wedding reception...you think YOU want to cry!!”

An hour later and Emma had really caught up with the current state of the wedding plans, and for that time she’d forgotten her own torment.

“He was amazing!” She offered as Isobel was reaching for the second bottle of wine. Her friend froze as Emma kept talking, “we travelled from the airport by cruiser, across the harbour, Golden Gate, Alcatraz, the works. Then we went out for the greatest dinner! It was amazing. And he tried so hard...I was a bitch to start with!”

Isobel finally turned to look at her friend and smiled, “you? I can’t believe that!” She gave a wink. “So what went wrong?”

“We were in a bar, his local place when I called you, and he was being SO perfect. We cuddled in the taxi, but I still pushed him away...” She sipped at the drink, “then back at his, I succumbed, I couldn’t resist...and he was amazing, it was amazing...”

Isobel placed her hand over her friend’s sensing everything was about to go wrong.

“He went out to get breakfast, and someone called him, left a message, basically this guy said there was a way for a quick divorce, and it was a way for him to keep his money away from me. Called me a gold digger!” She sighed, “when he came back I told him I was leaving, then we argued...there’s no future in this, we live on different continents, and he is no more able to look after me than I am myself! I mean he doesn’t have a car...he uses a bike!” She shook her head, “that does sound like I’m only interested in material things!”

Isobel nodded, “you’ve never been bothered with money or possessions, what made you snap at a bike?”

“The fact he was calling me a gold digger! It really hurt me, as though I’ve contrived this ridiculous situation. I don’t want this...but then he was SO nice to me.” She rolled her eyes, “then he had a gossip mag he’d picked up at the shop...and there was a photo of me with Theo on the front...”

“Touché!” Isobel gasped trying to follow the rapidly changing conversation. “Bet he loved seeing that in the shop.”

It was the comment that Emma needed to tip her over the edge into laughter, slightly neurotic and slightly hysterical. Isobel hugged her until those laughs turned inevitably to tears.

“What am I going to do?”

There wasn’t a lot of time to think for Emma as there were only four weeks until the wedding, and ten days after that, she had to fly to LA and start filming. Her big break. Isobel had told her to phone Jacob, try and sort things out, but she wouldn’t. The fact that he was silent was a good thing, though he’d been fairly unrelenting in the past. So she wasn’t counting her chickens just yet.

Isobel had dispatched her with a list of instructions to complete over the next two weeks, as Isobel was finishing up her term at school, and Emma was sans job!

Tuesday was ‘bridesmaid dress’ fitting day. So Emma had a day in the City with Eve and Angelina - a daunting task! When she came out of the tube station nearest the bridal boutique she could already see the two elegant frames of the two models ahead. They literally stopped traffic, construction workers whistled, heads turned. They were stunning. Emma trotted towards them and wondered whether come September when ‘Dieter’s Luck’ hit the screens. Would people recognise her? It could be the making of her. The thought both exhilarated and terrified her.

She was dragged from her day dream by the screech of her fellow bridesmaids.

“Darling!” Eve swooped to hug her, “how was LA? I told Iz that I could put you on to plenty of contacts for some company and fun. But she said you wowed Mr Samuel!”

Emma laughed, “he’s a very nice guy!”

Angelina winked elaborately, “once we’ve got this out of the way,” she gestured randomly to the boutique behind them, “then we want to hear ALL about it!”

They stood in their dresses, powder blue, strapless, full length, elegant and feminine.

“Hmmm. Thorn between two roses!” Emma muttered looking from her central position to the two six footers who flanked her.

Eve met her eyes in the mirror, “we will look freakishly tall on the day, we’re taller than Nathan FFS! To be honest Em, you will steal the show.”

Angelina nodded, “we’d both give anything for your boobs! All those years of barely eating,” she ran her hands down her slender frame, “well it hardly makes us curvy, does it!”

Emma laughed, “swap?”

An hour later she was filling them in on her time with Theo Samuel in great detail. And as they gushed over just how interested in Emma he was, she remained silent; neither knew she’d married her Las Vegas playmate!

After lunch they hit town searching for a bridesmaid’s gift for the blushing bride. In one shop Angelina suggested crotchless knickers, and it was at that point that they dissolved into giggles and made for the pub.

That night Emma collapsed onto her sofa and appreciated the fact that she’d had a day free of worry...and she had enough of that in her life!

“Are you coming to the cinema this afternoon?” Isobel called Saturday morning, she’d planned a cinema trip to try and amuse her bored sister. Eve was in the area until the wedding, and she didn’t do stasis well. She was bored and like a child needed to be entertained.

“I was, but I’ve just been summonsed home, my mother...not that she ever demands a visit. But she was very insistent.”

Isobel pondered that for a moment, “that sounds...strange!”

Laughing Emma slumped back in the chair looking at the ceiling, “I have a feeling that one of my cousins and their beautiful babies might be visiting. I’m to be tortured for a few hours in a ‘look what you could have’ kind of way!”

“Ouch!” Isobel was nothing if not sympathetic.

“Indeed. Can I meet you guys for dinner later? I should be back by eight.”

The trip to her parents’ was a chore, Saturday afternoon in late June, the world and his wife were heading to the coast and she got stuck in the longest tailbacks in history. It was gone three pm when she pulled her battered much maligned car into the driveway of their home, only to replace a large black four wheel drive sat blocking her route. Instead she was forced to park across the street outside a neighbour’s house. She was trying to think which cousin could afford such a car, maybe Stephen; he’d got a new job, and a new baby! Groaning, and trying not to roll her eyes, he had been a pain in the arse since they’d been kids; an afternoon of him showing off was more than she could bear! She got out of the vehicle and took a deep breath, this was going to be SO much worse than she imagined.

Walking up the drive she was amazed not to be greeted by her mother opening the door, normally she’d appear, wiping her hands on her apron, desperate for a hug. But there was no sign, so Emma walked up to the front door and tried the handle. It was open, and stepping into the hallway she ignored the fact that she didn’t actually have a key anymore. Kicking off her shoes near the front door, she could hear voices coming from the conservatory - her mother’s equivalent of a parlour, Wow! Her cousin Stephen really was being given the royal treatment.

“So what’s caused you to drag me all the way down here?” She burst in to the room and stopped dead in her tracks. Her father was sat on a chair, a beer in his hand and a beaming smile on his face, her mother sat on the sofa, equally as happy, her finest china tea service in front of her, and between them, sat a man, a man in a suit, looking relaxed, happy laughing at something her father had said, but as he lifted his eyes, his lips curled into a smile as he watched her appreciatively.

“There she is...Mrs Coren! My wife!”

Emma’s eyes moved from her mother, to her father and then back to Jacob, sat between them, and suddenly she felt sick, weak, her legs wobbled. Her eyes were closed before she started to fall to the floor, and she never knew that with lightening reflexes Jacob had caught her before that happened.