After Suffering From 33 Accidents Planned by My Fiancee, I Finally Left novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Eleven Days
Thea wakes in hospital, overhears Crispin and Daphne admit thirty-three was planned, records them, plays it to his family and takes off the ring; her father sides with the loan; she calls Clement and he answers on the first ring.
On the day I was meant to marry Crispin Ladbrook, a nurse told two hundred guests the bride would not be coming.
That was the thirty-third wedding date to fall through, and I slept through it.
I woke up eleven days after the car, in a white room with one eye taped shut.
Daphne was asleep in the chair beside me with my hand held in both of hers.
I tried to say her name and only a croak came out.
She was awake at once.
"Oh, thank God," she whispered. "Don't try to talk, Thea. You're safe. I haven't left once."
She had brought my diamond earrings from home and put them in a saucer on the locker.
My phone sat next to them, plugged into the wall, the screen cracked across one corner.
"Eleven days," Daphne said, and kissed my knuckles. "It's only a few bruises, darling. Nothing that matters."
Her own phone buzzed on the arm of the chair.
The screen said C.
She turned it face down and smiled at me. "Work."
Then she picked it up and went to the door with it.
She left the door open an inch, and I heard her say, low, "No. She's still under."
I was too tired to wonder who she meant.
I lay there and heard the lift, and then Crispin's shoes in the corridor, quick and light the way they always were.
"How is she?" he asked, gently, and I heard a paper cup set down for Daphne. "I brought you tea. You haven't eaten."
"Still under. Nothing. The doctor thinks she may not remember the crash at all."
"Good. That's thirty-three, Daph. Mother can book the church for spring."
Thirty-three.
I had never said that number out loud to anyone.
I had counted in my head for six years, one fall, one burn, one broken bone at a time.
I had never told a soul, because it sounded insane.
"You said it would only clip her," Daphne said.
"It did clip her. The driver went too fast."
Daphne laughed, quietly.
Crispin laughed too.
I reached for the locker.
It took me three tries to find the phone with my fingers.
I held down the record button with my thumb and pulled it under the sheet.
"Spring is a long way off," Daphne said.
"Spring is when the ring stays on and the loan stays put. After that we'll think of something."
"You always do."
I lay with my eyes shut while they came back in and she fussed with my pillow and he took my hand.
His hand was warm, and his thumb moved over my knuckles.
I let it.
At ten o'clock the next morning, the room was full.
Crispin stood at my left with a bunch of white roses.
His mother, Honoria, stood at the foot of the bed in a grey silk coat.
She held a bottle of champagne a porter had opened for her.
My father had both hands on the rail, and two of Crispin's aunts crowded in behind him.
A photographer from a society magazine was by the window, because Honoria had decided the world should see the miracle.
"Clement was there before the ambulance," Honoria said, and poured. "He always is."
"Our guardian angel on the payroll," Crispin said, and everyone smiled.
I sat up against the pillows.
Daphne reached over to tuck a blanket around me, and her hands were as gentle as ever.
"Thea, darling, don't say anything yet," Crispin said. "Just rest. We have all the time in the world."
"Spring," I said.
My voice was rough and the room went quiet.
Crispin's smile stayed exactly where it was. "What was that?"
I held up my phone and pressed play.
"That's thirty-three, Daph. Mother can book the church for spring."
His voice came out of the speaker into the white room.
Then Daphne's: "You said it would only clip her."
Nobody in the room moved, except the photographer, who lowered his camera and then slowly raised it again.
When it finished, Crispin put the roses down on the bed.
"Poor darling," he said, to the room.
"The doctors warned us. A head injury can make a woman hear all sorts of things."
"She heard it clearly enough," my father said, and I looked at him, grateful for a second.
Then he looked at Honoria, and I saw what he was weighing.
I slid the sapphire off my finger.
It had sat there for six years and came off easily.
I dropped it into Honoria's champagne glass, and it sank with a small bright sound.
"Thea," my father said. His voice cracked. "The loan stands on this engagement. Please. Think what you're doing."
Giles Marchbanks had run four hotels for thirty years and had never once begged anyone for anything.
I looked at the man I was meant to marry.
I looked at the woman who had held my hand for eleven days.
I looked at the father who had just chosen.
So I stepped out.
I pulled the drip from my arm and took my coat from the locker.
Then I walked past all of them in my hospital socks.
Nobody stopped me, and not one of them had a word ready.
Outside the main doors it was pouring.
I stood on the steps with one eye taped shut and rang Clement Ardley.
He was the one man I had never needed to call, because he always reached me first.
It was answered on the first ring.
"Miss Marchbanks," Clement said, from somewhere close in the dark.
"I'm in the car park. I've been here since the third day."
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