‘So what the hell is this charade you’re subjecting yourself to on Christmas Eve?’ Jackie supplied.
The words on the tip of Claire’s tongue were a little more colourful, but Jackie had summed up the gist of her feelings.
‘Are you sure about this, Jackie?’ she said. ‘There must be some explanation. Are there exceptions to the thirty-day rule?’
‘There are,’ she replied, ‘but none of them seem to fit. It’s stuff like work or travel commitments, religious reasons, legal proceedings. I’ll text you a link. Call me back when you’ve read it.’
Claire promised she would and ended the call. Seconds later, a text message arrived containing a link to the website for the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Claire clicked on it and her internet browser opened automatically. She suddenly felt absurdly grateful for Bindallarah’s decent mobile phone reception. Only a few years ago, she would have had to dash back to Vanessa’s place and fire up her wheezy old desktop computer to try to figure out why the man she inconveniently still loved had lied to her about his wedding date.
None of it made sense. Why were Scotty and Nina racing to the altar on Christmas Eve if their union couldn’t be legal for another fortnight? Was this what Nina was hinting at when she said it wasn’t her place to tell Claire what was really going on?
Claire couldn’t imagine any reason they would have been granted an exemption. It was unlikely either of them had to race off to deal with some urgent work-related thing. She couldn’t think of any pressing commitment that would require a veterinarian’s attention over the Christmas period, at least not outside of Bindallarah. And yoga was hardly a deadline-driven occupation.
Religious reasons were out, too. Scotty was an atheist and, while Nina obviously had a spiritual side, Claire was fairly confident she wasn’t a regular churchgoer. Besides, marrying at Cape Ashe Stud meant they had to have a civil rather than religious ceremony – surely, if she were devout, Nina would have insisted on a church wedding.
Legal proceedings? Claire had done jury duty years earlier and knew the courts shut down over the Christmas period, so that was out. For a second she wondered whether Scotty or Nina was about to be sent to prison, but dismissed the idea as crazy just as quickly. At least try to stick within the realms of reality, Thorne.
Claire kept reading. There was one possibility listed on the website that Jackie hadn’t mentioned: medical reasons. She broke out in a cold sweat.
She knew who that exemption was for. It was for people who were sick. Really sick. People who weren’t going to make it.
She dialled Jackie’s number.
‘What do you think?’ was her friend’s opening gambit.
‘One of them must be terribly ill,’ Claire said, her voice barely a whisper.
There was a pause. ‘That’s what you’ve come up with?’ Jackie said eventually.
Claire couldn’t respond. If she tried to speak she knew she would scream.
As if sensing her turmoil, Jackie huffed out a breath. ‘Claire, get a grip. Nobody’s dying,’ she said.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because if they’d been granted an exemption on that basis they’d be married by now. Those are for people who have hours to live, not weeks.’ Her words were blunt, but there was kindness in her voice. She must have felt Claire’s panic. ‘Trust me. Scotty is a very healthy-looking man. He certainly didn’t look sick to me the other week, and didn’t you say Nina’s some glowing Italian-American supermodel?’
Jackie was right. Neither Scotty nor Nina appeared to be unwell, and Claire was certain the bush telegraph would have told her otherwise. Illness was almost impossible to hide in a town the size of Bindallarah. The CWA would organise a meal-delivery roster at the first sign of a sniffle.
Claire stared out to sea as she tried to fit the pieces of the puzzle together in her mind. The overcast conditions of the past few days had blown through and the sky was a deep, cloudless blue. It was shaping up to be a spectacular Bindy Christmas – at least in terms of the weather.
She felt herself start to relax a little. She needed to take Jackie’s advice and try to maintain some semblance of perspective. It was just so hard to do when she was beginning to doubt whether anything Scotty had told her was the truth.
‘What else could it be? None of these exemptions applies,’ she said. ‘So how can they be getting married on Christmas Eve if they only lodged their Notice of Intent nine days ago?’
‘That’s exactly my point. They can’t be,’ Jackie replied.
‘But that means . . .’
‘Yep. The most obvious option is usually the answer. This wedding – or at least this wedding ceremony – is as fake as a three-dollar note.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Alex gave a low whistle as Claire opened the front door on Sunday evening.
‘Wow, Thorne,’ he said. ‘You scrub up all right.’
‘Is it okay?’ she said, casting a critical eye over her outfit for what must have been the fiftieth time.
She was wearing another one of Gus’s cast-offs. Gus had taken one look at the random assortment of dresses Claire had thrown into her suitcase two weeks earlier and declared them all hideous. She had to admit her cousin had a point. Claire hadn’t packed anything that was really suitable for a wedding, because she had left Sydney determined there wouldn’t be a wedding. In her head, she had been certain she could convince Scotty that marrying Nina was lunacy.
How wrong she had been. About everything.
So now she was wearing the dress Gus had worn to her school formal: a dove-grey gown with cap sleeves, a lace bodice and a flowing chiffon skirt. With the help of a YouTube tutorial, Claire had wrangled her long curls into a fishtail braid, which hung over one shoulder.
‘Okay?
