‘I fo
und the Valium,’ Gray told her, embarrass
ed
now
, ‘under a pile of stuff in the sitting room. I must have put them down . . . then something went on top . . . then something else. Anyway, I owe Lana an apology.’
‘You do,’ Annie agreed. ‘A big one. You can’t go around making accusations like that. You have to tread carefully with children, build up their confidence and their trust, not take great swipes at them like that.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he sighed. The sound of coffee trickling into his dainty white cups began.
‘I’m going to do much better at all of this, I promise you,’ he said and squeezed her hands.
Now Annie’s big
decision to
say
goodbye, pack up some of their things
and leave him wasn’t so
easy
. It didn’t feel so clear-cut. He wasn’t a bad person. He saw what had gone wrong, didn’t he? And he wanted to try for them. This was a man who had a lot to offer.
She looked out through the windows into the big garden, where green branches were swaying in the gentle breeze, and she imagined Lana on a sun-lounger reading, Owen digging up earth to conduct a biological experiment. In London, they didn’t even have a garden. They had window
boxes and trips to the park.
Gray set her coffee before her and poured in just the right amount of milk without asking, which struck her as a caring action.
Then he turned and opened a cupboard, but instead of bringing out a packet of biscuits, he came back with a small leather-covered box, which he held out to her. No prizes for guessing what was in there, she told herself, taking a deep and steadying breath.
Wordlessly, she took the box from him and carefully opened the lid.
From the dark velvet bed inside, a bright white diamond – oval, maquise cut, she recognized – shone back at her. At least one carat, she estimated, maybe even 1.2. Very, very white and clear. She couldn’t help but turn the box slightly to catch the light and make the surface sparkle.
It was absolutely breathtaking. She’d waited patiently all her adult life for a ring like this. Roddy’s promise to
her when she turned 30 (didn’t happen then) . . . well, maybe when the big job came (didn’t happen then) . . . well, maybe with the profits of the next house move (didn’t happen then) . . . the day had never come. It
turned out to be too hard to lash out hard-earned money on a diamond once they had children and a mortgage.
She’d even briefly considered buying herself the ring
out of Roddy’s small life insurance – but that had seemed far too frivolous.
‘Oh . . . my . . . God,’ she managed finally in a low and breathy voice.
Gray’s eyes were trained on her face, waiting for the smile to break and the overwhelming ‘yes’ of renewed commitment to come.
Instead, Annie asked, ‘What about Marilyn?’
Before he could make any excuse or fresh fib or cover up, she added simply, ‘I know you saw her yesterday.’ And with those words she wondered when he had bought the ring. Before seeing his wife? Afterwards? Today? At some early morning fabulous diamond store? Or in the days before the big row? It seemed important to know.
A splutter emerged from Gray in response to her question.
‘Marilyn . . . well . . .’ he stammered, ‘she wanted to have a chat about the divorce . . . how things were going with me. And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to think—’
‘There’s never any need to lie to me about anything .
. . I hope,’ Annie told him coolly. ‘If you lie and I find out then I’m going to think all sorts of things. Right now, I’m thinking: your ex-wife wanted to talk, so you take her for a cosy lunch at Le Pont d’Or? Hmmm. Then you
offer me a big, stunning diamond. Hmmm. This is strange behaviour, Gray. This is a man who’s not sure what he wants.’
Something about his flickering look – it went from her to his coffee cup, to the ring box in her hand and back to her – made her decision clear to her once again. Carefully she closed the box on the breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime diamond and placed it gently down on the table, then she slid it slowly back towards him.
Feeling tears of regret pricking at the back of her eyes, she told him: ‘I’m sorry, Gray. I’m really sorry, but we’re not going to work out.’ Catching the gasp these words seemed to have provoked at the back of her throat, she added, ‘We need someone for the three of us . . . someone to take us all on. You’re a very special person’ – the tears were slipping freely down her cheeks now – ‘you’ll be really good for someone else. But you’re not the one for us. I’m sorry.’
He hung his head at these words and may even have
been squeezing back some tears of his own. Annie wiped at her cheeks, then took several tissues from the box Gray was
thoughtfully
holding out for her and blew her nose hard.
After several moments, she felt together enough to ask, ‘You will get a refund on that ring, won’t you? You didn’t buy it off a dodgy internet site?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get a refund,’ he told her before putting his hand on her arm and asking if she was absolutely sure . . . wouldn’t she like some time to think this over?
‘No. This is the right thing,’ she assured him. ‘Hard to do, but still the right thing. Bloody hell!’ she added after a moment’s pause. ‘Packing again!’
‘Where are you going to go?’ he asked. ‘Your flat’s—’
‘Rented out for another five months, I know. Well . . .’ She’d worked through a plan on the way up the motorway. ‘We’ll stay at Connor’s till I’ve hustled up a deposit, then I mortgage myself to the hilt and buy the place in need of a makeover I was planning to get anyway – so it’ll be fine,’ she assured him.
‘You don’t have a job right now, Annie,’ he reminded her.
‘That’s never stopped me before,’ she told him firmly.
‘You can stay here as long as you need to,’ Gray offered, maybe in some last hope that he’d be able to persuade her to stay . . . or maybe just because he felt guilty.
‘No, no. It’s best we go. I might have to leave some boxes here for bit, just till we get sorted. But I’ll load up now with whatever I can.’
She stood up, leaving both the coffee and the diamond untouched on the table.
‘Strong drink required,’ was Connor’s verdict when Annie arrived back at his place looking pale and tired,
laden down with most of her and her children’s possessions.
‘Is that your answer to everything?’ she wondered.
‘In what situations does strong drink not work?’ he wondered back.
‘Driving test?’
‘You have a point.’
She, Connor and his boyfriend, Hector, got a little tipsy on fizzy wine he’d blagged from some photo shoot and
all shared giant man-sized pizzas with Lana and Owen.
Annie hadn’t realized, until she, her children and most of their belongings had arrived, that Hector was now a live-in fixture at Connor’s.
T
ipsy on the fizz and conscious that Annie
might not want to have to talk about Gray, or moving, or not being able to go home, or the general chaos, Connor and Hector drummed up enthusiasm for a ruthless card
game with truth or dare as the consequence of failure.
It involved Connor having to reveal who he’d first kissed (a girl, of course, way back in the days before he’d
admitted he was gay), and Hector having to lean
out of the window and shout ‘Darlings, isn’t it a wonderful evening!’ Lana, who under no circumstances was choosing ‘truth’, had to promise she would go to school in the morning with her shirt tucked in, her cardigan done up all the way and pigtails.
Owen had no problem with imitating five different farmyard animals on the balcony and then finally it was Annie’s turn.
‘Truth! Truth!’ Lana chanted. ‘We want to know everything.’
‘No way!’ was Annie’s response. ‘Oh . . . it’ll all come out in the wash anyway . . . eventually. Cover your ears, Owen.’ In a whisper
she added, ‘Yes, he wasn’t exactly the best
in bed . . . you already know that though, don’t you?’
Connor and Lana nodded, while Owen added: ‘I heard that!’
‘Anyway, dare. I chose dare, go on . . . bet you can’t think of anything I’m scared to do. I ain’t scared of anything now, Connor McCabe.’
A slow, cunning smile began to spread across Connor’s face. ‘Oh-oh! Nothing I like more than a challenge. Right, Annie Valentine . . . here’s your dare.’
He paused for a moment, for entirely dramatic effect.
‘You have to kiss again the last person you kissed passionately.’
‘Ha!’ she laughed. ‘Well that’s impossible. I’ve broken off with Gray, Roddy’s . . . unavailable. I haven’t kept the numbers of any previous dates . . .’
‘Mum!’ came from Lana.
‘No, no, no, my girl,’ Connor interrupted, ‘I don’t mean any of them.’
Annie looked at him blankly.
‘Can’t think?’ he asked.
‘No idea what you’re
talking about,’ she insisted.
‘OK,
I’m going to tell you a little story, Annie,’ Connor began. ‘One afternoon, I took the tube up to Highgate to see my friends Annie, Lana and Owen. When I arrived at their lovely little mansion block, the lift was out of action, so I swung open the heavy door at the foot of the stairs and began my climb up . . .’ In full dramatic flight now with voice modulation and eye rolling in the style of a murder-mystery narrator, Connor went on: ‘I was wearing rubber-soled shoes and as I climbed up, noticing how noiseless they were against the beautiful stone steps, I thought I heard your voice high up in the stairwell above me. Yes, it was definitely you and you were talking to someone . . . Is it starting to come back now?’
Annie made no reply, so he went on: ‘Yes, you were talking, then all of a sudden there was total silence. I sped up, taking the steps two at a time, wondering what
was happening, and that’s when I got a glimpse of you, two flights above me, totally entangled with someone. The kiss went on and on and on, my girl. Remember now?’
Annie was starting to look a little strange: slightly too pale but with a pink flush across her cheeks.
‘I tiptoed as quietly as I could back down the staircase so that I didn’t interrupt anything, then I waited for a few minutes. Imagine my surprise when tripping down the stairs, with a great spring in his step, came—’
‘That’s enough utter nonsense, Connor!’ Annie stopped him. ‘What a complete fantasist you are.’
She looked over at her children, who were glued to Connor with expectation.
‘Who?!’ asked Lana.
‘All I’m saying,’ Connor looked squarely at Annie, ‘is that if you want to stay here any longer, you better go and kiss
that
man again. That’s my dare.’
‘Huh!’ A
nnie huffed,
‘I need to go to bed,’ and with that, she picked herself up from the sofa and headed towards the door.
But then she turned and added angrily: ‘Here’s my dare to you, Connor McCabe. Grow up, and you know what
else? Come out properly, for goodness
’s sake. Don’t fudge it in the interviews any more. In the twenty-first century it’s a bad career move to be an actor who isn’t gay.’
She slammed the door hard behind her.
Chapter Thirty-two