“Are you feeling better, sweetheart?” he says softly. “I am so sorry if I upset you.”
“You didn’t, it’s me.”
Joe strokes my hair away from my forehead tenderly. I breathe deeply, the oxygen slowing the race of my heart and clearing my head. Evie deserves a tighter family unit, a public statement of intent. Where can this relationship go now if I say no? How can I still be angry about that day in the park now that I’ve done the same? And Josh? Josh dumped me! Josh is nothing! A sordid mistake. Yes, Josh will disappear from my head if I get married. This could be a fresh start. This
is
my second chance, glittering in the blue box. My chance to atone, a chance to build a proper family. A way of making it all better again. “Joe?”
“Don’t feel you have to give me an answer.” He is staving off a rejection. I can feel his heart thump harder. “Please, you’re upset, let’s just leave it.”
“Joe, I don’t want to leave it.”
“I understand, Amy. It’s too much, too late. I don’t want to pressure you into anything. . . .” Joe looks terribly sad. He’s made his mind up: I’m turning him down.
“I want you to ask me again.” I sit up, exhilarated by my decision. “If you haven’t changed your mind, which would be perfectly understandable.”
He smiles uncertainly. “Well, if you’re sure.” I nod. “Sure you’re sure?” I nod again. He gets off the bed and kneels. I giggle. “Amy Crane, dear unfathomable Amy, will you marry me?”
“I think I would, Mr. Costello.”
“Really?” Flushed and grinning, Joe stands up and hugs me in a rib-crushing embrace that in different circumstances would be more like an assault. “Tissues at the ready!” he cries and we fall giggling onto the dusty bed.
SEPTEMBER. 8:45 A.M. QUEEN’S PARK
.
Nicola grins at me. “See, I was right,” she says, leaning back on the child’s swing, kicking her feet up. “You muppet! He was innocent. The hotel, the jewelry bill . . . Doh! Here, let’s have a good look at it.”
I hold up my finger, shattering the breakfast sunlight. My first diamond. I’ll never be able to wear diamante again.
“It is truly lovely,” she says. “Gosh, you’re lucky having a boyfriend with good taste. I daren’t imagine what Sam would buy.”
“You know what I like best about it?”
“It’s started,” mutters Nicola to Thomas. “What, dear bride-to-be?”
“Imagining Joe buying it, puzzling over all the different styles. . . .”
“Sweet.” We stare around the park for a few moments: Juicy-clad joggers, skinny mothers, and fat squirrels feasting on the organic rice cakes tossed from Maclaran buggies. “I presume you confronted him, just to put your mind at rest?”
I bend my head sheepishly. “Well, not . . . not exactly.” I can’t, not really, not now I’ve fucked up, too. But I don’t say this because I can’t quite face telling her about Josh in the same breath as announcing my engagement.
Nicola shrugs and gazes out through the horse chestnuts. “Amy, there’s no right way,” she says, somewhat resigned. “And if you’re happy to take on the frankly terrifying prospect of walking down the aisle with everyone you have ever known staring at your backside, well, your decision.”
“Oh, it won’t be for ages. A long engagement.”
She laughs and kicks back on the swing. “No denial. You’re going to be preoccupied with napkin colors and confetti shapes for the next few months. You may have to call me when it’s over.” I bite off a split end. Nicola stares at me, suddenly somber. “It’s what you really want, isn’t it? To be married?”
A million thoughts tunnel through my brain in the second before I nod my head. Because, it’s true, in the cold light of London, something about our engagement niggles. Well, there’s the obvious. And there’s the worry that we’re doing it because of Evie. And if it weren’t for Evie we would have split by now. And does that mean that as a couple we’re invalid? Or would half the parents in the world split up if they no longer had children to bind them? There is also a nagging awareness that much as I want it all to have a happy ending, I can’t quite believe in it. And that anger toward Joe still throbs just beneath my skin like a particularly painful menstrual zit. So I’m going through the motions but holding a little bit back. And if you subtract part of yourself, even a little part, it’s not a deal breaker but you’re not committing yourself wholly. I suppose that’s it.
“Here, bride, fatten yourself up.” Nicola passes me a brown bag from the bakery. Pain au chocolat. Oh well, diet later. Flakes of pastry snow my jeans.
“Imagine, you’ll soon be a bona fide yummy mummy wife! All kaftan tops and Seven jeans accessorized by your handsome media husband.” She laughs and puts on her best fashionista voice. “You’ve made it, darling!”
“I won’t get into these much longer if I carry on like this.”
“Oh, don’t develop a West London wife eating disorder. You’ve lost quite enough weight already.” She doesn’t understand that thing about keeping it off. “Here, do you mind holding Thomas while I light a cigarette?”
I study Nicola’s face as smoke twists around it like ghost ringlets. There’s something different about Nicola. Then I realize. Nicola’s briars are now tamed perfect arches.
“Nicola! Your eyebrows. You’ve had them plucked! Pots and kettles . . .”
Nicola actually blushes, a first. “I’m going back to work soon.”
“You never told me!”
“Haven’t seen you. Our babymoon must end. Funds are running low . . .”
“And?”
“Hmmm. Met my boss and he started talking about my ‘new responsibilities.’ Hey, no more lead stories! Minor digital TV pages, things that ‘would fit in better with my new role.’ Can you believe it? The mummy track.”
“Bollocks . . .”
“Sure. Then I caught sight of myself in the staff loos. Have to admit, Amy, I looked kind of mumsy. A Gap label sticking out from my shirt collar because I got dressed while Thomas was screaming because he’d stuck his toast into the DVD player, nappy in the handbag. And while I’m not about to start Project Nicola . . .”
I’m weighted by a heavy lump in the chest as I imagine Nicola floating up and away, out of her tracksuit bottoms, into her tailoring and the bright busy world of the office. “What will I do without you?”
“Oh, don’t go all sentimental on me. Anyway, aren’t you thinking of going back soon?”
“Work? As you know, I’m rather good at the ostrich-like denial thing. I kind of think if you ignore something it’ll go away. That it’s only when you think about something you bring it into being. . . .”
“Yeah, right.” She laughs. “Your head’s probably full of white tulle anyway.”
“No, seriously. You are right. I must start thinking about work properly now.”
EeeeeEEKKKK.
A sudden screech, burning rubber. The sound of a sports car. Except it isn’t. A large Audi pulls up on the other side of the park railings.
“Now there’s a man in need of a Ferrari,” mutters Nicola.
We peer over the bushes. A long-legged woman in a leopard-print cape, holding a toddler under her arm, stands on the pavement, one hip jutted forward, as if she were at the end of the catwalk, pausing for the snappers. Jasmine! I wave, ring sparkling. Jasmine flutters back her free hand, then bends down and, despite holding Marlon, manages to get into the passenger seat with the graceful swoop of a movie star. The car accelerates with an unnecessarily loud roar.
Nic looks stunned, open-mouthed. “Nic? What’s the matter?”
“No way,” she mutters under her breath. “I can’t believe it. Did you see who was driving that car?”
JOE AND I HAVE HAD SEX. IT HAPPENED AT 2:46 P.M.
,yesterday. Evie was asleep. There was nothing on TV. I didn’t have my period. And it was beginning to get weird that we hadn’t done it already. We’d managed only a cuddle in the hotel. I felt too guilty to throw myself into anything more conclusive. And I was worried that rather than being the newly engaged pash-fest it was meant to be, the sex would be an anticlimax, that I would think of Josh and would want to stop it and not be able to do so without hurting Joe’s feelings. And Joe hadn’t initiated anything because he couldn’t face rejection. But yesterday he took a deep breath and pulled me toward him on the sofa and I didn’t resist or pretend I needed to go to the toilet or that I was too tired. I surrendered to him, to this relationship. And it didn’t hurt. Nor was it boring or awkward or embarrassing. It was nostalgic, like returning to a favorite old walk. No, I didn’t lose myself in him as I lost myself in Josh. I knew the landscape too well: the way his willy bends slightly to the left, tapers to a point like a bulb; the surprising flatness of his nipples; the gulp of his Adam’s apple as he comes. And did he come.
But not first. There I was, considering faking it, just once, just to reassure, but as his fingers traced the paths that Josh’s had a few weeks before, they tingled with a curious sensual deja vu. My skin remembered how to react, how to release. Is it possible that by some strange perverse logic, Josh has put my body back in touch with Joe’s? Was Josh just the rehearsal?
“Hello, my Zenned-out goddess.” Joe peeks his tufty head around the sitting room door.
I laugh uncomfortably. That is the kind of thing Josh might have said, but without irony. (I’m still not quite able to master total indifference to Josh. But I’m trying very hard.)
“How are you feeling?”
“Sleepy, eaten rather too much Sunday lunch. It was delicious, though. Thank you.” Joe and I have slipped into a state of suspended niceness. Wary of conversations that dig up the past and wanting to behave as we imagine a newly engaged couple should, we’re tiptoeing round each other, being really nice. I make him a nice breakfast. He makes a nice lunch, draws me a nice bath. It’s very nice. I’m not sure how long it can be kept up.
“Sweet,” says Joe, pointing at Evie, who is flopped on her tummy like a baby seal, fiddling with the remote control. “She’s into hardware now,” he says. “Not interested in any pink things or dolls. Should we be worried?” Joe absentmindedly pokes Evie’s teeny feet with his big toe. “Your mum phoned. She was wondering if she could borrow some heels, a particular pink . . . is it, er . . . L.K. Bennett? Said they were the
only thing, dear, the only shade that will go
with her new dress. Don’t shoot me that look! Only the messenger.”
“What’s the excuse?” It’s a liability having the same size feet as your mother. There’s no two-way traffic either. I can live without Mum’s court shoes.
“She’s going to some do with ‘all his own hair’ Norman.”
“Again? We haven’t seen her for ages.” I’ve missed her. Mum thinks now I’m safely engaged—“about time, too”—I don’t need her so much. Sadly, my diamond ring can’t babysit. I roll my shoulders. “God, I’m stiff.”
Ding dong
.
“I’ll get it,” Joe says, striding to the front door, perkier and more relaxed now he’s sure of his status. The marriage thing suits men. “Alice! This is a surprise. Come in.”
Alice’s light eight-stone footsteps on the floorboards. Joe shuffles behind her, still slightly sheepish because of their row and, like all men, probably disarmed by her beauty. She’s looking particularly hot. I jump up from the sofa and kiss her. There’s a scent of crushed rose petals on her skin.
“Sorry to arrive unannounced,” Alice says, laughing. “Glad you lovebirds are decently dressed.” Is that sarcasm in her voice? Since news of my engagement, Alice has cooled a little toward me.
Joe works a smile. He’s doing his best for my sake. This is our fresh start, after all. “Tea? Or something stronger?”
“Thanks, Joe. But I’m not stopping. I just thought I’d pop by and see if I could pick up your pretty fiancee. . . .” That word. Surely enough to put anyone off getting engaged. “Because I’m on my way to Pilates.” My stomach drops. “And Amy hasn’t been for ages.”
“Great idea. Amy was just complaining of being stiff and . . .” Joe looks at me enthusiastically.
“Er, no, actually. I was thinking of a walk,” I stutter.
“But you said . . .”
“We could go to the park,” I suggest hopefully to Alice.
Alice brushes me off with a wave of discreetly polished pink nails. “No way. I’ve got park fatigue. Amy, I insist you come to Pilates and work that pencil!”
“Pencil?” Joe looks baffled. “Oh go on,” he says, giving up trying to work it out. “You’ll feel so much better.” And this is how I am pulled out of my house—my precarious new stability—back into the danger zone of tanned feet and newly awakened chakras.
Outside, the warm wind carries the smells of the street, Indian takeaway, traffic, uncollected rubbish. “Set a date yet?” asks Alice tersely as she
click clacks
along the hot pavement in insubstantial summer thong sandals.
“No, no date.” I try and explain. “We’ll probably be engaged forever.”
“Well, at least that way you get a nice ring out of it.” Alice swings her red tote over her shoulder and flicks her curls, flecked ash and gold in the sunshine, striking a group of builders mute with lust. “Well, you know what I think. But hopefully you’ll prove me wrong. Shit . . . these shoes. I should have driven. Hail a cab if you see one, won’t you?” She bends down to readjust the thong between her toes. “Still, perhaps you’ve been my most successful project yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“Project Amy! Not only do you look fabulous, but you managed to get a marriage proposal! One hot makeover, I’d say.”
I laugh. “Sadly, I think Joe preferred me as I was.”
“Rubbish!” says Alice, slightly offended. “They all say that and think they mean it. But give them the choice between a size sixteen and a six and the six will win every time. Don’t you go all complacent on me and start reaching for the brownies and digging out those old clothes. It’s an easy psychological slip, Amy. One day you’re slouching about comfortable in roomy ‘fat jeans,’ the next you’ve filled them.”
“But look, Alice, look at this.” I stop Alice’s stride and stand up close and frown.
“What?” She looks puzzled.
“Look, no lines!”
“You did it!” she squeals, delighted.
“I did it.”