Whether they were merging friendship groups, meeting each other’s families or even talking about marriage and kids, conversation between them from the very start had always been easy and honest. Life wasn’t how it was in their parents’ generation, where it was a wedding, then children, then retirement. You could do things in any order now, or not at all, if that’s what took your fancy. In one of their many discussions, Zoe told Jack that she did want kids, eventually, and did want to work abroad, and she wanted to follow in her parents’ footsteps and not marry at all.
‘Fine by me,’ Jack smiled.
‘Aren’t men supposed to say that, though?’
‘I don’t know. I think most of my mates want to get married. Lots of them are quite happy to admit that they hope to meet someone who they’ll settle down with forever.’
‘Whereas you’re happy to enjoy the life of an ageless playboy.’
‘It’s not commitment I’m avoiding. Commitment I’m fine with. Give me kids and mortgages and a shared dog or parking space or whatever.’
‘Those things aren’t equivalent,’ Zoe said pointedly.
‘Well. Whatever. I just don’t really get marriage. My parents have done it. Some of my friends have, some of them haven’t. Sometimes it’s worked out, sometimes it hasn’t. I’m not that fussed either way. I don’t think it necessarily makes anything better, and if it doesn’t do that, what’s the point? It’s just papering over cracks, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, heartwarming.’
Jack shrugged. ‘I’d get married if you wanted. I just don’t really care one way or another.’
‘Stop, stop.’ Zoe wiped her eyes. ‘That’s just too beautiful. It’s … it’s poetry.’ She gave a dramatic sob.
‘How about you then? Not fussed about marriage because you’re ragingly anti, or just romantically apathetic, like me?’
Zoe narrowed her eyes. ‘When I’m raging, you’ll know about it, my friend. I suppose apathetic. No, somewhere between apathetic and anti. Maritally atheistic.’ She thought for a moment. ‘It’s not for me, although I don’t want to ban anyone else from doing it. It’s just not ever been something I’ve believed in.’ She stopped, looked down. ‘I think it would feel a bit … suffocating. And old-fashioned.’
‘Am I seeing a little bit of raging coming out? Just a little?’
Zoe sighed. ‘And … I was engaged before.’
Jack stared at her. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘what?’
Zoe leant back in bed. ‘I was really young. Sixteen. Seventeen by the end of it. And I was a young sixteen, if you know what I mean. And this guy – this prick, if you want a slightly more three-dimensional picture – he picked me out at a sixth-form college party, and he seemed so mature, and so great, and so clever, and funny, and he decided to become my boyfriend.’
‘You sound like you had no say in it.’
‘I didn’t, Jack. That’s my point. I was sixteen – I didn’t fucking know what I was doing. We were together for over a year, so it seemed like this was forever, as stuff does at that age. I didn’t have anything to compare it to – I’d not even had a boyfriend before then, or at least nothing longer than a few days. And this … man comes along, telling me how fantastic I am, how brilliant, how grown up, how different I was. And how could I resist?’
‘Hang on – how old was he?’
Zoe thought about it for a moment, then looked at Jack, shocked. ‘Your age. Your age, now. He was mid-twenties and going out with a sixteen year old.’
Jack looked queasy.
‘Yeah. Exactly. His name was Chuck.’ She sighed again. ‘I haven’t said that name for a long time. Then he thought we should be together properly, that we should be engaged, that … I needed to commit to the relationship, or I didn’t love him enough.’
‘Zoe.’
‘Well,’ she said tightly, leaning back from Jack’s hands and looking away from him again, remembering, just needing to say it all and not have Jack’s comfort stop her. ‘The happy ending is that none of that mattered anyway, because I completely fucked up my A Levels and didn’t get into any of my chosen courses anyway. It was pretty much thanks to him I fucked up every single paper I sat.’
‘But … I didn’t know this.’
Zoe gave him a look. ‘That’s the point,’ she said more softly. ‘No one did. He was good at that. Ava and Esther saw us out once, so I had to admit that I had a boyfriend, but they didn’t know what he was like. He wanted us to stay secret, so the relationship was just about us – no one else could be involved in something so special. No one could know. So he never met my parents, never spoke to my sisters, never hung out with my friends. In the end, I barely did either.’
‘Fucking hell.’
‘Yup. In the end, I told Liz, who said she’d been watching me since I first met him and knew he was up to no good. She wanted me to tell someone, someone at college or my parents or anyone at all really, but I still wanted to protect him. I thought I must have done something wrong to drive him away. To make him not want me anymore, for him to treat me the way he did. All I could think of during my exams was what I could have done to make him so upset. This was the man I was supposed to marry, remember. I was going to spend the rest of my life with him, but I was such an awful person that I couldn’t even keep him when I was already at his beck and call.’
‘Zo. You had such a narrow escape.’
She laughed. ‘I know. I realise that now. But I didn’t for years – and, the thing is, it’s kind of put me off marriage. Plus all that wearing white and changing your name and having your father hand you over, signing your life over to someone. It’s gross.’
‘But you can get married without all that stuff. Wear black and keep your name and have no one hand you over. And not everyone is like your incredibly gross ex.’
She blinked at him for a moment. ‘Yeah. I suppose. But it doesn’t really change the nature of the whole institution. That’s it’s just the government’s way of keeping tabs on who owns who.’
‘Now who’s the romantic poet?’ Jack tried to laugh.
‘It is, though! I can go to a wedding and cheer and throw confetti with the best of them, but I can’t say a little bit of me doesn’t die inside. Just a tiny bit. And it might come back to life later on, after a few drinks and once I’ve hit the dancefloor, but it doesn’t change my feelings. I just don’t get marriage. I don’t want to. I’ve had my little nibble at the edges of it, and it just didn’t sit particularly well in my guts.’
‘Alright, alright. I’ll throw away the floor-length black dress I’ve bought you and bin the Haribo ring.’
‘No, I’ll take the Haribo. You can keep the frock, though.’
Jack pulled Zoe into a strong hug. ‘I’m sorry, Zo. I’m sorry you had to go through that.’
Zoe kissed him, already feeling better. Lighter. Freer. Jack understood now.