It was three weeks after the sales conference where I’d first met Darrell when I stopped by Karen’s desk on my way to the photocopying room. She looked up from her screen with a smile and pushed her chair back. There was a half-eaten doughnut on a serviette beside her computer mouse, and sugar everywhere. Her desk was nothing like mine.
‘I think I’m being wooed,’ I said without preamble.
Karen’s eyes widened with delight, as though she’d just sampled something even more delicious than the confectionery beside her. ‘Really?’ she breathed, beckoning me to bend down a little closer. ‘What are you doing, and more importantly, who are you doing it with?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Just how dirty are we talking here?’ she asked, before waving her arms excitedly as a new thought occurred to her. ‘Oh, is it with Paul?’
‘Who’s Paul?’
‘The really fit guy from the post room, you know, the one with the body like a Diet Coke ad model.’
I shook my head, feeling like I’d accidentally stepped over into an alternate universe. It was difficult to know which of the many wrong tangents Karen was going down that I needed to correct first.
‘Firstly, I have no idea who this Paul person is. And secondly, I didn’t say “rude”, I said “wooed”.’
Karen flopped back against the worn grey fabric of her office chair and looked seriously disappointed for a moment, before considering what I’d said and deciding it was still way more interesting than whatever she’d been working on before I interrupted her.
She nodded to her colleague’s vacant chair. ‘Eric’s in a meeting,’ she explained, ‘sit down and tell me everything.’
I folded on to the chair and rolled it a little closer to hers, although I don’t think anyone – apart from her – was in the slightest bit interested in my love life. ‘Well, it started with the flowers – a beautiful bunch of twelve gerberas that were waiting on my desk a couple of weeks ago when I got back from lunch. After that came the chocolates, a box of twenty of those tiny Belgian white ones, which weirdly hardly anyone knows are my particular favourites, and then—’
‘Oh my God, you really haven’t inherited anything from your mother, have you? I don’t want an inventory, I want a story. Who’s sending you this stuff?’
I thought about making her wait for my answer, because her comment about my mother had stung a little. But what was the point in having news if you weren’t going to share it? ‘Well, that’s just it. To begin with I truly had no idea. There was no card with either of the first two deliveries.’
‘Then how did they get to your desk?’
‘I guess someone from the post room must have brought them up,’ I hazarded.
‘Maybe Paul?’ said Karen hopefully, still clearly fixated on the mail delivery guy.
I gave a small secretive smile, as I leant a little closer towards her. ‘I actually had a sneaking suspicion who they might be from, but it wasn’t until the third delivery arrived last week that I was almost certain.’
‘What was the third delivery?’
‘A litre bottle of Evian with a gift tag attached saying Drink me.’
‘God, I hope you didn’t,’ Karen interjected. ‘Who knows what could have been put in it.’
‘Why would anyone do that?’
‘Honestly, do you really not read anything apart from the FT?’ was her head-shaking reply.
I leant back in my chair and frowned, still disappointed with my friend’s reaction. ‘The water hadn’t been tampered with, and nor had the chocolates. And anyway, by the time the theatre tickets arrived, I was confident I knew who was sending them.’
‘Please tell me you didn’t go to the theatre to meet some random secret admirer, who could have been an axe murderer, for all you knew.’
‘What is it with you and axe murderers?’
Karen shook her head, making her look a little like a dishevelled dog with a troublesome ear. ‘Suzanne, if you don’t tell me who this mystery man is, there’s a good chance you won’t live long enough to be wooed or rude.’
‘It’s Darrell,’ I said simply, and although I tried really hard to stop it, somehow a huge grin spread itself across my face.
‘Who is Darrell?’
‘The guy I met when I went to that conference three weeks ago.’
‘The bloke you took up to your room? The one who could have been a sex offender?’ she asked, her voice unfortunately loud enough to carry to the people working on the next bank of desks. A few of them looked up, and I felt a hot blush colour my cheeks.
‘The guy who was actually a perfect gentleman, who bought me drinks and then escorted me safely to the door of my room,’ I corrected firmly. There must have been something in my voice that alerted my old friend that this particular running gag was now long past its expiry date.
‘Sorry,’ she said, sounding contrite, and yet somehow still quite concerned.
‘So the man you met in the bar has somehow tracked down where you work – and we’ll ignore for now how borderline stalker-ish that is; he’s bombarded you with presents and arranged for you to meet him at the theatre? It’s all a little intense, don’t you think?’
For someone who’d been quite happy to see me paired up with the mailman a few minutes ago, I was a little disappointed by her lack of enthusiasm, and I couldn’t help wondering if she wasn’t just a tiny bit jealous. I’d certainly heard her complain more than once about the lack of romance or spontaneity in her own long-term relationship.
‘It wasn’t intense. It was actually rather lovely. We went out last night and had a really amazing evening.’
It was impossible to stay mad at Karen; we’d been friends for far too long. Although I was still bristling a little when Eric appeared to reclaim his chair a few moments later.
‘Let’s talk some more about this over lunch,’ Karen had suggested, returning her attention reluctantly to her screen.
I nodded and slipped away, already knowing that the steaks in the restaurant where we’d chosen to meet wouldn’t be the only thing to receive a grilling that lunchtime.
*
It had taken quite a few double dates, and interrogations worthy of a Spanish inquisitor, before Karen had given Darrell her seal of approval. To be fair, no one could have tried harder than he did whenever we’d gone out together as a foursome. Darrell was charming, funny and always first at the bar to buy a round of drinks, or trying to discreetly settle the bill without splitting it. But none of that impressed Karen. What swung it in the end was something far simpler. ‘It’s the way he looks at you,’ she had admitted, as we wandered around the shops together one lunchtime. ‘The expression in his eyes when you walk towards him. The way he stares intently at your face whenever you speak. And how he laughs at your jokes, even when you screw up the punchline – which you do quite a lot, by the way.’
I had smiled, while absent-mindedly fingering the price tag of some silky lingerie, trying to decide if Darrell would like me in – or out – of it.
Karen had looked at me, at the vaguely dreamy expression in my eyes and then at the garment swinging on its tiny hanger from my finger. ‘You’re really starting to fall for him, aren’t you?’
I felt my cheeks flush, like a teenager, as I nodded. ‘I think I might be,’ I confessed.
‘Even though it’s all been so fast, and there’s still so much about him you don’t know?’
‘I know all that I need to. I know how he makes me feel.’
Karen shook her head as she followed me to the queue at the till. ‘What about that crazy ex-girlfriend of his, the one he never wants to talk about?’
I handed over my card and waited as the shop assistant folded the silken garment and began wrapping it in crimson-coloured tissue paper. ‘So he doesn’t want to talk about her. So what? You can hardly blame him for that. It was obviously a pretty ugly and traumatic break-up. Of all people, I can respect his right not to want to share every last detail of his past with the rest of the world.’
Karen made a small sound of disapproval, which may or may not have been because she’d just seen how much I’d paid for a tiny scrap of lace frippery. ‘Having a famous author for a mother doesn’t exactly count as having a dark and mysterious past – which, incidentally, I still don’t know why you insist on keeping secret. If she was my mum, I’d be shouting it from the rooftops.’
She bit her lip, as though tasting the words she was about to deliver next, already knowing how unpalatable I was going to find them. ‘If you and Darrell are serious, if this thing is really going somewhere, those are questions you have a right to ask. You know there are two sides to any relationship break-up. Darrell could be at least partly responsible for things ending so toxically.’ She said the last hesitantly, already knowing it would put a grim and determined set on my lips. She was absolutely right, it did.
‘I just don’t want you to end up being the next Mrs Bluebeard,’ Karen had muttered as we emerged from the shop and began to head back towards our office building. ‘I know Darrell seems like the perfect boyfriend right now – and hell, what do I know, maybe he is every bit as wonderful as he seems – but I bet you anything his old girlfriend has a completely different take on whatever happened between them.’
I pressed the button on the pedestrian crossing, and frowned at the little red man who was telling me to stay put, because I really wanted to keep walking and leave Karen’s voice of reason back on the pavement behind me.
‘Sometimes in life you just have to trust your instincts,’ I said firmly, making it clear that the mysterious girlfriend in Darrell’s past was a subject that was no longer up for discussion. ‘Right now I’m happier than I’ve been in years. Can’t you just share that with me?’
Karen looked torn, but in the end, what bound her to me was stronger than all of her doubts or suspicions. She linked her arm through mine as the green man appeared. ‘Of course I can, hon.’
*
My mother was an altogether harder nut to crack. More of a resilient Brazil than a pliable pecan. Even now, on the day she had totally surprised me by paying the balance on my wedding dress, the light of doubt was still in her eyes. She might have dialled down the dimmer, but I could still see it glimmering in the darkness in the small bistro where we’d gone for lunch.
‘Perhaps I should just have something light,’ she said, perusing the menu, ‘as we’re going out for dinner tonight.’
‘I think the place Darrell’s chosen is all about artfully garnished plates and minute portions,’ I said, trying not to notice the thought bubble that had popped up above my mother’s head with the word pretentious floating in it. ‘It’s the kind of place where you pop into McDonald’s on the way home because you’re still absolutely starving.’ My mother’s eyes met and held mine. ‘He’s just trying to impress you,’ I added hopefully.
‘I stopped being impressed by any man’s over-the-top flamboyant gestures a great many years ago,’ my mother said. I already knew exactly where this sentence was heading. ‘Your father saw to that.’
Thankfully, we were interrupted by a young, fresh-faced waitress, who popped up enthusiastically beside our table, wielding her small order pad like a radar speed gun. ‘Have you ladies decided yet, or do you need a little longer?’
‘I’d like the pasta, please,’ I said, passing the waitress my menu.
‘And I’ll have the chicken salad,’ my mother declared, after running a quick eye down the list of options.
I thought of the dress I’d left behind at Fleurs, the one I wouldn’t be seeing again until the day of my wedding, and wondered if I should change my order. The dress had fitted me perfectly, leaving no margin to either gain or lose weight. I shook my head and allowed the tiny concern to tumble back behind far larger and more troubling ones. The dress was practically the only thing about the wedding that wasn’t bothering me.
‘So, you do know that Dad is arriving back in the country at the end of the week?’
My mother’s smile, which was still sitting on her lips for the waitress, froze slowly by degrees. It was like watching a barometer drop. ‘I suppose that means you haven’t had a last-minute change of heart about inviting him?’
It was, almost word for word, exactly the same question Darrell had asked several weeks earlier. Ironically, on this one aspect of the wedding, my mother and fiancé were in total agreement.
‘Whatever has happened in the past, he is still my father. I know he’s missed many milestones in my life, and I’m not saying that I can ever totally forgive him for that, but not inviting him to my wedding, not even giving him a chance to be part of the day, would just feel… wrong. I want both of my parents to be there.’
Of course, the moment I’d said those words to Darrell, I instantly wanted to rewind time and take them back. My thoughtlessness made me feel absolutely terrible. Because of that stupid and mysterious feud he’d had with his parents, hardly anyone from Darrell’s family was planning on attending our wedding. Even worse, practically all of his old friends were apparently still in contact with his ex, so they weren’t coming either, out of loyalty to her.
‘Don’t you think, if you reached out to your parents, this would be a perfect time to heal the old wounds and put all of this behind you?’ I had suggested gently, working largely in the dark, because I still had no idea what on earth could have happened to cause such a seemingly unbridgeable rift. But whenever I brought up the topic, Darrell’s shoulders would stiffen and a lockjaw expression would immobilise his face. There was so much anger and pain in whatever had happened between them that I always stepped rapidly back from it, as though I was teetering on the edge of a chasm I could easily fall into.
There was no pain in my mother’s expression at the mention of her former husband, just the kind of bristling irritation you might feel towards a wasp that keeps endlessly circling your outdoor picnic, threatening to ruin everything.
*
Despite adopting an air of nonchalance when telling Karen I’d been seeing someone, my entire relationship with Darrell had been one huge leap of faith. And in a way it still was. That first headlong jump into the unknown had been taken when I’d removed the single theatre ticket from its envelope and decided to meet the mystery man who’d been secretly pursuing me.
Like many single women, I’d been on my fair share of blind dates, yet this one felt different – perhaps a little more partially sighted than totally blind. Not unsurprisingly for me, I got to the theatre far too early. Darrell (or possibly, not Darrell at all) had scribbled a suggested meeting time on a small yellow Post-it note, stuck to the ticket: Meet me at 7.15 by the Box Office. There was nothing alarming about his handwriting; no red flags were raised by the steep backward slant of his letters, or the way his pen sliced boldly through the letter T. And yet every time I looked at the note, I felt a shiver of something I couldn’t quite name run down my spine.
There were plenty of people milling around the entrance to the theatre, couples and larger groups, but no single men. No Darrell. Would anyone go to the trouble of seeking out where I worked, sending me gifts, and then not show up? Rather than wait around to find out, I decided to go for a brisk ten-minute walk around the block. Flashback memories of being stood up at seventeen hadn’t faded with time, even though roughly fifteen years had passed since the night I’d been left standing alone outside the cinema, long after the film had begun. The experience had stayed with me far longer than the face or the name of the boy who’d changed his mind.
Only Darrell hadn’t stood me up.
By the time I once again approached the theatre, my pulse was racing, as though I’d sprinted around the block – which, in the heels I was wearing, would have been physically impossible. My nerves felt like violin strings, one peg-turn away from violently snapping. I could see someone standing there, waiting. A man. They had their back to me, and in the unnatural glare of the sodium street lights, it was impossible to see if his hair was the same shade as the man from the hotel. The man who’d bought me drinks, who’d made me feel amusing, interesting and – for the first time in quite a while – just a little bit sexy.
I felt sick and excited in equal measure. My footsteps slowed and then faltered to a stop. Even though I knew he couldn’t have heard the clip of my heels on the pavement, he suddenly straightened and spun towards me, as though I’d called his name. His smile was on maximum wattage even before he’d completed the 180-degree turn. His eyes were warm, and crinkling at the edges like sweet wrappers. He smiled with his entire face, and it was so open and genuine that every last nervous thought I’d been harbouring simply evaporated away.
‘You came,’ he said delightedly, holding out his hand, palm side up. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to place my own hand in his. It was the middle of October and the evenings were rapidly growing colder, but all I could feel was the warmth of his fingers curled around mine. He inclined his head in the direction of the theatre. ‘We should probably go in and find our seats.’
I smiled and nodded, and allowed him to lead me up the three shallow marble steps to the theatre’s entrance. He held my hand all the way to our seats, and kept hold of it through the first half of the show. The gentle stroke of his thumb on the sensitive skin of my palm made it hard to concentrate on the performance, made even breathing naturally a new and interesting challenge.
Darrell was clearly a very tactile man; that much was obvious from the guiding hand resting in the small of my back as we climbed the stairs at the intermission and headed towards the bar. Once there, he again reached for my hand and wove us through the jostling crowds to a quiet corner where an ice bucket holding a bottle of champagne sat waiting. I looked at the small card with his name printed on it beside the two glass flutes.
‘You must have been fairly confident I was going to come,’ I said. There was something in his smile that made the breath catch in my throat. Several heads had turned our way at the sound of the popping cork, but suddenly it felt as if the bar was empty of everyone except the two of us.
‘Not at all,’ he confessed, pouring the champagne into the glasses without ever taking his eyes off my face. I knew without a doubt that if I’d done that, our shoes would now be splattered with alcohol, but he didn’t spill a single drop. He passed me a glass, and his voice was low and doing something really unexpected deep within my stomach. ‘I just knew that if you came, I’d want us to celebrate the moment, because it would be the night when something important had first begun.’
‘And if I hadn’t come?’ My voice was practically a whisper.
Darrell gave a small, sad shrug. ‘Then I’d definitely have needed this to console me for being the idiot who’d let you slip through his fingers.’
*
Those fingers were still holding mine that night, as we travelled in the taxi towards the restaurant to meet my mother. She’d politely declined our offer to pick her up, preferring to arrange her own transport. ‘She probably just wanted to terrorise another cabbie,’ I told Darrell jokingly, hoping the real reason wasn’t that she was trying to minimise the time she had to spend in the company of the man who was soon to become her son-in-law.
My anxiety levels weren’t being helped by either the rush-hour traffic or the fact that by the time we’d flagged down a cab on the busy road outside my flat, we were almost half an hour late.
‘I’m so sorry, my meeting overran,’ Darrell apologised, letting himself into my flat with the key I’d had cut for him several months earlier. ‘Then by the time I’d gone back to my place and showered and changed, the traffic had already built up.’
Acid irritation burnt in my throat, the kind that didn’t respond to Rennies and had a tendency to end up with someone saying I told you so. I swallowed down both the words and the emotion, because I wanted – no, needed – tonight to go as smoothly as possible. Things were going to get prickly enough once my father returned to the UK, so getting my mum’s albeit late-in-the-day approval of our marriage seemed doubly important.
‘So how did the dress fitting go today? Were you pleased with how it looked?’
I turned my head away from the side window, where I’d been busily glaring at every car that cut into our lane, making us even moments later than we already were. For the first time that evening, I could feel a genuine smile of complete happiness creep over my face.
‘It was absolutely beautiful. Even better than how I remembered it. And what’s more incredible is that both Karen and my mother really loved it too. It got everyone’s seal of approval.’
Darrell reached for my hand and kissed my knuckles, just below the large diamond he’d placed on my ring finger. ‘I really wish I could have been there. You know, I half thought about secretly following you and peering in through the window.’
I sat up a little straighter on the worn leather bench seat of the taxi. Darrell did this sometimes; he’d say something totally unexpected, and it almost always threw me off balance. ‘Well, I’m very glad you didn’t,’ I said, aware that my voice sounded a little like a slightly irritated school teacher. I took a breath and softened my words with a smile. ‘And anyway, don’t you know that it’s bad luck for you to see the bride in her dress before the ceremony?’
He kissed my hand again, and chuckled. ‘Don’t panic. I had back-to-back meetings all day that I couldn’t get out of. I’m just going to have to wait another three weeks for the big reveal.’ My eyes were still a little watchful, wondering if he had genuinely considered gatecrashing my fitting. ‘But, just for the record, I don’t believe in that old superstitious nonsense. I already have all the good luck in the world. I’m getting married to you, aren’t I?’
And just like that, I was reeled right back in all over again. His arms wound around me as he pulled me towards him and kissed me with a passion that made my cheeks glow hot, right there in the back of the taxi. After a minute or two I called a halt to our passionate embrace, just in case the driver’s eyes had been tempted to stray from the road to the action taking place directly behind him.
Darrell’s eyes twinkled mischievously, but he allowed himself to be gently but firmly pushed back.
‘Talking of people following people,’ I began artlessly, dropping my voice so that the driver couldn’t hear us, ‘I decided not to mention anything to Mum about what’s been going on recently. She doesn’t need another reason to raise objections.’
The twinkle died in Darrell’s eyes and was replaced with an expression of pain. ‘I didn’t realise she still wasn’t on board.’
I bit my lip, and thought yet again that I would make an absolutely appalling spy. I was rubbish at keeping anything from anyone.
‘It’s not that she’s not on board… per se,’ I said, trying to soften my words by gently running my hand down the length of his arm. I could feel the muscles, bunched and tense, beneath the expensive fabric of his Italian suit. ‘I just think it’s a combination of things. It’s how she feels about marriage, it’s how quickly we made up our minds – but most of it is probably down to my father coming back.’
Darrell’s eyes said I told you so, but fortunately his lips knew better. But he wasn’t wrong; my mother would have been far easier to win over if I wasn’t forcing her to play happy families with the man she once claimed she never wanted to see again – well, at least not until Hell had begun offering ice-skating sessions.
‘Anyway, I just wanted to warn you not to mention anything about… you know… any of the stuff that’s been going on.’
Darrell nodded, and there was a tension in his jaw that hadn’t been there before. ‘Don’t worry. That’s the very last thing I’m likely to mention tonight.’
*
It was exactly one week after we posted out the first wedding invitations when it started.
*
Weddings take a lot of organising, and the more I tried to keep on top of things, the more I could see why people hired a professional planner. When Darrell offered to help by writing out the invitations to his own guests on the list, I silenced my inner control freak and happily passed him a small bundle of engraved invitations from the box I’d collected from the printers. His pile was considerably smaller than mine, and I felt guilty that while my list kept growing like an out-of-control amoeba, his just kept depleting. ‘It’s because of my job,’ he had explained, gently smoothing away the frown lines between my brows with a tender finger. ‘I travel so much it’s hard to make new friendships or hold on to old ones.’ I opened my mouth to say something, but he silenced me with a kiss, resuming our conversation while my eyes were still fluttery and half-closed and my lips were still parted, waiting for more.
‘I have loads of acquaintances, both here and abroad, but nobody I care enough about to ask to our wedding. There’s only one person who has to be there, and as long as she turns up on the day, I don’t need anybody else.’
‘Oh, she’ll be there,’ I said, confirming my answer with a long kiss, which I broke off to teasingly question: ‘It was me you were talking about, right?’
His laughter had filled the room, and we were both still smiling as he pushed me gently back against the settee cushions, our plans of invitation-writing suddenly abandoned for an altogether more interesting pastime.
*
I rarely spent the night at Darrell’s flat. To be honest, I found his one-bedroom apartment rather cold and impersonal, like a second-rate hotel room. It was a sentiment he seemed to understand and completely agree with. ‘Its only merit is that it’s convenient and practically on the airport’s doorstep, so it’s ideal for when I’ve an early morning flight to catch,’ he’d explained the first time he’d taken me back to the grey concrete block, which externally had all the charm of a municipal car park.
The flat was a colour palette that went from grey to grey, and had obviously been decorated with practicality rather than style in mind, by someone with zero interest in making it homely or welcoming. ‘That’s why I prefer spending the night at yours,’ Darrell had said, coming up behind me and winding his arms around my waist as I stared in despair into his practically empty fridge.
‘Why? Because I actually have a kitchen full of luxury goods, like milk for tea or coffee?’ I said, only half teasing as I looked down at the empty fridge door.
‘I don’t starve when I’m here alone,’ Darrell said, nibbling my ear, as though to prove it by making me his next meal. ‘Although I admit my appetite is far better satisfied at your place.’ Darrell did that a lot, turn an ordinary conversation like asking whether he had milk for our coffee into something just a little bit risqué, a little bit provocative. And the more I blushed whenever he spoke that way, the more he did it.
‘Well, I definitely won’t miss anything about this place when you give up the tenancy,’ I said, pushing the fridge door to a close.
Darrell had his back to me and was pouring hot water into our coffee mugs. Something a little like a summer heat haze shimmered over him as he froze mid-stir at my words. Very carefully – too carefully – he replaced the kettle on its base before slowly turning around.
‘Suzanne, I thought you realised… I’m not giving this place up. It’s just too useful for my business trips.’
‘But… but…’ I shook my head as though I was a stuck needle that couldn’t get past that small three-letter word. In a way, I couldn’t. ‘But why? What’s the point of keeping it? It makes no sense, especially not financially.’ There she was again, my inner accountant, screaming out to make her point.
Darrell’s eyes met and challenged mine, and for just a moment I thought I saw a flicker of irritation dance within them. We’d been together, and practically inseparable, for months, yet suddenly, without any warning, we were here, teetering on the edge of our very first disagreement. Ever. When the ink was hardly dry on our wedding invitations, our timing couldn’t have been worse.
Suddenly, Karen’s words whispered in my head, like an annoying ghost. She and Tom had only been to Darrell’s flat once, and her verdict the following day had hardly been complimentary. ‘A mirror on the ceiling and black satin sheets? His place looks like an archetypical bachelor pad from the seventies, or the set of a porno movie.’ I had bristled angrily, mainly because I privately agreed with her, though now I would never be able to admit it.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I’d said obstinately, jabbing at the button to call the lift for our floor as we waited in our building’s reception.
‘Well, I’m sorry, Suze, but I would. It looks like the kind of place you take random girls back to after picking them up in a sleazy bar somewhere.’
I had turned to her, swivelling on my heel just in time to see her clap her hand to her mouth, remembering – just one sentence too late – how Darrell and I had first met.
‘Not that I meant that Darrell still does that – or that he’s ever done that,’ she said, stumbling over the apology in her haste to get it out of her mouth past her own foot. ‘I just meant his flat has a tacky retro kind of look to it. Oh God, just forget I ever said anything,’ she pleaded.
And I thought I had done, until right now, when Darrell was looking at me and I was trying not to let myself ask if there was any other reason, apart from its proximity to the airport, why a man would want to keep a bachelor pad after he was married. Admittedly, Darrell’s job involved a huge amount of international travel, but was that a valid enough reason not to let the flat go? Who started a marriage with ‘his and hers’ homes? More worrying than those questions was the one I was deliberately avoiding: I loved Darrell, but how well did I actually know him? Enough to trust him? It would have been a hell of a lot easier to answer that if the question wasn’t ricocheting around my head in my mother’s voice.
‘If it’s just about the money, then don’t worry. I can afford this.’
I shook my head. We were both on very good salaries, and I knew he could easily cover his rent and still contribute to the mortgage on my place. What worried me most was what I now saw as a reluctance to let go of life as a single man. Did it reflect a lack of commitment to our marriage… to us?
I could feel the prickle of tears smarting like soap suds in my eyes. The invitations had been sent, the venue was booked, the flowers were chosen, and my dress had been ordered. Everything was almost ready, except, perhaps, the groom. The kitchen suddenly seemed suffocating, as though there wasn’t enough air in the room for both of us. Through a threatening shimmer of tears, I looked for an escape. ‘I… I just need to go down and get something that I’ve left in my car.’
Darrell abandoned the coffee-making and crossed the small room, his arms outstretched. ‘Suzanne, you’re upset.’
No kidding, Sherlock, I thought, even while I was shaking my head in denial. ‘No, no, really I’m not,’ I said, wiping the back of my hand beneath my eyes, making sure no escaping tears dared make me a liar.
‘Let’s sit down and talk this through, sensibly,’ he said, his voice softly cajoling as his arms wound around my waist.
I took a single step backwards, which I think surprised him as much as it did me. His arms fell away and swung uselessly at his side, as though he’d suddenly forgotten how to work them. ‘You really are upset, aren’t you?’ There was an expression on his face that vaguely resembled a wounded puppy. He looked so hurt that I almost caved; I almost said he could have a whole string of properties, as long as he still wanted to live with me in one of them. My mother was practically screaming in dismay in my head.
I shook my head so vigorously that my ponytail slapped me, first on one cheek and then the other, as though I was hysterical and needed a sharp wake-up call. Did I?
‘I really have left something in my car, Darrell,’ I pleaded, hoping he could see that I wanted – no, needed – a few minutes away from him to compose myself. ‘Let me go down and get it, and then we can talk,’ I said, already plucking my bag from the kitchen worktop.
We did talk when I got back from the underground car park – but it certainly wasn’t about whether or not he should keep his flat.
*
Darrell had two allocated parking bays. His car was in one, and mine sat beside it, parked slightly at a skew, because I was always worried about hitting one of the concrete pillars. I don’t care much for underground car parks. Well, not the car parks themselves; what I mean is that I don’t much care for them when I’m alone, at night, when the overhead lights begin to flicker in the way they were doing now. Suddenly, every scary movie I’d ever seen, where someone in a hood or a mask pounces on a defenceless woman on her way back to her car, was replaying right there in the front of my mind.
The argument – if that’s what it was – with Darrell had already set my nerves on edge. The car park setting pushed them a little closer to the precipice. But it was the thing sitting on my windshield that tipped me over the chasm.
At first, I thought the item pinioned to the glass beneath my wiper blade was an advertising flyer, until I glanced around at the other parked cars and realised mine was the only one to have one. Without even knowing why, the small white envelope filled me with trepidation. I reached for the wiper to release it, holding it gingerly by the corner as the words scrawled on it came into focus. The writing was messy and smudged in places, as though written in a hurry. It was addressed to ‘The Bride’, which made no sense at all. I knew no one in this building, except Darrell, so how did anyone know this was my car? Even more worrying, how had they accessed a secure underground car park to put the envelope on my screen? If whoever had left it was a resident of the building, if Darrell had inexplicably decided to invite one of the neighbours he scarcely knew to our wedding, why hadn’t they just posted their reply through his letter box?
My fingers were trembling as they broke the seal on the envelope. More scrawled writing covered the pre-printed reply. It was a standard acceptance card, the kind they sell at newsagents and stationers everywhere. It wasn’t one of the engraved personalised printed cards that I’d slipped into every invitation sent out to our family and friends. But something told me this reply hadn’t been sent by anyone who fell into either of those categories.
Ignoring the spaces where you were meant to confirm or decline the invitation, the author of this message had written across the entire face of the card. Their disregard for the dotted lines offended me, but nowhere near as much as their words:
I will NOT be attending your wedding… and if you’ve got any sense, you won’t either.
*
I didn’t wait for the lift, but took the stairs, all five flights of them, which meant that by the time I hammered on Darrell’s door I was breathless and trembling and could no longer tell whether it was from anxiety or my exertions.
‘What? What is it? What’s wrong?’ Darrell asked when he opened his door and I practically fell into his arms. He looked past me into the deserted hallway as though expecting to see… I don’t know what. Perhaps that man with the axe Karen spent so much time going on about.
He kicked the door shut and led me into the lounge, one arm circled around my waist, supporting me, because suddenly my legs couldn’t remember how to do it. Still too shocked to speak, I handed him the envelope first, and saw his brows furrow to meet in the middle in confusion, and then inch even closer together when I passed him the card. I was watching him carefully, but I could decipher none of the expressions that flitted across his familiar features, because they dissolved and changed into the next one too quickly.
The final expression, the one he decided to stick with, was one of ironic and slightly irritated amusement. Holding one corner of the reply card, he tapped it against his outstretched palm. ‘Is this what got you so scared? I thought someone had attacked you or something.’
I shook my head, and tried to regain control of my breathing, which proved if nothing else that I really ought to exercise more, because the climb up the stairs had totally winded me.
‘What does it mean? Why would someone leave it on my car? And why does it sound so threatening?’
Of my three questions, the second one seemed to bother him most. ‘This was on your car?’
I nodded, wiping my damp palms on the legs of my jeans. Beneath the denim I could feel the muscles of my thighs still trembling, as though electrically charged.
For a moment I thought I saw a glimpse of anger on Darrell’s face, and then it was gone and his mouth twisted into a wry grin. ‘Well, obviously, it’s somebody’s idea of a joke.’
‘Who? Why would anyone do that? And if it’s a joke, it isn’t a very funny one.’
‘Agreed,’ said Darrell, turning to a small cabinet and pulling out a bottle of amber-coloured liquid. I don’t drink whisky, but this didn’t seem the right moment to remind him of that. There was a generous double shot in the glass he passed me.
‘Drink,’ he ordered, standing over me like a scary nurse dispensing medicine. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’
The alcohol burnt like fire all the way down to my stomach. ‘So who do you think left it?’ I asked, trying hard not to cough like a teenager who’s just raided her parents’ alcohol stash.
Darrell sighed and then shrugged. ‘If I had to take a guess, then my money’s on one of the guys from the gym. It’s their kind of prank – stupid and immature.’
Darrell was one of the minority; he was someone who actually made full use of his gym membership. The evidence of it was there, every time he unbuttoned his shirt. But this was the first time he’d ever mentioned interacting with any of the other members.
‘You’ve never talked about anyone from there before. Are these people friends of yours?’ I could hear the note of censure in my voice, the unspoken criticism that said I didn’t like his friends. I’d met and been introduced to so few people from his world, it was unfortunate to take an instant dislike to some of the first people he’d chosen to mention.
For just a moment I thought I saw irritation on his face, but then he sat down beside me and pulled me against him. I went willingly into his arms, feeling instantly safe and also a little foolish. Had I really just massively overreacted to a rather pathetic practical joke?
‘They’re more acquaintances than friends,’ he admitted. ‘But a couple of them live in this building, so I’m pretty sure it must have been them.’ He had his arms tightly secured around me and murmured into my hair, which meant I couldn’t see his face or his expression as he spoke. ‘I’m sure they thought they were being hilarious,’ he said, his words fanning my forehead. ‘I mentioned the wedding in passing the other day, so I guess that’s what inspired this wind-up. I’m sure they didn’t intend to frighten you.’
‘Well, they kind of did,’ I said, still decompressing from panic to foolishness.
‘Then I’ll definitely speak to them about it,’ he said, sounding grim. ‘They took it too far.’ I wondered if he realised his hold on me had suddenly tightened to such a degree that it was just this side of uncomfortable. ‘No one is ever going to hurt or scare you. Not without having to go through me first.’