My ‘surprise’ birthday party is held at Atwell’s, a smart restaurant off Fenchurch Street. They have an orangery with a small outside courtyard for private hire, and the conventional table settings have been cleared to make way for a cocktail bar and various food stations. Thirty or forty of my friends circulate with their drinks and plates of mini burgers, fish tacos and lobster rolls, and a playlist downloaded from my iTunes provides the background music. It’s nice, I think, but, then again, as someone who runs a catering business, I know this didn’t exactly require a lot of planning.
Still, Dominic was no doubt too busy to take care of the details himself. He’s been crazily busy lately. He’s back so late from work that I hardly see him during the week, and at the weekend he is often tired or distracted. Even David and Melanie’s wedding fails to generate much enthusiasm, although I’m happily carried away with the romance of it all and in love with my beautiful Temperley London bridesmaid dress.
The end of that summer and most of the autumn are taken up with establishing Comida’s second office in South West London. I’ve taken on a young Slovak called Milan to handle client liaison, while his boyfriend Matthew will be in charge of recruiting and managing chefs and waitstaff. They’re the archetypal odd couple – Milan a flamboyant drama queen, and Matthew older, quieter and more steady – but I’m developing a great bond with them both. They’re quite capable of running the second office without my input, but I schedule frequent updates and planning meetings because I enjoy them so much.
‘Sweetheart…’ I say to Dominic when we’re curled up in front of the fire with a bottle of Zinfandel and the Sunday supplements one weekend in early December. Dominic has just set down his iPad and picked up the Travel section. ‘Matt and Milan are going skiing in Austria over the Christmas break, and they wondered if we’d like to join them.’
‘I can’t,’ he says. Then he catches sight of my expression. ‘There’s something I need to tell you. Something that’s just come up. It’s quite…’ He looks down at the page he was reading again, as though searching for the appropriate word. ‘Quite serious.’
‘What d’you mean?’ I set down my wine glass on the coffee table, looking at him intently, trying but failing to decipher his facial expression.
‘My brother Simon… he’s been working abroad and he’s had a stroke.’
My eyes grow wide with disbelief. ‘What? He’s had a stroke! Why on earth didn’t you say before now?’
‘I was waiting to see what happened… you know how these things are.’
I shake my head firmly. ‘No, actually I don’t. If David had had a stroke, I’d have mentioned it the minute it happened. Phoning you would be the first thing I’d do.’
Dom glances up at me. ‘But you and David are close, and Simon and I have barely spoken in years… It’s like comparing apples and oranges.’
I give a little shrug. ‘I suppose.’
‘The prognosis was unclear to start with, and he’s not exactly communicative at the best of times. But the hospital treating him got in touch just now,’ he holds up his iPad, the email app still open, ‘and apparently he’s taken a turn for the worse.’
My hand reaches for him instinctively. ‘Poor you. But I still wish you’d told me when you first found out.’
‘I think I was in shock, to be honest. But now I’ve read this latest update, I think I’m going to have to go out there.’
‘Out where? Where is he, for God’s sake?’ I frown at Dom, taking my hand off his forearm and reaching for my glass of wine.
‘South Africa. Johannesburg.’
‘Really?’ My eyes widen. ‘You’re going to fly all the way out to South Africa, even though he couldn’t make it down from Newcastle to attend our wedding?’
Dominic sighs heavily. ‘Exactly. You know we’re hardly best buddies, but if things go… you know, badly, it could be my last time ever to see my brother. And he’s the only family I have left.’
I nod. ‘If the worst happens, which it probably won’t. It’s not like he’s that old.’ I do the mental arithmetic and try to work out how old Simon Gill actually is. Early forties?
‘You’re probably right, but with Mum gone, I’m all he has. Look, this is what I’ll do, okay? I’ll book a flight as soon as I can, but I’ll leave the return date open. And if I happen to be back by Christmas… well, yes, why the hell not? We can go skiing with your gay best friends.’
‘Okay.’
‘Tell you what, babe, why don’t you book two flights to Austria anyway, and if I can’t make it back in time, then take a girlfriend. JoJo or someone.’
I give in. Family is family after all, I tell myself, and if it was my brother who was stranded in a hospital seven thousand miles away, I would want to go to him. Christmas or no Christmas.
While Dominic is showering, I tidy the sitting room, wiping rings of red wine from the coffee table and stacking up all the newspapers to go in the recycling box. The Sunday Times Travel supplement falls open at the page Dominic was reading.
World Wide Flight Sale: Special Christmas Offers on Flights to South Africa. Johannesburg £760 return, Cape Town £820.
‘I tell you what, Dom: I could always ditch the ski trip and come out there too. Christmas in hot sunshine; that would be kind of nice.’
A few days later, I’m watching Dominic pack. His boarding pass, displaying LHR-JHB in large letters, lies on the bed next to the case.
He reaches over the case and plants a playful kiss on my lips. ‘That’s sweet of you, but I don’t think so, babe. I’m going to be at the hospital most of the time, and Joburg’s not a great city for a woman to be wandering around on her own. Not safe.’
Predictably enough, he’s not back from South Africa by the twenty-third of December, leaving me to fly out alone to St Anton and join Milan and Matt. JoJo is not with me either, having instead been whisked off to the Caribbean by a new flame.
We have a jolly time as a threesome, punctuating our skiing with candlelit sleigh rides and plenty of glühwein, but I swing between missing Dominic terribly and feeling furious and abandoned.
When I return to Waverley Gardens on New Year’s Eve, the lights are all on in the house. My first thought is that it must be burglars, but would they really go around turning on the lights?
I unlock the front door cautiously.
‘Hello?’ I call.
‘Surprise!’
Dominic appears in the hallway, wearing sweatpants and a hoodie. His tanned face is stubbly, but at least he has shaved off the hideous beard he was growing before he left.
My shock is quickly replaced by delight. ‘You’re back!’
He comes forward to take my suitcase from me, then envelops me in a hug. ‘I got in this morning. Couldn’t face seeing in the new year without my beloved wifey.’
‘How’s your brother?’
He shrugs. ‘Oh, you know… getting there. Improving slowly.’
‘That’s good news, at least.’
Dom’s embrace is so warm and enthusiastic that I relinquish some of my resentment over our separate Christmases. He presents me with gifts from the trip: a set of colourful woven baskets and a white gold eternity ring studded with South African tanzanites.
‘It’s beautiful!’ I sigh with genuine pleasure, holding out my right hand to make it sparkle under the light in the hallway.
Dominic sweeps me up in his arms and carries me up to the bedroom, where we have intense and enthusiastic sex.
‘Sorry about being away,’ he mumbles into the side of my neck afterwards. ‘I know the timing sucked.’
‘It’s fine,’ I sigh. ‘The boys and I had a good time in St Anton. It was fun.’
‘Let me know how I can make it up to you,’ he says, stroking my forearm.
To me the answer is obvious, since I’ve had little else on my mind for the past few weeks. I raise myself on one elbow. ‘Can we think about having a baby?’
He hesitates a second, before kissing me on the forehead. ‘Soon, I promise. Very soon.’
‘Our second anniversary would be the ideal time, don’t you think?’ I ask JoJo when we meet at Bean & Beaker a few weeks later.
‘Perfect time for what?’
‘For trying to get pregnant.’ I stir my cappuccino dreamily. ‘Dom said “soon”, and our anniversary’s next month. Which is soon, right?’
JoJo nods. ‘Right.’ She extends the word to show doubt.
‘What?’ I demand.
‘I mean, should you really be second-guessing the right time to do this? After two years together. Is there really still no plan in place?’
‘Dominic wasn’t ready,’ I say, aware I’m sounding defensive. When I’m with JoJo, I seem to be constantly defending my marriage. ‘But at New Year, he said he’d be happy to go ahead in a few months. So, give or take a few weeks, that coincides with our anniversary. We’ll have been married two years, so it will be the perfect time.’
JoJo shrugs. ‘If you say so.’
‘I’m not going to make it a big deal; I’ll just stop taking the birth-control pills. Chances are nothing will happen for months anyway.’
She gives a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, raising her coffee mug as if in a toast. ‘Might as well crack on with it then, girl, you’re not getting any younger.’
‘Exactly. I thought it would be nice to go away to the country for the weekend to celebrate. Maybe to the Cotswolds.’
JoJo’s eyes light up. ‘You should totally go to Gray’s Farmhouse.’ She names the rural outpost of a well-known private member’s club in Central London. ‘They’ve only just opened, and apparently it’s fabulous.’
I reach in my bag for my iPad and we both inspect the photos on the Gray’s website. It shows a large golden stone building surrounded by well-tended green space, in rolling Oxfordshire countryside. There’s a little chi-chi ‘market’ selling overpriced organic produce, and an on-site spa in a timber-framed building in the grounds. The luxurious rooms are chintzy, but in a minimalist way that nods to the company’s urban roots, and for those seeking total privacy, there are a few self-contained cottages. To keep the guests occupied during their stay, there’s a state-of-the-art gym, a pool, a boating lake, cycling and riding.
‘All that activity,’ JoJo groans. ‘You’ll end up exhausted.’
‘I’m kind of hoping we won’t leave the bedroom,’ I counter, with a smirk. I’m already filling in the online reservation form for the last weekend in March.
JoJo is standing up. ‘Got to run, chick, but I’ll see you at the sherry thing just before then, okay?’
‘The sherry thing?’
‘The tasting night. We were going to try and get out more and be less boring in 2018, remember?’
‘Oh yes,’ I agree. ‘We were.’
A couple of weeks later, our joint credit card statement arrives in the post. I feel a rush of shock at the four-figure total when I open it, then I see a payment to South African Airways and realise that Dom must have charged the return flight to Johannesburg to that card.
I go into the study to file away the credit card statement, pulling open the wrong folder and discovering it’s the one that contains Dom’s bank statements. As I go to put it back on the shelves, I can’t help but run my eye down the debit column. On the day after his salary lands in the account, there’s a payment for £2800 to an offshore account, simply tagged as ‘Galea’. Every month.
‘What’s Galea?’ I ask Dom over supper that night.
He stares at me, his fork paused halfway to his mouth. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I was cross-checking something against our Amex card statement and I got your bank statements out at the same time. I assumed it was the pension fund, but that’s Scottish Widows, isn’t it?’
‘Oh that,’ he says. ‘It’s a private equity fund that was recommended to me by someone at work. I’m using it to top up the pension fund.’
‘It’s a lot of money,’ I say, as equably as I can.
He shrugs. ‘If it doesn’t warrant the investment, I’ll switch the funds back to the pension account. No worries.’
‘What’s the name of the fund?’
‘Galea. Galea Securities. But they’re pretty discreet. Offshore stuff, you know. So you probably won’t find them listed anywhere.’
Sure enough, when I do a Google search the next morning, I can’t find reference to Galea Securities anywhere. A faint sense of panic rises in me, but I repeat Dom’s words to myself. They’re discreet. They won’t be listed.
Even so, it’s a little unnerving. As if they don’t exist.