Fourteen months later
OLIVER and Rachel stood on the balcony overlooking the Seine, his arms wrapped round her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder. ‘Ten years. Doesn’t seem like it, does it?’
‘No.’ She leaned back against him.
‘I can still remember how you looked when you walked down the aisle towards me,’ Oliver said. ‘The most beautiful woman in the world.’
‘I was convinced I’d trip over the hem of my dress and fall flat on my face. I was terrified.’
‘You didn’t look it. Just serene. And very, very beautiful.’
She smiled. ‘Flattery will get you anywhere.’
‘I hope so.’ He rubbed his cheek against hers. ‘Come with me, Dr Bedingfield,’ he whispered.
She allowed him to waltz her back into their suite. The honeymoon suite—a surprise from Oliver to celebrate their tenth anniversary. Paris, as he’d planned for their first anniversary—except they’d never got round to it and had put it off. And, to her even greater surprise, he’d arranged for his parents to look after the children for the weekend.
Isabel had thawed a great deal over the last fourteen months. Probably at Stuart’s prompting, Rachel thought. Since his recovery from the stroke, Stuart had become a lot closer to both Rachel and Oliver. And right at this moment Robin had probably found a quiet corner in his grandparents’ house and had his nose in a book, whereas Sophie was likely to be bossing her grandfather into telling her another Princess Mouse story. And Caroline—who’d become good friends with Rachel over the last year or so—was taking over for the day tomorrow to give Isabel a break and keep her sweet towards the children.
‘Ten years. According to my mother, traditionally it’s the tin anniversary,’ Oliver said conversationally. ‘So...’ He took a neatly wrapped package from the drawer next to his side of the bed. ‘Happy anniversary, love.’
She opened the parcel, and burst out laughing as she saw the can of pineapple. The first pudding she’d ever made for Oliver had been a pineapple upside-down cake, and if she didn’t have time to make a pudding for dinner, she usually opened a tin of pineapple and served it with ice cream. ‘Thank you.’ She grinned. ‘I wasn’t expecting a present. You’ve already given me what I wanted most.’ Time. A lot of time since he’d installed a practice manager and signed up the out-of-hours service. And Oliver was no longer missing out on all the children’s milestones. He’d even taken over the bedtime story routine with Sophie.
‘Well, it’s traditional to give your wife an anniversary present. But I looked up the anniversary lists on the Internet. The modern list doesn’t say it’s tin.’
‘No, it says it’s diamond jewellery.’
‘How do you...? Oh.’ He grinned. ‘You did the same.’
‘Mmm-hmm. Great minds think alike.’ She walked over to her bedside cabinet and extracted a small box. ‘Happy anniversary.’
He opened the box. ‘Wow. Cornish tin,’ he said, looking more closely at the cufflinks. ‘Thanks.’
‘It met the traditional and the modern criteria,’ she pointed out.
The tiny diamonds in the centre of the cufflinks gleamed in the light.
‘And all I got you was a silly present. A tin of pineapple,’ Oliver said ruefully.
‘I don’t need presents. I’ve got you.’
She kissed him back. ‘Definitely.’
‘You know, I really fancy some pineapple.’
‘What? Oliver, if you really want pineapple, we can call room service.’
‘Not the same.’ He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘And we ought to use your present, don’t you think?’
‘Another day, maybe.’
‘Now.’
She frowned. ‘Oliver, what...?’
He handed her a tin-opener.
‘But this is a hotel!’ What was he doing with a tin-opener in a hotel—a posh hotel at that?
‘So?’
She sighed. ‘All right, all right. If you insist, I’ll open the pineapple. But if I get juice all over the carpet and we get slapped with a cleaning bill, it’s your fault.’ She took the lid off the can, then stopped. ‘What?’ It was full of shredded tissue paper, not pineapple. ‘How...?’
‘You know Wayne Groves became an apprentice at Hollybridge Garage when he left school. Well, he was doing a welding course the other week,’ Oliver explained. ‘He, um, needed to do a bit of practising. And he thought he owed us a favour, since you spotted he had Weil’s disease last summer.’
‘You got Wayne to weld a tin of pineapple back together?’
‘After I’d emptied it and washed it up. The kids helped.’
‘They knew about this? No way. Sophie would’ve told me.’ Sophie couldn’t keep secrets—if she went to the supermarket with Oliver, she’d run in to Rachel to announce that Daddy had bought her some flowers.
‘No, they just scoffed the pineapple.’ Oliver grinned. ‘I told Wayne what I wanted to do, so he put some metal in the bottom to make the tin feel the right weight.’
‘You devious...’ But she was smiling as she took out the tissue paper and discovered the tiny velvet-covered box. ‘Oliver, it’s beautiful,’ she said, taking the diamond eternity ring out of the box, a band of flat-cut diamonds encircled by gold.
‘And so are you, Rachel Bedingfield. I just wanted to say happy anniversary. And that I’ll love you for ever.’
‘Ditto,’ she said. And she kissed him.
* * * * *