Chapter Fifty-Three

‘Claire Anna Eris …’ Dr Parker was looking up at the woman he had decided was going to be his wife. His lifelong partner. The mother of his children, God willing. He felt a strange feeling of euphoria mixed with fear – followed by a flash of doubt.

Was he doing the right thing?

He pushed the thought from his mind. He was on his knee now, goddamnit. A bit late to be having second thoughts. It was last-minute jitters. Ignore.

‘Would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’ There, he had said the words. No going back.

He caught movement to his right. He turned his head a fraction. Was that Helen?

‘Oh, John Anthony Parker …’

Dr Parker heard the words, saw the look on Dr Eris’s face.

‘… I’d be honoured to be your wife.’

Dr Parker took a quick look to his right. Whoever it was had gone.

Suddenly, he felt Dr Eris’s hands on his face and then her lips on his mouth.

He’d done it. His fate was sealed. He was going to marry Claire.

*

Looking at John as he brushed his hair back, something he did when he was nervous, Dr Eris held her breath. This was it. This was the moment she had been waiting for.

Watching the man she loved – the man she now truly did love – drop down to his knee, Dr Eris felt overwhelmed with happiness.

Finally, John was proposing.

Finally, she was going to be married – a ‘Mrs’, not doomed to be a ‘Miss’ her whole life, a spinster, an old maid.

Finally, she was being taken off the shelf.

Finally, she would be able to show her ex that he’d done her a favour. She had risen up from the embarrassment of being jilted. And what’s more, she had done better. Much better.

She had worked hard for this moment. Very hard indeed. All that plotting and planning at the beginning when she had first started working at the asylum and had met John. It hadn’t been love at first sight – more a case of This is the man I am going to marry. John was perfect. Ticked all the boxes. Good-looking, well off, a professional man, unmarried, unattached. She should have guessed, though, that there would be someone else on the sidelines wanting to take what she wanted.

Well, Helen hadn’t succeeded.

She’d put paid to that.

*

It was only later that Dr Parker realised the word ‘love’ had not once been uttered during his proposal to Claire – nor when she had accepted him as her future husband.