‘She probably didn’t recognise you,’ I said. ‘What with all the disappearing and everything.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You. Disappearing. To Aberdeen. Remember?’
He started. ‘I remember you not replying to any of my letters.’
‘It was a busy summer.’
‘Damn right,’ he said, and looked annoyed.
‘… goes down on you,’ said Max.
‘So you’re getting married?’
I shrugged. ‘God, no … I mean, I might, I haven’t decided …’
‘Hasn’t he asked you?’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘Are you going to force him into it against his will?’ he smiled.
‘Only if I really, really have to. And just with guns and dogs and things, nothing major.’
‘I’m sure you won’t have to. You should get married.’
‘And what makes you the great authority?’ I asked, panicking suddenly.
Why was I panicking? This was ridiculous. And anyway, he wasn’t wearing a ring: I’d checked.
‘I’m thinking about it.’
‘Oh, yes? Who’s the lucky girl? Haggis McBaggis, famous fisher lady of Aberdeen?’
‘Hello,’ said a beautiful dark-haired girl, suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
‘Who’s this?’
‘Well, she fishes,’ Clelland says, ‘but only for compliments. This is Madeleine.’
‘What are you saying about me?’ the girl said. ‘Ignore him, he’s unbelievably rude.’
‘See?’ said Clelland.
‘You are going to be in serious trouble later.’ And she tickled him on the nose.
‘Fantastic,’ he said.
Who’s this tart, I have to admit I was thinking.
‘Are the first four years of all relationships the worst?’ said the girl. ‘Tell me they are. I don’t think I could stand it any more.’
And Clelland put a strong arm around her and squeezed her to him.
‘Well, it won’t be like this when we get back to Africa,’ she said.
Is it my fate, I wonder, to always end up at the fountain at parties? I had slipped out the door as soon as I decently could, even though I could hear my mother asking people for me in the querulous tone she gets when she’s feeling upset. The twice-daily phonecalls were enough at the moment. I took my glass of champagne and wandered down the path. All wedding-focused country hotels have fountains. It comes with the brief.
I dallied my hand in the water again, and tried to think. Why – why did I feel like this? I was practically shivering. I felt suddenly as if my head was full of shame and fear, and just misery, and I didn’t know why. What was the matter with me? I was having a near-violent reaction to something that happened every day. So I’d met someone who used to be special to me – it was sixteen years ago, for goodness’ sake. It was as long a time since I’d last seen him as it was from when I was born and the time we first went out. God, that was grim. That whole summer was a period of my life I tried not to think about.
I certainly wasn’t thinking like an adult now, a sorted, happy person. I sipped my champagne and felt that dull ache you get at the bottom of your heart like when you’re a kid and you do something terribly, terribly wrong and you’re going to be in for it later. It’s hard to ignore your conscience. Sitting by that fountain, I knew. If I wasn’t going to end up like my father: dissatisfied, always looking for the main chance; if I wasn’t going to stultify myself, but, more importantly, if I wasn’t going to harm a good, decent kind man, who loved me, then—
‘Ah, there you are,’ said Olly. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you. I’m starving.’
He sat down, brushing sesame seeds off his waistcoat, bought to cover up his creeping paunch.
‘Hi, there,’ I said, nervousness bubbling up in my throat. I could taste it. Oh God. How could this have happened so quickly? We’d gone from happy couple, living together, and now I was on the brink of …
Well, we weren’t that happy, were we? Or rather, me, with my selfish, adolescent mind, and my desire to see the grass as always greener, and my dreaming my life away: Olly hadn’t a chance. God, I was a bitch.
Olly unsteadily started to bend down.
‘What are you doing?’ I said awkwardly.
It looked like – it couldn’t be. Tell me he wasn’t getting on one knee. TELL ME.
I stared at him in shock for a moment, and he picked up my shock in his own eyes, which suddenly looked a bit panicked.
‘Look, I know we don’t always get on so well …’ he started (badly, I thought).
‘FLORA!’ screamed another voice.
It is a witness testament to my immaturity and stupidity that for a second I thought it might be Clelland arriving, having realised as soon as he’d seen me that he’d been stupid, finally doing his last-minute dash to save me, save me from this life I had asked for but didn’t want.
It wasn’t, of course. It was my mother. They don’t sound at all similar, but I was in a very highly strung emotional mood. Nevertheless, at that moment, I was glad to see her. She came down the hill, looking frail and confused. I wondered sometimes if she was getting early-onset Alzheimer’s.
‘Flora darling, where are you? We need you!’ Her tone was querulous. ‘They’re cutting the cake.’
Olly stood up and pasted a big fake smile on his face.
‘Hi there, Mummy!’
‘Oh, hello, you two lovebirds. Wouldn’t think you’d want to miss this bit. Also, darling, you want to see the cake. I’m sure Tashy could tell you where she got it. You never know, could be useful …’
And she linked her arm into both of ours as we exchanged glances – his rueful; mine, I suspect, terrified – and we marched back up the hill to the house.
The cake was indeed a teetering, rose-encrusted thing of wonder. Tashy was grinning in that slightly terrified way again, and Max looked like he was getting quite frustrated with her as he was trying to get her to put her hand underneath his, rather than on top.
I glanced over where Clelland and his lovely girlfriend were deep in smiling conversation. Of course they were. Probably planning the same thing. And only a spiteful person wouldn’t wish them well. Everyone looking so happy.
I gulped. I was thirty-two years old. Suddenly it was as if I saw all round me people who were caught in a bubble of affection and love. And outside, unseen, there was me. My mother. My father. The spectres at the feast. The people who made the wrong choices. Who stuck with someone they didn’t really love out of age. Or fear. No, it was worse – my mum and dad had at least loved each other once. It was only me, with a good man I couldn’t love. I’d forgotten to sit down when the music stopped. Booby prize for me. I blinked back tears of utter, revolting, all encompassing self-pity.
‘For Christ’s sake, what’s the matter with you?’ said Olly. ‘Are you trying to draw attention to yourself?’
Tashy and Max were lifting the knife.
‘Darling? Darling, what is it?’ My mother was tugging on my sleeve. ‘Do you want one of my pills? I’ve got some in my bag. Shall we go outside?’
The