Delia laughed.
‘He was probably faking.’ Paul squeezed one eye closed and bent a leg behind him, speaking in a squeaky pitch. ‘Please give chips genewously to a disabled see-gal, lubbly lady. Mah situation is mos pitiable.’
Delia laughed harder. ‘What voice was that?’
‘A scam artist seagull voice.’
‘A Japanese scam artist seagull?’
‘Racist.’
They were both laughing. OK, he’d perked up. Deep breath. Go. It was stupid of her to be nervous, Delia thought: she and Paul had discussed the future. They’d lived together for nine years. It wasn’t like she was up the Eiffel Tower and out on a limb with a preening commitment-phobe, after a whirlwind courtship.
Paul started to grumble about the brass bollocks temperature and Delia needed to interrupt.
‘Paul,’ she said, turning to face him fully. ‘It’s our ten-year anniversary.’
‘Yes …?’ Paul said, for the first time noticing her sense of intent.
‘I love you. And you love me, I hope. We’re a great team …’
‘Yeah?’ Now he looked outright wary.
‘We’ve said we want to spend our lives together. So. Will you marry me?’
Pause. Paul, hands thrust in pockets, squinted over his coat collar.
‘Are you joking?’
Bad start.
‘No. I, Delia Moss, am asking you, Paul Rafferty, to marry me. Officially and formally.’
Paul looked … discomfited. That was the only word for it.
‘Aren’t I meant to ask you?’
‘Traditionally. But we’re not very traditional, and it’s the twenty-first century. We’re equal. Who made the rules? Why can’t I ask you?’
‘Shouldn’t you have a ring?’
Delia could see a stag-do group approaching over Paul’s shoulder, dressed as Gitmo inmates in orange jumpsuits. They wouldn’t have this privacy for long.
‘I know you don’t like wearing them so I thought I’d let you off that part. I’m going to get a ring though. I might’ve already chosen one. We can be so modern that I’ll pay for it!’
There was a small silence and Delia already knew this was not what she’d hoped or wanted it to be.
Paul stared out over the river. ‘This is a lovely gesture, obviously. It’s just …’
He shrugged.
‘What?’
‘I thought I’d ask you.’
Hmmm. Delia thought the sudden insistence on following chivalrous code was disingenuous. He didn’t like being bounced into it, more like.
She fought the urge to say, sorry if this is too soon for you. But we’ve been getting tipsy on holidays and talking about it happening maybe next year for the last five years. I’m thirty-three. We’re meant to be trying to start a family straight after: on the honeymoon, hopefully. This is our ten-year anniversary. What were you waiting for? When were you waiting for?
She shook the irritation off. The mood was already strained and she didn’t want to shatter it completely with accusations or complaints.
‘You haven’t given me an answer,’ she said, hoping to sound playful.
‘Yeah. Yes. Of course I’ll marry you,’ Paul said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see this coming at all.’
‘We’re getting married?’ Delia said, smiling.
‘Looks like …?’ Paul said, rolling his eyes, grudgingly returning her smile, and Delia grabbed him. They kissed, a hard quick kiss on the lips of familiarity, and Delia tried to keep still and commit the feeling to memory.
When they moved apart, she said, ‘And I have champagne!’ She knelt and fumbled in her heavy bucket bag for the bottle and the plastic flutes.
‘Here?’ Paul said.
‘Yeah!’ Delia said, looking up, pink with exhilaration, Kingfishers and cold.
‘Nah, come on. We’ll look like a pair of brown-bag street boozers. Ground grumblers.’
‘Or like people who just got engaged.’
A look passed across Paul’s face, and Delia tensed her stomach muscles and refused to let the disappointment in.
Maybe he noticed, because he pulled her up towards him, kissed the top of her head and said into her hair: ‘We can go somewhere that serves champagne and has central heating. That’s my proposal.’
Delia paused. You can’t try to run the whole show. Let him have his way. She took his hand and followed him back down the bridge, arm once more through his, their pace now quicker, thoughts buzzing. Engaged.
Paul had once said to her, about the loss of his parents: you can still choose whether you’re going to be unhappy or not. Even in the face of something so awful, he said he’d started to recover when he realised it was a choice.
‘But what if so many bad things have happened to you, you’re unhappy and it’s not your fault?’ she said.
Paul replied: ‘How many people do you know where that’s the case? They’ve chosen gloom, that’s all. Every day, you get to choose.’
Delia realised two things during that conversation. 1) Part of the reason she loved Paul was his positivity. 2) From then on, she could spot Gloom Choosers. Her office had one or two.
So tonight, Delia thought, she could either dwell on the fact she’d never got a proposal, and that her offer to him instead had been met with some reluctance. That Paul was simply never going to be the kind of man to gaze into her eyes and tell her she set his world alight.
Or she could concentrate on the fact that she was walking hand-in-hand with her new fiancé to a pub in their wonderful home city to drink champagne and chatter about wedding plans, on a stomach full of coconutty curry.
She chose to be happy.
‘They only do champagne by the bottle,’ Paul said, after they burst in to the warmth of the Crown Posada. Paul didn’t drink in places that hadn’t won CAMRA awards. They rubbed their hands and studied the laminated drinks menu as if they were at The Ritz.
‘Shall we bother with the fizz? Booze is booze is booze,’ Paul said.
Delia realised the evening as she’d imagined it wasn’t quite going to happen, but don’t force it, she thought to herself. You have your wedding day planning for all this stuff. (Wedding day planning! It was possible that Delia had a secret Pinterest board, covered with long-sleeved lace dresses and quirky licensed venues in the Newcastle area, and hand-tied bouquets of peonies, paperwhites and roses in ice-cream colours. At last, she could now go legit.)
She acquiesced cheerfully and Paul readied sharp elbows among the crowd to get their usual order, a bottle of Brooklyn Lager for him and a Liefmans raspberry beer for her. Paul sometimes worried they were ageing hipsters.
He motioned for Delia to grab a table and she retreated across the room to watch him waiting his turn at the bar, one eye on the action, the other playing with his phone. Nat King Cole’s ‘These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)’ was crackling on the Posada’s ancient gramophone, competing with a roomful of lively inebriated conversation.
Paul’s scruffy