That went down very well with Willie. ‘Ah… childhood sweethearts? Just like Moira and I.’
‘I wouldn’t say that exactly, would you, Lex?’ Romy decided it was better to stick to the truth as far as possible, or they would get hopelessly muddled. ‘Lex was older,’ she confided to Willie. ‘The truth is, he was hardly aware I existed before I was eighteen!’
‘Of course I knew you existed,’ said Lex with a touch of irritation, and he yanked at his tie as if it felt too tight. He looked cross and more than a little ruffled, Romy thought. Not at all like a man who was madly in love with her.
Funny, that.
She plastered on an adoring smile and leaned into his shoulder. Winsome wasn’t a look she did well, but it looked as if she was going to have to do the work for both of them.
‘It’s not as if it was love at first sight, though,’ she pointed out.
‘It felt like it.’
Much to Romy’s surprise, Lex appeared to have come to the same conclusion, or at least to have realised that he wasn’t giving a very good impression of a man who had found the love of his life.
‘I hadn’t seen Romy for three or four years.’ He turned to tell Willie the story. ‘You know what it’s like when you first leave home. I’d lost track of family occasions once I was at university. I remembered a gangly, unruly girl of fourteen or so, but then I called in to see my parents one weekend and Romy was there, and suddenly she was all grown up.’
And then before Romy realised quite what he was doing, he had taken her hand. His fingers closed around hers, warm and strong, and her heart began to bump against her ribs. She remembered that day so well.
‘I just stood and stared,’ Lex said, looking into Romy’s eyes, and it was almost as if he had forgotten Willie entirely. ‘Until then, I thought falling in love was just an expression,’ he said, his voice very deep. ‘But falling was just how it felt.’
He could still remember that moment, the lurch of his heart, the tumbling sensation as if he had slipped over the side of a cliff, the terror and exhilaration of falling, falling, out of control.
The pain of crashing into reality.
Lex took a gulp of his whisky. It burned down his throat, steadied him. Maybe thousand-pound bottles of whisky would have helped twelve years ago. Belatedly realising that he was still holding Romy’s hand, he let it go.
‘Eighteen?’ Willie was evidently doing some calculations in his head. ‘You’ve been together a long time, then.’
Romy glanced at Lex, and then away. ‘No. That time, the first time, we just had a week. We ran off to Paris together. It was very romantic. We had the most.’ She made a helpless gesture, unable to describe to Willie what that week had been like. ‘It was like stumbling into a different world, but we both knew then it couldn’t last.’
‘I thought it could,’ Lex contradicted her. ‘I asked her to marry me,’ he told Willie, ‘and she said no.’
‘I was only eighteen!’ Romy cried. ‘I was much too young to think about getting married. You agreed that it would have been crazy—’
She stopped, realising that Lex had agreed that morning. He hadn’t thought it was a crazy idea in Paris. But this wasn’t something they should be discussing in front of Willie. They were supposed to be in love, not two people still wrangling about the past.
She pinned on a smile. ‘Anyway, the upshot was that we went our separate ways,’ she told Willie. ‘I stayed in France for that year, and then I came home to go to university, but when I graduated I still had itchy feet. I spent the next few years working my way around the world. I ended up in Indonesia.’
Sensing Lex growing restless, Romy decided to speed the story up a bit. ‘That’s where I got pregnant. I came home to have the baby, but I didn’t see Lex again until his brother’s wedding last summer.’
No need to tell Willie that Lex hadn’t come near her all day.
‘Meanwhile, I’d been at Gibson & Grieve, doing what I’d always done,’ said Lex. ‘Then last summer, Phin got married, and Romy was there…’
‘And you fell in love with her all over again?’
Lex drew a breath, then let it out slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said.
When he looked at Romy, her eyes were dark and wary. ‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘I’d never forgotten her—how could I? I think I’d spent all those years just waiting for her to come home. I’d try going out with other women, but none of them made me feel the way Romy did. I was Phin’s best man. I remember standing by his side, and turning to watch the bride, and seeing Romy sitting a few pews behind.’
Willie seemed to be enjoying the story. ‘And that was that?’
‘That was that,’ agreed Lex.
There was a pause. Romy couldn’t believe how convincing he sounded. Beside him on the sofa, she studied him under her lashes. He was so lean and solid and restrained in his suit. What must it be costing him to come out with all this rubbish about being in love with her still? Only that morning, on the plane, he had reminded her that any feelings he’d once had were long dead.
We’ve both moved on, he had said.
He was a much better actor than she had expected him to be. Romy was sure he must be hating the need to pretend, to talk about feelings, but then, he had an incentive. He would do whatever it took to get Willie’s agreement.
‘Well, you’ve done a good job of keeping all this a secret,’ Willie was saying admiringly. ‘I’ve been trying to find out everything I can about you and there’s been no hint of it. I don’t mind telling you, it made all the difference to me that you were happy to get involved with a baby as well as Romy,’ he said to Lex. ‘That told me that you’re a man I can trust with Grant’s Supersavers, that you’re a man who understands what’s really important in life.’
‘I do,’ said Lex. He smiled at Romy, who did her best to conceal her amazement at how whole-heartedly he was entering into the pretence, and took her hand once more. ‘I thought I’d never find her again, and now that I have, I’m not going to let her go again. Freya’s part of the package.’
Romy’s eyes widened as he lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. ‘I’ve waited a long time for Romy to agree to marry me, and now she has. Between that and a deal to secure Grant’s Supersavers, I’ve got everything I ever wanted.’
Willie was delighted. ‘That deserves another toast!’
He hauled himself out of his chair to find the malt, thus missing the look Romy was giving Lex, who looked blandly back at her. She tried to tug her hand away, but he kept a firm hold of it as Willie splashed more of the precious whisky into their glasses.
‘Congratulations,’ said Willie, lifting his glass towards them both. ‘Here’s to love lost and found!’
‘Here’s to love,’ Lex and Romy agreed, smiling hard, but not meeting each other’s eyes.
‘What on earth did you say that for?’ Romy demanded as the bedroom door closed behind them at the end of that memorable evening.
‘Say what?’ said Lex, tugging his tie loose.
‘You know what! About getting married!’
Romy would have liked to have shouted, but Freya was asleep in the corner, so she was restricted to a furious whisper, which didn’t improve her temper.
Lex just shrugged and pulled the tie from his neck, undoing the top button of his shirt with a sigh of relief. ‘If we’re going to pretend, we might as well do it properly. And you’ve got to admit, it did the trick. Willie