STARTERS:
Lobster with watercress, apple, crème fraîche vinaigrette,
£32 per person.
———
Rock Oysters with shallot vinegar, lemon, brown bread & butter, £19 per person.
———
Asparagus with quail egg, beetroot & celeriac rémoulade,
£22.50 per person.
Times that by eighty people. And that’s just the starter. I look at Mark; he’s gone white. I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. He looks at me, relief written all over his face. He smiles and raises his glass to toast. I lift mine.
“To not having starters?”
“To not having starters.” I chuckle.
We dig in to the delicious entrées. And they’re worth every single penny. I’m just glad we won’t be the ones paying for them.
We opt for a main course of: Café Royal Homemade Chicken Pie with Bacon, quail’s egg, fine French beans, mousseline potatoes, £19.50.
For desserts we go for: Dark Chocolate & Wild Cherries: Dark chocolate crémeux and wild cherry compote, £13.
Plus thirty bottles of house red and thirty house white and twenty bottles of sparkling wine.
We think we’ve done a pretty good job until the maître d’, Gerard, sits down for a post-coffee chat. Apparently the minimum spend is six thousand pounds. They must have told us that last year when we booked, but we obviously weren’t listening, and even if we were, it wouldn’t have seemed important then. Gerard tells us not to worry; we can simply bump up to that price by adding after-dinner coffee and a cheeseboard for eighty people. Adding another thirteen hundred pounds to our total. We agree. Well, what else can we do? The wedding is in three weeks.
Afterwards, stuffed and brimming with buyer’s remorse, we descend into Piccadilly Station. Before the turnstiles Mark takes my upper arm and stops me.
“Erin, we can’t do this. Seriously, it’s ridiculous. It’s way too much, right? I mean—come on? We need to cancel it when we get home, lose the deposit, sure, fine, but just cancel it. We’ll do the wedding part in All Souls and then go to a local restaurant or something? Or up to my mum and dad’s, they could do a village hall thing, right?”
I look down at his hand tight around my arm. This isn’t someone I recognize.
“Mark, seriously, you’re scaring me a bit now. Actually scaring me. Why are you acting like this? It’s our wedding. We’ve got savings, it’s not like we’re taking out loans to cover the cost. You only do this day once in your life and I personally want to spend my money on this. On us. I mean, not all of my money obviously, but a bit of it. Otherwise what’s it all for?”
He sighs hard through his nose. Frustrated, he abandons the conversation, his hand releases me, and we descend underground.
The rest of our journey is spent in silence. I watch other people on the tube. Wonder about their lives. Sitting next to Mark but not talking with him, I imagine I don’t know him. That maybe I’m just a girl on the tube going somewhere on my own. That I don’t have to worry about what happens next, or with the rest of my life, for that matter. The thought is calming but ultimately empty. I want Mark. I do. I just wish I could shake him out of this mood. I wish I could fix it.
He turns on me as soon as we’re through the front door at home. His voice is no longer the whisper it was in the station.
He tells me I don’t understand. I’m not listening. I’ve never seen him like this, as if something inside were bursting to come out.
“I don’t think you really appreciate what is going on here, Erin, do you? What’s actually happening? I don’t have a job anymore. There is no money for any of this. And I can’t get another job, no one is hiring. My world is not like it is in the arts or your film school or whatever. I can’t just jump ship and do something else for a living! I’m an investment banker. That’s what I do. I’m not trained to do anything else. And even if I was, it doesn’t matter. I can’t just set up my own bank or, I don’t know, collaborate on a postmodern banking project or whatever the fuck. I’m not like you. I don’t come from the same place you do. I spent my whole life getting to where I am now. My whole life. Do you know how hard that was? People who went to my high school work in petrol stations, Erin! Do you understand that? They live in council flats and stack fucking supermarket shelves. I will not go back to that. I will not let that happen. But I don’t have a backup. I don’t have family friends in publishing or journalism or fucking wine-making. I’ve got a retired mum and dad in East Riding who are both going to need looking after before too long. I’ve got a total of eighty grand in savings and the rest tied up in this house. And now we’re trying to have a baby. I had a real job. I’ve lost it, and we are screwed. Because unfortunately we don’t all have the luxury of being paid for, like you do!”
I feel the bile rise up inside me. I’ve had enough. Enough of this for today.
“Fuck you, Mark! You’re being a fucking arsehole. When have you ever paid for me? When? What am I, a fucking hooker?”
This was supposed to be a lovely day.
“No, Erin, no, you’re not, sadly. Because if you were you’d shut the fuck up about now.”
My heart skips a beat in my chest. Fuck. Mark has gone, just like that, and a stranger is standing in my living room. Fucking hell. My breathing becomes shallow—God. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry, Erin. Just breathe. I feel the prickle behind my eyes.
Mark looks at me.
He mutters something inaudible, then turns away and looks out the window.
I sit down in silence.
“I can’t believe you just said that, Mark,” I whisper.
I know I should let it go but—no, no, I shouldn’t let it go. Fuck that! I have to marry this man in three weeks. If this is going to be the rest of my life from now on, I want to bloody know.
“Mark…”
“What, Erin! What do you think we’re going to do after the wedding? If we do have kids? What do you think is going to happen? My job pays for everything. It paid for this house.”
“No, Mark. No! We both pay for it! I put all of my savings into that deposit too. Everything I had,” I blurt out, my voice rising to meet his.
“Okay, great, that’s great, Erin. You put your money in too. But you can’t pay all the mortgage on your salary, can you? I mean, we don’t live in a one-bed flat in Peckham, do we? There’s absolutely no way you can cover the mortgage on your own with what you earn. I don’t mean to upset you, Erin, but you’re just not listening. We’re going to have to sell the house. Obviously!”
Sell it? Oh my God. I must look terrified, because he nods now, satisfied.
“I don’t think you’ve really thought about this at all, have you? Because if you had, then honestly, Erin, you’d be just as worried about it as I am. We are going to go under.”
Oh my God. I am silent. I’ve been an idiot. I see that now. This hurts. None of what he’s saying had occurred to me. I hadn’t thought about the fact that all our plans might simply fall through. That he just might not get another good job at all.
He’s right. No wonder he’s so angry. He’s been dealing with this alone. And I’ve been flouncing around acting as if…But then I remember. It doesn’t have to be like that. Like Caro said, he could just do something else.
“But, Mark, you can get another job! Any job! You’ve got a great résumé, can’t you just—”
“No, Erin,” he interrupts, wearily. “It doesn’t work like that. What the fuck else am I going to do? All I am qualified to do is price and sell bonds, nothing else. Unless you’re suggesting I work in a bar?”
“Mark, please. I’m just trying to help! Okay! I don’t know exactly how your industry works, do I? I just want to be in this together, so please stop saying I don’t understand and just explain it to me. Please.” I know I sound like a petulant child but I don’t know what else to say.
He sags down on the sofa opposite me, drained. His shoulders hunched. An impasse.
We sit in the silence, the low hum of traffic and wind through the trees in the garden just audible.
I get up and go over to sit next to him. I reach out and touch his back gently with my hand. He doesn’t flinch away, so I start to rub it softly with my palm. Soothing him, stroking his warm back through the starched cotton shirt. He lets me.
“Mark?” I say tentatively.
“It’s okay if we sell this place,” I continue. “It’s okay. It’ll be sad, because I like it here. But I don’t care where we live. I just want you. You anywhere. Under a bridge. In a tent. Just you. And we don’t need to have kids straightaway, if it’s the wrong time. And listen, I know you’d hate to do a different job, but it wouldn’t bother me what you did, as long as you were happy. I mean, I wouldn’t think any differently about you. You’re just you. I never loved you for money or anything like that. It’s nice to have it, sure, but I just want to be with you. We can even live with your mum and dad in East Riding if you want?”
He lifts his eyes to me. Smiles in spite of himself.
“That’s great, Erin, because that was another thing I needed to tell you: Mum’s already made up the futon in the spare room.” He’s watching me slyly. A joke. Thank God. We laugh and the tension bursts over us. It’s going to be okay.
“I genuinely think that would make your mum’s year, you know!” I laugh.
He smiles, sheepish, boyish again. I love him.
“Sorry.” His steady look. He is sorry.
“Can you let me join in again?” I ask.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I should have told you how I felt before. But I will from now on, okay?”
“Yes please.”
“Okay. But, Erin, I know it’s stupid but…I can’t go back to where I started. I can’t do all that again.”
“I know, honey. It’s okay. You won’t have to. We’re going to work this out together. Because that’s what we do.”
He takes my other hand, my ring hand, lifts it to his mouth.
“Mark, should I go back on the pill? Should we wait?”
“You know what they say…” He kisses our engagement ring. “There’s never a good time.” He still wants it. Thank God.
He pulls me close. We swing our legs up onto the couch and fall asleep together, spooning in the afternoon sunlight.