1
I leaned into the mirror and swiped another slick of Fuchsia-licious onto my lips and blotted with a piece of toilet paper. It left a faint white fuzz behind, and I rubbed at it with my fingertip. Great, now I looked like a kid who’d eaten a bucket of raspberries. I sighed and wiped the whole lot off with a wet paper towel. I looked like a deranged clown in lipstick, anyway. I slid on a layer of lip balm and smiled to check my teeth for any errant pink smudges. All clear.
‘Lovely dress!’ I looked up to see Florence from accounts staring at me closely as she washed her hands. She looked genuinely suspicious to see my legs unsheathed from their usual smart black trousers. ‘Going somewhere nice?’
‘Burnt Sienna,’ I said, trying and failing to sound casual. Burnt Sienna was the hottest restaurant in London at the minute, complete with a brash young hot-shot chef, and an aquarium filled with mini sharks. Christopher must have made the reservation months ago. When he told me where we were going tonight, I knew what would happen. I just knew.
‘Ooh, look at you! Special occasion?’
‘My birthday.’ I shrugged.
Florence clapped her hands together and did a little hop. ‘I didn’t know it was your birthday! We should have done cake and champers in the office to celebrate!’
I tried not to flinch at the word ‘champers’. It was on my list of gross words, along with nibbles, cuddly, and the reigning champion of gross, moist. ‘I’m not big on birthdays,’ I said.
‘Spoilsport! Well, have a lovely time tonight! See if you can get a photo with that chef – he’s super hot.’ She gave me a little wave before rushing out.
I stood back and assessed my reflection. I’d already redone the liquid eyeliner twice, and my left eye was still a little different from the right. Not that anyone would be able to tell unless I closed my eyes for some kind of inspection, but still, I would know. Tonight had to be perfect, including the eyeliner. I got the tube back out of my make-up bag and dabbed at the black swoosh that hugged my lash line. I squinted in the mirror. There. Perfect.
It was true that I wasn’t big on birthdays. I’d never thrown myself a party, or taken myself away for a pampering spa day. (Pamper. Add that to the gross words list). Most years I was happy with a takeaway on the couch, and a quick splurge in H&M. This year, though, this year was different.
What I couldn’t tell Florence was that this was the year I was going to marry my soulmate. I could picture the words on the list, written in the bubbly handwriting of my thirteen-year-old self. ‘Number 27: Marry soulmate when thirty-one.’ I was already behind (Number 25 was get engaged when thirty), but I’d always liked a challenge, and people planned a wedding in a year all the time. It was romantic! And now, on my thirty-first birthday, I was confident that everything would be back on track by the end of the night.
That’s why it had to be perfect – not because it was my birthday, but because it was the night I was going to get engaged. I was sure of it.
Well, not a hundred per cent sure, but pretty confident. Christopher was definitely my soulmate – we’d been with each other for six years, and we were perfect together – and we’d need at least ten months to plan a transatlantic wedding, so that didn’t leave a whole lot of time for him to propose. Sure, he didn’t exactly know about my list – no one did, except for Isla – but I’m sure he could sense that it was time for us to take the next step. So when he told me that we were going to Burnt Sienna tonight I just knew: tonight was the night.
It was six o’clock on a Tuesday, so most of my co-workers were still locked into their desks, pecking away at keyboards and studying spreadsheets. I didn’t want to call attention to the fact that I was ducking out early, so I grabbed my bag and coat from my cubicle and headed for the door.
The restaurant was on the South Bank, so I wound my way through Charing Cross and over Jubilee Bridge. It was early March, and the sky was dimming with dusk. The air still held the coal-edged smell of cold, and the wind cut straight through the leather bomber jacket I’d decided looked best with my little black dress that morning. Men in gray suits hustled past, and women clicked along the paving stones in their high heels. Everyone and everything seemed to have been painted in the same palette of gray.
Despite the cold, tourists still thronged the bridge, blocking the path in their threes and fours, heads tilted outwards towards the river, mouths slightly ajar. I pushed past them. I’d been in London for three years now, and the sights that I’d once only seen on postcards were now just background noise, and the people who flocked to London to see them were basically human-shaped obstacles to be hurtled and dodged.
I took a deep breath and felt my lungs fill with the cold air. Tonight, Christopher was going to ask me to marry him. My heart fluttered at the thought. Everything was working out exactly how I imagined it would. I just hoped I could work up a convincingly surprised expression when he popped the question.
We’d agreed to meet in the bar of the BFI. I spotted him as soon as I walked in. He was sitting at a table in the corner, glass of red wine in front of him, staring down at the phone in his hand with a frown. His dark hair, usually combed neatly into submission, had started to curl at the ends after the long working day, and there was a faint shadow of stubble across his chin.
Six years – six whole years! – and the sight of him still had the power to make me swoon like a heroine in a Mills and Boon novel. How could that happen? Weren’t there studies that proved this sort of thing was chemically impossible? Wasn’t I supposed to be inured to him by this point, as familiar as a favorite armchair or bathrobe?
He looked up, caught my eye, and smiled, and my stomach flipped.
I walked over to the table as he stood up to kiss me. ‘Happy birthday, darling,’ he said, before taking my coat and settling it on the back of my chair. ‘I’ll get you a drink. What would you like?’
‘Gin and tonic, please.’
‘Right, I’ll just be a tick.’
Maybe it was the accent. He’d been born in Wales, but his parents had moved up to London when he was eight and enroled him in a series of expensive (and from what I could gather, draconian) private schools, which had left him with an accent that drifted between soft lilting consonants and crisp aristocratic vowels. To my American ears, he sounded like Hugh Grant, though he hated it if I said that. Despite the harsh private school education, and the fact that his best friend was called Jonno, he soundly rejected any intimation that he was posh. ‘I’m from Penmaenpool!’ he’d scowl, his Welsh accent surging forward. ‘I’m not bloody posh!’ Anyway, I still think he sounds like Hugh Grant. Just don’t tell him I said so.
‘Here you are.’ He handed me my drink and sat down. ‘How was your day? Did anyone sing “Happy Birthday” to you? Was there cake?’
I shook my head. ‘I kept it pretty quiet.’
‘Ah, that’s a shame. Well, I’ve got a bit of a surprise planned that will hopefully make up for it.’
‘You do? Tell me!’
He laughed. ‘That would sort of negate the point of the surprise, wouldn’t it? You’ll just have to be patient.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘I know, I know, that isn’t your strong suit!’
We finished our drinks and headed back out into the cold. The restaurant was tucked down Gabriel’s Wharf, a place more traditionally known for its pizza joints, fish and chip shops, and galleries selling overpriced watercolors than for fine dining. The exterior of Burnt Sienna didn’t give any clues away, either. The outside of the building was clad in chipboard, and, rather than a proper sign, the name was scrawled in chalk on the window. We stood outside and looked at each other.
‘This is definitely the right place …’ Christopher said uncertainly.
I shrugged. ‘The reviews said it was edgy.’
‘Come on,’ he said, taking my hand, ‘let’s give it a go. If it’s awful, we could always leave and get a pizza from one of these places.’
We walked through the door and blinked into the gloam like a pair of moles. ‘Can you see anything?’ he asked.
‘Ow!’ I replied, as my foot caught on a hidden step. A maître d’ appeared in front of us, and we both jumped.
‘Your name?’ he purred.
‘There should be a booking for two under Christopher Walsh.’
‘Lovely. Follow me.’
‘I wish I had thought to bring a torch,’ Christopher whispered as we weaved our way through the tightly packed tables. The space, now that we were inside, was less a restaurant and more a cave, with candles guttering along the walls and ceilings so low they forced you to stoop.
We arrived at our table, and the maître d’ handed us menus and disappeared with a swoop. ‘The guy must be half bat,’ I whispered.
Christopher pulled his phone out of his pocket and shone its light at the menu. ‘I hope you’re in the mood for foam,’ he said, scanning the choices. ‘If not, there are some lovely emulsions.’
I wrinkled my nose. ‘What’s an emulsion?’
‘I’ve no idea, but they seem very keen on it here.’
Our eyes met across the table. ‘You know, I wouldn’t mind a large pepperoni,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Particularly if there’s garlic bread involved.’
We got up from the table and scampered out of the restaurant, the maître d’ calling a half-hearted ‘excuse me’ as we darted out the door and back into the night’s air.
‘Christ,’ Christopher said, ‘what a load of horseshit! Sorry, love. I should have done my research a bit more carefully before booking it.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘It was sweet of you to go to all that trouble. I just want to know what the hell those reviewers were talking about.’
‘Maybe they wouldn’t let them out of there unless they gave them four stars.’
‘Dungeon prisoners,’ I said. ‘Old school.’
‘Well, it’s put a spanner in my birthday plans for you, but I’m sure I can recover. Come on, let’s find you a pizza.’
We wandered along the street, glancing in windows and reading menus. I tried to picture myself getting engaged inside each of the venues, but either the lighting was wrong, or the tablecloths too plastic, or the places were too empty or too full.
‘Come on, birthday girl. I’m starving.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘I just know what I’m looking for.’
At last, we found it. Candles stuck in empty wine bottles, starched white tablecloths, almost full but not too loud. There was a man at a piano playing Sinatra classics. ‘They even have dough balls!’ I crowed as my eyes scanned the menu.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a winner.’ Christopher waved to the maître d’. ‘Could we have a table for two, please?’
‘Right this way, signor.’
We sat at the perfect table and ate the perfect meal, a thin-crusted pepperoni pizza, with a green salad and a big basket of garlic dough balls. A bottle of Chianti was uncorked and poured into two glasses, and when the waiters overheard us toasting my birthday, they insisted on bringing us two glasses of Prosecco. Christopher disappeared after the plates were cleared away, and when he came back to the table, he was carrying a tiramisu with a lit candle stuck in the middle. ‘Surprise!’ he sang, and then suddenly the table was surrounded by white-shirted waiters singing ‘Happy Birthday’. The rest of the restaurant joined in, and, even though my face was bright red – I could feel it, hot as the sun – my cheeks ached from smiling at the end of it.
‘Happy birthday, lovely,’ Christopher said, as he leaned across the table and kissed me.
This is it, I thought. This is the moment. The perfect moment. He was about to do it. I braced myself to look surprised and delighted.
‘Shall we get the bill?’
We sipped limoncello as we waited for the waiter to bring the card reader over.
‘So!’ I said brightly. ‘What’s next?’
He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s nearly eleven on a school night,’ he said. ‘I was thinking a taxi home. Unless you wanted to go clubbing in Vauxhall or something? I hear it’s bondage night at Torture Garden.’
I laughed as my heart sank. ‘No, that’s okay. A taxi home sounds good.’
He looked at me for a minute. ‘How about a walk first? We could head across the bridge, pick up a taxi on the Strand?’
I lit up. ‘Perfect!’
We gathered our coats and headed out into the night. Of course he wouldn’t ask me in a crowded restaurant, I thought to myself. He’s not a showy kind of person. He probably wants to do it somewhere private, where it’s just the two of us.
‘Shall we cross at Waterloo or Blackfriars?’ he asked. ‘There’ll probably be more taxis at the Waterloo end of the Strand, but Blackfriars is slightly closer to home.’
I weighed the romantic possibilities of both in my head. ‘What about Jubilee?’ It’s pedestrianized, I reason, so he won’t risk being run over when he goes down on one knee, and the name sounds suitably celebratory.
He pulled a face. ‘That’s miles out of the way.’
‘It’s not! Plus, there’s a taxi rank underneath the railway arch at Charing Cross.’ I hadn’t envisioned quite so much logistical wrangling in the lead-up to the proposal, but in retrospect I should have known better: he is a lawyer, after all.
He linked his arm through mine and tugged me towards the river. ‘Jubilee it is.’
Christopher launched into a story about a fraud case he was working on. Usually I loved hearing about that sort of thing – I liked predicting the verdict before it went to trial – but I was too nervous to concentrate. Every step we took towards the bridge made my throat constrict a little tighter. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, shooting me a worried glance. ‘You’ve gone awfully quiet.’
‘Fine!’ I squeaked. I was impressed by his cool – he didn’t look nervous in the least.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘if we don’t hurry, we’ll get caught up in pub kick-out time, and then we’ll never get a cab.’
We climbed the steps and made our way across the bridge. People streamed past us – commuters rushing home after late work drinks, young couples out on third dates grinning moonily at each other, a group of American college students loudly debating about the location of Bar Opal – but I refused to move at their pace. By the time we were three quarters of the way across – having stopped twice to insist on admiring the view – I was practically moving backwards.
The stairs down to the arches were approaching. I could feel Christopher’s rising irritation with me. Maybe he would wait until we got back to the flat, I reasoned. Maybe that’s why he was in such a rush to get back. After all, it was the place we spent most of our time together. There would be something romantic about him proposing there, in front of the sofa where we watched television most evenings, or in the kitchen where we chopped vegetables and sautéed fish side by side. It wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined, but maybe if he’d put a bottle of champagne in the fridge …
‘Hang on a minute,’ he said, and I turned to find him down on one knee, hands fiddling with something. Time turned to treacle. The world was suddenly in slow-motion, vivid and beautiful and clear. And then my mouth opened and I heard words fly out, unbidden. ‘Ohmygod, YES!’
He looked up at me quizzically. ‘Yes what?’
‘Yes I’ll—’ I looked down and saw that, instead of a ring in his hands, he was holding the two ends of his shoelaces, mid-knot. Panic gripped me. ‘You mean you weren’t—’
His eyes widened. ‘You mean you thought—’
‘Nothing!’ A peal of hysterical laughter bubbled up from inside me. ‘I didn’t think anything!’
He sprang to his feet and reached for me. ‘You did! Oh, Christ. Oh, Jenny.’
‘It’s just – it’s my birthday and all, and you said there would be a surprise …’
‘Beyoncé,’ he said quietly. ‘Beyoncé was the surprise.’
‘Beyoncé?’
He nodded. ‘I got you a pair of tickets for her show in July.’
‘Oh! Wow! Great!’ The words sounded flat even to my ears. ‘I mean, that’s a great surprise!’
We stared at each other helplessly.
‘I know you want to get married, Jenny,’ he said quietly, ‘but you’ve got to stop putting so much pressure on me.’
‘I’m not putting any pressure on you!’ The pitch of my voice was so high now that probably only dogs could hear it.
‘You are! You don’t know it, but you are. Every time we go on holiday, or out to a nice restaurant, or it’s your birthday or my birthday or Christmas or – hell – even a bloody bank holiday, I can feel you waiting for me to ask you.’
‘I just – I thought you wanted to be with me.’
He took my hands in his and smiled at me sadly. ‘I do. I am! I just don’t feel ready for the whole caboodle.’
‘The whole caboodle?’
‘You know what I mean.’
I folded my arms across my chest. ‘I really don’t.’
‘Marriage! Babies! Matching crockery sets! Retirement funds! Moving to the country! Commuting by train! Discussing nurseries at dinner parties with people we don’t even like but are forced to socialize with because we live in the country and can’t be arsed to commute into London for a night out!’
‘You’re being crazy.’
His eyes shone in the moonlight. ‘Am I?’
I nodded weakly. ‘I hate matching crockery sets.’
He threw his hands up. ‘You see! But you’re not actually opposed to the rest of it, are you?’
I shrugged. ‘I mean, you’re not exactly painting it in rosy tones, but no, I’m not opposed to it in theory. Maybe not exactly how you just described it, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little security.’
‘Jenny, our lives are mired in routine. Every day we go to work, and every night we come home and eat one of the four dinners we have on rotation, and we have the same Kung Pao chicken from the same Chinese takeaway place every Friday, followed by the same Sunday lunch at the Queen’s Head. If we were any more secure, we’d be encased in cement!’
‘I thought you liked our life!’ I said, my eyes filling with tears.
He sighed. ‘I do! I do.’ So he was capable of saying those words. ‘I love our life, and I don’t want it to change. Don’t you see? If we get engaged, things might change.’
‘They might not.’
‘But they might. And I’m not ready to risk that.’
I took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Do you know if you’ll ever be ready for the whole kit and caboodle?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
I let that sink in. He might never be ready to marry me. I was meant to get married to my soulmate this year – it had been etched in stone on the list and on my mind for eighteen years – but my soulmate was telling me it might never happen. ‘I’d like to go home now,’ I said. Though the thought darted across my mind, quick as a silverfish, that it might not feel like home anymore.
We were silent for the cab ride home, the driver stealing curious glances at us in the mirror until I eventually just closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. We pulled up to the curb outside our flat, and I waited on the sidewalk as Christopher paid. He led me up the steps and into the house, his hand gently supporting my elbow, as if I were an invalid. Our footsteps echoed on the wooden floorboards as we walked into the hallway.
‘You want a drink or anything?’ he asked, heading towards the kitchen. I followed him. There was a frosted chocolate cake slumped on the counter next to the oven, a white envelope with my name scrawled across it propped up next to it. ‘It came out a bit wonky,’ he said, nodding sheepishly towards the cake.
‘You baked it yourself?’
He nodded. ‘Sneaked off work a couple of hours early. I think there might be something wrong with the oven though, as both of the sponges only rose on one side. I tried to even them out when I stacked them together but it’s still a little crooked.’
I burst into tears.
‘Shit,’ he said, coming towards me and pulling me into his arms. ‘I’m sorry.’
I shook my head as I wept into his chest. I could feel the material of his shirt dampen with my tears. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I wailed. ‘You’re perfect!’
He stroked my hair and led me to bed, where I lay down and cried myself into unconsciousness while he rubbed my back with the flat of his hand.