A Perfect Proposal (35 page)

‘That woman is called Ali.’

‘Well, one of them did,’ said Moira briskly. ‘What about breakfast?’

‘No thank you.’ There was some sort of obstruction in her throat and chest and she didn’t think she’d get any food past it.

‘You need to eat,’ said Moira. ‘If every woman who was ever walked out on by a man gave up eating there’d be no women left in the world.’

‘I was left, wasn’t I? I just feel very confused. One minute Luke and I were …’ She blushed. ‘And the next he was taken away. It’s hard to take in.’

‘I’m sure you’ll find out why soon. It was a bit odd and melodramatic though.’ Moira put down a mug. ‘Do you want sugar? No? They say you should have it for shock but I think it’s a myth. I’m going to make you a bacon sandwich. I’ve cooked the bacon so we might as well eat it. White bread, lots of butter. Cures everything.’ She paused. ‘Well, some things.’

‘I don’t want to eat.’

‘Come on, to please me. I can’t have one if you don’t and I’m starving.’

Sophie watched as Moira took a large white loaf and buttered the cut side, sliced it off and then repeated the process. ‘There!’ She put a plate down in front of Sophie. ‘I’ll just make mine.’

Moira continued to give a running commentary on everything she was doing until at last she was sitting opposite Sophie with a bacon sandwich in front of her. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

Sophie shook her head. ‘I knew he’d have to go to London soon. It’s probably fine. I just wasn’t expecting him to …’

‘Be airlifted out?’

In spite of everything a tiny smile lifted the corner of Sophie’s mouth. ‘It was like that, wasn’t it? Ali should have been wearing a leather flying suit and come down on a rope to scoop him up.’

‘She did, practically,’ said Moira.

Cheered very slightly by this image, Sophie took a bite of her sandwich to show willing, but she couldn’t taste it. She chewed and chewed but it just stayed in her mouth, not seeming to get any smaller. Swallowing seemed impossible. With a huge effort she got the first mouthful down and took a sip of tea.

‘You seemed such a lovely couple,’ said Moira, eating her own sandwich with more enthusiasm.

‘We were … I mean – Maybe we weren’t. We haven’t been a couple long. In fact yesterday was the first time he’d even kissed me.’

‘Oh? You seemed so welded together I would have thought it was longer than that.’ She frowned. ‘Or maybe not. How did you meet?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘It’s good to talk,’ said Moira. ‘Have another bite and some tea and then tell me everything. It’ll help. Not sure why but it does.’

‘OK, well, we met in New York. Through his grandmother really.’

Sophie did find it helpful to talk. Somehow it organised things in her mind and while they were still horribly painful she could check that it wasn’t anything she’d done that made him run off like that. It also gave her hope that things weren’t actually over but had simply been interrupted.

When she got to the bit about finding Matilda’s grandparents’ grave her voice did crack a bit and Moira handed her a tissue from a box she then put on the table.

‘I just wish there’d been time to say goodbye properly.’

‘That would have helped. But he did give you money!’ said Moira, suddenly remembering. She put her hand into her apron pocket where she’d stashed it. ‘Quite a lot of money! These are fifties!’

‘Fifty-pound notes? I’ve hardly ever seen one!’ Just for a moment Sophie was distracted.

‘Well, there are lots of them.’ Moira laid them on the table. ‘Eight, to be precise.’

‘I can’t take it,’ said Sophie.

‘Why not? Didn’t you say you’d paid for everything when he’d had his wallet stolen and you were running out of money?’

‘Yes! But I did that because … well, I had to help him, didn’t I? I was paying him back for everything he and Matilda had done for me in New York. Oh dear.’

‘What?’

‘My ring. Do I have to give it back?’

‘No! It’s not an engagement ring.’ Sophie had told Moira how she came to own it. ‘And he may call you in a minute, explain what’s going on.’

Something about Ali and her proprietorial behaviour towards Luke had given Sophie the impression that this was an optimistic notion. She took the ring off, turning it round and round in her fingers. ‘He may not.’

‘I’m sure he will!’ But in spite of trying, even brightly optimistic Moira didn’t sound convinced. ‘And you do have to take the money.’

‘No! It makes me feel like a prostitute, as if he’s paying me for sex. Buying me off.’ All her feelings of being like Holly Golightly, which she’d forgotten, came rushing back to her.

‘You do need the money. You’ve got expenses. Besides, I can’t keep it, can I?’

Sophie shrugged, still not willing to touch the pile of notes on the table.

Moira put the last of her sandwich into her mouth and brushed the crumbs off her hands. ‘What were you going to do today?’ she asked when she’d finished. ‘If he hadn’t been dragged off by a harpy?’

Sophie smiled bleakly. ‘We were going to go back to the house and take photos. Then we were going to see those distant relations of mine to try and persuade them to let me take control of their drilling rights so I can do something with them.’ She’d filled Moira in on her mission in between telling her about how she’d met Luke and why they’d come down here in the first place.

‘Then you must still do that.’ Moira paused. ‘If you could do with company, I’d love to see the house and I’m quite a good photographer. If we used my camera I could help you email them to Matilda. Unless you’ve got a digital one?’

‘No, I’ve only got my phone,’ said Sophie, ‘and although I’m sure it is possible, I’ve never worked out how to get the pictures on to a computer.’

‘Well, use mine then.’

Sophie hesitated. ‘I’m not sure I want to communicate with Matilda when I don’t know … I mean …’

‘When you don’t know how things stand between you and Luke? You don’t have to mention him and she was the reason you came down here in the first place, wasn’t she?’

‘I suppose so.’ A wave of anguish swept over Sophie, catching her by surprise. She looked at Moira. ‘He shouldn’t have just left me like that without telling me what was going on.’

‘You’ve got to trust he’ll be in touch soon. Keep the avenues of communication open.’

‘That sounds like something you’ve read,’ said Sophie with a reluctant chuckle.

‘Mm. Yes. I worked on my marriage for quite a long time
before I finally gave up. Now, you go and have a quick bath while I tidy up and then we’ll go.’

When Sophie got back into the bedroom she found that Moira had made the bed and put back the quilt so Sophie could dress without the disturbing sight of a bed that has been thoroughly made love in. It helped.

‘Oh, it is a lovely house,’ said Moira. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t know about it, but then I haven’t lived here all that long and it is quite hidden away.’

They were standing in front of the old building. In some ways the daylight made it seem more dilapidated but also a lot less spooky.

‘It’s more lovely now we can see it, although it was very romantic in the dusk,’ said Sophie wistfully.

Determined to keep Sophie occupied, Moira kept focused on the task at hand and got out her camera. ‘Come on,’ she said briskly. I’ll take loads of pictures and then we can go through them at home and send Matilda the best ones.’

Sophie sighed, glad that Matilda didn’t know she and Luke had been to bed together. If only he’d phone and she could stop feeling he’d just abandoned her.

They spent a happy morning taking photographs and then Moira guided them to a jolly pub. While they stood at the bar reading the board for what was on offer for lunch, Moira produced a fifty-pound note. ‘This is on Luke!’

Once the first fifty-pound note had been broken into and had bought soup and salad and crusty bread for them both, Sophie felt a bit better about spending it.

‘You don’t have to spend all of it anyway,’ said Moira. ‘You can give what’s left back to him.’

Sophie was silent for a few seconds. ‘He hasn’t phoned. I don’t think he’s going to.’

Moira hesitated in a way that made Sophie felt she agreed with her. ‘You don’t know that.’

‘No, I know. But I just feel—’

‘There could be any number of reasons why he hasn’t phoned. No signal for one.’

Sophie instantly got out her phone to see if she had coverage. She had.

‘Well, he might not have coverage.’

‘True.’

‘He’s bound to get in touch about your quest, apart from anything else. He was helping you with that, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, but he’s helped loads already, and it was in exchange for me helping Matilda. We’re quits, really. There’s no real reason why he should get in touch. I mean – no practical reason.’

This sounded so cold and businesslike after what they’d shared that Sophie found her throat closing as if she was going to cry. She swallowed a spoonful of soup too quickly. It was hot and she had to follow it with water. But the time she’d done all this she was back in control again, superficially at least.

‘So you don’t think all is lost then?’ she asked Moira, when they’d moved on to salad, and were sharing a bowl of chips.

‘What? With Luke? No. I agree it didn’t look good but there could have been lots of reasons why he didn’t kiss you goodbye passionately. Apart from catching a plane, I mean.’

‘OK,’ said Sophie. ‘Let’s think of some.’

The two women exchanged glances for a moment or two before going back to eating.

‘All right,’ said Moira, ‘supposing he thought you’d gone out for a walk because you were so horrified to find yourself in bed with him. Maybe he felt you’d left him?’

Sophie considered. ‘Good, but not perfect. He can’t have
thought I’d left him when I’d been so – well – loving, just a few hours earlier.’

‘You don’t know that. Men are funny! Maybe he was suffering from empty-bed syndrome.’

‘It’s what women get, usually.’

‘No reason why men can’t have it too! After all, they’re supposed to get the menopause.’

Sophie sighed. ‘It’s all very well to joke about it, but why
do
you think he just left like that?’

Moira shook her head. ‘I still don’t know, but I do genuinely think there may be an explanation and I think you should see your relatives, do all the things you would have done, without him. Then if he does turn out to be a love-rat you haven’t wasted your time as well as your love – and money – on him.’

Sophie nodded. ‘OK. And it would be wonderful if I could achieve everything without his help. Who needs preppy rich boys?’

‘I’m taking that as a rhetorical question,’ said Moira, ‘but as the rich boy is paying, shall we have pudding?’

A little while later, they got back to Moira’s house and she led Sophie through to the sitting room. There was a laptop on the table.

‘Now let’s see what we’ve got.’

‘Let’s send the ones with the house looking good,’ said Sophie. ‘I’ll tell her about it being quite run-down, but it would be nice for her to see it at its best.’

‘OK,’ said Moira. ‘What about this one?’

‘Yes. And that one from the back. You can see there are some tiles missing but Matilda might not be looking at the pictures too closely.’

‘Here’s a nice one.’

When at last they were pleased with their choices, Moira attached them and Sophie wrote her email.

Dear Matilda, We found the house! Sadly, it’s not lived in and is in a fairly bad state as far as one can tell.
She was pleased with that ‘one’. She didn’t want to say ‘we’ or ‘I’.

I’m sending these pictures as Luke had to go back to London suddenly, with Ali. Apparently there was some emergency at work.

I’m going to look up some of my relatives and then go home.

I hope you are well and not missing Luke too much.

Lots of love, Sophie

Sophie pressed ‘send’ and then worked out that it would be roughly ten in the morning for Matilda. Then she went upstairs and lay on the bed, trying not to cry. She really, really did want to leave Moira’s immediately, but going home without finishing her mission would just be pathetic. And the bed was a real impediment to her return to normal.

She went downstairs to find Moira, who put the kettle on the minute she appeared. ‘Is it all right if I stay another night? I’ll go and see these relations tomorrow and then go.’

‘Will you drive home?’

Sophie shook her head. ‘No, we hired the car down here. I’ll take it back and then catch the train.’

Moira looked as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t quite decide what. In the end she said, ‘Why don’t you check your emails after tea? Matilda may have replied.’

‘Oh yes, I will.’

There
was
an email from Matilda. She was delighted with the photographs but less delighted to hear that Luke had gone to London.
Although he had helped you track down the house, as I asked him, and with everything going on in London, I suppose he hasn’t got time to go into it all further.