A Winter's Wedding (17 page)

‘Oh yes, so it is.’

‘And he never uses the dining room, so he just keeps the bike in there. You don’t mind your parents coming over, do you?’ Dylan asked then, setting down a stack of junk mail and giving Emily a big hug.

‘No, I expect they’ll get bored within a fortnight and go home again. I mean, I’m happy they’re showing some initiative at last, but I don’t know if they’ll fit in over here.’

‘It’s a pity they never found their niche in life, isn’t it?’ Dylan said.

‘Yes, I think it would have made all the difference, if only they’d found the right jobs,’ Emily said.

‘True. That’s why I had to get out of banking before it took over my life,’ Dylan told her. ‘I didn’t want to become addicted to easy money.’

‘You’ll find another passion when Sylvia can afford to hire a sales assistant for the shop,’ Emily said, looking around the sitting room again.

‘Yes, I will,’ he agreed.

‘I wonder, would Jake mind if we washed his bike?’

‘I don’t see any problem. I could take the bike to the car wash, if you like? I can ride a little bit – enough to go to the car wash and back, anyway,’ Dylan offered.

‘That’d be great. And I’ll try and do something with this room. You see, if the coffee table was placed in the centre of the room here, with the sofa there and those two chairs at either side, the room wouldn’t look quite so empty. And then I’ll find a couple of vases and buy some colourful flowers to brighten the place up.’

‘Go right ahead.’

‘Mind how you go on the bike, now,’ Emily said as Jake found the keys and wheeled the motorbike to the front door. ‘And please wear the helmet.’

‘Okay, you’re the boss,’ he said, winking at her.

While he was gone Emily rearranged the furniture, gave the leather sofa a good rub-down, straightened the curtains and found some dusty old vases under the kitchen sink. She boiled a kettle full of water, washed the vases and polished them with a tea towel until they sparkled. Then Dylan came back with a newly pristine motorbike, and suddenly the house took on a stylish, sophisticated look.

They bought some bright red gerberas at the supermarket, and enough groceries to fill the fridge. Emily even found a dark brown wicker basket to keep the mail in.

‘There!’ she said, when the finishing touches had been added to Jake’s cavernous house. ‘What do you think?’ The leather sofa was gleaming, the crates of records had been moved into a neat line, the red flowers added a much-needed splash of colour, and the gleaming Harley gave the house an eccentric but glamorous note.

‘I think it’s totally amazing. Jake won’t know this place when he comes back from Australia,’ Dylan said approvingly. ‘You’re brilliant at this.’

‘I should hope so, after ten years in the business!’

‘No, really. In a couple of hours you’ve made this house a home,’ he said, nodding his approval.

‘Well, thank you, kind sir,’ she said, making a little curtsey.

‘Oh, I like that,’ Dylan laughed. ‘Let’s go back to your place now; I fancy having my wicked way with one of the maids.’

Laughing, they set the alarm, pulled the door behind them and dashed back to the car.

18. One-night Stand

Emily and Dylan were enjoying a Saturday night drink at the Twickenham Arms, just embracing the peace and quiet before her parents arrived on Sunday evening. The pub was deliciously warm and welcoming and softly lit with orange and yellow glass lanterns. The gold tinsel strands on a huge Christmas tree were quivering in a faint draught by the door. Emily had a joint of beef marinating in the fridge back at her flat, and Jake’s house was ready with the guest room all made up and stocked with a basket of new towels.

‘Maybe I should stop drinking in a bit. All the cooking tomorrow will be a nightmare if I’ve got a belting hangover. I want to make tomorrow a nice day for Mum and Dad; it’s the first time in years that they’ve been so excited about anything. I really hope they enjoy living in Jake’s house.’

‘Relax, babe, you’ve thought of everything,’ Dylan said, his arm draped casually around Emily’s shoulders.

‘Did you just call me babe?’ she laughed.

‘Is that okay?’

‘Yes, it’s really nice,’ she smiled.

‘I’m looking forward to the dinner tomorrow,’ he said then. ‘Are you doing all the trimmings too? You don’t cook very often.’

‘No, usually I just have soup or a sandwich. But I want to make Mum and Dad feel really welcome. I think that they think I don’t want them here. I should have sounded a lot more enthusiastic on the phone that time. I mean, I was pleased they’d had an idea; I just wasn’t sure we’d find them anything. Of course, now they think I don’t want them around in case they cramp my style. And if I overdo the hugs and the happiness when they arrive, they’ll accuse me of faking it. Families, huh … I just hope I remember how to get everything ready for the meal at the same time,’ she added.

‘I’m sure it’ll be a feast fit for a king. Are you hungry now, by any chance?’ Dylan asked her.

‘I’m a bit hungry, I suppose,’ she admitted.

‘Shall we treat ourselves to some pub grub? I fancy a steak.’

‘Oh yes, let’s do that! I could murder scampi and chips.’

‘Right, I’ll ask for a menu on the way back from the Gents,’ he said, finishing his pint and standing up.

‘And I’ll get another round in,’ Emily said, picking up her handbag.

As Emily was waiting to be served at the bar, the pub doors opened with a shudder and a bunch of rowdy guys came staggering in, almost knocking the tree over. Some of the men grabbed handfuls of tinsel and placed it on their heads, laughing uproariously. They’d clearly been drinking already; possibly for several hours. Then she realized that she knew the men, especially one of them. His name was Glenn and he’d been Alex’s best man on the day of their cancelled wedding. Mercifully Alex was not with them tonight. The others had all been at school with her. They were wearing football shirts, so they must all be over in London on some sort of a soccer jolly, she thought. Glenn walked up to the bar and asked the barmaid for a menu.

‘Oh shit,’ Emily muttered, turning away from the men.

But it was too late. Glenn had recognized her, and he came straight over.

‘Well, look who it is, lads,’ he said loudly. ‘It’s none other than Emily Reilly from dear old Belfast town. Fancy meeting you here, Emily. What’s new, pussycat?’

‘Shut up, Glenn,’ Emily said. ‘Everyone’s looking.’

‘Come here, you,’ Glenn laughed, giving her a crushing bear hug and kissing her messily on the cheek.

‘Get off me,’ she said angrily, trying to push him away.

‘What’s the matter, pet?’ he said, hugging her again.

Emily thought she might suffocate if he didn’t let her go at once.

‘I said, will you get off me?’ Emily told him. ‘I’m here with my boyfriend.’

‘Oh, Emily’s got a boyfriend, lads. We’d all like to meet this boyfriend of yours,’ Glenn said in a slightly sinister voice. ‘Is he real? I wonder. Or is he just an imaginary boyfriend?’

The other men all guffawed loudly. Emily’s tragic wedding story had obviously been spread far and wide. They must all know that Alex had left her at the altar on their wedding day. She wondered frantically if Glenn had given them the final detail of that most humiliating period of her life.

‘Go away and leave me alone,’ Emily said in the firmest voice she could muster, slithering from his grasp, paying for her drinks and turning away from Glenn and his lecherous smile.

But Glenn wasn’t going to be swept aside. He followed Emily and pinched her bottom, causing her to hunch up and drop her drinks. Glasses of cola and lager hit the floor with a watery crash, and the men started laughing all over again.

A tired waiter appeared from behind the counter with a mop and bucket.

‘Keep the noise down, folks,’ he said anxiously.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Emily told the waiter as he bent down to pick up the remnants of broken glass. ‘Mind you don’t cut yourself.’

‘What’s going on here?’ someone said, and Emily knew that Dylan had come back from the bathroom.

‘You must be Emily’s
boyfriend
,’ Glenn tittered.

‘Yes, I am,’ Dylan said firmly. ‘What of it?’

‘Let’s go home, Dylan,’ Emily said nervously.

‘Are you not going to introduce us to your
boyfriend
?’ Glenn asked. ‘Are you engaged yet? Are we all invited to the wedding?’

The men laughed even harder.

‘Who is this idiot?’ Dylan asked. ‘What’s his problem?’

‘Leave us alone, Glenn,’ Emily said, taking Dylan’s hand and leading him towards the door. ‘We don’t want any trouble, do you hear me?’

‘Would you look at Love’s Young Dream,’ Glenn said, angry now at being left standing on his own in front of everybody.

His friends were all expecting a bit of a show, and he was damned if he was going to let it end like this.

‘Don’t go, Emily,’ he shouted. ‘Stay and have a drink with your old muckers.’

‘Please don’t say anything to him,’ Emily whispered to Dylan. ‘He’ll only hit you, and then it’ll kick off. There are eight of them, and they all enjoy a good punch-up. Glenn always did like to stir things.’

‘Okay, let’s go,’ Dylan nodded as Emily reached for the door handle.

‘You weren’t ignoring me last time we met, were you, Miss Reilly?’ Glenn called after them. ‘You couldn’t get enough of me that night, could you?’

Dylan stopped in his tracks, and turned to face Glenn and his cohorts.

‘Have you got something to say to my girlfriend?’ he asked in a low voice.

‘No, mate, I haven’t,’ Glenn said quietly.

Emily was weak with relief. She tugged again at Dylan’s hand, eager to be out of the pub and safely home in her cosy, lovely flat. Giving Glenn one final look of disdain, Dylan turned to go.

‘I have nothing to
say
to your girlfriend, but there’s definitely something I’d like to
do
to her,’ Glenn said loudly.

The laughter rang out again. By this time everyone in the bar was looking at them. The bar staff were terrified that a full-scale riot was about to erupt. A load of drunken guys in football shirts, with very strong Belfast accents – what else were they to think?

‘Oh please, no,’ Emily said.

‘Come over here and say that again,’ Dylan said, letting go of Emily’s hand and fixing Glenn with a cold hard stare.

Emily thought Glenn would run for cover, but instead he casually strolled over to Dylan and repeated his nasty words. Before he had finished the sentence, however, and before Emily could even blink, Dylan had reached out and landed an expert punch on Glenn’s sneering face. Glenn crumpled and went down like a ton of bricks, and Dylan then asked Glenn’s mates if any of them would like to have a go. There were no offers, strangely enough – Glenn’s friends had decided they were all too drunk to take on a man with a rugby player’s build. The bar fell silent, except for Glenn’s agonized moaning. A trickle of blood appeared on Glenn’s top lip.

‘I think you’ve broken my nose,’ he said accusingly.

‘You asked for it,’ Dylan said calmly.

‘We’ll get you back some other time,’ Glenn said to Dylan menacingly.

‘Not to worry, mate. You might have your little gang with you tonight, but I have plenty of pals too; we’ll be looking forward to the rematch.’

‘I’ll sue you,’ Glenn said.

‘I’ll see you in court,’ Dylan said, ‘though if I were you, I wouldn’t bother. I haven’t got any money, and you were sexually harassing my girlfriend. There’s no shortage of witnesses.’

The waiter handed Glenn a towel and asked him and his friends to leave the bar as soon as Glenn was able to walk, or else they’d have to call the police. Glenn’s friends then gathered round him and helped him to his feet.

‘Okay, we’re done here,’ Dylan said, and he took Emily’s hand and led her outside.

They went home to Emily’s flat as fast as they could. Dylan was so angry, he told Emily he would gladly have taken on the lot of them. But Emily didn’t want him to become a mere footnote in Glenn’s bloke-fest booze-up.

‘He’s
so
not worth it,’ she told him when they got back to her flat. ‘People who go around picking fights like that are just messed up in the head; I mean, properly messed up. That Glenn needs a whole team of psychiatrists to sort him out. He’d rather get his nose broken by a man than be civil to a girl. He’s crazy.’

‘Scumbag! I hurt my hand hitting him,’ Dylan said, flexing his fingers.

‘I’ll put some ice on it,’ said Emily.

She quickly wrapped some ice cubes in a tea towel and handed it to Dylan.

‘Cheers, babe.’

‘What bad luck to bump into him,’ Emily said, still furious. ‘He ruined our lovely evening.’

She couldn’t sit down, and had resorted to pacing up and down the sitting room.

‘What’s the story with him, anyway?’ Dylan asked after a couple of minutes.

‘You could say he was an ex of mine,’ Emily admitted. ‘A sort of ex, you might say.’

‘Well, it must have been beer goggles, then. Tell me, did he hit you?’

‘No, Glenn was always getting into brawls. But as far as I know he doesn’t beat women,’ Emily said quietly. ‘I ran into him a while after the wedding fiasco. I was at a hen party at this hotel in Dublin, and he was there too on a stag weekend. And to my eternal shame, well, we had a one-night stand.’

‘Is that all?’

‘I’m so embarrassed.’

‘Don’t be, we’ve all been there, done that,’ Dylan said ruefully.

‘Still, I should have known better,’ Emily said heavily. She felt incredibly embarrassed. ‘Even though I was tired and emotional, I should have known better.’

‘He seemed like a right lowlife,’ Dylan said, mystified.

‘I know. He is. He always was.’

‘So what happened? Were you on drugs when you kissed that particular frog?’ Dylan joked.

‘No, I was feeling sorry for myself and incredibly drunk. And he was just very nice to me,’ she said simply. ‘We got talking in a quiet corner of the hotel bar, and he was all sympathetic about the wedding being cancelled. He said Alex was a right fool and that one day he’d bitterly regret not marrying me. Looking back, I think he faked the sympathy to get me into bed. And it worked. I got a bit emotional and started crying my eyes out, we went up to his room and, well, basically we had a five-minute fumble on top of the bed. And then we fell asleep. We were both plastered. We didn’t even take our clothes off. It was awful, really – it was a pointless encounter from start to finish. I’ve never gone in for one-night stands, I swear to you, and that night reminded me why.’

‘Listen, Emily, I told you – I’m not judging you, babe.’

‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I know you aren’t.’

‘So that was the end of it?’

‘Not really. The next morning he was all keen to do it again, now that he was sober and everything. The room had a walk-in shower, and he thought it’d be fun to, you know, get frisky in there.’

‘And you didn’t fancy it?’

‘No, I did
not
fancy it. I felt completely disgusted with myself. I just wanted to go home and forget I’d ever spoken to him. He’s so immature, he turns my stomach. I told him I never wanted to see him or speak to him ever again – and he wasn’t very pleased, I can tell you.’

‘He didn’t try it on with you, did he?’ Dylan said, his face lined with worry.

‘Thank heaven, no, he didn’t,’ Emily said, shaking her head. ‘I said I wasn’t the type of girl who slept around, and he called me a tease and a bitch. Said it was a bit late to be saying that. I grabbed my shoes and left the room, and I got the hell out of that hotel as fast as I could.’

‘Sounds like he could have turned nasty.’

‘Yes, I know … and I hoped I’d never lay eyes on him again. To tell you the truth, he’s an awful bully; he always was. I really have no idea why I went anywhere near him that night. I should have known he was only faking the sympathy to take advantage of me. I should have known he’d tell his stupid mates about it. No doubt he told them I was a right tart.’

‘I’m sure all his mates know he’s the kind to exaggerate.’

‘I hope so. Why do some men think that just because you spent five minutes with them once, when you were at your very lowest ebb, you’ll now be available to them for all eternity?’

‘Search me. All I know is, that creep better not come near you again,’ Dylan said.

‘I hope he doesn’t press charges,’ Emily said.

‘No, he won’t do that, I could tell. He won’t go to the police, because he knows you could have him charged with sexual harassment. That bar was full of witnesses – and, thanks to his big mouth, they heard every word pretty clearly.’

‘Remind me not to drink in the Twickenham Arms for a very long time. Hopefully that’s the end of it now,’ Emily said. Then she got up and went towards the bedroom. ‘I still have the outfit I was wearing that night,’ she called out to Dylan.

She unlocked the wardrobe and took out a short black dress and matching jacket, a pair of five-inch black stilettos and a tiny black handbag. She brought her things back to the sitting room to show him.

‘I don’t want to keep these around any more,’ she said.

‘That’s understandable, but I don’t think we should sell them in the shop in case they bring bad luck to their new owner,’ Dylan said. ‘I’m not superstitious – but then again, you never know.’