Hitched! (10 page)

‘I don’t see why,’ said George. ‘All we need to do is pretend
to be in love.’

‘You’re in love with me,’ I reminded him quickly. ‘I’m just
toying with
you
.’

The creases around George’s eyes deepened appreciatively. ‘You
don’t think you could be a little in love with me?’ he said, looking down at me
with glinting blue eyes. ‘Letitia would like that. Naturally, I don’t mind being
toyed with the rest of the time. In fact, any time you feel like toying...’

Oh, God, there went my cheeks again.

‘I don’t mind making a bit of an effort for her,’ I said,
concentrating fiercely on the foil, ‘but I’m not making a fool of myself in
front of Saffron and her friends. That’s exactly the kind of thing we ought to
sort out now,’ I told him.

‘Uh-oh, I think I can feel some SMART goals coming on!’

‘You’re not taking this seriously,’ I complained.

‘Because it isn’t serious,’ said George. ‘Look, don’t worry
about it. I’ll look at you adoringly and give you a cuddle every now and then.
How much more of a plan do you want?’

It was the prospect of the cuddles that was worrying me, but I
could hardly admit that to George.
He
clearly hadn’t
lost any sleep over how he might react if I kissed him or slid an arm around him
and pressed into his side.

‘I still think we should talk about exactly what’s involved,’ I
said stubbornly.

‘Tell you what, why don’t you come round to supper tomorrow?’
said George. ‘It’s the weekend. We’ll have something to eat and we’ll make a
plan if that makes you happy.’

* * *

‘I’ve got a confession to make,’ said George when I
knocked on his kitchen door the next evening. ‘I’ve been working with Toby all
day. We were making real progress but, as a result, I forgot to go to the
shops.’

‘Does that mean no dinner?’

‘Not at all. This is why God invented takeaways,’ said George.
‘Pizza or curry?’

It was a filthy night. The spring days had been blown away by a
wind-splattered rain beating angrily against the cottage windows. I chose curry,
and George braved the weather to drive to the Indian restaurant in the local
town, while I lit the fire in his sitting room.

George’s cottage was a mirror image of mine. It had the same
dated décor and shabby furnishings, but it was cosy in the firelight. I poked
the embers and added another log, thinking that the room was infinitely more
inviting than the most opulent of my father’s houses.

We sat on the floor in front of the fire, eating like slobs
straight from the containers and drinking beer from the bottle.

‘So, how are the party preparations coming on?’ George asked.
He was lying on one side of the fire, propped on one elbow, while I leant
against an armchair with my legs stretched out in front of me.

I nibbled at an onion bhaji. ‘I saw Mrs Simms, and she’s
absolutely wonderful, just like you said. We talked about a menu, and it all
sounds great. I’m clearly going to have a battle with Saffron about the wine,
though. We had a big row when I told her I couldn’t afford the kind of wines she
wants. She wanted me to ask
Dad
to pay for it!

‘I was supposed to ring him up and say “Hi, Dad, we haven’t
spoken for six years, but could you lend me a couple of thousand pounds because
I’m too much of a failure to be able to give Saffron the wine she wants at her
party?”’

‘Hmm, I can see it might be a difficult conversation, but
you’re hardly a failure, Frith. Nobody’s expecting you to earn astronomical sums
at this stage of your career.’

‘Saffron is. She lives in a different world. Anyway, we agreed
in the end that she would pay for the wine, but now, of course, I feel a selfish
worm,’ I said glumly, and George laughed.

‘Frith, you’re giving her a party in a stately home. That’s
generous enough.’

‘Only thanks to Roly.’

‘You’re paying for the food, you’re organising it all. You are
not a worm,’ he said firmly.

Sitting up, he propped himself against the chair opposite mine
on the other side of the fire.

Our legs were stretched out side by side. If I moved my left
one just a little, it would be pressed up against his right one.

‘So you’ve got the food—and the wine!—sorted now. What else
have you got to do?’

‘Loads,’ I said, ‘but I did have a thought about games.’

‘Strip poker?’ George asked hopefully and I poked him with my
foot.

‘No,
not
strip poker. It’s not
going to be that kind of party.’

‘Shame.’

‘Since Jax is now definitely coming, I thought we could make
him and Saffron play Mr and Mrs. It’s a sort of test,’ I added when George
raised his brows enquiringly. He was scraping out the last of the lamb dopiaza
and I pushed the container of rice towards him. ‘I ask Saffron and Jax a series
of questions about each other in advance, and then read out their answers. Then
we’ll see how well they really know each other.’

‘Sounds dangerous to me,’ said George. ‘What sort of questions
were you thinking of?’

‘I don’t know, what’s their favourite book, that kind of
thing.’ I hadn’t given the matter much thought. I wasn’t at that stage of
planning yet.

‘Saffron didn’t strike me as a great reader,’ he said, which
was a tactful way of putting it. My sister had lots of good points, but a
razor-sharp intellect wasn’t one of them. I had only ever seen her flicking
through glossy magazines, and even then I suspected she only looked at the
pictures. I couldn’t see Jax spending much time buried in a book either.

‘Mmm, good point,’ I acknowledged. ‘What about favourite
meal?’

George licked his fork thoughtfully. ‘I get it. So if Jax
thinks that Saffron’s favourite meal is sausage and mash, and she says it’s
actually a lettuce leaf, hilarity will ensue when you compare their
answers.’

‘That’s the idea.’ I hunted round for a pen and turned my list
over so that I could write on the back. ‘I need some more questions. I thought
favourite meal, favourite colour—What?’ I broke off as George made a face.

‘No self-respecting bloke is going to have a favourite colour!
Why don’t you ask something interesting like, what does he/she do when they’re
nervous?’

I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, for instance, if
we
were
getting married, I’d say that you tucked your hair behind your ears whenever you
weren’t sure of yourself.’

‘I do not!’

‘It’s a dead giveaway,’ said George kindly.

‘Or they might ask what your most irritating habit was,’ I
countered, ‘and I would say the way you change my ringtone
every day
! I got a cow mooing today,’ I remembered grouchily. ‘You
do realise the joke’s wearing very thin?

‘You promised you wouldn’t do it again,’ I reminded him
crossly. ‘Scout’s honour, you said. I distinctly remember it.’

‘It doesn’t count if you were never a scout,’ said George.
‘Besides, I’m having much too good a time imagining your face when your mobile
rings every day.’

‘I’ll stop using it,’ I threatened, but he shook his head.

‘Can’t be done, Frith. A professional woman like you without a
mobile phone? What happens when someone wants to get hold of you and you’re on
site? No, I think you’ll keep it.’

He was right, curse him.

George smiled. He could read my expression without difficulty.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t worked out how to change it yourself,’ he said. ‘You
being an engineer and all.’

‘I deal with big structures,’ I said loftily. ‘Not all
engineers are nerds, you know. I’ve always been hopeless with fiddly technology.
I can switch on my computer and send a text, but that’s about it.’

‘Looks like you’re stuck with me choosing your ringtones, then,
doesn’t it?’

I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t going to let on to George, but
actually I did think the ringtones he chose were quite funny.

‘As long as you don’t pick any more like that first time. It
was really embarrassing.’

George paused with the beer bottle at his lips. ‘First time,’
he echoed. ‘Now there’s a question for your quiz! Ask Saffron and Jax the name
of the first person the other one slept with. It’s the sort of thing couples
ought to know about each other, isn’t it? After all, you never forget your first
time, do you?’

I didn’t answer, but when George looked at me I realised I had
to say something. ‘No,’ I said.

He nudged me with his foot. ‘Go on. What was his name?’

I looked at the flames. I really didn’t want to be having this
conversation, but George clearly wasn’t going to let it go. And I didn’t have to
make a big deal out of it. It
wasn’t
a big deal. Or
not any more.

‘Charles,’ I said.

I thought I said it lightly, but George sat up and put his beer
back on the floor. He narrowed his eyes at me.

‘Not a good experience?’

‘Not particularly.’

That was supposed to be it. I could have left it there. I
should
have left it there. We were only discussing a
game, for heaven’s sake. But all at once the memories were crowding in my
throat, and I was telling George what had happened before I realised that I was
going to say anything at all.

‘It was awful,’ I blurted out.

I fiddled with the corner of the foil dish by my side and
didn’t look at him. ‘It wasn’t long after my mother died and I’d had to go and
live with my father and Saffron all the time. Saffron was only eight, and Dad
was working all the time. I was lonely and missing Mum. I’d gone from a quiet
suburban house to a mansion, from a comprehensive to the exclusive private
school my father insisted on. I didn’t fit in anywhere any more. It wasn’t a
happy time,’ I said. Which might be called a massive understatement.

My father had trodden on a lot of toes on his way to his
fortune, and he had never been accepted by the Establishment. He was too brash,
too blunt, and he had an enormous chip on his shoulder. I suspected that
secretly he longed to be accepted, but he would laugh off any suggestion of
it.

‘Nobody looks down on you when you’ve got a few billion in the
bank,’ he’d boast, but of course among certain circles billions count for
nothing when you haven’t been to the right school and don’t speak with the right
accent.

Bullishly, my father tried to force Saffron and I into what he
thought of as the ‘right’ circles, unaware, or perhaps uncaring, that everyone
looked down on us. Saffron did better. She went to school with those girls, and
grew up with them, and of course she looked the part, but I was never going to
belong, and I didn’t want to.

‘You should make more of an effort,’ he ordered me. ‘Take your
nose out of those books and show those nobs that you’re just as good as they
are.’

I was horrified when I heard that he had taken a luxurious
villa on a private island in the Caribbean for the Christmas holidays and was
intent on pushing me into contact with the other young people there. I had
nothing to say to them.

And then I met Charles when my father dragged me along to a
party at the beach club. To this day, I don’t know if he gatecrashed or not, but
he was so rich and so confident that it would have taken a brave person to deny
him entrance.

‘I met him at a party,’ I told George. ‘I was horribly shy, and
embarrassed about my father, and Charles was like some Greek god, descending
from heaven to take notice of me. He was even more handsome than you,’ I said
and George pretended to reel back with shock.

‘Impossible!’

‘I know it’s hard to imagine, but he was. He had that whole
floppy-haired-chiselled-cheek-bones-upper-crust thing going on, and green eyes
like a cat. I was dazzled,’ I admitted.

‘I couldn’t believe he’d even noticed me, but he flirted with
me and flattered me and for once my father was looking approving. It was so
lovely to have some attention,’ I remembered, hating the wistful note in my own
voice. ‘I wanted not to be bowled over by Charles, but when he took my hand and
suggested we got away from everybody else, of course I said yes.’

‘I’ve got a feeling I’m not going to like what comes next,’
said George, an unaccustomed grim look about his mouth.

‘You can probably guess. He took me to a dark beach hut and
kissed me and one thing led to another...’ I gathered up the foil containers
within reach and stacked them neatly together before I lifted my eyes and looked
straight at George.

‘I didn’t say no,’ I told him firmly. ‘I wanted my first time
to be with Charles. He was so gorgeous and glamorous and he made me feel
special. Actually, it wasn’t that great. It hurt and was messy and awkward and I
didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but for a few minutes there I was thrilled.
It was worth it to be Charles’s girlfriend.’

I laughed, but it was a bitter sound. ‘He said we should go
back to the party, and he’d leave me to clean myself up. So he went out and
there were a group of his friends waiting outside the hut for him, cheering and
clapping him on the back, and it turned out that he’d won the bet.

‘I was the bet.’ My cheeks were burning with remembered
humiliation. ‘It turned out that they’d been taking bets on whether or not he
could bang ghastly Kevin Taylor’s ghastly daughter, and guess what? He won.’ I
swallowed. ‘I refused to go anywhere for the rest of the time on the island. My
father was furious and never forgave me.’

‘You didn’t tell him what had happened?’

‘Of course not. I knew what I was doing. I even wanted it,’ I
said. ‘I wasn’t going to cry rape. Besides, I couldn’t bear to talk about it. I
felt so...
stupid
.’

Had I really thought that someone like Charles would be
interested in me? How naïve could you get? At twenty-eight, I could look back
and see that Charles had just been a careless boy. He wasn’t to know that I was
just starting to recover from my mother’s death, just beginning to let myself
trust again, but at the time I had been devastated. His casual humiliation of me
had been all I needed to lock down emotionally, and I had never risked
abandoning myself to another person again.