“It’s a bet!”
It was hot that night and the air was heavy with the warm velvet scent of roses as Freddy and Laura wandered round the garden while Carrot searched the shrubbery for intruders. Laura was still fretting about the bet that Freddy had made. He had been very quiet on the way home from the pub. Although they had been together for a little over a year, and Freddy virtually lived at Padua now, they had never made any real plans for the future. She counted herself very lucky to have a second chance at both life and love, but she was still afraid that any attempt, however lighthearted, to tether their relationship might cause love to bolt. And she did love him. Not in the silly, girlish way that she had been infatuated with Vince. This had, for her, grown stealthily into an abiding love, sparked first by passion and then sustained by friendship and trust. But alongside her love for Freddy grew the fear of losing him; the two emotions cruelly shackled together, each feeding the other. Laura had to say something.
“That bet with Sunshine, it’s just a joke. I don’t expect you to . . .” She was so uncomfortable that she didn’t know how to continue. It suddenly dawned on her that marrying Freddy might be exactly what she wanted and that was why she was so upset. Her foolish hopes of a “happy ever after” had been turned into a joke, and she felt like a laughingstock.
Freddy took her hand and swung her round to face him. “A bet’s a bet, and I’m a man of my word!”
Laura pulled her hand away. In that moment, all the doubts about their relationship, all the fears of failure, and all the frustrations at her own imperfection converged to create a perfect storm.
“Don’t worry,” she snapped. “You don’t have to wait until you’ve worked out a ‘dignified escape route’! I’m fully aware that I’m the one who’s hitting above my weight in this relationship!”
“Punching,” replied Freddy quietly. “It’s ‘punching above your weight.’”
He was trying to find a way of breaking into the emotional vortex that Laura was whipping up, but she wouldn’t listen.
“I’m not a charity case! Poor old Laura! Couldn’t keep her husband out of someone else’s knickers and the only date she’s had in years was an unmitigated disaster, so what did you think, Freddy? Take her out and make her feel like she’s worth something and then let her down gently when someone better comes along?”
Like a songbird caught in a trapper’s net, the harder she fought, the more entangled she became, but she couldn’t help herself. She knew how unreasonable she was being, how hurtful, but she couldn’t stop. The insults and accusations flew while Freddy stood silently waiting for her to burn herself out, and when she turned to go back into the house, he called after her.
“Laura! For God’s sake, woman! You know how much I love you. I was going to ask you, anyway. To marry me.” He shook his head sadly. “I had it all planned. But then Sunshine well and truly stole my thunder.”
Laura stopped, but couldn’t face him, nor silence the desperate and completely untruthful coup de grace with which she finally broke her own heart.
“I would have said no.”
As she walked on to the house, silent tears ran down her face, but somewhere in the darkness of the rose garden there was the sound of someone else weeping.
CHAPTER 47
Eunice
2013
Portia gave the biscuits a magnificent send-off. She had wanted St. Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, but finding that even her obscene wealth couldn’t buy them, she had settled for the ballroom of a swanky Mayfair hotel. Eunice sat at the back, in her designated seat, which was bedecked, like all the others, in an extravagant black silk chiffon bow, and took in the splendid surroundings. The room was truly stunning, with a sprung wooden floor, floor-to-ceiling antique mirrors, and, judging by the acoustics breathing Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” into the rarefied air, a state-of-the-art sound system. Either that or Portia had the entire Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus hidden behind a screen somewhere. The mirrors reflected the monstrous arrangements of exotic lilies and orchids that loomed from shelves and pedestals like albino triffids.
Eunice had come with Gavin, a long-term friend of Bomber’s since their school days together, who now made a living cutting, coloring, and cosseting the hair of both genuine and manufactured celebrities. His client list was one of the reasons that Portia had invited him.