I wasn’t going to argue. And after much deliberation, I chose a gold cobblestone-band diamond ring that simply cried out for my finger. And once placed inside a box and Tiffany’s iconic bag, I skipped out of the shop and floated back to our hotel leaving a twenty-four-carat chunk missing from the Big Apple.
Holly was right. To anyone who ever gave you confidence – you owe them a lot.
Later, and too excited to give in to jet lag, Edward and I went out for a celebratory meal at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan that a friend of his had recommended. As he opened the frosted-glass door, I nearly fell backwards when a huge roar rang out. In front of me sat my family and friends, with champagne flutes raised high in the air like Gabriel’s trumpet.
Edward had paid for my children, their partners and my granddaughter to fly to New York earlier that morning. James had arrived from Mexico where he was touring, and Roger, Tom and Amanda and Selena had landed a day earlier with Edward’s sons. Steven and Baishali had travelled directly from their villa in the South of France, and even Simon’s stepmum Shirley had overcome her lifelong fear of aeroplanes for the first flight she’d ever taken in her eighty-seven years.
‘Edward called us all one by one to ask for our blessing,’ whispered Emily. ‘If you’d said no, Shirley was going to say yes!’
I didn’t think it was possible to love anyone as much as I loved Edward right at that moment. I would have done anything for Edward with one exception – tell him the truth about how Simon had left us. Shirley and I had kept that secret to ourselves.
‘I take it that’s the end of the surprises for one day?’ I asked later, tucking into a delicious amaretto cheesecake dessert. ‘Because I don’t know how much more my nerves can take.’
He smiled. ‘There’s just one more small thing we need to do. But you’ll have to wait till tomorrow for that.’
20 December
As the Five Boroughs Children’s Choir sang ‘Silent Night’, I glided up the mauve carpet towards a white iron altar in Central Park.
The heavenly Vera Wang wedding dress Selena had chosen for me fitted perfectly. My bridesmaids – Emily and my granddaughter Olivia – reached the minister before I joined them, clinging to my boys’ arms for dear life. The fairy lights wrapped around the plinth bounced off a light dusting of snow on the ground, then I greeted my husband-to-be and his two best men, my new stepsons.
And as I faced the love of my life I’d waited so long to find and sobbed ‘I do’, it was impossible to feel the freezing December temperatures when I glowed so warm inside.
Today, 7.05 p.m.
She’d howled in anger, tried to gain his sympathy and reluctantly appealed to his better nature, but nothing worked. He had yet to offer a single explanation for his sudden departure.
But the mood in the room, and specifically his, had shifted. When he spoke of James, he sounded wracked with remorse. And there was more to it than being reminded of the family he’d left, or a promise to the dead.
She needed to change her tack if she was going to get her answers.
‘Why now?’ she coaxed calmly. ‘You said time was running out? Is it because we’re getting older?’
His eyes surveyed the room. He looked forwards and sideways but not directly at her. He absent-mindedly chewed the inside of his cheek until he penetrated the skin.
She couldn’t decide if he was choosing to ignore the question or if he’d heard something completely different altogether. He’d become unreadable.
‘What do you have to put right with me, Simon?’ she said, like she was talking to a frightened child. ‘What do you need me to know?’
He looked like she’d woken him from a bad dream, and that he’d been further confused by unfamiliar surroundings. He was ageing before her eyes and it alarmed her.
She broke off from analysing him to ask herself why she was feeling concern for a man who hadn’t given a damn about her. But that was her nature. And he was pained.
Regardless of learning about Paula’s brutal killing, she no longer feared him. Even the hatred had lessened slightly. Now she felt pity for the obviously troubled soul before her. She’d wondered during their conversation if sometimes he was even listening to what she was saying, because his expression would switch from engaged to blank in a heartbeat. His vacancy reminded her of someone else, and her mind raced through a lifetime of mugshots, trying to recall who it was.
He tasted the blood trickling from the bite mark inside his cheek. He clenched his fists once again. He knew his eyes had glazed over and his brain was sluggish, but there was nothing he could do but wait until it passed, like it always did. He dug his fingernails into his palms, hoping it might let him focus on what he needed to say.
He’d dipped in and out of her recollections of her second wedding and now was finding it difficult to respond. His words were caught up in a swirling current and the faster he swam, the more they collided.
‘My brain feels like Swiss cheese,’ he’d told Dr Salvatore. His physician had warned him it was one of the symptoms. A year he had lived like this, blaming his altered state of mind on grief, stress and remorse before the truth was revealed. God had had one last plan for him. He could run away from everyone else in the world, but not himself.
‘You have Alzheimer’s!’ she gasped, startling both of them.
Suddenly it made sense to her. She’d witnessed the same behaviour with Margaret, her old mentor at Fabien’s and Selena’s mum. Margaret’s husband had brought her back to England from Spain and placed her in a nursing home after she’d been diagnosed. Catherine had visited her many times, and when Margaret was less blurred, she chatted in minute detail about her past. It was as if she needed to get it all off her chest while she was still able to.
And Simon had been doing the same.
The resigned look he offered said more than his muddled sentences could. Soon their shared memories would only belong to her.
‘Why did you leave, Simon?’ she asked softly.
He stared at her while he chose the right words and tried to put them in the correct order.
‘I saw you with him,’ he replied. ‘I know what you did.’
It was her turn to embrace confusion. ‘Who?’
‘Dougie. My best friend. You had an affair with my best friend.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SIMON
Northampton, twenty-eight years earlier
14 March, 11.15 p.m.
The stylus lurched backwards and forwards like a ball in a roulette wheel, until it settled into a groove it could work with.
Baishali and Paula had twice bumped into the record player as they stood back to back, imitating the girls from ABBA. ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ blasted out from speakers mounted on wall brackets, and a circle of people formed around them as they recreated the band’s iconic routine.
But I paid them little attention, as I was fixated by my wife and Dougie dancing together in the corner of the living room.