Chapter Three
After a few minutes of small talk in the restaurant, I’d been able to escape and had finally had a chance to crash in our room for the last couple of hours. It was beautifully designed, with the sort of romantic, opulent furnishings and unbelievably soft and inviting bedding you’d expect from a hotel that cost over FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS A NIGHT!! The sky had turned a dramatic dusky blue, and when I looked out of the window, the cobbled square below was bathed in the most enticing, cosy, warm glow, and peeping out from behind the rooftops was the ever-impressive Duomo.
I felt bad even thinking it, because I knew how much Nick’s family meant to him, but I wished it could just be me and Nick tonight, on our way out to dinner alone. That way, I’d be free to gorge on pasta and red wine without worrying about whether or not I was making a good impression/saying the right thing. I was still holding on to the fact that everything would be all right. That once we’d all got to know each other, I’d have the loving, welcoming, fun second family I’d daydreamed about on the (long) train journey out here. Perhaps we’d just got off on the wrong foot.
‘Ready to go down in five?’ asked Nick, appearing in the bathroom doorway in a puff of steam, a pristine white towel wrapped around his waist.
He might have been ten years older than I was, but he was also ten times fitter, not least because he forked out a fortuneon his gym membership and twice-weekly personal training sessions. His hair was longer when it was wet, licking his shoulders in golden clumps. Toddler’s hair, I sometimes thought, but of course never said. I remembered Aidan’s dark hair and his buzz cut, which I used to tease him about. My friend Lou referred to him as Army Boy and I told him this once and he’d taken it as a compliment.
I pushed the thought out of my head, going closer to the mirror to apply my mascara. I refused to be thrown off course by some random guy down in the lobby who probably looked nothing like Aidan close up. My eyes were playing tricks on me, that was all. Before today, I’d very successfully relegated Aidan to the depths of my mind, with only the tiniest details filtering through when I was least expecting it. Like the memory of the first time I’d seen him, on the shores of Loch Lomond, staggering about in his wetsuit. And, funnily enough, the last time I’d seen him, when he’d kissed me goodbye that morning, his hair smelling of his lemon shampoo, his laptop bag slung over his shoulder. And the point at which I realised he’d gone, really gone, from my life as suddenly as he’d appeared in it. I thought that deep down I still hated him for the way things had ended, but it wasn’t healthy to hold grudges, was it, so I barely admitted it to myself, let alone anyone else.
‘So, come on then, spill. What did your parents think of me?’ I asked Nick, lining my lips with a soft cerise pencil and applying a lipstick in my favourite raspberry shade. I pressed my lips together, sealing the colour on. See? I could do well-groomed, too, if I tried. My strapless dress might be Primark rather than Prada, and instead of real gemstones I was wearing fuchsia pink earrings that looked like Christmas baubles (in a good way), but I didn’tmindwhat I saw in the mirror. I smoothed down my dress, turning to one side andthen the other, sucking my stomach in. ‘Tell me exactly what your mum said, word for word,’ I said, trying not to sound too needy but desperately feeling as though I wanted some reassurance that they didn’t despise me at first sight. Perhaps they justseemedjudgemental – it could be a hang-up from my past, and possibly I had a bit of an inferiority complex about it. They might be very chilled and really nice and I was just projecting this whole stuck-up vibe onto them when actually they were anything but.
Nick came up behind me and slid his hands around my waist. ‘Mum loved you,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘They all did.’
I looked at his reflection in the mirror. He couldn’t quite meet my eye.
‘You can tell me the truth, you know,’ I said, reaching out behind me to ruffle his hair. ‘I’m a big girl, I can take it.’ Even as I said this I felt my heart drop slightly.
He moved his hands away and started getting dressed. I watched him pull on his boxers, struggling to slide them over his still-damp skin. He hadn’t actually told me anything. I thought I wanted details, but I was beginning to think that they weren’t going to be what I wanted to hear.
‘Tell me, then.’
‘It’s fine, Mads. They like you, OK?’ he said, plucking his shirt off its hanger.
I bit my lip, spritzing on some perfume. I didn’t believe him. It was sweet of him to try to protect me, in a way, but I also thought that we should be able to be honest with each other if we were planning on spending the rest of our lives together. I needed to know what I was dealing with. He couldn’t expect me to go into tonight like a lamb to the slaughter, having no idea what – if anything – I’d done wrong. Surely he could see that.
I picked up my hairbrush, running it through my long, naturally curly hair (which I always, without fail, straightened), pushing through the painful snags and then tidying up my fringe. I was glad, now, that I’d treated myself to an expensive blow dry before we’d left London. Somehow, in my gut, I must have known that the women in Nick’s family would have bouncy, expensive hair.
‘I get the feeling I wasn’t what they were expecting, that’s all,’ I said, pushing the point a little.
I was making Nick uncomfortable, I could tell, but then also I thought:welcome to my world.
Nick coughed. ‘Well, I’d told them lots about you, so there was … nothing that would have come as a surprise.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘And, um, they thought you were very … pretty,’ he added.
I rolled my eyes to myself. I reckoned I knew what that meant: that they thought I was pretty, considering …
I took a deep breath, trying to push the negative thoughts down. They were coming thick and fast now, but since I had to sit down with these people for a three-course meal this evening, maybe I should at least try to hold it together.
‘So what’s your mum into? We must have something in common,’ I said hopefully, slipping on my one and only pair of heels.
There, I thought, looking at myself.Much better than earlier.
Tonight was a chance for a new start. I was going to walk into the restaurant with my head held high, feeling good about myself and ready to face the Leveson-Gower family. Yep, that was Nick’s surname, and soon to be mine. My dad had cracked up when I’d told him. Well, after he’d got over the fact that Nick hadn’t asked his permission for my hand inmarriage, that was. He’d been quite hurt, actually. When I’d mentioned it to Nick, he’d been mortified. He said that he knew I had a difficult relationship with my dad and that he thought I wouldn’t like him seeking my father’s permission. And it was hard to explain: that although we clashed and we didn’t really understand each other, I still loved him, and it felt like asking my dad would have been the right thing to do. Nick had tried to make amends by taking all of us (well, my dad’s side of the family) out for a meal to celebrate and it was nice enough, but the damage had already been done as far as my dad was concerned.
‘She plays a lot of golf?’ said Nick.
I laughed. Although the clubhouse scene sounded fun.
‘Horses?’ he offered.
‘I mean, they’re beautiful, but I’ve never ridden one, or anything.’
‘The Timescrossword?’ suggested Nick, hopefully.