“And how did you meet?”
Shit. How long will this last? But it’s Erica, and she’s very sweet, so I grit my teeth.
“At a wedding. He was a guest.” I shrug. “Our eyes met over a crowded bar and the rest is history.”
Literally history, but I can’t say that.
She looks delighted. “Well, that’s lovely,” she says. “I hope Ryan and I have such a good marriage.”
“I’m sure you will.” It wouldn’t take much to beat our record. Britney Spears had a lengthier first go at matrimony. I immediately change the subject back to the wedding, and the next hour is taken up with finalising details.
Finally, I leave with a hug from Erica and promises to see me in a couple of days and a limp handshake from Frances. She doesn’t scrub her hand afterwards, but it’s obvious she wants to.
Think of the money, I say to myself and offer her a big smile that probably irritates her more than cross words.
When I get outside, the cold air almost feels warm after Frances’s company. I stop to fasten my coat and my phone rings. I look down at the display. Great. My mum.
“Could the day get any trickier?” I ask the universe. The universe ignores me as usual, although a passing bloke grimaces at me in sympathy.
“Hey, Mum?”
“Hi, sweetie.” My mum’s voice sounds warm and close, and suddenly I wish I was a kid at home again, having her solve my problems and having no worries other than what was for dinner and when she’d discover I’d lost my new bike. “How are you?”
I edge under the hotel’s overhang, getting out of the cold wind. “Fine. How are you and Dad?”
“We’re good. Just packing for our cruise. Are you sure you won’t come with us?”
“I can’t, Mum. I told you I’ve got this wedding.”
“I know you’ve got next week off, and I hate the idea of you being on your own. I was just saying to your dad we could cancel the cruise.”
“Don’t be silly,” I immediately say. “You’ve looked forward to this for ages.”
“I looked forward to having a child far too much to abandon them in their tiny little room on their own as the time counts down on their marriage.”
“That’s rather dramatic. It’s a perfectly nice flat, Judi Dench, and I won’t be there anyway. I’ve booked a holiday away.”
“You have?”
She sounds astonished, which is understandable, as the idea only just occurred to me.
“Yes,” I say quickly, thinking hard. “I’m going to Thailand. I’m going to lie on the beach for a week with cocktails and a good book.”
“But no men, darling.”
“Pardon?”
“Don’t do anything silly. You’re still married, and this current argument will all blow over. You were always such an impulsive boy. I don’t want you to wreck your chance at happiness as an adult.”
“Mum, I’m not setting off to sea to make my fortune. Just staying in a five-star hotel. Anyway, I was impulsive about things like shaving patterns in my hair and piercing my nose when I was ten. It doesn’t apply to my marriage, which is over. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Oh, darling, it doesn’t have to be.”
“Oh my god,” I breathe. “Lachlan’s been talking to you, hasn’t he?” There’s a short silence. “Mum,” I say sternly.
She caves. “I speak to him most days, and I really think you should talk to him too.”
“Mum, Lachlan and I aren’t just having a silly argument. We were categorically finished before I served divorce papers. There is no coming back from the way we ended.”
“I know, and you won’t tell me why and neither will he.”
I bet he won’t. “I absolutely won’t,” I say.
“He only rings to talk about you. He loves all the little stories about your childhood.”
“Oh god,” I say faintly.
“And I know a man in pain when I hear one.”
“You’re talking to one at the moment,” my dad shouts in the distance. “Leave the boy alone.”
“Thank you, Dad,” I call.
My mum returns to her subject like a terrier with a ball. “He’s hurting, Joe, and I think you need to talk.”
“I do talk. I’ve just been doing it with you when I kept saying that my marriage is over. Did you miss it?”
“Darling, don’t be sarcastic. It doesn’t suit you.”
I groan and contemplate hitting myself in the face with the phone. “Stop taking his calls,” I instruct her.
“If you really want me to, but please consider talking to him. I know Dad and I didn’t approve of him when we first met him. He was so much older and worldlier than you.”
“Worldlier? I wasn’t Julie Andrews.”
A lady edges into the overhang with me and then immediately looks as if she wants to reconsider her life choices.
Meanwhile, my mother is still talking. “I bet Julie Andrews was never as impatient with her mother as you are. Anyway, now we’ve come to love Lachlan, because we see how much he loves you.”
“It’s good you’ve noticed it, because I never managed to catch that stage of our relationship. No talking to him,” I repeat. “And have a wonderful holiday.” I raise my voice. “Love you, Dad.”
“Love you too.”
I ring off and sigh. “Is it the twenty-third century yet?” I say to the lady. “It feels like today has stretched into eternity already.”
Chapter
Eight
Joe
With my hands full of takeaway coffee cups, I back through the door and into my workplace. “Morning,” I call.
Ingrid the receptionist looks up from her perusal of a magazine. “You’re early.”
“I didn’t get much sleep.”
“You never do lately, you dirty boy.”
I roll my eyes. “Chance would be a fine thing. No, I had Sally on the phone.”
She grimaces. “Poor you. I still can’t believe I asked her if she wanted sugar in her tea yesterday and she cried for forty minutes.”
“Bridal nerves.”
“Well, she’s getting on mine.”
I set the cups down on her desk as she clears a stack of bridal magazines and mail out of the way. “God, it’s awful out there. Why don’t people just do their shopping online?”
“Maybe they want the real-life experience.”
“There’s an overdose of that out there. A woman just cried in Starbucks because they’d forgotten her chocolate sprinkles.”
She hovers over the cups, and I nod at one. “Yours is the hot chocolate and there’s a blueberry muffin in the bag for you.”
“Yummy. Thanks, Joe. I shouldn’t eat the muffin, but I’ll just do the cabbage soup diet for the week to compensate.”
I blink. “That sounds riveting and rather windy.”
She grimaces. “Lucky I’m not dating at the moment. It’s alright for you. You’re already pretty.”
“I am not.”