He resisted rolling his eyes at the mention of her brand. ‘How many followers are we talking now?’
She drew herself up proudly. ‘Fifteen thousand last count. And new ones every day.’
He was secretly impressed. ‘How the hell …?’
‘Other people recommend your page … stuff like that. People get to know what you’re about.’
‘So you’re all in on it?’
‘I suppose. It’s a very supportive community.’
‘Is it, though?’
‘Stop saying that.’ She imitated him, her head cocked just like his. ‘“Is it, though?” You cynic.’
He loosened his tie and undid his top button. ‘So what’s in all of these?’
‘Not sure yet.’ She sat down on the floor, cross-legged. He hadn’t noticed she had a pair of scissors. ‘Wanna open them with me?’
He couldn’t resist her. She made things fun, and it felt good. He kicked off his shoes, and sat beside her on the floor. ‘It’s like Christmas. Or a wedding list.’
‘Ah, we didn’t register for our wedding.’ She made a mock-angry face. ‘Call this making up for that.’
‘We didn’t need to register for our wedding. We already had most stuff. We weren’t kids. And, besides, we weren’t American.’
‘You guys have wedding registers.’
‘I know. God knows I know. I must have bought a hundred bloody toasters in my time for couples I barely even know.’
Heather giggled. ‘So you’re the guy who buys the toasters? I always wondered who did.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, a toaster doesn’t exactly scream imagination and romance, now does it?’
He poked her in the stomach. ‘I’m sorry. Should I have bought the satin sheets and furry handcuffs?’
She grabbed his hand, laughing now. ‘Whose weddings were you going to?’
‘Besides, toasters can be very romantic. If they’re used to make breakfast in bed …’
‘I see what you did there.’ She slid one blade of the scissors along a strip of tape, and pulled back the cardboard edges.
‘Exactly – imaginative and romantic. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.’
‘And how many times, since our wedding, when no one bought us a toaster because we didn’t register –’
‘Because I already had a four-slice stainless-steel Dualit toaster,’ he interrupted.
‘– since our wedding, have you made me breakfast in bed, mister?’ She’d put the scissors down now, and scooted across the floor the short distance between them. He put his arm around her and pulled her to him.
‘Ah, trick question. You don’t like crumbs in the sheets.’
‘You got me. Can’t stand them.’
He tipped her face upwards and kissed her, the boxes forgotten.
Theirs had been a small wedding. Laura and Alex’s had been a Hugh Grant-worthy affair – village church, marquee in the garden, Mum in a state of high excitement for nine months, and a vast hat for nine minutes, after which she’d promptly removed it because she said she couldn’t properly kiss people, and there were a lot of people who needed kissing. Dad choked up all day, terrified about giving his speech. Nick and Carrie had done a similar thing in Cumbria, with their own bohemian spin on it. Carrie had worn Converse All Stars under her cobwebby lace dress and danced all night in a circle of friends. Scott had been an usher at both, in morning dress for Laura, and a brown suit with drainpipe trousers that matched the other attendants’ at Nick’s, and he’d been equally uncomfortable in both, not quite at home in his outfits or in the saccharine soft focus of the days.
He and Heather had married at Chelsea Register Office at midday on a Tuesday. Just the two of them, Nick and Carrie, heavily pregnant with Arthur, Laura and Alex, Ethan, Charlie, Meredith and Hayley. Nick and Laura had acted as witnesses, and Carrie had collected petals to shower them with on the steps. Heather had worn a white trouser suit, declaring herself to be channelling Bianca Jagger, and he’d let himself be talked into a suit in a blue far nearer to cobalt than navy. The wedding had cost about thirty quid, the whole thing, and it took about ten minutes.
It got considerably more expensive afterwards, when they went to Claridges in a series of limos for a five-course lunch with a wine flight. He’d made a short but sincere speech, which he’d found surprisingly easy to write, in which he said he’d never entirely understood love until he’d met Heather, who held his hand, her eyes bright with tears throughout. And then they’d stayed the night in a vast art-deco suite, with the girls down the hallway in a slightly less vast twin room, ordering room service and watching movies. Laura had offered to take them with her but Heather had wanted to keep them near, and he hadn’t minded. He understood already how it worked. The girls came first. They always would.
It had been a lovely day.
It had threatened, briefly, not to be. The phone call giving the family two weeks’ notice of the wedding was literally the first any of them had heard about Heather. Until he’d had something concrete to offer, he hadn’t known how to tell them, which he knew was pathetic, but also understood was just how he was. He’d never really told them stuff. Less so, even, since Mum had died. She had had a way of getting him to spill beans – a knack that his dad didn’t have or seem to want to learn. Apparently it was weird. That was what Laura had said to him, anyway. She seemed excessively irritated by it – he remembered not understanding that at all. Nick was rueful, and Charlie made no attempt to hide his naked hurt. Scott had meant it to be a nice thing, having them all there, and it had seemed anything but. He wondered if they should have eloped, said their vows on a Maldivian beach instead.
They’d rallied, of course. Carrie’s warmth had permeated the day, as it always did. She was an unstoppably energetic, radiating force of goodness, who brooked no nonsense, and seemed incapable of negativity. Nick was a lucky man. At least, he had been. Scott had always seen what Nick saw in Carrie. Alex he got less. There had always been something almost sneering about him, even as a young, unproven man with a shaving rash and a florid complexion. And he was a vicious drunk, always had been, and that was a red flag to Scott. There were too many of those guys in the City. Guys whose human suit slipped off when they were in drink and revealed a reptilian underneath. He understood Laura’s extreme reaction more, now he knew she and Alex had been having problems. And Heather had explained to him how that would have impacted on how she behaved and how she felt about their getting married.
Perhaps he’d suspected their questions about Heather. Maybe that was why he’d presented her as a fait accompli, all dressed up and ready to marry. Perhaps that, too, was just how he was.
It wasn’t fair on Heather. They barely knew her. Since the wedding, they’d only been together as a family once, at Carrie’s funeral – that most dreadful, unspeakably sad of days – so it hardly counted. None of them could speak properly: that day had been a series of murmurs and choked sobs.
Now, suddenly, among the freebies, he was worried about her. ‘Are you nervous about the holiday?’
She had returned to the packaging, but she paused, scissors in mid-air, her face confused. ‘Should I be?’