“It was super high in sugar—”
“A tiny bit, is all I asked. A bite. Not like our Luke, is it, Emmie, to turn down something sweet?”
“No—”
“And I said to him, I said, when have you ever met someone who got heart disease from one—”
“I have a suit to fit into, Mum.” Lucas sits forward then, cocks his head, smiles at his mum, who stops talking and looks at him. Her eyes widen to full circles.
“Did you…” Her face breaks into a smile, then she looks at me. “He’s told you?” I stare at her, but Lucas nods proudly beside me. Even Jean looks up from his plate, eyes unblinking.
“Oh, Emmie!” Amanda whoops, a hand flying across the table to land on mine, her mouth stretching into a watery smile. “Can you believe it? Can you actually believe it? Married! Oh, tell me, what did you say?”
Ah. They thought I didn’t know yet. I swallow, a chunk of pastry disintegrating in my mouth. I look up at them, my gullible, on-the-edge-of-their-seats audience, and force a smile. “I couldn’t believe it,” I tell them. “I really couldn’t believe it.”
“I didn’t know you knew! I’ve been dying for him to tell you. Haven’t I, Jean?” Amanda beams, looking around the table to her calmly nodding husband, then to Lucas, then to me. She’s wide and glittery-eyed, squirming in her seat like an impatient toddler.
“I told her last night.” Lucas smiles at me, his hand reaching out to touch my arm. “She was so shocked, she went and had a migraine. Didn’t you, Em?”
Even Jean laughs at that, and says in his deep, broken English, “She is not the only one. My migraine of shock has only just dispersed.”
Amanda is not listening, though; she’s gazing at Lucas, freckly, gold-ringed hand at her chest, the nails painted pink. “Oh, I’m so glad you told her,” she sighs dreamily, then she looks at me. “I hate having secrets, especially from family. You can help us plan now, Emmie. Talk him out of wearing those horrible tight trousers all the youngsters are wearing these days—”
“Actually,” says Lucas, setting down his coffee cup, elbow on the table. “There’s one more secret.”
Then he looks at me and smiles. And then I realize, they don’t know. They don’t know what he asked me. “Last night,” says Lucas, “I asked Emmie…”
Amanda gasps, puts down the jar of lemon curd she had just picked up. It thumps on the tablecloth.
Lucas looks at me, nods his head encouragingly. I clear my throat, my smile unwavering.
“Luke asked me to be his best woman,” I say.
Amanda brings her hands to her mouth. “Oh!” she squeals. “Oh! Oh, Jean!”
Jean smiles, closed mouth, ever sensible, ever rock-steady. “And?” he says. “And did you say yes?”
Lucas laughs at that, as if the thought of me saying anything else is hilarious.
“Of course,” I say, and Amanda yelps again, standing up and gesturing for me to stand too, so she can wrap her arms around me, the chiffon of her blouse swooping over the plate of muffins on the table. “Oh, my darling,” she says into my ear, squeezing me close, all warmth and soft skin and floral perfume. “Nobody deserves the job more than you. He loves you,” she says. “He loves you so much. We all do.” And I don’t let her go. I hold on to her, this woman, the closest thing I’ve had in the last few years to a mother, as if she’s the only thing keeping me upright. My nostrils tingle, a prologue to the tears that are desperate to come now, but I sniff, blink them away, plaster back on that smile.
“Oh, it’s enough to make you weep, isn’t it?” chuckles Amanda as we pull away. She sits back down, draping the napkin across her lap. She busies herself with her breakfast, and Lucas reaches for a bowl of berries, still smiling over at his mum. Jean, opposite, sips his coffee silently, but his eyes are on me, serious and watchful. I’m glad when he looks away. It’s just in time to miss my smile slip.
“What?”
“He’s getting married. Lucas is getting married.”
Rosie stares at me, deep-red hair wild, coffee cup in hand. “What? To who?” And before I can reply, her glossy red mouth breaks into a huge grin. “Oh my shit, it’s you, isn’t it? Oh my God, it’s—”
“It’s not me.”
“Oh.”
“It’s Marie,” I tell her. Rosie looks at me blankly. “Ex-girlfriend Marie.”
“Avocado Marie?” Rosie’s mouth is open, her top lip in a confused snarl. “As in organic-deli-owner Marie? I thought she dumped him after she thought he was texting that girl. The Aussie.”
“Ivy.” I nod. “And Lucas didn’t text her. She texted him. But yeah. That Marie. They patched stuff up a couple of months ago, apparently. I didn’t even know. He said it was all really quick.”
“And what, then they got engaged immediately?” says Rosie, face crumpling. “Who does that?”
I shrug. “Happy people?” I offer. “In love people.”
Rosie’s brow furrows under her blunt, red fringe and she shakes her head. “So why the desperate need to talk to you? To summon you—”
“Rosie, he didn’t summon me; I was already going—”
“But he made it a big thing, didn’t he? That he had to ask you something and it had to be face-to-face. Then there’s the thing he said on New Year’s…”
I was waiting for this—braced for it. And as much as I wish I hadn’t told her about Lucas’s text, telling me he had something to ask me, or about that drunken comment he made about us being meant to be together, it’s not like not telling Rosie was even an option. I can’t keep anything from her. She sees right through me; through anyone.
“I can always sniff out the little shits before I’ve even handed over their room keys,” she’d told me on my first day here, at the Clarice, two years ago. “The ones cheating on their wives, the ones filming porn in the rooms, the ones who’re so leaving with a cleaning bill because they eat shellfish from that dodgy bloke on the pier and can’t make it to the loo in time. Yup. Can’t hide jack from me.”
“So, when you say engaged,” Rosie carries on now, “do you mean he and Avocado Marie just talked about it? Because anyone can make big, bold promises. I dated that bloke from Slough, you remember, the one with the eyebrows, and he promised me he’d take me to Montenegro, to Bali, to—”
“He proposed.”
“What, actually?”
“Actually.”
“Hm.” Rosie pulls her mouth into a grimace, as if she’s considering the validity of what I’ve just said; as if at any moment she’s going to stroke her chin and say “interesting.” A stark comparison to the Rosie of last week, who was squealing, rosy-cheeked, and dancing about so much that she sent two confit duck legs flying off the kitchen pass and skittering to the floor out of excitement. And that’s why I’d told her, I suppose. I was excited, and I knew she would feel the same. Fox was excited, too, in his own weird, measured Fox way, listening as he always does, quietly in the background, before appearing and delivering the sort of calm, timely, fatherly advice or opinion you’d expect from someone double his age. “Don’t overthink it,” he’d said this time. “Yield and breathe and hold no expectations.” And Rosie had tutted and said, “I’ve got expectations, all right. He’s gonna be bomb in the sack, that’s what I expect. All those years of unrequited love, all that repressed sexual energy…”