‘But you wised up eventually.’
‘Yeah.’ I let out a laugh. Not a pleasant one. ‘Him proposing to my sister was a pretty good hint.’
‘Shut the front door!’ Sarah leant forwards. ‘What happened?’
I took a deep breath and told her.
A team from the office had spent two months working in Paris, on a big case. For reasons I now knew to be Zara’s evil schemes, I wasn’t part of the team, but Richard fabricated excuses for me to fly over a couple of times, and we were in contact most days about work. I’d never told Zara about my relationship, but we shared an apartment, so she must have at least suspected. When she decided it was time to snag herself a man, Richard was an obvious choice. I didn’t know what happened in Paris. But then a ring box arrived on the day of the office Christmas party, and the gossip quickly spread. Richard was going to propose.
‘And you thought… Flip, Jenny. That issocrap.’ Sarah took hold of my arm. ‘Hang on a minute, I’ll just check on Ed before you tell me the rest.’
She topped up our glasses on the way back, the buzz of wine after several weeks’ abstinence probably contributing to my ability to continue the story.
‘It all happened as you’d expect. Me, sweating in my best dress, trying to catch his eye across the room. Champagne, a speech about how much this person meant to him, how he admired their ambition and the success they’d achieved against the odds. And, to clarify – the only odd my sister ever had to deal with was me. I stood there, a total fool, clutching my glass and grinning away, subconsciously inching closer to the front ready for my big moment. And when it finally came, and he got down on one knee…’
‘Wait.’ Sarah flapped her hands in disgust. ‘He proposed at theoffice party?’
‘It’s hard to explain, but Dougal and Duff is more than a workplace. It’s their whole lives. Like something out of a John Grisham novel.’
‘Remind me never to read one of those. I’m more of a Hillary West fan.’
‘Iloveher books. This wasnothinglike that.’ I pulled a tissue from the flowery box on the coffee table and blew my nose. ‘So, anyway. At first, I thought he’d got flustered, when he knelt down facing the opposite way. I even waved to get his attention. Which unfortunately meant I got a load of other people’s attention instead. He had eyes for one person only.’
‘You poor thing,’ Sarah whispered. ‘You must have been properly gutted.’
‘Weirdly, no. Not at the time.’ I shrugged. ‘As I realised what was happening, I saw Zara flick her eyes over to me, with this look, and something inside me, like, burst, you know?’
She nodded.
‘Twenty-eight years of jealousy and insecurity. That’s another story, really, but pressure to keep up with Zara led to a nervous breakdown when I was nineteen. And then I’d had to accept her handout job and spare room after screwing up my future. I’d lived in her shadow my whole life. Felt grateful when she passed on her barely worn clothes, or the rare times she let me sit in on her dinner parties. Worked my butt off in that firm because I owed it to her. Tidied, ran errands, apologised, bowed and scraped. And then she took the one thing I’d managed to earn myself. And, yes, I do know how wrong it sounds that I thought I’d earned Richard’s attention. So, basically, I flipped. Violence ensued, hair got yanked out, food tables toppled –andI broke her new plastic nose. The police were called…’
‘Wow. You got arrested?’
‘She decided not to press charges – for the firm’s sake, not mine.’
‘But you lost your job.’
‘Yep. And for obvious reasons, I moved out.’
‘It sounds like you’re better off here.’ Sarah gave my hand a squeeze. ‘I know me and Ed are better off having you here.’
‘Sure you don’t mind a violent criminal who beat up her sister working in your café?’
‘Are you kidding?’ She snorted. ‘You sound like a handy woman to have around.’
I wobbled back home at around half-ten, the bike’s lamp casting a weak silver glow on the path in front of me. The woods around were so dark that the black seemed to have texture – like treacle. I mumbled the rap we’d composed earlier about all the reasons we were better off single, but it made a poor job of drowning out the snaps and creaks of the forest, the rustles and hoots. I felt properly spooked by the time I reached home, and grateful for the soft yellow light peeking from the edge of Mack’s blind. I tramped upstairs, wondering whether, if I did manage to sleep in my lovely new bed, my dreams would be about the man who lived next door, and whether they would be dreams, or nightmares.
8
Sunday, after what had been quite possibly the best sleep of my life, my weary bones enjoying the mattress way too much to bother about where it came from, I asked Ellen if I could borrow her kitchen. She agreed, offering to provide baking ingredients if I borrowed some kids at the same time. This worked out perfectly, as my cash had dwindled to a miserably tiny amount, and I feared I might be surviving on mega-cobs and soup until my first pay day as it was.
That afternoon, ready as I’d ever be, I lined up my volunteers, wishing that sensible Dawson hadn’t excused himself to do homework.
‘Right, team. We have two important missions today. One big cake, not for you, and lots of little cakes, which you can keep.’
‘How many little cakes?’ Billy asked, ‘A hundred?’
‘A thousand?’ Hamish asked, jumping up and down.
