by Jo Lovett
Maybe he should take the opportunity now to raise the matter of their kiss? And how much he had loved it and how much that had freaked him out? No, she wasn’t looking receptive to that kind of talk. Better work up to it gradually.
‘Shall we walk?’ he suggested. Izzy nodded and they started to stroll. Terrible idea. He was never going to be able to hear what she said, given the umbrella situation. He lifted his one very high so that he could inch in closer to her. Although now he couldn’t see her face at all.
‘How are things with Dominic?’ He leaned down so that he’d be able to hear her response. Awkward question but he had to ask.
‘We’re getting divorced, formally.’
‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’ He hoped he sounded less insincere than he felt.
‘Thank you. It’s for the best.’
‘I hope you’re okay.’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Maybe he should change the subject.
‘So Emma and Rohan got together. As you said, wow.’
‘I know. Amazing. They’re actually perfect together. It’s lovely.’ This was not going well. Open, chatty, always friendly Izzy had been replaced by a woman who looked as though she really didn’t want to be here and was going to give blood-letting from a stone a run for its money.
‘And how are your activities with Emma going? Still painting and climbing?’
‘Yes, but not as often. But both still regular. We did two – well, one and a half – choir sessions and then we left. It wasn’t for us.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well…’ Yes. Sam sensed one of Izzy’s anecdotes coming. He’d missed her stories. He’d missed everything about her. ‘Everyone else was a lot more keen. The choirmaster was very strict and gave us homework. It was the Messiah, which is really hard. The rehearsals were in a freezing church hall but we weren’t allowed to wear our coats because coat-wearing might have hampered our singing. And they gave us orange squash and fig rolls in our exactly fifteen-minute break. There was literally nothing good about it unless you like a fig roll, which I do not.’
‘Wow. That’s making singles climbing sound much more attractive. So who decided that you weren’t going any more?’
‘Me. But Emma gave in really easily.’ She looked up at him and smiled. Sam loved when she got that cheeky look in her eye. In the whole of history, there could barely have been a time between two humans when one person had more wanted to tell the other that he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
Sure, little bit impractical, given that he lived in New York and she lived in London, but they could sort something out. From the moment he’d got on that plane, he’d known the course the rest of his life – their lives – should take. In fact, he’d probably known from the moment he’d seen her in the greasy spoon. It was amazing how right it felt to finally admit this to himself. Obviously there was now the slight glitch of broaching it with Izzy and convincing her that they could make it work. If she wanted to, of course. God, he hoped she wanted to.
He was smiling down at her very foolishly and his mind had gone blank. He really needed some witty banter at this point. No, no words. He just kept on smiling. He really wanted to put his arm round her. Kiss her. But obviously he couldn’t just do that. He needed to know that she’d like him to.
And then something fantastic happened. The wind kicked up, Izzy gasped as her coat skirts whipped round, and then her umbrella popped inside out and two of the spokes snapped. She looked at it.
‘Bugger,’ she said. ‘I need a bin.’ Excellent. Sam’s giant umbrella was finally going to come into its own.
‘Let me. Why don’t you come under here?’ Sam asked, taking her broken umbrella.
‘Honestly, I’m fine, thank you.’ She actually took a step backward. She obviously did not have the same ‘snuggle under the umbrella’ instinct that he did. She was absolutely soaked, the wind slapping her wet hair across her face and raindrops dripping off her nose. And she was shivering.
‘Take this one.’ He held it out.
‘No, I couldn’t.’
‘I insist. Please? I’m the one who dragged you out here in this weather. And you need to hold it for me so that I can bundle this one up and get it into that bin.’ He handed the umbrella to her and pointed at the bin further along the path.
‘Okay, thank you very much.’ She took it from him and he saw a small smile on her face before the top half of her disappeared under it.
Seriously. How dumb was he? If he’d just held it over her, it was so big that she’d probably have moved inside without thinking. But instead he’d invited her under, like he was inviting her on an under-umbrella date or something, she’d obviously said no, and now she was under the umbrella and he was outside it and she was so much shorter that he could pretty much only see her boots and there was no way they were going to be able to converse properly.
He squelched over to the bin to put her umbrella inside. It took an unexpectedly long time. The hole was small and the umbrella kept popping back up.
Izzy turned up next to him just as he’d finally got it in.
‘We’re going to have to share this umbrella,’ she said. ‘You’re soaked.’
‘You absolutely sure?’ Okay, what was wrong with him? He was making it sound like they were going to be sharing a bed or something.
‘Yep. You could fit a whole family in here. And also, it’s really, really heavy. It’s killing my arms.’ She smiled at him as he stepped under.
And finally, yes, they were indeed in a little cocoon away from the world. They were also soaking wet and had a very heavy umbrella to hold, on an angle, to accommodate their height difference. But he’d take all of that.
She’d stopped smiling at him. She seemed to be studying the ground. Sam looked down at the top of her head and the side of her cheek and decided that awkward small talk wasn’t going to get them anywhere. He cleared his throat. Didn’t help. Right. He should just get on with it. This was not a comfortable silence. It wasn’t a silence, either. It was very loud.
‘The raindrops are very noisy, aren’t they?’ he observed. Much like a young child with few social skills might do.
‘Yes, very,’ said Izzy. Yup, they were going to get nowhere with light conversation. He was just going to go for it right now.
‘I’ve really missed you. It’s great to see you.’ He paused but Izzy didn’t speak. Or move. Right. Plough on. He should really have planned what he was going to say. ‘Look. Part of the reason I reacted so badly that night in the pub was because of our kiss. It was…’ How to describe it? ‘It was an extraordinary moment for me. It made me realise how much I love you and I don’t think I was ready for that realisation.’
Izzy still didn’t move. Sam was holding the umbrella with both hands, looking down at her, and she was standing a few inches away from him, staring at the ground. They were together in their own little umbrella world, and yet entirely separate.
And then she looked up at him. Her beautiful grey eyes were misted with tears and had rings of evidently non-waterproof black make-up underneath and her mouth was a little twisted. The picture of misery. Sam’s heart twisted like her mouth, and he reached his left hand to touch her cheek. She didn’t move away. Instead she closed her eyes. A tear squeezed out of her right eye. Sam wiped it carefully away with his thumb.
She re-opened her eyes and parted her lips a little. And Sam lost any remaining ability he had to think and moved his hand round so that it was in her gorgeous, thick, tangled hair, now dark with water, and lowered his mouth to hers. And then they were kissing, and it was everything he’d remembered and more.
Sam’s umbrella arm was now around Izzy. The umbrella dropped to the ground, and still they kissed, Sam barely registering the torrent of rainwater pouring down on them.
They kissed for a very long time. Deep, urgent kissing, interspersed with softer, caressing, exploratory kisses. All of it was perfect. Life affirming. And love affirming.
; When they finally stopped, they were drenched. Sam had water inside his collar, soaking across his shoulders, down his back. His shoes had some time ago given up any pretence of holding up against the mini lake they were now standing in. The umbrella had rolled a little down the path and was upside down and already, despite its size, half-filled with water. The bottoms of his trousers were wet and muddy. Izzy was in much the same state.
And Sam felt good, very, very good. This was the moment. From nowhere, words came.
‘Izzy, beautiful, amazing, wonderful, kind, funny, perfect Izzy, will you marry me?’
Thirty-Four
Izzy
Izzy’s day had not started well.
Their post had arrived unusually early and it had consisted of two catalogues and a postcard for Ruby from her cousin Ella. The picture was one of those photo ones. It was of Izzy’s mother, Veronique, Max, Nat and Ella in front of the Eiffel Tower and it was captioned ‘65th birthday family trip to Paris’. Izzy had been seriously pissed off by it. Anyone normal would think she and Ruby were part of Izzy’s mother’s family. But apparently Izzy’s mother and Veronique did not. So much so that they’d presumably thought she’d appreciate the postcard.
Second best, always. Obviously Izzy was happy that they were happy. But she was not happy that they hadn’t included her and Ruby, again.
So then she’d checked DoctorDebz on Instagram and there were several Paris photos, with a lot of gushing comments about how fab it was to be surrounded by her whole, whole, family on her birthday.
Izzy reading all the posts had made them late for school.
Then she’d spent ages doing her hair and make-up and worn her favourite new coat and boots for meeting Sam, and been half-soaked by the bloody rain before she’d even arrived, a bit late, to meet him.
And now she felt like a drowned rat, although that was clearly not her biggest problem right now.
Most of their conversation had been unpleasantly stilted, monosyllabic on Izzy’s side, because she’d felt too overcome with emotion and too unsure about what she wanted from this meeting to speak. And that never happened to her, and it wasn’t enjoyable.
And then, somehow, probably because she’d stupidly looked up at him, huge mistake, they’d kissed, in the most amazing way, for an incredibly long time. She hadn’t felt cold or wet when the kiss had stopped, she’d felt in utter physical bliss.
And then Sam had asked her to marry him.
He had proposed to her.
And now she was standing in the pouring rain, holding onto the lapels of his coat, like some heroine in a Regency romance, completely sodden and freezing cold, and her lovely new coat and boots were probably ruined, which was nothing compared to the fact that it felt like her whole life was ruined.
Of course she wasn’t going to marry him. She let go of his lapels and looked up at his handsome, gorgeous, perfect, rugged, Hollywood heart-throb face. She couldn’t see amazingly well because her mascara had clogged together in blobs on her lashes because of the rain. She could see, though, his crooked smile that without fail did something to her insides. And that as she looked at him, the smile was diminishing a little. Probably because she was very much not smiling.
‘Sam,’ she said. She didn’t know what else to say. Had he meant it?
‘I would be truly honoured if you would become my wife,’ he said, taking her hands in his. His hands were lovely and big and warm. His gorgeous dark-brown eyes were very serious. Yes, he’d meant it. Izzy closed her eyes for a moment. If only, if only this had happened the day they first met, nearly fourteen years ago. If only he hadn’t been marrying someone else that day. Although, of course, Ruby, and the twins.
Could she marry him?
There were a lot of practical obstacles between them. The kids. They lived in different countries. She got up late, he got up early. She hated running, he loved it. She liked chocolate, he’d always go for cheese. Basically, she said tomato, he said tomayto. Although they could probably resolve all of that. In reality, it wasn’t practical issues that had caused her split with Dominic, it was that she hadn’t ever really fallen hard enough in love with him. And he with her, she thought. Whereas Sam was perfect for her.
Except for one huge thing. She loved Sam so indescribably much that she couldn’t be second best in his life. The pain would torture her. And if Lana hadn’t died, he’d still be happily with her and would never have given Izzy a second thought.
‘I can’t,’ she said. Sam’s head jerked back slightly, as though she’d slapped him. Yep, he’d been serious about his proposal. ‘Thank you so much for the compliment.’
‘Not at all,’ he said, really quietly.
‘I should go.’ There was obviously nothing else to say and Izzy needed to get home and wallow in misery, alone.
‘Of course. One question. Please.’ His voice sounded scratchy. Izzy nodded. ‘Do you love me?’
There was no point denying it. She’d started their relationship, if you could call it that, just under fourteen years ago, by humiliating herself when she asked him out on his wedding day. There was a symmetry to rounding things off by being fully honest.
‘Yes, I do. I really, really love you. And now I need to say goodbye.’
Sam put his hands out to her but Izzy didn’t take them. She stepped round him and started walking, towards the really bloody annoyingly cheerfully decorated Christmas tree at the end of the path.
‘Take the umbrella,’ he said.
‘Too heavy,’ she said without turning round, and carried on walking, fast.
When he called, ‘Izzy,’ she ignored him.
She cried all the way home but no-one she passed would have known because of all the rain pouring down her face.
Thirty-Five
Izzy
Izzy couldn’t bear the thought of going painting with Emma this evening. She had the headache from hell from letting herself cry instead of doing her admin, and she just wanted to pick Ruby up, come home, stick her in front of the TV, listen on autopilot to her reading homework, get her into bed as soon as possible, and cry again. It was still raining heavily, which was ideal, because no-one ever tried to chat mid-school-run when it was pissing it down like this. So she could easily avoid talking to any adults this afternoon.
Except, if she pulled a painting sickie, Emma would probably come round anyway to check on her, either because she believed that Izzy was ill and was worried, or because she didn’t believe she was ill and was worried. And, it wasn’t like Izzy wasn’t going to have to start living the rest of her life and try to be happy at some point. Maybe she should just go to painting. Maybe it would take her mind off things a bit.
* * *
‘What’s happened?’ Emma asked, literally the second she’d closed the car door on their way to painting. What was she, some kind of misery detective? ‘Your face is all puffy, you have no lipstick on, and you’re struggling to smile.’ Okay, not much detective work required.
‘Bad day,’ Izzy said, putting the car into reverse.
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘No. Thank you.’ Maybe she did. She put the car into drive and set off.
Neither of them said anything for a minute or two and then Izzy said, ‘I met Sam this morning.’ Turned out she did want to talk.
‘So closure didn’t go well?’
‘Nope.’ Because it had turned out that closure wasn’t easily attainable if you were head over heels in love with someone.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you.’ Izzy carried on driving for a bit. She stopped at a red light, looked at Emma and said, ‘He asked me to marry him.’
‘Oh my goodness. Oh, Izzy. But why are you miserable? What happened?’
‘Well, obviously I said no.’
‘But why?’ Emma waited, but Izzy couldn’t speak. ‘I could be wrong and I could also be overstepping the mark but from where I’m standing you jumped straight into a relationship and marriage with Dominic, who really wasn�
�t the love of your life, but you’re holding back on a relationship with Sam, who is the love of your life, for nearly fourteen years and counting? Why would you do that?’
‘Too high risk.’ Oh, for God’s sake. Izzy was crying again and her make-up was going to be ruined for the second time in one day. She’d already had to have a second shower and hair wash this morning after she’d got so soaked in the park.
‘Why don’t you pull in for a minute?’ Good idea. Izzy couldn’t really see to drive; she was crying so much. ‘Because?’ Emma asked again after Izzy had parked diagonally between a van and a skip opposite a pub.
‘Well. There are all the practical reasons. You know, like we live several thousand miles apart. And we’re very different. How does that even work in a marriage? It didn’t work for Dominic and me. But those are small things compared to the biggest thing, which is that I don’t think I can get over the fact that he’d still be married to his first wife if he hadn’t lost her. And I’ve spent my whole life being second best. You know my mother and Veronique barely even remember that I’m my mother’s daughter. And my father’s the same. I mean, I literally only hear from him about once a year. I can’t be second best in my marriage. I actually think I could have been second best in a marriage to someone like Dominic because I wouldn’t have cared so deeply. But I can’t be second best married to Sam, because it would kill me, because I love him too much.’
‘Oh, Izzy. Come here.’ Emma hauled Izzy into a hug.
‘Mascara all over your shoulder,’ Izzy said eventually.