‘What what?’
‘Why do you keep looking at me?’
He could lie, but what would be the point when she could so clearly read him like a book?
‘Just reflecting on how strange this is. How we got here.’
‘Bad life choices, I suppose,’ she said with a wry grin. ‘And Mormor,’ she added, with a glance at the ring on her finger.
‘Bad life choices and my Swedish grandmother. I wonder how many other people out there can so accurately pinpoint the source of all their problems.’
‘I think mine could be summed up as “daddy issues”,’ Lara said. ‘I hate being a cliché.’
Jannes nodded. It was hard not to agree with that. ‘We should probably have a lot of therapy.’
‘Probably,’ she said, but the humour had gone from her voice.
‘Hey.’ Jannes reached over, his hand just brushing over hers where it rested on the gear stick before she pulled it away. ‘I’m sorry. Too far?’
‘No, it’s fine. I just think you’re probably right.’
‘I am?’
She nodded, her lip caught between her teeth, her eyes fixed ahead. ‘I don’t know, but I’m pretty angry, and some of the things you said maybe make me wonder if I’m letting that old cheating, lying bastard have more influence over my decisions than he deserves.’
‘Decisions like agreeing to this?’ He gestured between them and noted her knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
‘Possibly.’
‘Well, you know I support you, don’t you? I always will.’
Lara glanced over at him and gave him a smile he couldn’t quite interpret. ‘I know. Maybe we should go together. Is fake couple therapy a thing?’
‘I think it’s best to keep to one set of daddy issues per session.’
She gave a wicked smile that for some reason set him on edge. ‘So we are going to talk about how being sent to boarding school at seven is at the root of your commitment issues.’
He shook his head. ‘Nope, we definitely aren’t going to talk about that.’ He threw her a sharp look. ‘What could have given you that idea?’
‘So it’s just me who has to do the soul-searching? God forbid we both work through our issues so we can form healthy adult relationships.’
‘Hey, maybe we should save this conversation for when we’ve had a screaming row with my grandmother,’ Jannes said, letting his head fall back against the headrest.
‘She scares you.’
‘She doesn’t scare me; she’s just...immovable. It’s exhausting.’
‘Exhausting and immovable. I can’t imagine how difficult that must be for you,’ she said pointedly.
He rolled his eyes at the sarcasm in her voice, but had to concede that she had a point. He couldn’t support her decision to get therapy without thinking that he probably needed a healthy dose of it himself. It wasn’t right that he’d torched every relationship that he had been in. It was one thing not to want a romantic relationship. It was another to want one as desperately as he wanted Lara, and be certain that he couldn’t even try without hurting her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LARA REACHED ACROSS and squeezed his hand as they climbed the steps to Mormor’s apartment building. ‘Remember,’ she said, ‘she can’t actually force us to get married.’
Jannes nodded, and she recognised the tensing of the muscles in his game face. ‘We go in there, explain that she’s out of line. She’s gone too far and she has to stop interfering in our lives like this.’
‘Right. And then we run away.’
He laughed. A little weakly. ‘I wouldn’t blame you. This thing has got entirely too weird. You had no idea what you were signing up for.’
Lara shook her head. ‘I knew I was signing up for you. Mormor’s a part of that. Now.’ She squeezed his hand again before letting it drop. ‘Let’s do this.’
But, before they had a chance to knock, the door flew open in front of them.
‘Ah, there you are, älskling. I wondered when you would get here.’ She pulled Jannes in by the elbow and planted a kiss on his cheek.
‘We didn’t tell you we were coming.’
‘I announced your engagement in The Times without telling you. Of course you were coming.’
Jannes rolled his eyes. ‘So you’re not even going to deny it?’
She looked amazed. ‘Why would I deny it? It was a stroke of brilliance. I’m rather proud of it.’
‘It was manipulative and inappropriate—’ Jannes started.
‘And yet Lara seems to be wearing an engagement ring.’ Mormor interrupted him with a pointed look. ‘So it can’t have been that terrible an idea.’
Lara could see a muscle twitching in Jannes’s jaw as he struggled to keep calm. ‘We found out in a business meeting. You didn’t give us a choice but to play along.’
‘Oh, we always have a choice, älskling,’ Mormor said, walking down the hallway to the kitchen and speaking to them over her shoulder as she went. ‘And you two chose to be engaged. So, congratulations. I’m sure that you’re going to be very happy.’
Jannes leaned in the doorway of the kitchen while Mormor bustled around, making them all a drink. Lara looked from grandmother to grandson, amused by the clash of wills, or she would have been amused if she had been an innocent bystander rather than caught up in Mormor’s little scheme. ‘Mormor, you do know that the ring isn’t legally binding, yes? We’re going to break this off when the timing is right.’
She threw her hands in the air, and Jannes grabbed for the milk jug she was about to fill. ‘Yes, yes, well, you can explain all of that to the vicar if you want.’
‘Excuse me, the vicar? What vicar?’ Jannes slammed the jug down so hard on the worktop that Lara feared for its safety, but even with the roiling anxiety of the fake engagement it was impossible not to be charmed by the clearly well-rehearsed ballet of Mormor trying to make tea but getting distracted, and Jannes trying to minimise damage but only getting in the way.
‘The vicar from the Swedish church, of course,’ Mormor said, as if Jannes was the idiot for not knowing which vicar she was talking about. ‘Did you know you can’t get married in church until you’ve had the banns read three times? And I told the vicar to start this Sunday, but she absolutely insisted that she had to meet you first. I don’t see why she couldn’t just take my word for it, as I am your grandmother after all, and why she thinks that she would know better than—’
Jannes came to an absolute standstill. ‘Let me get this right,’ he said very slowly, choosing his words with care. ‘You spoke to the vicar and you tried to have our banns read? Without asking us?’
‘Yes, well, if you’re going to have the wedding there then you have to book it well in advance.’ Mormor carried on setting cups and saucers on a tray, either not noticing or not caring about the storm cloud expression on Jannes’s face. ‘There’s only one Swedish church in the whole of London, you know that. So unless you want this to be one of those depressingly long engagements—’
‘But we’re not getting married!’
Mormor finally stopped what she was doing, turned to look at him with narrowed eyes. She fixed Jannes with a look that could make flowers wilt. ‘Then why are you engaged?’
Jannes’s jaw clenched so hard that Lara worried that he might crack a tooth. She should probably intervene, but there wasn’t anything she could say that Jannes hadn’t already, and really it was quite amusing, seeing Jannes pushed so close to the breaking point.
‘Mormor. We are not engaged,’ Jannes ground out. ‘We are simply playing along because you’ve given us no choice. You can cancel the appointment with the vicar—’
‘No, well, I can’t do that.’
Jannes sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I don’t think I even have the strength to ask why not.’
‘Well, because I’ve told all of my friends at church that you’re getting married there. I’d simply be too mortified.’
Which meant that word had probably spread across half the Swedish population of London. Which also meant that trying to deny it would probably spread just as fast, and hit the tabloids before the week was out.
‘Mormor, please.’
For the first time, the older woman’s expression softened, and she reached to cover his hand with hers.
‘Look, älskling, I’ve spent a long time watching you be unhappy without saying anything. And now I see how you two are together—’ she glanced across at Lara, who felt herself blush ‘—and I just think, give it a go! I can see how fond you both are of one another. And I know you like to pretend that there are reasons why you can’t do this. I’m never going to forgive your parents for the way they treated you. I thought I’d clear the way for you. Show you that it can be that simple if you just decide it’s what you both want.’
‘But it’s not,’ Lara said gently, stepping into the kitchen for the first time, and coming to stand beside Jannes. ‘We’ve talked about it, because you’re right. We are very fond of each other. But not about the rest of it. I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but we don’t want this. We’re friends, and that’s all it’s ever going to be.’
Mormor compressed her mouth into a thin line, but didn’t argue. ‘You’ll see I’m right,’ she said eventually. ‘The appointment with the vicar isn’t for a month. I’m not cancelling it.’
Jannes shook his head. ‘We won’t be needing it.’
‘We’ll see, won’t we?’
‘I should be going,’ Lara said, looking between them, her heart aching slightly at the way Mormor looked at Jannes, as if he were still a little boy, crying after his parents had left him alone at school.
‘I’ll let you say goodbye,’ Mormor said with a meaningful look before sweeping out of the kitchen.
‘So that went...’
‘Pretty much as expected,’ Jannes finished. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll speak to the vicar. Tell her that Mormor was jumping the gun and we want to wait a bit longer.’
Lara nodded. Then couldn’t resist. ‘Interesting that Mormor brought up your parents, after what we were talking about in the car.’
‘Lara, can we not?’ Jannes snapped, and she took a step back, surprised by his tone. ‘I’m sorry. But just...not now, okay?’
She wrapped her arms around herself and moved towards the front door.
‘Okay, I guess I’ll see you next time you’re in London then,’ she said. ‘It’s the twins’ christening in two weeks. Are you still...?’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Fine. Great. So I’ll see you then.’
She slipped through the front door and leaned against the wall in the corridor, the cool paint soothing against her flushed cheeks. She hadn’t imagined that things could fall apart so quickly. She’d never felt closer to another human being than she had to Jannes last night. And now—now she was running away from him because she didn’t know how to talk to him any more.
* * *
Back in her apartment later that day, she pulled out her planner and looked at her schedule for the week. She was going to have to move things around now that she had an engagement to announce out of nowhere. There were a couple of posts she’d worked on with partner brands that she couldn’t move. A post later in the week she’d already bumped twice. If she didn’t run it soon she’d end up having to scrap it completely. Which meant that the only good slot for the picture of her engagement ring was...tonight.
She sighed and rested her head on her hand as she scribbled notes to herself. She really wasn’t in the mood to come up with a caption that would make sense of her and Jannes’s whirlwind romance and sudden engagement. Not least because her online following was based on her authenticity and honesty. When she’d joined Instagram, her shots of London’s quiet backstreets, her vintage fashion finds and adventures in upcycling to furnish her flat had only been to entertain her friends.
With her friend Jess as her partner in crime, she’d upped her photography game and spilled her guts in her captions, constitutionally unable to stop herself oversharing. But for some reason it had struck a chord and her followers had gone from the hundreds to the thousands to the hundreds of thousands. Until she’d had enough clout that she’d been able to partner with brands that she loved and turned her hobby into a business.
The thought of lying to her followers turned her stomach. So she started writing, trying to focus on hers and Jannes’s friendship and put her feelings for him into words in a way that was truthful.
He was a dear friend. She cared for him deeply. Their relationship had changed recently, though not necessarily in the way that people might assume. These were all things that she could say truthfully. As for the ‘engagement’...well, she didn’t have to say anything, did she. She could just post the picture of the ring and let people make their own conclusions.
It wasn’t honest, but it wasn’t an outright lie either. And she supposed that was the best that she could hope for. She tagged Jannes in the photo—her stomach lurching as she caught sight of his profile picture, that same shot of him they had used at the awards ceremony, a magazine shoot for a menswear brand, with Jannes hanging half off a yacht in a shirt that had once been white but had been rendered transparent by virtue of being dripping wet. She really shouldn’t be driven to biting her lip over someone who she was meant to think of as just a friend. She’d been suppressing these thoughts and these feelings for Jannes since the day that she had met him—you’d think that she’d be better at it by now. But her trip to Harbourside, the fireworks, had changed all that, and she wasn’t sure how they were meant to get back to normal. Not while they were meant to be engaged.
She hit post, and almost instantly the comments started flooding in, full of love hearts and bride emojis and the occasional aubergine.
She shut down her laptop—normally she interacted as much as she could in the comments, but she couldn’t for this post. Even accepting the congratulations would make her stomach twist with guilt. Would make her melancholy for what she couldn’t have.
She had never thought that she could lie about something so important. She had spent half her life wondering how that bastard of a father had come home to her and her mother every night—or every night he wasn’t with his other family—and now she had some insight. All it needed was high enough emotional stakes, and intense enough feelings, and you found yourself making choices that you couldn’t have imagined making just a few weeks before. Was this how it had been for her dad? One choice leading to another to another, until the lies got away from you and you had no choice but to stick to your story or see your life fall apart.
The big difference, of course, was that no one else’s feelings were at stake. Everyone who was emotionally invested knew the truth. But Lara’s online community was just that—a community. Full of people who she had never met in person but nonetheless considered to be friends. Was she hurting them, by bending the truth about her and Jannes’s relationship? Or was it their business and nobody else’s what was going on behind closed doors? She didn’t even know that she understood what was going on. Okay, they had no intention of getting married, that much was clear. But what about the kisses that they’d shared? The night that she’d spent wishing that she was in Jannes’s bed instead of her own? That wasn’t exactly platonic, was it?
What they were doing in public was acting out what would have been happening in private if it weren’t for the scars they were both carrying that made a romance between them impossible. It was an alternate version of her future playing out before her, and her and Jannes were the only ones who knew that she wouldn’t be able to keep it.
Her phone rang, and she hesitated when she saw Jannes’s name on the screen. She really didn’t want to speak to him just now, when h
er feelings were so jumbled from having written that caption, and then looked at that picture on his profile. But the longer they went without speaking, the more awkward it was going to get. She hit answer and tried for an easy breezy, ‘Hey.’
‘Hey. My notifications just blew up. Do I take it we’re official?’
‘As of about five minutes ago. Everything okay at Mormor’s?’
He sighed. ‘She’s singing. Absolutely delighted with herself as far as I can see. Not a smidge of remorse.’
‘She’s a monster.’
Jannes laughed out loud. ‘That might be a little harsh considering all she wants is for us to be happy.’
‘Hmm. Are you going back to Harbourside?’ she asked, telling herself it was just friendly chitchat rather than her wanting to know how much longer he was going to be in town.
‘My agent organised a couple of meetings for me here tomorrow now that Spencer is on board. Then back to Harbourside and a training camp in Norway. I don’t know how contactable I’ll be...’ His voice trailed off and she realised that this was a ‘couple’ sort of conversation. Checking in and warning of radio silence. Was this where they were with one another now? Explaining your whereabouts like you would with a real-life fiancé?
She felt a familiar twinge of discomfort at this. That they were becoming more to each other than just a lie. This was where she usually started a subtle freak-out. Because when the person she was with started telling her where they were going to be, making plans to see her, she had to decide whether she was going to believe them. Or whether they were just telling her what she needed to hear, covering their tracks so that they could do what they wanted without getting caught. This was the part where trust came in. When it started to matter to her whether the other person was telling the truth. And, invariably, it was where she threw up her walls, ensuring that no one would be able to hurt her.
She had to remind herself that it didn’t matter whether Jannes was telling the truth. That their relationship was a pretence. That even if he did lie to her, she wouldn’t get hurt because he didn’t owe her the truth. He didn’t owe her anything. That was what made this safe—a relationship that she knew was based on a lie could never hurt her. That was what made this different.
From Best Friend to Fiancée Page 11