The Plus-One Agreement

by Charlotte Phillips

  ‘Spoilsport,’ he called after her, kick-starting her blush all over again.

  * * *

  As they walked out through wide-open double doors onto a stone-flagged terrace she was more aware than ever of his hand pressed softly in the hollow of her back. It seemed to generate sparks of heat that climbed tantalisingly up her spine. Her mind insisted on replaying his kiss on a loop, making her feel completely flustered.

  Fortunately she had the reality check of Adam’s flamboyant styling to smack her between the eyes. The terrace was softly lit by hurricane lamps on tables and pin-lights strung along the stone balustrade. A band were set up to one side, playing jaunty music to which none of the guests were dancing because they were all crowded around the centrepiece in the middle of the terrace.

  For a moment she had to lean back and narrow her eyes while her brain processed exactly what it was.

  Adam and Ernie had apparently commissioned a life-size ice sculpture of themselves. It gleamed in the floor-level spotlighting. It depicted Adam with one finger pressed against his temple in a thoughtful pose while Ernie looked on.

  Her parents were standing to one side, and her mother’s face was a stunned picture. On the bright side, at least it appeared to have rendered her speechless. As soon as she saw Emma and Dan she crossed to them, the beads on her purple evening dress shimmering as she walked. She wouldn’t have looked out of place in a ballroom dance show.

  The real Adam and Ernie joined them, wearing complementary head-to-toe designer suits, with a group of Ernie’s relatives flanking them.

  ‘Aren’t they fabulous?’ Adam was gushing, clasping his hands together in delight. ‘And the best thing about having yourself carved is that you can tweak the way you look. So I made myself taller and we had a bit shaved off Ernie’s nose.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got to be honest, I’m not that impressed,’ her mother sniffed, deploying her usual tactic: if it was outside her comfort zone then she was suspicious of it. She leaned backwards appraisingly. ‘They’ve made your ears stick out,’ she remarked to Adam. ‘How much did you pay for them?’

  ‘Mum, you can’t ask things like that,’ Emma said, smiling nervously at the group.

  Her mother drew herself up to her full height and pursed her lips. ‘Of course I can. Adam’s my son. We’re parents of the groom. I’m entitled to my opinion.’

  ‘They were a gift,’ Adam said, pink-cheeked. ‘From Ernie’s aunt. She’s a sculptress. She spent hours working on them. In a freezer.’

  There was an ensuing pin-drop silence, during which Emma’s father took a canapé from a passing waiter and attempted to lever it into his mouth.

  ‘No more of those tartlets, Donald,’ her mother said, leaning in as if with a sixth sense. She expertly took the canapé out of his hand and his teeth closed over thin air. ‘Cholesterol!’ she snapped.

  Ernie dragged a blushing Adam away to circulate, and Emma did her best to stand in as sounding board for her mother’s stream-of-consciousness opinions on every minuscule aspect of the proceedings. She was vaguely and gratefully aware of Dan’s calming presence at her side.

  How would she manage at things like this in future, without him watching her back? The thought of losing that comfort gave her a needling sense of dread.

  A couple of hours later she was worn out with smiling and small talk and her mother seemed to have reconnected with a kindred spirit in the shape of Emma’s spinster aunt Mabel, last seen at a childhood Christmas before moving up north. Emma watched them across the terrace, their arms folded in matching poses, matching critical expressions on their faces. Although her voice was drowned out by the music, she saw her mother’s lips form the word grandchildren as the pair of them looked her way.

  She turned to see her father surreptitiously sliding food from the buffet table onto an already heaped plate while her mother was preoccupied.

  ‘Your mother’s got me on a diet,’ he said when he saw her disbelieving stare.

  ‘Doesn’t sound like much fun,’ Dan said.

  He shrugged.

  ‘It’s not so bad. I have a second lunch down at the golf club most days. They do a fantastic pie and crinkle-cut chips. What she doesn’t know, and all that.’

  Oh, for Pete’s sake, she’d had just about enough of this.

  ‘I need a walk,’ she said, heading for the steps down from the terrace and onto the lawns.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Dan followed her away from the party, grabbing a couple of champagne flutes from a passing waiter.

  * * *

  It was a beautiful clear summer night, the velvety cropped lawn silver in the moonlight. Strings of pearly pin-lights lent the trees a fairy-tale quality.

  Emma walked on her toes at first, to stop her three-inch heels sinking into the grass, then gave up and took them off, walking barefoot, with the hem of her dress sweeping the grass. Dan was acutely aware of the change in their height difference. Now she seemed small and fragile as she walked next to him.

  The faint sound of music and laughter drifted after them on the night air as the party carried on up on the terrace. The lawn swept gently downwards towards a small lake, molten metal in the moonlight. The fresh, sweet scent of dewy grass hung on the cool night air.

  ‘And you wonder why marriage doesn’t appeal to me,’ she said as he fell into step beside her. ‘If I ever found the right man why the hell would I marry him, if that’s what it does to you? They lead separate lives. Separate rooms, separate friends. He spends his life trying to exist below her radar and she’s got zero excitement in her own life so she makes up for it with gossip and by meddling in Adam’s life and in mine. And yet they think they’re presenting the image of joint marital solidarity.’

  She warmed to her subject, flinging up an exasperated hand.

  ‘Is that how I’ll end up if I have kids? With them arguing over who isn’t going to have the annoying old cow over at Christmas?’

  He couldn’t keep in a grin. She was so indignant.

  ‘It’s not all bad,’ he said. ‘At least they are interested in you.’

  She sighed.

  ‘On an interfering kind of a level, maybe.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Maybe it comes across like that. OK, OK—it does come across like that,’ he said as she gave him an incredulous look. ‘But still you’re lucky to be part of a family. I couldn’t believe it when you said you were thinking about throwing it all away for some guy you’d known five minutes.’

  Emma hid her fluster at his unexpected mention of Alistair by zeroing in on his other point. Family and Dan weren’t really two words she thought of in the same sentence.

  ‘That was part of the attraction,’ she said. ‘The idea of having some fun, for a change, with someone who put me first without criticising, without comparing me—who put me ahead of everything else. And with Alistair there was no prospect of settling into anything like my parents’ take on domesticity. It would have been loads of travel and excitement, minimal chance of ending up in separate bedrooms living my life through my kids.’

  ‘So the whole thing with Alistair was about you proving a point to your family? Why does it bother you so much what they think?’

  Dan’s comment made her feel as if she was being sloshed with cold water—especially as it was so astute. She had been blinded to Alistair by the desire to impress her parents.

  ‘It had nothing to do with proving a point,’ she lied. ‘I’m a grown-up. What bothered me when I was a kid is just an exasperation now.’

  She stopped to sit down on the bench he’d seen earlier from the bedroom window. He sat down next to her, the hard wrought-iron pressing cold through his shirt. He handed her one of the champagne flutes.

  ‘Then what is it?’ he said. ‘You handle yourself brilliantly back in
London. You’re a real slick professional. You don’t need to let anyone’s criticism bother you.’

  She stared across the silvery lawn. Faint laughter drifted across from the terrace.

  ‘Ah, but that’s exactly the point,’ she said. ‘When we see each other it’s usually for some work reason or other. When it comes to work I know I can hold my own. I know what I’m talking about. I make sure I won’t get caught out or make a slip-up.’ She paused. ‘It hasn’t always been like that for me.’

  ‘So what was it like, then?’

  Emma looked at him, trying to gauge whether his interest was real or counterfeit. He’d never shown an interest in finding out more about her before—not unless it was related to work, of course. His blue eyes held hers steadily. She took a sip of her drink and smiled a little, remembering, letting the years fall away.

  ‘Growing up, I was the clumsiest kid you can imagine,’ she said. ‘If anyone was going to make a fool of herself it was me. And it was even more difficult because Adam’s always been such an overachiever. I started out at school trying to work hard, but it never seemed to matter how much effort I put in. I was never quite good enough to earn Adam’s level of interest or praise. He was picking up A grades, winning competitions, excelling at everything. After a while I learned not to put myself in a position where people could notice I was falling short.’

  A memory returned to her in all its cringeworthy glory.

  ‘I had a part in the school musical once.’ She looked up at him. ‘When I was thirteen. Can you imagine me doing that?’

  He shrugged, a small smile on his face. A polite response.

  ‘They used to do a musical every year. It was so popular. Everyone would come and watch—parents, locals. And that year they were doing Grease. Loads of singing and dancing. I was so excited by the whole idea. I just wanted to be part of it. It didn’t occur to me that there could be a negative side, that things could go wrong. I was so naïve.’

  ‘What happened?’

  She put her head in her hands and pulled a cringing face.

  ‘I forgot my lines. I stood on that stage and looked out at the hall, knowing it was packed, and I couldn’t remember a word. And I don’t mean I stumbled over my lines. I didn’t just have a bit of a blip and then pick things up. My mind went completely blank. I froze. The lights were bright in my face, but I could still see the shadows of all the people. The music was so loud I could hardly think.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I ran off the stage and refused to go back on. They put the understudy on instead. My parents were in the audience and my mother gave me hell. She still brings it up now and then. I think in some part of her mind I’m still that nervy thirteen-year-old who had a public meltdown onstage and showed her up.’

  She took a sip of her champagne, thinking back. The bright lights in her eyes. The cold horror rushing through her as she tried and failed to make her panicked brain work. The slick of sweat on her palms.

  She looked across at Dan, easily pasting a smile on her face. She’d had years of practice at doing it. She was an adult now, with her own life, and she didn’t need to be defined by that awful feeling of failure—not any more. Yet on some level maybe it could never be erased.

  ‘That’s awful.’

  She shrugged, smiling a little.

  ‘It was at the time. I was mortified. And it never happened again—not to that extent. I never put myself out there again after that—not in any situation where I couldn’t trust myself to get it right. I concentrated on academic stuff instead of the arts. Left all that to Adam. And, well, you can see how good he was at it. That’s partly why I decided to study law. A lot of it is about bulk learning. If you know the rules you can apply them. If you put the work in you can build a career. It isn’t left to the whim of anyone else liking what you do in order to secure your success.’

  He watched her, looking down at her hands, her skin silvery pale in the moonlight, contrasting with her gleaming dark hair. The air of vulnerability about her made his heart turn over softly. He had an unexpected urge to sweep her into his arms and erase all that self-doubt, make her feel special.

  ‘You care far too much what people think of you,’ he said.

  She frowned.

  ‘Isn’t that what everyone wants, though? Validation from everyone else? Or at least from the people you care about.’

  ‘Maybe. But sometimes love doesn’t show up as hugs and presents,’ he said. ‘Not everything is that in-your-face in life. Your mum, for example, shows she cares by—’

  ‘By being the most interfering woman on the planet? Maybe. But just a little...’ she searched for the right word ‘...positivity might be nice now and then.’

  She leaned back a little, surveying him with interest.

  ‘I didn’t think you had such strong feelings about family,’ she said. ‘It’s not like I see you jumping through any hoops to see yours. You never seem to visit them—you never even mention them. They can’t be any more of a nightmare than mine are, and even I do my duty and see them every few months.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean, why?’

  ‘Why do you do your duty and see them? It’s perfectly clear you don’t relish spending time with them. Why don’t you just cut them out of your life if they’re that much of a chore?’

  He made a slicing motion with his hand while she stared at him, momentarily speechless.

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ she said at last. ‘They’re my family.’

  ‘You mean you care about them?’

  ‘Of course I do. I’ve kind of got used to the criticism in a way. It’s who they are. They might be a nightmare, but at least they’re mine.’

  ‘And there’s your answer.’

  She shook her head faintly at him.

  ‘To what?’

  ‘You were wondering why I never mention or see my family. There’s your answer. That’s the difference between you and me. I don’t really have a family—not as such. And what I did have of one was never remotely interested in me, even in a critical way.’

  * * *

  She dropped her eyes from his.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry...’ she began.

  He smiled at her.

  ‘Don’t be. I’m fine with it. It’s always been that way. I don’t need a family, Emma. What you don’t have you don’t miss. When I was a kid we didn’t do overbearing parents or criticism or sibling rivalry.’ He paused. ‘We didn’t actually do family.’

  His mind waved the memory of Maggie before him again with a flourish and he clenched his teeth hard. Talking about family with Emma wasn’t so difficult when it related to his mother. His feelings for her had progressed over the years to end up somewhere near contempt. But family as related to Maggie meant something completely different. That had been his hope. That had been their plan. Losing that planned future had somehow been so much worse than losing any excuse for a family he might have had in the past.

  She was staring at him. He could feel it. He stood up, began walking back to the terrace, deliberately not looking at her.

  ‘What do you mean, you didn’t do family?’ she said, catching him up, her long skirt caught in one hand.

  He thought fleetingly about simply closing the conversation down, but found that on some level he didn’t want to. When had he last talked his childhood over with anyone? His usual conquests were happy to go along with however much he told them about himself—or, more to the point, however little. There had never been any need to give much away. Dinner and a cocktail or two seemed to be all that was needed to get to first base, quickly followed by second and third.

  ‘Exactly that,’ he said. ‘My upbringing wasn’t in a nice suburban house with a mum and dad, siblings, pets. Out of all those things some of the time I had a mum.’r />
  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘I’ve never known him.’

  The look of sympathy on her face was immediate and he instantly brushed it away with a wave of his hand.

  ‘I’ve never needed to know him. It’s no big deal.’

  It was a billion times easier to talk about the family he’d actually had than the one he’d wanted and lost. The two things were worlds apart in his mind.

  ‘Yes, it is. That’s awful.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘What about your mum, then? You must have been close if it was just the two of you.’

  He could feel his lip trying to give a cynical curl.

  ‘Not especially. She wasn’t exactly Mother of the Year.’ He caught sight of her wide-eyed look and qualified resignedly, ‘Oh, hell, she was very young. It can’t have been easy, raising a kid by herself. It just was what it was.’

  Maggie flashed through his mind again. They’d been young, too, and totally unprepared for parenthood. But walking away had never been an option for him. He’d known that from the very first moment she’d told him about her pregnancy.

  ‘She worked on and off,’ he said. ‘Bar work, mostly. When I was smaller I used to stay with a neighbour, or one or other of her friends. There was never any consistency to it. Then when I got older it was just me.’

  He paused for a second, because that couple of sentences didn’t really sum up what it had felt like in that house by himself. It had been cold, with a musty smell of damp that had never gone away, even in the summer. Never tidy. Ready meals and late-night movies because no one cared if he stayed up late or if he was getting enough sleep for school. Sometimes his mother had stayed out all night until he’d wondered if she’d return at all. What would happen to him then? Where would he go? The uncertainty of it all had made him constantly on edge.

  ‘I’d never have known,’ she said. ‘You’ve done so well to get out from under all that.’

  Emma felt a sudden stab of shame at her fussing about her own childhood. She must sound like some dreadful attention-seeker to him, with her comfortable middle-class upbringing, moaning that she’d never seemed able to please her family when he’d barely had one.