by Matt Dunn
Izzy had sidled up next to her, and Rachel readied herself to shove her away if required, to give herself the necessary space, again like a footballer might – perhaps those boring Saturday nights sitting in front of Match of the Day with Rich were all leading up to this moment, and if that was the case, at least she’d got something out of the relationship.
‘Good luck!’ whispered Izzy, and Rachel smiled humourlessly back at her. Luck has nothing to do with it, she thought.
‘You too,’ she said, her fingers crossed behind her back.
She took a couple of deep breaths as a beaming Livia turned her back on the group. ‘Ready?’ she said, and Rachel nodded determinedly.
I was born ready, she thought, before realising she’d said that out loud.
‘One . . .’ said Livia, as Rachel shushed the women standing in front of her.
‘Two . . .’
Rachel tensed. But was Livia going to throw on ‘three’, or would it be one-two-three-throw?
She considered bringing a halt to the proceedings so she could ask her, but surely that would sound a little desperate? And besides, Livia’s loud ‘Three!’ combined with her heaving the bouquet up and over her head in a soaring arc pretty much answered her question.
Rachel shaded her eyes against the lights that dotted the terrace, careful not to lose sight of the bouquet’s trajectory – NASA mission control couldn’t have kept a closer eye on its flight – and prepared herself to leap for all she was worth. But Livia had put her and her baby’s combined weight behind her throw, and instead of landing mid-group, it was looking like the bouquet might soar over all their heads.
As if of one mind, the women surged towards her, and Rachel feared she might be trampled in the stampede, so she began running backwards as fast as she could, her feet kicking up, her fists flying to stop her pursuers getting too close, while keeping both eyes determinedly on the bouquet as it flew over her, agonisingly just out of reach. Then, suddenly, one of the red-faced English women seemed to snap the heel on her towering stiletto, and with an agonised cry of ‘Sooz, no!’ from her friend, went down heavily in front of the chasing pack, causing the sort of pile-up you saw on those comedy video shows on TV.
Rachel mentally punched the air. The bouquet was surely hers now. She could wait for it to land, just pick it up off the floor – a hollow victory, perhaps . . . But then again, didn’t you have to actually catch the thing for it to count? And besides, if she stretched, maybe jumped, there was a distinct possibility that she still could.
Her adrenaline pumping, it seemed as if everything was happening in slow motion, and with a desperate leap Rachel reached up, stretching her arm almost out of its socket, and by some miracle she managed to close her fingers around the bouquet’s foil-wrapped stems. It was hers. She’d done it! Take that, Izzy. You snooze, you lose, you other women. Tough titty, teenagers. She was the one who’d caught it, fair and square. And now she’d be the next one to get married.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Izzy, trapped in the middle of the pile of scuffed knees, sunburnt flesh and mussed-up hair the chasing pack had ended up in, and smiled smugly. Younger wasn’t always better, and Rachel felt buoyed by the expression of horror on her face. Although what did Izzy mean by shouting ‘Rachel, no!’? Talk about a sore loser.
With the agility of the cat she refused to get, Rachel swivelled round in mid-air and began her descent, hoping she could pull off the same graceful three-point landing Scarlett Johansson always seemed to manage in the Avengers movies. That would be her crowning glory. The thing that would make all the men watching look at her with desire in their eyes. Pull this off, and she was sure she only had to parade around the tables on the terrace, click her fingers, and any man she wanted would be hers.
Trouble was, as Rachel quickly realised to her dismay, to achieve any kind of landing – graceful or otherwise – you needed to be landing on actual land.
And not, as she was about to do, slap-bang in the middle of the hotel’s swimming pool.
Patrick had sat through the speeches, wondering whether he was going to have to make one of his own later. Izzy hadn’t let him out of her sight since the ceremony, and he knew he’d have to address her declaration of love at some point. Trouble was, when – and more importantly, how?
Still, at least she hadn’t caught the bouquet. He had to think that was a good omen. As was the fact that the person who did had ended up making a fool of themselves in front of everyone. Which pretty much summed up how Patrick felt about marriage.
Though Jed’s speech had made him think. Particularly the line about being blind to what’s in front of us. Yes, he and Izzy were different, but since things had turned out so disastrously with him and his ex-wife, he truly believed in the whole ‘opposites attract’ thing. Why would you want to date someone exactly the same as you? Where would be the fun in that? And as for the age gap . . . Patrick kept himself in shape. Had regular medical check-ups. And even though he sometimes thought it was the sex that might kill him, on balance the stamina and flexibility it required was probably doing him a few favours too.
He glanced across at her – she’d spent the last ten minutes picking the icing off her slice of wedding cake, and while Patrick had assumed that was because she didn’t want to overload on sugar, she’d actually ended up leaving the fruity interior and devoured all of the sweet bits. But that was Izzy. She could surprise you. And unlike Jed, Patrick actually quite liked surprises.
‘Having fun?’
Izzy mimed a yawn, then followed it up quickly with a smile. ‘Just kidding. It’s all right.’
‘You not a fan of weddings, then?’
‘I prefer them to funerals.’
‘I should hope so.’
‘Actually, it’s my first one. Of either of those things.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘How old do you think I am?’
Patrick’s heart skipped a beat, then he relaxed when he realised she’d have to be at least sixteen to be working in Selfridges. ‘None of your friends ever . . . ?’
‘Nope.’ Izzy popped the last piece of cake icing into her mouth. ‘Most of my friends think marriage is kind of over. No offence.’
Patrick made a face. His certainly was. ‘None taken. Though you better not let Jed and Livia hear you say that.’
‘Yeah, well, they’ve been together for, like, a hundred years. So it doesn’t really make that much difference to the likes of them, does it?’
Patrick opened his mouth to argue, then realised it wouldn’t achieve anything. ‘Perhaps not.’
Izzy turned her attention to Liam, who seemed to be fussing with a pair of giant speakers at the far end of the terrace. ‘When does this party actually start?’
‘Once everyone’s eaten, I guess. The hotel normally has a DJ in on a Saturday night for a bit of a poolside disco . . .’ Izzy had started to snigger, so Patrick stopped talking. ‘What?’
‘Disco.’
‘What would you prefer? Rave?’
Izzy nodded enthusiastically. ‘I would, actually!’
‘Anyway, we’re going to join in with that. Or rather, we were going to, until the DJ did a runner. So Liam’s stepping in.’
‘Excellent!’
‘Why is that excellent?’
‘At least we’ll get some decent music.’
‘Right.’
As Izzy sat there, impatiently tapping a fingernail on the table, looking a little too much like a bored teenager for Patrick’s liking (and which, he reminded himself, wasn’t far off an accurate description), he took a deep breath. Now would be as good a time as any for them to finish their little talk. Although ‘as good as any’ didn’t necessarily mean ‘good’.
‘Izzy, about what you said earlier.’
She smiled innocently at him. ‘What did I say?’
‘You know what you said. And if this is what you want . . .’ He gestured around the room. ‘Marriage. Me saying “I do”. And ki
ds . . . I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it again.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, because . . .’ Patrick hesitated. He’d only worked this answer out recently. Just before he’d met Izzy, in fact. But to admit that the actions of one woman, his ex-wife, had caused him to doubt everything he knew about human nature, made him question whether he could ever love – or trust – anyone ever again, made him fear that loyalty and commitment were just made-up constraints that were there to be discarded as soon as someone better came along, and that family ties weren’t actually that strong at all . . . that sounded really melodramatic, and to be honest, a bit pathetic, especially at someone else’s wedding, right when they were about to have a baby . . .
He took Izzy by the hand, grateful when she didn’t pull away. ‘Because I’m too old.’
It was a cop-out, and he knew it, but by the incredulous look on her face, Izzy didn’t seem to be having any of it. ‘Surely I’m the judge of that? And you didn’t seem that old earlier.’
‘I’m nearly fifty now. If I had another baby, it’d probably kill me.’
‘You mean the effort of raising it, right, and not in an “it’ll murder you when it grows up” way?’
He smiled, relieved Izzy could make a joke at a time like this. ‘Right,’ he said, as she let his hand go, but only to help herself to a piece of icing from his plate. ‘And even if it didn’t, I don’t want to be the oldest dad at the school gates. Don’t want people to think when we all went out together, it’d be grandson, mum and granddad.’
‘Hardly,’ said Izzy, and Patrick smiled grimly. Because while that was one of his fears, he couldn’t tell her that ‘I don’t want to do it with you’ was perhaps the most appropriate reason – not that he didn’t think Izzy could be a good mother, just that he suspected she wasn’t ready to be one any time soon. And he certainly didn’t have the luxury of waiting until she was.
‘Tell me something,’ he said, leaning in so he could talk to her without anyone else overhearing. ‘Back when we met. How did you think this would go?’
Izzy popped another piece of icing into her mouth. ‘I didn’t. I just thought we’d have a good time and see what happened. Besides, you can’t live your life thinking “what if?”, especially if you do the numbers and realise the relationship is doomed to failure, statistically, so what was the point of trying to make any plans whatsoever?’
‘That sounds a bit . . .’ Patrick remembered Livia’s comment from earlier. ‘Cynical.’
‘Look who’s talking! And it’s not cynical. It’s called getting real. People generally have loads of relationships, and they all fail, until one doesn’t.’ She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her expression the same as when she feared Patrick might be breaking up with her earlier. ‘Baby, do we really have to talk about this now?’
‘We do, if this’ – he waved a hand around in an attempt to indicate the evening’s events – ‘is where you see things going.’
Izzy stared at him for a moment. ‘I don’t know where I see things going,’ she said, sulkily. ‘Not yet, anyway. What are you so worried about?’
He raised his voice a little, though only so she could hear him above the music that had started to boom out from the speakers. ‘That I might be stopping you from doing what you really want.’
‘Haven’t you learned by now?’ Izzy inspected her fingertips, locking eyes with him as she suggestively sucked the icing from them. ‘There’s actually very little that stops me from doing what I really want.’
‘And what do you really want, Izzy?’
She got up from her chair, then straddled him in his. ‘You.’
And despite his best intentions, Patrick didn’t have an answer for that.
Chapter 10
Rachel had spluttered to the surface, just in time to see another, fully clothed body jump in beside her, followed by another, then another, until perhaps half the hotel guests were floating beside her in the pool, playfully splashing and ducking each other. As she’d struggled to touch the bottom, she’d felt a strong arm encircle her waist, and she gratefully allowed herself to be towed to the side of the pool. Then, to her horror, she realised the arm was attached to someone she knew. Someone she’d met earlier, in fact. And the last person she wanted to see her like this.
‘Jay?’
‘We must stop meeting like this.’ He put both hands on the edge of the pool, and hoisted himself athletically up and out. ‘Actually, we mustn’t. I’m quite enjoying it.’
‘Wh – What are you doing here?’
‘Here as in “at the wedding”, or here as in “in the pool”?’
‘Either. Both. I don’t . . .’ Rachel reached up and grabbed the hand he was offering her, marvelling at his firm grip as he hauled her out of the water and lowered her down next to him with a loud, soggy squelch.
‘I got here just in time to see you launch yourself into the water. I guessed it wasn’t on purpose, so I thought if I jumped in too, people might think it was a thing to do.’ He nodded at the still-full pool, where the guests seemed to be enjoying a respite from the warm evening. ‘And it looks like they did.’
‘So you did that just to spare my blushes?’ said Rachel, realising she was probably blushing now, and Jay shrugged.
‘Well, yeah.’
‘That’s . . . That’s possibly the nicest thing anyone’s done for me. Ever.’
Jay shrugged again, then he helped her to her feet. ‘In that case, you’ve been hanging round with the wrong kind of people.’
‘You’re telling me!’
He reached down and removed his shoes, emptying the water from each of them back into the pool. ‘That was some jump.’
‘Thanks. Though I don’t think Tom Daley’s got anything to worry about.’
‘Maybe not.’ Jay leaned across and brushed a wet strand of hair from her face. ‘Having a nice time?’
‘Up until a moment ago.’
‘When I arrived?’ he said, pretending to be hurt.
‘No, silly. When I fell in the pool.’
‘Fell?’ Jay smiled as he wrapped her in a towel he’d grabbed from a pile on a nearby sun lounger. ‘I think “leapt” might be a more accurate description.’
‘Maybe.’ Rachel pulled the towel tightly around her shoulders, partly because she was cold, but mainly because her dress had gone see-through.
‘Still, at least you caught the bouquet.’
Rachel realised to her horror she was still clutching tightly onto the (somewhat bedraggled) bunch of flowers. ‘This?’ she said, putting it down hurriedly on the nearest table. ‘Oh, that was just a bit of fun.’
‘Right,’ said Jay, mischievously. ‘Where are the happy couple?’
Rachel scanned the terrace. ‘See those two over there doing a bad job of pretending not to be watching us?’
‘Which ones?’
‘By the bar. The heavily pregnant woman, and the rather embarrassed-looking chap standing next to her.’
‘Crikey. She looks about to burst.’
‘That’ll be the amount of wedding cake she’s eaten.’
Jay found himself a towel and began drying his hair. ‘I can see why they were in a hurry to get married.’
‘Well, one of them was.’
‘Huh?’
‘Long story.’
‘I’ve got all night,’ said Jay, then he blushed, though Rachel was too busy trying to wring the water out of her dress to notice. ‘Should we perhaps get a drink?’
Rachel decided not to point out she’d just had one, so she allowed herself to be helped to her feet, then she steered him towards the bar, trying to stop her mind racing. Jay was here. Jay was here! And while she didn’t know how, or why, what was more important was that he hadn’t left when he’d see her perform the worst of bombs into the swimming pool . . .
As she ordered them each a beer, Rachel reminded herself not to get too excited. They’d had a holiday fling, nothing more. Then again, it wasn’t as if Rich w
as waiting for her at home, and not only because he wasn’t at home.
It wasn’t as if anyone was waiting for her back in England, come to think of it.
A tap on her shoulder made her spin round, though before she could say anything, Livia’s ‘Good catch!’ made her smile. Particularly since, by the way she was eyeing Jay up, Rachel suspected she wasn’t referring to the bouquet.
‘Livia,’ she said, awkwardly. ‘This is . . .’
‘Jay?’ said Livia.
‘How did you know it was him?’
‘It wasn’t that hard to guess.’ Livia stood up on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek, then she looked Rachel up and down. ‘That’s a good look for you. Though isn’t it the bride who’s supposed to change outfits at the end of the wedding, rather than the maid of honour?’
‘Yes, well, the maid of honour isn’t supposed to go for a swim mid-reception either. Then again, this is quite an unconventional wedding.’
‘Unconventional?’ said Jay. ‘How so?’
‘Livia asked Jed to marry her.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Jay had raised both eyebrows. ‘Good for you. Was he surprised?’
‘Oh yes.’ Livia grinned. ‘Seeing as I only asked him yesterday.’
Jay’s mouth fell open in shock, then he burst out laughing. ‘Double good for you! I like a forward woman.’
Livia was smiling at her, though Rachel couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘So, Jay, what brings you here?’
‘I, um . . .’ Jay gave Rachel a look. ‘Rachel left her . . . something at my flat earlier. I’m just returning, you know, it.’
‘That’s good of you,’ said Livia, though Rachel’s heart was sinking faster than she’d been about to in the pool before Jay had saved her. She’d thought – hoped – he’d come here to see her, but in reality he was just returning an item that – yet again – Rachel had been stupid enough to lose. And even now, she was too stupid to remember what she’d left there. As far as she knew, she’d had everything with her when she left his place. Except, perhaps, for a small piece of her heart.
‘You should have come earlier,’ Livia said. ‘You could have had some food.’