Mind made up and only slightly regretful that life wasn’t even a little bit like a romance novel, though being the sort of woman who drove men to giddy heights of passion would be quite annoying and very time-consuming, Verity unpacked her case.
By the time Johnny exited the bathroom, a hangdog expression on his face that Verity was getting to know very well, she was changed (hurriedly, behind the ajar door of the wardrobe) into her shared posh party outfit, a sixties-style black and white polka-dot shift dress.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Johnny murmured in a way that was also becoming very familiar. He caught Verity’s eye in the mirror where she was attempting to do her make-up as per Nina’s instructions. ‘I had to take that call. Now, look about the room …’
‘I’m OK about sharing the room,’ Verity said, her voice strained as she was trying to do a smoky eye and talk at the same time. ‘You’ve made it perfectly clear, on more than one occasion, that you don’t have designs on me.’
‘I’m not saying you’re unattractive because you are,’ Johnny quickly assured her. ‘Attractive that is, but even so I would never—’
‘It’s all immaterial because you’re in love with another woman,’ Verity said rather shriekily because she wanted to end this agonising conversation as quickly as humanly possible. ‘And I’ve sworn off any kind of intimate relationship ever again.’
Johnny’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Really? Because I did wonder why you were so resolutely single.’
‘There’s no big mystery. Some people are happier on their own and I’m one of them.’ Verity narrowly avoided jabbing herself in the eye with her mascara brush in her alarm. ‘Are you ready? What time do we need to be there?’
10
‘The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and everyday confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters.’
It was a short stroll from The Kimpton Arms, through the village then left to crunch up a gravel drive.
Verity had been worried that Lawrence, the birthday boy, and his wife Catriona, would live in some huge stately pile not dissimilar to Downton Abbey, but the pretty detached house was large enough that it had probably once been home to some local swell – a doctor or solicitor – but certainly not one of the landed gentry.
Even so, they followed the sound of music and a trail of balloons round the side of the house and unlatched a gate to a garden that was less a garden and more several acres of land.
‘I guess we should head for the big tent,’ Johnny said. There was a huge white marquee in the middle of the lawn, people milling about outside its entrance, children in their best party outfits chasing each other around its perimeter. There were also grumpy-looking teenagers pressed into waiter service bobbing about with trays of drinks.
Verity looked longingly at the champagne on offer, but she had to pace herself. It was only five o’clock and with curfew at eleven thirty, they could be here for over six hours. She didn’t want to be steaming drunk before it was even dark, not that she’d ever been steaming drunk but now really wasn’t the time for that kind of voyage of personal discovery.
As they got nearer to the tent, Verity realised that all eyes were upon them. Even people who weren’t actually looking at them were quickly nudged, words whispered in their ears, so they swivelled around too. It was a lot like the scene in every Western that Verity had ever seen (which admittedly wasn’t that many) when the new sheriff walked into the saloon in a godless frontier town and everything went silent.
However, from inside the marquee a band murdering ‘Music to Watch Girls By’ played on and a short, jolly-looking man detached himself from the throng and waved. ‘Johnny! Whoever let you in?’
‘That’s Lawrence,’ Johnny muttered for Verity’s benefit and then he tried to take her hand but she flexed her fingers away.
‘I’m not a very touchy person,’ she explained in a whisper.
‘Oh, I am. Touchy. Tactile. Sorry,’ he whispered back then he opened his arms wide as they reached Lawrence who also spread his arms and then they were hugging each other and slapping each other on the back in that hearty way that men did because they were just as uncomfortable with touching each other as Verity was with touching anyone.
‘I’ve missed your ugly mug!’ Lawrence said as they detached themselves. ‘In fact, I think you’re even uglier than you were last time I saw you.’
‘And you have even less hair than you did a few months ago.’ Johnny grinned and ruffled Lawrence’s luxuriant mop of thick dark hair. ‘You’re practically bald.’
‘Can’t understand how someone with a face like yours has managed to persuade such a pretty young lady to spend time in your company. Are you having to pay her?’ Lawrence asked teasingly. He was ruddy cheeked and had a good-natured face, a ready smile, so Verity doubted there was malicious intent behind his words even as Johnny sucked in a shocked breath.
‘I’m not a paid escort, I just quite like spending time in Johnny’s company even though he isn’t much to look at, is he?’ It was one of only three times in her entire life that Verity had ever managed to say something vaguely witty at the right time. ‘I’m Verity, by the way.’
‘I’m Lawrence and I can immediately tell that you are far, far too good for the likes of him,’ Lawrence said and he took Verity’s hand and kissed it and now really wasn’t the time to tell anyone else that she really wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of person.
Over the course of the next hour, Verity was hugged and had her hands held and her cheeks kissed by what felt like every person in attendance. Her face ached from smiling as she was reintroduced to all the people that she’d met at the brunch the Sunday before and newly introduced to everybody else.
Verity knew that if she felt uncomfortable, then it was more to do with her lamentable social skills, and very little to do with the warm way she was welcomed into the fold of Johnny’s friends. They were unfailingly polite and accommodating but also relentless in their curiosity. Verity couldn’t count how many times she had to recite verbatim the account of how she and Johnny had both been stood up at the same restaurant. Every time she did, the reaction was the same. ‘About time,’ his friends would say or words to that effect. ‘If ever a man deserved the love of a good woman, it’s our Johnny.’
Verity and Johnny weren’t in love and she certainly wasn’t a good woman, not when she was currently defrauding all his friends, so it was a huge relief when he finally detached her from the crowd gathered around them.
‘Come on, let’s find a little quiet spot,’ Johnny said, after they’d filled their plates from a groaning buffet table. Verity was sure that she was looking a little exhausted, a little wild around the eyes, at being the centre of attention for so long. ‘It’s been quite full-on.’
‘There has been a lot of new people,’ Verity admitted. ‘I couldn’t even tell you half their names.’
‘Luckily for you, I know a secret path through the shrubbery,’ Johnny said and he suddenly disappeared through a gap in the hedge. ‘Come on!’
Verity followed Johnny down a little meandering trail bordered by manicured bushes that came out by a pond where fat, exotically coloured fish swam lazily about. Past the pond was a pretty summerhouse painted mint green and hung with bunting and on its porch (because it was a big enough summerhouse to merit a porch) was a wooden bench.
Verity couldn’t help the huge sigh of relief as she sat down. Not only could she rest her feet, which were aching from being hoisted into a wedge sandal after months of flat shoes, but she could rest her mouth too. Just be quiet. Not say a word or have a word spoken to her.
‘So, that was—’ Johnny began but Verity held up a hand in protest.
‘Not another word!’ she begged. ‘Please … just for a few minutes.’
Johnny shot her a slightly offended look but stayed silent as they picked their way through the food on their plates, drank their champagne and listened to the faint sound of the band playing down the other end of t
he garden, accompanied by birds singing as they made the most of the evening sun.
It was lovely and Verity felt as if she could breathe again. All too soon though, Johnny clinked his empty glass against hers. ‘Permission to speak?’ he asked with a hint of amusement.
‘Permission granted,’ Verity decided reluctantly.
‘We should probably go back into the fray,’ he said. ‘We’ve caused such a stir that they’re bound to notice that we’re missing. I expect there’ll be lots of sly comments about getting up to no good in the rose bushes.’
As they retraced their steps back to the house, it was Verity’s phone that beeped first. How’s it going? Merry wanted to know.
It wasn’t going badly, not by any stretch of the imagination, but as everyone had turned to look at them again as they stepped through the patio doors into a large conservatory, Verity felt sure that the second part of the Inquisition was about to start.
She didn’t really have the words so she settled for emoji instead.
‘I think they’re about to make speeches,’ Johnny said and that was fine with Verity because if people were making speeches, then no one was going to try and speechify with her.
They stood at the back of the room as Lawrence’s younger brother toasted the birthday boy with a lot of rugby club banter (the word ‘scrotum’ was mentioned several times) that had Verity wincing in a couple of places. She was saved from having to give the speech her full attention, by Merry texting her back.
Am perturbed by your uncharacteristic use of emojis. Is it really that bad? How much have you had to drink? Perhaps you should drink some more? Could borrow Dougie’s mum’s car if really that awful and come and rescue you.
It was a tempting thought but really it wasn’t even halfway to being that awful, Verity decided. She didn’t often take Merry’s advice but as a waiter came into her orbit with a tray of drinks, Verity grabbed another glass of champagne and one for Johnny too.
‘For the toasts,’ she said, because she was meant to be his girlfriend and she could absolutely do this and not be such a wet weekend about it.
The speeches went on forever. Long enough for Verity to drink another two glasses of champagne. Not enough to be drunk, just enough for the world to become soft focus and when Johnny left her side when his phone rang and he just had to ‘take this very important call’ she was quite happy to hang out with the North London contingent of Johnny’s friends. Wallis had told them all about her visit to Happy Ever After and for a while Verity fielded enquiries about working in a shop that only sold romantic novels, which quickly segued into a quite thrilling conversation about which was the best adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which was obviously the BBC version and not the awful sham that featured Keira Knightley simpering and Matthew Macfadyen in a truly terrible wig.
‘Colin Firth emerging from a lake in a white shirt, which clings damply to his chest, I rest my case,’ Verity said as she’d said many times before because this was a conversation she often had with her sisters and Posy and Nina, and Verity never failed to be surprised that there were women unmoved by the sight of a young Colin Firth in a damp shirt.
Verity had had worse Saturday nights than this. In fact, she realised, she was actively enjoying herself. Whoever would have thought it? But as talk turned to a new TV series that everyone was watching, she was happy to murmur, ‘Excuse me’ and retreat to the loo.
She’d have liked to have stayed there for a few minutes just to gather and regroup, but mindful that there was a queue of women outside, Verity took thirty seconds to assure herself that she was OK, she still had some charge left in her batteries, and it was just gone nine now so they only had to stay another two hours, then they could go back to the pub.
Because it was past nine and the champagne had been flowing like fizzy pop, most people had passed pleasantly buzzed and were rapidly heading towards drunk. Back in the marquee, there was a lot of dad dancing going on. As Verity moved through the tent trying to find Johnny, she suddenly felt quite lost and alone, as if she didn’t have as much charge left in her battery as she thought she had.
She wandered back out into the garden. The sun was sinking behind the trees, which were strewn with paper lanterns so Verity could see quite clearly that Johnny was nowhere to be found. She decided to retrace their footsteps; to find the gap in the hedge and from there, the pond and the summerhouse, but before she could, Verity heard unsteady footsteps behind her then an even unsteadier voice.
‘Yoo hoo! Johnny’s lady friend! Stop! I need to talk to you!’
Verity cast her eyes to the heavens then turned round. She’d been introduced to the woman earlier but back then the woman’s blonde hair hadn’t been so tousled, her mint-green lace dress not quite so rumpled, her tasteful pinky nude lipstick not so smudged. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Verity winced. ‘I can’t remember your name. There’s been so many new faces and …’
‘Oh, never mind that!’ Verity was suddenly yanked forward so she almost fell face first into the other woman’s cleavage. As it was she was folded into a sticky, warm embrace. Verity barely had time to tense every muscle before she was thrust away, the other woman keeping hold of Verity’s upper arms so she couldn’t get away. ‘I just wanted to say thank God for you. Johnny is such a lovely man, I tried to have a crack at him myself when we were younger, but he was already head over heels in love with her. Can you believe that he’s wasted all that time being in love with her?’
‘Her?’ Verity ventured, though taking advantage of a very drunk woman to get some information on Johnny’s mystery woman was wrong. Wrong but also impossible to resist.
‘Her!’ the woman confirmed. ‘Actually, I probably shouldn’t be mentioning this to you, of all people, but you know, right? Johnny and you have had the talk, haven’t you? It must be pretty serious if he wants you to meet everybody. All this time and the pair of them thought that nobody knew but I knew and it was such a strain pretending that I didn’t. You can’t imagine what an ordeal it’s been for me. That love triangle was old when we were at Cambridge. Now it’s positively geriatric.’
So much information to take in; Verity could feel something short-circuiting in her brain. ‘Exactly what love triangle are you talking about?’ she asked.
The woman gave a hollow laugh. ‘It’s such a cliché isn’t it, when a woman comes between two good friends? But when Johnny went to the States after his mother died, we all thought it was over. I mean, it was over, she married Harry, forgodsakes. Then Johnny came back and it all started up again. I only know because I saw the two of them with my own eyes, these eyes …’ The woman pointed at her bloodshot eyes in case Verity was in any doubt over which eyes she was talking about. ‘Johnny was going out with a wonderful woman at the time, an architect like him, but that didn’t last and no wonder when I saw him and Madam holding hands in the bar of the Stafford Hotel in Mayfair. And since then? He hasn’t dated anyone else and now he turns up with you. I really should hug you again. Everyone thinks you’re a cracking girl.’
There was still so much to unpick. ‘Really? They do?’
‘Of course they do, because you are,’ Johnny said from behind Verity and she froze, as if her insides had suddenly turned to ice.
11
‘You may ask questions which I shall not choose to answer.’
Verity dared to turn and look at Johnny who simply raised his eyebrows at her and smiled a bland sort of smile so it was impossible to know what he was thinking – or how much he may have overheard.
He took a couple of steps forward so he was at Verity’s side. ‘Julia, I think Matthew is looking for you,’ he said in a mild voice to match his smile.
Julia nodded. ‘He probably is. Just as well he’s driving us home.’ She staggered uncertainly for a moment. ‘It’s the first time in seven years that I haven’t been pregnant or breastfeeding and I think I’ve overdone it on the champagne.’
Verity and Johnny took an arm each so they could guide Julia back up the g
arden, through the house and to the entrance hall where a harried-looking fair-headed man stood jiggling his car keys.
‘Oh Julia, I knew this was going to happen,’ he said sorrowfully when he spotted Verity and Johnny’s lurching cargo. ‘You’re going to feel absolutely rotten tomorrow and my mother’s coming to lunch.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Julia exclaimed as she tottered towards her partner. ‘Shall I phone her now and tell her not to bother?’
‘Best not to. She still hasn’t forgiven you for what you said last Christmas.’
‘Well, she did provoke me and her stuffing was dry …’
Julia and what sounded like the long-suffering Matthew disappeared down the drive.
Johnny looked at his watch. ‘It’s gone ten. Do you want to go back to the pub? By the time we say our goodbyes, we should just be back before curfew.’
Verity nodded but didn’t move. ‘Instead of saying goodbye … can’t we just ghost?’
Johnny frowned. ‘Ghost?’
‘You know, the French exit. The Irish goodbye. We just disappear without having to spend an hour telling everyone we’re about to disappear.’ Verity was done now. She was out of juice. Fading fast. No reserves left. Having to stay for another hour with a smile pinned on her face while Johnny’s friends, all pissed now, made jokes about the two of them and what they’d do when they were alone, was more than she could handle.
As it was, if they did ghost, everyone would draw their own conclusions anyway and imagine that they’d sneaked off to have sex, which was hilarious given the circumstances.
‘Isn’t that a little rude?’ Johnny asked and maybe it was, but it wasn’t as rude as getting Verity to agree to a fake relationship without telling her exactly what she was getting herself into.
‘I have a headache,’ Verity said and it wasn’t a lie. She could feel the telltale throb at her temples that she always got when people were trying to make her have fun against her will. ‘I need quiet time.’
True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop Page 10