by Anne Brooke
How To Marry Your Husband
by Anne Brooke
How To Marry Your Husband by Anne Brooke
Chapter One: The Proposal
Olivia Williamson and Kieran Hartman are an item. Their first kiss on their very first date in London – though they’d been friends for a while before that – made everything, all the noise and traffic and people, turn completely and utterly silent during that magical moment. Olivia never knew such things could happen and, since then, they’ve been together – on and off – for a good number of years. More years than Olivia cares to admit. However, Olivia isn’t telling that particular story here; even though most comic romances end with a wedding or start with one which proves to be a disaster, her story is different.
No, Olivia’s story begins with a proposal and ends with a wedding – the time period most young heroines – and their authors – skip over. Olivia thinks the engagement period tells you more about anyone than any number of crazy parties, girls’ nights out or adventures abroad with handsome young men, or whatever they have in other books. Olivia thinks a lot of things.
So, this is Olivia’s story and it starts with a proposal.
However, the proposal isn’t Kieran’s. It’s Olivia’s. The time is the 1990s, so don’t expect technical wizardry or young people’s talk. It’s not her style, and never will be. Some romances were made before mobiles and TwitFace came about and this is one of those. It takes place in slow time.
It’s Leap Year. Olivia’s been planning her proposal for several weeks. She’s hinted at it to Kieran several times, but he’s never the best at picking up Woman Clues so she’s not convinced he has any idea what is happening. She can’t help admiring that in a man.
On the evening of her proposal, Olivia takes Kieran out for a meal at the local café. It does the best coffees in town and it’s not even a Starbucks, yet. She doesn’t remember what she orders, though it’s probably her usual chicken pasta, garlic bread and coke. She’s not a great drinker though she’s never been known to say no to a glass or two of champagne. Who would?
When the coffee is served and the waitress has scuttled away, Olivia takes her courage in both hands and asks him The Question.
“We’ve been together for a while,” she says, “and I really want to stay together. What do you think about getting married?”
Kieran splutters into his coffee – okay, maybe it wasn’t the best time for the question, Olivia thinks – and then puts his cup down. He stares at her and blinks. “You mean: a wedding? Us? In church?”
“That’s the general idea. Unless you think a registry office will be better. But I’d prefer a church, if I’m honest. Wouldn’t you?”
He’s still staring at her and by now Olivia is too tensed up to speak further. It’s not going the way she’d planned, and his response is totally not what she has been imagining: no cries of joy, no celebratory champers from the café’s secret store (if it has one, but she’s not sure about this).
“Olivia,” he says gently, and she knows right then what his answer is going to be but she can’t stop him saying it because she actually can’t move or speak or think any more. “I’m sorry but I don’t want to get married right now. I’m not ready.”
Not ready? Not ready? Their on-off relationship has lasted for nearly eight years – how much preparation does this man need? How much preparation can any man need, for heaven’s sake? And, anyhow, what sort of preparation does Kieran mean? Evening classes? A weekend seminar course? A degree?
Olivia wants to scream or cry, or maybe both, but she doesn’t do either of these things as she’s sitting in her favourite café and she’d like to come back to it after tonight, if entirely possible. So she grits her teeth and smiles.
“Okay, no problem,” she lies. “I only thought I’d ask as it’s Leap Day today.”
Kieran’s brow clears and he gives her an uncertain smile. “Oh.”
He then lapses into silence and Olivia’s about to speak again to fill the gap with something – she’s not sure what – when he gets in first. “I should buy you a dress, shouldn’t I? A silk one. Isn’t that the usual forfeit for a man who says no on Leap Day?”
Is it? Olivia hasn’t a clue but she leaps at the olive branch with alacrity. “Oh yes,” she agrees. “But as we’re apparently not engaged, then I think nothing less than gold will do, don’t you?”
And that, for a while, is that. Olivia doesn’t press for the gold jewellery as she’s not that kind of girl, but she’s secretly very pleased when a couple of weeks later Kieran presents her with a gorgeous pair of teardrop earrings shaped like a parrot in blue and red and – yes! – gold. She loves them and honour is satisfied.
Naturally, she doesn’t tell anyone about her rejected proposal, not even her mother or her three closest friends – a girl has her pride! Still, she can’t help wondering what exactly Kieran thinks will happen to them in the future. Will he ever be ready to get married and settle down? Though Olivia doesn’t think of marriage as settling down at any level. She thinks of it as one of the last great adventures, and even more so with Kieran, the man she loves with all her heart. But whatever marriage may turn out to be, does Kieran even want it? Does he want them to live together instead? They’ve never even lived in the same county while they’ve been a couple, let alone the same house. Maybe he wants to see what living together would be like before thinking about marriage.
Olivia doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want a half-way house to love. She wants the full Monty, the whole hog, the grand caboodle, and nothing else will do. Marriage, for her, isn’t a trap. It’s a liberation and she doesn’t want to let her dream go.
The only question is: does Kieran feel the same?
***
Olivia has to wait until Christmas that same year to find out. Half seriously she gives herself a deadline of the following January to see how their relationship is progressing. If he’s not prepared to commit himself to her by then, she’s not sure what she will do but she knows it will be drastic. Maybe even more than drastic, but she doesn’t want to think about that too much.
Because deep in her inner being, Olivia knows that this time round, she and Kieran have to either take the next big step together or end it for good. There isn’t any other solution – not for them. They’ve split up twice already due to a variety of extraordinary reasons – religious differences (he has a Baptist’s view of Catholicism and she doesn’t really mind either way as half her extended family is Catholic); temperament differences (she loves an argument and he thinks arguments are the Work of the Devil); and simple lack of communication (are they going out now or are they not?). And if they split up this time round because they both view marriage so differently, they’re not going to get together again.
She can’t bear the thought, so she pushes this knowledge to a place within herself she doesn’t visit often. However, as the season approaches, Olivia can’t help viewing Christmas with dread.
To be honest, Olivia always approaches Christmas with existential terror. She doesn’t have a problem with God or (as yet) being Anglican, and she and Kieran always attend the Midnight Communion service without getting drunk first – go them! What she can’t stand is all those get-togethers with work people, eating sherry trifle with immediate family – of whom she only actually likes her mother and stepfather and everyone else can go hang – or watching children’s ballet with her friends. She’s sure that being an adult at Christmas was never supposed to be like this, but this is what has happened. Where has she gone so terribly wrong?
Anyway, the upshot of a lot of fiercely fought negotiations in the past is that she and Kieran will spend Christmas and Boxing Day with Olivia’s mother, and then visit Kieran’
s family for New Year. A classic outcome, but if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Christmas goes as expected, as these things always do in families: lots of tradition; some quiet annoyance, and the Queen’s speech. Of all of it, Olivia prefers the Queen’s speech – it brings some much needed quietness to the day. Even church was full of jollity, and Olivia really isn’t a girl who has much appreciation of ‘fun’. Whatever fun may be.
After the Queen has finished rallying the nation during its annual glut of mince pies and champagne, Olivia’s mother and stepfather decamp to the kitchen-cum-dining room for a snooze, leaving Olivia and Kieran collapsed in the soft chairs next to the Christmas tree. They hold hands across the gap and smile at each other. One of the good things about Kieran (of which there are many) is how he gives Olivia a sense of quietness she’s never been able to provide for herself.
On impulse she reaches across to kiss him and then loses her balance, tumbling to the floor underneath the tree. She’s still clinging to his hand and starts to giggle. “I’ve not been drinking, you know! It’s the odd-shaped furniture my mother has.”
He raises one eyebrow at her. “You mean we didn’t have to open the second bottle of champagne because your glass had evaporated in the unseasonal warmth?”
“No! I mean yes, that was exactly it!”
Still laughing, she gives his arm a tug and pulls him down so they’re both lying underneath the tree. Heaven alone knows what her mother will think if she comes in now – though Olivia knows she won’t as they can both hear the parental snores from here.
She half-expects Kieran to sigh and pull away as he’s not one for big – or small – public displays of emotion, but instead he gathers her in his arms, in spite of the pine needles digging into them both and gives her a sudden enormous hug. Gosh, it must really be Christmas!
However, before she can hug him back, he’s let her go and shuffled a few inches away. He takes her head in his hands and when she looks at him, she thinks he’s never looked so serious or so scared.
“Olivia,” he says, relishing her name on his tongue as if it’s the first time he’s said it. “Olivia, I love you and I want to be with you for ever. Will you be my wife?”
As he’s been speaking, his grip on her face has tightened so much that her mouth is squeezed into an almost impossible circle. When Olivia answers, she’s both laughing and crying at the same time – something she only ever thought was possible in books.
“Yith,” she manages to say. “I live you. Of courth I’ll mirry you, you idiot and I’ll even say it priperly if you lit me.”
He doesn’t let her go. He doesn’t her go at all. Instead, he crushes his lips to hers and holds her even tighter if such a thing were possible. Olivia could stay in that position for ever with the man she truly loves – and who she’s going to marry – but they both have to breathe sometime.
When they’ve finally finished kissing, Kieran smiles. “I suppose you’ll want to tell your mother?”
“Oh no,” Olivia shakes her head, mind made up. “Not until I’ve got the ring!”
Chapter Two: The Ring
Olivia is very excited about the whole concept of choosing a ring, especially as Kieran and she are off to a big New Year party with all their friends. She is determined to have a ring to wear at the party. So between Christmas and New Year, she takes every opportunity to go shopping with Kieran for the ring.
She finds some interesting rings that are far too expensive and some dull rings that aren’t. She tries the shops in her parents’ local town and then the ones in her own.
Finally, after three or four days of searching – thank goodness she’s got the time off work to do it, though sadly Kieran hasn’t – she sees a ring she thinks she likes in a shop she trusts.
The ring might even be affordable, and Olivia is more than happy to share the cost with her new fiancé. This is the 1990s after all.
Kieran has other thoughts. In fact, being engaged seems to have brought out the 1950s’ gentleman in him that Olivia has always wondered about.
He shakes his head when she raises the subject. “Oh no, I have to buy the ring. I’m the one who asked you to marry me.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? This is the twentieth century. We’re both earning, and so surely we should both pay towards it.”
To her surprise, Kieran springs up and engulfs her with a hug. “But I want to buy you the engagement ring and I want you to wear it – that’s how we both contribute towards it.”
Olivia blinks. “Oh. Are you sure?”
“Definitely sure.”
“Ok,” she says with a smile. “Thank you. But in that case I hope the one I fall in love with is really expensive.”
He gives her his special look over the top of his glasses, and she pretends to be scared, but she’s used to it by now.
“Actually, I thought I was the one you were in love with,” he says.
Oh yes. This much is certainly true.
On the Friday before New Year’s Eve, she and Kieran take a trip to the nearby village to check out the jewellers there. Olivia isn’t holding out much hope of getting one she likes before tomorrow – when all her friends will be able to see it – but as they walk hand in hand down the road, Kieran tells her there is one ring he’s seen recently that she might like.
“You mean you’ve been looking already? Even before you asked me?”
“Of course.”
“But, darling, that’s almost like planning, and you hate planning! Were you so sure I’d say yes?”
His grip on her hand tightens. “No, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure at all. But I thought if I looked at rings, it might be more likely to come true. It worked, didn’t it? You said yes.”
Olivia laughs. “I was always going to say yes! You knew that – you must have done. I’d asked you in February, hadn’t I?”
“Ah,” says Kieran, retaining his usual male mystique. “That was different.”
In the shop of course, Olivia falls instantly in love with the ring Kieran has spotted – and the one she thought she liked originally vanishes into the ether. She more than likes this new ring – she loves it. The ring is 9 carat gold with a small oval emerald at the centre surrounded with diamonds. The green goes with her eyes and it’s perfect.
So perfect in fact that Olivia can’t wait for Kieran to buy it so she can put it on her finger and be really and truly engaged. Luckily, it fits her as if it’s been made for her alone and no alterations are needed. Once the deal is done, Kieran takes the box from the jeweller but then won’t let Olivia have it there and then, which she desperately wants to happen.
She assumes he’ll hand it over once they arrive home, which is only a ten or fifteen minute walk away so she won’t have long to wait.
Full of the joys of being a newly-engaged woman, she hurries along, chattering away about plans for the wedding and what they might do and when they might schedule it, and all that jazz. Halfway across the churchyard which is part of the shortcut across town, Olivia realises two things: firstly, her fiancé is no longer beside her, listening to her hopes and dreams; and secondly a woman she’s never seen before who is walking her dog up ahead is frantically waving at her and pointing to something behind that Olivia can’t see.
Olivia has never been the brightest candle in the box. When she turns round, she sees her fiancé fifty yards or so back, down on one knee holding the box in his hand. He’s decided to do the romantic thing and ask her properly again, with the essential prop, but sadly she’s not been aware of his absence at her side and so has carried on walking and chattering mindlessly … to no-one.
At once, she bounds back, accompanied by the laughter and excitement of the dog-walker, and shrieks, ‘Yes, of course, you idiot! I’ve not changed my mind!’
With that, she grabs the ring. Not the most gracious of proposal acceptances ever, but at least Kieran knows her mind and they have provided a lovely five minutes’ entertainment for the dog-walker. Wh
o will probably dine out on the story forever.
The very second Olivia and Kieran arrive home, Olivia phones her mother and tells her the good news. She also waves her ring finger at the phone, but this is well before the days of mobiles and instant photos and so does absolutely no good at all. Still, her mother and she being the kind of women they are, there is a lot of joyous shrieking and an equal amount of bouncing up and down on the stairs. Kieran, being the quiet man he is, disappears into the TV room and is not seen again before supper.
Interestingly enough, Olivia’s mother already half seems to know as she thought something had been up between the two of them at Christmas, and is just thrilled to have her happy suspicions confirmed. Which just goes to show, Olivia thinks, that you can keep secrets from the entire world, but one’s own mother is never fooled once.
Chapter Three: The Official Engagement
Olivia and Kieran decide to say nothing to anyone until the evening of the New Year’s Eve party they are both attending, and then actually see if people notice the ring without them having to say anything at all. A bit cheeky, maybe, but it might be interesting.
Just before they knock on the front door, Olivia tells Kieran that, of her three special friends, Jo, Anwen and Justine, it’s Jo who is sure to spot the ring as she has a real obsession with jewellery. Olivia is proved right. As soon as she sees Jo sitting in the living room, Olivia stands in front of her, drinking her wine in as flaunting a manner as she can do without looking as if she might be conducting a band. She doesn’t have to wait long … Within seconds, Jo’s eyes widen as she spots the additional jewellery on Olivia’s left hand and all hell breaks loose.
Soon, the whole party is focused on nothing but congratulating Olivia and Kieran and asking a myriad questions about their plans (which is scary but fun especially as they don’t actually have any plans). In addition, Anwen and Justine are sent out for more champagne, return with a crate or two, and the bubbly is well and truly flowing. It’s an amazing evening, all round, and one which neither Olivia nor Kieran will ever forget. It’s the engagement party they haven’t needed to organise. Which for party poopers like them is utter bliss.