The Wedding Pact

by Isla Gordon

  ‘You went on a date with him?’

  ‘No, it absolutely wasn’t a date.’ The last thing she needed was to mess this all up by trying to date the man who’d agreed to move in with her.

  Bel got out her phone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ August asked.

  ‘I’m texting Kenny to tell him I’ll be in late today because my friend is having a nervous breakdown.’

  August batted the phone out of her hand, stopping Bel from contacting Kenny, her dental nurse and friend. ‘I am not having a nervous breakdown; I am actually very happy with the decisions I’ve made.’

  ‘Back it up then, and tell me what’s going on.’

  August took a breath and explained how both she and Flynn had arrived on Elizabeth Street early, how he’d just flown in from Japan and was desperate to just get some accommodation sorted before starting his new, really busy job, and about how the place was perfect for both of them, so it made sense to just rent it together.

  ‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ declared Bel when August had finished.

  ‘Nope, that’s everything.’

  ‘No … ’ Bel leaned forward and studied her friend’s face. ‘No, you’re leaving something out, I can tell by your twitchy eyebrows.’

  ‘I do not have twitchy eyebrows, I am an actress and I have full control over my face, thank you very much.’

  ‘Tell that to your eyebrows. What’s going on?’

  August hesitated. ‘Well, there is one thing … ’ Bel waited, without saying a word. ‘It’s only a small thing, but there is a reason it has to be him that I move in with.’

  ‘I knew it. I knew that nothing is ever just easy breezy with you. What’s the reason?’

  ‘We just have to, very occasionally, just for show, no big deal, pretend to be … um … married.’

  Bel sighed. ‘You and Casanova have to pretend to be married?’

  ‘Yes, but only to the landlady.’

  ‘Oh, good, I thought it would be to someone integral to the contract, like the postman!’

  ‘All right, Sarcastic Sue.’

  ‘What do you mean you have to pretend to the landlady that you’re married? Why do you need to do that?’

  ‘Because I heard her telling her son she only wanted to rent to a married couple therefore this was our only way in. It was this or both of us be homeless.’ August shrugged.

  ‘Homeless? You haven’t even handed in the notice to your current flat yet.’

  ‘But Elizabeth Street is my real home, I can feel it.’ August spent the next couple of minutes explaining to Bel and her rolling eyeballs all of the arguments she’d put forward to Flynn only the day beforehand out on the balcony, of why it wasn’t worth fighting the landlady, and how the arrangement was advantageous to both of them. By the end, Bel was shaking her head, but smiling.

  ‘This scheme is so typically August,’ she said. ‘And so is stubbornness, so I know I’m not going to change your mind.’

  ‘You’re not,’ August said, firmly.

  ‘And I won’t try, you’re obviously happy.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re finally going to live in your dream home.’

  ‘I am,’ August replied, sighing softly, relaxing her shoulders. ‘This feels like the start of something for me.’

  Bel reached across and squeezed a sticky hand over August’s. ‘And Flynn really is a nice guy? You aren’t just letting the dream home cloud your judgement?’

  ‘He really is nice. He seems kind, and funny, and clever. I think you’ll like him.’

  ‘Okay, then, I’m happy for you.’ Bel smiled and checked her watch before pulling out some cash. ‘Listen, I’d better get going for work, but let’s catch up again soon. And I want to meet this husband of yours.’

  August gave her friend a thumbs up, and then lingered in the cafe a while longer after she’d gone. She wasn’t letting the house cloud her judgement; she was sure of it. Flynn really did seem like he’d make a great flatmate. Though if she was honest with herself, really honest, she probably would have shacked up with Charles Manson if he was residing in the house on Elizabeth Street.

  Chapter 18

  Flynn

  Flynn had a recurring tension headache that pulsed at his temples every time he gave himself thirty seconds to stop for a breather on his first day. He felt like a rookie, a fresh graduate, rather than someone with close to eight years working in law. The still-present jet lag, worsened by the still-present lack of sleep in his hot hotel room, the mountain of corporate policies and jargon for his new firm to learn, the volume of new names to remember and the knowledge he wasn’t going to be getting a day off for nearly two weeks thanks to the conference at the weekend all culminated in this little gift to himself: the headache.

  ‘It’s a lot to take in,’ said Shelly, his new manager, presenting him with a coffee he hadn’t asked for but accepted gratefully. ‘Is everything at your desk working okay?’

  ‘Yes, seems great,’ Flynn replied, clearing his throat, pasting on a smile, and pushing acknowledgement of the pain quite literally to the back of his head.

  ‘Bath must seem pretty different to life in Tokyo,’ she smiled.

  ‘It’s definitely a culture shock,’ Flynn laughed. But possibly not for the reason Shelly was thinking. Sure, Tokyo was a million times faster paced than this cathedral city in England, but right now he felt a lot more frazzled than he ever did in Japan. It would be different when he was settled, in his own place, caught up on sleep. He thought back to his apartment that he’d shared with Yui, with its calming décor, clean lines and tranquil lighting. Oh to be back there, napping on the window seat under a soft, cloudy sky, listening to the gentle rain on the glass.

  He wondered if Yui was there now, on the window seat, dressed in her light grey dressing gown that she always wore. She said she might keep living there even when he was gone, but part of him wondered if she was just saying that to spite him.

  Shelly walked away, leaving him to continue navigating his way through the company intranet. And it was at that moment his phone flashed up with a text.

  A smile spread across Flynn’s face. He hadn’t noticed that she’d done this when he’d given August his phone at the end of dinner yesterday, to put her number into his contacts. She’d named herself ‘The Wife’.

  ‘Still want to live with me? In other words, do you have enough jet lag brain to make you still want to do this?’

  He replied with, ‘Yes, to both. And you?’

  August replied with four house emojis, four wedding ring emojis, and a gif of Chandler from Friends doing a happy dance. He took that as a yes.

  In truth, he was a little apprehensive about moving in with a stranger, especially one he had to act like he was married to should the landlady ever come around. But this person had a way of bringing smiles to his face and bubbles of laughter from out of him, which felt like an energiser in this upheaval of a time.

  Now he just had to get through the next two weeks in that hot hotel room and he would be in his very own home.

  The days were busy, full of learning on the job, conference preparation and coffee-fuelled mornings, and, thankfully, those two weeks rushed by like a fast-moving river after a heavy rainfall.

  Chapter 19

  August

  August spent the fortnight packing up her flat, removing traces of James, and having a clear-out. Come the weekend before the big move on Monday, her abode was wonderfully organised chaos. On one side of the living room (if you could even call it a room, it was sort of a snug with a kitchenette at one end) were bags of clothes, books and objects that hadn’t ‘sparked enough joy’ during her Marie Kondo-style clear out. She was proud of those bags.

  On the other side of the living room were all the boxes of clothes, books and objects, that, apparently, did spark joy. And so she’d kept them. Though looking at the shell lamp teetering perilously out of the top of one of them, she wasn’t sure she’d been entirel
y ruthless enough. And then on the floor, like a scene from the latter half of Home Alone, were little mounds of ‘stuff’. Stuff that didn’t fit into a neat category and so didn’t belong to a box. Stuff that was an odd shape. Stuff August couldn’t decide if she loved or actually hated. Stuff that was tiny and looking to be swept up together with other tiny things in a pretty pouch of some kind to be forever left in the back of a drawer because who knows what to do with tiny things like that.

  Her doorbell buzzed and August sighed, picking up the smallest box from the pile and tiptoeing over her things.

  She opened the door to James. Seeing him again was … well, what was it exactly? She had expected in this moment to feel a rush of sadness, or embarrassment, or something akin to the feelings she once held for him. But although it was strange not to reach for him or kiss him, she was missing a longing to do so.

  ‘All right?’ he asked, looking like he wanted to be done with this as fast as possible.

  Relax, she wanted to say to him. This isn’t some ruse to try and get you back together with me. ‘Hi, James, thanks for stopping by, here are your things.’

  He peered past her into her flat. ‘Are you moving?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘To that house at the top of the hill?’

  August laughed a little. ‘On Elizabeth Street, yes.’

  ‘Without me?’

  She looked around. ‘Well, I don’t think I’m moving there with you. I’m pretty sure that’s why we broke up.’

  James nodded, lingering on her doorstep.

  ‘Are you okay?’ August asked.

  ‘Yep,’ he said, taking the box. ‘Thanks for this. See you later.’ With that, he left, and August found herself wondering if Flynn was that weird.

  Then she asked herself, Why are you comparing Flynn to James?

  Chapter 20

  August

  It was move-in Monday and August was on Elizabeth Street before the sun had even had time to reach the top of the sky. Having enlisted the help of Steve and Bel to help her shift her boxes of stuff over before they started work, including the beautiful, and ginormous, jade velvet armchair she’d inherited from her grandma, she was now seated upon her throne on the opposite pavement, in front of the wall, gazing lovingly towards her new home.

  A curtain twitched inside the building, and was then flung open. A blonde woman visibly jumped from behind the glass on seeing a stranger in an armchair staring up at her apartment.

  August shuffled to try and make herself appear less creepy, and looked instead down the street, searching for signs of Flynn. When she glanced back towards the window, the curtains were firmly closed again.

  There were four storeys to the townhouse: a top floor, with windows that angled themselves towards the sky and had a sort of stone balcony running across in front of them, then three levels of big, rectangular windows. Below that were the whispers of a basement level, peeping out from behind the eyelashes of the wrought iron railing. August didn’t know if that was a whole separate flat, or part of the ground floor dwellings. The flat she and Flynn were moving into was one floor up, nestled in the middle. It currently had sunshine beaming against the panes of glass.

  The front door of the house opened a crack, and the blonde woman poked her head out. ‘Hello?’ she called towards August, sitting with her belongings.

  August scrambled from the armchair and waved. ‘Hello! Sorry, I’m not a weirdo, I’m just moving in today.’

  ‘Are you August?’

  ‘I am!’ She waved again, for good measure. ‘I’m just waiting for my – my – my – Flynn, he’s bringing the rest of, um, our things.’

  ‘Great,’ said blondie-head, and her head disappeared back in the door, only to reappear – along with the rest of her – a moment later, carrying two mugs, a bag of caster sugar dangling from her mouth. She set the mugs down on top of one of August’s boxes and said, ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Oh, um, no, thank you. Thank you so much!’

  ‘No problem,’ said the woman, who August could now see was probably in her forties, athletic looking with a tan, dressed in floppy yoga pants and a Detroit Red Wings T-shirt. ‘I’m Callie, your neighbour. I live up there with my mum.’

  ‘Your mum isn’t Mrs Haverley, is she?’ August joked, checking that not everybody she ran into at Number Eighteen, Elizabeth Street was one of Mrs Haverley’s offspring.

  ‘No, no, though they get on like a house on fire, those two.’

  August couldn’t imagine the grumpy Mrs Haverley having a roaring time with anyone, but okay.

  Callie continued. ‘Mrs H’s great, she let me move into Mum’s spare room about a year ago after my marriage broke down. Mum needs a little extra help anyway, though she’d be pissed off if she heard me admitting that to you, so it’s our little secret. Mrs H lives on the top floor.’

  August looked up, surprised, shielding her eyes from the sunlight and looking at the top level of the house, with its skyward-windows. ‘Oh. I didn’t realise she actually lived in the building.’ Oh no. This could make things a lot more awkward than she’d promised Flynn.

  ‘Oh yeah, she loves this place. We all want her to move down to the ground floor though and swap with the couple that live there. They’re more than happy to switch, at least they say they are, and Mrs H could do with less bloody steps to climb every day, but she’s stubborn as anything. Don’t tell her I told you that.’

  ‘Okay,’ laughed August.

  At that moment, Flynn appeared, walking up the hill towards them. He rolled a large suitcase behind him and wore a bulging rucksack on his back. Compared to August’s great pile of clobber he looked like he was just going on a weekend away.

  August put down her mug and reached for Flynn, pulling him straight into a hug and whispering in his ear, ‘Go with it.’

  ‘Hi, darling!’ she then said out loud.

  Flynn looked from August to Callie and replied, ‘Hello … sweetheart.’

  ‘Callie, this is Flynn, Flynn, this is one of our neighbours, Callie.’ She squeezed Flynn’s hand. ‘Callie lives in the flat above ours, and Mrs Haverley lives on the top floor. In there. In our building.’

  Flynn followed her gaze up to the top floor and then blinked at Callie before pulling himself together and sticking out his hand. ‘Hello, I’m Flynn.’

  ‘Great to meet you,’ Callie replied. ‘Would you like a cuppa? Or a hand bringing in your things?’

  ‘I’m fine, I just filled up on coffee,’ Flynn replied, with an easy smile. August watched him, happy to see his face again, glad it was still as friendly as she remembered and it hadn’t just been a trick of the light across his jet-lagged five o’clock shadow.

  ‘And we can manage bringing these things in,’ August added. ‘I guess we didn’t have a lot of stuff between us, once it’s all in boxes.’

  ‘Did Mrs H let the flat to you furnished?’

  ‘Partially furnished,’ August answered.

  Callie nodded. ‘Makes sense. The older couple that lived here before made a move to a retirement village near their kids, which probably would have had some furniture in already. They still went off with a whole removal van though.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing what’s been left,’ August said, excited to get inside and start flinging her colourful wares about the place.

  ‘Before we do,’ said Flynn, putting an arm around his ‘wife’. ‘Let’s just take a moment to take it all in.’

  Callie picked up her tea and the sugar bag and said, ‘That’s my cue to head back inside, I was just about to force my mum to take a yoga sesh with me so I’ll catch up with you love birds later. August, just pop the mug outside my door when you’re done.’ She waved at them and disappeared back into the house, and Flynn and August turned, arm in arm, to look out across the view.

  ‘So our landlady lives here in the building?’ Flynn asked quietly, glancing towards August with an amused smile.

  ‘Apparently so,’ she agreed. ‘I’m sorry, I
didn’t realise. It’ll be okay though, right? How often do people run into their neighbours anyway?’

  ‘Well, we just ran into one and we haven’t even moved in yet. So what are we doing, pretending to everyone that we’re married, or asking everyone else to pretend to Mrs Haverley?’

  ‘I don’t think we should ask anyone else to lie,’ August replied, chewing on her lip. ‘Let’s just not make a big deal of it to anyone else. If we just act like close friends who are a bit touchy-feely, will they really know any different? I mean, my friend Bel and her fiancé have been together for years and it’s not like I’m always catching them snogging, and they don’t talk dirty to each other when I’m there.’

  ‘Friends who are touchy-feely?’ he clarified, and laughed.

  ‘In front of other people,’ August stated, firmly.

  They made their way in through the door and up the stairs to the flat, murmuring quietly about the small fly in the ointment, and August was about to open their new door when a man stepped out wearing a baseball cap and a hoodie, looking down at his phone. August shrieked, causing him to drop his phone. He looked up, startled, and she realised it was Abe.

  ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry!’ she said. He looked so different from the stuffy, suited Abe they’d met two weeks ago. This was off-duty Abe, she guessed.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, a little bewildered. He cleared his throat, bringing himself back to the ‘Business Abe’. ‘Just doing a final check that the lights were all working, before I catch a train back to London. Again. I wasn’t expecting you here so early.’

  ‘Oh, no problem, sorry about that,’ August said, and reached behind her to hold Flynn’s hand, hoping Abe hadn’t heard anything they’d been saying.

  ‘That’s okay, I’ll leave you to it.’ He nodded a smile to both of them and high-tailed upstairs.

  When he’d gone they stepped into the apartment, both being hit by the wonderful light streaming in through the windows again.

  ‘Is this okay?’ August asked Flynn. ‘All this, I mean? I’m sorry it’s more complicated than we – I – thought it would be.’