It Would Be Wrong to Steal My Sister's Boyfriend (32 page)

And Rose looked back at him with a kind of searing passion that could take paint off a canvas, and the two of them disappeared upstairs to Serena’s study for the best part of an hour, and Ben and I laughed and laughed about it, and said we expected that things would work out between the two of them.

Oliver wasn’t there, and nor was Nina. I’d have been happy enough to invite them, but they’d flown off to Hong Kong a couple of weeks before, which Oliver was pleased about because it meant he’d make heaps more money and pay heaps less tax, and Nina was delighted about because it was the East and therefore somehow more spiritual than London, and Benedict would become fluent in Mandarin.

Ty turned up looking as heart-stoppingly gorgeous as ever, without Olya, and fizzing with excitement. He told Ben and me that finally, after playing gigs to almost empty pubs for years, he’d had a breakthrough: a song he’d written had been bought by an ad agency to be used in a fabric softener commercial. How I kept a straight face I will never know. But then he went on to tell us that he’d given Olya the push.

“I tell you what, mate, something like this makes you realise what’s important,” he said to Ben. “Look at you, you’re settling down, like, stepping up to the plate, taking responsibility. I reckon it’s about time I…”

Then he caught sight of Claire emerging from the house, where she’d been giving moral support to Serena while she fed William and Verity, who were only a month old. Claire walked out into the sunshine, her long legs tanned and perfect beneath the hem of her orange dress, with Pers toddling along behind her, and Claire looked around and said something to Pers and squatted down on the grass and lifted her daughter up and kissed her, and shook her glossy hair and laughed, and Ty said, “Excuse me a second,” and raced off in her direction. I
looked at Ben and Ben looked at me, and I knew he was thinking exactly the same thing I was.

We watched as Ty jogged up to Claire and took her hand and gazed into her eyes in just the same way he always used to. But Claire didn’t gaze back. She listened to Ty for a while, quite gravely. Then she said something to him, laughed again and patted him on the cheek in a fond but totally unemotional sort of way. And Pers giggled and tried to stick her fingers up Ty’s nose, and the moment was over. Ty sat down on the grass with Pers while Claire wandered off to get a drink and talk to Dad about doing voice-overs on his new game.

Anyway, the funny thing happened right after Dad made his speech. I took a lovely gulp of champagne, and all of a sudden I was transported back to one hungover morning a few years ago when Ben and I had been to the Edinburgh Festival together, and I’d woken up on the floor of Rose’s student flat and seen a can of Irn Bru on the floor next to me, and taken a huge thirsty swig of it, only to find that someone had used the can as an ashtray the night before. My champagne tasted just like that, and I promptly turned green and vommed into the nearest ice bucket. Ben ushered me inside and said, “Ellie, do you think…” and I nodded queasily, realising that all Rose’s plans for our fabulous wedding would have to be put on hold, because there was no way she’d want to design things around a pregnant bride. Ruth and Duncan were there that day, and I’d been planning to ask them if they’d think about giving me my old job back, but Ben suggested I take a look at my contract at Black & White, and see what the maternity leave allowance is like, and I’m glad I did. I can’t wait to see Barri’s reaction when he finds out that I’m going to be starting a year off on full pay almost exactly twelve months after commencing my employment there, I really can’t. I may have to remind him that there’s no ‘I’ in ‘Team’.

And now for a sneak preview of Sohpie’s next novel,
A Groom With a View,
due to be published on June 20th…

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Last night of freedom

Mate
Just a quick one to say all the best on your last day as a single man. If your stag night was anything to go by, tomorrow is going to be one hell of a party! See you at noon – I’ll keep my hip flask handy and resist finishing the contents until my ushering duties are over. Shout if you need anything. Hope you get some kip tonight.
Nick

I don’t remember very much about the night it happened, because we were a bit pissed. That sounds so bad, doesn’t it? I know a proposal’s meant to be right up there in the high points of a girl’s life, along with the wedding it leads to, but there you have it – I was wankered and so was Nick. And neither of us can clearly remember, even now, exactly when he demanded to make an honest woman of me, popped the question, went down on one knee (actually, that was when he tripped up the stairs coming out of the Tube station), or asked for my hand in marriage.

Nick loves to quote some rock god idol of his who apparently once said, after some or other shameful rock god antics on stage at a gig, that everyone, from time to time, behaves badly and everyone, from time to time, gets drunk. I’m afraid that was us at Iain and Katharine’s wedding. Okay, there were no screaming groupies involved and no mic stand to wave around in a manner contrary to all health and safety guidelines, but we worked with what we had. We behaved as badly as we could have, really, considering it was your typical civilised London wedding.

Iain is Nick’s former business partner, and the two of them used to play in a band together before they got respectable and started a graphic design agency, and although they certainly didn’t set the world on fire, they were quite well thought of at one stage, opening for Snow Patrol back in 2004 (admittedly only at a tiny gig in a pub in Bournemouth, but still). Since then, Iain’s gone via more respectable to extremely respectable – the old Iain, with his waist-length hair and squat in Dalston, wouldn’t have stood a chance with Katharine; the new one, with his designer suits and penthouse in Shoreditch, married her.

In all the years I’d known him, Iain had never been single. First there were groupies who he’d take to bed, take to his gigs, then invariably cheat on and be dumped by amid screaming rows. Later there were work experience girls who he’d dazzle with expense-account lunches at Itsu, sleep with and then part from with some relief when their three-week stint at the agency ended. Then, about three years ago, Katharine came on the scene. She’s the marketing manager at Brightside.com, a toe-curlingly stylish interiors e-tailer that’s one of the agency’s biggest clients. I’m not sure if it was fear of losing the account or fear of losing Katharine, but Iain seemed to clean up his act and stop shagging around, and in due course he proposed. I liked Katharine – she was sweet and a bit kooky but had a will of iron and an impressive ability to get what she wanted.

Anyway, the point is that there was no expense spared at Iain and Katharine’s wedding. They hired the ballroom at The Mortimer. They had gulls’ egg canapés with gold leaf stuck to them. I overheard two girls talking in the ladies’ saying the flowers cost six thousand pounds, but they must have been joking, because of course no one spends that on flowers for a wedding. Do they?

There were two hundred of the bride and groom’s closest friends there, some of whom were Nick’s and my old mates from school and from the Deathly Hush days. And there was free-flowing Krug and lethal cinnamon mojitos (Nick had five. I counted). It was a bloody brilliant day, and by the time Nick and I sprinted for the last Jubilee Line train home, making it with seconds to spare, we were, as I’ve said, a bit the worse for wear.

“That was so cool,” I said, lifting my hair and fanning my sweating neck.

“Wicked,” agreed Nick, swaying slightly, out of synch with the motion of the train. “We’re never going to do it, right?”

Nick and I have always said marriage isn’t for us. When we first got together, when I was only sixteen, we said it was because we didn’t want to do anything that would make us in any way at all like our parents. Then when we got together the second time, Nick said that marriage was a bourgeois construct aimed at commodifying women and entrenching Judeo-Christian morality, and I agreed vehemently (then went off and googled what all that meant). Then after a few more years together, we’d bought our first flat and Nick had had his thirtieth birthday and we were fine as we were. Even if our relationship wasn’t perfect, what relationship is? We were happy and settled we saw no reason to change anything. We weren’t into soppiness and romance. We thought what we had worked just fine.

So all our friends had more or less given up asking, “Are you two going to be next?” at every single one of the weddings we’d been to that summer (and there had been lots; last time I counted I had seventeen hats).

“No chance,” I said to Nick, as the train pulled out of Southwark, sending him lurching off balance again. “Not a hovering batfuck.”

He grinned at me and I grinned back, and we moved together and had a proper full-on snog on the train, in front of everybody, until some teenagers shouted at us to get a room, and the sudden, jerking stop at Bermondsey almost sent us flying. We snogged some more on the escalator, and again when we stepped out of the station and the hot September night hit us like a sponge, and again when I stopped to take off my shoes because my toes felt like they were bleeding.

By the time we got upstairs to the flat, I was dizzy with desire for him. You know what it’s like, if you’ve been with someone for ages. Some days the only conversation you have is a one-liner about whose turn it is to take out the bins. There are weeks when you don’t have any physical contact more meaningful than a kiss goodbye in the morning and the warmth of their back against yours at night. And then there are times when you’re knocked sideways by lust, like Nick and I were that night.

Of course, he is absolutely gorgeous. Properly hot – but I’ve got so used to seeing him every day that sometimes I just don’t notice. That night, though, I was devouring the sight of him like someone on the 5:2 diet slavering at the window of Greggs. His dark hair is slightly wavy and always shiny and, back in his lead-guitarist days when he had it long, was considerably nicer looking than my own. His steely grey eyes still manage to be warm and smiley even though their colour is cold as a winter sky. Deep dimples press into his cheeks when he smiles his special, wicked grin that’s just for me. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, and his legs are all muscly from running.

It sounds like I’m showing off. I don’t mean to. I’m not some model-gorgeous stunner who automatically assumes she’ll get the best-looking guy, I’m just averagely pretty, if you don’t mind short girls, so it amazes me that I was able to pull Nick in the first place, let alone be his girlfriend for more than a decade. So that night I was truly swept away by how lucky I was to have him, and by the knowledge that he wanted me as much as I wanted him.

We ran up the stairs to our flat together, holding hands, and tumbled into the hallway, and Nick swept my hat off and whizzed it like a frisbee on to the kitchen table (he’s always had impressive aim). We didn’t even make it as far as the living room before he’d unzipped my dress and let it fall to the floor in a puddle of silvery satin. And you’ll appreciate the intensity of the moment when I tell you that I didn’t even consider saying, “That’s Anglomania! I need to hang it up or Spanx will sleep on it!” like I normally would.

(Spanx is our ginger cat. We couldn’t decide what to call him when we first got him, and we were in the middle of a heated argument about it when he came trotting into the room with a pair of my suck-it-all-in knickers, which he’d retrieved from the washing basket, in his mouth. And that settled it.)

Soon Nick’s jacket had joined my dress on the floor and we were both gasping with desire and laughter, our hands and mouths all over each other’s bodies. Nick and I have been together for ages, as I said, and you know how you sort of get into a routine? Not this time. This was filthy. At one point he… but that’s too much information. I will say that we fell of the sofa, which made us laugh so much I could hardly breathe, and then we went upstairs to bed and service, as they say, resumed. It was totally amazing, the way sex sometimes is when you’ve had a lot to drink and have no inhibitions left to speak of.

And that’s pretty much all I can remember. I suppose there must have been a moment – maybe when I was on top of him, my hair falling in a tangle over his face, his hands gripping my waist; maybe when we were lying together afterwards, sweaty and sated – when one of us said it. Or perhaps it was more of a team effort – I quite like to imagine that.

Me: You know, I bloody love you.

Him: You’re not too shabby either, Pip.

Me: Iain and Katharine looked really happy today.

Him: They did. You know, you don’t make me suicidally miserable either.

Me: I know what you mean. Some days, being with you is almost bearable.

Him: So this marriage malarkey…

Me: Maybe it’s not actually…

Him: Such a bad idea…

Me: So should we…?

Him: So will you…?

Kind of like that. You get the idea. Spontaneous. A sort of joint proposal. But unfortunately I can’t say for sure what happened, because I genuinely don’t remember a thing about that night beyond our tumble off the sofa and stumble up the stairs, and the rush of love and pleasure flooding over me.

What I do remember is waking up the next day with about as awful a hangover as I’ve ever had in my life, cuddling up to Nick’s warm bare back for comfort and kissing his neck, and him saying sleepily, “Did what I think happened last night really happen, Pippa?”

And me saying, “Oh fuck, I’m going to be sick,” and legging it to the bathroom just in time.

Like I said, that’s Nick and me. A right pair of old romantics.

Foolishly, I’d arranged to meet Callie that day for breakfast and I was already late, so I didn’t have time to question Nick further about what had or hadn’t taken place between us the previous night. I showered at top speed, left my hair to dry on its own (even though I knew it would mean my head would look like the aftermath of an explosion in a cotton wool factory by lunchtime), dragged on a pair of jeans and went out, bashing out a quick text to Callie as I ran to the bus stop to tell her I’d be there in half an hour.