The Proposal (2 page)
Steeling herself, she began to write. Now was not the time for regrets or doubt. Old age was about doing the things you had always wanted to do, about tying up loose ends, before time ran out.
No, she was absolutely right to be here. Absolutely right to do this. She handed her form to the classifieds woman, paid her money and, after confirming when the advert would run, picked up her bag and left the office. She glanced at her watch. It was not even four thirty in the afternoon. She had things to plan, phone calls to make, and only a few hours left in the day to do it all.
2012
‘He’s going to propose tonight, I can just feel it.’
Amy Carrell looked across the kitchen at her friend Nathan Jones.
‘And what makes you so sure?’ she said, picking up three plates and expertly balancing them on one arm. ‘If he was whisking me off to Paris, then I might be suspicious. But we’re going to an office party – not exactly what you’d call romantic.’
Nathan rolled his eyes.
‘Are you kidding me? It’s Christmas, darling, and the party’s at the Tower of London. At night! It’s what I would call the very essence of romance.’
‘Nathan, they used to behead people at the Tower of London . . .’
‘Correct. Anne Boleyn for one. Apparently it took several attempts because she had a very small neck.’
‘As I said. Not exactly romantic,’ grinned Amy, pushing through the double doors of the kitchen and into the roar of the dining room at the Forge Bar and Grill, one of the more fashionable eating houses on Upper Street in Islington, north London. She moved with the grace of a ballerina, swaying between tables and deftly positioning the plates in front of the diners. Tonight Amy didn’t need to remember who was having the squash risotto and who was having the escalope – everyone was having turkey. This was the sixth Christmas party she had done in the last week, and they weren’t getting any better.
‘Oi, love!’
She jumped as someone slapped her bum.
‘Bring us out another bottle of the fizz, eh?’ yelled a red-faced man, leering up at her. ‘And what about your phone number too, eh?’
‘I will send the sommelier over for you, sir,’ she answered, forcing a smile.
‘Ooh, a sexy American,’ he laughed, pinpointing Amy’s accent. ‘Why don’t you come and join us for a glass of champagne? Maybe after hours, eh?’ he added as Amy fled back to the kitchens.
‘Groper, table two,’ she said to Nathan. Her friend just nodded and peered through the porthole in the kitchen door. ‘Pink cheeks, white shirt?’
‘You got it. Total sleazeball.’
‘Don’t worry, I suspect his shirt is going to be bright red when he leaves here. I feel a wine-related accident coming on.’
‘Nut roasts!’ screamed a voice. They turned as a dishevelled woman crashed through the door. Cheryl, the Forge’s owner, had a heart of gold but swore like a trooper and was not a woman to be crossed when she had a scowl on her face like now.
‘I got three arseholes giving me crap on table six; say they need their nut roasts asap or they’re walking.’
‘Sorry, I’ll get on it,’ said Amy, moving towards the serving hatch, but Nathan held up his wrist, tapping his watch meaningfully. ‘I’ll deal with the veggies, you better skedaddle.’
‘Where are you going?’ said Cheryl, frowning.
‘It’s Daniel’s party, remember.’
‘Jeez, Amy. You only just got here.’
Thanks to an audition running seriously behind time, she had been thirty minutes late for her shift and Cheryl hadn’t let her forget it all day.
‘I’ll come in early tomorrow.’
‘You’ll do more than that. I need someone to take a double shift tomorrow. Think of the tips and tell me you’ll do it.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Amy, knowing she needed the money.
‘Off you go then. Go, go,’ said Cheryl, shooing Amy away with both hands. ‘Want to use the flat to change?’
Amy smiled gratefully as her boss pushed her hand into her jeans pocket, pulled out a jangling set of keys and threw them at her.
‘He better bloody well had propose after this,’ Cheryl shouted after her as Amy grabbed her bag and vanished up the stairs.
Inside the pub’s top-floor flat, Amy looked at herself in the mirror and sighed. Her light blonde hair was all over the place, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the kitchen and – God, she sniffed her blouse – she stank of goose-fat potatoes. She looked longingly at the little shower cubicle, but there was no time for that. No time for anything, really.
Unzipping the bag, she emptied the contents on to the bed. Two crumpled dresses fell out, tangled up with heels, a hairbrush and her make-up. The first dress was a black knee-length shift she had found in a charity shop, the second rust-coloured and covered in sequins, bought in the summer sales for an occasion just like this one. It wasn’t particularly well-made – there were sequins already floating around the bottom of her bag like little lost pennies – but there was no doubt it was a knockout look-at-me dress. Considering her options, she wondered what image she wanted to project tonight. Sexy and irresistible? Or did she want sophisticated, a woman of the world, good wife material?
Back in the kitchen, she had mocked Nathan’s suggestion, and two days earlier she would have had absolute conviction that Daniel Lyons, her boyfriend of little more than one year’s standing, was more likely to fly to the moon than get down on bended knee. But that was before she had gone rummaging around his sock drawer and seen a duck-egg-blue gift box tucked away among the neat balls of fabric – a Tiffany gift box. It had been too tempting to ignore it, but before she’d had further opportunity to examine the size and shape of its contents, Dan had come back into the bedroom and she’d had to slam the drawer shut.
She hadn’t been alone in his bedroom since, but it had sent her giddy with excitement and she had tried to read hidden meaning into every comment, every affectionate gesture he’d made since. ‘Dress up,’ he’d said about tonight’s party. And she was certain that he’d been a little anxious about something, which for someone as poised and confident as Daniel was very unusual indeed.
With twenty minutes to get to the Tower, she held one dress up against herself and then the other.
What do you wear for a night that just might change your life for ever?
she thought, staring at her reflection in the mirror. For a split second she allowed herself to imagine him slipping a sparkling solitaire on her ring finger in the creamy moonlight. They’d take a picture of themselves with her camera phone and she’d post it on Facebook to show to all their friends. At some later, unspecified time, it would be shown to their children and be smiled at wistfully in their old age. It would be a forever photo – an image you’d remember and talk about for many years to come and one for which you wanted to look your very best.
‘Screw it,’ she whispered, quickly pulling on the sequinned dress and leaning into the mirror to tie up her hair. The dress was very short and tight and she did wonder if there’d be any sequins left by midnight, but sexy had to be better than looking like someone’s mum, she thought, throwing the shift dress back on the bed.
She slipped on her heels and ran out of the pub, hearing a wolf-whistle from Nathan before she exited on to the street, where a black cab pulled up almost immediately.
‘Tower of London,’ she breathed to the driver as she slammed the cab door. ‘And don’t go down City Road, it’s always crazy at this time.’
Amy didn’t really have any idea if City Road was mental or even if the cabbie would have gone that way, but she always tried to say something to imply she knew London inside out, otherwise the driver would hear her American accent and immediately think ‘Tourist!’ and add a zero to the price – a zero she definitely couldn’t afford. She sank back into the seat and watched the little red numbers tick around on the meter, resisting the urge to open her bag and check the lining for stray twenty-pence pieces – after all, this was a cab ride she could barely afford.
For a brief moment, Amy allowed herself to think about what Nathan’s premonition might mean. How becoming Mrs Amy Lyons would change her life for ever, because the reality was that it would change everything. No more taking double shifts at the Forge to scrape together the rent for her tiny Finsbury Park studio; no more auditions, praying that someone would finally give her a job in a chorus line; no more stumbling from date to date hoping she wasn’t making a complete idiot of herself; no more rooting around sock drawers searching for validation that someone actually loved her.
‘Blimey, Tower’s lit up like a Christmas tree,’ said the cabbie, sliding his window back as they turned on to Lower Thames Street. Ahead of them there was a queue of sleek cars and people spilling on to the street in black tie.
‘Special night is it tonight, love?’
‘I hope so,’ she grinned, leaning forward and handing him the only twenty-pound note in her purse.
She left the cab and walked down the cobbled road towards the gatehouse. Wow, she thought, stopping and looking at the ancient building, artfully floodlit against the pitch-black sky. Her family and friends had all been surprised when she’d announced that she was leaving New York for London to take a job with Blink, a physical theatre performance group that had transferred from Broadway to the West End two years earlier.
No one close to her back home had ever left the United States – not even for a holiday. I mean, why go to see the Alps when they had amazing snowy peaks of their own? Why bother with the Loire valley when they could visit Napa for the price of an internal flight? Her dad particularly was of the mindset that if it hadn’t happened in New York’s Five Boroughs, it didn’t happen. But Amy had always been fascinated by England, by London – its history, its culture, its majesty, the fact that kings and queens and generals and ladies in their huge skirts had walked across this very spot – so while she had been nervous about leaving her New York life behind her, now she wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to go home
.
She handed over her invitation and hurried inside – the wind was cutting right through the thin dress despite her coat and she didn’t want any more sequins to get blown off.
‘The FO, miss?’ asked an old man in a dark uniform.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The FO, you are here for the Foreign Office dinner?’
‘Oh, yes, yes I am,’ she stammered, feeling suddenly very self-conscious. Didn’t she look like she should be going to the Foreign Office party? she thought, trying to pull the fabric of her dress a little further down her thighs. She glanced at the man again and could see that he was simply trying to help, make sure she didn’t get lost. He gestured to her right.
The party was being held in the Pavilion in the moat area of the grounds. It was a spectacular space, the grey-white Tower walls rearing up behind it spotlit with purple neon. There were hundreds of people there already and she looked around feeling vulnerable and lost. She texted Daniel and went to look at the big table plans in front of her.
‘Look at you,’ said a voice as she felt a hand snake around her waist.
Turning round, she saw Daniel, handsome in a single-breasted dinner suit, standing out like a movie star in the more ordinary-looking crowd.
‘You like?’ she said, feeling suddenly happy and in the party spirit. Growing up, Amy had never been particularly confident of her own looks. Her hair had a tendency to frizz, especially in the humid New York summers, and a slight overbite gave her a look of Liv Tyler on a good day, but most of the time made her paranoid that she was just a bit goofy.
But standing next to Daniel Lyons made it impossible not to feel part of the beautiful crowd.
He leant in towards her ear. ‘I want to put you over my shoulder and carry you home to bed, except my parents might not be too happy about it if I went missing in action.’
‘Parents?’ she stammered, moving a fraction away from him.
He looked at her with his bright blue eyes.
‘I didn’t know they were coming until today. And they’re apparently on our table, but don’t worry, I can do a bit of switcheroo with the place cards if we get there in time.’
‘Maybe try putting us at opposite ends of the Pavilion.’
A slight frown creased the space between his brows.
‘Come on, they’re not that bad.’
It was her turn to feel piqued, remembering a particularly uncomfortable afternoon at the polo, in the middle of summer, when she had first met Vivienne and Stephen Lyons. Amy still wasn’t sure what had upset her more. That Daniel had only introduced Amy to them as his ‘friend’, or the fact that Mr and Mrs Lyons hadn’t thought she was sufficiently important to say more than two words to her for the rest of the day.
‘How was your day?’
‘Good. I had an audition.’
‘Sweetheart, I’d forgotten. How did it go?’
‘Well, I think. It’s being choreographed by Eduardo Drummond, who is the hot new thing in modern dance, and I think it’s going to go big and I got the feeling he really liked me . . .’
‘Well, it certainly is a night for celebration, isn’t it?’ He smiled, waving across the room to a friend who had caught his attention.