Undertaking Love (21 page)

Marla fixed him with a measured stare.

‘Just quit it with the inquisition, will you? I’m fine.’

Jonny took a leisurely sip of his wine and ignored her plea. ‘I asked you a question this morning.’

Emily looked at Jonny non plussed as Marla shrugged non-committally.

‘Did you?’

‘I asked you if you loved Rupert.’

Emily’s head swivelled back to Marla, agog.

‘So?’ Marla folded her arms across her chest and glared at Jonny squarely across the table.

‘So, do you?’

The weight of both of their expectant stares proved too heavy. Marla slumped, elbows on the table and her face buried in her hands.

‘No. I’m fond of him, but I don’t love him. And no, I don’t want to marry him, either.’

Jonny rubbed her back, immediately contrite.

‘Poor baby, I knew it.’ He shot a pained look of horror over her head at Emily.

‘You have to tell him it’s off, darling, and sooner rather than later,’ Jonny advised, making Marla howl behind her fingers.

‘But why did you say yes?’ Emily whispered, fishing a tissue out of her massive tote bag and pushing it into Marla’s hands.

Marla lifted her head and ripped the tissue slowly into ribbons.

‘
Did
I? You were there. Did I
actually
say yes?’

Jonny and Emily exchanged troubled glances.

‘It sort of looked like you did, yeah. You nodded, and then you burst into tears,’ Emily said.

‘
I nodded
. You’re sure?’

‘’Fraid you did, sugar,’ Jonny confirmed.

‘And to think I thought it was all so romantic,’ Emily marvelled with wide eyes. ‘Are you sure? That you don’t love him, I mean?’

Marla took a good slug of wine and nodded.

‘He’s fun company and he makes me laugh. We have a good time together.’

She balled the shredded tissue up.

Emily’s face said all Marla needed to know.

‘He doesn’t make your heart miss a beat when he looks at you?’ Emily asked. ‘He doesn’t make you melt?’

Marla smiled sadly and patted Emily’s hand. ‘We can’t all be as lucky as you, Em.’

She registered the shadow that passed across her friend’s eyes.

‘Well, that’s that then. You can’t marry him if you don’t love him.’ Emily placed her other hand over Marla’s. ‘Marriage is hard enough when you
do
love each other, so it’d be a complete disaster if you don’t.’

‘Is everything okay with you and Tom?’ Marla asked, partly out of concern and partly because she badly wanted to change the subject.

Emily batted the question away with a wave of her hand. ‘We’re fine. Ignore me. It’s just hormones.’

Marla debated for a second before reaching for her handbag. She pulled out her diary, and extricated the note she’d found on Gabe’s desk from between its pages. Jonny and Emily stared at the innocuous little envelope in silence as Marla slid it towards the centre of the table.

‘There’s this, too.’

‘What is it?’ Emily asked.

‘It’s a note I never received.’

Marla took the card out of its envelope and passed it to Emily who, clearly confused, read it with a frown then handed it on to Jonny.

‘I found it by accident on Gabe’s desk the night that Bluey died,’ Marla said quietly.

‘I don’t understand …’ Emily shrugged, her face a picture of frustration.

‘No? Well I bloody do!’ Jonny burst out as he slammed the card down on the table a few seconds later. Marla chewed her lip and waited in silence to see if Jonny’s conclusion tallied with her own.

‘I knew that jumped-up twatbag couldn’t have come up with anything so thoughtful on his own!’

‘Tell me what’s going on!’ Emily hissed at them.

Marla placed a hand on Jonny’s arm to stop him from shouting again, then turned to Emily.

‘I think the note should have been attached to the fireworks.’

‘But Rupert gave you the firewo— Oh my god!’

Emily’s mouth dropped into a perfect ‘O’ as realisation dawned.

Jonny drummed his fingers on the tabletop in an attempt to control his temper. ‘Have you said anything to Rupert about this yet?’

Marla shook her head. ‘I only read it today.’

‘Good. Let me tell him. Or, better yet, let me smack his teeth down his throat for you.’

Marla covered Jonny’s tightly balled fist with her own hand, grateful to have him in her corner, even if he had temporarily morphed into Bruce Willis from the ‘Die Hard’ years.

‘I still don’t get it though …’ Emily muttered.

‘I don’t either, really,’ Marla said. ‘Rupert definitely gave me those fireworks himself. How did he get hold of them, if they were actually from Gabe?’

Emily shook her head with a perplexed look at Jonny. ‘Well, I know one thing for sure. Gabe wouldn’t have given them to Rupert to pass on, since they can’t stand the sight of each other.’

Marla nodded. She’d arrived at that same stumbling block herself.

Jonny, however, was streets ahead of both of them.

‘You’re right.
Gabe
wouldn’t
give them to Rupert. But you can bet your sweet ass that
Melanie
would,’ he said, slowly. They lapsed into silence and stared at each other.

‘Bitch,’ Jonny spat eventually.

‘But why would she take Gabe’s note off first?’

Jonny looked at Emily as if she were the village idiot.

‘Durr! Because she’s got the hots for him herself of course! Haven’t you noticed the way she moons over him?’

‘But why would Rupert not mention that they weren’t from him?’ Emily asked, her eyes flicking between Marla and Jonny.

Marla was silent – still turning the idea over in her head.

‘Because he’s a thieving opportunist shitbag. Why else?’

Marla cringed at Jonny’s typically harsh words. ‘Go easy, Jonny. Maybe he intended to tell me they were from Gabe, but then felt awkward when I was so thrilled.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Jonny laughed sourly. ‘Why are you determined to see the best in him?’

Marla shrugged. ‘I just know him better than you do. And anyway, since when did you become a fully paid up member of the Gabriel Ryan fan club?’

‘I’m not. I just don’t like people lying to you.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Emily asked, her chocolate eyes soft with sympathy.

Marla rubbed a hand across her forehead, then knocked what was left in her wine glass back in one go.

‘I don’t know yet. But one thing’s for sure. I’m not marrying Rupert.’

Marriage was number one on her ‘things not to do before I die’ list, so how the hell had she ended up with a bona fide fiancé? Let alone one who was already lying through his teeth before he’d even got a ring on her finger?

Over at Emily’s cottage, Tom unzipped the suit carrier that hung on the back of the spare bedroom door and felt around inside the jacket pocket of his linen wedding suit. It was still there, folded in half, just as it had been that night on the mantelpiece.

He clutched the pale green note and stared at it as if it might explode in his fingers.

The night he’d found it, he’d so wanted to destroy it, but something had held him back. Was today the day he would actually read it?

Was
any
day the right day to find out the real reason your wife planned to leave you?

His fingers touched the cool cotton of his jacket. If he reached into the pocket of the trousers, he knew he’d find powder soft Antiguan sand from the beach they’d married on. He’d never got around to having the suit dry cleaned, for fear that it would wash away some of the magical memories of that day.

Emily, barefoot and beautiful, an exotic flower tucked behind her ear. Of how she’d laughed at the way the wedding celebrant pronounced his surname, and how thrilled she’d been to finally share that name with him.

Of the love they’d made on that very same beach to consummate their marriage, beneath a blanket of stars so bright you could almost reach up to take one home as a souvenir.

He flipped the letter over again. He’d told Emily that he’d thrown it in the fire that night without reading it. He wished he had.

Did her really want to know what had driven Emily to the point of leaving him?

Did he want to rake it all up again, now that she was finally having a baby and they’d stepped back from the brink of disaster?

The baby.

He closed his eyes and sighed hard, the letter suddenly as lead-heavy as his heart. Inevitability swamped him. He already knew.

He traced his own name with his fingertip, scrawled across the front of the paper in Emily’s familiar round handwriting.

Today was the as good a day as any. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and opened the letter.

Dear Tom,

I’m so sorry that I’m not brave enough to do this face to face, but we seem to have lost the ability to talk to each other these days anyway, so maybe it’s for the best. I miss that so much. Talking, I mean. I miss
you
so much – even when you’re home, its like we’re strangers living under the same roof.

I’ve done something terrible, Tom, and it’s ripping me apart. I don’t even want to write it down because I know how much reading it will hurt you, but I have to because you deserve to know the truth.

I’ve slept with someone else. It was just once, and he means nothing to me, honestly, he doesn’t. I won’t try to make excuses, and I’m not asking for your forgiveness because I can’t forgive myself. I was just so desperately lonely, and he was kind to me. God, I wish I could wind the clock back and not do it, but life isn’t like that, is it?

I’m so sorry – for this, and for wanting a baby so much that I’ve let it rip our marriage apart. Jesus, Tom, how did it come to this?

You are the love of my life, it wasn’t supposed to end like this. I’m so ashamed of myself, and I won’t blame you if you decide that you can’t be with me anymore.

I’ve broken my own heart as well as yours, I’m sorry to the ends of the earth and back.

Love always,

Emily

x

‘Rupert, we need to talk.’

Hmm. Too clichéd.

‘Rupert, did you lie to me about the fireworks on July Fourth?’

Bad idea. Too confrontational.

‘Rupert. I don’t want to marry you.’

Too honest. Too true.

As she waited for Rupert to arrive at the chapel to take her to lunch, Marla ran through several other possible ways to open the conversation. Her stomach had been churning with nerves and questions had been buzzing around inside her head since she’d left Emily and Jonny in the pub last night.

The crunch of tyres on the gravel ratcheted her nerves up another notch, and she peeped out of the window just in time to see Rupert climb out of his sports car and cast a furtive look over towards the funeral parlour. As she watched, Melanie opened the door and gave Rupert a smug little wiggly finger wave, and Marla felt her temper rocket from a low simmer to totally furious in two seconds flat.

By the time Rupert waltzed through the chapel doors, she’d backtracked on her plan for a civilised discussion over lunch and decided to just get things over with here and now in the chapel.

‘Hey gorgeous.’ Rupert breezed in and flicked his hair back in that way that was really starting to get on her nerves.

‘Hey yourself,’ Marla said.

Something in her flat tone must have alerted him to incoming thunder clouds, because he dropped his keys on the nearest chair and pulled her into his arms.

‘You okay?’

He frowned as she ended his kiss a nano-second after it started and squirmed out of his embrace.

‘Not really.’

Marla watched his jaw work furiously as he tried to decide how to play things.

‘Bad morning at work?’ he tried.

She shook her head and sighed.

‘It’s not work, Rupert, it’s us.’

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. He ran a finger around his neckline to loosen his collar.

‘It’s lunch, isn’t it? You’re too busy. I’ll call and cancel, we can just walk down to the café and grab a sandwich if you like?’

‘It isn’t the lunch arrangements Rupert. It’s
us
.’

Marla repeated the ‘us’ more firmly this time to stop him from attempting to side step the issue again.

‘Okaaaaay.’ He dragged the word out as if he were trying to reason with a five year old. ‘What about us?’

She detected a note of irritation in his voice and tried not to rise to it.

‘I … I feel as if we’re rushing into things. You know, the wedding and all.’

He nodded slowly.

‘Riiiiight.’

He dragged that word out too, and Marla fought back the urge to slap him.

‘So we’ll slow it down, then. Get married later on. No big deal,’ he said brightly. ‘Grab your jacket, we’ll miss our table.’

Marla sucked in air and looked out of the window for a second before meeting his eyes again.

‘That’s the thing though, Rupert. I don’t want to get married – sooner
or
later.’

The spoilt schoolboy in him surfaced instantly.

‘But you said yes!’

‘No. I didn’t. You assumed it.’

‘Marla, we had a whole audience who would beg to differ! You can hardly back out now.’

His outrage would have been funny in any other situation.

‘Can’t I?’

‘No you bloody well can’t. You’ll make me look a total fool.’

‘That’s your main concern, is it?’

‘Don’t be stupid, I love you,’ he protested, and then for good measure, he added, ‘and you love me.’

‘I do?’

‘Well … don’t you?’

Marla bit her lip and frowned. She didn’t want to hurt him any more than was necessary, but this wasn’t the moment to pull any punches.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I do,’ she whispered.

Disbelief hit his face first, followed hot on the heels by self-righteous anger.

‘So you’ve been stringing me along then?’ He was like a petulant child.

‘No! I was fine with dating, but then you got all heavy and proposed.’ Marla knew her voice was rising but she couldn’t control it. ‘And for the record, I did
not
say yes!’