Always and Only You

Chapter Sixty-Seven

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Present Day

Simon arrives, as promised, for a visit the following weekend. By that time, the walls of the back bedroom are painted a lovely bluish-grey, and Gil has moved in there. I have been painting every afternoon instead of having a nap. I find the swish of the brush over the paper soothing, even though my passion far outstrips my talent. If it’s fine, I paint on the roof, and if it’s cold or rainy, I set up the easel Gil found me in the corner of the living room, where I get light from both of the long, horizontal windows.

Simon arrives as he usually does, with a fanfare of movement and noise. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s always seemed to bring more light, more colour, into any room he enters. He presents me with a huge bunch of flowers, and hauls me into his arms and spins me round.

Simon is keen on going out to the Ferryboat Inn, where he might bump into old friends, but I can’t face it on a Saturday evening, so Gil cooks and we choose a film to watch. I fall asleep before the end and crawl off to bed while the guys pick another one full of car chases and explosions. When Simon eventually comes to bed, I don’t even stir.

I get up around seven, hoping he might join me for a cup of tea and we can have a chance to reconnect after only seeing each other face to face a handful of times in the last month or so. But Simon snores on until almost ten, and then insists we all go out for brunch at the open-air café near the jetty. I won’t lie: sausage sandwiches taste amazing with a side order of salty river air, but I feel restless, knowing the minutes are ticking away until he leaves again.

Just as Simon is paying the bill, a call comes through on my mobile. I get up to take it, wandering through the café and stopping on the narrow road outside.

‘Hello, is that Erin?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is Sandra from the Royal Marina Hotel. Sorry to call at the weekend, but I had a feeling you wouldn’t want to wait until Monday to hear this news … We’ve had a cancellation.’

‘You have?’

‘Yes. The call came through just half an hour ago. We have an opening on the sixteenth of November and it’s yours if you want it.’

I blink. ‘I … I don’t know what to say.’

Sandra laughs, clearly delighted to be delivering this news. ‘We need to know if you want to book it fairly quickly, of course, otherwise we’ll offer it to someone else.’

‘How long have we got?’ I say, my pulse trotting a little. It’s not just the venue, is it? There are other things to organize too, and we need to make sure we can get all our ducks in a row for the same day.

‘Normally, we’d say forty-eight hours, but you can have until Saturday morning.’

‘Thank you,’ I say, and I genuinely mean it. The hotel has been so understanding and I think they may have bumped us up the queue a little bit because they’ve felt so sorry for us.

‘No problem! Have a nice Sunday,’ and Sandra rings off, leaving me to break the news to my fiancé.

I wait until we get back to Heron’s Quay, needing the familiarity of the surroundings to ground me. When Simon heads towards my little suite of rooms, I hurry after him.

‘That call …’

He picks up his overnight bag from the armchair and pops it on the bed. ‘Uh-huh?’

‘It was the Royal Marina. We’ve got our cancellation.’

Simon unzips his bag, then raises his head to look at me.

‘We can be married by the end of the year if we want.’ I feel a quiver of butterflies in my stomach as I say this. Why am I nervous? We should be laughing and hugging and jumping around the room together.

‘That’s great,’ he says.

‘Yes.’

Still, neither of us moves. Neither of us smiles.

‘I’m worried, though …’ I begin as Simon opens the wardrobe, takes a shirt out, and folds it haphazardly before stuffing it in his bag. Suddenly I’m gripped by all the fears he voiced a few months ago: that I’m not ready, that’ll it’ll be too much. I’m only planning on getting married once in my life and I really don’t want to limp through the day, too wiped out to enjoy it. ‘Can we take some time to go through it all? I really need to process it out loud.’

Simon comes around the bed and kisses the wrinkled skin between my brows. ‘Of course.’ And then he gathers his toiletries and stuffs them into his bag.

I glance towards the little living room. ‘I can make us a cup of tea—’

‘You mean now?’

‘Well, when else?’

Simon walks over to me and plants a kiss on my forehead. ‘I was hoping to get away in the next thirty minutes. Try to beat the traffic, you know? If I don’t hit the M25 before three, it’s going to be manic.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’ll call you … we can thrash it out over the phone. Video call if you like, as long as the Wi-Fi’s good enough?’

I nod. I don’t think anyone has to worry about the Wi-Fi signal in a house that Gil owns. ‘Should be. What time shall I call? Will seven give you enough time to get settled after the journey?’

Simon jams his underwear in the front pocket on the bag. ‘I’m probably gonna be wiped out this evening,’ he says. ‘And you’re not yet your sharpest at that time of day, either.’

‘But they need to know quickly. Tomorrow?’

‘I’m due round at Rachel’s tomorrow for dinner. She’s decided to take care of me since I’m home alone a lot of the time.’

‘That’s nice,’ I say. ‘Tuesday?’

Simon thinks for a minute. ‘I can do Tuesday.’

My shoulders unclench a little. ‘Okay, good …’

‘If not, Wednesday is the only other day I can do. I’ve got that training course on Thursday and this weekend is Felipe’s stag thing. We’re leaving for Amsterdam at the crack of dawn on Saturday.’

‘Oh yes.’ One of his work colleagues. I don’t remember him telling me that, but he probably did. And I didn’t know he and Felipe were that close. ‘So you won’t be coming down next Saturday either?’

He shakes his head. ‘Sorry.’

I sigh, disappointed, but I can hardly stop him living his life, showing up for his friends, just because I’m feeling needy, can I? I let the subject drop and return to something more important. ‘We’ve got to let the hotel know by first thing Saturday, so as long as we chat before you go off with the boys, it should be fine.’

Simon pulls me into his arms and holds me tight. ‘Anything for you.’ We stay like that for a few moments, and then he pulls away. ‘Gotta grab a few last bits.’

I nod. ‘Of course …’ And before I know it, his bag is full, and he zips it up and heads across the hallway to say his farewell to our host.

‘Good to see you, mate,’ he says to Gil and gives him one of those laddish hugs with lots of backslapping, and then he turns to me, pulls me into his arms and kisses me properly for the first time all weekend before disappearing out the door.

Something occurs to me and I turn to Gil. ‘Have you been invited to Felipe’s stag weekend?’ As much as I want more independence, I feel suddenly panicked at spending time here at Heron’s Quay on my own.

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t really know him that well. Besides, from the handful of times I have met him, I got the impression he doesn’t like me very much.’

‘Oh, dear,’ I say, wincing. ‘Sorry.’

Gil shrugs and smiles at me. ‘No problem. I don’t like him much, either.’