‘Blimey,’ said Dominic.
I tried not to stare as we made our way over, but I knew what Dominic meant. Wynn was the exact reverse of every single boyfriend I’d ever known Helen to have. He was gingery, chunky in a rugby-playing fashion, and had with him what looked like a zip-up cardigan. It might have been a jumper with a half-zip. Weirdly, whichever it was, he didn’t look terrible in it. He looked … reassuring. Not malnourished, wired, angry, tormented or dangerous in any form.
He also got up with a polite smile as we got nearer, and offered his hand to shake, which was a definite improvement on Seamus.
Helen leaped up as well, and introduced us with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for celebrity diners. ‘Guys, this is Wynn!’
‘Guys?’ muttered Dominic. ‘What? Are we in Friends now?’ but I rushed to shake Wynn’s hand.
‘Hello! I’m Rosie, and this is Dominic.’
‘Ah, the famous Dominic,’ said Wynn affably. He had a gentle Welsh accent, all daffodils and Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer. ‘I read your column every week. Very funny.’
Dominic could never resist a reader. ‘Thanks.’
‘Bit worried we’ll end up in it this evening!’ Wynn glanced at Helen. ‘Helen did warn me that you write everything down.’
‘Wynn!’ Helen pretended to look cross, and nudged him. This time I boggled. Helen never pretended to look cross. She was either fine, or very cross, nothing in between.
‘You’re perfectly safe. Dominic only writes down the stuff I say,’ I said.
‘And only then if it’s funny,’ added Dominic.
‘In which case he passes it off as his own.’
Helen raised her eyebrows.
‘Ha-ha!’ I added, to make it clear that this was just lighthearted banter and not the aftermath of a tense conversation we’d had over breakfast about ‘Betty’s’ disdain for the wine list at a restaurant I actually went to quite regularly and liked, and which now refused to serve me ‘anything with a screw top.’
‘So, are you reviewing this place?’ Wynn asked as we settled into our booth. It was covered with tartan, with black leather trim.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Dominic, studying the menu, also tartan/leather-trimmed. ‘I’m going to have to make you two eat anything with a sauce, and a pudding each.’
‘Brilliant.’ Wynn flapped his (tartan) napkin over his knee. ‘I love a pudding.’
‘Wow! So do I!’ exclaimed Helen, as if they’d discovered their mothers grew up on the same street, had the same birthday, and had stood next to each other at a Wings gig in 1978. ‘What kind?’
‘Chocolate ones? And meringue-y ones.’
‘Me too! That’s amazing!’
‘Is it going to be like this all evening?’ Dominic muttered, while they did a ‘you, no you, no you’ routine over the warm rolls that arrived at the usual breakneck speed, with extra butter in a thistle-shaped pot. ‘In which case, can they bring me a tartan-trimmed bucket?’
‘Stop it,’ I whispered, already seeing how this might play out in the column. ‘And it’s lovely, so don’t spoil it.’
‘How can I spoil anything? It’s like we’re not here.’
‘Don’t be mean. I’m sure we were like this once.’
But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure that Dominic and I ever had been. Our early days had been above the table, all sparky repartee and spontaneous jokes, whereas Helen and Wynn were actually holding hands. Touching each other.
I reminded myself that at least the hands were where we could see them, unlike all of the double dates we’d suffered with Seamus and his ilk. Most of those might as well have been single dates for all the time Dominic and I spent twiddling our thumbs alone while Helen and the chef du jour ‘went for a cigarette’ outside. Helen didn’t even smoke.
‘Everything okay?’ Wynn enquired. ‘What have you put about the place so far? Because this bread’s great. Very tasty.’
‘I love the fleur de sel on the butter,’ added Helen. ‘And the imprint. I might nick that for ours.’
‘I’m going to order some wine,’ I said, making the executive decision that Dominic and I would get a cab home tonight. I loved Helen, but I’d need a drink to get through three courses of this.
I looked up to see where our waiter had got to, but he seemed to be heading our way already.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Sorry to bother you, but do any of you own a black Smart car?’
‘I should hope not,’ snorted Dominic. ‘Do we look like the kind of people who drive around in oversize trainers with a steering wheel?’
‘Yes,’ said Helen. ‘It’s mine.’
Dominic stared at her, ignored my kick under the table, and said, ‘Oh, okay. That makes sense.’
‘Is there a problem? Someone hasn’t crashed into it, have they?’ Helen groaned. ‘I’ve only just got it back from the body shop. I’m not brilliant at parking,’ she explained to Wynn, who just smiled.
Dominic spluttered on his wine. ‘You can’t park a Smart car? Doesn’t parking a Smart car mean just stopping somewhere and turning the thing off?’
‘Ha-ha,’ I said as if he was joking, then narrowed my eyes quickly. Not tonight.
The waiter pointed towards the door. ‘Sorry, but you might want to get out there – it’s being towed.’
‘Where did you park it?’ asked Wynn.
‘Round the corner … by the skip?’
Dominic let out a groan, and I could sense his Parking Warden Fury monologue rising up in his head. It was one of his favourites and ended in a freestyle rant about parking fines being used to fund CCTV to generate more parking fines. I felt a flicker of irritation. I didn’t want to hear it tonight. I wanted this evening to be about Helen and Wynn, not Dominic.
‘They’re quite fierce round here,’ explained the waiter. ‘We had one customer throw himself on the bonnet of his car to stop them ticketing it, but the parking warden just ticketed the customer.’
‘But we only arrived half an hour ago!’ wailed Helen, scrabbling under the table for her bag. ‘How can they have ticketed it and got it towed already?’
‘Did you park it in the skip?’ Dominic inquired.
‘No need to panic, I’m sure we can sort it out.’ Wynn pushed his chair back and pulled his cardi-jumper back on. ‘Let’s go and have a word with the tow company. Calm down, lovely. Nothing to get het up about.’
‘Good luck with that,’ Dominic honked, but Wynn just smiled pleasantly.
‘I’m used to dealing with anxious individuals at work,’ he said. ‘You learn to calm people down when you’re holding a drill.’
I watched in amazement as he escorted Helen out of the restaurant, his hand on the small of her back as she shoved her hands into her blonde hair and flapped her hands in panic. By the time Wynn was opening the door for her (he was opening the door for her!), the flapping had calmed down to a light flutter.
Dominic and I stared after them, but sadly the frosted glass in the door prevented any amusing visions of Smart cars being hoisted into the air.
‘Well,’ said Dominic, once the waiter had brought us another complimentary basket of tiny rolls. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You told me we were coming out for dinner with Helen and her new boyfriend, but we seem to have come out for dinner with Helen and her accountant.’
‘No,’ I said in equally pretend patient tones, ‘Wynn’s definitely her boyfriend.’
‘No. Helen’s boyfriend is a melodramatic speed-freak chef.’
‘Dominic! Don’t you listen to a thing I tell you? Helen dumped Seamus after that business at the awards ceremony. Wynn is—’
‘No, no, no.’ He held up a finger to stop me. ‘No, no, no. Not just Seamus. All Helen’s boyfriends are (a) melodramatic, (b) off their tiny chumps on something or other, and (c), because of the above, usually chefs.’ He made a sweeping gesture towards the door. ‘This man is normal and quiet.’
?
??I know,’ I said. ‘And that’s a good thing.’
He sat back in his chair, giving it his full ‘pantomime despair’. ‘Well, I give it two weeks.’
‘I don’t,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Why do you have to be so negative? Helen says she didn’t realize how exhausting it was to be with someone as high-maintenance as Seamus until she met Wynn. Wynn looks after her.’
‘Yes, but the novelty of that’ll wear off. Women like Helen thrive on drama.’
‘Seriously, Dominic, stop being negative for the sake of it. No woman likes drama. They just put up with it. It’s an annoying by-product of going out with certain kinds of men.’ I evil-eyed Dominic him, and this time I wasn’t pretending. Women like Helen. That sounded kind of … sexist to me.
‘What are you saying?’ he asked, playfully popping another roll into his mouth, and for a weird, wavering moment, it almost broke out of me: Why can’t you be more like Wynn?
I stuffed it back in. I loved Dominic because he was spiky and acerbic and a writer. That’s what I’d fallen for. You couldn’t have all that and gentle hands on the small of your back.
Could you?
‘Can you imagine what Seamus would be doing now if his car got towed?’ Dominic asked with relish. ‘If he’d managed to get his licence back, of course. Ha! That was quite a night. You have to hand it to Seamus, there was never a dull moment. Happy days.’
‘No, Dom, not happy days. Stressful days.’ I could feel something turning inside me. I wasn’t enjoying the way Dominic was deliberately not listening to anything I was saying.
‘Oh, come on,’ he went on with a cackle. ‘Who wants to tell their kids about the time Mummy’s friend filed his VAT return on time? Eh? Like that friend of my mother’s who tells us about the drunk vicar at her daughter’s wedding every single time we see her. That’s not an anecdote! That’s a nonecdote.’
I stared at the door, straining my neck to catch a glimpse of what was going on. ‘There’s a happy medium, Dom. Helen works long hours; she needs someone to cosset her, appreciate her—’
‘She’ll get bored with nice,’ insisted Dominic. ‘Girls always say they want back rubs, but that’s what sports masseurs are for.’
‘No, they don’t,’ I said, staring straight at him. ‘Sometimes they like men who bring them flowers and tell them they love them.’
He stared back at me. ‘Is that what you want?’
I felt as if I were falling down a deep well. Down and down and down. Of course it was. ‘Do I even have to answer that?’
He didn’t have time to respond because Helen and Wynn were weaving their way through the tables. Wynn looked relaxed; Helen seemed bewildered, but in a good way.
‘So?’ Dominic slapped the table. ‘What happened? Where are they taking your tiny little car? Did they just pop it into the boot of their own?’
‘They’re not taking it anywhere,’ Helen marvelled. ‘Wynn talked them out of it.’
‘What?’ said Dominic and I at the same time. Dom sounded more disappointed than I did.
Helen shook her head, amazed. ‘They’re … they’re not even going to fine me. Apparently the notice wasn’t hanging in the right space, so it’s not a valid ticket …’
‘Very basic error,’ said Wynn, settling back into his seat and ruffling his hair modestly. ‘Quite a reasonable chap in the end. Anyway, now we’ve got that out of the way … Have you two had a look at the specials? Can you guide me? I can’t say I’ve ever eaten …’ He checked the back of the menu. ‘Um, French-Scottish fusion. But first time for everything, eh?’
He glanced up to see three pairs of eyes staring in astonishment at him.
Well, two pairs astonished; one pair adoring.
This weekend, I thought, staring with fresh determination at the list of crêpes stuffed with deep-fried things, Dominic and I are going to find a flat we both want to buy, and he is going to make me an omelette. Or wire a plug, or something. Something that’ll give me that baffled but proud glow that Helen’s wearing right now.
Then I looked over at Dominic, making Wynn laugh with some witty observations about the menu and knew for absolutely certain that whatever else he brought to our relationship, the omelette-making and plug-wiring were always going to fall to me. And so would the reminders about flowers and I-love-yous.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the kitchen in Dominic’s flat, above the toaster, was a Star Wars calendar, marked up with our personal and joint comings and goings: my weddings in red, Dominic’s meals out in blue, hotel events in green, our personal joint commitments in black. There weren’t many black dates. We never seemed to have time at the same time. In fact, it was only down to the benevolent secretarial help of Darth Vader that we each knew where the other was, half the time.
Tonight, though, even Darth had let us down, and I was annoyed, because it was one event that I really hadn’t wanted to miss: Dominic’s London Reporter Quiz Night.
I’d only remembered over breakfast, when I found Dominic revising last year’s Michelin-star winners for the food round.
‘I’m really sorry, Dom,’ I said for the third time, checking my work bag and my emails at the same time. ‘I’ll try to get away by ten. Half past ten, possibly. The groom wants to get the bride out of there by nine thirty so they can catch their flight to Dubai.’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Dominic. ‘And I mean that in a very non-passive-aggressive way. Seriously, there is no need to bother. It’s fine.’
‘But I want to bother,’ I insisted. ‘I want to be there for you. And I’m very good on the pop music round,’ I added with a smile. ‘I really want to meet your friends, too.’
We’d both been making more of an effort lately – and it wasn’t just me. I’d been leaving work by six, and we’d actually been to look around a couple of flats, neither of which, sadly, met Dominic’s very specific requirements. But it was a start, as I’d told everyone at work. In fact, if anyone had been working late, it had been Dominic. He’d booked a couple of review meals lately with colleagues from work – ‘It’s an easy way to pay back favours,’ he’d explained. ‘And you don’t like Thai food.’
‘No, no. It’s my fault, I should have checked the calendar.’ He buttered himself a third slice of toast and started digging around in the marmalade jar with his buttery knife. ‘Don’t know why I didn’t write it down. Anyway, you’ll see people at the Christmas party,’ he went on. ‘You’ll see them all, since you’re organizing the party. For which, many thanks.’
‘No, many thanks to you. I’ll be working,’ I reminded him. ‘Just because you’re my boyfriend doesn’t mean that I can skive off to sip champagne and mingle with the stars. Anyway, I want that evening to be the best ever. I want all the star columnists talking about what an amazing night they had.’ I grabbed a piece of toast for myself. ‘And I want you to be proud of me,’ I added.
Dominic looked up.
I wasn’t sure why I’d said that. Maybe it was my nerves over today’s wedding. Maybe I’d just got used to seeing the way Wynn looked at Helen, and wished Dominic would do the same.
‘I’m always proud of you.’ He gave me an uncertain smile. ‘Are you feeling okay? You were doing your sleep muttering again.’
‘I’m just … a bit tense. This wedding’s been a bit on and off, Helen’s still in her Welsh love trance, and I can’t rely on Joe not to have one of his attacks of honesty. And Laurence is on some new liver diet.’ I stuck my hands in my hair. ‘And I said we’d get back to that estate agent about the flat in Paddington, which is bad because I should be prioritizing us—’
‘Rosie, I keep saying – it’s fine. I don’t mind about tonight. You just go and make that wedding amazing for … whoever it is.’
‘Natalie and Peter,’ I said automatically. Teacher and stockbroker, afternoon tea wedding, buffet reception, swing band. Don’t let the bride’s mother near the punch.
‘For Natalie and Peter,’ Dominic repeated. ‘You are a miracle worker. I app
reciate that. Now, aren’t you going to be late?’
‘No, I’m – oh, nuts.’ I glanced at the kitchen clock. It was already ten past eight, and the florists needed to start dressing the reception room at half past. I shouldered my bag. ‘I’ll see you later, then?’
‘You just concentrate on making their day,’ said Dominic, and stuck the now-crumby knife back into the marmalade.
*
I knew something was up when the first person I saw in reception was Laurence. He had a jacket and scarf on, but something about them wasn’t convincing. They weren’t his usual floppy scarf and fedora – he looked like someone pretending to be about to go out with the first things that came to hand.
‘Rosie! I’m so pleased to see you,’ he said, with so much emphasis tiny bits of spittle flew out. ‘There’s been a surprise development.’
‘Really?’ I said, heading towards my office. I didn’t need a surprise development, not today, not even for Laurence.
He followed me, keeping one eye on the foyer, as if he wanted to stay within sight of the big revolving door. ‘It’s Ellie. She’s had to go to Dublin on some urgent business, and she’s, um …’
We were halfway down the corridor, but I clearly heard a distant thud come from my office, followed by a high-pitched howl, followed by another thud, and then the screech of a personal attack alarm.
I stopped and spun on my kitten heel. ‘Laurence,’ I said, ‘you’re not going to tell me that she’s left Otto and Ripley here again, are you?’
He winced. ‘There was a crisis this morning, apparently …’
Another crash and some giggling. My heart sank. It was the kind of giggling that said ‘cake for breakfast’.
‘You’re not going to tell me that they’re in my office … and you’re about to go out?’
‘Gemma’s with them,’ he added. ‘And she’s told them not to touch anything.’
‘But Natalie’s wedding flowers are in there!’ I yelped. ‘And all her favours!’
‘Gemma said she needed to get going with something, and I have to get weighed,’ he said apologetically, inching back towards the foyer. ‘If I don’t get weighed before lunch, Dr Harris can’t tell if the serum’s working.’