Page 78 of The Work Husband

‘Mum,’ I said, ‘why are you looking at all this stuff now? Why’ve you even kept it? Surely none of it matters any more?’

She looked at me, her hollow cheeks wet with tears. ‘I just found out he’s getting married again. To the latest in his string of floozies.’

Her news silenced me. Dad’s series of girlfriends – the women who’d come and (usually quite rapidly) gone in his life, some of whom I’d quite liked but most of whom had never meant much to me, mostly because I was too wary of their probable transience to get attached to them – had never been more than a peripheral presence.

And it was so long since I’d seen him that I wasn’t sure I even knew the latest one’s name.

‘He hasn’t even told you, has he? Emily she’s called.’ She spat out the name as if it had a foul taste. ‘She’s only forty, you know. She could easily have a baby and that’d be your inheritance down the tubes.’

‘I honestly don’t care about that. She’s welcome to it.’

That was true. Whatever my father had – property or savings or stocks and shares – he might as well leave to the local cats’ home as far as I was concerned. I’d even have preferred that. And if he had another child, the local cats were more likely to feel deprived than I was.

‘Of course,’ Mum went on as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘he only told me because he wanted something.’

‘What? To hurt you?’ I asked. ‘Because it looks like he’s done that.’

If she realised that her injured feelings would be seen as a victory by my father, she was more likely to get over them quickly.

‘Oh no, not that. That bastard can’t hurt me any more.’ That was blatantly untrue, and she was clearly trying to convince herself more than me. ‘It was the ring he wanted.’

‘What ring?’ Puzzled, I cast my mind back. I couldn’t remember Mum ever wearing an engagement ring, only the plain gold wedding band that she’d removed after their divorce and had melted down and made into earrings.

Surely my father wouldn’t have wanted that?

‘The engagement ring that was his mother’s. The cheek of it. He rang me and told me he wanted it back, after all these years. Like it was still his to give to this Emily like he gave it to me.’

‘Oh.’ I felt a fleeting moment of sadness, remembering how close I’d been to my grandfather before his death. He’d given the ring to the woman he’d loved and been happy with for thirty years, but who’d died before I was born. ‘And did you? Give it back to him, I mean?’

‘I wouldn’t have if I could.’ She sounded almost triumphant. ‘But I can’t. I haven’t got it any more. I gave it to Sam, a few weeks ago.’

THIRTY-NINE

My mother’s revelation left me alternately bewildered and bereft.

Sam had contacted her to ask for the ring that had been my grandmother’s – an heirloom, a tangible piece of what he knew had been the only happy marriage in my family’s immediate history, bought by the grandfather he knew I’d loved. He’d meant to give it to me – he must have intended to ask me to marry him. When Ava had mentioned Sam telling her we might get married one day, I’d been too engrossed in what she was telling me to properly take it in. But he’d said it, and he’d meant it.

Mum, typically, hadn’t cared about ruining his surprise, and I hadn’t told her that there would be no surprise to ruin now. She’d have to find out eventually – presumably Sam would return the ring to her; it would become part of the division of our belongings, the dismantling of our shared life. Then it would be up to her to pass it on to my father or not.

She couldn’t remember – or claimed not to be able to remember – when Sam had asked for it, only that it had been after her birthday, the last time I’d seen her. Back when things between Sam and me had still been… not the best, but not the worst either. Perhaps he had thought that asking me to marry him would be a way of demonstrating his commitment, of assuring me that I had nothing to fear from Ava, that it was me he loved and a life with me he wanted.

But something had stopped him from doing it. More precisely, I’d stopped him. Me doubting him had made him doubt me in return, and it had all spiraled from there. There was no love any more, and there was no life together. There would be no surprise proposal, no engagement and no wedding.

The awareness of what I’d lost – not only the romantic gesture, but the life we could have had together, and, more than anything, Sam himself – tore at my heart.

But I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on it or succumb to the tears that felt ever-threatening.

I had another engagement to focus on.

I spent almost all of Thursday glued to my phone, which was handy because I had an excuse to ignore Jamie’s menacing presence at the desk opposite mine. It was just over twenty-four hours until Okan’s carefully orchestrated proposal was to go ahead, and everything was going wrong.

‘Georgia.’ The florist called me, her voice shrill with stress. ‘I’m at the market and the peonies are shit. The only ones I can find are tiny and going brown round the edges. What are we going to do?’

‘Send me photos of them, and the alternatives.’

So I spent half an hour frantically googling and phoning. Eventually, between us, we managed to locate an alternative supplier in Andijk in the Netherlands, and I spent another half hour arranging for four hundred blooms to be flown over by special courier.

Then Okan called to say that he’d checked the weather forecast for the next day (which I’d expressly forbidden him from doing) and it was going to rain, so I downloaded four alternative weather apps on my phone and sent him screen grabs of their more optimistic predictions.