Page 26 of The Woman Who Said Yes

‘Wow. Lucky you.’ I drop her wrist and look over at Dom, expecting a jokey, what-can-you-do? face. ‘I can’t stop buying her jewellery!’ But that’s not what I see. Instead, his jaw is set and tension clouds his eyes. ‘Very nice, Dom,’ I announce.

‘Just a little something.’ He smiles tightly and sets about rearranging the spirit bottles on the table, as if it’s suddenly crucial that they are all lined up. The music fades, and Eva doesn’t seem to have noticed the mood switch as she cuts the cake and serves us each a piece in a spotty paper napkin. Yet, as I take a bite, something doesn’t feel right. Something I can’t identify as I swallow down the chocolate sponge.

The evening is winding up and Dom carries plates and the ice bucket through to Eva’s kitchen. ‘They were excellent cocktails,’ I tell him when he returns.

‘Well, I learnt from the best.’ He turns to Eva. ‘Didn’t I, honey?’

She nods, grinning. ‘Yes, you did, darling.’

‘Can I see your recipes?’ I’m not sure why I asked him that. Perhaps I’m hoping that another peek at his decorative handwriting might reveal… something at least.

Dom gives me an inscrutable look. ‘Oh, I’m not sure I can divulge those. Sorry.’

‘C’mon, Dom. Please. My dad and his wife are staying with me next week. They love a tipple and they’ll be so impressed…’ I reach for his notebook on the table, but he grabs it and clutches it to his chest. ‘It’s classified information!’ he announces.

‘Dom, don’t be ridiculous,’ Eva exclaims. Already, they have reached a point where she can be openly exasperated with him.

He holds it aloft, laughing now – isn’t this a jolly jape? ‘Dom!’ Eva cries out, and with a defeated groan he hands it to me. ‘For your eyes only, Andie. All right?’

‘Of course.’ Aware of him watching keenly, I flick through the pages adorned with his quaint script. I pull out my phone, realising I’ve forgotten to take any pictures tonight. But I take some now, of the recipes, picturing Dad and Trudy sipping from my best glasses, thinking this is how I live all the time.

‘Dom, help me with this lot,’ Eva instructs him. Dutifully, he gathers up the shaker and remaining glasses while Sam stacks up the mismatched vintage snack plates. They head for the kitchen and Eva follows, carrying the remains of the cake on its silver platter.

Aware of their jovial chatter, I turn another the page of the notebook, and realise that this isn’t a recipe at all. It’s an address and a note – still in Dom’s Victorian handwriting but messier here, as if scrawled in haste.

BIG LOO PIPE PROBS AGAIN sort asap!! 29C Boggis Rd.

I blink at it, faintly aware of Sam announcing in the kitchen that the cake was delicious. Eva enthuses that we must do this again sometime – the four of us, as if Dom is now officially one of the gang.

Well, of course he is. In just over six weeks he’ll be her husband and that’ll be that. But my heart is thudding and something is wrong; I just know it as I stare down at the loo pipe page. And even though I suspect that this actually is classified information, I photograph that too.

14

WEDDING COUNTDOWN: 41 DAYS

Last week’s visit was just a pit stop. However, tomorrow Dad and Trudy will touch down at Gatwick for the start of their week’s stay with me. In preparation for this, I have an important job to do.

I must rehang the pike.

Before that can happen I lift down my treasured painting from its usual spot and carry it carefully, like a precious baby, through to my bedroom. What I love about Sam and Eva’s gift is how it evokes joy and positivity and life. Whereas the thing I’m grappling for under my bed represents death. Poor Gideon, mighty warrior of the lakes, exiled among the discarded shoes and trainers and dust-furred knickers and that mascara I thought I’d lost.

With a groan, I pull him out, wondering if I am going to have to keep up this charade of having him on display for every future visit. But what would I say, when Trudy commented on his absence? ‘I’ve lent him to a museum as he’s such an exceptional piece’? ‘He’s away at a taxidermist’s being refreshed and, actually, I thought I’d treat him to veneers’? That wouldn’t do. I brush off the dust from the enormous man’s pyjamas that I’m making myself wear as punishment for not reading the Vinted item description correctly, and carry the hefty item through to the living room.

Here, with no small amount of jiggling, I finally manage to lower the tarnished ring on the back of the frame onto the nail poking out of the wall. I stand back to assess it, worried now that the pike has a freshly hung air about it. A panicked look, as if Gideon is startled at having been rudely wrangled from his gloomy (but possibly more hospitable?) sub-bed environment.

Maybe I’m over-worrying? It’s fine, I tell myself. Or it will be when it’s not hanging wonkily. I go to straighten the frame, and maybe I do this rather roughly – certainly begrudgingly – because somehow it pings off the nail and crashes to the floor.

‘Shit!’ I stare down at it, too scared to pick it up in case it’s irreparably broken or Gideon bites me. The fact that it’s fallen face down suggests that he was offended by the sight of me in my colossal pyjamas and hurled himself off the wall. So this isn’t my fault! He committed a reckless act!

My heart is thumping hard as I crouch down and slowly turn over the frame. Of course it’s smashed. As Trudy proudly told me, it’s the original 1930s glass. Irreplaceable glass that appears to be around 0.0005th of a millimetre thick. And people moan that progress is bad? That olden-day things were better? I place the shattered artefact on the sofa, sweep up the glassy shards as best as I can while in full panic mode, and wonder what the hell to do.

This minor emergency has at least stopped me obsessing over Dom’s little notebook, and what he’d scribbled in there about Boggis Road. The more I think about it, the less it aligns with the scant info he’s shared about his working life. Even in vague terms, he’s given the impression that whatever he does in the property business, it’s pretty upmarket. ‘I’m more on the design and consultancy side,’ he said at Niko’s. So how does a problematic big loo pipe fit into this? Will he consult on that too? I’d ask Gideon what he thinks, but of course he can’t speak. He can’t do anything – not even sing ‘Take Me to the River’. I make a mental note to never give anyone a present that’s likely to cause them grief and stress.

Unfortunately, there’s no time to shop around for a replacement. Not on a Sunday, when I’d imagine fish taxidermy shops are shut – and anyway, Dad and Trudy would identify a substitute immediately. Gloomily, I study the pike, now partially exposed to the air beneath his shattered window. And I remember being on a walk with Marnie and Jake in Epping Forest when they were little, and we’d found a dead frog, gruesomely squashed on the path. Jake had wanted to cover it reverentially with leaves. But before I could stop her, Marnie had picked up the mangled amphibian to examine its other side.

Now, like my morbidly fascinated daughter, I ease in my hand between the jagged edges of glass. I don’t want to see what Gideon looks like on the other side. I’m just intrigued to touch him. As I do, I’m surprised by his stiffness and the lack of fishiness at my fingertips. But then, I can’t imagine I’d feel terribly life-like if I’d been trapped in a glass case since 1937.

‘We’ll have to fix you,’ I murmur, ‘in time for tomorrow.’ Carefully, I extract my hand from the frame, figuring that it’s only glass. A delicate job for sure, but not insurmountable. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ I tell him as I go to fetch my phone. ‘Just you sit right there. I know exactly the person who can make you all better again.’