lingering in the background. ‘I just had the bill for the food stuff he destroyed, plus the cleaning bill for the rugs. I’ll leave it in the house, shall I?’
‘Sure. Sorry about that. I’ll knock it off the rent.’
‘Cash would be handy.’
‘I bet it bloody would.’ Jimmy shook his head. ‘We’ll knock it off the rent, like Dais said.’
Daisy tried not to visibly cringe. It was lovely to have Jimmy doing his macho- territory thing, but it wasn’t his rent to knock it off. She smiled. ‘I’ll get showered then, shall I?’ And ushered Hugo off down the path. No way was she leaving the pair of them together to lock horns.
Chapter 2 – Daisy. White elephants
‘Bloody hell, I needed that.’ Jimmy wiped the froth from his mouth with the back of his hand, put his pint glass down on the table and raised an eyebrow at Daisy before scrummaging about in his pockets. ‘There you go.’
It was a box. An enormous, blue, scary box. Well, it was tiny, actually. As in ring-size tiny. But inescapable. It was that white elephant in the room. Daisy understood now why they called it that. You couldn’t actually not look at it.
Her stomach lurched. Not the fluttery feeling of anticipation that she sometimes felt when Jimmy started to slowly unbutton her shirt and his fingertips brushed her skin, it was more like the feeling of fear when Barney took off with her and she was wondering how the hell she was going to stop him before they ploughed through a group of unsuspecting picnickers. That heart-in-the-mouth moment before she knew for sure if he was going to slam the brakes on, spin round, or launch his huge body into the air and go for it.
It hadn’t been her imagination, or dodgy hearing because her bobble hat was pulled down over her ears. He had said the words that had made her nearly amputate her fingertips with a liberal wrapping of plastic twine.
We should get hitched.
She took a gulp of lager and glanced round, hoping nobody was looking at them, but knowing that she was probably just about to hit the number one slot for gossip-worthy news.
‘How about it then, Daisy, are you up to the job of making an honest man of me?’
His Adam’s apple bobbed nervously and there was a sheen of anxious perspiration across his brow. Not a look she associated with the solid, dependable, and slightly cocky man she more often than not shared a bed with. She wanted to throw her arms round him, reassure him, and scream with delight, like they did in the films. But it wasn’t happening. All she could force out was a wobbly mad-woman laugh.
‘Come on.’ His grin was all lopsided. Why, oh why couldn’t she grab the box? ‘You’re making me nervous here, put me out of my misery.’ He lifted the lid, encouraging a positive response.
‘Oh Jimmy.’ She put one finger out, not quite daring to touch the diamond that she should have been desperate to see. ‘It’s lovely, you’re lovely, wonderful.’ Oh God, she was sounding like a bad greetings card, and she was going to cry. It suddenly hit her, and her stomach lurched as she looked at the ring, the words that had automatically tumbled out of her mouth summed it up. That was the thing. She thought he was ‘lovely’, which maybe wasn’t quite the same as being madly in love in an ‘I want to marry you kind of way’. ‘It’s just a shock. I didn’t expect…’
‘To be honest,’ the look had turned to bashful Retriever now, ‘I know we’ve always kept it casual.’
Yeah, thought Daisy. At the start, Jimmy had always been the one to say it was daft to get too involved; he didn’t like commitment of any kind. Not even the kind that meant he’d agree to accompany her to the wedding of one of her best mates. And, to be honest, she realised now that it suited her; it had worked. She’d soon moved on from that crazy-crush elation because the cheeky Jimmy had noticed her as a teenager (which was rather a long time ago now) to the realisation that maybe they weren’t a match made in heaven. They were comfortable. In a few years’ time maybe they’d be too comfortable. Oh God, surely when you agreed to marry a man, your toes should still be curling up and your skin prickling all over when he kissed you?
But she still liked him, loved him in a best-buddy way. Now she felt two steps behind him, when he was finally saying he was ready to commit it all seemed a bit surreal. A bit too late – if he’d said this a couple of years ago she might well have leapt into his arms and a life of washing his clothes and wandering down to the local every night.
‘It was my old man that put me up to this, actually.’ He really was looking sheepish, and something inside Daisy rose up in suspicion.
‘Your dad?’ Since when did his father turn Cupid? Romantic proposals were so not the image she had of his dad. Not that this was turning out to be particularly romantic, so far.
‘He asked when I was going to get my finger out and give him some grandkids; told me to get on with it while he was still young enough to kick a football.’
‘Let’s get this straight. It was your dad’s idea? Your dad told you to ask me?’
‘Well, yeah, but then I got to thinking. I mean, why not? We love each other.’
This was going from bad to worse. She had thought maybe they did. But now he’d made her actually think about it, she was wavering. She loved him in the way she loved Mabel, Barney, her best mate Anna, her parents, her chickens (well at least her favourite chicken)… but did she love him? As in big heart, forever together. He was cute, he was kind. He chopped wood like a trouper. He knew just the right way to rub her aching feet. He hardly complained at all when she watched ‘Love Actually’ for the twenty-third time. He still loved her even when she was wearing a fleece with holes in and didn’t have any make-up on.
They had matching Christmas jumpers. He loved Mabel.
So why was she messing about? It could be perfect. Was it just some stupid unrealistic romantic notion that she wanted to be swept off her feet – not be asked the question in the middle of a field as she wrapped twine round a gatepost, almost like it was an afterthought.
She’d been watching too many rom-coms, read too many happy-ever-afters. This was real life. In real life you were happy, compatible, had known each other since you were knee- high to a grasshopper, as Grandad used to say.
In fact, this probably was how Grandad and Grandma had made the decision.
They were comfortable. Like two old slippers rubbing together.
Oh Gawd, she didn’t want to be an old slipper. Not yet.
The groan started to come out of her mouth and she did her best to change it into a non-committal squeak of what could have been mild interest. Or a pig sound.
Jimmy was not deterred. ‘I can just give my place up, daft me wasting money on rent. I’ll move in with you, and we might even be able to afford to tell Hugo to piss off.’
She didn’t want to tell Hugo to piss off, even though he could be irritating. She wasn’t really sure she was ready to let Jimmy move into the little cottage, her little cottage.
They seemed to be skipping
