soon as I saw Grace, I knew she was the one I’d been waiting for.’
‘So romantic,’ sighs Diane, who already knows the story of how Jack and I met. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of women I tried to set Jack up with but no one would do until he met Grace.’
‘What about you, Grace?’ Esther asks. ‘Was it love at first sight for you too?’
‘Yes,’ I say, remembering. ‘It was.’
Overwhelmed by the memory, I stand up a little too quickly and Jack’s head swivels towards me. ‘The soufflés,’ I explain calmly. ‘They should be done now. Are you all ready to sit down?’
Spurred on by Diane, who tells them that soufflés wait for no one, they drain their glasses and make for the table. Esther, however, stops on the way for a closer look at Fireflies and, when Jack joins her rather than urge her to sit down, I breathe a sigh of relief that the soufflés are no way near ready. If they were, I would be near to tears with stress at the delay, especially when he starts explaining some of the different techniques I used to create the painting.
When they eventually sit down five minutes later, the soufflés are cooked to perfection. As Diane expresses her amazement, Jack smiles at me from the other end of the table and tells everyone that I am very clever indeed.
It’s during evenings like this that I’m reminded of why I fell in love with Jack. Charming, amusing and intelligent, he knows exactly what to say and how to say it. Because Esther and Rufus are newcomers, he makes sure that the conversation as we eat our soufflés is for their benefit. He prompts Diane and Adam into revealing information about themselves that will help our new friends, such as where they shop and the sports they play. Although Esther listens politely to their list of leisure activities, the names of their gardeners and babysitters, the best place to buy fish, I know that I am the one who interests her, and I know she’s going to return to the fact that Jack and I have come relatively late to marriage, hoping to find something—anything—to tell her it is not as perfect as it seems. Unfortunately for her, she’s going to be disappointed.
She waits until Jack has carved the beef Wellington and served it with a gratin of potatoes, and carrots lightly glazed with honey. There are also tiny sugar peas, which I plunged into boiling water just before taking the beef from the oven. Diane marvels that I’ve managed to get everything ready at the same time, and admits she always chooses a main course like curry, which can be prepared earlier and heated through at the last minute. I’d like to tell her that I’d much rather do as she does, that painstaking calculations and sleepless nights are the currency I pay to serve such a perfect dinner. But the alternative—serving anything that is less than perfect—isn’t an option.
Esther looks at me from across the table. ‘So where did you and Jack meet?’
‘In Regent’s Park,’ I say. ‘One Sunday afternoon.’
‘Tell her what happened,’ urges Diane, her pale skin flushed from the champagne.
I hesitate a moment, because it’s a story I have told before. But it’s one that Jack loves to hear me tell, so it’s in my interest to repeat it. Luckily, Esther comes to my rescue. Mistaking my pause for reticence, she pounces.
‘Please do,’ she urges.
‘Well, at the risk of boring those who have already heard it before,’ I begin, with an apologetic smile, ‘I was in the park with my sister Millie. We often go there on a Sunday afternoon and that Sunday there happened to be a band playing. Millie loves music and she was enjoying herself so much that she got up from her seat and began to dance in front of the bandstand. She had recently learnt to waltz and, as she danced, she stretched her arms out in front of her, as if she was dancing with someone.’ I find myself smiling at the memory and wish desperately that life was still as simple, still as innocent. ‘Although people were generally indulgent, happy to see Millie enjoying herself,’ I go on, ‘I could see that one or two were uncomfortable and I knew I should do something, call her back to her seat perhaps. But there was a part of me that was loath to because—’
‘How old is your sister?’ Esther interrupts.
‘Seventeen.’ I pause a moment, unwilling to face reality. ‘Nearly eighteen.’
Esther raises her eyebrows. ‘She’s something of an attention seeker, then.’
‘No, she’s not, it’s just that …’
‘Well, she must be. I mean, people don’t usually get up and dance in a park, do they?’ She looks around the table triumphantly and when everyone avoids her eye I can’t help feeling sorry for her.
‘Millie has Down’s syndrome.’ Jack’s voice breaks the awkward silence that has descended on the table. ‘It means she’s often wonderfully spontaneous.’
Confusion floods Esther’s face and I feel annoyed that the people who told her everything else about me didn’t mention Millie.
‘Anyway, before I could decide what to do,’ I say, coming to her rescue, ‘this perfect gentleman got up from his seat, went over to where Millie was dancing, bowed and held out his hand to her. Well, Millie was delighted and, as they began to waltz, everybody started applauding and then other couples got up from their seats and started to dance too. It was a very, very special moment. And, of course, I fell immediately in love with Jack for having made it happen.’
‘What Grace didn’t know at the time was that I had seen her and Millie in the park the week before and had immediately fallen in love with her. She was so attentive to Millie, so utterly selfless. I had never seen that sort of devotion in anybody before and I was determined to get to know her.’
‘And what Jack didn’t know at the time,’ I say in turn, ‘was that I had noticed him the week before but never thought he would be interested in someone like me.’
It amuses me when everybody nods their head in agreement. Even though I am attractive, Jack’s film-star good looks mean that people think I’m lucky he wanted to marry me. But that isn’t what I meant.
‘Grace doesn’t have any other brothers and sisters so she thought the fact that Millie will one day be her sole responsibility would discourage me,’ Jack explains.
‘As it had others,’ I point out.
Jack shakes his head. ‘On the contrary, it was the knowledge that Grace would do anything for Millie that made me realise she was the woman I’d been looking for all my life. In my line of work, it’s easy to become demoralised with the human race.’
‘I saw from the paper yesterday that congratulations are in order again,’ Rufus says, raising his glass in Jack’s direction.
‘Yes, well done.’ Adam, who is a lawyer in the same firm as Jack, joins in. ‘Another conviction under your belt.’
‘It was a fairly cut-and-dried case,’ Jack says modestly. ‘Although proving that my client hadn’t inflicted the wounds herself, given that she had a penchant for self-harm, made it a little more difficult.’
‘But, generally speaking, aren’t cases of abuse usually easy to prove?’ Rufus asks, while Diane tells Esther, in case she doesn’t already know, that Jack champions the underdog—more specifically, battered wives. ‘I don’t want to detract from the wonderful work you do, but there is often physical evidence, or witnesses, are there not?’
