He ignored the interruption. ‘I’ll wait, then we can announce it at Christmas. Go on, you get on with it, go and do things. Then you can come back home, eh?’
He could have added ‘when you’ve come to your senses’, but he didn’t. She could see it in his eyes though.
‘But I can’t do much in December, it’s too cold, and I’ve no time to plan, I—’
‘Daisy, be fair.’ He looked her in the eye, an earnest frown on his normally happy face. ‘You can’t just expect me to hang around for ever while you think about doing stuff. If it’s that important to you, then get on and do it. Unless it’s just an excuse, and what you’re really trying to do is tell me to sod off?’ He cocked his head on one side, and the normal twinkle wasn’t in his eyes.
‘Of course I’m not, Jimmy, we have a great time, it’s just…’
‘I’ll get that drink.’
They had another beer. He dropped her off home.
‘Do you really, really want to get married?’
‘I’ve asked you now, Dais. I can’t exactly un-ask, can I?’
Daisy crashed onto the sofa and didn’t object when her Irish Wolfhound Mabel climbed onto to her lap. ‘Why did he have to ask?’
Mabel didn’t answer, just flopped sideways so that her back legs dangled over the edge. Whatever happened, it meant things had changed between them forever. They couldn’t just go back to how they’d been.
‘Oh Mabel, what am I going to do?’ The dog wiggled her eyebrows, then rested her hairy chin on her paws and gave a heavy sigh. ‘He’s right. He’s blown it now. You can’t un-ask a question like that, can you?’ And you couldn’t announce an engagement when your fiancée-to-be hadn’t said yes, could you? ‘I need to talk to Anna.’
***
Anna kicked her Ugg boots off, pushed Mabel’s tail out of the way, and plonked herself down on the sofa – stretching her feet out towards the fire. Still clutching her bottle of wine. ‘Come on then, spill.’
Wriggling her way out from underneath the front end of Mabel, Daisy wondered what on earth she was supposed to add. Her text to Anna had said it all, and rather succinctly, she’d thought. Jimmy proposed, what the hell do I do now?
‘There isn’t exactly anything else to spill. I’ll get some wine glasses and a corkscrew.’
‘So you are sure he actually meant to propose, Daisy? He wasn’t just mucking around?’
‘He had a ring.’
‘Wow, I didn’t know he could be that organised. Did it fit? Did it have a huge diamond?’
‘I didn’t try it on, that would have been weird.’ She daren’t even touch it.
‘A ring is kind of, er, conclusive. Shit.’
‘I didn’t think he wanted to get married.’ Jimmy didn’t do surprises, and he didn’t do organised. He was just Jimmy.
‘But you love him, don’t you?’
‘I thought I did.’ Daisy looked glumly at Anna. This was what people waited their whole lives for, wasn’t it? Falling in love, being proposed to. Nest-building. Having children. Growing old together. Oh bugger, she’d just written off her whole life.
‘I take it from the look on your face that you’ve worked out you don’t.’
‘Well, I am very fond of him.’ Yuk, what kind of a word was ‘fond’?
‘Daisy! You either do love the man or you don’t.’
‘It’s not that simple. I mean I do, really, really like him. We get on.’ Which was enough for some people. She loved him, they were compatible, had reasonable sex (even if the headboard didn’t bang as much these days), they shared a sense of humour, they got on. She loved him like she loved Mabel and Barney (but obviously it was platonic with them).
She’d always just assumed they’d carry on together. As they were. Without a ring. With separate homes. Have fun. It wasn’t that she was expecting some man to sweep her off her feet; sexual frisson seemed to have largely passed her by. Which was fine, but did she really want to deny herself the possibility of ever having it? To give up on the hope of even the smallest fizz?
‘What are you thinking about? You’ve got a weird look on your face.’ Anna was peering at her, one eyebrow raised.
No way was she going to say sex, or excitement, or thrills. She’d never hear the last of that. ‘Nothing.’ She wriggled, pretty unconvincing then, even to her own ears. ‘Jimmy is great, but,’ she’d moved on to squirming, which was better, ‘it’s not that I’m not grateful.’
‘You’re not supposed to be grateful, you idiot, you’re supposed to be excited.’
But she wasn’t. That was the problem.
She covered her face with her hands. ‘I ignored him the first time he asked.’
Anna laughed. ‘That is so mean.’ Then she frowned. ‘And it’s not like you at all.’
Daisy peeped through her fingers. ‘Well he mumbled, and I was busy tying the gate together and I thought maybe I’d misheard.’
‘You hoped you had, you mean. So you made him ask again, twice, and then said no! Oh, poor Jimmy.’
‘Shush, I didn’t mean it, and I didn’t say no. Oh, Anna, the second I saw the ring I just felt… oh God, this sounds awful.’
‘Spit it out then.’ Anna was looking more intrigued by the second. ‘This is better than an episode of EastEnders.’
‘If you’re not going to take me seriously, then I’m not going to talk about it.’
‘I am. Honest, cross my heart.’
‘I just felt,’ if she said it quickly it might not sound as bad as it did in her head, ‘is this it? Is this all there is?’
Anna giggled. ‘Sounds like a song,’ and she started singing.
‘This is my life, Anna.’
‘Another song.’
‘Sod off, it’s not funny. What the fuck am I supposed to do now?’
‘Well, you’re sounding a bit philosophical even for you – is this all there is? – roll on death and maggots eating your rotting corpse.’
‘I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t. It’s just…’ She gazed out of the window into the blackness, but knew that in the morning the beautiful rolling hills that she did love would be there.
She had Mabel, she had her horse. It should be enough;
