Page 81 of The Work Husband

He held out the ring, and now I could see the diamond blazing like a flame in the sunset.

‘Yes.’ Zahra’s voice was calm and clear. ‘I love you, Okan, and I’d love to marry you and welcome you into my family.’

Then he slipped the megawatt-diamond ring onto her finger. She helped him to his feet, and their two bodies merged into one against the skyline as they kissed on and on.

FORTY

I floated down the seventy-two floors of the Shard in the lift on a cloud of vicarious bliss.

Zahra’s happiness had been incandescent. Okan had glowed with pride at the success of his proposal and the beauty and feistiness of his new fiancée. Even Uncle Ahmet and Auntie Farida had relented slightly when Okan told them who his father was and it turned out he was an old business associate of Zahra’s dad.

More champagne had been ordered and more canapés produced, and the string quartet had departed for the pub to spend the vast tip Okan had pressed on them. All that remained for me to do was arrange for the floral arch to be delivered the next day to Great Ormond Street Hospital, where I hoped the children being treated there could enjoy it.

I’d sent a photo of it to Molly and told her my plan, and she was as delighted as everyone else.

But when the lift returned to earth with a bump, so did I.

Almost all the other problems I’d had when I woke that morning were still there. Jamie was still out to get me. What I’d learned about him from Ava still weighed heavily on my conscience. And I was still devastatingly sure that I’d lost Sam forever.

Sam, who’d asked my mother for the engagement ring that had been her mother-in-law’s before it was hers. I remembered asking her about it once, when I was a little girl just beginning to understand what marriage was, my idea of it heavily influenced by fairy tales that ended, ‘And they all lived happily ever after,’ even though I’d already realised that, in my parents’ case, things hadn’t quite worked out that way.

‘Why don’t you wear a ring, Mum?’ I’d asked.

‘I do,’ she replied shortly, holding out the hand with the plain gold band on it.

‘But – you know. One of those sparkly ones that princesses have.’

‘I had one of those. It was impossible to keep clean, so I took it off.’

Much later, I realised that refusing to wear the ring that had belonged to his dead mother, who he’d adored, was yet another way for her to spite and punish my father.

It was my grandfather who’d told me the story of how he’d bought the ring, taking my grandmother to a fancy jeweller off Bond Street and letting her admire the sparkling trinkets in the window, tempting her to choose which one she liked the best and would want to wear if they ever got engaged, before going down on one knee and proposing to her right there in the rainy street.

I’d told Sam the story once, when I’d been explaining about my family and trying to get him to understand that they hadn’t all always hated one other. And he’d remembered, and somehow plucked up the courage to ring Mum and ask her if she still had it and if he could give it to me.

‘But he hasn’t, has he?’ Mum had asked. ‘Commitment-shy, like I told you. I’ll have to ask for it back, I suppose, and then I may as well sell it, if that’s the only way to stop that Emily getting her hands on it.’

I hadn’t told her what was going on with Sam and me. She thought the worst of him anyway – she’d only let him have the ring because she simply hadn’t cared at the time what happened to it.

But he’d cared. He’d cared enough to think that if I got married, I’d want some token of a marriage I knew had been happy, even though I’d never known the woman who’d originally worn it. He must have meant to give it to me. He must have been planning to ask me to marry him – planning it in his own way, different from Okan’s way but none the less heartfelt.

It would never happen now. It had all gone wrong. But I wanted Sam to know that I knew, and that the gesture he’d never got to make meant the world to me.

Wearily, I got off the train at the stop nearest to our flat. The rain that had given Okan sleepless nights was falling now, a thin drizzle driven by a cool, gusty breeze that heralded the coming of autumn. Fallen leaves skidded under my feet on the grimy pavement, and an empty soft-drink can rattled past me, propelled by the wind.

I was glad to be home, even though it might not be my home for much longer.

I pushed open the door, calling for Milton, who I knew would be furious at the delay to his dinner. But he didn’t come as I expected, running and yowling, telling me off for my neglect, tail curving in the air like a question mark.

I stopped, putting my keys and bag down, my heart sinking. I called his name again, but there was no response. I looked in the bedroom, but he wasn’t there. Dreading what I might find, I went through to the living room.

And there Milton was. Not forlorn and alone, but on the sofa, sitting on someone’s lap.

Sam’s lap.

There was a distinctly smug expression on the cat’s face. See, he seemed to be saying, I don’t need you. I’ve got a better human.

‘Hi,’ Sam said.