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Chapter 14
I looked wistfully at the restaurants lining the quay, each table packed with people on their lunch hour, the mouth-watering aroma of garlic and freshly baked bread and fragrant herbs wafting tantalisingly out of every doorway.
The three of us plus a motorbike straddled the pavement for a while as we set off, which was most inconvenient for everyone walking in the opposite direction, until Sylvie took a call and strutted off ahead.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked Léo, who was wheeling the bike along beside me with his bag slung over his shoulder again.
‘A place on the Quai de Valmy. It is a bar we visit all the time,’ said Léo. ‘Like a second home for me. We will only stay a little while. I will not make us late, ok?’
‘It’s ok,’ I said. ‘I believe you.’
He stopped to dab his face on the shoulder of his T-shirt. The sun was shining again, glittering on the surface of the canals, its reflection disturbed only by the odd boat drifting quietly by. The cobbled quayside was scattered with groups of teenagers sitting cross-legged in circles and lovers curled into each other, one’s head in the other’s lap as they looked out across the water.
‘Do you still think about this wedding?’ asked Léo.
‘Yeah,’ I said, laughing lightly. ‘Because if I don’t make it on time and I manage to upset my future in-laws before I’ve even begun, they’ll never let me forget it.’
Léo looked at me, frowning. ‘What do you mean by future in-laws?’
The thought of saying it out loud made me feel self-conscious. After all, until now I hadn’t told a soul.
‘I found an engagement ring in Si’s bag,’ I said, crossing my arms and then uncrossing them again.
It had been our second day in Venice and we’d gone back to the hotel for a nap. I’d had the beginnings of a headache, a dull throb at the front of my skull and I remembered Si had packed some paracetamol. I glanced across at him; he was sleeping, his eyelids flickering, his breath soft and rhythmic. Not wanting to disturb him, I knelt down on the floor, pulling his bag out from under the bed, unzipping it as quietly as I could, searching for the medical kit he’d told me he’d brought with him in case of emergencies. He was always very prepared, a hangover from his boy scout days, perhaps – according to Catherine, he’d been a very diligent one. I searched hesitantly through the contents of his bag, pulling aside the perfectly packed, neatly ironed selection of top-end High Street clothing. His was the polar opposite of my own suitcase, which was already in disarray, with dirty clothes mixing with clean, and everything requiring a second round of ironing. I felt around for a bottle of pills, my fist eventually closing over something small and square. I wiggled around in some sort of pocket, assuming it was the packet of tablets I needed. Instead I pulled out a little red velvet box. I squinted at it, pulling it close to me so that my nose was almost touching it, then holding it as far away from me as my arm would stretch. My first thought was that it might be an early Christmas present, a necklace he’d seen me looking at in one of the markets and had sneakily gone back to buy. There’d been that time he’d said he needed the loo and I’d waited for what felt like ages in the sun, sitting on the wall outside the Peggy Guggenheim museum. But then when I flipped open the lid, my mouth literally fell open. Inside was the most beautiful engagement ring I’d ever seen – an exquisite vintage square-cut diamond in an art deco mount. God, he knew me so well already, and after just a year together. The ring could not have been more perfect. Was he seriously going to ask me to marry him? I gazed at it for ages, my eyes straining in their sockets, my heart fluttering high in my chest, until I heard the rustle of bed sheets and panicked and snapped the box shut and flung it back almost exactly where I’d found it, smoothing out the clothes on top. When I looked up, Si was hanging off the edge of the bed, staring wide-eyed at me.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, his voice unusually high.
‘Looking for painkillers,’ I said, wishing I was a better actor. ‘Sorry, I should have waited for you to wake up, but my head is pounding.’
‘Here,’ said Si, rolling naked off the bed and nudging me gently aside, looking sideways at me. ‘Let me.’
Léo looked almost as shell-shocked as I’d been.
‘That is huge, Hannah.’
I nodded. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘What happened after you saw it in his bag?’
‘I was worried he’d notice something was up,’ I said, ‘so I babbled away, banging on about food and boat trips and what I’d seen out of the window earlier. And the whole time this funny, kind of uncomfortable feeling was rippling through me. Disbelief, I suppose.’
‘You could not believe that your boyfriend would want to marry somebody as pre-occupied with dying as you are?’
I rolled my eyes at him. ‘Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?’
‘Yes,’ he said, although the look on his face said the opposite. He probably thought I was going to tell him some soppy tale about the proposal itself. In his mind, it might have taken place on a gondola. At midnight, while we were gliding under one of those romantic little bridges.
‘I wouldn’t want to bore you,’ I said.
‘You are not particularly boring.’
‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all day.’
As we walked past a vegan café, I noticed a woman of about my age wearing a white vest with pale grey jeans and a camel cardigan. Somehow it looked exquisite and neat and expensive, in a way it never would on me. She had a bowlful of green salad in front of her, therefore embodying not only the style aesthetic I aspired to, but the clean eating habits, too.
‘So tell me: how did he ask you?’ said Léo.
‘He didn’t.’
