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“I think a glass of prosecco, don’t you? We can celebrate properly with champagne later,” Toby suggests, as we sit back down.
He places the order and I grin stupidly at him. Suddenly, a thought occurs to me that wipes the smile off my face.
“Wait. Sorry Toby, but we need to do this properly. I know it’s ridiculous, but my father will expect you to ask his permission before you can propose to me. It won’t change my answer, but you’ll have to ask me again after you’ve asked him.”
“Relax,” he smiles. “I spoke to him yesterday and he gave his blessing very happily. I think your mother is already planning the guest list.”
It’s fair to say that my father didn’t like the sound of Toby when I first told him that we were dating. ‘Freelance Photographer’, unsurprisingly, didn’t count as a real job to him, and he warned me about getting involved with ‘some loser who will probably just be a drain on you’. It was only after he’d Googled ‘Toby Roberts’, and I’d explained that Toby earned comfortably more than I did, that he changed his opinion. The fact that Toby has always been polite and deferential to him helped, and now he thinks Toby is very good for me.
“How long have you been planning this?” I ask him.
“A while, but I was having trouble coming up with the perfect proposal. If I’d dragged you up a mountain or anything like that you would have been suspicious, and I wanted it to be a surprise. In the end I decided to keep it simple. Was it a surprise?”
“Total surprise! I’m so happy, though.” Another thought occurs to me. “Hang on a minute. Aren’t you supposed to give me a ring?”
“I struggled with that so much,” he tells me. “I looked at loads, but I couldn’t find one that I was absolutely sure you’d love. And then I thought, we’re going into this incredible partnership, and it seems wrong to start out by me imposing my choice of ring on you without you getting a say. Also,” he grins, “If you’d have said no, I would have had to go through all the rigmarole of taking it back for a refund.”
“Who said the art of romance was dead?” I smile at him. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We eat our lunch, drink our prosecco, enjoy each other’s company, and then I thought we could go and choose a ring together this afternoon. What do you think?”
“That sounds absolutely perfect.”
