‘Mirror.’
‘Of course. I absolutely loved the mirror.’ She stood up and walked back to her husband, who turned away, already clasping her arm.
We watched them cross the dance floor.
‘You didn’t buy her a mirror.’
‘I know.’
They were still talking, Rupert’s gaze flickering back to us. It was as if he couldn’t believe Will had simply been nice. Mind you, neither could I.
‘Does it … did it bother you?’ I said to him.
He looked away from them. ‘No,’ he said, and he smiled at me. His smile had gone a bit lopsided with drink and his eyes were sad and contemplative at the same time.
And then, as the dance floor briefly emptied for the next dance, I found myself saying, ‘What do you say, Will? Going to give me a whirl?’
‘What?’
‘Come on. Let’s give these f**kers something to talk about.’
‘Oh good,’ Mary said, raising a glass. ‘Fucking marvellous.’
‘Come on. While the music is slow. Because I don’t think you can pogo in that thing.’
I didn’t give him any choice. I sat down carefully on Will’s lap, draped my arms around his neck to hold myself in place. He looked into my eyes for a minute, as if working out whether he could refuse me. Then, astonishingly, Will wheeled us out on to the dance floor, and began moving in small circles under the sparkling lights of the mirrorballs.
I felt simultaneously acutely self-conscious and mildly hysterical. I was sitting at an angle that meant my dress had risen halfway up my thighs.
‘Leave it,’ Will murmured into my ear.
‘This is … ’
‘Come on, Clark. Don’t let me down now.’
I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around his neck, letting my cheek rest against his, breathing in the citrus smell of his aftershave. I could feel him humming along with the music.
‘Are they all appalled yet?’ he said. I opened one eye, and glanced out into the dim light.
A couple of people were smiling encouragingly, but most seemed not to know what to make of it. Mary saluted me with her drink. And then I saw Alicia staring at us, her face briefly falling. When she saw me looking, she turned away and muttered something to Rupert. He shook his head, as if we were doing something disgraceful.
I felt a mischievous smile creeping across my face. ‘Oh yes,’ I said.
‘Hah. Move in closer. You smell fantastic.’
‘So do you. Although, if you keep turning in left-hand circles I may throw up.’
Will changed direction. My arms looped around his neck, I pulled back a little to look at him, no longer self-conscious. He glanced down at my chest. To be fair, with me positioned where I was, there wasn’t anywhere else he could really look. He lifted his gaze from my cle**age and raised an eyebrow. ‘You know, you would never have let those br**sts so close to me if I weren’t in a wheelchair,’ he murmured.
I looked back at him steadily. ‘You would never have looked at my br**sts if you hadn’t been in a wheelchair.’
‘What? Of course I would.’
‘Nope. You would have been far too busy looking at the tall blonde girls with the endless legs and the big hair, the ones who can smell an expense account at forty paces. And anyway, I wouldn’t have been here. I would have been serving the drinks over there. One of the invisibles.’
He blinked.
‘Well? I’m right, aren’t I?’
Will glanced over at the bar, then back at me. ‘Yes. But in my defence, Clark, I was an arse.’
I burst out laughing so hard that even more people looked over in our direction.
I tried to straighten my face. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I think I’m getting hysterical.’
‘Do you know something?’
I could have looked at his face all night. The way his eyes wrinkled at the corners. That place where his neck met his shoulder. ‘What?’
‘Sometimes, Clark, you are pretty much the only thing that makes me want to get up in the morning.’
‘Then let’s go somewhere.’ The words were out almost before I knew what I wanted to say.
‘What?’
‘Let’s go somewhere. Let’s have a week where we just have fun. You and me. None of these … ’
He waited. ‘Arses?’
‘… arses. Say yes, Will. Go on.’
His eyes didn’t leave mine.
I don’t know what I was telling him. I don’t know where it all came from. I just knew if I didn’t get him to say yes tonight, with the stars and the freesias and the laughter and Mary, then I had no chance at all.
‘Please.’
The seconds before he answered me seemed to take forever.
‘Okay,’ he said.
19
Nathan
They thought we couldn’t tell. They finally got back from the wedding around lunchtime the following day and Mrs Traynor was so mad she could barely even speak.
‘You could have rung,’ she said.
She had stayed in just to make sure they arrived back okay. I had listened to her pacing up and down the tiled corridor next door since I got there at 8am.
‘I must have called or texted you both eighteen times. It was only when I managed to call the Dewars’ house and somebody told me “the man in the wheelchair” had gone to a hotel that I could be sure you hadn’t both had some terrible accident on the motorway.’
‘“The man in the wheelchair”. Nice,’ Will observed.
But you could see he wasn’t bothered. He was all loose and relaxed, carried his hangover with humour, even though I had the feeling he was in some pain. It was only when his mum started to have a go at Louisa that he stopped smiling. He jumped in and just said that if she had anything to say she should say it to him, as it had been his decision to stay overnight, and Louisa had simply gone along with it.
‘And as far as I can see, Mother, as a 35-year-old man I’m not strictly answerable to anybody when it comes to choosing to spend a night at a hotel. Even to my parents.’
She had stared at them both, muttered something about ‘common courtesy’ and then left the room.
Louisa looked a bit shaken but he had gone over and murmured something to her, and that was the point at which I saw it. She went kind of pink and laughed, the kind of laugh you do when you know you shouldn’t be laughing. The kind of laugh that spoke of a conspiracy. And then Will turned to her and told her to take it easy for the rest of the day. Go home, get changed, maybe catch forty winks.