Forget Me Knot (19 page)

“OK. Well, first, my boss called me into his office today and told me that I had been made a partner in the firm.”

“You have? Oh, Toby, that is such wonderful news!” She got up, threw her arms round him and kissed him. “Oh, sweetie, I am so proud of you. You’ve worked so hard for this. If anybody deserves to be made partner, you do.”

“Thanks, Abs. And you know what? I’m rather proud of me, too. I think by way of celebration, a Porsche might be in order.”

“Wow,” she said, sitting down again. “So, what’s the other thing we’re celebrating?”

Just then the waiter arrived with the champagne. They sat in silence while he filled their glasses. After he’d gone, Toby asked her to close her eyes and hold out her left hand.

Abby started to giggle. She was pretty sure she knew what was coming. A moment later Toby was slipping a ring onto her wedding finger.

She opened her eyes and looked down at her hand. The large, square solitaire diamond danced and twinkled in the candlelight.

It was so utterly and uncompromisingly beautiful that for a moment she was speechless. She could feel her eyes filling up.

“I know I should have done this earlier; after all, it’s been over a month since I proposed. But my feet have hardly touched the ground these past weeks. Thanks for being patient.”

“It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that we love each other and we want to spend the rest of our lives together. Toby, this is stunning. I adore it. As usual it’s the most perfect choice.” She turned the ring on her finger. “Even the fit is perfect. Oh, I do love you.” They leaned into the middle of the table and kissed.

“And I love you.” Toby raised his champagne glass and Abby did the same. “To us,” he said.

“To us.”

She was gazing at the ring again. “This diamond is truly exquisite. It must have cost a fortune.”

He shrugged and grinned. “Only a small one,” he said.

“But when we were in Paris, you said we were going to buy a ring at some discount place in Hatton Garden.”

“I changed my mind,” he said. “That didn’t seem very romantic, and I wanted you to know how much you mean to me.” He took a sip of champagne. “Didn’t you mention that there was something else we should be celebrating?”

“Yes. I nearly forgot. You’ll never guess what. I took another ride in an elevator today. To the—wait for it— twenty-third floor. What do you think of that?”

“Oh, you clever girl. I am so proud of you.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Well done. That is great. Just great.”

AFTER DINNER
, they went back to Abby’s flat. As soon as they got through the door, she took his hand and began leading him toward the bedroom. “The thing is,” he said, pulling away his hand, “I’ve got a mountain of paperwork to deal with. You go ahead. I’ll be an hour or so.”

Her heart couldn’t have sunk any further. Her disappointment must have shown, because he put his hand to her cheek. “Don’t worry. I know we need to set more time aside for making love, and we will. I’m on the case. I’ve found this specialist in Harley Street who’s going to give me the onceover, but he’s on holiday right now. Things are going to change.”

“But you’re always saying that, and they never do. There are times, like now, when I just feel so neglected…. Then I get confused and I just don’t know what to think.”

“Oh, God, Abby, we’re not back to this bloody gay thing, are we?”

“No! No, of course we’re not.” But the truth was—in her mind, at least—they were back to it. She was aware that her stomach was forming a tight knot.

“Good. Look, things will get better. I guarantee. You have to believe me.” He pulled her toward him and kissed her.

She swallowed. “I do believe you.” The knot in her stomach grew tighter.

“Love you,” he said.

“Love you, too.”

AFTER A NIGHT’S SLEEP
, Abby’s stomach was still in knots. Her inner voice was telling her one thing; Toby, lying beside her, smiling in his sleep, his arms round her waist, told her something completely different. She gazed at her engagement ring. What kind of gay man a) gets engaged— to a woman—and b) spends a fortune buying her a dazzling engagement ring?

Later on, downstairs in the shop, she greeted Martin with a coy smile and an ostentatious wave of her left hand.

He reached for her hand and let out a soft whistle. “So Toby finally got you a ring. Wow, that has to be worth more than me mam’s flat in Liverpool.”

Abby grinned. “I think you’ll agree it’s quite a commitment for a gay man.”

“I guess,” he said, clearly less than convinced.

“Oh, come on, Scozz… don’t be like that. Why can’t you be pleased for me?”

“I am pleased for you.”

“You don’t sound it.”

“No, I am. Really. I’m sorry, Abby. I shouldn’t have said what I did. Forgive me?”

He was saying the words, but Abby knew he was merely going through the motions in order to keep the peace. But she wasn’t about to press the point. She didn’t want to cause another scene. More than anything, though, she had no wish to stir up her own doubts about Toby. She wanted an end to the sick feelings and knotted stomachs.

“Of course I forgive you.” She gave him a hug. “By the way,” she said, “I have even more exciting news.”

Martin’s eyes widened with anticipation. “What?”

She knew how desperate he was to hear her verdict on Ichiro, but she decided to leave him hanging. “You’ll never guess what—I took another ride in an elevator yesterday.”

She saw how hard he was trying to remain excited. “Wow, Abby. That’s fantastic. You really are beating this thing.”

“Oh, and there’s something else.”

“Yes?”

“Ichiro is definitely gay.”

Martin’s face lit up. “You sure?”

“Believe me, the man is as camp as a row of pink tents.”

“And is he pretty?”

“Put him in white face paint, a wig and a kimono and he could have auditioned for
Memoirs of a Geisha.”

Martin gave a shiver of ecstasy. “OK, you have to work out a way for us to meet.”

Abby said that she was bound to need a second look round Mr. Takahashi’s apartment before she made a final decision about what flowers to order and that she would take Martin with her.

“Fantastic, but you have to give me plenty of warning. I’ll need time to plan what to wear.”

DINNER ON
Friday at Feng Wei in Chinatown turned out to be a pretty raucous, drunken affair. It didn’t help that Toby “didn’t quite get round” to speaking to Guy and the others about being on their best behavior. Not that it would have made any difference, Abby decided. Upper-class oafs like Guy Stradbroke didn’t take kindly to being told how to behave.

Toby’s male friends were nearly all shallow, boorish lawyers and city types. Like Toby, most of them came from aristocratic or upper-class stock. Like him, they drove flashy, expensive cars and owned flats in posh bits of town, while the parental manse was a crumbling pile in the country.

Their Sloaney girlfriends tended to fall into two camps. They were either scruffy, rather jolly types, similar to Katie the location finder, or they were leggy clothes horses with perfect Fulham highlights and plastic, ski-slope noses that had been perfectly constructed for looking down.

Most weekends, one or another of Toby’s gang would host a house party at the family home. Sometimes the parents would be there, but more often than not they obliged by being away.

Because Toby usually ended up working at least half the weekend, he and Abby were forced to turn down most house-party invitations. In all the time they had been going out, they had made it to only one—last fall. It was the first time Abby had met Toby’s friends.

Guy, who had been Toby’s best friend since boarding school, had invited them to his parents’ house in Dorset.

Abby had imagined the weekend would be a pretty relaxed affair, until Soph managed to convince her that it would all be very
Brideshead Revisited
. “Bet you anything the men will go out shooting. Oh, and they’re bound to get glammed up for dinner. Take a cocktail dress, and remember: diamonds in town, pearls in the country. I picked that up from an episode of
Upstairs, Downstairs.”

“What are you talking about? First, that show was set before the First World War, and second, nobody under the age of sixty wears pearls.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. You know what the upper classes are like. They’re sticklers for tradition. Believe me, nothing will have changed.”

Broxbourne Manor was situated on the outskirts of an exquisite Dorset village that looked as if it had been freshly transported from a chocolate box lid. There was a winding main street lined with white-and pink-washed thatched cottages. At the bottom, opposite a village green complete with pond and ducks, was an ancient church and a post office selling moth-eaten bread and dusty tins of processed peas. Next door was an oak-beamed pub, complete with log fires and dozing Labradors.

Abby had gotten herself into such a panic about what clothes to take that weekend that she had packed half the contents of her wardrobe. Anxious to look the part, she had also dashed to Harrods to buy a Barbour and a pair of green wellies.

She could have asked Toby what clothes to take, but she hadn’t wanted him to think she was unschooled in the sartorial mores of the country-house weekend.

It was after four by the time they’d reached the village. Being late October, the light had all but faded. Then, as
they turned a bend in the private, hedge-lined road that led to the house, the grand Elizabethan manor rose out of the dusk, its windows bathed in soft gold light.

Toby parked his Mercedes sports model on the gravel drive alongside several Porsches and Range Rovers. For a moment or two, Abby didn’t move. She was too busy looking at the house and taking in the gnarled black-and-white timbers, the red herringbone brickwork and pretty mullioned windows set in yellow stone.

“Wow, it’s gorgeous,” Abby said, turning to heave her hefty bag from the back of the car. “You half-expect Anne Boleyn to answer the door.”

Toby smiled and nodded in agreement. “By the way, leave the luggage. Somebody will deal with it later.”

“Sorry,” she heard herself say—embarrassed that she didn’t know “the form.”

Guy turned out to be a prematurely bloated, thin of hair, oafish type with a fondness for loud, Toad of Toad Hall green check tweeds. He greeted Toby with much back-slapping and hail-fellow-well-met cheer. It was a few moments before he acknowledged Abby. When he did, he addressed her as “Toby’s little lady,” before puckering up and planting a limp, slightly damp kiss on each of her cheeks. Then, as they went inside, he ran his hand over her bottom. Had Guy not been a friend of Toby’s, she would have turned on him and told him to keep his hands to himself. Instead, she bit her lip.

Setting aside the shabbiness, the overpowering smell of wet dog, and the ancient electric sockets, which looked to Abby as if they had been installed by the first Lord Stradbroke about six hundred years ago, the interior of Broxbourne Manor was just as glorious as the exterior.

There was a dark, oak-paneled entrance hall with a magnificent sweeping staircase. Each of the downstairs rooms had polished wood floors and magnificent Inglenook fireplaces.

Despite there being fires in every room, the house was freezing.

“Ah, clearly Toby’s little lady isn’t quite
au fait
with the country-house experience,” Guy said, after Abby let out an involuntary shiver. “Always brass monkeys in these places. Would cost an arm and a leg to install central heating.”

As a result, the Stradbrokes depended on ancient electric-coil fires and fan heaters. The bedrooms, in particular, were Arctic, but Abby and Toby’s carved ebony four-poster—in the east wing—was covered in umpteen blankets and a wonderfully thick eiderdown.

Mrs. B, the cheery but much put-upon housekeeper, had even appeared with two hot-water bottles to put in the bed. “Wind is coming in from St. Alban’s Head,” she announced, pulling back the eiderdown and blankets. “I’ll see if I can find you an ’eater, as well.”

They had tea in the library, where—to Abby’s relief— there was a log fire and an oil-filled radiator, which took the edge off the cold.

People were welcoming enough, but Toby and his friends went way back and the loud conversation was gossipy and full of in-jokes that Abby didn’t understand. Since she wasn’t able to contribute much, Abby turned her attention to a ginger cat called Asquith and Mrs. B’s homemade scones and raspberry jam.

After an hour or so, the women started making noises about having baths before dinner. Guy said he’d had the immersion heater on since lunchtime, but he didn’t guarantee
there would be enough hot water for everybody. “Some of you girlies might have to take baths together.” Guy grinned. “Maybe I could join you. I’d let you play with my duck.”

A reed-thin, haughty woman named Tara who had cheekbones that could have sliced paper drew deeply on her cigarette. “Guy, darling, you really are the most disgusting pervert. You’re embarrassing poor Abby.”

Abby said she wasn’t remotely embarrassed. Deciding that she could do with relaxing in a bath, she tipped Asquith off her lap and got up to follow the other women upstairs.