The Accidental Proposal (33 page)

‘Hello Edward,’ she says, once she’s recovered from the shock of me bursting in.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said, is everything . . .’ I stop talking, and point to the kitchen table, where Mrs Barraclough’s hearing aid is lying next to the newspaper.

‘Oh,’ she says, picking it up and inserting it into her ear. ‘Silly me. No wonder I didn’t hear the door.’

‘Are you ready to go?’ I say, conscious I’m on a bit of a tight schedule.

Mrs Barraclough frowns. ‘Didn’t you get my message? I left one with that other young lady at your house.’

‘Other young lady?’

‘Yes. You know. The one who always picks up the telephone when you and Samantha are out. Although I must say, she’s never particularly chatty.’

It takes me a moment to work out that Mrs Barraclough is referring to the woman’s voice on the BT standard-answer phone message. ‘Ah. No. She forgot to give it to me.’

‘Never mind. I just rang to say that I didn’t need to go shopping today.’

‘Oh?’

Mrs Barraclough beams proudly up at me. ‘No. I managed to get almost everything I needed locally.’

I smile, and wonder just what ‘locally’ means to her. After all, Tesco is little more than half a mile down the road. ‘What did you do that for?’

‘I thought you’d have a few things to do this evening. Seeing as you’re getting married on Saturday.’

‘That was very thoughtful of you, Mrs B,’ I say, deciding not to tell her exactly what it is I’ve got to do this evening, ‘though I don’t mind if you still want to go. Honestly.’

‘Nonsense,’ she says, patting the back of my hand. ‘You get yourself off home.’

‘I could stay for a cup of tea, if you wanted a bit of company,’ I say, nodding tentatively at the pot on the table. I’ve had Mrs Barraclough’s tea before, and given the fact that she always seems to ignore the sell-by date on her milk, ‘one lump or two’ doesn’t always refer to the sugar. ‘Or perhaps a hot chocolate?’

‘Not at all,’ she says. ‘We can’t have Samantha thinking you’ve got yourself another woman, can we?’

Not for the first time, I find myself wondering whether Mr Barraclough’s psychic. ‘No, Mrs B,’ I say, forcing a smile. ‘We can’t.’

‘That’s settled, then,’ she says.

‘If you’re sure?’

‘Perfectly,’ says Mrs Barraclough.

I lean over and give her a peck on the cheek, then make my way towards the door. ‘Now are you sure there’s nothing you need between now and Saturday?’

Mrs Barraclough walks slowly over to the cupboard in the corner, reaches inside, and removes her last couple of sachets of hot chocolate. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I could do with a few more Options.’

And as I head back outside and jump into my car, I find myself thinking that she’s not the only one.

7.25 p.m.

When Dan rings the doorbell I’m understandably nervous, mainly because despite the fact that I’ve already warned her he’s coming round to help me sort out some ‘wedding stuff’ – which it is, I suppose – Sam’s not left yet. It has occurred to me that a less embarrassing way to have approached this would have been to actually get drunk and try and have sex with Sam, and then if I couldn’t, problem solved, but of course I can’t, because if it turns out I can actually have sex, then I’m more likely to have caught something, which I don’t want to pass on. Still, I’m hoping she won’t suspect anything, but unfortunately, Dan’s managed to time his arrival just as she’s walking out of the door.

‘Whatcha got there?’ she says, nodding towards the bulging holdall Dan’s carrying.

He looks desperately up at me, where I’m frantically mouthing the words
Don’t tell her
from just over Sam’s shoulder. ‘Just, you know, some hardcore Danish porn and an excessive amount of alcohol.’

As my jaw drops Sam grins. ‘Yeah, right. Well, you boys have fun,’ she says, kissing me goodbye, then slapping Dan on the backside before skipping out through the front door.

‘What did you tell her that for?’

‘Had to think on my feet, didn’t I?’ He says, following me through into the lounge. ‘So I decided to bluff. Brazen it out. I knew she’d fall for it.’

‘You couldn’t think of anything else, you mean.’

‘So? It worked, didn’t it? Anyway . . .’ He sits down on the sofa, and produces a couple of bottles of Harvey’s Bristol Cream from his bag. ‘Down to business. I worked out that over the course of the evening, you probably consumed the equivalent of these. So all you have to do is get them down you, and—’

‘Sherry?’

‘Yup.’

‘You couldn’t have worked it out in a slightly more manly drink, like maybe beer? Or even wine.’

Dan sighs. ‘Sherry
is
wine. Just stronger.’

‘Cheaper, you mean.’ I unscrew the top of one of the bottles and take a tentative swig. It’s really quite pleasant, if a little sweet, although whether I can manage the whole bottle, let alone two, we’ll have to see.

‘How is it?’

‘To be honest, a bit sickly.’

‘All the better to replicate how you felt after the Minesweeper. Here.’ Dan carries the sherry into the kitchen and tips half the bottle’s contents into a pint glass. ‘Do it the easy way.’

‘You mean . . .’

He slides the glass across to me, then helps himself to a Diet Coke from the fridge. ‘Down in one.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

‘Do you want to drink it with something?’

‘Like what? My nose pinched?’ I take a look at the glass of sickly-sweet liquid, and remind myself why I’m doing this. ‘To Sam,’ I say, picking it up, and clinking it against his can.

‘Whatever,’ says Dan.

Thirty seconds later, I’m struggling to keep the sherry down, while Dan is filling up my glass again. ‘How long before it, you know, kicks in?’

Dan looks at his watch. ‘I’d give it about half an hour. Then you can get stuck in,’ he says, nodding towards the contents of his holdall. ‘Or not, as the case may be.’

7.57 p.m.

‘How are you doing?’

‘Not great, actually.’

‘Great,’ says Dan.

‘So I suppose I’d better, you know, get in position.’

Dan looks at me strangely for a moment, then shakes his head violently, probably to get rid of the mental image he’s just conjured up for himself. ‘You mean in the bedroom, right? And not . . .’

‘Yes, Dan. In the bedroom.’

I walk over to the table and pick Sam’s laptop up, checking the battery’s charged.

‘Here,’ says Dan, handing me a DVD enticingly titled
Danish Delights Volume Two
.

‘What was wrong with volume one?’

Dan smiles as he tops my glass up. ‘This one’s better.’

I decide not to quiz him as to why and, after forcing down another couple of mouthfuls of sherry, insert the disc into the laptop. The video’s set to auto play, and before I can reach the pause button, the usual bad soundtrack starts to emanate from the speakers.

‘Right,’ says Dan, as I concentrate hard to bring his face into focus. ‘Time to try it out. And you might be needing this,’ he adds, handing me the holdall. ‘There’s some extras.’

‘Oh. Thanks,’ I say, struggling into the bedroom with the holdall and laptop while trying not to spill sherry on the carpet.

‘And Ed?’

‘What?’

‘Close the door, please.’

‘Sure. Sorry.’

I shut the door behind me, sit heavily down on the bed, then reach into the bag. There’s a selection of magazines in there with titles I can’t read, and while initially I think it’s because I must be drunk, it’s actually because they’re in Danish. I start to flick through one of them, gazing at the graphic images, some of which – a bit worryingly – seem to contain animals, but at least I console myself with the fact that the pages aren’t stuck together.

After a few minutes, when it’s clear the magazines don’t seem to be doing anything for me, I dump them on the bed, and decide to turn my attention to the video, but before I can concentrate on the on-screen action, whose plot seems to be loosely based on a group of naked hikers arriving at an already rather over-populated log cabin, there’s a knock on the door.

I look around with a start. ‘Yes?’

‘What’s happening?’ I can barely hear Dan’s voice through the firmly closed door, mainly due to the
various moaning sounds blasting from the laptop’s speakers.

‘Well, two of the girls are . . .’ It takes me a few seconds to understand what he’s asking. ‘Oh. Hang on. That wasn’t what you meant, was it?’ I put the laptop down and try and concentrate on my groin. As far as I can tell, there’s not so much as a faint stirring, apart from a slight need to go to the toilet. ‘Doesn’t seem to be anything.’

‘Are you sure?’

This throws me. How am I going to be sure, exactly? I glance up to check that the door’s still shut, then clumsily undo my trousers and push them – and my boxer shorts – down past my knees.

As I sit there with my pants around my ankles, the only thing that starts to rear its head is the futility of the situation. I’ve never been much of a one for porn, and besides, what does this prove, exactly? After all, it’s one thing to look at pictures of perfect-bodied Scandinavians going at it, and another when there’s someone actually there going at it with you.

Unfortunately, just as I’ve reached this conclusion, I hear a commotion from the other side of the bedroom door, and through my sherry-induced fog I can just about make out a voice that I think I recognize – especially once I’ve turned down the volume of grunting and screaming coming from the laptop – as Sam’s.

Even in my inebriated state I know this isn’t good, and equally, I’m sure that Dan’s ham-fisted efforts to keep her out of the bedroom will probably only make her even more suspicious. Instinctively, I stand bolt upright, then catch sight of my reflection in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe, wondering what Sam will make of things when she inevitably walks in through the bedroom door and spots her fiancé standing next to their bed, knee-deep in hardcore Danish pornography, with his trousers round his ankles. From somewhere inside me, a little voice tells me I need to do something.

Trouble is, I don’t know what to do first: attempt to hide the various magazines
open on the duvet, or pull my pants back up. And because I can’t decide, I end up doing the classic drunk thing of doing neither for a few seconds, then trying to do both at the same time. And of course, because I’ve got my pants round my ankles, and I’m too drunk to be coordinated, I end up falling over, grabbing the duvet on my way down in a futile attempt to regain my balance.

I lie there on the floor for a while, one of the magazines open and covering my face, not daring to move, especially when I hear the bedroom door opening. Maybe, I tell myself, if I can’t see Sam, then she can’t see me, although I’m not that drunk to know there is a flaw in that plan. Reluctantly I reach up, remove the magazine, and try and focus my eyes on the upside-down figure in the doorway. Fortunately, it’s Dan.

‘That was a close one,’ he says.

‘Did she see . . .’

‘Nope.’ Dan grins. ‘I told her you were trying out a surprise for the wedding. And thinking about it, it’s going to be a hell of a surprise. As, hopefully, is this.’

‘What?’

‘This.’ Dan pulls his mobile out of his pocket and snaps a photo of me. ‘And I thought the fat suit pictures were good. Oh, and by the way – the mouse is out of the house.’

I hurriedly pull my boxers up and haul myself up onto the bed. ‘You better delete that.’

‘All in good time, Ed. Now put it away carefully, will you?’

I stare down at the front of my shorts. ‘I just have.’

Dan sighs, and points at his precious magazines, which are strewn across the bedroom floor. ‘The porn, Edward.’

8.23 p.m.

I’m on my third cup of black coffee, having made myself sick, had a cold shower – to clear my head of the effects of the alcohol rather than the porn – then made myself sick again
in
the shower for good measure, when Dan clears his throat.

‘So. No joy, so to speak.’

I shake my head slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. ‘Nope.’

‘Excellent,’ says Dan, breaking into a huge grin. ‘Which proves that even if she tried really hard, you probably weren’t. So now we can get on with this wedding bollocks, and not have to worry about whether you did or didn’t have sex with another woman.’

‘Yes, but it’s hardly conclusive proof, is it?’ I say, ignoring his pairing of the words ‘wedding’ and ‘bollocks’. ‘I mean, looking at dirty magazines, well, it’s not quite the same as actually, you know, having someone there, is it?’

‘Rubbish,’ says Dan, once he’s stopped sniggering at my use of the phrase ‘dirty magazines’. ‘Besides,’ he adds, poking the holdall, ‘this is the highest quality Danish porn. If it can’t get a rise out of you, then I don’t know what can. Let’s face it, if nothing happened, if you get my drift, then, well, nothing happened.’