Mad About You Read online

  Two years of being fastidiously polite to them all, and for what? She was as much a disliked outsider as ever. Whatever the code was to crack their safe and become accepted by the Barracloughs, the magic numbers stubbornly eluded Harriet.

  ‘Good, thank you,’ Harriet said.

  ‘Busy? Lots of bookings? Business booming?’

  ‘Yep. People are determined to keep marrying. The soaring divorce rate never puts anyone off.’

  ‘That’s a rather cynical observation,’ Martin said, pouncing. There it is, Harriet thought.

  ‘I was joking. I think it’s romantic that it doesn’t put anyone off.’

  ‘You never seem very keen on weddings, to say you’ve made your career out of them.’

  ‘You’d probably not love them either if you went to two a week.’

  He swilled the wine in his glass, holding the stem between forefingers, as if he was considering the grape on a vineyard tasting tour.

  ‘Why do it, if you don’t have a passion for it?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s Harriet’s attitude, actually,’ Jon interjected limply, and was ignored.

  ‘I am passionate; I’m passionate about doing a good job for the couple.’ Harriet paused. ‘You’re in property, it doesn’t mean you want to move house every month.’

  ‘Tell them about the wedding last month, Hats,’ Jon said, slightly desperately. ‘The groom who legged it.’ He looked around the room. ‘Seriously. Everyone was there at the church, the bride pulls up in her Roller, only to be told he’s been and gone and done a Lord Lucan. Minus murdering a nanny. Dreadful! Can you imagine?’

  Melissa gasped. Harriet squirmed at using someone else’s ordeal as a thrilling anecdote to dig herself out of an unpopularity hole.

  ‘That was it really, I don’t know much more,’ she said, carefully. ‘He got to the church, changed his mind, and left. The bride was told when she arrived. I’ve no idea what happened or why he went.’

  ‘What an absolute creature,’ Jon said. (He never swore in front of his parents.) ‘Shattering a young woman’s life like that.’

  ‘Presumably they lost a lot of money on it too,’ said Jon’s dad. ‘You’d not get refunds, cancelling on the day.’

  Everyone nodded, sadly, murmured: ‘Terrible.’

  ‘Why would you change your mind at that moment?’ Melissa said. ‘It’s so …’ She grasped for what Harriet thought might be insight – ‘… random?’

  It was the very opposite of ‘random’, Harriet thought, it was an utterly intentional and conscious decision based on a specific prospect. Which is why it was so hurtful. Harriet couldn’t stop wondering about how ruthless you’d need to be, how heartless, to abandon someone you were supposed to love like that. To set them up for a fall from that height.

  ‘Perhaps it was like that film,’ Jacqueline said. ‘What’s it called, you know. The old one, with Dustin Hoffman?’

  ‘Rain Man?’ Martin Junior said.

  ‘No, the one where he runs in and stops the girl getting married … The Graduate, that’s it!’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone else,’ Harriet said. Although maybe the someone else wasn’t physically there, but the groom couldn’t stop thinking about her? Or him? No, don’t dignify a horrifying episode by giving the man some sort of high-concept romantic comedy motivation.

  Had Kristina ceremonially burned her wedding dress, watched it go up like a white flag in the garden? You’d have to aggressively own an experience like that, in order to conquer it. Like incorporating a pirate scar.

  The dessert dishes had been cleared away and she saw Jonathan making emphatic faces at someone in the doorway. He’d not told her of any cake presentation or similar, and she wondered if he and his brother would now be locked into escalating displays of devotion. They’d be frogmarched outside to watch a biplane fly past with a banner.

  The room fell silent as a waiter strode up to Harriet and, with exaggerated ceremony, placed a plate in front of her, covered by a silver salver. Harriet glanced around. No one else had one?

  He leaned down, whipped the cover away. On a large white plate sat a small, square, royal-blue velvet box.

  Harriet frowned. She looked up. Not only did no one else have Weird Plate With Tiny Velvet Box, they were all riveted upon her in a way that suggested they weren’t similarly confused.

  ‘What’s this?’ she said.

  ‘Open it!’ Jon said, practically vibrating with gleeful anticipation, and Harriet felt woozily nauseous. It was impossible that Jon could be this reckless, this tactless, this INSANE? Please no, please God no: what was happening?

  She picked up the box and pushed; it snapped open heavily. A diamond ring sat on a white silk lining – one square gem flanked by two smaller ones, set on a platinum band.

  There was a beat of silence, which felt to Harriet like a yawning void she could tumble right into.

  ‘It’s a ring?’ she said, because she had no other words, and the held-breath of the room erupted in hysterical laughter.

  ‘Not much gets past Harriet!’ Martin Junior whooped.

  ‘It’s a ring,’ Jon agreed, his eyes scanning her face for reassurance in her response. ‘Let’s do this properly.’

  He took the box from her damp, lifeless hand, and pulled his chair away from the table to create the necessary space to go down on one knee.

  ‘Oh JJ!’ bleated Jackie in the background as he steadied himself on the carpet, overjoyed to see her youngest play Mr Darcy.

  Looking at Jon’s earnest expression, Harriet honestly wanted to be sick. Imagine that. Imagine responding to a proposal by vomiting on someone. Eat your heart out, runaway groom.

  Her head was spinning and her heart was pounding, and not in the good way.

  ‘Harriet Hatley, you already make me the happiest man in the world. Will you make me this happy for the rest of my life, and agree to marry me?’

  The two silent seconds that followed this question felt like a whole cultural era had passed. Harriet desperately calculated what to do for the best, what she should do, with no time to do so.

  ‘Yes,’ she squeaked, eventually, in a minuscule and defeated voice. ‘Yes of course.’

  The moments that followed were a blur, the small thunder of the room’s applause, of Jon landing a clumsy kiss, half on her lips and half on her cheek, of Martin Junior bellowing: well, this calls for champagne! and picking up a brass bell and jangling it – a sound which resonated inside Harriet like an alarm – to summon minions, so he could demonstrate his largesse by sticking bottles of Moët on Jon’s tab.

  Jon grabbed Harriet’s left hand and slid the ring onto her finger, gabbling: ‘Do you like it? It was my grandmother’s. Maternal grandmother’s. Mum found it by chance in the attic two months ago, and got it restored. It’s Mum you have to thank for giving me the idea I could use it, in fact!’

  Oh, I bet.

  ‘Overcome your aversion to weddings now, eh!’ gloated her father-in-law-to-be, pointing at the ring, and before Harriet could reply, Jon said: ‘It’s different when it’s your own. Right, Hats?’

  Was Harriet a voiceless chattel from a bygone age?

  Harriet glanced over at her mother-in-law-to-be, who was smiling at her like a large pedigree cat who’d eaten a crow.

  ‘Yes, it’s beautiful. Thank you, Jacqueline.’

  ‘Welcome to the family, Harriet.’

  5

  Over the next hour, Harriet clung to the phrase: There’s so much to think about! like a life raft. Like a barrel going over Niagara Falls.

  ‘Where will you look for a dress?’ Jacqueline demanded. No idea, so much to think about!

  ‘Would you prefer a reception venue in the city, or out in the countryside?’ Jon’s dad asked. Ooh, I don’t know, so much to think about!

  There really was, so much to think about. Like, what if she’d said no? She internally remonstrated with herself for her cowardice – but even if she’d been prepared to make that scene and deal with the fallout
, she now knew for sure that it was only half the size of the conversation she and Jon needed to have anyway.

  She had no choice but to perjure herself for the next hour and a half, repeatedly and fulsomely. To agree she was now a fortunate woman with a sky’s-the-limit budget to plan her society nuptials, and wasn’t Jonathan’s gesture tonight wonderful.

  ‘I’d guessed he was going to pop the question,’ Martin Junior offered. ‘Well, you’re thirty-four, aren’t you? Thirty-five, it’s a watershed.’ He tapped his nose, glancing at her stomach, and Harriet truly wanted to throw her champagne in his face.

  At least she could honestly say she’d had no premonition that Jonathan was going to use this evening to propose. She left out the part where she’d failed to anticipate it because she’d thought there was no way he was so off his chanks to think that doing it in front of his parents, brother, sister-in-law and nephew was remotely fair, romantic or appropriate.

  ‘It’s so lovely to think your wedding anniversary is our engagement date,’ Jonathan said to his mother, practically simpering, and Harriet wondered if what she’d seen as dutiful benevolence was in fact appalling arse-licking. She’d been dealt such a blow she couldn’t tell what was analysis, and what was raw anger.

  As they finally all started yawning and agreeing well, what an incredible evening but maybe time to turn in, Harriet didn’t know how to feel. What had happened was torrid; what was to come was likely worse.

  ‘I keep catching sight of the ring on your finger and my heart explodes,’ Jon said to her, grabbing her hand to hold it as they walked up thickly carpeted, shallow stairs to their bedroom.

  She was quaking at the prospect of what she was building up to do – it was going to be unutterably awful, but he’d really left her no other options. Harriet didn’t even have the comfort of feeling one dominant, defining emotion – fury at Jonathan, and pity for him were fighting a tumultuous war inside of her. However much he deserved what was coming next, he didn’t deserve what was coming next.

  Harriet had a fear that he would try to kiss her, and she’d have to push him away, so she dropped his hand, swiped the key card and strode assertively through the door. She moved swiftly across the room, sliding the ring from her finger and placing it on a French chest of drawers, then turned and folded her arms. Jon, seeing this, looked unperturbed.

  ‘Don’t fret about safety?’ he said. ‘It’s worth a bundle but I’ve already put it on the home contents, which would see us covered for loss or damage here, too. So put it back on and come here, my stunning fiancée.’

  He looked like a kid at Chessington World of Adventures who’d been told the rides were free.

  ‘Jon,’ Harriet said, in a voice so low and grim, it didn’t sound like her own. ‘What the hell did you do that for?’

  Jon’s expression changed abruptly, and yet he remained motionless, scenting for danger like a vole sensing a predator in the undergrowth.

  ‘… Should I not have agreed with my mother she could be involved in the dress fittings? I will rein her in if you’d find it too much, don’t you worry. I know you don’t like fuss.’

  ‘No!’ Harriet shrieked in disbelief he’d still not grasped what he’d done, and Jon recoiled. She realised she’d have to keep her emotions in some check in case they were overheard. ‘I mean, why did you propose? In front of your bloody family?!’

  ‘That’d be because I very much want to marry you,’ he said, balancing one elbow on the mantelpiece, the smile creeping back onto his face. She could tell that he was fairly drunk, and so elated, so awestruck at the idea he was looking at the future Mrs Barraclough (Junior) that he had enough happiness for her, too. Her mithering would not be able to withstand the juggernaut that was Jonathan’s joy. Surely she couldn’t help but be infected with his ecstatic certainty of their bliss? As if infatuation was a communicable disease.

  ‘I’ve always said that I’d never want my own wedding. You know that. I didn’t leave it in any doubt?’

  ‘Errrr. Then … why did you say yes?’ Jon said, and even though Harriet guessed this was coming, she still had to dig her fingernails into her palms to stop herself shouting.

  ‘Are you serious? What choice did you give me? In front of your PARENTS? Have you got any idea how agonising that was?!’

  Jon stood up straighter, processing this. But Harriet could see he was also frantically assessing: OK, she’s really upset, Work Brain Mode, conflict resolution, how do I apologise sufficiently for misjudging the manner of proposal and soothe her, make her feel heard? Until we can make up, spoon in bed, and perhaps even chuckle about it? What am I like!

  ‘Oh God, sorry, Hats. You’re completely right. I’d not thought of how that might feel. I got so excited that my mother had the ring, she said she’d give it to me here, and of course I couldn’t wait, and a plan formed. My mum was insistent it wouldn’t be stealing their thunder, bless her.’

  The incaution of praising his mum for her key role in this shitshow was typical Jon. Jackie wasn’t guileless like her son, she’d have known it was interfering, taking family ownership of what should be a private event. She had no doubt hatched the plan as soon as she found the ring, and stage-directing her son wasn’t difficult. If Barty was Joffrey in their Game of Thrones, Jacqueline was Lady Olenna Tyrell. Tell Harriet. I want her to know it was me.

  ‘It was a bit of a runaway train. I see now that you feel you’ve been put on the spot.’

  ‘I don’t “feel” it, I was put on the spot. I don’t want to get married! You know that about me. We’ve had explicit conversations about it?’

  ‘Yes but …’ he raised and dropped his arms, in a gesture of baffled futility. ‘People say things all the time, don’t they? I say I’m going to pack my job in to become a paddlesport instructor every summer. I thought you were being irreverently witty! You’d got a bit jaded about them because of your work. I thought if you could do a wedding your way, that—’

  ‘My way? You mean once you’d offered to pay for one, I’d grab it? My convictions are that shallow?’

  ‘No!’

  He did, he thought his wealth carried all before it. That if he was prepared to roll out the red carpet, in return, he could have what he wanted. Jon wasn’t a cynical person, but this was the calculation.

  ‘You thought once I was permitted to plan a party, all my silly little feminine objections would magically fly away? It was one of those little lady ideas that don’t really matter in real actual life?’

  ‘Come on, Hats, I’d never think your opinion doesn’t matter, you know that. You’re being a bit mischievous here,’ Jon said, and she tried not to scream. ‘I suppose I thought … As ridiculous as it sounds, I thought no harm in asking. “Shy bairns get nowt.” That you could say no.’

  ‘Except, if you ask with an audience, Jon, that’s not quite true, is it?’

  A hostile audience, at that.

  This, more than anything, seemed to pierce his bubble of satisfaction, and he took a step towards her, hands up, beseeching.

  ‘No, no. Oh, fucking hell. I’ve made a pig’s ear of this.’

  Harriet said nothing. It still didn’t sound nor look like real contrition to her. She didn’t think he even believed her. Harriet had presented him with a hurdle he’d have to navigate, that was all. If they left it here, by tomorrow, the fantasy would have reasserted itself, such was its power. He’d be cheerfully whistling and secretly scheming how to incorporate an expurgated version of their exchange tonight into his speech. What was I like!

  ‘So … Do you want to officially break off the engagement, or simply put the idea on hold, say we’re doing a long engagement? Please keep the ring, though. It looks perfect on you. We can call it a commitment symbol or something.’

  The ring. After everything she’d said, he was fretting about a piece of jewellery. Harriet felt an electric prickle up her spine, and for the second time today, rollercoaster-drop nauseous. How did she end up here? What was she like? And suddenly she k
new, with crystal clarity. The thing that her gut had been telling her for a while. She’d been letting those messages accumulate like unopened bills, and now the bailiff was at the door.

  She took a deep breath into her lungs.

  ‘I don’t want to be with you anymore. This is over, Jon.’

  6

  He stared at her, eyes wide, skin turning a terrible lime-white colour, chalky, like the paintwork. It was his spirit dying, in real time.

  Eventually he said: ‘You can’t be serious …? You’re breaking up with me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘… Because I botched a proposal?! Harriet, this is ridiculous. You’re quite right to be angry but let’s not turn this into a full-tilt drama.’ He paused. ‘I don’t need any more punishment to understand how upset you are.’

  She hard-gulped, as the tears surged up. ‘I’d hardly say this and not mean it, to punish you. That would be vile.’

  ‘Then why say it now?’

  Harriet said, thickly: ‘You’ve kind of forced the issue tonight.’

  ‘So you weren’t happy before I proposed?’

  Deep breath. Say it.

  ‘No.’

  Jon said: ‘Really?’ in a broken voice, which was a small stab to her heart.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t love me?’

  Harriet closed her eyes. ‘Not in the way I need to.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Just … what I said.’ She opened them again. It was as if Jon was shrinking inside his clothes. She hated herself.

  ‘How do you love me then? Like a hamster?’

  ‘… I feel this has run its course.’

  ‘Oh, all the lazy cliches coming out tonight! What’s up next, you love me but you’re not in love with me?’

  Harriet said nothing.

  She realised she had on some level known that this conversation would be barely any less traumatic for her, which was partly why she’d never looked directly at it. Harriet was not skilled at antagonism.