Something in the Water(18)

“To not having starters?”

“To not having starters.” I chuckle.

We dig in to the delicious entrées. And they’re worth every single penny. I’m just glad we won’t be the ones paying for them.

We opt for a main course of: Café Royal Homemade Chicken Pie with Bacon, quail’s egg, fine French beans, mousseline potatoes, ￡19.50.

For desserts we go for: Dark Chocolate & Wild Cherries: Dark chocolate crémeux and wild cherry compote, ￡13.

Plus thirty bottles of house red and thirty house white and twenty bottles of sparkling wine.

We think we’ve done a pretty good job until the ma?tre d’, Gerard, sits down for a post-coffee chat. Apparently the minimum spend is six thousand pounds. They must have told us that last year when we booked, but we obviously weren’t listening, and even if we were, it wouldn’t have seemed important then. Gerard tells us not to worry; we can simply bump up to that price by adding after-dinner coffee and a cheeseboard for eighty people. Adding another thirteen hundred pounds to our total. We agree. Well, what else can we do? The wedding is in three weeks.

Afterwards, stuffed and brimming with buyer’s remorse, we descend into Piccadilly Station. Before the turnstiles Mark takes my upper arm and stops me.

“Erin, we can’t do this. Seriously, it’s ridiculous. It’s way too much, right? I mean—come on? We need to cancel it when we get home, lose the deposit, sure, fine, but just cancel it. We’ll do the wedding part in All Souls and then go to a local restaurant or something? Or up to my mum and dad’s, they could do a village hall thing, right?”

I look down at his hand tight around my arm. This isn’t someone I recognize.

“Mark, seriously, you’re scaring me a bit now. Actually scaring me. Why are you acting like this? It’s our wedding. We’ve got savings, it’s not like we’re taking out loans to cover the cost. You only do this day once in your life and I personally want to spend my money on this. On us. I mean, not all of my money obviously, but a bit of it. Otherwise what’s it all for?”

He sighs hard through his nose. Frustrated, he abandons the conversation, his hand releases me, and we descend underground.

The rest of our journey is spent in silence. I watch other people on the tube. Wonder about their lives. Sitting next to Mark but not talking with him, I imagine I don’t know him. That maybe I’m just a girl on the tube going somewhere on my own. That I don’t have to worry about what happens next, or with the rest of my life, for that matter. The thought is calming but ultimately empty. I want Mark. I do. I just wish I could shake him out of this mood. I wish I could fix it.



* * *



—

He turns on me as soon as we’re through the front door at home. His voice is no longer the whisper it was in the station.

He tells me I don’t understand. I’m not listening. I’ve never seen him like this, as if something inside were bursting to come out.

“I don’t think you really appreciate what is going on here, Erin, do you? What’s actually happening? I don’t have a job anymore. There is no money for any of this. And I can’t get another job, no one is hiring. My world is not like it is in the arts or your film school or whatever. I can’t just jump ship and do something else for a living! I’m an investment banker. That’s what I do. I’m not trained to do anything else. And even if I was, it doesn’t matter. I can’t just set up my own bank or, I don’t know, collaborate on a postmodern banking project or whatever the fuck. I’m not like you. I don’t come from the same place you do. I spent my whole life getting to where I am now. My whole life. Do you know how hard that was? People who went to my high school work in petrol stations, Erin! Do you understand that? They live in council flats and stack fucking supermarket shelves. I will not go back to that. I will not let that happen. But I don’t have a backup. I don’t have family friends in publishing or journalism or fucking wine-making. I’ve got a retired mum and dad in East Riding who are both going to need looking after before too long. I’ve got a total of eighty grand in savings and the rest tied up in this house. And now we’re trying to have a baby. I had a real job. I’ve lost it, and we are screwed. Because unfortunately we don’t all have the luxury of being paid for, like you do!”

I feel the bile rise up inside me. I’ve had enough. Enough of this for today.

“Fuck you, Mark! You’re being a fucking arsehole. When have you ever paid for me? When? What am I, a fucking hooker?”

This was supposed to be a lovely day.

“No, Erin, no, you’re not, sadly. Because if you were you’d shut the fuck up about now.”

My heart skips a beat in my chest. Fuck. Mark has gone, just like that, and a stranger is standing in my living room. Fucking hell. My breathing becomes shallow—God. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry, Erin. Just breathe. I feel the prickle behind my eyes.

Mark looks at me.

He mutters something inaudible, then turns away and looks out the window.

I sit down in silence.

“I can’t believe you just said that, Mark,” I whisper.

I know I should let it go but—no, no, I shouldn’t let it go. Fuck that! I have to marry this man in three weeks. If this is going to be the rest of my life from now on, I want to bloody know.