Just Last Night(6)

Oh did he now. Well, it’s possible he didn’t, Hester’s a great self-mythologizer.

“. . . And I knew right then I had found someone very, very special.”

The room’s part-liquid.

“Now we’re thirty-four—what I’m wondering—Ed Cooper . . . after sixteen amazing years, of highs and lows, laughter and tears . . . is—will you marry me?”

A pause, and a roar of male expectation goes up from the steamily packed pub.

Susie, Justin, and I look at Ed in shock, and he momentarily returns it, and gazes at us, as if for our cue or permission. I literally see the thought pass across his face that he’s going to get into horrendous trouble if he spends more than a single second weighing this offer up.

“Yes!” Ed says. Then louder: “Yes, I will marry you!”

He stands up and belts over to the bar and leans over, and he and Hester have a quick kiss while the room cheers and claps.

Susie, Justin, and I all realize we should be doing the same, as we look around us, and join in, in mechanical fashion.

“What are you like . . . ? What on earth?” I can hear Ed saying to Hester as she does a “oh you know me, what can I say” delighted both-palms-up gesture, and Justin, Susie, and I drink our drinks and say nothing in the din.

Ed and Hester continue whispering and Ed is clearly expressing his ongoing amazement at Hester’s romantic audacity. I tear myself away from the sight and look once more at my friends.

“I didn’t see that coming!” Justin says, with a pointedly upbeat, even tone. “At The Gladdy quiz, no less. Keep your gondolas in Venice or your sunsets in Marrakech, this is the way to do it. I will pencil mine in for when we’re next getting doners in Panko’s Fish Bar. What do you say, Leonard, fancy the job as ring bearer?” Leonard wakes up and stares at his owner and goes straight back to sleep, face down on tufted front paws. I think: Yep, hard same, Leonard.

Susie and I make polite murmurs of agreement and it’s fair to say, for once, we’re both speechless.

Ed and Hester are back at the table and we make nonspecific but emphatic noises of “Wow!” and “Congrats!” and “Oh my God!”

At times like this—OK, there haven’t been many times like this, but at times in general when we’re meant to show genuine and natural enthusiasm for Ed’s relationship—I marvel that someone as perceptive as Ed has tuned out the fact that we obviously aren’t that keen. Or maybe he knows full well, and sets it to one side.

Whenever the issue of their marrying arose, he used the fact they bought a “fixer-upper” of a house as a distraction. “We’ve got better ways to spend twenty grand than that, thanks to Crapston Villas.” I hoped against hope his reluctance was about more than the cost.

“Well then! Here we are!”

Hester plonks celebratory Cava down on top of the quiz sheet, Ed juggling five flute glasses, as we croon fake awe at recent events. He’s crimson-tinged with shock and glee and booze. Hester unpeels the foil and wrestles the cork out of the bottle and, as it snaps out with a phut, the fizz bubbles over, streams down the sides, and splatters our quiz sheet below.

“Whoops!” I move to rescue it, but Hester picks up the bottle and wipes the base with the sheet of paper, the spreading ink turning the writing into indecipherable Rorschach blots. Oh. I pick it up and it’s as limp as a tissue.

“I’ll put it over here to dry,” I say, draping it over the back of the seat.

“You’ll need translators from the British Library to decipher it,” Justin says, in that quick, light way that gets him away with murder.

I can’t help but glance at Susie, and she gives me a quick hard look of understanding and looks away.

We sip our fizz and clink glasses and say “Happy engagement!” as heartily as we can, and Hester says, “It wasn’t planned, you know?! I had one of my moments of inspiration. You know my thing is to follow them.”

I do know. I remember a story about Hester convincing her in-laws to skinny-dip with her on a family holiday to the Cornish coast that lives on in my nightmares. (“Never trust the physically uninhibited”—only solid piece of advice my dad gave me.)

“Next up, you’ve got to buy a ring,” Justin says. “You should spend a month’s wages, isn’t that right?”

Ed grimaces. “Luckily my monthly wages are two hundred quid and a bag of scratchings.”

“Hah, oh Edward. Best get saving! The one I like is Cartier!” Hester says.

Unplanned, was it.

“Jesus wept, how much are they?!” Ed fires up his phone and Googles. When he finds the relevant page, he mimes mopping his brow with his scarf. “H, the website doesn’t even have prices. I have to”—he makes a James Bond face—“Contact a Cartier Ambassador to Request the Price.”

Hester’s gurgling with delight and I know Ed’s in the clear to joke as much as he wants for the rest of the evening. If not the rest of his life.

“If they won’t even admit the price upfront then surely it’s a real ‘going in hard with no lube’ situation?” Justin says. (I told you about Justin and good taste.) “Oof.”

“Yeah, they’ll start well north of five grand,” Susie says, someone who knows about posh things more than the rest of us. “Get that kidney ready for the black market, Eduardo!”