Before I Do(48)

“You keep them,” he said.

“You don’t want them?” she asked, challenging him with her eyes. She hadn’t even asked where he lived, she knew so little about him, and yet she felt she already knew everything important.

He looked at her and then started, as though suddenly remembering something,

“Shit. What time is it?” He pulled out his phone and looked at the blank screen. “I’m out of battery. Fuck, I have to be somewhere. You just pulled me into a different space-time continuum, Audrey. I completely forgot where I was supposed to be today.”

“Go, if you need to.” She couldn’t hide her disappointment. How could he leave now?

“I don’t want to go anywhere.” He frowned, glancing at the large clock on the opposite wall. “But it’s my mum’s birthday, we’re throwing her a surprise dinner, and she’s going to be there in . . . fifteen minutes.”

“Go, go.” Audrey laughed, satisfied with his excuse. “Of course you must go.”

She carefully tore the strip of photos in two and handed him the top two. “Write your number on the back,” she commanded, a newfound confidence in her stance and tone.

He pulled a fountain pen from his bag and wrote his number on the back of her half. Then she wrote her number on his. She gave him her home number, in Fulham; it was safer than the broken mobile currently drying in a bag of rice.

“I don’t want to wait to call you,” he said. “I’m not going to be cool about this.”

She smiled, her cheeks aching with pleasure. “Let’s not wait, then. Let’s meet here tomorrow.”

His eyes lit up at the idea. “Okay, here, at our booth, first thing. I’ll bring breakfast,” he said.

Audrey blinked, remembering she couldn’t make tomorrow morning. “I have to meet my mum’s fiancé in the morning, a peacekeeping mission. Can we say one o’clock?”

“I’ll be here,” he said, reaching up to brush a strand of hair behind her ear. “Don’t make any plans for the rest of the day, or for the rest of your life.” He said the last part lightly, as though he wasn’t serious, but something in his eyes told her he might be.

“Go, go, you’re going to be late for your mum!” She laughed, pushing him toward the tube.

He leaned in to take her arms now, looking down into her eyes. “I found you. I found you.”

She nodded. “You found me.”

He kissed her again, and Audrey wanted to follow him, to say she would walk him to his dinner, anything to spend another minute by his side, but he squeezed her arm and said, “Tomorrow,” and then disappeared into the crowd.

She did not see him again for another six years.





26


Ninety Minutes Before I Do



Vivien fixed the dress. You could tell close up that the material didn’t hang smoothly, but crucially, Audrey wasn’t going to show the whole congregation her underwear. In the mirror, Audrey saw a real bride. She looked elegant, poised, strangely ethereal. She’d had these recurring dreams over the last few months where she was a bride without a face, just a blur beneath a veil. But now here she was, in a dress, with a face—this was real. As she stood in front of the mirror, her mother came up behind her.

“You look exquisite, darling. Consider my reservations dispelled, you can pull off this fabric.”

“Thank you.” Audrey reached out a hand to touch her mother’s arm.

When Clara went into the bathroom to do her own makeup, Vivien took the opportunity to revive the conversation she and Audrey had been having earlier.

“Now, you mustn’t have doubts about Joshua. There’s nothing to doubt,” Vivien said, leaning in and putting a hand on Audrey’s shoulder. “You complement each other so well. He’s so sensible, so grounded.”

“You didn’t answer my question, about who the love of your life was.”

“I think, if you’re lucky, you get more than one. Or maybe you’re luckier if one lasts you a lifetime, I don’t know.” Vivien gave a childish shrug.

“Did you have doubts before any of your weddings?”

“Every time!” Vivien cried. “Getting married is like skydiving. There’s always a moment before you jump out of the plane where you think, What am I doing? I’m jumping out of a plane—I must be mad! But then you jump and you’re glad you did. Unless you forgot to pack a parachute.”

“What’s the parachute in this analogy?”

Vivien paused for a moment. “Mutual kindness. Don’t marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from, that’s what my aunt always told me. If a man isn’t kind to strangers, or at least respectful to his enemies, know that one day you might be a stranger to him, you might be his enemy. Joshua is definitely the sort of man you could be divorced from. That’s the highest compliment I can give him.”

“The wisdom of Vivien Wey,” Audrey said with a grin.

“You get married enough times and you learn a thing or two.” Vivien gave her daughter a wry smile. “Goodness, that reminds me, I have something for you.” She turned away, going to her handbag on the bed and leafing through some papers inside. “I didn’t know when to give this to you. It was supposed to be last night, but then with your injury . . . well. I never know with these things.”