Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [9]
‘Come here.’ Tom grabbed her right arm and pushed it across her chest, then started pumping the left. ‘ “Should old acquaintance…” ’
Huh. Old acquaintance. Ancient-history acquaintance, more like. And, yes, he bloody well should be ‘forgot’. Not tonight maybe. She had to be remembering him to say he should be forgotten, didn’t she? But tomorrow he would definitely be so very ‘forgot’. She had everything she needed here, after all. She had good friends, she had unlimited access to chilled white wine, she had Tom. Ah, yes, Tom.
It was very noisy. The first time she said it, his brow furrowed. ‘What?’ he roared.
‘You’re going to marry me, Tom.’
‘What?’ Except that this time he had heard.
‘I said, you are going to marry me.’ She had pulled her right hand away from the man on her left, and was using it to point, with emphasis.
‘Course I am.’
She didn’t remember much after that.
Until Tom’s mum knocked on the door and, without waiting for an answer, came in and sat down on the end of the bed. She held out a mug of tea. ‘Happy New Year, dear! I must say, this takes me back. It’s been years since you slept here, hasn’t it? It’s lovely. I only wish Tom had told me he was bringing you. I’d have bought carnations, brightened the place up a bit.’
It was bright enough already. Natalie squinted between eyelids gummed together with last night’s mascara. Lime green and violet. The result of a particularly lurid and unpleasant episode of Changing Rooms Cynthia had watched, and, more worryingly, been inspired by, in the mid-nineties. Natalie wasn’t sure God had made a carnation to match.
Cynthia was still talking. That was the nice thing about her. No response necessary. Natalie didn’t think she could speak, this morning. Had she been smoking? Her mouth felt like the proverbial parrot’s cage, and her head was thumping.
‘How’s your mum, love? Terrible business, that. Still, glad it turned out to be nothing in the end. Must have given her a terrible scare. I’ve been meaning to go and see her for a while but, you know, with one thing and another…’ Her voice almost trailed off. But she rescued the moment. ‘Still, New Year, new start, all that.’
That was easy enough, then. Perhaps Natalie should explain that to her mother. They’d never been friends, not really. Cynthia was too noisy, too speak-now-think-later for her mum. Natalie had always felt a little embarrassed about her mother’s attitude, to be honest. She could seem… aloof and superior. But Cynthia would never have noticed. Speaking of which, she’d have to go today, she realised, with a small shiver of dread. On a hangover. ‘Where’s Tom?’ she croaked.
‘In the shower, I think. He’s in slightly better shape than you. Nice fry-up? Kill or cure!’
‘Sounds lovely, Cynthia. Thanks.’
Natalie had retreated back under the duvet, and was almost asleep again when Tom knocked and came in.
‘What is it with you lot?’ she grumbled. ‘Do you never wait to be invited in?’
‘Don’t be narky with me. If I hadn’t practically carried you back here last night, God knows where you’d have ended up. You were in a right state.’
‘Thanks a lot, Sir Lancelot. Whose fault is it that I was?’
‘I can’t see that it’s mine. I don’t remember making you drink ten glasses of wine.’
‘Was it really that many?’
‘Well, I wasn’t counting, but I’d say it was a ten-glass stagger you had on you at the end.’
‘Was I embarrassing?’ She covered her face with her hands.
‘Excruciating.’
She threw a lime-green pillow at him. He caught it in one hand.
‘And why the hell are you looking so sprightly anyway?’ she asked. He looked positively rude with health, hair still slightly damp from the shower.
‘I’ve got things to do, people to see. There’s a lot to arrange.’ Natalie was mystified. ‘It’s not every day a guy gets proposed to.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m hurt that you don’t remember.’ He didn’t seem hurt at all. ‘Last night? You asked me to marry you. And I agreed.’
‘You silly bugger.’
‘Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?’