Laura suppressed a smile as she took a sip of her own spicy chocolate drink. Joanie was Algerian-French and consequently despised bland food. The two had bonded over their love of chocolate drinks nearly two years ago.
“Besides, did you really want to move to a small town in Sweden? Nothing happens there, and Jacob was a small town boilerman—”
“Heating engineer,” Laura corrected.
“With no money,” Joanie continued. “You paid for everything.”
“These things don’t matter when people love each other.”
“Did ‘the people’ love each other?” – Joanie mimed quotation marks – “Or were you settling?” She paused while a middle-aged couple strolled past them along the narrow lane and walked into the antiques shop opposite.
“Don’t blame him, Joanie,” Laura said. “He’s a good man, and kind and loyal. He wanted to make a happy home and a family.”
He’d also not trusted her with the truth about his past.
The ex who wasn’t over him. The one who kept calling until Jacob realized he still had feelings for her too.
Laura hadn’t even realized there hadbeenan ex. If only he’d told her about that apparently serious relationship, Laura wouldn’t have been so blind-sided.
And she wouldn’t have resigned from her job and sold her flat to the first – and very low – offer.
“You’re right, I didn’t really love him, not as much as his ex did.”
The ex who apparently cried on the phone every night. Laura couldn’t blame the poor woman for wanting the love of her life back, for wanting happiness.
No, the person she blamed was herself for not spotting the signs. Jacob may have been a nice man, but he’d wasted her time before knowing what he really wanted.
“If you had a longer engagement,” Joanie shrugged. “You would have seen he wasn’t right for you. Why were you in such a hurry, anyway?”
Because…
Laura chewed her lip.
“What?” Joanie gave her a questioning look.
“Okay, if I tell you, don’t judge me.”
“You’re not pregnant!”
It surprised a laugh out of her. “No, of course I’m not. It’s just a stupid thing when I was sixteen…erm… well.”
“If you don’t tell me immediately I’m going to take away your hot chocolate.” Joanie reached for the mug.
Laura moved it away. “Alright, alright. There was this tarot card thing. When I still lived with my grandmother. We saw this fortuneteller’s stall on Brighton pier one bank holiday weekend. Gran had – unusually for her – taken a huge interest. She even paid for us both. When it was my turn, I went in and there was this woman in turban and jewellery like a maharaja. Anyway, she looked at her cards and said. ‘I don’t see marriage. Maybe a small possibility in your twenties but nothing comes of it, and it’s gradually fading until you are thirty and then it just vanishes and there is no more talk of marriage.’ It’s not that I believed her. I actually was determined to prove her wrong.”
“And now you think…” Joanie raised her eyebrows in a way that spoke clearly of her disdain for such things.
“I don’t really believe in tarot cards, but with every breakup the prediction niggled at me in there.” She touched the back of her head where her short hair tapered to a point above her bare neck. “I spent my twenties trying to prove the prophesy wrong. But here I am, two weeks away from my thirtieth birthday, with another break up.”
“That woman was a charlatan,” Joanie said hotly. “I’m sure your old bat granny bribed her. You should have grabbed her tarot cards and told her you see a prison sentence inherfuture.”
What Laura didn’t tell Joanie was how that prediction had chimed with her grandmother’s frequent repetition ofNo one will ever want to marry you.And how fear had driven her to cling on to every relationship.
She never argued, never showed too much personality, always made sure to do everything right so she could be married before she turned thirty. Thirty, according to her grandmother, was the gateway to spinsterhood.
“In two weeks, I’ll be thirty and I’m going to be a spinster.”
Joanie laughed. “Are you also going back to the 1920s when that word was last used?”
