‘Tonight,’ Cammy replied. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t ask you before now. It was a spur of the moment thing.’
‘When you know, you just know,’ Jack said, but he wasn’t looking at Cammy, he was looking at his wife, his hand over hers, her grin now even wider, the two of them locked in their own moment.
The volume from the football tables lowered sharply, and as Cammy turned to investigate, he immediately saw why. Lila had just walked in the door and she was gliding towards them. She was poetry. Mesmerising, intoxicating poetry. Every second thought he’d never admitted to having, every doubt, every hesitation was squashed right there and then. She was the most breathtaking woman in any room and he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with her.
A response, it would seem, that was shared by the guys with the fancy footwork at the middle two tables. Almost all of them had eyes on her now, a few of them continuing conversations, but most of them having given up trying to speak and stare at the same time. Cammy saw Lila register their attention, and put just a little more hip action into her strut. She liked to be admired. Nothing wrong with that.
Jealousy had never been high on his radar. Years of loving Mel while she was married to her first husband had forced him to dampen any twinges of envy and it was a life lesson that had stayed with him. Damn, Mel again! Why did she keep creeping into his thoughts today? He fought to get back on message. Yep, he was thinking about how jealousy was a wasted emotion. Pointless. Anyway, while he knew Lila enjoyed the approval, she would never act on it. Not once had she ever given him a reason to doubt her fidelity and that was saying something given that she could absolutely have any guy she chose, including, it seemed, her pick of these French footballers.
As he stood to greet her, he felt like the luckiest guy in the room – which was saying something considering at least twenty of his dining companions earned more than ten million a year and were adored by an entire nation of almost 67 million people.
Lila kissed both her parents before sliding into the seat to the left of Cammy.
‘Hey babe, tough day?’ he asked her and watched as a shadow crossed her face.
‘It wasn’t great. You know one of those days when you know what you want to achieve and you just can’t get there? That was today.’
‘Did the last appointment not work out?’ he asked, aware that he wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about. Lila visited doctors, they then ordered her company’s products. That was about as much as he’d picked up because she avoided talking about work at home. ‘Way too boring – let’s talk about something else,’ she’d say when he tried to take an interest and ask her about it.
She clocked the bottle of champagne in the ice bucket at the side of the table. Cristal. Her favourite. ‘Oooh, are we celebrating something?’ she asked. There was an irrepressible chirp from her mother and Cammy thought for a moment that she’d given the game away, but then saw that Lila had already been distracted by the two rows of tables to her right.
‘Is that the… the…’ If she hadn’t had Botox, her brow would have been frowning in puzzlement.
‘French football team,’ Cammy answered, while filling the glass in front of her with bubbly liquid. And, he saw, a couple of them were still casting glances in Lila’s direction.
There was no avoiding her reaction. Back a little straighter, boobs a little higher, smile a little wider and a dramatic flick of her hair. He knew she probably had no idea she was doing it – it was a completely unconscious reaction.
Great. The night he’s proposing to the woman he loves and he’s in a packed, noisy restaurant, with other blokes ogling his intended fiancée.
This wasn’t going well. Perhaps he should postpone, but he’d already told her parents and he definitely didn’t trust Louise to be able to keep this one a secret – she was already sitting there with an expression of rapt anticipation that was hard to miss.
It was a relief when the waiter appeared in front of them with his tablet out, ready to take their order. No common pads and pens in this place.
Lila hadn’t had a chance to look at the menu but he knew that wouldn’t matter.
‘A green salad, dressing on the side,’ she said, repeating the same order that she placed in every restaurant they ever went to. No meat. No fish. Nothing other than green salad leaves,kale and spinach. As a rule, he avoided carbs and treated his body well, but Lila took discipline to a whole other level.
Except, it would seem, when she was responding to some casual interest from a nearby table. As he gave his order – steak, side salad – he noticed her flick her hair yet again. Okay, time to get this back on track. Small talk. Get control back with casual conversation.
‘So, Jack, Louise, have you booked any holidays this year?’ he asked. Great. He now sounded like a hairdresser making chitchat over the sound of a hair dryer.
‘Actually, we just booked yesterday – we’re going to Mauritius for two weeks over New Year,’ Louise said, before turning to Lila. ‘Your dad has always wanted to go there, but don’t worry, darling, we’ll still be here for Christmas.’
Cammy spotted Lila’s fleeting shadow of disappointment. ‘But you’ll be away for New Year? We always spend New Year together…’ There was no hiding the touch of petulance that had taken residence at the table. ‘And especially this year…’
Had he heard that right? It was so damn busy in this restaurant that he could barely hear himself speak, never mind pick up everything the others said. Yet, he was sure he’d heard her say…
‘Why?’ Cammy blurted. ‘Why “especially this year”?’ Bollocks. Did she know? Had she sussed it out? Did she want her parents here to celebrate the end of the year that she’d got engaged?
She shrugged, stuttering, ‘Oh, I don’t know – I just meant it would be nice for us all to be together every New Year now that Dad’s retired. We missed so many years when he was working away.’
Okay, phew. It was fine. Her head was in a different place altogether and she had absolutely no idea he was about to pop the question.
‘We’ll have lots of years ahead of us,’ her dad said, dismissing her objections. Cammy felt a twinge of sympathy. For just an instant, she looked crushed, but then she immediately rallied, smile back on, and changed the subject. That was why he loved her, he thought again. She never let anything get her down.
Instead, true to form, she pulled out her phone. ‘Let’s get a picture!’ she rearranged her position, so that she could capture the full scene, the gorgeous table, the champagne, her mum and dad, Cammy, and of course her, eyes wide, chin down, megawatt smile.
‘I’ll post it later – can’t see in this light if it needs tweaking,’ she said, and by that, Cammy knew she meant a touch of Photoshopping. A photo didn’t go up unless it was a hundred per cent flattering. OK, so that might be a tad pretentious. Or maybe it was just the way things were done these days. Sometimes the ten years in age difference between them felt like nothing – he’d always prided himself on being hip, current and frequently immature – but sometimes it felt like they came from completely different generations.
