Perhaps this is all getting a bit too emo and downbeat.
I have a sudden urge to wipe my mind clean and start the evening again.
But before I can open my mouth to change the subject, he asks, ‘What is it that made you want to settle down so young, do you think?’
I shrug and try to relax my posture too. ‘I guess I’ve always needed to feel absolutely secure about my relationships. My parents set a brilliant example of what a solid, respectful partnership should look like and I wanted that for myself. They met each other at school and they’ve been together ever since.’
I shift a little, getting more comfortable. ‘I always imagined that would happen to me. I felt like it could. It was my ideal. I consider myself a loyal person and when I decide I like you, that’s it, you’re in.’
‘Except when you decide that personisn’tin any more.’
I look round to catch his eye. ‘Are we talking about you again by any chance?’ I ask, making my tone light and flirtatious.
His eyebrows raise and pinch together and I see a flash of amusement in his eyes. ‘We might be.’
Breaking my gaze, I flop back onto the bed and stare up at the ceiling. ‘Yeah well, honestly, when we got together, I really wanted it to work out with you. I really liked you, but it didn’t seem like you had the same attitude to relationships that I did and that worried me.’
‘Don’t you think it’s a good thing to have lots of experiences before you settle down though?’
‘I didn’t at the time, clearly. And I’ve always been pretty single-minded.’
‘No shit.’
I turn to smile at him as he flops down next to me.
‘And I’m guessing What’s-his-face made you feel like he was as grown-up as you and he took your relationshipvery seriously,’ he says, with a hint of droll derision in his voice.
‘Yeah, I’d say that was true. He totally love-bombed me when we first got together. I felt really special andseen. Wanted.’ I smile sadly.
‘What a creep,’ he jokes.
I have to laugh at that. ‘It’s all a gamble anyway, right? We can’t ever know how things are going to work out.’ I prop my head on my hand, my elbow digging into the mattress. ‘Can you please use your vast wealth to get someone to invent a crystal ball that actually works so we can see the future? That would be a real gift to humanity.’
‘Would it though? Wouldn’t life be deathly dull if we knew how everything was going to turn out? We’d just end up spending all our time waiting to die.’
‘At least we could prepare ourselves,’ I point out.
‘But to what end? Especially if you know your time will be up quickly. Imagine living your life knowing that. It’d be torture.’
I think about this for a second. ‘But maybe you’d make the most of every moment you had left.’
‘Shouldn’t we be doing that anyway?’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Perhaps we’d both lost our sense of adventure if we were prepared to settle down with our ex-partners,’ he says thoughtfully.
‘Honestly, I was surprised when you said you were going to get married,’ I say. ‘It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you do. You must have been really into Katya if you got down on one knee and popped the question.’
‘Well, yeah, I was.’ He pauses and I get the impression he’s trying to gauge how much more he wants to talk about this. ‘But it didn’t exactly happen like that.’
‘How did it happen then?’
‘She sort of asked me. But in a roundabout way. We were both drunk and she was talking about how her best friend had just got engaged – to a fuckingScandinavian prince– and she was talking about how cool it would be for us to get married too, and somehow we ended up deciding to do it, for a laugh.’
‘A laugh?’ I’m horrified by this.
He shrugs, but I can tell he’s a bit embarrassed to admit to it. ‘Yeah. It sounds pretty stupid now in the cold light of day. But she texted her friends the minute we agreed to do it so it was kind of set in stone from that point on.’
