‘And they said it wouldn’t last,’ quipped George from the other side of the table. She laughed back at him.
‘Good job I didn’t listen to you,’ she said. When she’d first started seeing Simon, in secret because they were work colleagues, George had been the only person she’d confided in. He’d tried to talk her out of it, saying that it wasn’t a good idea to mix business with pleasure, especially with her track record. Her relationships tended to implode at around the three-month mark, which was how she knew that Simon was the right man for her. He was calm, steady, and just what she needed, unlike her previous boyfriends, who tended to be here today, gone tomorrow. Admittedly, while they’d been a lot of fun, commitment, financial stability, or the ability to be faithful had been in short supply. Simon offered all of those things, although he could be a little stodgy and stuck in his ways sometimes. Her spontaneity and get-up-and-go was a good balance for him. They complemented each other perfectly.
With the help of G and James, she tied the piñata to the curtain pole.
‘Just don’t break the window,’ she said, her heart starting to thump with excitement.
To a chorus of ‘give it some welly,’ and ‘go on,’ Simon took a few tentative swipes at the tissue and papier-mâché donkey. A couple of people held up their phones to film the scene as Simon rather ineptly swiped at the piñata. At one point Mina despaired of him ever breaking open the darned thing and itched to take over his half-hearted attempt. Then with one final crack, it was torn clean in two and a giftwrapped box dropped to the floor.
With a triumphant yell, Simon snatched it up, and Mina, her pulse now roaring like an express train around her body, steered him back to the table and sat on his lap.
‘I didn’t know I was getting presents,’ he said, fighting his way through the paper. Of course, Mina hadn’t made it too easy for him, because inside the box was another box, and then another box. At last he came to the final one and she held her breath as he opened it to find a blue suedette pouch.
He wrinkled his eyebrows and gave her a puzzled look, a broad smile on his face. She smiled tremulously back at him, realising her hands were shaking a little. Everyone around the table craned forward with interest.
Simon opened the pouch and pulled out the gold wedding band, holding it up between thumb and finger. With a dazzling smile, she looked up into his face.
‘Will you marry me? It is a leap year after all.’
Around the table there were a few gasps and a couple of ‘ahs’.
She felt Simon’s body stiffen and as she watched his face, she saw his eyes slide across the table, widening as they connected with someone else’s shocked gaze. Her own gaze followed, and in a single second her world crumbled. Belinda?
In the next second, Simon stood up with horrified speed, as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her, and she slipped off his lap onto the floor.
He dropped the ring on the table as if it were hot lava and stared horrorstruck at her.
‘Are you crazy?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper. ‘What are you doing?’
Mortified, Mina’s throat closed up and her skin crawled as she realised everyone was watching, with avid fascination, as the car crash unfolded. What had she been thinking? It had seemed such a brilliant idea at the time. Only last month they’d been talking about moving in together and about the future. They’d even talked about how many children they’d have one day. How had she got this so wrong? She’d been so sure of him. They’d made plans. Admittedly, Simon had been distracted for the last month, but she’d assumed it was the long hours he was working and the pressure he was under in his department, which had seen several redundancies. Now it was painfully obvious that something else – or rather, someone else – had been on his mind.
‘But…’ She looked from Simon to Belinda, whose face was now stained with a fierce red blush and contorted by an odd, constipated sort of expression. Simon’s face mirrored Belinda’s. They looked remarkably similar: two compatriots, two people in sync – a couple.
As the trainwreck finally slowed to a comprehensive halt, she remembered all her earlier hopes. This was one night she wouldn’t be forgetting anytime soon.
Chapter Two
Mina hurried out of the front door and down the steps clutching her laptop bag, huddling into her scarf, trying to hide from the biting January wind. Despite the icy conditions predicted by the weather forecast, she wore high, kick-ass, black patent leather boots under slim-fitting black trousers with a matching jacket over a scarlet silk blouse. If there was ever a down-but-not-defeated outfit then this was it. This morning she had to face all her work colleagues after Saturday night’s disastrous proposal, including Simon himself.
While the rest of the guests had hastily beaten a path to her door, she and Simon had retreated to her bedroom for a hideous, no-coming-back-from, stand-up row.
‘What did you think you were doing?’ hissed Simon, shaking his head in rare fury.
‘I thought I was proposing to someone who said, less than a month ago, that he loved me. Someone who had agreed to find an estate agent to have our flats valued, and had selected the name Victor for our first male child – which, I’d just like to say now, I thought was an awful name, and I fully intended talking you out of it – and I seem to recall you even suggested getting married in St Mary’s near your mum’s. So forgive for me being a little confused. I thought I was doing what we’d already agreed we would do?’
‘Typical. So it’s my fault, is it? I might have known. Not that you had to jump the gun or anything, like you always do. You’re in such a hurry all the time.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have done if I’d realised you were shagging – I’m assuming you are, by the colour of her face – one of my oldest friends.’ Belinda had been excommunicated – she no longer deserved the title ‘best’ friend.
At that point Simon’s mouth firmed to a mutinous line rather reminiscent of a toothless turtle.
‘How long has that been going on?’ Mina thrust her chin up into his face.
‘She’s much calmer. You want to do everything at breakneck speed. You’re too much. Even your ridiculous wedding proposal is so true to character. Belinda’s much… more balanced. I feel on an even keel with her.’
‘So, you spineless git, you’re saying this is my fault, because of my personality?’ Her eyes bored into him with fury.
‘We’re not right for each other.’ Simon’s words were stiff as he refused to look at her.
