“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. My parents are their own kinds of cockweasels.”
He pulled away from the hug sooner than I would have liked. My chest hollowed.
“So, now the whole country thinks we’re engaged,” I said, eyeballing the newspaper like my stare alone could reduce it to ashes. “I’m sure we can explain it to your folks easily enough.”
“Yes, I look forward to seeing their faces slide back into permanent disappointment. This can be yet another way I’ve failed them, depriving them of an aristocratic son-in-law.”
I sighed in sympathy. “I’m going to have to explain it to the whole village too. Preferably this side of the village fair, or that’ll be unbearable.”
“So, is he coming here with his bloody car club?”
“I haven’t replied yet,” I said. “I wanted to ask you what I should do.”
Petey shrugged. “A bag of carrots is a bag of carrots.”
“You don’t mind.”
“Why would I? I won’t be here.”
Chapter 27
Petey
William looked broken, like the newspaper article was more than he could take.
“Any chance your father’s popped another spliff in that drawer,” I asked, half hoping to lighten the mood a little, half hoping a spliff might actually be on offer.
“Given there was only one in the drawer and we already smoked it, that’s one of those questions with no good answer,” he said. “A no means disappointment, but a yes means we’ll never truly be able to sleep comfortably in here ever again.”
William moved to the makeshift drinks cabinet on the bookshelf and poured us each a sloe gin—no ice, no mixer.
“This’ll help,” he said, and knocked his back so fast it couldn’t have touched his tongue. I took a sip of mine, winced, then did the same. It burnt all the way down, but as the warmth radiated out from my belly, I felt some of the tension leave muscles I didn’t know I’d been clenching.
“I need to get my laptop,” I said, heading for the stairs.
I still hadn’t worked up a presentation for Indira with my best idea for a TV show. I really needed to be working on it.
“Petey, this is going to follow us around,” William said, staring out the porthole window. “The last time I was in the papers?—”
William paused. I couldn’t tell if he was deciding whether to tell me something, or whether he was swallowing his emotions.
I sat down in the armchair, facing him.
“I was down in London for the reading of my father’s will,” he said slowly. “I was a wreck. My father and brother had been killed three weeks earlier—I’d been in London then, too, as you know. The place is cursed for me. Every time I go there, something dreadful happens.”
Was that what his hatred of London was all about? A tragic coincidence? A silly superstition? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. A photo like that wouldn’t have kept me up at night. It would have horrified my parents, but that was all the more reason to revel in the notoriety. William and I lived in completely different worlds.
“The accident had been all over the papers. A baron and his heir dying in a plane crash. I get that it’s news. But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was so deep in grief. I’d just inherited all this and been told my father’s affairs were an absolute mess and there wasnomoney. I’d had to give up my rugby career to move home and deal with it all. My mother was inconsolable.”
His hand started to shake, and he put his glass down on the coffee table, slumping into his armchair.
“Some friends, Jonty among them, took me to Annabel’s and got me drunk. I was in a devil-may-care mood. It was probably the cocaine. Possibly too many hours on the trot in Jonty’s company. So when this couple approached me, bought me a few drinks, and asked me home, I thought, sod it. Why not? Isn’t this what normal people do? I can be normal. This is what young men are supposed to do when they’re in London, right? My parents were always saying to live in the moment. So we left theclub. Got as far as a park bench in Berkeley Square. You know the rest.”
He kicked the newspaper off the coffee table and onto the floor.
“I’m sorry that happened,” I said. I could tell he had been suffering, that this moment had haunted him all this time.
“Listen,” William said, leaning forward and grabbing my hands in his. His eyes were bright with enthusiasm. “Why don’t you stay?”
