‘Perhaps this year he’s actually keeping his epic romantic gesture a secret.’
‘Do you think so?’ I had brightened at that prospect.
‘No,’ Erin had unceremoniously replied. ‘I think he’s been so focussed on his work that he’s forgotten about it entirely. Andlast year, I remember you saying how excited you were about Valentine’s Day. This year you’ve hardly mentioned it.’
That conversation had made me realise that the change in my relationship with Ted wasn’t just down to him; I had cooled off too.
When I’d told Mum about it at work the following day, she had said that all relationships go through this as couples settled into their own routines.
I didn’t want a routine. And I didn’t want to settle.
Yes, I wanted to get married, have kids, and pets, and everything else that falling deeply in love usually led to, but settle into a routine? No thank you. I wanted to be with someone who made my heart soar, my mind fizz with excitement, and my body burn with desire, each and every day. I wanted the sort of love I’d be willing to do anything for.
Was that the stuff of fairytales?
Perhaps it was.
But that was how Sam had made me feel.
Okay, that had been ten years ago, and I was only eighteen at the time. But I was only twenty-eight now, and I wanted those things. I had always wanted those things.
That was why I had booked a romantic getaway for me and Ted to that cottage in Midwinter.
After one year and a few months together, Ted and I were drifting apart. I could feel it. He hadn’t booked anything for Valentine’s Day. I hadn’t been certain of that, but I somehow knew he hadn’t. He had confirmed that tonight when he’d said that if I cancelled, we could go out for dinner on Valentine’s Day. He hadn’t said that he had already booked something.
And I hadn’t been excited about Valentine’s Day this year either. If we were going to save our relationship, one of us had to do something to rekindle that spark.
I was hoping that being so close to Fairlight Bay, the place where I’d experienced the best week of my life, not to mention, the best sex of my life, might reignite something in me. And hopefully ignite something in Ted.
How stupid of me.
I had wanted to spend a week with Ted in a cosy, country cottage in Midwinter in the hope that some of the magic I’d felt in Fairlight Bay ten years ago, might waft over us, and make us fall in love. Deeply, madly, and passionately in love.
Because we weren’t.
We liked each other a lot, but love?
Neither of us had said those three little words, and the chances of us ever saying them were getting less each day.
This evening, I had also realised that I wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle of Kingston upon Thames. Away from the bridal shop, and the online side of the business that I helped my mum run, where every bride-to-be gushed about her upcoming marriage with the love of her life. The man of her dreams. Her one true love. Away from the constant reminder that, the way things were going, it would probably never be me. Because the only man I had ever truly loved, had broken my heart ten years ago, and no one since had made me feel the way that he had.
When I’d met Ted, I had thought he might come close, but the longer we dated, the more it seemed unlikely. I’d booked this romantic break in a sort of last-ditch attempt to see if we could make a go of it. But in doing so, the only thing I would have possibly achieved was the thing I was determined not to: I would be settling.
I wanted to be in love. Deeply in love as I once was. All those years ago. Would I ever feel that way again? Why wasn’t I lucky with love?
Perhaps the problem wasn’t with the men I dated. Perhaps the problem was with me. I still hadn’t got over Sam, even after all these years, I was clinging to the past.
So I was going to spend a week in a cosy, country cottage in Midwinter and try to sort myself out. Whether Ted came with me or not. And I wanted to go back to Fairlight Bay and to try to exorcise those ghosts. The ghosts of a long-lost love.
Was I being overly dramatic? Probably.
But after I’d had that little flashback earlier, I couldn’t get Sam out of my mind. And I had to get him out. Once and for all. I had to move on from my past if I was ever going to have the future I wanted.
Four
Ted, it transpired, had been making plans of his own. Plans that didn’t include me. It wasn’t merely his unwillingness to spend a week in a cottage in the middle of nowhere that had made him decline to come with me to Midwinter – although at first it had been that. But, as he’d briefly mentioned, one of the calls he had taken that evening, after we’d eaten, had been from a friend of his. This friend had organised a last-minute break of his own. A four-day break to a golf resort in Vilamoura in the Algarve region of Portugal the following weekend. A work-related jolly that Ted had called, a Networking Event.
Ted had apparently told his friend that he couldn’t go, but it was obvious he wanted to. Portugal might not be hot in February but the weather would undoubtedly be better than it would be in the UK. When I had said that I wasn’t going to cancel my booking to Midwinter, whether Ted came with me or not, Ted had decided he would rather go to Vilamoura. He’d be flying out in the early evening on Friday the fourteenth, and returning the following Tuesday. And if I spent the entire week in Midwinter, it would mean we wouldn’t see one another on Valentine’s Day.
