“Just running through my reading,” she tells us, as Matthew stares down at the floor, his foot tapping in irritation. “Your uncle is having a cup of tea with the vicar in the sitting room. What a lovely woman! She’s been telling us all about her sermon tomorrow. It’s going to be so moving.”
“Ah, she’s great, isn’t she?” I smile up the stairs.
“Is there nowhere private in this place?” Matthew mutters under his breath.
Looking as though he might lose it at any second, he grabs my wrist and pulls me a few steps down the hall and yanks open the cupboard under the stairs, then ushers me in. He follows, shutting the door behind him. Startled, I feel for the switch on the wall and turn on the light. It’s so cramped in here, with all the household bits like the hoover and brooms that Dad shoves in here out of the way, we’re pressed right up against one another.
“Matthew, what are you doing?” I whisper, pushing away the mop handle that falls on my shoulder. “Why are we in a cupboard?”
“I couldn’t hear myself think out there,” he growls.
“Yeah, well, if you wanted some space we could have driven somewhere,” I point out, wrinkling my nose at all the spiderwebs in the corners. “There are much nicer places to get away from everyone.”
“This couldn’t wait.”
He bites his lip. He’s really making me feel on edge. The way his mannerisms are so jerky, the beads of sweat forming on his forehead, his eyes darting around.
“Matthew, what is it?” I ask in concern, reaching for his hands. “Is it the peacocks?”
He pulls his hands out of my grasp. “Peacocks? What? No! This isn’t about peacocks. Why would this be about peacocks?”
“You know what, you look a bit frazzled, so there’s no need for you to know. Let’s just say there’s a peacock situation, but it’s being handled.”
He stares at me in bewilderment and then suddenly it’s like he just gives up. His hands fall to his sides, his shoulders droop, his head bows. He exhales, shutting his eyes tight together.
“I can’t do this,” he whispers.
“Can’t do what? Matthew, are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“I’m so sorry,” he whimpers, suddenly looking completely helpless. “I’ve known it for a while. I should have told you. I’ve spoken to my parents about it just now and they… well… I have to tell you.”
I reach for him but he recoils as much as he can in such a small space, his foot knocking into the hoover. It switches on and he desperately searches for the power button. I calmly reach over and turn it off for him.
“Matthew, what’s going on? You’re worrying me. Whatever it is, you can tell me.” I smile at him with encouragement. “We can sort it together.”
“I can’t do this,” he croaks. “I can’t do any of this. Not anymore. I can’t go through with the wedding.”
I stare at him, unable to speak.
“I’m so sorry, Freya,” he says slowly but surely, lifting his eyes to meet mine. “It’s over.”
CHAPTER ONE
When you get dumped the day before your wedding in a broom cupboard, suddenly everything seems a bit shit.
I never imagined my world would come completely crashing down like this, but if I had, I never would have considered it might happen in a broom cupboard. I had a mop handle literally resting on my shoulder. My right foot was balanced on the dustpan and brush on the floor. There were about a hundred gross spiderwebs hanging around my head. And barely two inches away from me was my fiancé—the man I’d spent the last twelve years with; the love of my life, whom I was due to marry the very next day—who had decided that this was the best place to tell me that, actually, he’d changed his mind.
A broom cupboard.
My brain couldn’t process the information at first. I made him repeat himself. You know, just to torture myself as much as possible. Apparently, I wasn’t content with how he’d spelled it out the first time, when he said very plainly he couldn’t go through with the wedding. No, I made him say it again and again, each time expecting his words to make sense.
But there was no sense to be made. All Matthew did was stand in that broom cupboard and repeat that he’d had doubts for a while, but that he didn’t want to believe them. He’d hoped they would just go away, and when they didn’t he had no idea what to do. As the wedding crept toward us, he’d tried to work outa way to tell me that he wanted out. Only he could never quite muster the courage.
Suddenly, it was the day before and he couldn’t bear to cause me pain, but he knew he had to do it, otherwise it would be even crueler to go through with the marriage. So, he took his parents to lunch and he was honest with them. And they told him that he absolutely had to tell me. That day. Right there.
“They told you to tell me this in the broom cupboard?” I managed to whisper. Gail and Andrew loved me, how could they have encouraged their son to call off our wedding in a broom cupboard?
“What?! No, no, course not,” he confirmed, his brow furrowing. “They didn’t mention the broom cupboard specifically. This was the only private place on offer.”
