“I’d got him a special engagement gift, you see, a framed photograph of the two of us in the pub where we met for the first time. I’d had the frame engraved with our names and the date we met and thought it would be a cute gift to give him on the night of our engagement party.”
“It sounds like you put a lot of thought into it.”
“I did,” Carole replied on a long sigh. “I was young and naïve and my head was filled with romance. Well, at least it was, until I let myself into Steven’s flat and heard all the grunts and shrieks coming from the bedroom. When I pushed the door open and saw him on the bed being straddled by some woman, I froze in total shock.”
“Jeez, that’s horrendous, Carole.”
“When Steven noticed I was standing there, he jumped up and pushed the woman off him and I realised it was my so-called friend he was in bed with.”
She trailed off again, shaking her head. “I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It’s one of those phrases we use all the time, isn’t it?I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We all say that at some point about something or other, and mostly it’s just an exaggeration, a turn of phrase. But in that moment, it was no exaggeration. Iliterallycouldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
“I don’t blame you. It must have been hell.”
Tom caught the faraway look in her eyes as she recounted what had happened. Part of him wished he wasn’t driving the car at that precise moment, because he wanted to comfort her.
But then he saw a steely expression replace the faraway look on her face and he realised that Carole didn’t need comforting. Far from it. She was made of sterner stuff.
“I had a lucky escape,” she said. “I found out who Steven really was before it was too late. He tried to apologise, and tried to blame my friend—well, my ex-friend, inevitably, by that point—for leading him astray and seducing him. Obviously, that was a load of rubbish.”
“With friends like that…” Tom said with a wry grin.
“Exactly. And don’t get me wrong, I did have a lucky escape, but it took a while for that to sink in. At the time, it was just completely awful, and it’s still the worst thing that’s ever happened in my entire life. It was humiliating having to cancel the engagement party when everyone was already gathered in the function room, and it was humiliating having to call off an engagement, and it was humiliating when word inevitably got around my family and friends about the reasons behind it. I felt like a complete fool.”
Tom turned his gaze from the road and gave her a sympathetic smile.
“But eventually, once I got over the shock and the humiliation, I realised it was better that I’d caught him sooner rather than later. We’d only been together for three months at that point, and there was a lot we still didn’t know about each other. Much though it pained me to admit it, the truth was I hadn’t known Steven nearly well enough to agree to marry him. I had no idea he was the sort of man who’d cheat on me. And much though it also pained me to admit it to my parents, theywere right that I’d been too young to get engaged in the first place.”
“They weren’t happy about it?”
Carole shook her head. “They thought it was all too fast. Like I said, I was only twenty at the time. I was still living at home, still trying to work out what I wanted to do for a career, and still very far away from figuring out who I even was. My mother was livid when I breezed into the house with Steven at my side and announced we’d got engaged, and my poor dad turned as white as a sheet and almost keeled over with shock.”
“Poor guy.”
“I was too self-involved in my own romantic drama to realise what a fright I’d given them. It was only later that I realised how furious they were. I mean, they were polite enough to Steven while he was still in the room with us, but once he left, they went berserk.What are you thinking? Getting engaged at twenty to someone you only just met? Have you lost your mind?”
Carole gave him a wry grin before continuing. “Naturally, I thought they were being completely unreasonable and unfair and willfully blind to the fact that Steven and I were in love and wanted to be together for the rest of our lives. God, I must have sounded so naïve.”
“Love does strange things to us.”
“It certainly did strange things to me, that’s for sure. And I think I probably did lose my mind, like my parents’ accused me of. I was completely and hopelessly in love, which is what made Steven’s betrayal so much worse.”
“Clearly he was an idiot who didn’t deserve you in the first place.”
“Which is exactly what I told myself over and over again once I got my wits back after finding him in my bed with my friend. Yes, Steven was an idiot who didn’t deserve me, and yes, I’d had a lucky escape, and yes, my parents were right, and I probablywas too young to get married and to make such a huge decision when I was barely out of my teens. But what I could never understand waswhy.”
Confused, Tom glanced her way and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it wasStevenwho proposed tome. He was the one who said he wanted us to get married. It never would’ve occurred to me to suggest we getengagedjust a few months into our relationship. I was crazy about him and totally head over heels in love, and although we talked about the future and how much we loved being together, getting engaged and married is a big deal. Steven was the one who proposed and said that all he wanted was for us to spend the rest of our lives together. So why did he do that and then jump into bed with my friend two weeks later, on the night of our engagement party?”
Tom heard frustrated bafflement in her voice at the question she couldn’t answer.
“I thought we agreed the guy was an idiot,” he said. “Isn’t that explanation good enough?”
She let out a weary laugh. “You’re right. It should be good enough. And Steven was an idiot. Probably still is, for that matter. But what he did… it just never made any sense.”
“Terrible people do terrible things all the time that don’t make any sense to the rest of us who are more or less normal and decent.”
Carole laughed. “I suppose that’s true.”
