There was also the additional worry that he’d hidden the ring in her pot au chocolat and there was nothing remotely romantic about the Heimlich manoeuvre.
On their last evening in Paris, they sat on the wrought iron balcony of his apartment drinking a bottle of extremely mellow red wine, while the noise and the hubbub of the Champs Elysées at night buzzed way below them. Janice was getting desperate. It was, after all, the last night of the holiday.
Jasper’s last chance to propose.
And as she describes their conversation in minute detail, my mind keeps rewinding like videotape, back to an event that, in the whole whirlwind of my fake engagement, I’ve totally forgotten. The restaurant on Upper Street and the girl in the raspberry dress. Should I tell her what I saw?
But if I do tell her, and it turns out to be something completely innocuous, then I’ll look like a stirring old witch.
But what if I don’t tell her and he’s been stringing her along the entire time? What happens then? She’ll be having charity biddy sex for nothing when she could be bonking half of London Irish instead.
‘And so I’ve just given up altogether,’ Janice is sipping her third margarita and looking at me curiously, ‘when he says…’ She gulps.
‘Ye-es?’
Thank God for that! He’s proposed after all. Phew. I’m saved! I don’t have to mention Raspberry Dress. After all, as long as she gets the marriage certificate and the bank account, she’s hardly going to be concerned about a smidgen of infidelity, now is she?
‘He says, “I’ve got something for you”,’ she finishes. ‘And he brings out this Tiffany box. I know it’s Tiffany, right, because I recognise the colour, you know, it’s the same as the walls in my kitchen.’
I nod eagerly. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, of course I’m getting really excited by this time, because I know, I just know, it’s a solitaire diamond and that this is It and I’m sure he must have popped out and bought it that morning while I had a lie-in and he went to fetch fresh croissants…’
‘Croissants too.’ I snigger. ‘Lucky girl. So you didn’t have any problems with the false zoobies then?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ She shoots me a look. ‘His back won’t take that kind of bending. No, I mean real croissants. And those nice, sticky pains au raisins you get from the boulangerie. Well, I don’t mind telling you I wolfed down three, because I’d just about given up hope of there being any wedding to speak of so there wasn’t any point in slimming any more. So there we are,’ she continues, talking faster and faster to get out exactly what she has to say, ‘in the most romantic city in the world, and he’s giving me the famous turquoise box and I’m just kicking myself for eating three pastries for breakfast, because the moment has finally arrived. And I just know, Katie, I just know that this is when my life is going to change for the better and I’m finally going to get rich, so I delay opening the box because there’s a tiny little part of me that’s worried he’s picked one I’ll hate and I won’t know what expression to have on my face if that happens. But then I can’t wait to see it, because I can’t wait to know and so I open the box and…and…’
‘And…’ I breathe, urging her on. God, even I’m getting excited. I must be going soft.
‘And it’s a fucking locket,’ she spits. ‘Imagine, Katie. A silver Tiffany locket. And there I am, wanting to go to the bathroom and cry my eyes out with the disappointment of it all, and there he is, slinking up behind me and expecting me to be thrilled to bits, saying, “Shall I put it on for you?” The smarmy old git.’
‘Oh dear,’ I say sympathetically.
‘Oh dear is fucking right,’ she says bitterly, a fat tear rolling down her cheek. ‘You see, I was so sure that this was it that I let him boff me every night. Imagine!’
‘Yuck.’
‘And you know what’s worse?’ ‘What?’ I signal for more drinks. I think we need them.
‘I gave him a blow job and everything. Yes, a blow job,’ she shouts, as the whole of the next table, and the one after that look on, open-mouthed. ‘And I swallowed. And this is the thanks I get. A poxy fucking locket and a gutful of fogie sperm. And then, when we get back to London, I have to get the sodding tube here on my own. No limo. No car. Not even a shitty black cab. Nothing.’
‘Why? Where’d he go?’
‘No idea.’ She shrugs. ‘Work, I expect. He’s a workafuckingholic, that man.’