CHAPTER ONE

Vicky Pattison By Brian Aris

Vicky Pattison By Brian Aris

Becky

My Uber driver is the chattiest man in London, possibly the UK. I’ve been in this car for only seven minutes and already I know that his name is Dave, that he lives in Shoreditch (but moved there before it ‘got all up its own arse and full of bloody vegan restaurants’), he likes watching The Chase, loves a good jigsaw puzzle when he’s in the mood, and plans on having a Morrisons’ own brand Tikka Masala for his tea. I try my best to be nice and polite and interested in Dave – nice and polite and interested are the three words people would most use to describe me – but today has been extra-long and a bit crap. It’s not that I don’t care about Dave’s ‘onion bhaji or naan bread’ side dish-based dilemma. It’s just right now I haven’t quite got the energy for small talk. So shushy please, Dave, shhhhuuusssshhhhyyyy.

Instead I make vaguely interested noises and stare out of the cab window as the hustle and bustle of central London whizzes by in a blur of headlights, engine smoke and speeding motorbikes weaving in and out of the traffic. As Dave segues into a passionate speech about his favourite flavours of crisps, I find myself unable to stop the yawn that escapes my mouth with a sleepy squeak.

‘You alright, love?’ Dave asks into the rear-view mirror, his bushy grey eyebrows raising in question.

I smile kindly, feeling bad for yawning in the middle of his big Quavers versus Wotsits monologue.

‘Yeah, sorry about that.’ I shrug my shoulders apologetically, remembering how tight and stiff they’ve been feeling recently. ‘One of those days, you know?’

He nods. ‘You do look knackered, to be fair. All washed out and fed up. Not being funny or anything.’

Mad Bitchy Dave, Maaaaadddd Bitchy . . .

I pull a face. If he’d said that to my sister Lizzie, she’d have leant over the back seat and probably punched him directly in the throat while giving him an acerbic piece of her mind. Sadly, I don’t have Lizzie’s gigantic metaphoric lady balls but I’m not a complete pushover. That’s right, I can stand up for myself when I need to. And I totally intend  to give Dave a three-star rating on the Uber app instead of the five-star rating I’d usually award. AHA! How’d you like me now? Yeah, Dave, that’s right – I roll like that. I’m so thug life.

I pull out my phone and open my camera app, jumping in fright as it illuminates my face. Dave might be a cheeky bastard, but he is right. I’m looking pretty rough tonight – in fact, I look like a bag of piss. I sigh to myself as we drive down Marylebone Road. This day just gets better and better. I love my job, I really do, but it’s hard work and sometimes it gets to me. I’m a commissioning editor at a big publishing house called Richmond Books and one of my authors is behaving like a complete and utter fruitcup just one week before the release of her debut novel. It’s all got out of hand and dealing with her has been incredibly stressful – trying to calm her down is like trying to push water uphill with a fork – and now I look terrible on date night, of all nights. Date night, by its very nature, is the night I’m supposed to look gorgeous, irresistible, like a glowing goddess of seduction and sophistication and instead I look like a foot. Daniel and I may have been together since we met at university in Leeds, he may have seen me with Jolen tash-bleach blobbed on my upper lip and I may have found him lying in bed covered in half-eaten kebab and dressed as a giant baby after one particularly prolific rugby team night out, but Friday night is the night that we forget all that and, regardless of our busy schedules, social lives, family dramas or even the fact that we live together, we go out. Like the two loved-up adults we are. We go out and chat lovely chat, kiss amazing kisses, catch up with each other’s news, laugh and eat and drink and go home and make love like it’s the first time. Okay, perhaps not the first time – we were both virgins the first time and it was super awkward, really fast and a little bit shit. So I suppose what I mean is we go home and make love like it’s the fifth time (we found our stride by the fifth time – it was plain sailing in the sex department from that moment on. I’d give us a four star rating on the uber app.)

I rummage around my handbag for my favourite Charlotte Tilbury bronzer and highlighter, to try to make myself look less like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards. It takes me ages to find them because my bag is overflowing with stuff and jam-packed with general rubbish. My best friend Lauren calls me Mary Poppins because my bag is so big and holds stuff for every eventuality. Plasters, needle and thread, spare toothbrush, make-up, ballet flats, iPad, passport, charger, tissues, painkillers and a tangle teezer. I just like to be prepared, is all. What’s so wrong with that? When you grow up with a mum who takes off to God-knows-where when you’re fifteen, a little sister who’s a real handful and a dad who, while totally lovable, is clueless to most practical aspects of bringing up two daughters, you learn to prepare for . . . well, for everything.

Once I’ve found it, I pat the highlight across the top of my cheekbones and on my cupid’s bow before fishing out my favourite nude NARS lipstick and applying a slick across my lips. I take out my comb and run it quickly through my dark brown bob so that it settles back into the chic, sleek and sharp style that cost me almost a week’s salary.

There. I smile at myself in the camera screen. That’s better. I look human, at least. A slightly weary human, maybe – a human with the flu, perhaps? Or six small children? But human nevertheless.

When we pull up outside Nandos in Bayswater, there he is. Waiting outside the glass double doors looking like something out of a Hugo Boss advert. Daniel Balfour. Boyfriend of nine years, fully paid member of the stud muffin society, love of my life and all-round sort. I watch, smiling, as he leans down to pet a pug who’s just run over to sniff his shoes. The owner of the pug – an elderly woman – beams at Daniel in delight as he coos over the dog. Daniel has that effect on people and small dogs apparently. They love him. He’s genuinely good and nice and all of the things you want the love of your life to be (FIT! He is insanely FIT!). I watch him say goodbye to the elderly lady with a charming wave and my rubbish week, my crazy author, my sleep-deprived and haggard appearance starts to fade. Daniel Balfour – the ultimate cure for a shitty day.

I laugh as Daniel spots me exiting the Uber. He looks even smarter than usual in a sharp navy Armani suit, his blond hair foppish and shiny, a strand falling delightfully over one gorgeous blue eye. God, what have I done to deserve this man? I thought.

 ‘Hello, angel.’ He grins, leaning in for a kiss.

‘Hello, you.’ I accept the kiss gratefully, reminded of the way me and Lauren accepted our first gin and tonics in the airport after that juice retreat we did in Marrakech. Ahhhhh, good times.

Mmmmmm. Daniel’s kisses are insane. Not that I have many men to compare with (only two – well, two and a half as I sort of kissed Jonny Miller in year seven but the dinner lady caught us behind the PE equipment shed so our moment of passion was cut short. I still count it though) but I’m pretty sure that if there was a national kissing Olympics he’d take the gold, silver and bronze for team GB.

I giggle as I take him in in his suit. And then I peer down at me in my TopShop shift dress and River Island shoes. We don’t exactly look like the kind of people who’d frequent Nandos on a Friday night. But it’s where Daniel took me for our first date in Leeds and I must admit, I do have an enormous soft spot for their hummus and peri-peri drizzle.

Daniel opens the door for me, ever the gentleman, and I’m struck by how quiet it is in here tonight. In fact, it’s silent. There are no other customers! I glance at Daniel with a frown, desperately hoping that they haven’t been closed for bad hygiene standards. As I said, I love their hummus and peri-peri drizzle but if it turns out they’ve got rats or something I’ll be changing date-night venue to Pizza Express quicker than you can say ‘garlic dough balls’. But Daniel just grins, unfazed by the fact that it’s 7.30 on a Friday night and we’re the only two people in Nandos. This man is cool as a cucumber in a bowler hat, and ah well, if he’s not worried by our restaurant’s apparent lack of popularity, I’m not either. I suppose he can protect me from the killer rats.

Daniel takes my hand and leads me to a booth decked out with roses of pink, white and yellow and tiny candles nestled in little jam jars. The leather seats are scattered with pink rose petals. There is no menu, no placemats, no cutlery, no garlic peri-peri sauce on the table. Huh? And then I notice that the music playing isn’t the usual Nandos Samba, but the strains of a Pussycat Dolls song. The song that was playing the first time Daniel and I kissed on the sweaty, dark dance floor of Starlitez nightclub in Leeds town centre on their ‘buy three Jagerbombs for a fiva’ night.

‘Daniel?’ I turn to him, a happy but slightly confused smile spreading across on my face. I look around and there’s no one else around. Not even a waitress.

Daniel gestures to the decorated booth, looking slightly nervous. ‘Is this . . . is this okay?’

‘It’s beautiful,’ I reply softly.

And then it occurs to me.

Is he . . . is he about to do what I think he’s about to do?

Slowly, Daniel lowers himself onto one knee.

Macho Peas! This is happening.

I feel the tears slide down my face before he’s even got the words out. I start to laugh. He laughs at my laughing.

‘Bex,’ he says, his voice catching. ‘Nine years ago today I saw you in the student union, sitting cross-legged, wearing those big nerdy glasses and a fruit of the loom jumper, your hair all piled on top of your head like a birds nest, nursing a pint of snakebite and black and reading a copy of Pride and Prejudice. I knew then that you were special, that you were different. And I was right. You’re everything to me. The only person in my life who expects nothing from me and in turn gives me so much happiness. You light up my life and I want to light up yours for as long as we, you know,’ he laughs, a little embarrassed, ‘both shall live.’

Through the blur of my tears I see him pull a red velvet box from his inside jacket pocket. He opens it to reveal a beautiful platinum ring with an elegant princess-cut diamond nestling on the top. Holy hummus and pittas, this is DEFINITELY happening.

‘Daniel,’ is all I can manage to choke out.

‘Bex. Will you marry me?’

*

I’m engaged! I can’t believe that I’m engaged. I always knew Daniel and I would take the step eventually. We’re soulmates, so of course we were always going to get married one day. But I didn’t expect him to ask this year! He’s been so busy working at his dad’s company, trying his hardest to impress his frankly unimpressible father, that I didn’t expect he’d have the time to think about marriage. But he has and he did and now we’re engaged. I have a fiancé! I am a fiancée! Oooohhh, I feel so grown-up and fancy!

A waitress arrives with our food and another sashays over with the off-menu bottle of champagne that Daniel has clearly had them bring in from a nearby wine shop. Two plates piled high with chicken, chips, halloumi, sweet potato mash and of course hummus and peri-peri drizzle are served. I look around and I can’t help thinking how unusual this all is. The candlelit booth, the soundtrack – a playlist of all the songs we listened to at university. It feels surreal, like the most romantic restaurant in the world, not Nandos Bayswater. I can’t believe the thought and effort he’s put into this. I well up again thinking of all the adorable little personal touches and the lengths Daniel has gone to in order to make this special and perfect.

‘I was thinking a late summer wedding,’ Daniel says, tucking into his chicken wrap. ‘I know it’s only four months away, but why wait?’

A flicker of excitement ignites in my stomach. Daniel and I usually plan and research and plan again and outline every big decision on our lives. Planning a wedding for four months’ time? It feels so spontaneous and romantic, like he can’t wait and wants to become my husband as quickly as possible. My husband. I like the sound of that.

‘Sounds perfect,’ I say. I think about a late summer wedding. Golden skies, bridesmaids in palest pink, Pimms and Prosecco and big bowls of strawberries dipped in white chocolate, candles flickering in jam jars as the sun sets.

I sigh happily and shove a big forkful of mash into my mouth, as Daniel excitedly mentions beautiful St John’s Church near our flat in Notting Hill that might work as the venue.

Work might have been tricky this week, but it’s amazing how much can change in the space of a few hours – my nutty author, rude Uber driver and stressful week have just faded completely away. I’m so incredibly lucky.

‘I’m so excited,’ Daniel says, lifting his champagne glass up in a toast.

‘Me too,’ I say, clinking my glass against his. ‘This is the happiest day of my life!’

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