He found the box and took the band out. He held it out, between two fingers. It was amazing. Patrick said, ‘As it turns out Martha, despite what I may have said at different times, I have been in love with you for fifteen years. Since the moment you spat this onto my arm.’ It was the rubber band from my braces.
He took my hand and tried to slide, and ultimately, stretched it over my finger. I looked at my hand and told him I would never take it off, although it was already cutting off the blood supply. He kissed me again. Then, I said, ‘So just to confirm. When I asked you, that time, if you were in love with me –’
‘Utterly,’ he said. ‘I loved you utterly.’
*
I told Patrick I couldn’t sleep with him that night because Heather was shortly due home, and I needed her to not be in the next room. He said he didn’t want to anyway because he was saving himself for the right person and offered to take me back to Goldhawk Road.
In the car, doing up his seatbelt, Patrick said, ‘It is going to be rubbish the first time. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I do.’
‘Because I’ve had a decade or so to overthink it.’
I told him I hated that term, because people were constantly accusing me of it. ‘I think they are underthinking everything. But I don’t say so because it would be rude.’
Patrick said yes, okay. ‘That’s the most important thing to establish in this conversation, not how to negotiate our sex life’ and started the car.
‘I also hate that term.’
He said so do I. ‘I don’t know why I used it.’
*
One day, years later, my mother would tell me that no marriage makes sense to the outside world because, she would say, a marriage is its own world. And I would dismiss her because by then ours had come to its end. But that was what it felt like, for the minute before we said goodbye outside my parents’ house, Patrick’s arms around me and my face turned into his neck. I hadn’t said I loved him, properly in the way he just had, but it is what I meant when I said, ‘Thank you Patrick,’ and went inside.
20
WE WENT TO the hospital the next day to see Ingrid. My parents, and Winsome and Rowland, were already there with Hamish, crowded into a room that was small and overly supplied with chairs.
As we were getting ready to go, Patrick said, ‘Just quickly, everyone, I asked Martha to marry me last night and she said fine.’
Ingrid said oh my gosh, finally. ‘It’s been a real will they, will they situation.’ My father did a triumphant movement with both fists, like someone who has just discovered they’re the winner of something, then tried to make his way over to us, pushing through the surfeit of chairs. ‘I’m parked in, Rowland – move, I need to shake my son-in-law’s hand.’ Patrick went over instead and I was, for a second, by myself.
Ingrid said, ‘Hamish, hug Martha. I can’t get up.’ While I was being hugged stiffly by my sister’s husband, I heard my mother say, ‘I thought they were engaged already. Why did I think that?’
Hamish released me and my father said, ‘It doesn’t matter. They are now. What do you think, Winsome?’
My aunt said it was lovely because it made everything so tidy. And we were welcome, she said, to have it at Belgravia, should we so wish. Rowland, beside her, said, ‘I hope you’ve got ￡50,000 to hand, do you Patrick? Bloody expensive business, weddings.’
When my father finally reached me, he pulled me into a crushing hug and kept me there until Ingrid said, ‘Can you all leave now please?’ and Hamish showed us out.
*
Patrick and I went back to his flat. There was a note on the table from Heather, reminding him that she had gone away and wouldn’t be back until the weekend. I read it over his shoulder. He said, ‘I promise I didn’t arrange that. Do you need a cup of tea first or anything?’
I said we should have it afterwards, as a reward, and pulled my T-shirt off.
*
Patrick wondered if it was the worst sex that had been had by two people in the UK since records began. For the few minutes it lasted, he had the set expression of someone trying to endure a minor medical procedure without anaesthetic. I could not stop making small talk. We had got out of bed straight away and dressed with our backs to each other.
In the kitchen, drinking tea, I told Patrick that it was like a terrible party.
He asked me if I meant highly anticipated but then disappointing.
I said no. ‘Because only one person came.’
The second time, we agreed, was motive to continue.