I am grateful to be outside for a few moments. I wouldn’t say it’s peaceful—Izzy is with me. But this afternoon’s rain glimmers on the trees around us, and the air is soft and fresh as nightfall presses in.
When I moved here, I never expected to love the forest so much. I thought it would be picturesque, perhaps, but I didn’t realise how something so old and so beautiful would make me feel. It is easy to find calm in a place that outdates you by about a millennium.
“I feel like it’s not saying proposal. We need to dial up the sparkliness,” says Izzy, stepping back to survey the pergola with a critical tilt of her head.
I breathe out through my nose. Izzy offsets all calming properties of the New Forest. My blood pressure is already climbing.
“Why does a proposal require sparkle, exactly?”
The pergola looks classy—there are candles, tasteful floral decorations, and a light sprinkling of fairy lights hanging in loops between the eight oak pillars.
“It’s a huge moment! It needs to feel epic,” Izzy says, and then, catching my eye-roll, she says, “Oh, let me guess, you hate proposals? And joy? And love?”
“I do not hate joy and love. Or proposals. Put those fairy lights down,” I say, exasperated. “You’ll ruin it. We already have lights.”
What is it with this woman and those things? If she had her way, we’d all wander around the hotel draped in them.
“Not enough lights,” Izzy says, already mounting the ladder to hang the next set. “And I don’t believe you. I literally cannot imagine you proposing. You’d be like . . .” She trails off. “OK, I’m not going to attempt a Brazilian accent. But you’d say something really factual. Like, Why don’t we get married, here are all the reasons I think this is a good idea.”
“Do it in the accent,” I say, moving to stand under her ladder. No doubt, if she fell and broke a bone, it would be my fault somehow. “Then I might tell you how I would propose.”
That catches her by surprise—her hands falter on the fairy lights and she looks down at me. I meet her gaze after a day of avoiding eye contact by every possible means. She has surprising eyes. From her colouring you’d expect hazel or brown, but they’re the green of palmeira leaves, and almond shaped, with decadent long lashes. Izzy is “cute,” that’s what men would say—she’s petite, with round cheeks and a button nose. Cute, not sexy. Until you meet her eyes, and then you change your mind.
“I’m not doing the accent,” she says after a moment, returning her attention to the string of lights.
“OK.”
“I’m not doing it—it’ll be offensively bad.”
“Fine.”
She waits. I wait.
“Oh, for God’s sake, fine: Why don’t we get married,” she tries; and then, when I start laughing, “That was good! I thought it was good!”
“It started Spanish,” I say, straightening up and sniffing as I compose myself again. “And then became Australian.”
Even in the half-light I can see that she’s red with embarrassment, and I grin, mood greatly improved.
“Shut up, Lucas. Go on, then—how would you propose?” she asks as she climbs down the ladder and shifts it to the next pillar.
“Not like this,” I say.
With all the outdoor heaters set up and the table beautifully dressed, this is technically an ideal spot for a proposal. But there is something tense about it.
“This is too . . .”
“Spontaneous? Romantic?” she says, climbing up the rungs again as the colour subsides in her cheeks.
“I was going to say showy. What if Hiro says no? Half of his family is waiting in the bar.”
“Do you just enjoy sucking the fun out of everything? We’re helping to create something magical here, and you’re standing there talking about Hiro breaking Charlie’s heart.”
I ignore this, taking comfort—as I will many times—from remembering Izzy trying to sound Brazilian. She is wilfully na?ve about this sort of thing. I am just being realistic.
“Anyway, asking someone to marry you is a question,” she says over her shoulder, standing on one foot to loop the lights a little further along the beam. “So there’s always the possibility the other person will say no.”
“If there’s the possibility she will say no, then I wouldn’t be asking,” I say. This strikes me as a given, but Izzy pauses as she comes down the ladder, staring at me.