Chapter 58
Cal
At around the same time on Friday that I was seducing Aida in my home with my excellent skills, both culinary and sexual, Rafe was proposing to Belle. And it sounds like his skills were right up there with mine, because I’ve never seen my mate look so fucking perky on a Monday morning.
His perfect happiness is a welcome distraction.
The trailer for Searching for Paradise gets released today after a successful, and total, embargo on the show’s existence, and it’s fair to say I’m nervous.
Not for myself so much as for Aida, who’s positively bricking it.
I hated letting her go yesterday afternoon, knowing how much she’s steeling herself for the depressingly inevitable backlash.
A “middle-aged”woman (her term) hooking up with a younger sex club owner to rediscover her sexuality: we’re both confident the tabloids will find the most judgemental, reductionist, lurid way to spin our situation and that the British public will positively rejoice in tearing her down for it.
God forbid she should emerge triumphant from the farcical conclusion of her marriage.
All of which makes me even more determined to be there for her. And I will. I’ll stick to her like fucking glue this week, see if I don’t.
But first, we’re doing a coffee toast to Rafe, our intrepid explorer and the first of our little foursome to propose lifelong, till-death-do-us-part commitment to another human being. When you think about it that way, it’s really something.
‘Tell us everything,’ Gen begs, as if three million messages weren’t exchanged over the weekend on our group chat. ‘So she was totally shocked, yes?’
Rafe crosses his knee over its opposite ankle and sits back, all contented ease now he’s secured his future happiness.
‘Totally fucking gobsmacked,’ he confirms, grinning to himself at the memory.
‘She kept remarking on how quiet it was. I had the string quartet set up just outside that sweet little room that’s all panelled in Fragonards, and she was like “What a shame these people are playing such beautiful music and there’s no one around to appreciate it.
” She didn’t click at all, until I went down on one knee, and then… Yeah. She clicked.’
Jesus, my eyes are wet. I blink furiously as Gen lets out a squeal.
Maddy’s bouncing up and down. ‘She still won’t tell me what you actually said to her. Even though I spent most of Saturday night begging her.’
‘Yeah, we agreed we’d keep the specifics between the two of us,’ Rafe says. ‘It’s private, you know? But thanks for coming over on Saturday,’ he says to Zach and Maddy. ‘She needed someone to talk it all over with—we both did.’
‘You couldn’t have kept me away,’ Maddy retorts, and we all laugh.
‘What’s important is she said yes, mate, and you look like the happiest man alive,’ I tell him.
Usually, I’d be tempted to take the piss a little, because I’ve never seen him hit over the head quite so hard with the love stick, but I can’t knock a man who’s this happy. Can’t take away from this moment.
‘Yeah.’ He nods slowly, like he’s trying to absorb the fact himself.
‘She definitely said yes. It’s odd. Obviously, I engineered the entire evening around her, and I wanted to make it as special as possible, but seeing her face when she realised what I was doing—she was so fucking ecstatic—I tell you.
I’ll never forget that feeling as long as I live. ’
There’s a silence during which Zach gives an enormous, wet-sounding sniff.
‘Jesus Christ, mate,’ I say, pinching the bridge of my nose in an effort to stop my own waterworks.
‘So, engagement party here, I assume?’ Gen asks with excellent comic timing, and we all crack up.
‘Can you imagine?’ Rafe asks. ‘Belle’s dad would cough up a bollock if we held it here. No, I think we’ll aim for somewhere a bit more conservative. The Mandarin or the RAC Club.’
‘Bring it,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll all be there to embarrass you. You set a date for either?’
‘Not exactly, though we spent the entire weekend talking about it,’ Rafe says. ‘Probably late spring for the wedding—neither of us wants to wait. And we’ll get the engagement party sorted for a few weeks’ time. The most important thing is that Belle’s brother Dex can make it.’
‘He’s in New York, right?’ Zach asks.
‘Yeah, at Goldman Sachs.’
‘Have you met him?’
‘We did that trip in June, remember?’ Rafe asks.
‘He’s a good guy. Not mad keen on London, mainly because he likes to keep as much distance between him and their dad as humanly possible.
But he told us when we Face Timed him this weekend that he’s considering a transfer back here, so he’s going to try to tee up some meetings at the same time as the engagement party. ’
‘Did their dad fuck him up as much as he did Belle?’ I ask, curious. That guy sounds like a religious nut-job, from what Rafe’s told us.
He cocks his head, considering. ‘Hard to tell. On the surface, no, because he rejected all that shit a lot earlier than Belle, and more openly, too, from what I hear. But she reckons he’s fucked up in his own way. He fucks around but beats himself up for it.’
‘Maybe you should put him through Unfurl,’ I deadpan, and everyone laughs.
‘Believe me, he’s not one hundred percent convinced about me,’ Rafe says. ‘Not by a long shot. He warmed up over the weekend we were out there, but he’s still not a massive fan.’
‘You’re fourteen years older than his little sister and run a sex club,’ Gen points out. ‘There’s really nothing to like, if you’re him.’
That sets us all off again.
‘You are every big brother’s walking nightmare,’ Zach agrees, shaking his head in mock horror.
‘Yeah, yeah. I get it. But he knows I love Belle, and he knows she’s my whole world.
I think standing up to Ben earned me some brownie points with Dex, at least. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s made peace with me and her being together, but there’s something about my proximity to Alchemy that has him shitting the bed. ’
‘You mean he doesn’t trust you to be faithful?’ Gen presses. ‘Surely not?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Not that. It’s more… I don’t know; it’s just a hunch I get.
I suspect he finds the whole prospect of a sex club tantalising and morally outrageous in equal measure.
Like I said, the guy has serious issues, even if he acted out earlier than Belle.
There’s definitely stuff he hasn’t made peace with.
So I suspect he feels threatened just by my ties to this world. ’
‘Interesting,’ I muse. I’m lucky enough to have come out of my ultra-Catholic education reasonably intact.
I never really allowed the doctrine we were force-fed at school to take root, unlike a huge proportion of my classmates.
It helps that my parents aren’t religious—Mum’s Catholic and pushed for me to go to Loyola, but Dad’s a Scottish Presbyterian in name only.
So I probably don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for adults in their twenties or thirties who are still grappling with guilt over betraying teachings that I’ve only ever seen as total horseshit.
‘Sounds like we need to forcibly drag him to Alchemy,’ I conclude. ‘A night here will sort anyone out.’