Chapter 26
26
F leur stood in the kitchen with a cloth in one hand and a bottle of spray in the other, having just moved all the appliances and pots from the worktop onto the kitchen table. She’d sprayed and wiped the worktop until it shone. A fresh breeze came through the window, and she smirked to herself at the state of the situation around her. Here she was, going through the motions of a nice, normal life; a regular old cottage in a nice area, cleaning the kitchen, doing her chores, getting ready for the next work week. All of it normal and nice while on the inside, she was gearing up for a mammoth moment in her life. She, Fleur Champion, the woman who never did anything out of the ordinary, was going to pop the question to her unsuspecting partner.
As she took the little tray out of the bottom of the toaster, tipped its contents into the bin, cleaned it out, and slid it back into place, she wondered how the evening ahead of her was going to go. She and Patrick were off to a speakeasy, and she’d decided to take the bull by the horns and was planning to ask him over chowder. Not that she had any clue whether or not she was doing the right thing, but she’d decided that you only live once. Just as she was spraying the side of the kettle and wiping it until it gleamed, her phone buzzed with a call from Patrick.
‘Hey, how are you?’ Patrick asked.
Fleur felt ridiculously nervous about the evening ahead. ‘Yeah, good. You?’
‘You sure? You don’t sound it.’
Fleur felt a quiver of butterflies go around her stomach. ‘I’m fine. How are you?’
‘Yeah, busy. I’ve got that meeting to go to, I’ll leave as soon as it’s over, so hopefully, I won’t be late if the traffic’s not too bad. But it is Friday afternoon.’
‘Well, hopefully, you’ll be home in time.’
Patrick exhaled on the other end of the line, the sound of rustling papers and a muffled voice in the background. ‘I mean, I should be back in time, but you know how it is. One idiot on the M25 and suddenly my ETA goes from a civilised six-thirty to send out a search party a few days later.’
Fleur smiled, still wiping the kettle as if her life depended on it. ‘Yeah, well, you would choose to try and run an empire for a living. Hardly surprising you end up spending half your time in tailbacks behind lorries with all the places you go.’
‘Correction, badly driven lorries and honestly, some of these drivers make me worry for the future of humanity.’
‘Good to know you’ve got your usual optimism about you today.’ Fleur chuckled.
‘It’s part of my charm.’
‘Lol.’
‘Lol? You sound odd. Why do I get the sense you’re up to something? Are you okay? You’re not coming down with something, are you?’
Fleur gripped the cleaning spray. ‘No, no. I’m not up to anything. Just head down cleaning and getting stuff ready for next week.’
‘You definitely are. You’re weird, and you keep doing that voice you do when you’re pretending everything’s fine but actually something’s up.’
Fleur shuddered. ‘There’s nothing up. Can’t a woman just want to go out for dinner without it being some big conspiracy?’
‘A woman can, yes. You, on the other hand…’
‘I’m just happy.’
‘Hmm, it’s not that; it’s your voice. Suspicious.’
Fleur chirped. ‘It’s not suspicious, Patrick. I’m just full of the joys of spring.’
‘Well, if I’m about to get lured into some elaborate scheme, can you at least promise me there’ll be a good few beers this evening after the week I’ve had?’
Fleur rolled her eyes, popping the dishcloth onto the worktop. ‘There will be beer and chowder. You should know; you have more experience of these speakeasies than me.’
‘Good. That’s all I ask. Alright, I’m about to go into the meeting, and then I’ll set off. Hopefully, I won’t get stuck behind some bloke who thinks 40 mph is an appropriate speed for a dual carriageway.’
‘You definitely will. Just managing your expectations. I’m very experienced in traffic, unfortunately.’
‘If I turn up late and hungry, just ply me with food and drink.’
‘Duly noted.’
‘See you later, when I will find out what you are up to.’
Patrick hung up, and Fleur stood for a moment, looking out the window. He’d got wind of her just by the sound of her voice. He was going to spend the entire meal trying to figure out what she was up to. Great. She glanced at the kitchen table, still covered in appliances and pots. Perhaps she’d change their plans, forget about the proposal altogether, stay in and, as Cassy had said, propose over beans on toast.
Funny, really, Patrick was already suspicious. She’d clearly not make a very good spy. He was going to turn up, sit opposite her in the deli, and spend the entire evening watching her like a hawk trying to figure out what she was up to. She picked up the cloth again and wiped the already spotless kettle. Maybe she should just cancel the whole thing. Stay in, open a bottle of wine, and forget she’d ever had the utterly ridiculous proposal idea in the first place. Pulling out a chair, she sat down, staring at the box holding the ring in front of her. She still hadn’t worked out how she was going to do it, though she’d watched enough YouTube videos on proposing. She laughed to herself as she imagined just slipping it into the conversation between bites of chowder.
‘Oh, by the way, Patrick, fancy getting married?’ She said to herself. No. Way too blunt.
‘You know, I love you more than anything, and I’d really like to spend the rest of my life with you, so what do you think? Marry me?’ God, no. Too serious. He’d probably panic and run a country mile.
She leaned back in her chair, sighing. She needed something in between. Not too casual, not too dramatic. Something very “them”. Deciding to just wing it, she tried not to think about it. After all, that was how she’d ended up in the situation in the first place. She hadn’t planned to propose, and yet here she was, sitting in her kitchen, running through every possible way to pop the question like she was rehearsing lines for a play.
After checking the time, she left the kitchen, walked upstairs, and pulled open her wardrobe. What did one wear to propose? Something casual? Like it was just another dinner? Or something special? She pulled out a soft, floaty dress that made her feel nice but wasn’t over the top. Slipping it on, she went to the mirror, smoothed it down, held her head to the side and made a few expressions. Ridiculous. Shaking her head, she decided she was making it so much harder than it needed to be and she’d just pop the question at some point in the meal and be done with it. Patrick loved her. She loved him. That was all that mattered. Easy. All she had to do was have a shower, get ready, make sure she looked like the bee's knees, and then actually do the deed. By the way her insides felt, easier said than done.