Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Stella
Beck held my hand as we left the hotel room to join the others downstairs for a lunchtime picnic.
I’d woken up feeling sore—not on the outside but somehow the inside of me was bruised.
Maybe it had been that way for some time and I just hadn’t noticed.
I couldn’t believe I’d confessed to Beck last night about Matt and Karen.
He must have thought I was a total doormat.
Just as we were stepping onto the brick veranda, Karen appeared.
There was no heading off in the opposite direction or avoiding eye contact—we were face-to-face, and shame rose from my feet and seeped into my belly.
Shame for not saying anything to her and for allowing myself to be treated the way she treated me.
“Hi,” she said, glancing down at my hand linked with Beck’s. “It looks like the sun is going to hold.”
“Looks beautiful,” I said, trying my best to smile.
Even if I did have the courage to say something, I couldn’t risk upsetting things for Beck.
Henry was Karen’s godfather after all. If I ruined her wedding, we’d be asked to leave, and Beck would lose his chance of getting Henry to sell him his building.
But if I was to say something, I might tell her how her first boyfriend had turned up at my house the week before he ended things between them and told me he loved me.
I might say how her little sister, Elsie, had told me once that she didn’t like the way Karen spoke to me.
I might even show her the message I got from her mother the day after the invitation arrived, telling me how sorry she was for what her daughter had done.
But of course, I stayed silent.
“Well, head over to the weeping willows where everything is set up,” she said. “I’ll catch you later.”
“She’s very upbeat,” Beck said as we made our way down the steps. “It’s annoying.”
I laughed. “Yeah. She’s always been that way—nothing much gets to her.” It had always seemed like Karen had some kind of internal suit of armor.
“I think it’s genetic,” he said. “Life’s always wonderful.”
Different colors of tartan picnic blankets were laid out on the grass by the river.
On each blanket there was a wicker hamper and a square card with names printed on them.
Beck would think this was normal and put it down to the idiosyncrasies of the upper classes, but set seating at a picnic was anything but normal—it didn’t matter who you were.
Beck and I wandered from one empty blanket to another looking for our names.
“People are different. You can’t know someone just by virtue of the fact their family has money.
” Beck was looking at name cards intently, and I wasn’t sure if he was ignoring me or hadn’t heard me.
“There we are,” I said, spotting my name two blankets farther up, at the very edge of the party.
I kicked off my ballet flats and took a seat.
“Have you thought anymore about confronting Matt or Karen—or even better, both of them?” he asked, handing me the card while he unbuckled the hamper.
“You might enjoy making enemies, but I don’t.”
“It’s not about making enemies. It’s about standing up for yourself.”
There was no point in having this conversation again. It wasn’t as if I’d helped Karen pick out her wedding gown or was a bridesmaid or something. “Well, if I had confronted her, I wouldn’t have been invited this week and you wouldn’t be here. So, count yourself lucky and zip it.”
He chuckled, handing me two wine glasses. “Yeah. Okay. Point taken. I just don’t get it, that’s all.”
I spotted Florence and Bea on the other side of the sea of blankets, down by the river. Karen must have given them a blanket for four.
“Look, Florence is waving,” Beck said.
I nodded. “Yeah. She’s over there with Bea and there’s Jo, too,” I said, spotting the rest of our gang.
“No doubt your good friend Karen was in charge of the seating plan.”
“Come on,” Beck said, standing up. “We’re going to take our blanket over there.” He tugged at the green wool I was sitting on. “Get up.”
“Beck, no. We can’t. There’s a seating plan for a reason. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if we’re back here.”
“We bloody well can.” He scooped up the hamper. “This week is difficult enough for you without her seating you nowhere near your friends.”
“It won’t be malicious from her perspective,” I said, not entirely believing it. She probably hadn’t wanted me in her eyeline as a reminder of what she’d done, although in that case she shouldn’t have invited me.
“I suppose it depends on your definition of malicious. If not giving a shit about you or your feelings is malicious, then that’s the least she’s being. Get up,” he said again, “or I’ll put you over my shoulder and carry you. If you won’t stick up for yourself, I’ll do it for you.”
I shivered. I couldn’t remember any man coming to my rescue before. I wasn’t used to a man who worried about my feelings or the enjoyment of my day.
Something ignited inside me, giving me energy, and I got to my feet.
Matt should have been that guy.
He should have been the man who wanted better for me than I wanted for myself, who stood up for me and did things to make my day better.
Because we’d been together for so long, what I had and what I should expect for myself had melded together and I’d lost sight of what I was worth. Beck might be a fake boyfriend, but on every measure, he was better than Matt had ever been.
He was nicer to me. More respectful. He was in my corner—batting for me, cheering me on. Not to mention more handsome, funnier, and a better kisser.
Matt had done me a favor by dumping me. The constant, subtle putdowns, the lack of affection and kindness, not to mention the way he always pushed his needs to the top of the list, even if I’d let him. Beck had provided me with a new normal, and I could never go back now.
It really said something when having a fake boyfriend was better than having a real one.
Instead of sadness, the realization about Matt freeing me provided relief. And uncertainty—if I’d been wrong about Matt for so long, what else was I wrong about? Who else?
Before I got a chance to overthink, Beck tucked the blanket under his arm and made his way between the other guests.
I had no choice but to follow him as I hastily put my shoes back on and gathered the wine glasses.
Although it felt a bit naughty, it also felt liberating.
For once, I was doing something to make myself happy.
“Hi,” Beck said, as we arrived at the spot where all my friends were. “Do you mind if we join you?”
“Of course not,” Florence said. “I don’t know why you weren’t over here with us in the first place. And who the hell has assigned seating at a picnic anyway?”
Beck shot me an I-told-you-so look and, despite him being a tiny bit irritating, I couldn’t help but admire how he just didn’t give a shit. It felt like a small victory over Karen and Matt, and Beck was the man who’d made it happen.
“Who’s having wine?” Beck asked, offering up the bottle in our basket.
When everyone passed, he filled my glass and put a few mouthfuls in his.
“Day drinking and staring out at that river,” he said as we all looked through the screen of willow branches down to the jetty that led into the river.
“It’s like something out of an E.M. Forster novel. ”
“You read much E.M. Forster?” I asked, laughing.
“I read A Room with a View,” he said, which stopped my smile in its tracks.
“You did?” I asked. “For school?”
“No. I saw the film and liked it, so I decided to read the book.”
He was obviously serious, and I had to stifle a giggle. He seemed such an unlikely audience for anything Merchant Ivory.
He looked at me. “Are you laughing at me?” he asked, smirking.
“Never,” I replied and took a sip of my wine. I was such a horrible liar.
“What can I say? It’s a good film and a better book.”
“It doesn’t seem like your kind of thing.
Isn’t it wistful and romantic?” Beck was dogged and determined.
You didn’t get to be as successful as he was from a standing start without having an edge.
A love of costume drama didn’t seem to fit.
But what did I know? I couldn’t tell good people from bad. Friends from foes.
I wanted to ask more about his taste in films—prod to see if it was a character trait or a fluke—but I didn’t want to give away how little we knew about each other. “I’ve never seen it,” I said. “So I couldn’t possibly comment.”
“When we’re back in London, we’ll watch it one night.”
I glanced over at Bea, to see if she was taking any notice, but she was talking to Florence about something. Was this conversation real or fake? Either way, I was enjoying it.
“You’ll have to point out all your favorite bits,” I said.
He chuckled. “I can tell you don’t believe me, but my sister went through a phase of reading everything by him, and I was a dutiful younger brother and sat through the film a couple of times. Looking back, she must have been recovering from heartbreak. I guess she was around fifteen.”
Shit, I’d forgotten her name. I lowered my voice. I couldn’t not ask but didn’t want anyone to overhear. “Are you still close with . . . your sister?”
“She’s older and married with two kids. I don’t see her much but when I do, I enjoy it.”
“Tell me that’s not Karen and Matt arriving on a boat,” Florence said, pointing at the water, interrupting me imagining a sun-kissed, younger Beck reading E.M.
Forster. People began to murmur and, sure enough, Karen, dressed in white, and Matt in his usual summer outfit of chinos and a blue shirt, climbed out of a small rowing boat and up onto the jetty.
I might have been hoping that one of them would go head-first into the water, but I wasn’t about to admit to it.
“She’s such an attention seeker,” Jo said. “Who has an entire week of wedding celebrations in the first place. And then this?” She cocked her head at the river.
If Karen had told me she was going to sail into her wedding picnic on a rowing boat in a white floaty dress when we’d still been friends, I would have thought she was fun and carefree. “It’s not a bit of fun?” I asked.
“Everything’s fun for Karen if everyone’s looking at her,” Bea said. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“If she’s so selfish and self-involved, why have we all been friends with her for all these years?” I asked. Had Bea and Jo seen this side of Karen since she got engaged to Matt or had they always felt this way?
“Because you always wanted the four of us to do stuff together,” Bea said.
“You’re always the one who includes Karen on the email chain or suggests she gets the invitation to dinner.”
It hadn’t been conscious. I just liked to include everyone. “I never noticed . . .”
“Because you see the best in everyone. Want the best for everyone. It’s lovely, but people like Karen eat up your goodness like summer pudding,” Florence said.
Karen always liked to be at the center of things, the rest of us just looking on like we were members of the audience rather than on stage, but it had never really bothered me—I hadn’t seen her as taking advantage of me.
Maybe Matt was the same. When we were together, I’d thought we were co-stars, but perhaps I was just backstage sweeping up after him.
“Or Eton Mess,” Bea said. “Matt was no different—they both took advantage of your kindness.”
Beck nudged me and nodded toward Florence and Bea as if to tell me I should pay attention to what they were saying.
The thing was, I vaguely remembered Florence and Bea saying these things to me before and me dismissing them.
But now, with what had happened, what Beck had said and kept saying .
. . I couldn’t ignore who Karen and Matt really were anymore.
But who else was going to reveal themselves as my enemy rather than my friend?
If two of the people I was closest to in the world could betray me, then anyone could.
As the happy couple walked up the riverbank to join us, people began to clap. Beside me, Beck chuckled. “I was hoping one of them would go in.”
I bit down on my bottom lip to stop myself from laughing. Today had kind of summed Beck up—moving the blanket and calling out this spectacle, forcing me to acknowledge what was really happening.
He dared to do what I didn’t, say what I couldn’t, made me see things the way they were rather than how I wanted them to be. Whether our kisses had been real or fake, Beck was changing the way I saw the world and the way I saw myself.
I just hoped I wasn’t as wrong about him as I had been about Matt and Karen.