Chapter One #2
Seriously, though! I looked down at my faded jeans and my black T-shirt and my faux-suede ankle boots that were scuffed at the toe already even though I’d only bought them a couple of weeks ago (I was terrible at keeping footwear looking nice, probably because I only had about two pairs on rotation at any one time).
How on earth was I going to make a decent first impression looking like this?
‘You look beautiful, Maddie. You always do,’ said Nick, running his hand reassuringly down my arm. ‘Come on, let’s go and say hello.’
He headed purposefully towards the restaurant and I leapt into action, grabbing his arm.
‘No, Nick, honestly. I can’t meet your parents in this state. At least let me put some product in my hair and shove a bit of lipstick on.’
Nick sighed. ‘The thing is, we’ve already missed lunch. And my mum hates being kept waiting. I can tell by her text that she’s not happy with us.’
‘Us? There’s no “us” about it,’ I argued. ‘You do know that if we’d flown to Italy like everyone else, we could have been here last night?’
Nick groaned. ‘Not this again, Mads?’
‘I still don’t get how you managed to fly to Chicago for work.
I didn’t see you insisting you’d have to sail across the Atlantic,’ I said, aware that bringing all of this up moments before we were about to meet his parents was probably the worst idea I’d ever had.
It’s just that this was a big moment for me and I felt put out about being dropped in it like this!
Nick pinched the top of his nose. ‘I had to borrow a Xanax, as you well know.’
‘OK. I get how hard it is for you. But couldn’t you have taken a Xanax this time?’
‘Where’s your sense of adventure? I thought you were a seasoned traveller. I’ve got no idea why you’re getting so wound up about a little train journey.’
‘I wouldn’t call twenty-four hours little!’
I caught the eye of the receptionist, who was observing us with interest and also slight disgust. Perhaps the quiet lobby of Florence’s most upmarket hotel wasn’t the best place for a row, but I had all this pent-up frustration at Nick’s refusal to fly and the fact we’d barely left the country together since we’d met.
We’d travelled the length and breadth of the UK, which had been fine at first, because I’d enjoyed going anywhere with him in those first few months, but after a while, one rugged, pebbled, rain-soaked beach started to look much the same as the next.
I’d tried to be understanding, I really had, but the problem was, I loved travelling and, by default, that meant I loved flying, too, and now I rarely got to do either unless I was on a work trip.
Realising I was fighting a losing battle, I touched my hair, trying to neaten it up, hoping it hadn’t gone frizzy but assuming it probably had because, well, that was how my hair rolled.
There was nothing I could do about my clothes or my make-up, since my suitcase was currently being whisked efficiently up to our room on a silver trolley with a plethora of other luggage, most of which, I’d noticed, was Louis Vuitton.
I was just going to have to brazen this out.
Perhaps Nick’s family wouldn’t even notice what I was wearing.
They were probably very nice and laid-back, with a sort of ‘anything goes’ attitude to clothing and I was worrying for nothing.
‘Let’s go,’ said Nick, holding out his hand. ‘You can change in a bit, once we’ve said hello.’
‘Thanks for your permission,’ I replied, reluctantly linking my fingers through his.
We walked into the restaurant together. A wave of nausea swept over me as I scanned the room, wondering which table housed the people whose family I was about to become a part of.
I thought it might be the sweet, older couple in the corner who were chatting happily away as they sipped espressos, but then there was a chorus of cheers and multiple counts of ‘over here, darling!’ from a different direction.
My head turned. A group of ridiculously glamorous people were sitting at a table scattered with already demolished glasses of wine and bread baskets full of crumbs and not much else and they were all staring in our direction.
Nick whispered in my ear, ‘I love you. And so will they.’
I smiled tightly at him, wishing I felt half as confident. I could tell by the way these people commanded the room that they were nothing like my family.
Nick nudged me towards them and I concentrated on looking pleased to see them and not falling over and on not letting my self-esteem shatter into a million pieces when I saw how dressed up they all were (designer labels, by the looks of it).
Only Nick’s daughter, Daisy, looked vaguely casual and was wearing the quintessential teenager’s uniform of high-waisted shorts and white crop top that only looked flattering on pre-pubescents.
‘Mummy!’ exclaimed Nick, launching himself at a woman in her early seventies with silver walnut-whip hair and a huge brooch pinned to her emerald green blouse that I reckoned was real sapphire and diamonds. Not that I was a gemstone expert, but she didn’t seem the costume jewellery type.
Also, ‘Mummy’? Really?
‘Darling!’ crooned Nick’s mum as they rocked back and forth in an embrace that seemed to go on at least thirty seconds too long.
Eventually, he beamed around at me. ‘Mummy, I’d love you to meet my fiancée, Maddie. Maddie, meet my mother, Rosamund.’
I stepped forward with the same tense, highly charged sensations flooding through my body that I might experience if I was being introduced to the King. How to act? What to say? To curtsey or not to curtsey (I mean, obviously not, but I suspected Rosamund would probably quite like it if I did)?
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see an exquisitely dressed woman in tan trousers and a black cashmere jumper that probably cost more than I made in a week looking me up and down with a hint of a smirk on her face.
I wasn’t sure who she was. Nick’s sister, possibly, although I didn’t think she’d been able to make it in the end?
‘Lovely to meet you, Rosamund,’ I said, going for the handshake option.
Despite her weirdly intense clinch with Nick, Rosamund didn’t look like a hugger.
I pumped her wrist up and down in a manner which I hoped exuded poise and self-assurance – if I wasn’t feeling it, I was clearly going to have to fake it.
‘Maddie. How lovely to meet you. We’ve heard so much about you, haven’t we, Peter?’ she said, turning to the man next to her who hadn’t bothered to stand up and was presumably Nick’s dad. He was wearing a tweed jacket that looked as old as he was.
‘Indeed,’ said Peter, who had his napkin tucked into the collar of his shirt and seemed a little confused about who I actually was. ‘Absolutely.’
‘I hope we haven’t interrupted your meal?’ I said, taking in the carnage on the table.
‘You’re much too late for that, I’m afraid,’ said Rosamund, giving Nick a pointed stare.
‘Oh don’t give them a hard time, Ros,’ said the tan-trousered goddess, getting up and circumnavigating the table to give me an awkward, socially distanced embrace.
It was like the hugging equivalent of an air kiss.
Had I just coined the phrase ‘air hug’? ‘I’m Sophia,’ she announced dramatically, elongating her vowels to perfection. ‘Nick’s ex-wife.’
I swallowed hard, letting myself hope for a second that I’d misheard. Because why on earth would Nick’s ex-wife be here? And if I hadn’t imagined it and this stunning woman was in fact his ex, why hadn’t he warned me?
I smiled at Sophia as authentically as I could manage and then glared at Nick, hoping to telepathically convey that this was not OK. This was not OK at all.
Nick was completely oblivious, of course, and continued his overenthusiastic greetings with aplomb, launching himself at Daisy, his fourteen-year-old daughter who I’d actually met once before.
She’d been staying with Nick for a couple of weeks over the summer holidays last year and he’d thought that it would be a brilliant idea for us to meet, ensuing in a disastrous trip to the theatre where Daisy had barely said a word to me all night, had glowered through the entire performance (an admittedly very pretentious take on Hamlet) and then had refused point-blank to let me sit in the front seat on the drive home.
‘Nice to see you again, Daisy,’ I said.
She grunted a hello and wiggled her fingers in my direction.
I supposed that was a start. Now that Nick and I were engaged, it felt even more important that we got along.
I had several missions for this weekend (making Rosamund like me suddenly seemed even more daunting than I’d built it up to be), and one of them was to get off on a better foot with Daisy.
She resented me for marrying her dad, I got that – divorce was never easy on the kids, I knew that better than anyone.
But I had to win her over and this trip could be the perfect time to start.
As I saw Sophia say something out of the side of her mouth to Rosamund, I began to feel the familiar prickle of self-doubt.
Were they wondering what Nick was thinking, getting engaged to somebody who was clearly ‘not one of them’?
Were they the sort of people who would deem me not properly English because I was of mixed heritage and my dad was from St Lucia?
I started imagining all the ways in which they could think I wasn’t good enough for Nick and my stomach swirled with anxiety.
I twisted my engagement ring back and forth on my finger again, reminding myself that Nick thought I was good enough and that that was all that mattered.
Not that he was my favourite person right now, by any means – he could have let me smarten myself up before bringing me to face this firing squad of family members, who were looking at me as though I was some kind of alien.
And he didn’t want to get me started on the fact his ex was here!