16. Epilogue
Epilogue
Mandy
The first sign that Peter has become part of my life is not his key on the hook by my kitchen door.
It is not the spare jumper he keeps in my wardrobe, or the finance magazine he insists is “work reading” and leaves on my coffee table, or the fact that I now own parmesan because apparently that is something households require.
It is the message waiting on my phone when I leave the surgery.
Alexandra
Is my brother cooking for you tonight?
I am only asking because Hunter says Peter left Morton Hall early with potatoes.
And because you have been together nearly a year, which means I am entitled to information.
I stop beneath the surgery awning and read the messages while rain taps against the pavement.
Nearly a year.
The words still have the power to startle me.
Not because it feels wrong.
Because it does not.
Peter and I have survived almost twelve months of village gossip, shared breakfasts, separate houses, Sunday walks, bad puns, good sex, two minor arguments about QI is better than Homes under the Hammer, and Alexandra referring to herself as “patiently waiting for my sister-in-law era” whenever she has had more than one glass of wine.
We have not swallowed each other’s lives.
That was the part I was afraid of.
His cottage is still his, with its stubborn toaster, crooked hall light and the old walking hat on the peg by the door. My house is still mine, with my overflowing mug cupboard, my untouched cookbooks and my blissfully undisturbed silence on the nights I choose it.
When I open the door, Peter is standing at my hob in rolled-up sleeves, a tea towel slung over one shoulder and a look of deep concentration on his face as he stares into a pan.
My house smells of beef, onions and rosemary.
My stomach makes an undignified sound.
Peter turns. “Doctor.”
“Finance officer.”
He points the wooden spoon at me. “That sounded almost respectful.”
I step out of my shoes and leave them by the mat. Peter once moved them to the cupboard and I reacted as if he had suggested burning down the house.
He has not moved them since.
Instead, he bends, picks them up, and places them neatly side by side by the mat.
Compromise, apparently, is very sexy.
I drop my bag onto the chair by the door, then immediately pick it up again and move it to the floor.
Peter notices.
His gaze flicks to the bag, then back to the pan.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That look was not nothing.”
“I would never give you a look in your own kitchen.”
“You absolutely would.”
“I would, yes.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
He only smiles and goes back to stirring.
There is flour on his forearm, and a smear of tomato near his thumb. A year ago, he would have been a secret in this kitchen. Meetings behind closed doors. Voice lowered if a car slowed outside.
Now his coat hangs on the peg beside mine.
His keys are in the chipped blue bowl by the kettle.
His phone is charging from the socket I always meant to get fixed because it buzzes if the plug sits at the wrong angle.
Nothing about the room has changed very much.
Everything in it has.
“Wine?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Long day?”
“Flu seasons has officially begun.”
He pours me a glass from the bottle already open on the table.
There are flowers there too, in the old jam jar because I still do not own a vase.
Autumn colours. Nothing neat. Nothing pink and polished.
The kind of flowers that look as if they might have been gathered in a hurry by someone with good intentions and no training.
I touch one of the dark red petals.
“Did you buy these?”
“No. I wrestled them from a bridesmaid at Morton Hall.”
“That would not surprise me.”
“She was very strong.”
“Most bridesmaids are.”
He hands me the wine.
His left hand is bare.
So is mine.
Ridiculous thing to notice when I have spent nine days carrying the answer in my bag.
The ring box is tucked beside my purse, my keys, two pens, a crumpled appointment card and an apple I no longer trust. It is small enough to hide in my palm and heavy enough to have altered the gravitational pull of my entire week.
I take a sip of wine.
Too large.
Peter’s eyebrow shifts.
I put the glass down. “How is Hunter?”
“Currently pretending the new booking system is a temporary inconvenience rather than a personal attack.”
“Is it?”
“A little.”
“And Alexandra?”
“Plotting.”
“That is not news.”
“No, but this plot involves a Christmas fair, three school choirs and a donkey.”
I stare at him. “A live donkey?”
“That was my question.”
“And?”
“She changed the subject.”
“Terrifying.”
“Deeply.”
He turns down the heat under the pan and reaches for the dish on the side.
Cottage pie.
The first meal he cooked in this kitchen. The meal Alexandra accidentally interrogated. The meal that should probably have its own plaque in our history by now.
He spoons the filling into the dish.
I watch his hands.
The steady way he works. The small frown of concentration. The fact that he hums under his breath and never seems to know he is doing it.
I have seen those hands on my worktop, in my hair, wrapped around a mug at seven in the morning.
I have seen them folding laundry badly because he insists helping is more important than technique.
I have seen them holding mine at his mother’s grave, and around Bernard’s lead when Mrs Higgins claimed her hip was playing up and then walked perfectly well to the bakery.
I know those hands.
I want my ring on one of them.
I want his ring on mine.
My mouth goes dry.
Peter sprinkles cheese over the mash. “You are staring.”
“I am supervising.”
“You do not cook.”
“I have eyes.”
“You once asked whether mince could be over-browned.”
“That remains a valid concern.”
He laughs, and the sound loosens something in me and tightens something else.
I set down the wine glass.
“Peter.”
He stills.
“Yes?”
I walk to my bag.
My fingers catch on the zip.
Once.
Twice.
“Bloody hell,” I mutter.
Peter puts the cheese down. “Mandy?”
“I am fine.”
I get the box out before I can lose the nerve.
It is dark blue velvet. I stand in front of him and hold it out.
“I am not getting down on one knee,” I say.
His mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
Good.
That is a first.
“My left knee clicks,” I add, because apparently I am determined to be myself even now. “Also, the floor needs mopping.”
Peter blinks. “Mandy.”
“Yes.”
“Is that…”
“Yes.”
His throat moves.
I open the box.
Two rings sit inside.
His is plain silver, broad enough for his hand, with a narrow line cut around the middle. Mine is slimmer, the same silver, the same line, simple.
I saw them in the jeweller’s window in Skipton and thought, with annoying immediate certainty, there you are.
Peter looks at the rings for a long moment.
Then he looks at me.
His eyes are already bright.
I grip the box harder.
“Do not cry before I have finished. It will make me bossy.”
He laughs once, but it breaks halfway through.
I take a breath.
“I bought two because I did not want to ask you to wear a promise I was not wearing too.”
Peter’s face changes.
Softer.
More dangerous to my emotional stability.
“So,” I say quickly, before he can undo me by looking at me, “you will see that this is a very efficient arrangement.”
“Very efficient,” he says, voice rough.
“I like my life,” I say.
His eyes stay on mine.
“I like my house. I like my work, except on days involving rashes with ambitions. I like quiet evenings on my own. I like waking up in my own bed and knowing the whole day belongs to me if I want it to.”
“I know,” he says softly.
“I know you know.” My voice wobbles, which is rude of it. “That is the point.”
He stays very still.
Letting me say it.
“I spent a long time thinking loving someone meant waiting for the part where I had to hand pieces of myself over. Space. Peace. Routine. The right to be difficult without it becoming a referendum on whether the whole thing worked.”
Peter’s jaw tightens.
I step closer.
“But you never asked for that. You just learned where the mugs are. And which evenings not to talk at me for ten minutes. You learned my life without trying to take it from me.”
The kitchen is very quiet now.
The oven clicks behind him.
Rain taps lightly against the window.
I hold out the box.
“So I am asking you something, and I am asking it here, in my kitchen, because this is where I mean it most.”
Peter presses his lips together.
I see him trying to stay still for me.
Trying not to rush me.
Trying not to rescue me from the difficulty of saying the thing I want to say.
“I want you in my life on purpose,” I say. “Not hidden. Not half-explained. Not fitted into the gaps when I am brave enough. Publicly. Deliberately. Legally, if we are being dramatic.”
His laugh is silent.
Mine nearly is too.
“I want shared breakfasts. I want quiet evenings. I want you at this table and beside me at village events where Alexandra pretends not to plan our future in real time. I want all of that without either of us disappearing.”
I look down at the rings, then back at him.
“Will you marry me?”
Peter does not answer.
For one terrible second, my medical training provides several unhelpful explanations for why a human male might become entirely motionless.
Then he steps forward, takes my face in both hands and kisses me.
Hard.
The box presses between us. My elbow knocks against the worktop.
I do not care.
His mouth is warm and shaking against mine, and when he pulls back, his forehead stays against mine.
“Yes,” he says.
The word is rough.
I swallow. “Yes?”
“Yes.” He kisses me again, softer this time. “Yes, Mandy.”
“Oh, thank God.”
He laughs against my mouth. “Were you worried?”
“No. I am an emotionally balanced woman who proposed beside a cooling cottage pie.”
“Very balanced.”
“Extremely.”
His hands slide from my face to my shoulders, then down my arms until they cover mine around the box.
“You bought us rings.”
“Yes.”
“You chose them.”
“No, Bernard chose them. I took him to Skipton for his refined opinion.”
Peter laughs properly then, and I breathe for what feels like the first time in five minutes.
“Give me your hand,” I say.
He does.