Chapter 55
Afew hours or so later, the dress was in place, and Tilly had done her best to enjoy herself rather than wade around in worry about not being good enough.
It had been a tall ask but, actually, she’d nailed it.
There had been a nice long soak in the bath, the blow drying of hair and the surprise part of the date was next on the agenda.
As she walked along in the quite frankly astonishingly gorgeous dress, it performed miracles and reiterated to Tilly how the other half lived.
Oh, to be skimmed by a beautifully cut weighted fabric made for her every day of the week.
Everything about the dress worked together: hidden fastenings, secret nips and tucks, hems with weights, lining just so.
All in all, it and the person wearing it were doing rather well.
Dressed up to the nines and feeling it, Tilly was determined to have the best time. For sure, she felt she was owed it.
Arriving at their destination, Tilly’s eyes widened at a great medieval hall of pale honeyed stone.
Buttressed, battlemented and very old, with high arched windows and a roof of dreams, Tilly loved the place at first sight.
On the concourse outside, people were drifting towards the great door in twos, threes and little clusters.
Women in long frocks, suited and booted men, chatter here and there, London doing its thing in the air.
Standing on the pavement with her head raised, Tilly scrutinised the enormous, beautiful ancient building and sighed.
Otto steered her up the huge, wide stone steps up towards the doors. 'You've not been here before?'
For a quick microsecond, Tilly considered a little white lie but thought better of it. 'Nothing like it.'
'You'll love it. It’s a candlelight music performance. That’s the surprise. I'd put money on it.'
Once inside, Otto wasn’t wrong. It was breathtaking. There was no other word that would do. Tilly beamed, 'This is spectacular.'
'I know. Wait until we get seated, and they start.'
About half an hour later, they were waiting for just that to happen.
As the first note went up into the candlelit interior of the glorious hall, Tilly felt as if the music was actually going through her.
It was almost too much as loads of things that had happened in her life appeared to float in front of her eyes and then make their way off to other climes.
After years of coercive control from her ex-husband, the waiting in hotel bars, cheap warm white wine and cheesy lounge music in the back end of venues, this was something else.
With the music pouring down off ancient walls, the joy of thousands of flickering candles, she blinked hard, and willed herself not to be the woman who blubbed at a concert.
After an hour of it, Tilly was so into the music, the building and the candlelight that it was as if she’d actually started to float of her own accord.
The musicians took her away to a totally other plane, and the next thing she knew, Otto’s hand was on her leg, and she blinked as the music rose and fell.
Turning her head very slightly to look at him, she smiled.
He was watching the musicians, his profile shifting in the candlelight.
Here sat a man whom on a foggy morning she’d thought was the rudest person in England.
Now, here she was with him, sitting in a grand hall, being entertained.
There was also something much, much, much more concerning in the room.
Do you know what? Our Tils had done quite the silly thing.
Oh yes. Sitting in the middle of a candlelit hall with a thousand flames flickering, she’d only gone and fallen further in love.
Not falling, fallen and hard. Past tense, done, dusted, caput.
Hook, line and sinker, the way she'd sworn on a plane over the Indian Ocean, she would never, ever do again.
Tilly Bloomwood was in love with Otto Carrington.
Grumpy, widowed, infuriating, gorgeous, so very handsome Otto and all that came with him.
As the music swelled, the strings climbed and gathered, and the candles flickered, Tilly watched the woman who'd come to Darling to be alone walk out the nearest fire exit.
Who needed to be independent anyway? As she sat there, she thought, fleetingly, about Andy.
Of how being in a relationship had once involved a cage and not a gilded one.
A thing measured out in mileometer readings and hidden exit plans, a slow folding-away of everything until there'd been almost nothing left.
How absolutely and completely strange that whatever it was with Otto felt like the exact opposite.
Somehow, she felt deep down that he already had her back.
Sitting there with her hand in this man's hand, falling, fallen, all the way gone, she felt not smaller but more herself than she'd been in years, if ever.
As though meeting him had handed her back great armfuls of the person she'd mislaid somewhere over the Maldives.
She didn't understand it really, but who cared?
She just knew that buttons were being pushed.
All the right ones, all at the same time.
The piece came to an end on one long-held note, and the whole hall broke into applause. Tilly clapped and clapped and beamed.
Otto whispered in her ear. 'Glad you came?'
Tilly gushed. 'So glad. I loved it!'
The best thing, though, wasn’t the spectacular building, the joy of the dress, the beauty of the music or even the candlelight.
The very best thing were the fireworks exploding right there alongside the musicians.
On and on and on they went. Long after the last note had faded, burning gold, pink, blue, silver, all over the show.
Letting the whole sky light up, and me, oh my, did Tilly revel in them.
If she could help it, she wouldn’t ever be letting them go.