The One Read online

  ‘Ah, but flowers are a little like marriage,’ said the florist sagely. ‘Sometimes the secret lies in the compromise.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Picture this: you walk down the aisle carrying a bouquet of pure white Calla lilies. Maybe eight or ten stems, very tasteful. At the front are two beautiful displays, with Oriental lilies nestled among Vendela and Sweet Avalanche roses. Then, for your reception, we could do miniature versions for the tables. It’d be like the best of both worlds.’

  Lizzie could have kissed her. ‘That sounds perfect,’ she said. ‘How much would something like that cost?’

  ‘How many tables are you having?’

  Hmmm, something else we still haven’t sorted …

  ‘I’m not totally sure yet. Probably about ten.’

  ‘OK, no problem. If you fill out this sheet with your contact details, I can go away and put a quote together. We can always fine tune it later.’

  ‘Great, thanks,’ said Lizzie. She scribbled her details down on the form and passed it back.

  ‘Gosh, that’s a pretty ring.’ Lizzie held out her hand so Peggy could see it more clearly, the square-cut diamond winking under the artificial lights. She had not expected Josh to choose something quite so showy, but it was undeniably dazzling, with two smaller diamonds in the platinum band flanking the main attraction. ‘You’re a lucky girl, dear. I’ll be in touch soon.’

  Lizzie smiled to herself as she ambled off, reminiscing about the day Josh proposed. They’d spent a brilliant afternoon over in Notting Hill, pottering around the vibrant stalls of Portobello Market before catching Spectre at the cinema. They’d cosied up on the back row, munching sweets and missing more of the film than they saw as they kissed like teenagers.

  Afterwards, Josh drove her back to her flat in Shepherd’s Bush and looked at her intently. ‘Are you coming in?’ she asked, wondering why she suddenly felt nervous.

  ‘I can’t right now,’ he said. ‘I wish I could, but I promised Freddie I’d go round to his to watch the game. Wanna come?’

  ‘No thanks. You know I’m not really into football.’ Or Freddie.

  ‘Yeah, I figured. But I’ll ring you later, OK?’

  True to his word, he called at 10.30pm, just as she was about to get ready for bed. ‘Hey,’ he said, a faint crackle on the line. ‘How was your night?’

  ‘Fine. Quiet one. Megan’s out and I thought I’d have a go at some writing.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just for fun. I actually had an idea for a short story.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he said distractedly. ‘So did you miss me?’

  ‘Of course. You’re very missable.’

  ‘Maybe we need to come up with a plan so that we miss each other less.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She paused. ‘You practically live here anyway.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I was thinking we …’ She strained to hear what he was saying, but just then the front door buzzer went off and made her jump. Aaaargh. She hated that thing. It always felt like someone had taken a tiny drill to her brain.

  ‘Hold that thought,’ she said. ‘Meg’s forgotten her keys again. I’ll be back in five secs.’

  Throwing the phone onto the bed, she rushed to open the door – only to find Josh on his knees carrying a huge bouquet of roses and a blindingly shiny sparkler.

  ‘So as I was saying, I’ve been thinking … Elizabeth Sparkes, will you marry me?’

  Lizzie was still lost in her romantic reverie when a lady transporting a four-tier cake almost ploughed straight into her: a fate not entirely unappetising, but best avoided all the same. I’ve got to stay focused. In some ways it felt like an eternity since Josh proposed, and yet the past few months had gathered a momentum of their own, hurtling towards the marital finish line. For every task they managed to cross off the to-do list, another two sprang up to take its place.

  First thing I need to do is find a fiancé in this haystack.

  She pulled her mobile from her pocket and hit the speed dial. Josh didn’t pick up. He probably couldn’t hear his phone in the noisy hall, what with the giggling and the squealing and the super-jolly sales people. To her right, a string quartet struck up as if to really put the boot in. Lizzie sighed and shoved her phone back in her jeans. Guess I’ll have to go and hunt for him instead.

  She strolled over to the nearest row of stands, but Josh was nowhere to be seen. Behind one table, a gangly lad with raging spots glared at her like she’d just walked into the men’s toilets. ‘Can I help you? This is the stag zone,’ he said, gesturing to a poster of two bikini-clad girls on a quad bike, which hardly seemed like the most practical racing attire.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I was looking for the hen section,’ she said sweetly. ‘Though I could use a second opinion … Do you think I should go for the pole-dancing party or the mud-wrestling weekend?’

  As his jaw dropped, she turned and walked off in the opposite direction, hoping Josh hadn’t wandered too far. After passing a caricaturist, a cellist and a woman dressed in medieval costume (she didn’t stop to ask why), she finally spotted him emerging from what looked like a taxi.

  ‘Lizzie! Lizzie! Hey, you’ve got to see this.’ He pulled her inside and onto his lap, shutting off the outside world with a slam of the door. She could feel his belt buckle digging into her back, so she shuffled sideways into the space beside him. ‘It looks like a normal cab, but really it’s a photo booth in disguise!’

  ‘Is this part of your Bond man-crush?’

  His laughter reverberated around the shiny interior. ‘I was thinking we could have it at the reception,’ he said. ‘Guests can pose for photos, then they get a copy to take home and we get one as a souvenir. We can get everyone to sign them instead of a boring old guest book. And …’ he rummaged around in a box of props on the floor, ‘you haven’t seen the best bit yet.’ He donned a pair of red heart-shaped glasses, and placed a sailor’s hat on her head. ‘What do you think? You on board?’

  Lizzie couldn’t help but smile. It’s very … Josh. ‘I don’t know,’ she said diplomatically. ‘I mean, it’s cool and everything, but do we need it? We’ve already booked the photographer.’

  ‘Nah, this is totally different. We’ve got to do it!’

  ‘Why? Because the wedding will be doomed unless we all don fancy dress?’

  ‘Because it’ll be a laugh. Go on …’ He wiggled his eyebrows mischievously. ‘Sometimes you’ve got to live dangerously.’

  His words stung unexpectedly, as though she’d been jabbed again by his buckle. It had been more than ten years since anyone had said that to her, but suddenly she could remember it like it was yesterday. She rubbed the faint line on the inside of her wrist, as though that might somehow erase the memory.

  ‘You OK?’ asked Josh, for the hundredth time that week.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, I was just thinking about something. So you really like the taxi, huh?’

  ‘Not as much as I like you,’ he said, cranking up the charm. ‘But I do think it’d be great.’

  ‘How much?’ She could feel herself relenting. After all, she had spent months trying to persuade him to have more input into the wedding, so it seemed mean to veto the first thing he’d asked for. And besides, it did look kind of fun.

  ‘Normally it’d be £500, but if we sign up today there’s 20 per cent off.’

  ‘Can we afford it?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so. Especially if we don’t hire the Aston Martin.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Lizzie was happy to forgo the fancy car, but she knew that was a major sacrifice for Josh.

  ‘Yeah, we’ll find some other way of getting there. Or you’ll have to haul your arse on the bus …’

  She slapped his arm playfully. ‘Hey, this bride doesn’t do buses!’

  ‘Fair enough. Maybe they’d let you hitch a ride in the photo booth?’

  ‘Stop it!’ Lizzie was giggling so hard now that her eyes began to water.

  ‘Well, there’s
no need to cry about it,’ said Josh. He stared ahead at the high-tech screen. ‘Do you want to try it out?’

  ‘I guess we should.’

  ‘OK, when I press the button do happy face, sad face, poker face and scary face.’

  ‘Ooh, I like it when you’re bossy.’

  ‘Hey, do you want this to look good or not?’

  She adjusted his oversized glasses, kissed his cheek and hit the flashing button.

  ‘I don’t think there’s much chance of that,’ she said.

  4

  6 October 2002

  Lizzie took another sip of wine as she read the coffee-stained dessert menu. She was almost too full to think about a third course, but she was having such a good time with Alex that she didn’t want their date to come to an early end. Maybe I could squeeze in a scoop of gelato, she persuaded herself. Possibly even two.

  Before she could make up her mind, a sticky dough ball came flying through the air and landed on the red and white checked tablecloth with a thud. She looked around the Italian restaurant, and noticed two small boys laughing hysterically in the corner. ‘Will you two stop it?’ hissed their mortified mother from across the table. ‘Sit down and behave yourselves!’ She looked over at Lizzie and waved both hands apologetically. ‘I’m so sorry, really I am. I don’t know what’s got into them today.’ She glared back at the boys, who were now pulling faces at one another. ‘When their dad hears about this they’re going to be in big trouble.’

  ‘It’s OK. No harm done,’ smiled Lizzie. She turned back to face Alex and they both burst out laughing. ‘Are we still getting dessert?’

  ‘Only if we can get it before those little terrors,’ he joked. ‘Otherwise we might end up covered in chocolate next.’

  Lizzie tried hard not to visualise that thought, but for a split second her mind went off on a dirty tangent. Alex was looking even fitter tonight than she remembered, dressed down in a pair of faded jeans and a grey T-shirt, with a well-worn leather jacket strewn over the back of his chair. He was different from her usual clean-cut type, but there was something about him that she found intriguing, more than any of the lads she had briefly dated before.

  The cheerful manager came over to take their order. ‘What will you like?’ he asked in loud broken English, the words resonating almost musically around them. ‘You have one of my speciale desserts?’

  ‘I’m pretty full,’ said Lizzie, patting the front of her cream fine-knit dress. ‘But I think I can manage some lemon gelato.’

  ‘Molto bene,’ he replied. ‘We have the saying, like there are two stomachs: one for the main and one for the dessert. Always little room for dessert.’

  ‘Quite right, too,’ said Alex. ‘In that case, I’ll have the tiramisu, thanks.’ The manager nodded approvingly and hurried off in the direction of the kitchen.

  Alex turned his attention back to Lizzie. ‘So, where were we?’

  ‘You were telling me about your adventures.’

  Though they were in the same year at university, Alex was 18 months older, and had spent his gap year in Australia taking part in all kinds of adrenaline-inducing activities. He’d been bungee-jumping in Cairns, climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and gone sky-diving in Melbourne. Lizzie found his stories both fascinating and terrifying. She literally couldn’t think of anything worse than jumping out of planes. In fact, she hated even boarding the things ever since a particularly bumpy flight resulted in her barfing halfway across the Atlantic. She had forced herself to get on an aircraft a couple of times since, but could never fully relax, her heart thumping and her palms sweating before it had even taken off.

  ‘Yeah, that was a fun year. So, where’s the best place you’ve been?’

  ‘Oh, I … I’m not much of a traveller.’

  Alex looked surprised. ‘You don’t want to visit other countries?’

  ‘No, I’d love to visit other countries, but … I’m not exactly a big fan of flying.’ Ha. That’s putting it mildly.

  ‘Like a phobia?’

  Lizzie hesitated. She had never told anyone besides her family and Megan the full extent of the problem before, and she wasn’t sure if it was something she should confess to a globetrotting boy she really liked. But there was a quiet self-assuredness about Alex that made her want to trust him.

  ‘Yeah,’ she confided eventually. ‘I guess you could call it a phobia.’

  ‘Have you always had it?’

  ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘When I was about 15, we hit some terrible turbulence on the way to Florida and I spent half the flight throwing up. My parents saw the funny side – my dad still calls that plane the “chunder-wonder”. But I think it put me off for life.’

  ‘That must be tough,’ he said, nodding sympathetically.

  ‘It’s not the end of the world,’ she said, trying to shake off his pity. ‘There are plenty of other things I enjoy.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Loads of things … writing. Reading. Swimming. Not all at the same time.’ Alex laughed, giving her an adrenaline rush of her own. ‘Oh, and I’m totally addicted to The West Wing. Have you seen it?’

  ‘No, but I heard it’s good.’

  ‘It’s better than good. Aaron Sorkin is like some sort of writing genius.’

  Alex smiled. ‘I’ll have to check it out. What sort of writing do you do?’

  Lizzie confessed she’d been trying her hand at fiction, but her efforts so far just made her want to cringe. ‘You’ll get past that,’ he said. ‘You’ve just got to keep putting words on the page. They’ll make their own sense, eventually.’

  Now it was Lizzie’s turn to look surprised. ‘You write?’

  ‘Not really – not like books or anything. But I taught myself to play the guitar a while back, and now I’m trying to come up with some of my own stuff. I could spend all day doing that.’

  Lizzie was intrigued. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but why study hospitality if your passion’s music?’

  Alex leaned forward, his eyes lighting up. ‘Because what I really want to do, one day, is open my own bar,’ he explained. ‘Book some bands, host some cool gigs, be my own boss. That’s the real dream, I guess.’

  ‘So you don’t want to be a rock star, then?’

  ‘Nah, I wouldn’t last five minutes being famous,’ he said. ‘I’d hate the whole circus that goes with it. But that’s OK. It’s never been about playing at Wembley. I just wanted to learn the guitar, see what happens …’ He trailed off as a waitress returned with their desserts and plonked them down on the table. ‘So anyway, what about you?’

  What about me? It was hard to focus while he was looking at her so intensely. His eyes were distractingly sexy. She dipped her spoon into the soft gelato. ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘What do you want to do when you leave here? Write novels?’

  Lizzie laughed. ‘Well, that would be amazing, but it’s not as simple as that. The odds of me getting published are pretty slim.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Alex. He took a bite of his tiramisu. ‘You’ve got as much chance as anyone else.’

  She’d never thought of it like that before. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But if that doesn’t happen, there are still some other options I’d like to explore. I could go into journalism, or advertising, or—’

  Just then she was interrupted by a shrill cry, which rang out across the restaurant like an alarm.

  ‘TOMMY!’

  She whipped her head around to see the mother of the two boys on her feet, frantically slapping the taller one on his back. His hands were clutching tightly at his neck, and his face was beginning to turn blue.

  ‘Somebody help me!’ she screamed. ‘He’s choking – my baby’s choking!’

  Alex pushed back his chair, leapt to his feet and ran over. He tried to give the boy five firm back blows between his shoulder blades, but the child continued to gasp for air, his eyes beginning to bulge from their sockets. ‘Is there a doctor here?’ shouted Alex. Lizzie looked around the room, her stoma
ch lurching violently. None of the other diners replied, but simply stared on in horror.

  ‘Please, somebody do something!’ yelled the mother, gesturing to the manager, who had turned a sickly shade of green. ‘Call 999!’

  There’s no way an ambulance is going to make it in time. What’s the drill for choking? Lizzie jumped up and ran across to Alex, racking her brain to try to remember the advice she’d been taught for children. She’d done a basic first-aid course while training for her lifeguard qualification, but administering help to a plastic dummy in a leisure centre and trying to do it on a writhing, petrified boy suddenly seemed like two entirely different prospects. Her heart was beating so fast she could barely breathe herself.

  ‘Let me see,’ she said, opening the boy’s twitching mouth to see if she could spot the obstruction. Nothing. The terror in his tiny eyes was unmistakable.

  His mother was standing right next to her, wailing uncontrollably. ‘Please help him!’ she cried. ‘I don’t know what to do!’

  ‘I need some room,’ said Lizzie, moving behind the lad. She bent him slightly forwards and used the heel of her hand to slap him five more times between the shoulder blades. He made an awful rasping sound, his hands never leaving his throat, but whatever was stuck stubbornly refused to budge.

  Shit.

  Instinct kicked in and she threw her arms around Tommy’s small waist, forming a fist with one hand above his belly button, and wrapping her other hand over the top. Then she pulled sharply upwards and inwards, the child’s squidgy flesh feeling much softer against her hands than the Resusci Anne she had practised on.

  One.

  She could feel the boy squirming against her. Try again!

  Two.

  She gave another thrust, desperately hoping that she was doing it right. Come on, come on, come on, come on …

  Three.

  The boy made an unnerving noise that sounded like retching, and a half-chewed piece of dough ball shot out of his mouth and across the table. He inhaled loudly, sucking in air in noisy gulps, then burst into frightened tears. His mum rushed forwards and wrapped her arms around him, tears streaming down her face too. ‘Oh Tommy, I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You’re going to be OK. Mummy’s here.’