Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper 2016

Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2016

Cover design © Holly Macdonald

Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Lindsey Kelk asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007582419

Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780007582426

Version: 2017-08-22

Dedication

Dear Della, Terri and Kevin,

What’s worse, looking jealous or crazy?

That’s what I thought, thanks.

Love, Lindsey & Beyoncé

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Lindsey Kelk

About the Publisher

1

It really doesn’t matter how brilliant your life is, the last day of your holiday is always depressing. I’m talking Monday dread plus post-Christmas blues multiplied by a maxed-out credit card with the added bonus of knowing there are at least another twelve holidayless months stretching out in front of you before you’ll be able to get away again. Unless you’re Beyoncé. I imagine nothing other than dinner with Kanye is quite that depressing if you’re Beyoncé, but for the rest of us, the last day of a holiday is right up there with doing your taxes, getting a bikini wax and that time you went to the fridge for your favourite bar of chocolate and found out someone had already eaten it.

Kneeling on the sofa, I rested my chin on my forearms and stared out the window. Bright blue skies bled into dark blue seas with flashes of pink and purple smeared through the middle to let me know that night-time was on its way. The sun was literally setting on my vacay and it just wasn’t on. I had a tan, seventeen insect bites, a suitcase full of tat I didn’t need – but I still didn’t have the one thing I’d been waiting for which could only mean one thing.

Tonight was the night.

‘Liv?’

‘Adam?’

‘Is it me or can you see my knob through these trousers?’

Not exactly the question I was waiting for him to ask.

I craned my neck to see six feet four inches of blond boyfriend framed by the bedroom doorway, thrusting his crotch in my general direction with a vexed expression on his face.

Hmm. He was wearing his Best Trousers. My heart started to beat a little bit faster.

‘I don’t think so?’ I said, squinting at the general area. You could sort of see it, but only if you were looking for it and, really, how many people were strolling around Tulum on a Monday night, staring at my boyfriend’s crotch? I hoped it wasn’t that many. ‘I can’t see anything.’

‘“I can’t see anything” isn’t exactly what I want to hear when you’re looking down there.’ Adam bent his knees slightly and bounced up and down in front of the mirror. ‘You sure there isn’t, you know, an outline? I forgot how thin these trousers are.’

‘You look nice,’ I reassured him with a smile while he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and checked his reflection at every angle. ‘I like those trousers.’

‘I’m going to get changed,’ he said, more to himself than me. ‘I can’t put anything in these pockets. And you can totally see my knob.’

‘What do you need to put in your pockets?’ I asked, the attractive high pitch of desperation squeaking into my voice. ‘I can put your wallet in my bag.’

‘My phone?’ Adam muttered, giving the mirror one last thrust then pottering back into the bedroom. ‘Stuff?’

‘Stuff?’

I glanced down as my own phone buzzed on the windowsill.

‘You know,’ he called from the other room. ‘Stuff.’

‘Oh, OK,’ I replied, nodding as I opened the text message. ‘Stuff.’

HAS HE DONE IT YET?????????

Cassie had sent me the same text thirty-six times in the last fourteen days. Anyone would think she was the one whose blood pressure had been hovering around stroke-inducing levels every day for the last two weeks. And that wasn’t an exaggeration, I’d been checking, such were the perks of a background in medicine.

No, I tapped out as quickly as my little fingers would allow, not yet. I added three sad faces just in case she wasn’t sure how I was feeling and then a unicorn, just because. There’s always room for a unicorn.

Three little dots thrummed across the bottom of the screen while Adam sang an off-key Rihanna song to himself in the bedroom.

Maybe he’s nervous? Cassie suggested. Give him an in.

I looked up from my phone just in time to see our very large, very hairy neighbour in nothing but a pair of tiny trunks walk right by my window and raise his hand in a polite hello. There were downsides to staying in a cottage on the beach. They certainly hadn’t shown him on the website. Waving back quickly, I stood up and leaned against the arm of the settee, shaking out the creases in my long skirt.

Give him an in?

That was easier said than done. Maybe I could start a casual conversation on the way to dinner with ‘Did you know nine out of ten boyfriends that want to live to see another day propose to their girlfriends on holiday?’ Or perhaps ‘Hey Adam, the third finger on my left hand is cold; do you have anything sparkly I could borrow to warm it up?’

Working on it, I replied, despondent.

No emojis this time.

Truth be told, we’d had a lovely holiday but it would have been considerably lovelier if I hadn’t been constantly waiting for Adam to drop the P bomb. Nothing kills the mood like waiting for a proposal that never comes. And I want to be clear, it’s not as though I’ve been sat around the house for the last three years, draped across a fainting couch and waiting for him to swoop in with the promise of a yearly allowance of a hundred pounds and a new topcoat every winter. The chance would have been a fine thing. When you’re the only local vet in a five-village radius, you spend most of your time in surgery with your hand up a Chihuahua or in your bed, fast asleep. After you’ve washed your hands, of course. Ideally, at the end of a dog-bothering day, all I wanted was to be up to my eyeballs in a Real Housewives marathon and two-thirds of a bottle of rosé with Adam by my side. Marriage hadn’t really crossed my mind. There were so many other things I still had to accomplish, I wanted to travel, I wanted to start drinking whisky, I wanted to finish watching the last series of Doctor Who before the new one started.

However, things had changed. Supposedly, Adam had told his brother he was going to propose in Mexico, then his brother had told his wife, who just so happened to be my best friend. Of course, everyone knew Cass couldn’t keep a secret and it only took half a bottle of Pinot Grigio before she was bursting to tell me everything, and now here I was at the end of our trip, still unengaged. I had been told there was a ring, I had been told the ring was coming in Mexico – and now I wanted the bloody ring. I was Gollum, only with slightly better hair.

‘Ready?’ Adam re-emerged from the bedroom, best trousers replaced by regular jeans, paired with a nice, but hardly special, shirt.

I looked at him and wondered. Why would you tell someone you were going to propose to your girlfriend and then not do it?

‘Ready,’ I replied with a curtsey, dropping my phone in my bag, out of sight and hopefully out of mind.

He frowned for a moment, giving my ensemble the once-over before fastening and then unfastening his top button. ‘Is that what you’re wearing?’

‘What’s wrong with it?’ I stood up and let my long, floaty white dress drift down to the floor. ‘I love this dress.’

It was a great dress. It was loose around my backside, tight around my boobs and, most importantly, I could eat in it without feeling like I was wearing my nana’s girdle. It had also cost an obscene amount of money but Cassie had assured me it was The Dress and I’d put it on my credit card without thinking about the damage. That was until the bill came. He had better propose – I needed a joint income to pay for this bugger.

‘Makes me feel a bit of a scruff, that’s all. Are you sure you’re all right to walk in those shoes?’

‘I could run a marathon in these shoes.’ I picked up a foot to inspect my three-inch heels. Maybe a marathon was pushing it. ‘We’re not walking that far, are we?’

‘Google Maps says it’s ten minutes,’ he replied, patting himself down then sticking his thumbs in his jeans pockets like a Topman-clad cowboy and all the while his eyes were still on my sandals. ‘You can do ten minutes?’

I nodded and made a disgusted noise in the back of my throat. Of course ten minutes were doable. Generally I was of the opinion that no good could come of strapping tiny stilts to your feet after a particularly nasty incident involving a spiral staircase in a club called Oceana during Freshers’ Week. More than a decade may have passed but if you’d spent your first semester of university on crutches, you’d be wary of anything higher than a kitten heel as well.

‘I really do like that dress,’ Adam said, crossing the room to rest his arms on my shoulders. I shuffled my feet apart and pulled him in closer until we were nose to nose. ‘Is it new?’

‘Quite new,’ I replied, hoping there were no follow up questions. Adam hated spending a lot of money on clothes, hence only one pair of Nice Trousers.

‘It’s like a proper lady dress.’ He nuzzled his face into my hair, pressing his lips against the nook where my neck met my shoulder. I shivered from head to toe. ‘It might be the nicest thing I’ve ever seen you wear.’

‘Just checking that’s a compliment,’ I whispered as he slid his hands around my waist and a flush bloomed in my cheeks. Adam was no slouch in the bedroom department at the best of times but on holiday it wasn’t just the bedroom that got him going. The living room, the bathroom, the beach, the toilets at a restaurant we could never go back to … Not that I was complaining. The restaurant manager maybe, but not me.

I ran my hands down his broad back and rested them on his hips. ‘Perhaps we should stay in tonight?’

‘No, we’re going to the restaurant.’ Adam checked his watch then dropped me like a bag of burning dog shit and backed away, jostling the front of his jeans to dispel the beginnings of a boner. ‘And we need to leave now or we’re going to be late.’

‘Adam, we’re in Mexico. Nothing has happened at the time it was supposed to happen since we got here,’ I said, brushing my blonde hair forward to cover the stubble rash on my throat and delicately draping my dress back down over my thighs. ‘What’s the rush?’

‘They were really funny about it when I made the reservation. It’s supposed to be dead fancy,’ he insisted as he checked his reflection and smoothed down his eyebrows. What a weirdo. ‘Plenty of time for doing it when we get back.’

My boyfriend was such a romantic.

‘Dead fancy,’ I repeated. Dead fancy sounded like the kind of place where you would propose to your girlfriend, or at least the kind of place that would have proper toilets and honestly, either of those things would have been welcomed at this point in the trip.

Following him outside, I nabbed a quick glance in the mirror as we went. Hair looked good, make-up looked good, but nothing I could do about my sunburned nose except filter it into oblivion. I was as ready as I’d ever be.

The next time we walked through that door, we would be engaged.

Or I’d have stabbed Adam through the heart with a spatula. Or a teaspoon. Or whatever was handy, really; I was a resourceful girl.

‘Do we really have to go home tomorrow?’ Liv skipped along beside me as I tried to slow down.

‘Aren’t you ready?’ I squeezed her hand and smiled, hoping that my palm wasn’t as sweaty as I imagined it was. ‘I’m gagging for a proper cup of tea.’

‘Yeah, this is just awful,’ she replied, waving at the white sand and screensaver-worthy sunset. ‘I’d trade it all for a cup of Tetley.’

‘You know what I mean,’ I said, looking at the time on my watch. We were definitely going to be late. ‘Come on, let’s pick up the pace.’

‘We have definitely been walking for more than ten minutes,’ she said in a tight voice, a few minutes later. ‘How much further is it?’

‘Not far?’

A dark look crossed her face as she gripped my hand hard and attempted to match my long stride. A word of advice: if you’re over six feet tall and you end up going out with someone under five-five, you will never not be frustrated with how slowly they walk.

‘I will miss the sunsets,’ I admitted as she walked on beside me in silence. I wrapped my right arm around her red shoulders, keeping one eye on the time. ‘The sunsets are good.’

‘The sunsets are good?’ Liv repeated, one eyebrow raised. ‘If it weren’t for the cat, I wouldn’t be going back at all. We’ve got everything we need right here. Sun, sea, sand and surprisingly good internet service? I’m in no rush to go home.’

As casual as possible, I ran a hand over my hip, checking for the telltale bump in the tiny pocket. I was certain she’d found it back in the cottage when she was packing up my clothes, but if she had, she was doing a fine job of pretending and there was no way she could fake something like that: she was a terrible liar.

‘Loads going on when we get back though …’ She carried on talking, twisting the ends of her hair in her fingers. ‘Are you excited to get started on the bar?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Nervous?’

‘Nah.’

I was so nervous I was bricking it. Just before we left, a friend of a friend of a friend had set me up with a guy who was opening a bar in London and needed someone to design and build the interiors. Since he had next to no budget and I was looking for a project, we’d managed to come to a financially dubious but still exciting accord. But it was still my first major project and there were a million things that could go wrong. Was my estimate right? Was my timeframe realistic? Was I even capable of pulling something like this off without it looking utterly crap? But Liv didn’t need to know how worried I was. Men shitting themselves over their big break wasn’t exactly a turn on for most women to the best of my knowledge.

‘It’ll be amazing,’ she said, with an assured nod I couldn’t return. ‘And there’s my dad’s sixty-fifth coming up, Gus’s christening, your birthday, my birthday …’

I made a noncommittal noise, trying to hold her hand, remember if I’d had a response to my last email from Jim, the guy who owned the bar, and open Google Maps to check where this bloody restaurant was supposed to be. All I could see was beach, beach, and more beach. We’d already been walking forever and I certainly couldn’t see a five-star restaurant with sunset views and a ridiculously-expensive-to-hire string quartet hiding anywhere nearby.

‘Things have been mental at the surgery, it feels like everyone on earth just adopted ten dogs and they’ve all got ear infections or worms or something else disgusting—’

‘Liv?’ I interrupted.

‘Yes?’ she looked up at me with big blue eyes, all smudgy with make-up but in a good way.

‘No.’

There was nothing like a woman talking about putting her hand up a dog’s backside to put you in the mood for a romantic proposal – not.

‘Sorry,’ she opened her mouth to say something else and then clamped it shut, staring out to sea. She didn’t look happy.

‘Liv?’

‘Yeah?’

‘What do you think Daniel Craig is doing right now?’ I asked.

She turned round, shielding her eyes from the sun and gave me a look.

‘The actor or the cat?’

‘The cat.’

‘Eating, sleeping or having a shit,’ she replied, pulling on my hand as she began to lag. ‘That’s more or less all he does these days.’

‘What do you think Daniel Craig the actor is doing right now?’

‘Eating, sleeping or having a shit? That’s more or less all he does these days.’

‘Weirdo,’ I laughed, flapping my elbows slightly as I tried to find a phone signal and hoped there wasn’t a massive sweat stain on the back of my shirt. Should have worn an undershirt. Should have put deodorant on my back. Should have done a lot of things.

Liv pressed her lips together into a thin smile. ‘You’re a weirdo.’

‘Yeah, but that’s why you love me.’ I choked on the words as the map came up. We were nowhere near the restaurant – it was a ten-minute drive away, not a ten-minute walk.

‘I knew there had to be a reason,’ she said, trying to subtly pull a strand of hair out of her lip gloss. ‘Are you excited about the christening?’

‘I can’t believe my brother is a dad,’ I replied, still staring at my phone. ‘He wasn’t even allowed to bring the school guinea pig home during the holidays and now he’s got a baby.’

Recalculating the route, I looked down at Liv, wincing with every step she took.

‘Anyway, it really has been the best holiday ever,’ she said slowly. ‘I can’t imagine anything nicer.’

‘Yeah, incredible,’ I agreed, a cold sweat running down my back. How could I have messed this up? ‘Total once-in-a-lifetime thing.’

‘And I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather be with, yeti.’ She looked up and gave me the smallest, sweetest smile and I thought I was going to be sick. In a good way. Sort of. ‘Ever.’

Oh god, I was actually going to be sick. Everything had been planned so carefully, right down to the smallest detail, and I had cocked up the directions. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to propose after all.

‘You obviously haven’t given it enough thought,’ I said, forcing out a laugh to distract from the fact I was dying inside. ‘You’re saying you’d rather be on holiday with me than Channing Tatum?’

‘Why Channing Tatum?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘He’s good looking, isn’t he? All buff and that. And he can dance. Women love men who can dance.’

‘You can’t dance – and I love you,’ she said, curling her fingers tightly around mine. ‘And I’d definitely pick you over Channing Tatum.’

‘Really?’

‘You’ve got better hair,’ she nodded thoughtfully. ‘And I couldn’t do that to his wife. She seems lovely.’

I’d been so worried about what to wear, about getting the music right, the menu right, about fixing my massive Teen Wolf eyebrows, I’d completely messed up our timing. We were supposed to get to the restaurant in time to watch the sun go down. At this rate, it would be the middle of the night before we got there.

‘Really, though,’ Liv started with a crack in her voice and my stomach turned over again. ‘I don’t want to be with anyone other than you, Adam. There’s no one else for me, ever.’

I let go of her hand and wiped my sweaty palms on the back of my jeans.

‘Yeah, better the devil you know,’ I said, my tongue tripping over my words. ‘It’s like Star Wars. You’ve got the original trilogy and they’re great, but then George Lucas says he’s going to make new films and you get all excited but you end up with The Phantom Menace.’

Liv knitted her perfectly groomed eyebrows together. I always hoped our children would have her eyebrows.

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘I’m saying, our relationship is like the original Star Wars,’ I explained. ‘So I can’t dump you in case I end up with The Phantom Menace.’

The sun had already started to slip away over the horizon but it was not difficult to make out my girlfriend’s expression. She didn’t look nearly as pleased with the analogy as I was.

‘What I’m saying is …’ I rubbed my palms together then took her hand back in mine. ‘You’re A New Hope. That’s good! And it’s better to stick with you because who knows if the next girl is going to be a Force Awakens or a Phantom Menace.’

‘If I were you, I’d probably just stop talking.’ She looked around the deserted beach, clearly confused. ‘Yeti, where is the restaurant?’

‘So, there’s a small chance I was looking at the driving directions when I said it was ten minutes away,’ I replied, reviewing the map. ‘It’s further than I thought?’

‘How much further?’ she asked, a noticeable hobble in her walk.

I bloody well knew those shoes of hers would be trouble.

‘The good news is, we’ve already been walking for twenty minutes,’ I replied with a tentative smile. ‘And it’s only fifty minutes away altogether.’

‘Fifty minutes!’

Liv stopped dead in her tracks, looking at me as though I’d just told her she had to walk the rest of the way barefoot, over hot coals.

‘I can’t walk another half an hour in these shoes.’ As she leaned forward, her blonde hair fell in front of her face, showing off her long neck as she messed around with the miniscule gold buckles. I hated those shoes but I loved that neck. I wanted to kiss it. But this really was not the time. ‘My foot is killing me.’

I bloody knew it.

‘Well, take your shoes off and we’ll walk on the sand,’ I suggested, looking at the uneven path that ran down the side of the beach. Even my leathery Hobbit feet wouldn’t fancy that much.

‘I can’t,’ she said, wincing as she removed her left shoe. ‘My foot is a bit of a mess.’

‘Oh my god, there’s a hole in your foot!’ I made an involuntary gipping sound as she pulled the shoe away to reveal what must have been a particularly nasty blister about fifteen minutes ago. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘You were in such a rush.’ She leaned against the low tidal wall and poked gently at the weeping mess formerly known as her foot. ‘I didn’t want to be late.’

‘I told you not to wear those shoes,’ I said, mad at her foot, mad at Google and possibly, very slightly mad at myself.

‘You also told me the restaurant was ten minutes away,’ she snapped back. ‘I can’t help it.’

I checked my phone one more time before taking another look at Liv’s gammy foot. It was utterly disgusting but I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

‘If we walk around the beach, we’ll be there in ten minutes,’ I said, enlarging the map to make sure of my short cut. ‘Then we can clean that mess up there.’

‘There’s no way I’m walking down the beach,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘It’s filthy. Do you want me to get an infection in my foot? Do you want me to get septicaemia?’

No, I almost shouted, I want to bloody propose to you! Instead, I took a calming breath, put my phone away and smiled.

‘Have you got a plaster?’

‘Of course I haven’t got a bloody plaster!’ she exploded. ‘Why would I have a plaster?’

‘Because you’re a vet?’ I suggested. ‘Don’t you carry that sort of thing?’

‘What, in case we pass an Alsatian with a splinter?’

I turned my back on her and looked out at the setting sun, the last sliver hovering over the sea, and fingered the ring in my pocket. We were supposed to be there by now. We were supposed to be drinking champagne, surrounded by white roses and enjoying all the other amazing things I’d paid an arm and a leg for Pablo the events manager to organize in The Arse End of Nowhere, Mexico. I should have been the one down on one knee with a ring in my hand, instead Liv was crouching on the floor and tending to an open wound.

‘Maybe we should go back to the hotel,’ I suggested weakly as the sun drowned itself in the ocean. ‘It’s dark; it’s late. We’re not going to get there on time.’

‘You want to go back?’ she asked, hesitating over every word. ‘You don’t want to go to dinner?’

‘Well, I don’t want to sit here,’ I replied. ‘What would you suggest?’

Do it now, hissed the little voice in my head. Do it now, do it while she’s not expecting it.

‘Fine,’ Liv pursed her lips and stood up, limping along to the edge of the path. ‘We’ll just go back.’

That’s right. For some reason, the voice sounded an awful lot like my big brother. Go back to the hotel, don’t propose, wait for Liv to leave you then you can die alone with a massive beard, tissue boxes on your feet instead of shoes and hundreds of bottles full of your own wee to keep you and your eighteen cats company.

‘Fuck it,’ I murmured, fishing around in my pocket for the ring and bending down. Slowly. I really needed to see someone about my back.

‘There’s a taxi!’

Before I could stop her, Liv hopped off the path and into the street, flagging down a white car with a red stripe down the side. It screeched to a halt at her side. I watched her, the headlights of the car lighting up her flowing white dress as it swirled around her slender legs, her hair flying out behind her. She was beautiful. She was clever and caring, she made me laugh, she took care of me even when I didn’t know I needed taking care of and she always watched Star Trek Next Gen with me, even if we’d seen it a dozen times before. Olivia Addison was perfect.

And I couldn’t even get her to a bloody restaurant on time.

‘I can’t,’ I realized, staring at my grandmother’s engagement ring. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘Adam?’

It was too late, Liv was already inside the taxi, staring back at me. ‘What are you doing?’

It felt as though everything inside me had stopped working, like even my organs were waiting to see what came next before they bothered to carry on keeping me alive. Her eyes widened and she blinked at the sight of me kneeling on the dusty street.

‘Fastening my shoelace,’ I replied, dropping the ring on the floor and covering it with my shoe. ‘Sorry.’

Better start saving up my tissue boxes and adopting those cats, I thought, as I stood up, stashed the ring back in my pocket and forced one foot in front of the other to join her in the back seat of the taxi. You couldn’t just walk into an RSPCA and take eighteen. Could you? Surely there was a limit.

The taxi driver pulled out into the speeding traffic, turning the radio up full blast and soundtracking my misery with a song I had loved until that moment. Now I was going to have to hunt down Mumford and all of his sons and murder them all to death.

Liv stared out the window with her shoes in her lap as I closed my eyes, trying to work out just how I’d managed to get everything so wrong. Slipping my finger into the tiny pocket of my jeans, I traced the setting of the sapphire in my grandmother’s engagement ring and squeezed the bridge of my nose, trying not to cry.

Well. That went well.

2

‘Have you got everything?’

‘Yeah,’ Adam replied, looking back over his shoulder. ‘I think so.’

‘Did you check all the drawers?’ I asked. ‘The little ones in the nightstand?’

‘I’ll double check,’ he said, disappearing back into the bedroom.

The second we got back to the cottage, Adam had retired to the bathroom, claiming an upset stomach and didn’t reappear until I’d given up any hope of a romantic proposal and swapped my beautiful white dress for my Garfield pyjamas. The whole evening had been a complete waste of make-up. Neither of us had slept a wink but neither of us was prepared to admit anything was wrong. Adam kept saying he still felt unwell, even though he’d managed to put away all the beer left in the fridge after I’d gone to bed, and I was only just keeping my shit together.

‘Are you not taking all this sun cream?’ he shouted, waving half-empty bottles of Ambre Solaire in the air. ‘There’s loads left.’

‘I couldn’t fit it in my case,’ I said as I heaved said case out of the front door and onto the deck, waving at our very early taxi driver. ‘Leave it.’

‘But there’s more than half left in one of them.’ He appeared in the living room with the three bottles in his hands. ‘Why didn’t you use one up instead of starting all three?’

‘Why didn’t you use any sunscreen the entire fortnight?’ I replied. ‘They’re all different. SPF 50 for the first week, 30 for the second and 15 for my legs.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ he muttered, opening his suitcase and jamming the bottles inside. ‘Such a waste of money.’

‘It’s sunscreen, it doesn’t matter, we can buy more. And it’s going to explode all over your sodding case if you keep shoving it in like that.’

He looked up, defiance all over his broad features.

‘No, it won’t.’

I raised an eyebrow and shrugged. ‘Fine.’

‘You’re not right about everything you know.’ He yanked the zip closed and pushed past me, chucking the case through the door. ‘It’s such a waste of money.’

‘Arsehole,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘I’m totally right.’

He stood on the deck, staring at his phone as I locked the cottage door behind us. I’d already checked out when Adam went for his morning swim. Because like I said, he wasn’t feeling well.

‘All right?’ I asked as he began to type madly, all fingers and thumbs with his phone. His hands were so big, they even dwarfed his iPhone 6. ‘Is something wrong?’

He shook his head without taking his eyes off the screen. ‘I need to call someone, I won’t be a minute. It’s not a problem.’

I stared at him as he strode across the beach but kept my mouth closed for fear of accidentally screaming ‘Where is my riiiiiing?’ right in his face. Instead, I nodded and wheeled my suitcase over to the waiting taxi while he paced up and down the sand, shouting at someone in Spanish. For someone whose only opinion on weddings before finding out about Adam’s supposed proposal was that if it wasn’t an open-bar reception, I wasn’t going, I was beginning to worry I’d lost my mind.

‘No!’ Adam barked in his laboured accent. ‘Eso no es lo que acordamos.’

It was strange to see him so close to losing his temper. Generally speaking, my boyfriend was so laidback and offensively agreeable that I once went round to his house to find Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to come up with an excuse to leave.

‘Who was that?’ I asked, intensely casual as he clambered into the back of the taxi beside me.

‘No one,’ he replied, clicking in his seatbelt and turning towards the window. ‘Nothing.’

Oh good, I thought, smiling beatifically. I was going to have to kill him.

‘No one,’ I repeated. ‘Right.’

He looked back at me for a moment, seemingly on the verge of telling me something.

‘Really,’ he said with fifty per cent less huff. ‘No one. The manager of that restaurant wanting to know why we missed our reservation.’

He was such a terrible liar.

‘OK.’ I kept my eyes on the horizon as we sped away from our beautiful cottage, in the beautiful resort by the beautiful beach, and realized I had wasted two weeks waiting for a proposal that wasn’t going to happen. ‘OK, then.’

‘Yeah,’ Adam replied, shifting back towards the window. ‘Everything’s fine, don’t worry about it.’

Because that was definitely a sensible thing to say to a woman, wasn’t it?

‘Here, give me that.’

Adam held out his hands for my suitcase as I jostled it up onto the headrest of the seat in front of me, hair stuck to my sweaty forehead.

‘It’s all right,’ I said with a tired but determined smile. ‘I can do it.’

‘I know you can,’ he replied, lifting the case out of my hands easily and sliding it neatly into the overhead locker before kissing me on the top of the head. ‘Just let me help.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, hurling my handbag onto my seat. He shrugged agreeably, staring at his ticket as I curled up in my uncomfortable seat.

‘Oh.’

‘Oh?’ I looked up to see Adam staring at his ticket. ‘What’s wrong? Are we not sat together?’

‘We are,’ he said, jamming his ticket into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘But you’re in the window seat.’

I looked out of the tiny porthole at the steaming tarmac below and saw three men in orange hi-vis vests chucking suitcases onto a conveyor belt. I watched as one fell off, bouncing along the floor before one of the men came over to kick it all the way back to the conveyor belt to try again.

‘Did you want the window?’ I looked out at my little square of sky reluctantly. ‘We can swap?’

‘No, I don’t mind,’ he wrestled his man bag from across his chest and dropped it in the aisle seat. ‘It’s just, you had the window on the way out.’

‘You can have the window,’ I told him, nursing my handbag. ‘You sit here and I’ll sit in the middle.’

‘I said I don’t mind.’

It was funny, because he certainly looked like he minded. He looked like he minded a lot of things but since he’d been almost silent ever since we got in the taxi it was impossible to know what was going on in his head. I had read every single gossip magazine the airport had to offer while he paced up and down the terminal, shouting at the supposed restaurant owner in broken Spanish. It had been a long three hours. I wasn’t a woman renowned for her patience when it came to human beings and the thought of a twelve-hour flight back to the UK was not helping me be my most sensitive self. If he wasn’t going to explain what was going on and the rubbish app I’d quickly downloaded to translate him couldn’t explain either, I was just going to have to pretend it wasn’t happening.

‘Uh, I think I’m sitting next to you guys.’ A young woman with an American accent waved her hand awkwardly behind Adam’s immense shoulders. ‘22C?’

‘Oh, hi.’ I gave her a manic smile and nudged my boyfriend in the thigh. ‘Adam, can you move your bag.’

‘I’m Maura,’ she said, slipping travel-sickness bands onto her wrists and sliding assorted medications and sick bags into her seatback pocket. ‘I’ll probably sleep the whole flight, so if you need to get by to use the bathroom, just like, climb over me.’

‘No problem, I’m Olivia, Liv,’ I replied, pointing at myself before gesturing at the six-foot-four human partition standing between us. ‘This is Adam.’

‘We’re not supposed to change seats before take off.’ He grabbed his bag from Maura’s seat without acknowledging her and hugged it like a sulky toddler. She sat down, cheek to cheek against his backside. ‘But whatever. You sit in the window, I’ll sit in the middle. Again.’

I looked up at him, all tanned and sullen, and hoped against hope that my ring was wedged right up his arse.

‘Why can’t we change seats before take off?’ I asked, watching as Maura in 22C swallowed a handful of little white pills without so much as a sip of water. Total pro.

He sat down in the middle seat with a heavy thump. ‘Because if we blow up during take off, they might not be able to identify the bodies so they need to know where everyone was to distribute the remains.’

Maura in 22C froze.

‘I think it’s actually something to do with weight distribution,’ I replied loudly. ‘And I don’t think it really matters that much, let’s just swap.’

‘No, that’s helicopters,’ Adam corrected, still cuddling his backpack. ‘With planes it’s in case all the bodies get burned up beyond recognition, then they can bury the right remains in the right—’

‘Just swap with me.’ I stood up and hoisted him to his feet while Maura in 22C began to cry. ‘And for god’s sake, shut up.’

‘What?’ he asked, wide-eyed and completely oblivious to my neighbour shaking silently as she stared at the safety card through red eyes. ‘What did I do?’

‘Nothing,’ I muttered, hiding behind my hair. ‘Sit down.’

Adam kicked his bag under the seat in front and pulled his hood over his head, smiling for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long.

‘Liv.’

From deep inside a dream about going out for ice cream with Brad, Ange and all the kids, I felt a stiff poke in my shoulder.

‘Liv? Liv.’

Why? Why would he wake me up when it took me so long to fall asleep?

‘Liv.’ Adam tapped my shoulder over and over again. ‘Are you awake?’

‘No,’ I replied without opening my eyes. ‘I’m really not.’

‘I’m bored.’

I cracked open one eye to find his face so close to mine that everything but his freckles was a blur.

‘Talk to me,’ he pulled the strings on his red jumper so that the hood cinched in tightly around his face until just his eyes and nose were showing, the strain showing on his stupid, handsome face. ‘We’ve still got ages.’

‘I know, that’s why I was asleep,’ I said, swiping at his hood. ‘Can you take that down? You look like Little Red Riding twat.’

‘You love it.’ Adam tied the strings in an elaborate bow underneath his chin. ‘I look amazing. I’m the amazing red-hooded yeti.’

‘If you say so,’ I replied with a yawn. ‘And I’m not just saying that because you’ve got food in your hand.’

Abi had been the one to christen him ‘yeti’ when we first met. She always labelled our dates, refusing to acknowledge their real names until the relationships had been established. Adam came to be known as the yeti because none of us really believed it was possible for an eligible, handsome man over the age of thirty to move to our village with his family and therefore she considered his kind to be as rare as the abominable snowman. With his sandy blond hair, longer and shaggier than it was now, yeti worked, and yeti had stuck.

‘Open your mouth,’ he ordered, opening a packet of M&Ms. ‘I bet I can do it in one.’

Somewhere far, far away, I felt my grandmother spinning in her grave. Somewhere closer, I heard Maura in 22C let out a stuck-pig snore.

‘You’re not throwing sweets at my face on a plane,’ I said quietly, holding up a hand in front of my face. ‘Stop it.’

‘You know I can do it,’ Adam repeated, readying a blue M&M. ‘Open your mouth.’

With lips pursed tighter than the average cat’s arse, I shook my head, still mad about being woken up and slowly remembering all the other reasons I was upset with him. Last night’s weirdness, the airport phone calls and, oh yeah, the complete and utter lack of a bloody proposal.

‘Fine, whatever,’ he muttered, emptying half the bag directly into his mouth, slumping back down in his seat and producing a tiny can of Coke from his backpack. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

‘Excuse me?’ I turned so sharply a curtain of my own sun-bleached blonde hair slapped me in the face. ‘What did you call me?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied with a smirk. ‘Mum.’

‘Oh, be quiet,’ I replied, mostly peeved because he was right. It was happening more and more often, I would open my mouth and my mother’s voice would come out instead. I had Motherettes. ‘That’s so not funny.’

‘Oh, it’s so not funny?’ He let down my tray table without asking and placed his can in the little indentation without a napkin underneath. ‘I hate when you talk to me like a child, you’re not my mother, you know.’

‘Thank god,’ I quipped without thinking.

The smirk wiped itself off his face.

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

I should have known better, I really should. I knew I wasn’t allowed to make comments about his mum, ever, no matter what he felt like saying about mine. It was the number one unwritten, unspoken rule of dating a mummy’s boy. Never make a joke about his mother, ever.

‘Nothing.’ I picked up his drink and snapped my table back in place to cross my legs without hitting my knees. ‘Is your tray broken or something?’

‘At least my mum’s fun,’ he muttered, nipping the can out of my hand and glugging. ‘At least my parents aren’t boring.’

‘Don’t start.’ I closed my eyes and tried to think of happy things like my friends and my cat and advent calendars and Tom Hardy and the Topshop summer sale. Nothing was really that wrong, it was just the enclosed space and the lack of sleep and the night before and … oh god, I really was going to kill someone. At least Maura was completely unconscious so there wouldn’t be any witnesses.

‘I can’t be arsed with you right now.’

‘Me?’ Adam replied, incredulous. ‘What have I done?’

‘Other than all those weird phone calls? And the moody silences?’ Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop myself and an unpleasant feeling began to fizz up in my chest. ‘Or, I don’t know, completely ruining the last night of our holiday?’

‘I didn’t feel well,’ he protested. The strings of his hoodie were still tied in a neat bow under his chin and it was all I could do not to choke him with them. ‘You couldn’t walk in those stupid shoes anyway; you would have ended up moaning all night. You should be grateful.’

‘I would not have moaned.’ My foot was still throbbing underneath the four layers of plasters. Ten minutes away, my arse. ‘You were the one who said it was ten minutes. And can you please take that hood off when I’m trying to talk to you?’

Adam yanked the hood down, his hair springing up around his face, all fluffy and dry from the recycled plane air. He looked like a furious Pomeranian and it was very hard to take him seriously.

‘So, I made a mistake.’ He chugged his drink and crumpled the can like a slightly less impressive Incredible Hulk. He was, in fairness, almost as green. Adam was not a good flier. ‘I’m sorry I’m not perfect all the time like you. And it wouldn’t matter if you hadn’t been wearing those stupid shoes in the first place.’

‘I’m not perfect,’ I said, brushing my hair behind my ears as my eyes began to burn. It was just the dry air. My eyes were watering because I’d gone to sleep in my contact lenses. I definitely wasn’t crying. ‘I’m just not stupid.’

I felt Maura seize up at the side of me, not nearly as unconscious as I had originally thought.

A condescending sigh escaped his mouth and he flipped his hood back up over his head, pulling it down over his eyes.

‘That’s me, so stupid. Not like Professor Liv. I’ll shut up before I say anything else that offends you.’

I didn’t know what to do. We never argued, ever. Well, there was that one time he’d deleted the Downton Abbey finale off my Sky+ but he’d replaced it with the DVD and all was forgiven. What was I supposed to do? Let him calm down, I told myself. Take Elsa’s advice and let it go. That would be the clever thing to do.

‘Arsehole.’

I closed my eyes the second it was out, ashamed. Elsa would never call her boyfriend an arsehole – Olaf, maybe, but never Elsa.

‘I’m an arsehole?’

Adam yanked the hood down and turned in his seat to give me his full attention.

‘I’m an arsehole?’ he repeated.

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Oh brilliant, now I couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘You’ve been acting like a mentalist for two weeks,’ he said in an angry whisper that woke anyone still sleeping in a three-row radius. ‘Whining, sulking, constantly complaining and I’m the arsehole.’

‘When was I whining? What have I complained about?’ I replied, trying to keep my rage to an appropriate volume level. My grandmother would have come back to life just to die again if she’d seen us arguing in public. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘“What are we doing today, Adam? Where are we going tonight, Adam? Adam, I need a drink. Adam, it’s so hot. Why don’t you carry me, Adam? Why didn’t we hire a donkey, Adam?”’

‘I was only joking about you carrying me,’ I replied, flushed. ‘And obviously I didn’t really want to hire a donkey. You’re totally exaggerating.’

Admittedly, I had googled the donkey thing when a girl rode one past us halfway up a mountain but apparently you had to buy it outright and I knew my credit card limit wouldn’t stretch to it. Not after that bloody stupid frock. For the most part, any questioning on my part was because I was anxious about the supposed proposal, but I could hardly tell him that.

‘I’m very sorry the Mayans didn’t build their ancient civilization closer to the hotel,’ Adam seethed. ‘What a bunch of selfish fuckers.’

‘It was hot and I was thirsty,’ I glanced around the plane and everyone quickly looked away. ‘But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t having a good time. Don’t make out like all I did was complain.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you enjoyed yourself,’ he said, either oblivious to or unconcerned by the scene he was creating. ‘You love complaining, you complain constantly.’

‘I do not.’ At least, no more than any other self-respecting Englishwoman. ‘I tell you when I’m upset about something, that’s not the same thing.’

‘Then you must be constantly upset. Liv, how do you cope?’ Adam said, sharpening his spine and wrapping his arms around himself, pulling himself further and further away from me, severing every point of physical contact. ‘Nothing’s ever good enough for you, is it?’

‘What are you talking about?’ I was so incredibly angry I could barely see, and worst of all, I was almost certainly about to cry. ‘You’ve totally lost me.’

‘Mexico’s not good enough, my family’s not good enough, I’m not good enough,’ he carried on ranting in a mad whisper, banging his elbows on the armrests and his head hitting the ceiling as he threw himself around in his seat like an overgrown toddler. ‘Nothing’s ever good enough.’

I stared at my boyfriend and he fannied around with his seatbelt, yanking on the strap trying to extend it, only succeeding in restraining himself even more tightly. Not a terrible idea, as things were. It was so out of character. Adam never lost his temper. Something was definitely wrong.

‘Adam,’ I laid my hand on his arm to calm him, trying to ignore the prying eyes up and down the plane and be the bigger person. ‘What’s wrong?’

He shook his head and pulled away. My hand hovered in midair for a moment and I literally didn’t know what to do. What had happened? How had we gone from kissing in the cottage to shouting at each other on a plane?

‘What’s wrong with me?’ he asked with a laugh. ‘Amazing. There’s nothing wrong with me, what’s wrong with you?’

Without waiting for an answer, he pulled his phone out of the seatback pocket and opened up one of his games, completely ignoring the stunned expressions on me, Maura in 22C and everyone in row 23. Nothing I wanted to say could be helpful, nothing I was feeling made sense. All I could do now was sit quietly for the next five and a half hours and hope we were flying through the Mexican equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle.

Dabbing the corners of my eyes with my sleeve, I stared straight ahead, burning with embarrassment, confusion and most of all, the unshakeable feeling that I had done something wrong only I didn’t know what. And if he hadn’t apologized by the time we landed, I could always push him down the escalators at Heathrow and say it was an accident.

We spent the rest of the flight in silence, listening to Maura’s choked sobs every time the plane shook, followed by another wordless hour in customs and nearly two more driving home. I was half awake, half asleep, delirious from jet lag and unwelcome tears. I didn’t care about the ring at all any more, all I wanted to know was why Adam was so incredibly angry.

A sharp left turn jolted me wide awake as we pulled off the main road and into the village. Enough was enough, I thought, rubbing my eyes and blinking at the clock on his dash. Perhaps the holiday wasn’t going to end in a proposal but there was no way it was going to end like this.

‘Here already?’

Adam nodded as we pelted down the country roads.

‘I wonder what’s gone on while we’ve been away,’ I said, my voice so croaky I could barely hear it myself. ‘Dad was supposed to be getting the surgery painted. I hope he got the colours I suggested.’

Adam stared straight ahead.

‘I bet Gus has grown,’ I went on. ‘He gets bigger every time I see him. I think he’s going to be tall like you and your dad. I bet he’ll be bigger than Chris by the time he’s seven. Definitely going to be a heartbreaker, like your mum said.’

I stole a sideways glance at my boyfriend. Nothing.

‘It’s a long way from Tulum, isn’t it?’ I clucked as we flew past the supermarket my dad swore he would never shop at until he found out he could get a free coffee every time he went in. The little village Co-op had closed within six months, it never stood a chance. ‘Makes you think.’

About what, I wasn’t sure.

Another left turn took us off the high street and down the little lane that led to the surgery.

‘We’re going to mine?’ I asked, sounding like I’d sandpapered my throat on the way home.

We never stayed at mine because Adam hated staying at mine. Mine being a tiny one-bedroom flat above the veterinary surgery as opposed to Adam’s three-bedroom house with a great big garden and no attached neighbours. Adam claimed the flat was haunted by the Ghosts of Pets Past and their late-night howling kept him awake but I had an inkling it was more to do with the fact he didn’t like being away from his fancy coffee maker and king-size bed. Out of the three years we’d been together, I could count the number of nights we’d spent together in my flat on one hand. Most of my things were over at Adam’s but since my parents were oddly old-fashioned about these things, I had never officially moved in. I slept at mine once, maybe twice, a week, if my evening surgery ran late or Abi demanded a sleepover but really, it was little more than an unnecessarily well-furnished storage locker.

Adam’s Land Rover crunched along the gravel outside the surgery and the motion-activated security lights shone accusingly into my eyes. Exhausted and frustrated, all I wanted was to go to bed. Maybe a couple of hours of decent kip would help, things always got blown out of proportion outside of daylight hours and everyone knew things seemed worse when you were tired. I opened the passenger side door and stumbled out onto the drive – Adam’s car really wasn’t made for a short arse like me. Retrieving my suitcase from the boot, I was staggering down the path with my suitcase, halfway to the front door, keys in hand before I realized Adam was still in the car. Still wearing his seatbelt. Still gripping the steering wheel as though the car might tear away all on its own.

‘Are you planning on sleeping out here?’ I asked, the sharp edges of my house keys cutting into my fingers. ‘It’s a bit cold for a camp-out.’

‘No,’ he replied, eyes straight ahead. ‘I’m going home.’

I took a deep, calming breath.

‘Adam,’ I said as softly as I could. ‘Come inside—’

‘I need to sort some stuff out,’ he cut me off, nodding once at his windshield. Even though he was looking in my general direction, his eyes didn’t quite meet mine. ‘I need a break, Liv.’

‘Well, you’ve just had a holiday,’ I pointed out, trying not to yawn. ‘That was a two-week break.’

‘I don’t mean that kind of break,’ he tailed off with a huffing noise and then turned the key in the ignition. ‘I need a break from this, a break from us.’

The security light blinked out above me, leaving me in disorienting darkness for too long a moment. The only thing I could make out was Adam’s profile, etched in orange light from his glowing dashboard.

‘What?’

My handbag slid off my shoulder, landed on my foot and then hit the ground, its contents spilling all over the floor. Inside the surgery I heard a few drowsy barks and whimpers as the security light flashed back into life, dazzling me with its angry white light.

‘I’m tired, Liv,’ he muttered, gunning the engine. ‘I’m going home and I’ll talk to you later.’

Without any further explanation, he reversed quickly and peeled out of the driveway, showering me with gravel as he went. Stunned, I reached down to grab my handbag and felt an unexpected tear roll out of my dry eye and off the end of my nose. Inside the bag, my phone was flashing with a text message. It was Cassie, up for a three a.m. feed.

ARE YOU ENGAGED???? DID HE DO IT??????

‘No,’ I whispered to my phone, tears falling freely down my face as I knelt on the floor. ‘I’m just knackered, miserable and desperate for a wee.’

The sharp stones of the driveway dug into my knees, and underneath all the plasters my foot was screaming but I couldn’t feel any of it. I couldn’t feel anything at all. Swiping the back of my hand across my face, I scooped all my things back into my handbag then dragged my suitcase through the gravel, up to the door of my little flat, alone.

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