The Goddess Rules (29 page)

“I know. So let’s see the ring again. Was it sugarloaf emerald?” Tanya asked as she picked up Kate’s left hand to examine it.

“How does everyone know about jewels except me?”

“Because you’re not a superficial gold digger and the rest of us are,” Tanya said as she nodded in an impressed way at Kate’s ring. “So how did Louis take the news?”

“He hasn’t yet. Do you think I have to tell him?” Kate didn’t even want to think about Louis right now.

“No, I think you should just carry on seeing him and kissing him and doing whatever it is you do with him and have him be in love with you until he notices that you always have to be home by eleven o’clock and the name on your checkbook changes from Disney to Mrs. Jake Moore. Don’t you?” Tanya suggested. Kate saw her point, and groaned.

“Louis, it’s Kate.”

“Hi, sweetheart. I was just thinking about you. I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come to see a film with me tonight?”

“I’d love to but . . .”

“You’re busy? I know, I ought to stay in myself and do some work for the show. It’s just that I’m going stir crazy and I thought that some human contact and, well . . .”

“Louis, I’d sort of like to talk, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, go on,” Louis replied with only the faintest hint of suspicion in his voice.

Certainly he wasn’t expecting to hear what Kate was about to tell him. She put her engagement ring out in front of her to remind her that this was good news. For her at least. And she hadn’t led Louis on in the slightest, they’d just been having a fling. And now they weren’t. It was really simple.

“Can I come over?” she asked, and twisted the ring between her teeth.

“No,” he said firmly.

“I can’t?” Maybe he’d gone off her, she hoped, that’d be perfect.

“No. I need to get out of the flat. Let’s meet somewhere.” Kate was supposed to be meeting Jake for dinner with her mother at eight. She wondered whether she’d have time to meet Louis without Jake finding out. Then her mother’s words sang out in her head:
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

She ought to have told Jake about Louis. It wasn’t as if she’d been doing anything she shouldn’t. Certainly the odds were on him having seen a few girls in their sabbatical, as Jake liked to call it. But she hadn’t really had a chance . . . and now she was engaged.

“Okay, let’s meet at the zoo in twenty minutes,” she suggested. “Giraffes.” She hoped nothing could get too serious with giraffes around.

“Great,” agreed Louis. “See you there.”

Kate was already waiting when Louis loped over to join her by the giraffes. He looked slightly frazzled, doubtless from all the work he’d been doing, and was carrying two lattes. He handed one to Kate. Thankfully she’d secreted her engagement ring away in her handbag this time.

“Just what I needed. Thanks,” she said, and wondered whether the lattes would come to an end now. In fact she wondered whether the whole polar bear project would come to an end. She really hoped that it would; the idea of being around Louis after this was not going to be the most fun she’d ever had.

“I had a great time the other night.” He kissed her on the lips. Then put his free hand on the small of her back and moved closer to her. Kate kissed him back for a brief moment and then shook her hair back in a bid to pull away without seeming like a scalded cat.

“So how’s the exhibition coming along?” she asked, and rested her back against the fence of the giraffe enclosure. Louis leaned one arm against it and smiled goofily at her as she took a sip of her coffee.

“I’m so behind, I ought to throw myself out of the window but I suppose if I’m a piece short it’s not going to matter, I can just rearrange the space and—”

“Louis, I want to tell you something.” Kate decided to abandon the gentle lead-up and get straight to the point.

“Okay.” He nodded patiently.

“Well. Something really unexpected happened to me last night,” she began.

“Yes?”

The bitter irony was that Louis looked so frayed around the edges today that she fancied him more than she ever had. She wanted more than anything to be tucked up under the sheets in his flat, hiding from the world. Then she stopped herself. These weren’t the thoughts of a woman about to be married. She focused on the ground. “Jake proposed to me.” She waited a moment before looking to see his expression. Louis’s eyes were barely visible—they were squinting tightly in the sunlight. She waited.

“Go, Jake,” he said, and then burst into amused laughter. “Well, I’ll say this for him. He doesn’t give up, does he?”

“Louis . . .” Kate sounded the warning bell and his laugh quickly died away.

“Kate?” He was glaring at her now. Pretty much the way that Mirri and Tanya had also glared at her. Only behind his glare was something else, a look of stunned pain.

“I’m so sorry, Louis, I really am” was all she could manage to get out. There didn’t seem much point in justification. She just wanted to leave.

“Come on, you’re not serious. You said yes?” His voice was filled with disbelief.

Kate nodded. “I loved what we had, Louis. But I couldn’t be sure about us. There was no time to find out. With Jake I know that I still love him after three years and all that we’ve been through. You and I might only last a week.”

“You’re not fucking serious?” Louis could no longer look at her face-on. He had half turned his head away from her when he spoke.

“Who knows whether we’d have been anything more than a really great fling?” she said, getting the hang of her defense now.

“Oh I see, is this you having the courage to live your life as you want to?” he snarled.

“What do you mean?” Kate took a small step backward. She couldn’t remember having seen Louis angry, ever.

“The other night. All that bullshit about how you’ve learned that you don’t need to conform, you don’t need to marry the wrong man just to fall into line with everyone else, how you want to make brave choices. And what do you do? Marry the first person who asks just because it’s more time-efficient than finding out whether you and I might be in love and have a chance for the future.” He shook his head contemptuously.

“I love Jake,” she argued. “And before you say that he treats me badly, he’s changed. He understands what he did wrong and it’s going to be different in the future.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Kate. That’s one of the most pathetic, hackneyed things I’ve ever heard.” He began to laugh bitterly.

“I am being brave,” she said defensively, “I’m going to marry a man I’m taking a chance on. There’s no guarantees with Jake, either. That’s courageous.”

“No, Kate, that’s stupid.”

“I’m sorry.” Kate closed her eyes.

“Yeah, me too. But I think maybe you’ll be sorrier than me in the end.”

“We’ll see.” There was an interminable silence as they both clutched their drinks and Louis scuffed his sneakers in the dirt. “Do you still want to work with me? I completely understand if you don’t,” she said quietly after a while.

Louis lifted his head. “Sure. It’s not really going to change much. Like you said, we had a fling. It’s over. Let’s not get too overemotional about the whole thing.” His voice had a steely edge to it. “Clearly you haven’t.”

“Okay,” Kate said. “I’ll see you Monday. Unless . . .” She hesitated. “Unless you want to come to the engagement party tomorrow.” There was another long silence as Kate bit her lip.

Eventually Louis sniffed, “Yeah, I think I’ll give that one a miss if you don’t mind.” Then he tossed his coffee cup in a nearby bin. “I’ll see you Monday, then.” He shrugged and walked away down the path. Kate leaned back against the fence with a sigh of relief. That was that, then.

Chapter Twenty-two

On Sunday afternoon the English summer came to an almost apocalyptic end. It was only July but it felt like November. The temperature had dropped, the skies hung low, and gray and rain threatened. Kate had unearthed a thick sweater and some green socks from a box under her bed and put on the heater in the shed.

“Well, I’m definitely going to buy the flat now,” she told Leonard and Mirri as they sat around the kitchen table folding tissue paper into garlands for tonight’s party. “Every fox, badger, and hedgehog in London’s going to want to make the shed home if this weather carries on.”

“Where do I tie the cotton again?” Mirri was glowering at a spindly paper flower in her hand.

Kate laughed and rescued the disaster from her grasp. “I’ll do it. You can just cut out these. See where I’ve made the circles.” She handed Mirri a pair of scissors.

“I don’t know why you can’t buy these from Harrods,” she snarled.

“Because I like making them,” Kate said good-naturedly. Since she’d gotten all the dirty work out of the way and told her friends and Louis of her unpopular decision, she felt a lot better. The truth was out, it was downhill with her feet off the pedals all the way now.

“Are you going to make your own wedding dress, too?” Mirri was unashamedly bad-tempered this morning. She’d had a row with Jonah last night and had been chain-smoking all day. It was now three in the afternoon and she still hadn’t gotten dressed.

“Oh, dear, Mirabelle is depressed,” Leonard had said as she walked into the kitchen first thing. It wasn’t exactly hard to spot.

“What did you argue about?” Kate asked in a hushed voice when Leonard went down to the cellar to fetch up some wine for the party while they carried on making flowers.

“I have no idea. I made something up,” Mirri replied in a surly voice.

“To argue about?”

“Why not. He was being banal. It annoyed me.”

“What are you going to do about Nick?” Kate asked. She’d filled Mirri in on his architectural achievements and the fact that he lived in a village in Oxfordshire and that there was no discernible wife in the wings, but Mirri had virtually ignored the information.

“The idea of it makes me feel sick,” she said as she stubbed out a cigarette in the bottom of her coffee cup.

“That’s no reason not to do it.”

“I’m not sure that I would like him anyway.”

“You used to like him. People don’t change that much.” Once again Kate was Mirri’s alter ego.

“I don’t think I’m capable of loving anyone. And the idea of being with someone in a relationship is intolerable. Look at Jonah—he’s sweet and yet a lot of the time I want to bite him.”

“It’s not as if you have to spend the rest of your life with Nick,” Kate said, getting a butterfly as she realized that she’d just agreed to precisely this with Jake. “You only have to meet for a coffee for old times’ sake. You don’t have to declare love straight away.” Kate was feeling remarkably sage and pleased with herself until Mirri let out a hiss.

“If you say one more sensible thing I’ll bite you as well.”

“Oh.” Kate deflated slightly. “Fine. But you can’t deny love. It’ll catch up with you in the end.”

“Jesus, what are you? Kahlil Gibran?” Mirri snorted. Kate shrugged and continued to tie the paper roses to her chain. Not much could dent her mood today.

“So what are you going to do?” she persisted.

“Okay. I’ll write to him tomorrow. If I’m in the mood,” she snapped and then shut up and cut out the next sixty paper circles without speaking.

An hour before the party the heavens opened. Kate’s roof sprang a leak and the dress she was going to wear, a white satin number that she’d spotted in the window of an antiques shop in Primrose Hill yesterday, got covered in a particularly nasty strain of leaf mold as it lay on the bed under the drip. Kate drafted in an old sundress of Mirri’s instead and refused to see the whole thing as a portent, despite Mirri’s dark mutterings.

“It’s not a good sign that your dress is ruined. It’s an omen from God that you’re not doing the right thing,” she mused as she attached one of the paper roses to the clip in Kate’s hair. Mirri had done a flowing-tendril number on Kate that was worthy of a bride. “I’d have the wedding hair now in case you never make it to the altar,” she said as she pinned away.

“Mirri, will you stop it?” Kate said. “You sound like my evil godmother.”

“Don’t worry. I will try very hard to like The Slug,” she said as if she were offering Kate the world. With a cherry on top.

“I don’t want you to try. I’m sure you will. Now, you’re not going to row with Jonah in front of everyone, are you?” Kate asked. “It’s only that Tanya’s trying really had to get pregnant and she’s just read a book on how negative energy can adversely affect your chances of conception. She can’t be around it ’cause it’s bad for her eggs.”

“Boffé,”
Mirri said. “Anyway, Jonah’s gone to his youngest child’s christening so he won’t be coming. And so I told him, neither will I,” she said haughtily.

“Poor Jonah, do you have sex with him at all anymore or are you just punishing him the whole time?” Kate asked.

“Oh, I punish him all the time. But when we do have sex it’s even better,” Mirri said tartly as she held up a pair of diamonds to Kate’s ears.

“Don’t you ever get tired of all the game playing?” Kate asked. Not, for once, being supercilious. She was exhausted by the very thought of Mirri’s life, and she didn’t have to live it.

“Of course I do,” Mirri said in a suddenly melancholic way. “That’s why I can’t ignore Nick Sheridan anymore. My past’s caught up with me and now my life only seems very frivolous, ridiculous, and sad. I’m too old to chase men.”

“You don’t chase them. They chase you,” Kate reminded her.

“But now it looks as if I have to do the chasing.”

“It’s not chasing. You’re looking him up after thirty years. It’s not as if you’ve been stalking him since the day he left.”

“No. I don’t think I can do it.” Mirri shook her head furiously. She was sitting on the floor cross-legged with Bébé on her lap.

“What do you mean? You can’t back out,” Kate protested as she looked out the window to see Leonard instructing two men as to where to place the tarpaulin of a tent he’d drafted in at the last minute. “Bugger this rain,” Kate said, and turned back to Mirri.

“He doesn’t want me. If he did he’d have found me,” she said and buried her face in the lion cub’s fur. “It’s not as though I’m hard to find. He must know I’m in the country. It’s been in the papers. No, Kate. That’s it. I’m not doing it.”

“You haven’t got anything to lose.” Kate sat on the edge of the bed and pleaded with her.

“This love affair you had. It’s thrown a shadow over your whole life. Don’t you think you should find out whether it’s as significant as you think?”

“What about Louis? He could be the love of your life. You didn’t give it a chance,” Mirri said petulantly.

“Don’t turn the tables on me. I’m getting married. Now, promise me you’ll call him. I know you want to. You’re just chickenshit.”

“Chickenshit?” Mirri didn’t understand what Kate meant.

“You’re afraid.”

“If he’s bald I’m going to walk away without saying hello,” she threatened.

“Wow, thank God you’re not superficial. And I agree, it’s completely reasonable to discard your soul mate, the one man you’ve ever loved in your life, because of his bald spot,” Kate said sarcastically as the rain continued to flood the garden.

“I’ll do it. Okay? Now leave me alone. I need to look young for this evening. I don’t want everyone thinking I’m your mother.”

From the magical moment when the tent in the garden was hauled into the sky, Kate was in a dreamworld. Jake had arrived earlier and they’d had an hour of mellow chatter as they made last-minute phone calls to invite friends, dashed to the shops to buy extra tonic water and lemons for the drinks, and finally took a shower together in Kate’s bamboo cubicle.

“Why do we need a house anyway?” he’d asked as one of the green bamboo shoots tickled Kate on the shoulder and Jake kissed the other one. “I like your shed. I could begin married life in your shed.”

“Too late. I’m going to make an offer for the house on Monday,” Kate said. “I’ve got rising damp in my bones from staying here. Don’t forget that I’ve lived here for months. It’s not a novelty anymore.”

“I know, but it’s so romantic.” He hugged her tight and nuzzled her neck playfully.

“We’d better get out there. Everyone’s going to be arriving in ten minutes,” Kate said as she readjusted her shower cap, which was protecting Mirri’s handiwork.

“Let’s get married straightaway. Next week.” He gave Kate one final squeeze before she ducked out of the shower.

“You’re so impractical sometimes.” Kate laughed as she grabbed a towel. “Are you afraid I’ll change my mind?”

“No.” Jake was adamant. “I just don’t think we should lose the moment.” He called out, “Is there any soap out there, angel?”

Kate and Jake ran down the garden path with an old golf umbrella shielding them from the downpour. They ducked into the tent to discover that they were almost the last at the party.

“I told you we didn’t have time for a quickie,” Kate whispered in his ear with a giggle as everyone turned to welcome them. Despite the fact that it had been a last-minute party, there were a surprising number of people there. Kate’s mum came forward and kissed them both and from then on a steady stream of people bombarded them with questions and sighs and requests to see the ring.

“Yeah, it was on a pal’s houseboat on the Thames,” Jake said for the umpteenth time that day. Kate felt another of the alien flutters in her stomach when she wondered how many times she’d hear this story throughout the rest of her life. She smiled at Jake’s cousins Lizzy and Jemima, whom she’d barely met before, even though they were supposedly close, and politely made her excuses to duck from under Jake’s arm and find Mirri, whom she’d spotted grilling Jake earlier. She was longing for a report.

“Are you having a good time?” She spied Mirri chatting to Robbie in a corner.

“Darling, I’m having a marvelous time.” Mirri had her hand on Robbie’s knee.

“Where’s Tanya?” Kate asked. Hoping that Mirri wasn’t going to cause any fireworks between her best friend and her husband.

“She’s talking to your mother,” Mirri replied. “I’m just giving Robbie some advice.”

“Very useful advice actually.” Robbie elbowed Kate in a conspiratorial way. “But you’re not to tell my wife about it.”

“About how to have babies.” Mirri winked and the two laughed. Kate held out her glass as it was refilled by one of the very smart waiters whom Leonard seemed to have conjured from thin air. They were wearing Nehru jackets the same color as the cornflowers that were wound around the tent poles. The whole party really couldn’t have looked more stunning if they’d spent a year organizing it and hired the bossiest party planner money could buy.

“Well, I think that Robbie understands the general principle of making babies,” Kate said, “unless you were planning on giving him a practical lesson.” She gave Mirri a warning look.

“Darling, I may have adored his father but I like his pretty wife enough not to mess around with the son.” She laughed her throaty laugh and Robbie looked as starstruck and transfixed as he had been when he first met her. And Kate had to admit that Mirri was breathtakingly seductive this evening—sitting here in her corner of the party like a queen bee with all the honeybees swarming to her for approval. She had her hair down around her shoulders, a cigarette wafted smoke in the eyes of anyone who looked too closely, and her scent seemed to make the men fall under a spell. Or perhaps that was her cleavage, which flashed into view from behind her fitted, barely buttoned shirt every time she leaned forward to whisper in their ears.

“Mirri’s given me a pretty great tip about getting Tanya pregnant,” Robbie revealed under his breath.

“That’s interesting,” Kate said, wondering when her goddess had become a fertility guru as well. “So, Mirri, I want to know what you thought of Jake?”

“I like him. But I don’t trust him,” she said nonchalantly, and lifted her cigarette to her lips. “Which I suppose is all right. Sometimes when men aren’t trustworthy and you feel that you must marry them—well, it’s a good thing not to trust them. That way you can’t be disappointed.”