Visions (20 page)

34

I laid out my new negligee for when we got back to the hotel. Theo lounged in the bath while I pampered myself with the complimentary moisturisers and applied my makeup. Then I pulled on my cream lace dress and a pair of matching heels. Theo emerged with a towel wrapped round his waist. I forced myself to look away. There was no way the dress was coming off over my hair, which was perfectly arranged now. Theo didn’t look in the mood, anyway. He looked distracted and nervous. “Are you feeling ok?”

              “Fine. I’m just…thirsty.”

              “Do you want some water?” I asked, reaching for the bottle.

              “No, wine would be better.” He picked up the room service menu. He couldn’t be feeling that bad then, not if he wanted alcohol.

              Once the wine had arrived, I lazed on the bed watching MTV while Theo flustered around the room. He added a tie to his suit and just as I was about to ask him where we were going to be eating, the hotel phone rang. We both dived for it but I was nearer. “Mrs Arnold? Your car is waiting outside. Thank you.”

              “Mrs Arnold!” I giggled.

              “What?” Theo spun round to face me.

              “Nothing. That’s just what the receptionist called me. I didn’t think it was important to correct him.” I shrugged. “Apparently our car’s waiting. What have you got planned, Theo?”

              “You’ll have to wait and see, Mrs Arnold!”

              When the car stopped outside the Thoumieux, I had to check to make sure we weren’t simply stuck in traffic, but Theo got out and offered me his hand. In the dark of the evening, it looked amazing. The windows glowed with candlelight and it seemed each table was occupied by happy couples. As we walked through the door, a smartly dressed waiter hurried over to us.

“We have a table booked under Arnold,” said Theo.

              “Oui, monsieur. Follow me.” He led us over to a window table where a single red rose lay across one of the placemats. As usual, Theo chivalrously pulled out the chair for me and waited for me to be settled before he joined me.

              “Champagne, please,” he said to the waiter.

              “Theo, this is amazing. I can’t believe you managed to get us a table!”

He shrugged modestly, taking my hands in his. “Exploring hotels isn’t really my thing. Gill…” He was interrupted by the waiter returning with a bottle of
a
champagne and two flutes. We were then handed the menus.

              “Oh, it’s all in French,” I commented. The waiter had already scurried off.

              “No worries. My French is slightly rusty, but I should be able to decipher most of it.”

It should have been painstaking, but with Theo it seemed fun. We decided to order goujonnettes de sole and quasi de veau cuit tout doucement, mainly because Theo’s ridiculous translations of sole goujonnettes and almost gently cooked veal made us clutch our empty stomachs to stop them aching with laughter. Once our order had been made, Theo was back to his previous serious mood. “Gill…I told you how serious this thing we’ve got is to me and I meant it. There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while now. He took a deep breath. “I love

you, Gillian.”

I smiled at him, my heart starting to race. “I love you too, Theo.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, blue box. Involuntarily, I gasped.

Theo’s eyes widened and any remaining colour drained from his face. “No! Please, don’t worry. It doesn’t have to mean… that. It can just be a gift.”

“What do you want it to mean?” I asked, staring deeply into his eyes.

“Well, ideally I would like it to mean that, but…”

“Ok!”

“Ok?” He nearly dropped the box and had to scramble to regain hold of it. “No, wait.” He clambered onto one knee. The waiting staff all seemed to stop at once. The restaurant became hushed. Theo’s cheeks were flushed with anticipation. He opened the box, revealing the most beautiful diamond ring I’d ever seen. “Gillian Gordon, will you one day do me the honour of becoming my wife?”

I nodded, my heart feeling so full of happiness that it may explode out of my chest at any moment. Theo slipped the ring onto my finger and then stood up. Eagerly, I jumped to my feet and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling his lips to mine. I didn’t want to let him go but two waiters scurried over, one bringing our meals and the other, a complimentary bottle of champagne.

The morning came, bringing with it two horrific hangovers. Theo rolled over to face me while I wondered how I’d managed to sleep in his t-shirt when I had specifically laid my new negligee out. That now lay in a ball on the floor.

“Any regrets?” he croaked.

“Only drinking too much champagne.” I gripped my head and groaned.

“Good!” Theo got up and ordered two full English breakfasts to be delivered

to the room and then made his way to the bathroom.

When room service arrived, I quickly forgot about my nausea and tucked into the bacon and sausages instead.

Leaving the hotel felt incredibly sad. I didn’t want to leave Paris, at least not yet. At the airport, flicking through photos on the digital camera, we agreed that we would return soon. I sighed, feeling melancholy boarding the plane. It had been such a magical weekend; the best I’d ever had in my life. Once up in the air, I closed my eyes, trying to hold onto to all the vivid images that I had stored up.

“Gill?”

I opened my eyes.

“Now that we’re engaged, I was thinking maybe we should think about moving in together. I mean, we’re going to live together after we’re married, anyway, and it would be like having a practice run. It would be better to know whether you can stand living with me before we take the big step, don’t you think?”

I laughed, but then realised he wasn’t joking. “It can be hard living with a doctor. Lots of the other men at work have lost partners because of the odd hours they have to work.”

“I think it’s a great idea, Theo.”

“I don’t mind whether we move into my house or yours. The last thing I want to do is put pressure on you, but my place is quite a bit bigger…”

The thought of leaving my lovely terraced house with its quirky nooks and crannies was definitely upsetting, but Theo was right. His house was three bedroomed with a large garden. I tried to picture walking around his house, seeing my ornaments and it being my home.

“Is this moving too fast for you?” He sounded worried.

“No, I was just picturing what it would be like,” I reassured him. “I think you’re right. We should put my place on the market or maybe just rent it out for the time being and I’ll move in with you.”

“I was also thinking my place would be better for when we have children. We Greek men aim for large families so five or six should suffice.” He tried to retain a poker face, but there was more than a glint of a smile.

“Now you’re moving too fast!” I chided, poking him hard in the ribs. We both laughed. “Honestly though, if someone had told me this would be happening to me right now, I would have argued that it was impossible in such a short time space, but I’d have been wrong. This isn’t going too fast. It feels just right, perfect even.”

Back at home, before we’d even thought about unpacking, I phoned my mother and told her our news. As expected, she was thrilled for us. It worried me slightly that she kept repeating what a great catch Theo was for me rather than worrying that he might not be good enough for her only child. But then it only reaffirmed my belief that Theo was genuinely a good man.

The next week was spent having property valuations on my house, organising all the details of pricing and advertising with the chosen estate agent, and then packing up bits and pieces of mine to transfer over to Theo’s place. While it sounds like a lot of hassle, Theo and I focused on simply enjoying being in each other’s company.

35

“Ugh! The holidays always go too fast, don’t they?” Morgan commented as we met up on the school steps. “I always have all these plans about what I’m going to do, like decorating the spare room or going taking my mother out for lunch, then it’s the night before we’re due to come back and I just think where’s the time gone?”

              “It feels like we’ve done loads! If anything, I feel like I’m due some relaxation time!”

              “Oh yes, Mrs Arnold-to-be! Congratulations, by the way!” She stopped outside our classrooms and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

              “Did you know he was going to propose?” I asked.

              “I had an inkling. Ok, more than an inkling! I helped to choose that gorgeous ring you’ve got on your finger! He was so nervous. I kept trying to tell him that you were crazy about him, but I think he needed to hear it from you. He’s such a sweetie!”

              “Speaking of sweeties, did you spend much time with Will?”

              “We went to Cornwall like we planned. It was absolutely fantastic; we took long walks on the beach, I ate my body weight in ice-cream and rather than going out like we planned, we spent most evenings back at the cottage!” She laughed, gleefully clasping her hands together. “I told him I was crazy about him, but since it was during the throes of passion, I don’t think he took me too seriously.”

              Over the course of the day, I realised that knowing Darren Pierce would not be walking the corridors of Logford rendered me much more at ease than I’d ever been during my time here. Amelia looked like she’d recovered, physically at least, from what had happened to her. She seemed to have retreated back into her shell to some extent, but the close friends were still around her. Stress levels were at an all-time low for the younger years, who were enjoying the sun during break times and already planning what they were going to do over the six weeks of summer holiday that always felt like paradise to school children. The students, who were soon to leave on the other hand, were in the midst of studying for exams and getting all their essays in on time. Despite this, the news that Miss Gordon was engaged spread fast and several pupils took the time to congratulate me, groups of girls asked me to regale them with how he proposed, and everyone wanted to see the ring.

              At dinnertime, Morgan commented on how all her classes were talking about me as well. “They haven’t had so much fun gossiping about staff since they saw one of the textiles teachers kissing a PE teacher in the car park!”

              “I can’t believe how fast news spreads around here!”

              “That’s technology for you. You can guarantee there will have been texting and twittering going on during lessons. Mobile phones are so compact these days, they can hide them under the desk without being noticed.” Other teachers started to join in the conversation at that point; all wanting to talk about their experiences with mobile phones in the classroom and how it could be prevented. I remembered my school days of passing notes under the table and reflected that, if we’d had access to mobile phones back then, I probably would not have been able to resist the temptation of texting my friends who were in different classes to me, either. The only difference was that scrawled notes were shown to the intended audience, then screwed up and discarded, so that the teacher didn’t see. Many teenagers didn’t know how to limit their audiences or didn’t think it was an issue, so anyone could see the information they were posting, and it was there for a very long time.

              Throughout my last lesson, I had to keep pulling my mind back to figurative language. I couldn’t wait to see Theo waiting for me in the car park, leaning against the Land Rover looking absolutely delectable as always. The best part of our decision to move in together was that it didn’t matter which shift times Theo had been given, because at some point in the night he would still climb in bed with me. There was never a twenty-four hour cycle now where I didn’t get to spend time with him in one capacity or another, and that was the way I liked it. While we’d agreed that we wouldn’t set a date for the wedding yet,I was starting to get very excited about becoming Mrs Gillian Arnold.

              I saw my class out at the end of the lesson, ensuring they had all written their homework down, and I started tidying my things away. When there were no meetings or after school detentions, Theo always gave me half an hour before he turned up, so I had a chance to tidy the classroom and gather my things together. I transferred a lesson that needed tweaking for tomorrow onto my memory key and grabbed a file of practice papers that I wanted to go through before I chose which ones my year tens would be attempting. Carrying my things to the door, I caught sight of Morgan leaving her classroom, so we walked together.

“You don’t need a lift tonight, do you?” she asked.

              “No, Theo should be here in about…” I glanced at the clock at reception, “five minutes.”

              “I thought you’d said he was picking you up, so I’ve organised to go over to Will’s place for some extra-curricular activity.”

              “Well, you can’t get enough of that!” I joked.

              “I know! It will look great on my CV if I decide to move on or up the ladder one day!”

              “What will look great on a CV?” Will asked as he joined us on the stairs, automatically taking the heavy box of books from Morgan. “Who’s leaving?”

              “No-one’s leaving. We were just talking about the value of extra-curricular activity,” Morgan half-explained.

              “Oh, yes, it’s invaluable. I used to run a rock club at dinner times. They’re one of my hobbies. The kids seemed to get a lot out of it at first, but numbers started to wane so we called it quits.”

Morgan and I looked at each other, fighting the urge to break into hysterical laughter.

              “You know he means actual rocks as in hard stones, not Metallica or anything even remotely cool!” Morgan called back over her shoulder.

              Ten minutes later and I was still chuckling to myself every time I thought of Will’s rock club.

Theo hadn’t shown yet as Hazel walked past. “Is Theo picking you up?” she asked.

              “Yes. He’s just a few minutes late.”

              “You sure you don’t want a lift?”

              “No. Thanks for the offer, though. Have a nice evening with Dean!” I put my stuff down to stop my arms aching and looked down the road to see if I could spot Theo’s car approaching. Mike walked out and nodded politely, then carried on talking at a preposterous level on his mobile. That gave me an idea. I found my own mobile in my handbag and waited patiently for it to switch on. My wristwatch told me that Theo was now twenty minutes late. There was a text message and an answer machine message. The text read, ‘
hope you got my message. Ask Morgan for a lift or get a taxi. Love Theo xxx.’

I dialled my answer machine number, more worried about Theo than bothered about the lack of a lift. “Hi Gill. I’m really sorry, sweetie, but I’m not going to be able to pick you up after school. There’s been a big crash in the centre of town involving two cars and a bus full of college kids. We’ve all been called in as emergency staff. Don’t bother waiting for me for dinner. I’ll see you when I get back.” I sighed in deep relief. The accident sounded horrific, but at least Theo hadn’t been hurt.

The thought of getting a taxi when I could get a bus seemed like a waste of money, so I grabbed my stuff and walked as quickly as I could towards the bus stop. If I hurried, there would be one just arriving. But luck didn’t seem to be on my side. As I reached the school gates, the bus steamed past. There wouldn’t be another one for thirty minutes. I looked up and down the road, trying to make a decision as to what I should do. Then my mind was made up for me. Darren Pierce was across the road, swaying from side to side as he walked along carrying a shopping bag from the local convenience store. He was staring straight ahead so I doubted he had seen me, but I could only imagine how intimidating he would be now he knew that he couldn’t be disciplined by the school. I turned on my heels and walked back into the school. I could start looking through those exam papers in my classroom and then come back for the bus in twenty-five minutes.