Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

I squeeze his hand. He squeezes back. Something shifts almost imperceptibly behind his eyes.

“Erin. Thanks for being, you know…I’ve got a lot on my plate right now and I know maybe I’m not expressing it in the best way.” His eyes drift around the nearby passengers. They’re all absorbed in phones and paperbacks. He leans in to me, quieter now. “I tend to clam up when I’m stressed. And, you know, I don’t usually get stressed, so it’s hard finding my way through this. So thanks.”

I squeeze his hand harder and let my head fall onto his shoulder.

“I love you. It’s okay,” I whisper.

He shifts slightly, straightening up in the tube seat. He’s not finished. There’s more. I lift my head.

“Erin. I did something last week—” He falls silent.

He studies my face. My stomach flips. Sentences like that always chill me to the core. Words of preparation for something. Worse news to come.

“What did you do?” I ask it gently because I don’t want to scare him off. I don’t want him to shut down.

“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before. I just, I thought it wasn’t the right time and then the right time didn’t come and then it became a thing and now here we are.” He stops. His eyes remorseful.

“I canceled our honeymoon.”

“You what?!”

“Not all of it. I just, I’ve canceled a week of it. Bora Bora is only two weeks now.” He studies my face. He waits to see what will happen next.

He canceled our honeymoon. No, he didn’t cancel it; he just rearranged some of it, that’s all. But without asking me? Without saying anything? Without checking with his future wife? Secretly? And now, now that I’ve agreed to pay less for the food today, he’s decided that it’s okay to tell me. Right. Okay.

My mind races as I try to process it. To find out what this means. But nothing comes. Is it important? Maybe it’s not. I can’t really make myself care. I can’t make myself care about a vacation. It doesn’t feel like a thing. Dare I say it: I don’t mind. Should I mind? But then maybe the point is, he lied. Yes. Or did he? He didn’t really lie, did he? He just did something without telling me. And, come on, at least he’s telling me now. But then, he had to tell me at some point, right? Didn’t he? What was the alternative? Not tell me until we were on the plane? No, of course he would have told me. It’s fine. I’ve just been busy. I’ve been too busy with work. Besides, two weeks on a tropical island is fine. More than fine, bloody fantastic. That’s more than some people get in a lifetime. And I don’t need any of it anyway. I just want him. I just want to marry him. Don’t I?

We’ll work it out later. But right now I won’t scare him away. Won’t make it worse. He’s made a mistake and he’s sorry, so that’s it.

I raise his hand, still interlaced in mine, and kiss his knuckles.

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. We’ll have a chat about money later. Let’s just have a lovely day. Okay?”

He smiles, eyes still sad.

“Done. Let’s have a lovely day.”

And it is a lovely day.

—

In the twinkly mirror-and-oak-paneled ballroom, we sit at a white-clothed table floating adrift on a sea of buffed parquet flooring. A cheerful waiter brings us intricate plates artfully arranged with seasonal fare. Once all the starter options are placed on the table, the maître d’ explains each one and hands us a discreet card listing the dishes and prices. And disappears back through the oak paneling, leaving us to it. We peruse the card.

STARTERS:

Lobster with watercress, apple, crème fraîche vinaigrette,

£32 per person.

———

Rock Oysters with shallot vinegar, lemon, brown bread & butter, £19 per person.

———

Asparagus with quail egg, beetroot & celeriac rémoulade,

£22.50 per person.

Times that by eighty people. And that’s just the starter. I look at Mark; he’s gone white. I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. He looks at me, relief written all over his face. He smiles and raises his glass to toast. I lift mine.

“To not having starters?”

“To not having starters.” I chuckle.

We dig in to the delicious entrées. And they’re worth every single penny. I’m just glad we won’t be the ones paying for them.

We opt for a main course of: Café Royal Homemade Chicken Pie with Bacon, quail’s egg, fine French beans, mousseline potatoes, £19.50.

For desserts we go for : Dark Chocolate & Wild Cherries: Dark chocolate crémeux and wild cherry compote, £13.

Plus thirty bottles of house red and thirty house white and twenty bottles of sparkling wine.

We think we’ve done a pretty good job until the maître d’, Gerard, sits down for a post-coffee chat. Apparently the minimum spend is six thousand pounds. They must have told us that last year when we booked, but we obviously weren’t listening, and even if we were, it wouldn’t have seemed important then. Gerard tells us not to worry; we can simply bump up to that price by adding after-dinner coffee and a cheeseboard for eighty people. Adding another thirteen hundred pounds to our total. We agree. Well, what else can we do? The wedding is in three weeks.

Afterwards, stuffed and brimming with buyer’s remorse, we descend into Piccadilly Station. Before the turnstiles Mark takes my upper arm and stops me.

“Erin, we can’t do this. Seriously, it’s ridiculous. It’s way too much, right? I mean—come on? We need to cancel it when we get home, lose the deposit, sure, fine, but just cancel it. We’ll do the wedding part in All Souls and then go to a local restaurant or something? Or up to my mum and dad’s, they could do a village hall thing, right?”

I look down at his hand tight around my arm. This isn’t someone I recognize.

“Mark, seriously, you’re scaring me a bit now. Actually scaring me. Why are you acting like this? It’s our wedding. We’ve got savings, it’s not like we’re taking out loans to cover the cost. You only do this day once in your life and I personally want to spend my money on this. On us. I mean, not all of my money obviously, but a bit of it. Otherwise what’s it all for?”

He sighs hard through his nose. Frustrated, he abandons the conversation, his hand releases me, and we descend underground.

The rest of our journey is spent in silence. I watch other people on the tube. Wonder about their lives. Sitting next to Mark but not talking with him, I imagine I don’t know him. That maybe I’m just a girl on the tube going somewhere on my own. That I don’t have to worry about what happens next, or with the rest of my life, for that matter. The thought is calming but ultimately empty. I want Mark. I do. I just wish I could shake him out of this mood. I wish I could fix it.

—

He turns on me as soon as we’re through the front door at home. His voice is no longer the whisper it was in the station.

He tells me I don’t understand. I’m not listening . I’ve never seen him like this, as if something inside were bursting to come out.

“I don’t think you really appreciate what is going on here, Erin, do you? What’s actually happening? I don’t have a job anymore. There is no money for any of this. And I can’t get another job, no one is hiring. My world is not like it is in the arts or your film school or whatever. I can’t just jump ship and do something else for a living! I’m an investment banker. That’s what I do. I’m not trained to do anything else. And even if I was, it doesn’t matter. I can’t just set up my own bank or, I don’t know, collaborate on a postmodern banking project or whatever the fuck. I’m not like you. I don’t come from the same place you do. I spent my whole life getting to where I am now. My whole life. Do you know how hard that was? People who went to my high school work in petrol stations, Erin! Do you understand that? They live in council flats and stack fucking supermarket shelves. I will not go back to that. I will not let that happen. But I don’t have a backup. I don’t have family friends in publishing or journalism or fucking wine-making. I’ve got a retired mum and dad in East Riding who are both going to need looking after before too long. I’ve got a total of eighty grand in savings and the rest tied up in this house. And now we’re trying to have a baby. I had a real job. I’ve lost it, and we are screwed. Because unfortunately we don’t all have the luxury of being paid for, like you do!”