Page 83 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
‘Are you nervous?’ he asks.
‘No.’ I’m not. I was, the first time. ‘Are you?’
‘Only about getting my vows wrong.’
‘You won’t.’
He looks at me, his eyes intense, and part of me wants to look away, but I force myself not to.
‘I will never hurt you,’ he says.
And I swallow, keep looking. ‘I know.’
The setting is perfect and there’s a bit of a breeze. Enough to cool things down a little but not so much that the sand is being blown around. The hotel staff have set up a little archway with flowers for us to stand under. As I walk towards it, my hand tightly in Matt’s, I look at the place where the chairs would be, if we had guests. Is it selfish that I don’t really want to share this with anyone? I know I would be happy if Dee and Liam were here, but I’m all right with the fact that they’re not, too. Matt gives my hand a squeeze and then lets go, because we are there, under the archway, and the celebrant is smiling at us, and it’s time.
Afterwards, the celebrant and the witnesses disappear and Matt and I dance on the sand to a song he hums. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I run through different iterations of myself – the one who let Annabelle push me around, the one who Mick used to let out his frustration on, the one who became David’s victim. Who am I now? The one who is loved, perhaps. Matt’s love is something I am sure about, something that feels almost too big to be true.
On a folding table nearby, there are glasses of champagne, bubbles fizzing to the top. We take them and sit down, and I take off my shoes, bury my toes a bit in the sand. The tide is out and the water seems so far away, but I know that it will reach this place in an hour or two, that it will wash away our footprints, as if we’ve never been here.
‘I want to give up the pub.’
He looks at me, astonished.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘I just… I didn’t know you were there yet.’
‘What do you mean, there?’
‘Big dream time.’
I remember the conversation we had, about me wanting to help people. Think about the shelter where I spend a few hours a week. Is that what I mean? I think it is. In one sense, it’s terrifying to think about walking away from the Pheasant, from everything I’ve worked towards and built up. But I’ve done that, and now I want to do this.
‘There’s this place, an old office building,’ Matt says. ‘I’ll show you when we get back. It’s on the outskirts of town, near that restaurant with the good fish. It belongs to the council but it hasn’t been used for years. I was thinking about whether they might do a deal with you – let you use it rent-free to do something good for the community.’
I don’t say anything. I am thinking that this is what it’s like to have a real partner. Someone who remembers what you told them and bears it in mind, thinks of you when you’re not together, when he sees a place that might just fulfil a dream you once mentioned. A smile spreads across my face, and I lean over and kiss him, and then he’s kissing me back and I feel a bit dizzy, but in a good way. When we stand up and he takes my shoes from me, I notice that the sea is already creeping in, already making its move. Nothing stays the same.
A week later and we’re home, our skin a shade darker than usual and our heads full of memories. Dee invites us for dinner, and when we get there, she says she had this whole Moroccan thing planned but then Callum wouldn’t let her put him down the whole day so do we mind if it’s Dominos?
‘We’ve got some news,’ I say. ‘It’s kind of big.’
Dee stops with a slice of pepperoni pizza halfway to her mouth.
‘I’m giving up the Pheasant.’ It’s only as I say it that I realise I’ve never talked with Dee about this possibility. This is going to come out of absolutely nowhere for her.
‘You are not,’ Dee says, biting into the doughy pizza.
‘I am. I’m starting a new venture.’
The day we got back from holiday, Matt took me to see the building he’d mentioned. We stood in front of it, hand in hand. It needed some work, but not a huge amount. I thought about how we might turn the small office units into bedrooms, a couple at a time. Build as we went. And the next day, I made an appointment to see someone at the council about it. I have all these ideas, about filling the place with flowers and books and having space for kids to do their homework and for Matt to do some batch cooking when he has time to help out. Whenever I think about what I’m going to do, I feel this fizz inside me, and I know it’s right.
‘What kind of new venture?’ Liam asks.
I clear my throat. I’m not used to saying it yet, feel a bit like people will think I’m silly, or a do-gooder. ‘I’m going to open a shelter for victims of domestic abuse.’
There is silence for a beat.
‘Are you serious?’ Dee looks like she might cry.
