Page 81 of The Women

‘Peter Bridges, clever chap,’ she says. ‘Yes, I will.’

They kiss. And it is this she finds hardest. But she steels herself and does it.

The next morning, he is drinking coffee and reading the news on his phone. She is used to the coldness, can anticipate it. Numbers, she thinks, streaming down in a dark, dark sky. Next, he will run upstairs, clean his teeth. He will return, plant a perfunctory kiss on her cheek and leave. It is possible he won’t even mention what passed between them last night. Except he won’t do any of these things, not this morning, not if she can help it.

‘Good morning,’ she says, flicking on the kettle, ‘future husband.’

He raises his eyebrows, smiles. Hallelujah, a crack in the stone.

‘Mrs Bridges.’ He puts down his cup and his phone – a miracle – and crosses the room. Takes her in his arms and kisses her deeply on the mouth. He smells of shampoo, tastes of coffee. ‘I thought I was dreaming, but if you remember it too …’

She giggles. ‘I do.’

‘I do,’ he jokes. What a witty pair they are.

‘How was your morning coffee, dear?’

‘It was almost as good as what followed.’ He grins. Oh for fuck’s sake, he even winks. ‘What are you up to today, future Mrs Bridges?’

‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I was thinking of coming into town. I thought maybe I could pay you a visit. One of the mums said she’d have Emily any time. We could grab lunch or something.’

He frowns. ‘I’m lecturing until three. Today is tricky.’

She smiles, meets his eye. ‘Another day then? I have an idea you might like.’

‘Oh yes?’

She trails her fingertips up his arm. ‘I’ve always had this fantasy that I was one of your students.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Mm-hm. Maybe a PhD student, you know? So I was thinking, if you give me the keys to your office, I could wait for you there and you could maybe give me a little private tutorial before lunch. On your desk, perhaps?’

His eyebrows shoot up; he coughs into his hand. ‘It’s not a key, it’s a … it’s a pass card.’

‘Key, pass card, whatever. I didn’t mean it literally, it was more about the idea …’

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ He appears flustered. ‘Of course. I have a spare.’

‘Great,’ she says lightly. ‘Shall we put a date in the diary?’

‘How about next week? And I keep meaning to book our Easter holiday, but with Emily getting taken and the poems and everything I’ve been too preoccupied.’

‘You’re spinning too many plates, hon,’ she says, almost licking her lips at the dramatic irony of the line she’s just given herself. ‘Leave it all to me.’

The first thing she does is book the wedding ceremony. Emily tucked under her arm, she fills in the forms, cursing at the thirty-day notice period. She thought that was something from back in the twentieth century, earlier even, and only for churches – wedding banns and all that jazz. Holy crap, that means she will have to keep this charade up for a whole month.

Both parties have to give notice – not an issue. The password for the home computer is the same as the one for his Gmail account, unless he’s changed it again since Emily went missing. Today is Thursday 22 March – she sends notice from her own and Peter’s account and books a slot for a simple ceremony, two witnesses, in York House on the morning of Thursday 19 April. That will work well with Peter’s Easter holidays – she’s pretty sure he goes back the following Tuesday, so they can have a long weekend honeymoon – with Emily. Tempting as it is to ask Aisha and Jenny to be witnesses, if only to see the look on Peter’s face, she decides to ask Marcia and Jacob. Marcia can be told only what she needs to know. Samantha will tell her the rest afterwards, once the dust – and there will be a lot of dust – settles.

Is it too much to buy matching rings? No, she must do everything in the most convincing way possible. She must sweep him off his feet.

In Peter’s bedside cabinet, in the little wooden box with the marquetry top, she finds the signet ring he sometimes wears when they go out. This she slides onto one of the candles they keep in the cupboard under the kitchen sink.Everything in its place and a place for everything.She draws a line around the candle with a sharp knife, there, where the ring has stopped. She will buy a cheap gold band. If all goes to plan, there will be no risk of it tarnishing.

There will be no time.

Next, she returns to the computer and looks into flights. There is only one possible place. Peter promised he would take her there. It was when he took her there through his words that she fell in love with him. She knew even then that this was what had happened; she felt it, had felt it even before, from that first precipitous sensation when he removed the drink from her hands and suggested they leave. His lecture was the penultimate piece of a seduction she thought was all about her, when in fact it was all about him.

But she’s not going over this, not again.

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