‘You’ll have to come back for a gallop another time, eh?’ said Mortimer, over the top of his paper.
I smiled thinly at him as Elizabeth dropped a piece of toast on my plate. ‘There you go, butter and jam on the table.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, reaching for the butter dish. Oh. It was covered in dog hair. I peered more closely. Or cat hairs, plus a couple of human hairs for good measure. I scraped around the hairs, looked at the jam jars in front of me and decided to stick with butter.
Rory continued tapping at his phone, Mortimer read his newspaper and Elizabeth hummed while shuffling pots around the kitchen so I sat eating my toast and stared through the French windows. I’d talk to Rory on the train. I wasn’t sure how to start the conversation but I’d think of something.
This, I decided, with another crunch of hairy toast, was why life without boyfriends was easier. I’d been all right on my own and now I was in a pickle. I liked Rory. I felt a small kick of pleasure inside me every time I remembered that I had a boyfriend, every time I mentioned him to someone. Sure, not very feminist, but it made me feel more normal, less alone. And yet here I was, weakened by him because his behaviour had influenced my own mood. Or maybe that was just what a relationship looked like? I pulled a hair from between my lips and flicked it from my finger to the floor. If I got back to London without dysentery it would be a miracle.
Luckily, because it was a Sunday morning, the train was almost empty. We sat at a table and Rory optimistically slid his book on Margaret Thatcher out from his satchel.
‘Can I talk to you about something?’ I asked, forcing myself to get the sentence out. I knew, once I’d said those words, that other words had to follow them, although I still wasn’t exactly sure what those words would be.
‘Hmm?’ he said, not taking his eyes off the page.
‘Do you want to marry me?’
He turned towards me with a grin. ‘Florence Fairfax, are you proposing to me on the 11.03 to London King’s Cross?’
‘No, sorry, that’s not what I meant, I’m not proposing.’
‘I think you are,’ he said in a mocking tone. ‘That sounded very much like a proposal to me.’
‘I’m not proposing! Listen, I’m being serious – it was something Octavia said to me last night.’
A ripple of alarm passed over his forehead. ‘What did she say?’
‘She said that you were only going out with me because you’d been told you need to get married for your career, for a seat,’ I said, as quickly as I could, as if getting the words out faster made them less painful. ‘That someone had told you to find a wife, and that’s why you’d picked me.’
Rory closed his book and put it on the table so Margaret Thatcher glared back at me. ‘I’m sorry she said that.’
‘It’s true?’
He sighed, turned, looked away from me through the window and I felt a black surge of anguish. OK, never mind. We’d break up, and that was sad, but Marmalade would be waiting for me at home. And it had been a diverting few weeks. And at least I could say now that I’d had a boyfriend, even if it was only for three seconds. That would shut Patricia up. And I’d probably cry for several months but I’d finally get over it, maybe when I was in my mid-forties. And then I might seriously think about signing up for a nunnery. Were nunneries listed on Google? I’d look when I got home.
‘Course it’s not true,’ he said, turning back a few moments later, just as I was wondering if I had the right shaped face for a wimple.
‘So why did she say it?’
‘Because she’s jealous and always thought she and I would end up together,’ he said, with a sigh. He took both my hands in his. ‘And yes, it’s true the party used to prefer that candidates were married. Solid family men, that sort of thing. But not any more. Come on, Florence, you’re better than this, it’s not 1919.’
I rolled my lower lip through my teeth. ‘So she made it up?’ I asked, frowning.
He shrugged. ‘That’s the only thing I can think of.’ He glanced away from me, down the aisle at an approaching