chirping, ‘Hello, stranger,’ when I turned up for work each morning. I ignored her, and left my defence to Fran: ‘For Christ’s sake, Mum! Rawndesley’s twenty-five minutes by car. You see Connie every day.’
All my life, I had assumed that my family was crippled by a disease that affected no one else, of which the chief symptom was extremely narrow horizons. Then one day Kit and I were on our way out for a meal and we bumped into some neighbours, a couple who lived in the flat next to ours, Guy and Melanie. At the time, Kit worked with Guy at Deloitte; it was Guy who had told him there was a duplex apartment available in his building with a great view of the river. While the men talked shop, Melanie looked me up and down and interrogated me: what did I do, was my hair naturally so dark, where was I from? When I said Little Holling in Silsford, she nodded as if she’d been proved right. ‘I could tell from your voice that you weren’t from round here,’ she said.
Later, at Isola Bella, the better of Rawndesley’s two Italian restaurants, I told Kit how much Melanie’s remark had depressed me. ‘How can Silsford not count as “round here” when you’re in Rawndesley?’ I complained. ‘Culver Valley people are so parochial. I thought it was just my parents, but it’s not. Even in Rawndesley, which is supposed to be a city . . .’
‘It is a city,’ Kit pointed out.
‘Not a proper one. It’s not cosmopolitan and buzzy, like London. It’s got no . . . vibe. Most people who live here don’t choose it. Either they were born here and aren’t imaginative enough to leave, or they’re like me – born and bred in Spilling or Silsford, and so sheltered and insular that the prospect of moving thirty miles down the road to the metropolis that is Rawndesley feels as exciting as moving to Manhattan, or something – until you get there, that is. Or people move here because they have no choice, because they get jobs that—’
‘Like me, you mean?’ Kit grinned.
Strangely, I hadn’t thought of him. ‘Why did you come here?’ I asked him. ‘From Cambridge, of all places – I bet that’s a buzzy, vibrant city.’ It was the first time Cambridge had been mentioned by either of us since the big fight.
‘It is,’ said Kit. ‘It’s a beautiful city, too, unlike Rawndesley.’
‘So why leave it and move to the stifling Culver Valley?’
‘If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met you,’ Kit said. ‘Connie, there’s something I need to ask you. That’s why I suggested going out for dinner.’
I sat up straight. ‘Will I marry you? Is that it?’ I must have looked excited.
‘That’s not it, no, but since you’ve brought it up . . . Will you?’
‘Let me think about it. Okay, I’ve thought about it. Yes.’
‘Excellent.’ Kit nodded, frowning.
‘You look worried,’ I said. ‘You’re supposed to look blissfully in love.’
‘I am blissfully in love.’ He smiled, but there was a shadow behind his eyes. ‘I’m also worried. It’s a massive coincidence, but I need to talk to you about my job, and . . . well, about Cambridge.’
I held my breath, thinking he was about to entrust me with the story he’d refused to tell me three years earlier. Instead, he started talking about Deloitte, telling me there was an opportunity for him to lead a new team at the Cambridge branch, doing new, exciting work, how good the promotion prospects would be if he agreed. My heart started to pound. Kit’s words were coming faster and faster; I couldn’t take in the details, and some of what he was saying made no sense to me – phrases like ‘client-facing’ and ‘granularity’ – but I got the gist. Kit’s firm wanted him to relocate to Cambridge, which meant that I, as the person who’d just agreed to marry him, even if I did kind of ask myself, had a chance to escape from my family and from the Culver Valley.
‘You’ve got to say yes,’ I hissed at Kit as the waiter arrived with our tiramisus. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. When did they ask you?’
‘Two days ago.’
‘Two days? You should have told me straight away. What if they’ve changed their minds?’
Kit covered my hand with his. ‘They won’t change their minds, Con.’
‘How do you know?’ I demanded, panicking.
‘They’re one of the UK’s leading accountancy firms, not a bunch of hysterical teenagers.