Falling Read online

  Years ago, his mother had told him that when he met the girl he was going to marry, he should look at her mother to see how she would turn out. For some reason, that piece of advice stuck with him.

  He remembers it now, thinking of Georgina Montague with a slight shudder. She was undeniably a handsome woman when young—Dominic has seen the old black-and-white photographs in silver frames that dot every surface—but she is a bit of a battle-axe now. Clearly she was never tiny in the way Emma is; her stoutness and imposing bosom add to her commanding air. Seeing Emma here, next to her father, Dominic breathes a sigh of relief. He is clearly the parent she takes after in every way.

  Dominic’s phone buzzes and he lights up when he sees it’s Jesse calling. He excuses himself to take the call outside.

  “I like him,” says Simon Montague, when Dominic has left the room. “He seems like a lovely chap, and he quite clearly adores you.”

  Emma feels the warmth of happiness spread through her body. “Thank you, Dad. That means a lot to me.” She pauses, knowing she shouldn’t pose the question she’s about to ask, but she can’t keep the words in. “Does Mum like him?”

  “She really doesn’t know him,” says her father diplomatically. “And you know your mother. She still thinks you’re going to find yourself a nice English fellow and settle down in Somerset. Preferably a peer.” He raises his eyebrows, then continues, “Your having found yourself a serious American boyfriend means there’s a very real possibility that you’ll never come back for good. And although you and your mother have had your . . . issues over the years, she loves you very much, and that’s a bitter pill for her to swallow.”

  Emma sits back, surprised. She hadn’t looked at it like that, hadn’t ever considered the possibility that her mother wouldn’t like Dominic because she fears he will take Emma away from her forever. Has she been too harsh on her mother? She is surprised to feel a wave of compassion.

  Dominic walks back in, distracted.

  “Is everything okay?”

  He shrugs. “Jesse’s okay. He’s not loving his grandparents being there. I mean, he’s thrilled they’ve taken him out and bought him toys, but he tells me they’re screaming at each other all the time. He’s stressed and upset.” Dominic shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have done it. I thought they might have calmed down, but it doesn’t sound like a great situation.”

  Emma sinks down on her seat, filled with guilt and remorse. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “It’s only another couple of days. Do you think he’ll be okay until then?”

  “I guess,” Dominic says. “I just feel guilty, and a little foolish to think they might have been different with him. I hope he is going to be okay.”

  “Listen,” Emma reminds him. “You survived an entire childhood with them, and you turned out fine. However bad they are with each other, they’re still loving with him, aren’t they? And kids are resilient. He’ll be okay.”

  “I won’t do it again, though,” Dominic says. “I can’t have my parents look after him regularly. I mean, that’s why they never have, and he doesn’t really know them. I was always scared this would happen. I don’t want him around that kind of shouting.” He looks at Emma then. “At least with us he sees what a good relationship is.”

  “He does,” says Emma, taking his hand. “He will forget this visit with his grandparents, but he won’t forget what we’re modeling for him. That’s what counts.”

  It is Emma’s turn to excuse herself. She goes to the restroom and stares at herself in the mirror, smiling. Everything Dominic says, that they are modeling for Jesse what a relationship can be, that he knows this is it, makes Emma happy. She knows this is different, knows this is for real. The only fly in the ointment is the childish need she still has for her parents’ blessing.

  She already has her father’s—of that she is sure. But if she doesn’t have her mother’s approval, she can learn to live without it.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Oh God!” Georgina Montague throws her hands up in the air as she walks into the kitchen from the garden.

  “What’s going on?” Emma is doing up the ankle straps on her Manolo Blahniks, wishing she had brought evening flats rather than high suede Mary Janes. Now she will have to spend the entire evening tiptoeing around so that her heels won’t sink into the lawn.

  She is wearing a black silk dress she has had for years, her go-to cocktail dress for parties in New York, although it probably isn’t what’s worn for an English engagement party under a tent in a garden. She owns a million floral tea dresses, any of which would have been perfect. Oh well. Emma sighs, seeing the first guests stride down the driveway in their pretty sundresses. They’ll just have to presume that she has become completely New York–ized over the past few years.

  “What’s the matter?” She looks at her mother as Dominic walks into the kitchen, breathtakingly handsome in a navy blazer and pale blue shirt.

  “The bartender’s throwing up in the back loo,” Georgina says. “Food poisoning, he says. He’s been retching for the past hour and tells me he can’t work the party. I don’t know what we’re going to do!” She throws her hands up in the air again for dramatic impact. Then she pauses, and swivels neatly to settle her gaze on Dominic.

  “Wait a moment,” Georgina says. “Dominic. Didn’t you say you were a bartender?”

  “Mum, come on. We’re guests,” says Emma. “It’s not fair to ask him. Phone the caterer and ask them to send a replacement. And if they can’t, people can just serve themselves.”

  “I have phoned the caterer,” snaps her mother. “They don’t have anyone else. Apparently it’s one of the busiest Saturdays of the year. As to your suggestion we have people serve themselves?” She snorts with derision. “I don’t think so. This isn’t that kind of party, and our friends certainly aren’t those kinds of people. We must have a bartender.” She stares at Dominic. The seconds tick by.

  “It’s fine.” Dominic gives an easy shrug as he breaks Georgina’s stare and looks at Emma. “Honestly. It’s no problem. It’s what I do. Do you have any signature drinks I need to know about?”

  “I knew there would be something I’d forgotten. No! We don’t have any signature drinks. Oh Lord.”

  “Don’t worry. Let me go out and see what you have. Maybe I can come up with something.” Everything about his manner is reassuring. Emma watches her mother’s shoulders visibly relax as she smiles at him graciously.

  “Oh,” she says, just before she turns to rejoin the party. “You can borrow a white shirt from my husband. The trousers are fine.” She casts an eye over his khaki pants. “I would have preferred black but never mind.”

  Emma is suddenly furious. How dare her mother be so patronizing. How dare she treat Dominic like a member of the staff, especially when he’s doing such a huge favor for her. But Dominic places a hand on her arm and holds her back until her mother disappears through the doors into the garden.

  “It’s okay, Emma,” he says gently. “She’s hugely stressed, obviously, and at a party this size, having a bartender get sick is a big deal. I’m happy to help. She’s just trying to make sure the evening’s perfect.”

  “Because she’s so bloody insecure she thinks that a bartender in the wrong trousers will make her look like a failure. Heaven forbid. My God. It’s pathetic.”

  “Yes. It is. Which is why you need to feel sorry for her, not get angry. She can’t help it. It’s okay.”

  “Are you absolutely sure about this? Because honestly, at this point I would be quite happy to pack up our stuff and go to a hotel. I just don’t know that we should stay.”

  “They’re your parents,” says Dominic. “And they’re getting older, and they’re not going to be here forever. You hardly ever see them. Let’s just accept your mom’s insecurities, and forgive her. She can’t help it. Remember, she’s just doing the best she can with the knowledge that she has
.”

  “When did you get so forgiving and generous? And wise?”

  “I’m not sure I am. If it were my parents, I’d fucking kill them. But they’re yours, so I’m able to be forgiving and see their good side.”

  “There’s a good side?”

  Dominic pauses as if he’s thinking. “Well, your dad’s awesome,” he says finally, and Emma laughs.

  “Come here.” He takes her in his arms. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  “Dominic?” They hear her mother calling from the gallery. “Are you coming? I have the shirt here for you.”

  “I promise to make you a very stiff drink,” he says with a smile, kissing Emma before walking off to join Georgina and take care of the bar.

  • • •

  The marquee, or, as Dominic kept referring to it, much to her mother’s chagrin, tent, is packed to bursting with the guests. George and Henry are moving through the crowds, greeting friends, being introduced to ancient family members Henry has never met.

  Henry, it has to be said, looks not unlike a man in drag. She is wearing red lipstick, which is entirely the wrong color for her, and heavy eye makeup that no cosmetician worth her salt would ever have chosen for her. Her hair has been curled, and now has a pink streak in it that Henry described with a hoot of laughter as “great fun!” She is wearing a belted green dress with a knee-length skirt that does absolutely nothing for her, and she has large sparkly multicolored hoops in her ears.

  Emma has greeted her relatives, family friends of her parents she hasn’t seen for years, and people from the village she has known her entire life. She has had the same conversations over and over: yes, America is exciting; no, she isn’t married yet; the bartender is her boyfriend, and he is helping out because the original bartender has a stomach bug; yes, I think he’s terribly handsome, too; no, I’m no longer with the bank.

  She goes to the bar frequently, for constant refills and reassuring kisses, but Dominic is busy. She can’t expect him to look after her as well as the other guests. So she moves to the other side of the marquee, wishing he weren’t helping out, wishing he were by her side so she wouldn’t be quite so bored.

  “Em-ma,” says a familiar singsong voice, and she turns, catching her breath, utterly stunned to see a tall, lanky man standing there, the top buttons of his shirt open to reveal the beginnings of a suntanned chest. A chest she used to know very well. A body she used to know almost as well as her own.

  “Rufus.” She forcibly replaces the surprise with a smile and gives him an air kiss on either cheek. “What a lovely surprise. No one told me you’d be here.”

  “I didn’t know I’d be here myself.” Rufus laughs. “I’m up staying with Kat and Jonti for the weekend. I had no idea they were attending an engagement party, much less one at the Montagues’. Of course, I insisted on gate-crashing.”

  “Oh. I hope my mother doesn’t see you,” says Emma, knowing how appalled her mother gets when people show up without an invitation.

  “I’m not really gate-crashing,” says Rufus. “I phoned her first. I told her I was up for the weekend and she invited me immediately.”

  Emma frowns. “When was this?”

  “Yesterday morning. Clearly she didn’t pass on the information.” He laughs.

  Emma finds herself looking at him, unable to believe she spent so many years with him. This was the man she woke up with every morning. She knows all his habits: the way he soaps himself in the shower, the way he shaves while grimacing into a tiny magnifying mirror stuck to the wall. He likes to sit on the loo for hours, reading the papers, sometimes with a glass of scotch on the counter next to him. He loves soft, creamy scrambled eggs for breakfast, with burnt whole-grain toast. He finds cruel humor hilarious. She knows the expression on his face when he orgasms. And what it takes to get him there.

  She blinks. It has all come flooding back to her. She knows him so well, and here they are, making small talk, like strangers.

  “I heard you got married and have children now,” says Emma, awkwardly, not knowing what else to say. “Congratulations. How old are they?”

  “I have Charlie, who’s four, and Daisy, who’s just turned two. They are adorable, naturally, as all small children are.”

  “And your wife? Is she here, too?”

  Rufus grimaces. “Little bit of a problem at the moment.”

  Emma stares at him. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re on a little bit of a break. Having a few issues with . . . with our marriage.”

  Emma can’t hide her look of surprise. “You’re having issues? Aren’t marriage and kids what you always wanted?”

  “Well, yes. Absolutely. But my wife seemed to think I’d be home all the time once we had kids. She doesn’t seem to understand that I can’t change my schedule—all the after-work meetings I have to attend—just because I have children now.”

  Emma tilts her head. “Do you mean long drunken dinners with the boys four nights a week?”

  Rufus gives her a sheepish smile. “You know me so well.” He shrugs. “You always understood.”

  “I did, but I didn’t like it. I never had a problem with you going out with the boys, it was just that the boys were so ghastly I never wanted to go.”

  “That’s what my wife thinks, too. She would never dream of going, but she doesn’t want me to go, either, which is where the problem started.”

  “You’re really allowing nights out with the boys to get in the way of your marriage when you have two tiny children?”

  “Well, it’s not just that,” says Rufus. “You said I always wanted marriage and kids, which I did, but . . .” He pauses and looks away.

  “What?” prompts Emma.

  “I always wanted that with you,” he says simply, without a trace of his signature sarcasm.

  Emma doesn’t respond. She has no idea what to say.

  “Clearly we’ve both moved on.” He shakes his head. “I think I may have made a terrible mistake. I married the first girl I met after we split up. I didn’t really give us a chance to get to know each other, to find out if we were compatible. I just met her, we fell into this thing very quickly, and I proposed without really thinking it through.”

  “Oh God, Rufus. I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. I just don’t think we have very much in common.”

  “Other than your two children,” Emma points out.

  “Well, yes. Obviously it’s not optimal circumstances, to have had the children. I did rather think I might have been making a terrible mistake when I showed up in church on our wedding day. I was quite drunk, you know. But I didn’t know how to not go through with it. And she announced she was pregnant before I had a chance to confess my unhappiness, and how could I say anything after that?”

  Emma reaches out and rubs his arm sympathetically. “I don’t know what you do in a situation like that,” she says. “It sounds impossible.”

  “It just got worse from there,” he says, seemingly relieved to be able to talk about it. “We weren’t friends. We weren’t partners. We were two people who happened to have children, but we had nothing else in common. I didn’t feel love when I looked at her. I felt resentment. And she felt the same way about me. Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk your ear off. I certainly didn’t mean to complain. I moved into a flat in Notting Hill a couple of months ago and I’m making the best of things. How’s your life? You look wonderful.”

  Emma smiles. “Thank you.”

  “No, I mean it,” says Rufus. “You’re absolutely glowing. America clearly suits you.” He pauses. “I should never have let you go.”

  Emma laughs. “You didn’t let me go, Rufus. I left. Or at least, it was my decision to split up.”

  “But I should have worked harder for you. I shouldn’t have let you just walk away without fighting to try and get y
ou back.” He steps closer to her, looking meaningfully into her eyes, and Emma shrinks back. If she didn’t know better she would be certain he was about to kiss her. Rufus pauses, Emma freezes, with no idea what to do, and the moment hangs in the air until they both hear his name being called.

  “Rufus!”

  Emma turns around to see her mother bearing down on them, delight in her eyes as she gives Rufus enthusiastic kisses on both cheeks. “What a gorgeous surprise!”

  Emma turns to her. “You knew he was coming,” she says, trying to keep the belligerence out of her voice.

  “I completely forgot!” her mother replies, still smiling. “Gosh, you look handsome. Doesn’t he look handsome, Emma?”

  Emma nods uncomfortably.

  “And is it true that you’re a single man again? Oh, Rufus! I am so sorry.” But she can scarcely hide her glee. “Emma, did you hear that? Rufus is single again!”

  “I know,” Emma says flatly. “We were just discussing it.”

  “Were you? Oh, it’s lovely to see you, Rufus. And even lovelier to see the two of you together. I know, I know, I’m just an annoying old woman, but the two of you do still make the most beautiful couple.”

  Emma shakes her head with scorn as her mother innocently throws her hands in the air. “What? Don’t glare at me just for pointing out the obvious. Emma’s gone all American on us,” she says, turning to Rufus. “She brought her American boyfriend here.”

  “Boyfriend?” Rufus raises an eyebrow. “I had no idea you had a boyfriend. Where is he?”

  “Behind the bar,” says her mother. “He’s a bartender.”

  “Oh,” says Rufus, with an amused smile. “A bartender? That’s . . . nice.”

  “It’s certainly helpful,” trills her mother. “Especially tonight, when the original bartender we’d booked got ill.”

  Rufus turns and studies Dominic as Emma cringes. “He looks very American,” he says finally. “All good looks, big muscles, and white teeth.”

  “Thanks,” Emma says guardedly, unsure if this is a compliment.