No, there was something else going on at the back of it all, Terri was sure of it.
Again, she decided to bide her time and wait until the moment was right to reveal to Gary that at this very second Rachel was out having dinner with Ethan Greene.
‘So you’re worried that Greene might steal Rachel away from you, is that it?’
Gary guffawed. ‘You must be joking! Nah, I just don’t like the way he’s sniffing around her, that’s all.’
‘I can imagine. Still, I suppose it’s funny how these things work sometimes. If Greene hadn’t come along when he did, then who knows what might have happened? With the accident, I mean.’
‘Yeah, who knows?’ Gary snorted and slurred. ‘Well, all that seemed to work out well for Rachel, that’s for sure.’
Terri narrowed her eyes. She was about to learn what was going on, she knew it. ‘What do you mean? Of course it worked out well, but for both of you, surely?’ She pretended to be shocked, egging him on.
He laughed. ‘Well, to be honest, I can’t really remember much of it myself, but the one thing I do know is that if that accident hadn’t happened, we probably wouldn’t be engaged.’
‘What do you mean?’ Terri sucked in her breath, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He smiled and motioned her closer. ‘Can I tell you a secret?’
‘Of course. My lips are sealed.’
He scratched his head, reminding Terri of a gorilla she’d seen on a recent visit to Dublin Zoo with one of her nephews. ‘I don’t know where the hell that ring came from.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
His eyes were glazed. ‘As I said, I don’t know where it came from. It just appeared in my stuff after the accident.’
Terri blinked, confused. ‘You mean you can’t remember buying it at Tiffany’s?’
‘Nah. I bought something there all right, but it wasn’t that rock.’
Now her mind was galloping like a racehorse. ‘Back up there for a second. You’re telling me you bought something from Tiffany’s, but when you got back from the hospital the same thing wasn’t in the bag?’
‘Bang on. I think there must have been some mix-up in the shop.’ He raised his glass. ‘Worked out well for me, though.’
‘Hold on. You mean that you somehow ended up with the ring that Rachel’s now wearing instead?’
‘Yup.’
‘But, Gary, surely you took the ring back to the store and told them about the mistake?’ Terri was flabbergasted. ‘Or explained it to Rachel, at least?’
‘How the hell could I, when she was doing a jig over it?’ He gave a self-satisfied grin. ‘Anyway, the way I see it, it’s finder’s keepers.’
‘But . . .’ Terri was finding it hard to get a handle on this. It wasn’t what she’d expected at all and yet it made sense. ‘And what did you actually buy?’
He shrugged. ‘Just some charm bracelet that I thought Rachel might like. Didn’t cost me much, and look what I ended up with!’ He grinned again. ‘I dunno . . . it was late, and I was rushing to get back to the hotel . . . Then next thing I know, I’m lying in some hospital bed.’
Terri was silent for a minute, while she tried to think this through.
‘So it was right after you left Tiffany’s that you got hit?’ She hadn’t known the specifics before, but now that she did this was starting to make a hell of a lot more sense. It was all falling into place. The ring – it wasn’t meant for Rachel, and never had been. Which must mean . . .
Suddenly Terri recalled Ethan Greene’s wide-eyed expression earlier today when Rachel was showing off her magnificent diamond.
Oh hell . . .
She tried to picture the scene in her head. Two men shopping on Christmas Eve, both laden down with packages. One gets hit by a cab and the other tries to help out, and somehow the shopping bags get mixed up.
Terri couldn’t believe it. Poor Ethan Greene. He must have almost died when he realised that his massively expensive diamond ring had gone astray, and, even worse, that he’d ended up with a simple charm bracelet.
And poor Rachel too. Talk about adding insult to injury: Gary thought so little of her that he was willing to pass off the ring as his own and commit to marriage on a random whim!
‘I don’t understand. The ring isn’t yours, so how could you use it to propose to Rachel?’
‘What was I supposed to do, Terri? Believe me, I was as shocked as anyone when I saw what was in there, but I could hardly tell Rachel when she was mooning all over it, could I? Besides, it all worked out OK, didn’t it? Rachel’s happy, and yeah, OK, so it might not have been on the cards right now, but what can you do?’
Terri was so disgusted she thought she might gag. To think that he could blithely go along with something so awful . . .
‘Gary,’ she began, deciding to throw the idea out there, as clearly he wasn’t clever enough to put two and two together. ‘Did you ever consider that
maybe
the reason this Ethan Greene guy has been hounding you as you say, is not because he fancies Rachel but because the ring is actually his?’
He looked completely bewildered and she knew the idea had never even once crossed his mind. ‘Huh? But how could it be? It was my bag.’ But she could see his eyes grow wary, now the subject had been raised.
‘Yes, but perhaps he’d been carrying a Tiffany’s bag too, and the two of them got mixed up in all the drama?’
Gary shrugged. ‘Nah, I don’t think so. Anyway, it’s not my fault if this guy can’t keep track of his own stuff.’ He was seriously slurring his words now, and Terri figured it was pointless trying to get him to see sense at this stage. She wondered if he would even remember this conversation tomorrow.
Well, however dishonourable his intentions regarding Ethan Greene, Terri now needed to know his true intentions towards her best friend.
‘So this whole engagement only came about because the ring turned up out of the blue? You hadn’t planned it all along?’
‘Nah. I mean, I don’t mind going along with it, though. Rachel’s great, easy on the eye, good craic, dynamo in bed,’ he added and Terri seriously had to restrain herself from throttling him. Clearly he’d forgotten whom he was talking to at this point, and this must be how he talked about Rachel to his ‘boys’.
Terri was so annoyed she couldn’t think straight. She wasn’t sure what to say next. Gary was an even bigger numbskull than she’d realised.
At that moment he laid his head on the table and closed his eyes, muttering something that sounded like ‘I could get used to all this free stuff – beer, diamonds . . .’ and then he let out a huge snore.
Terri waited for a moment, making sure he was out cold before she could even contemplate her next move. Her first instinct was to whack him over the head with something, she was so shocked by what she had just learned.
While she’d suspected all along that something wasn’t right, she certainly hadn’t anticipated this. Should she tell Rachel? Break the news to her friend that her so-called fairy-tale engagement was a complete sham, and had only come about because Gary had come out the better end of a mistake? She had to, didn’t she? Although, thinking about it, no doubt Ethan Greene was doing exactly that himself right now.
Trying to imagine that conversation, Terri’s heart went out to the poor guy. Why should he have to suffer the consequences of all this, when dumbass Gary was the one completely at fault?
Terri looked again at the love of Rachel’s life, drunkenly snoring his head off. She hoped he had the mother of all hangovers tomorrow morning and would be wracked with shame and guilt over what he’d just told her. Or would he even remember?
Terri shook her head. Poor Rachel, and her big dreams about tradition; with an oaf like Gary for a husband what kind of traditions would she have to look forward to now?
Chapter 24
Gary could hear someone calling his name. He was in a murky place; something cold and hard was pushed against his face and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what it was.
‘Ah, Ma, give it a rest . . .’
‘Gary, wake up.’
There, he heard it again. Why couldn’t he open his eyes? They seemed glued shut. He was slowly becoming conscious and the first thing he noticed was the shooting pain in his skull; it was as if his head was locked in a vice. Why did his head hurt so much? And again, where the hell was he?
‘Gary, come on – wake up!’ There was an insistent tapping on his shoulder and, blearily, he realised he knew that voice.
Finally, he was able to open one eye, then the other one. There in front of him stood Rachel. His fiancée, he remembered. She didn’t look happy, though. He wondered why.
‘Gary.’ She shook his shoulder. ‘What are you doing here?’ It was more of a demand than a question.
He had still not uttered a word but was trying to focus on his surroundings. There was a whiskey bottle in front of him, along with two shot glasses. He appeared to have his head resting on the dark wood of a table and was sitting on a chair. He noticed that not only did his head hurt, but so did every other part of his body. He could only imagine it had to do with the fact that he had slept practically upright all night.
‘Hey, babe,’ Gary mumbled as he started to slowly pick his head up from the table.
Rachel’s nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed. He tried to think of a time when he had last seen her mad, and realised he couldn’t recall a single moment. Sure, there had been times when she had been stressed out about this and that with the bistro, but her anger had never been directed at him.
‘What the
hell
are you doing here?’ she asked again.
Good question, he thought to himself, what
was
he doing? He tried to think back to the previous evening. He remembered getting a taxi back from Wicklow with Sean, and then arriving at the bistro looking for Rachel, but she wasn’t there. Terri had been, though, and she’d given him more drink. More importantly, Terri had been
nice
to him; she’d invited him in for a beer and, of course, what man would turn down free beer?
It was strange because Terri never really talked to him, and he’d always thought she didn’t particularly like him, but last night . . . had she
flirted
with him? Gary tried desperately to think back. Yes, there could be something to that. She’d certainly been over-friendly anyway. He tried his best to remember the rest. But he was missing something; there was something important he couldn’t recall. They had started doing shots of whiskey; he remembered being surprised when she’d pulled the bottle out. They’d done a couple – no, it had been a lot more than a couple. Terri had kept refilling his glass.
And she had kept asking questions.
He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. After all, it just sounded as if she was jealous of Rachel getting married, and he hadn’t realised this before, but maybe she’d fancied him too.
Then Gary’s skin broke out in a cold sweat as the most important part suddenly came rushing back to him. He’d told Terri about buying the bracelet and ending up with the ring. He had told her the
whole
bloody story. And was he imagining it or did Terri have some kind of theory on exactly how that had happened, something to do with that guy Greene.
Christ . . .
He wondered if Terri had already told Rachel about the mistake. If she had, it would certainly explain why she seemed so mad at him now. And he hoped to God he hadn’t shot his mouth off about anything else.
‘Well? Do you plan on answering me?’
Gary snapped back to the present, realising he still hadn’t said anything to Rachel. She was tapping her foot on the ground. He looked up, wondering if he had the presence of mind to bluff his way out of all this.
‘Ah, well . . .’ He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be explaining: why he was here, or why he’d proposed to her with a freebie engagement ring.
‘Why are you sleeping on one of my tables?’ Rachel entreated, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
‘What time is it?’ he asked groggily. It was starting to get bright outside. Had he been here all night?
‘It’s seven a.m. And you still haven’t answered my question.’
‘I came here last night, looking for you.’
Something crossed Rachel’s face very briefly. Gary caught it and it piqued his interest. Was it guilt? If so, he wondered if he could maybe turn this around.
‘But you weren’t here so I decided to stay for a while, and I had a drink with Terri.’ He thought if he played up this aspect maybe it would distract her, make her a bit jealous even? ‘We had a couple of drinks and—’
‘Looks like it was a hell of a lot more than a couple of drinks,’ she said, incredulous.
Gary blinked. Now he wasn’t sure if she was angry about him drinking with Terri or sleeping at the bistro. He decided to wing it.
‘Come on, babe, you don’t need to be jealous or anything.’
‘Oh please. I’m not jealous of Terri, I’m just wondering how you ended up sleeping all night in my restaurant.’
OK, she wasn’t jealous. Gary shifted gears. ‘Well, it’s not my fault. Terri got me drunk and then left me high and dry here, so blame her.’ If he shifted most of the blame onto Terri then Rachel could take her anger out on her.