‘Don’t be so hard,’ I sobbed.
‘Why not? He deserves it. He’s a long, winding Lane, Mint, leading nowhere.’
‘Oh, Amber.’ I was in floods.
‘He’s a fucking liability,’ she went on angrily. ‘So he’s dumped Virginia Pork-Pie too?’ I nodded. ‘They should attach a government warning to him,’ she said. ‘“Associating with this man, ladies, may seriously damage your mental health.” It’s a very bad idea,’ she said again, shaking her head and pursing her lips. ‘I think you should ring him back and say no. Anyway, why do you
want
to see him?’
‘Because I was very attached to him,’ I replied quietly. ‘And he …it …what happened on my wedding day has obsessed me for the past nine months. And because I didn’t understand why it happened, I’ve been largely blaming myself. And now, at last, I have the chance to find out the truth, and I’m not going to turn that chance down.’
Amber sighed. ‘Well, as long as he doesn’t try and get you to go back to him.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said wearily. ‘Of
course
that’s not going to happen.’
‘I want you to come back,’ said Dominic, the following Thursday, at about twenty past eight. ‘I think we should give it another go.’
We’d met shortly after eight, in the Ivy. He hadn’t taken long to say what he had to say. It was as though he wanted to get it in, quickly, at the beginning, in case this tense encounter got out of hand. I just stared at him, and said nothing. I’d mentally rehearsed this moment many times. The moment when he and I would meet again. But it was an event I had not believed would ever come to pass. Because once Dominic’s made a decision, he
never
changes his mind. Oh yes, Dominic always knows what he wants – ‘exactly’. But, to my amazement, he had proved me wrong. And now here we were. Face to face once more.
What would you have done? Refused point-blank to go? Agreed, then stood him up? Gone to the restaurant and hurled abuse, or tipped soup all over his head? Perhaps you’d have denounced him in public. Or turned up with another bloke. I’d run all these options through my mind over the past couple of days. I’d tried them on for size as I might try on clothes in a shop. In the end, I’d rejected them all. They didn’t suit me. I’d simply decided to be cool. That’s what I would be – very, very cool. So I packed ice around my heart. But my legs were shaking as I entered the restaurant.
The waiter offered to show me to Dominic’s table, but I went straight to it, unassisted, as though I were a heat-seeking
missile. I got a jolt, naturally, when I saw him – a burning surge of adrenaline. He looked the same, I thought, but at the same time he somehow looked different. His eyes were just as blue, of course, though his hair was darker, from the winter. But I was irritated to see that he looked slightly heavier. This suggested an easy conscience, or perhaps it was all those pork pies. He stood up, and there was an awkward moment when I could see he was going to try and kiss me. So I was careful to turn my head, inhaling as I did so, with a sharp pang, the familiar aroma of his Chanel. He was drinking a gin and tonic and offered me one. But I ordered a Perrier, because I knew that if I had any alcohol, I’d cry. He was very well turned out, as usual, not in the sackcloth and ashes I’d hoped for, but in a dark suit, and a discreetly striped shirt, with double cuffs, in which were visible a pair of silver links I’d given him for his birthday. He was wearing a pale yellow silk tie, which I didn’t recognise. Perhaps that was from Miss Piggy. Anyway, he looked very smart. And the funny thing was, when I was getting ready to meet him, I’d felt the usual panic that I wouldn’t look good enough for him. That he’d complain about my appearance. That he’d say my bag was ‘wrong’ with my suit, or that my jacket was too baggy, or the wrong colour, or too cheap. And I’d felt a sudden stab of guilt at throwing away all the clothes he’d given me. Then I’d sat down on my bed and slapped my brow, twice, with the palm of my hand. And I’d put on a pair of Red or Dead chinos, because he doesn’t like women to wear trousers, and a black jacket by Comme des Garçons. All my most un-girlie gear. And I’d slicked down my hair with a little gel. He’d looked slightly taken aback when he saw me. I saw his eyes flicker with surprise. But he made no comment about my Eton crop, or my conspicuous change of style. Maybe he’d seen the photo of me in the
Standard.
Maybe he’d been prepared.
We sat there, eyeing each other nervously for a few seconds. He tried to smile, but I met his eyes with a steady, disinterested gaze, despite the clamour in my heart. Because for the very first time in our relationship, I was the one with the power.
And this was because of the simple fact that it was Dominic who had asked to meet me. We perused the menu for a few moments in silence. Then the waiter came to our table.
‘I’ll have the tricolore salad of vine-ripened tomatoes, followed by pan-seared swordfish,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry, madame,’ he replied, clearly confused. ‘But zat is not on ze menu.’
‘Oh, silly me!’ I exclaimed softly with a benevolent smile. ‘I was getting confused with the Waldorf. I’ll have the Sevruga caviar, please, followed by the roast mallard with
foie gras.
’ I was only sorry they didn’t have any Beluga caviar.
‘And for sir?’
‘Smoked salmon, and shepherd’s pie.’
‘Or should that be humble pie?’ I said pleasantly, as the waiter walked away. ‘I presume that’s what you’re going to eat this evening?’
‘I know I ought to,’ he said quietly. ‘And you have every right to be angry, Minty. It’s no more than I expected.’
‘Do you know,’ I said, smiling brightly, ‘today, I’m not actually angry. Not at all. I
was
angry, of course,’ I went on calmly. ‘To be perfectly honest, Dominic, I was so angry I thought I’d get cancer.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. And he looked it.
‘In fact …’ I went on, being careful to keep my voice low, because Dominic’s very self-conscious and can’t bear ‘scenes’ of any kind.
‘What?’ he said.
‘I had a kind of breakdown, because of what you put me through.’ He was silent. ‘Just thought I’d tell you that,’ I added, with a smile. Then I sipped my gently fizzing Perrier. ‘Still,’ I said cheerfully, ‘no hard feelings, eh? Isn’t that what you said? No hard feelings? I’m afraid I can’t say the same for Virginia Park.’ Dominic reddened at that. ‘Yes, Dominic, I’m sorry to say that, despite my extensive experience in this field, I was quite unable to help her. Oh, I gave your engagement ring to a Parisian busker, by the way.’
‘Minty-’ Dom blurted. His face expressed a strange
mixture, of annoyance and contrition. Not many people have the kind of face that can do that. But Dominic’s can. ‘Minty,’ he tried again. Oh, I do wish he wouldn’t keep repeating my Christian name, I thought to myself. He’s not trying to sell me an insurance policy now. ‘Minty,’ he repeated, ‘I understand that I may not be your favourite person at the moment, but I hope you’re not going to make this evening hard for me.’
‘Oh, Dominic, I wouldn’t
dream
of it,’ I said, pleasantly. ‘I was always very kind to you, as you know.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do know that.’
‘I was always very, very sweet to you.’
‘Yes,’ he said wistfully, ‘you were. You were always very sweet and, well, nice. And that’s why I wanted to see you again.’
‘So that I could be nice to you? Well, I think I might find that rather difficult.’
‘No. Of course I don’t expect you to be nice to me, straight away. That will take time. I wanted to meet you, because …well …I’d like to try and put things right.’
‘I have two questions for you, Dominic,’ I said, helping myself to a roll. ‘a) What makes you think you
can
“put things right”, and b) why do you
want
to?’
‘Because …’ he sighed heavily. He was clearly finding this stressful. Oh God, his eyes were shining. Were those incipient tears? To my dismay, I felt the coronary ice begin to drip. ‘Because I’m so fond of you, Minty,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘Yes. And I think I
can
put things right,’ he went on, ‘because of what we once had. And the reason
why
I want to do it, Minty, is because I know I made a terrible mistake.’
I made a terrible mistake. A terrible mistake
? Why didn’t he say, ‘I know I did something terribly wrong?’ My heart chilled over again.
‘You certainly did make a bit of a mistake there,’ I said. ‘But never mind, Dom. It’s all in the past.’
‘Is it, Minty?’ he said, with a faint smile. ‘I hope it is. And I think we can only consign it to the past’ –
We
? – ‘if I explain
to you what happened. If I explain,’ he went on, ‘how I came to get everything so wrong.’
How I got everything so wrong
?
‘I’ll tell you how you got everything so wrong,’ I said. ‘I mean, this is just from my own selfish point of view of course, so you have to bear that in mind. But how you get everything so wrong,
I
think, is by abandoning me in church on my wedding day in front of almost three hundred people. You also got everything wrong by never once apologising to me, or even contacting me to see if I was all right. You
also
got everything wrong,’ I added, ‘by leaving my parents with the bill, which, incidentally, in case you’ve forgotten, was twenty-eight thousand pounds. And then you
also
got everything wrong, and again this is just from my own self-centred perspective, by getting engaged, within a mere five months, to someone else.’
‘I hope you’re not going to be too hard on me, Minty,’ he said. ‘And, yes, I
am
eating humble pie. Which is what you want. And it’s no less than you deserve.’
‘Thank you, Dominic.’ Our starters arrived. He picked up his knife and fork and I found myself looking at the gold crest ring on the little finger of his left hand. He’d bought it, second-hand, when he was twenty-five. I’d always thought it much too big. It depicted a hind with an arrow through its throat. That’s what he’d done to me.
‘It was all a terrible mistake,’ he said, as he squeezed lemon on to his smoked salmon. A mistake.
Mistake
? That word again. ‘I made an appalling error of judgement,’ he continued. ‘And I take full responsibility for what happened. I’d like to stress, Minty, that you were not in any way to blame.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said, without irony. ‘Because, actually, I did think I was at least partly to blame. In fact, Dominic, I’ve been in agonies about it all for months.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it was entirely my fault. But there are extenuating circumstances, which I want you to know about.’
‘I should be very interested to hear what they are,’ I said.
Because that, dear reader, was the only reason I was sitting there. Out of a simple need to know.
‘Why did you do it?’ I asked.
‘I was up shit creek. That’s why.’ He sighed heavily. ‘My whole world was about to cave in.’ This was news to me. I was intrigued. ‘Something …horrendous had happened,’ he explained. ‘Three weeks before the wedding …it was dreadful.’ The memory of it, whatever it was, seemed to make him feel ill. His eyes looked dead and blank. I felt a sudden wave of sympathy. I couldn’t help it. I put my knife down.
‘I don’t know what it was, Dom, but you know I would have helped you.’
He looked at me, and smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know. But the trouble was that you couldn’t help me – no one could, because it was …’ he emitted a little groan ‘ …too awful. It was too big. And I didn’t want to get you involved.’
‘So you weren’t having an affair with Virginia Park, then?’
‘No’ he said, ‘I wasn’t. She’s irrelevant.’
‘Not to me. Before you carry on, could you tell me why you got involved with her?’
‘That was a …mistake,’ he said, with an exasperated shrug. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight. I was on the rebound.’ Rebounder, he should have said. ‘She’s irrelevant,’ he insisted again.
‘So what was it then? What had happened that was so terrible?’
‘I’d been threatened …’
‘Threatened?’ I repeated. My God. By who? The mafia? The Triads? The Yakuza? The IRA?
‘I’d been threatened with losing everything,’ he went on quietly. ‘Every penny of what I’d built up. Everything was going to be taken away from me. And I was going to be left with nothing.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d have had to sell my house, and my car, and it still wouldn’t have been enough. I’d have had to surrender my Peps, my Tessa’s, my endowments, my premium bonds, my Post Office Savings accounts – everything.’
‘Why?’ I said again.
‘Because of a …mistake I made at work.’
‘You did something wrong?’
‘No, no – not
wrong.
It was a grey area.’
‘A grey area?’
‘It was about pensions,’ he explained.
‘Pensions? What about them? You sold them all the time.’
‘Yes, I did. Very profitably. But then we all ran into problems. There were investigations.’ Investigations? Suddenly, it clicked, and I knew.
‘Mis-selling,’ I said. ‘You were mis-selling pensions! That’s why you were in trouble.’
‘Yes,’ he said with a sigh.
‘You were advising people to take out private pensions, rather than staying in their company scheme. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Well, that’s the nub of it. Yes.’
‘And you were advising them to do this, even though you knew the new scheme would be less profitable than the occupational one they were in.’
‘Well, that’s putting it rather bluntly.’
‘And the reason
why
it would be less profitable – do correct me if I’m wrong – is because all the commission that they had to pay you would take a big chunk off the value of the fund.’
‘Ye-es. Yes, it would.’
‘And that it would take these people years and years to catch up, if they ever did. So it was like starting with a massive handicap.’
‘I suppose so. Yes,’ he conceded.
‘Whereas, if they’d stayed in their company scheme, as you should have advised them, they’d have been better off in the long run.’
‘You seem to know rather a lot about it, Minty,’ he said warily.
‘Well, there’s been quite a lot about it in the papers. And one of our business reporters has been following the story. He says three million people were conned.’