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  He stopped for a moment and cleared his throat again. ‘Right, you know that, um . . .’ Faltering, he looked down at his lap and seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. Then he grabbed his champagne glass in one hand and offered it up. ‘Cheers to Ben and Kim and their soon-to-be new addition,’ he said resolutely, smiling a weak smile. Cara didn’t move to greet the gesture, so Shane leaned forward to clink her glass instead. Then he sat back in his chair and took a deep drink from the flute.

  Cara sat across the table, feeling bewildered about what had just transpired.

  Had he really bought a bottle of champagne worth nearly a hundred quid just to toast to family members who weren’t even present at this dinner? she thought to herself. Not to mention that he’d only just learned the news about Kim and Ben’s new baby. Cara felt a growing unease in the pit of her stomach and couldn’t seem to organise her thoughts. All she knew was that something very important had happened – literally in the last few moments – that had greatly changed the tone of the evening.

  For some reason, the relaxed mood from before they’d seen the other couple’s proposal never returned, and Shane spent much of the meal in sullen silence. Cara was relieved when the bill was paid and they were finally able to leave.

  Walking out on to the street, Shane seemed lost in another world and Cara hoped it wouldn’t take long for them to find a taxi and just get home.

  He turned to Cara suddenly. ‘Actually, you go ahead. I need to go back to the office. I just realised I forgot something.’

  Cara frowned at him. ‘But it’s after nine o’clock at night, Shane. Can’t it wait till morning?’

  ‘It really can’t,’ he insisted, signalling an oncoming taxi. ‘Look, why don’t you take this and go on home. I just need to go grab this . . . file and I’ll be back in no time.’

  Cara nodded glumly. Something was definitely wrong and she didn’t know how to fix it; she just knew that for some reason Shane didn’t want to come home with her. He wanted to be away from her. She cursed the newly engaged couple who had given rise to all the fears that she had thought she had put away. She had vowed not to mention the idea of marriage again tonight and, somehow, the notion had still followed her in to the restaurant by way of a third party. And now her boyfriend was looking to avoid her.

  ‘All right,’ she agreed lamely. ‘If this file is so important, go ahead.’ ‘Hey,’ Shane said, pulling her close and raising her chin so she would meet his gaze. ‘I won’t be long I promise, just go home and get settled, and I’ll follow on shortly. Really, I promise I won’t be long.’ He kissed her, and there was something in it that made her anxiety ebb away a little.

  ‘Shane, are we OK?’ she couldn’t help but ask. ‘It’s just that scene in there and the couple with the engagement . . . and then your mood and . . . just the way everything felt . . .’ She blurted the words out, feeling all of the worries that had been piling up since last night suddenly cresting and overflowing around them.

  ‘Hey, hey – what did I say this morning?’

  ‘You said a lot of things . . .’

  ‘And all of them were true. Look, I just had something on my mind tonight, that’s all. Just go home and don’t worry about a thing, OK? I’ll see you soon.’

  She nodded and got into the waiting taxi, not sure what else there was to say.

  Later that night, Cara woke suddenly. She sat up in bed, turned to the alarm clock and looked at the time. 12:15 a.m. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she looked down at the other side of the bed. She reached a hand out: it was empty and cold. Shane was not beside her. She had left him hours ago at the restaurant and he still hadn’t returned home.

  Pushing aside the worries about their disastrous dinner earlier, she tried to figure out what had woken her up. She’d waited up for him as long as she could, but the events of the day had drained her and she had eventually fallen asleep.

  Just then, Cara’s phone chirped from the nightstand. She reached out to grab it, and fear entered her heart as she immediately had visions of the police calling telling her there had been an accident and that Shane was in the hospital.

  ‘Oh God,’ she breathed, preparing herself for the worst.

  The screen came alive but it wasn’t a call coming through. There was a lone text message. It was from Shane.

  She swallowed hard. What if he wasn’t coming home? What if he had decided that he didn’t want to be with her . . . what if . . .?

  She opened the message. It simply read

  Sorry to wake you. Meet me in the living room?

  The message was new and delivered a few seconds ago. Once again, confusion reigned. Shane was here in the apartment? But why was he texting her from their living room? She got out of bed and pulled her robe on.

  Then suddenly, her senses, acute in the dark, were met with something unexpected.

  A sweet, rich smell.

  Cara began walking across the room and her bare feet came into contact with something on the floor. It was cold and velvety soft. Reaching to the wall to turn on the overhead light, she realised that the floor was covered in a trail of petals, rose petals. They led to the door.

  A tentative smile rushed to her face, and something that felt like hope mixed with excitement bloomed in her heart. Her feet moved lightly across the room and she opened the door to find the hallway bathed in what seemed like soft candlelight.

  What the . . .?

  She continued to follow the trail of rose petals down the hallway, past the kitchen and, finally, into the living room, where Shane stood. He had his back to her, and was looking out through the glass patio doors that showcased the night, lit only by the stars overhead.

  ‘Shane? What are you doing? What’s going on?’ Cara asked hesitantly.

  She knew he had heard her, but he began speaking without turning round.

  ‘I knew I was doing something wrong in the restaurant earlier, you know. I wanted to do something special, but it went completely against who we are, as a couple. However, it is now officially a new day.’

  She started to breathe easier. He seemed to be apologising for his strange behaviour earlier – mind you it was a slightly odd apology, but she appreciated it just the same.

  ‘Shane, really, it’s fine. I’m sure that when you saw that couple and after what we talked about this morning . . . I understand, there is a lot of pressure about the whole marriage thing, and it’s all coming from me. I’m sorry, I should never have mentioned anything about it, and never would have, only for that stupid invitation . . .’ She started to walk towards him.

  Shane turned around then and met Cara’s gaze. A smile was on his face, a truly genuine one. The kind she was used to.

  ‘You really don’t know, do you?’ he said, chuckling a little.

  ‘Know what?’ She was at a loss. Her eyes were round as saucers as she tried to figure out what she had seemingly been missing.

  Shane crossed the distance between them in three steps and pulled her into his arms. ‘You make me so happy, you are my whole world, and I love you and I want you with me always. I don’t want to share our special happy moments with a room full of strangers. I want this to be all about us. I was going to tell you all that in the restaurant tonight and then give you this . . .’ He pulled a small black velvet box from the pocket of his jacket and sank to one knee in front of her.

  Cara’s breath caught in her throat and her heart started to beat wildly.

  ‘But the time wasn’t right, not then, and I wanted this moment to be special for you, for us, and I then realised that making a big show of it,’ he continued, ‘a big public proposal in some restaurant, wasn’t right for us, and thankfully that bloke beat me to it and forced me into shutting up. I didn’t want anything to ruin or spoil this moment.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Cara I love you, I have never loved anyone the way I love you. Please do me the honour of becoming my wife. Will you please make me the happiest man on the planet and marry me?’

  Before Cara, s
till trying to recover from what he’d said, could say anything, he opened the ring box to reveal a perfect princess-cut diamond on a white gold band. Two smaller diamonds on either side of the bigger one also graced the band. It was simple, beautiful and classic. And it was perfect.

  His eyes met Cara’s as it finally dawned on her what was going on. He had been planning to propose in that restaurant . . . and of course – what was it she’d said at the time? Something about restaurant proposals being a cliché? She had taken everything that had happened and, thanks to her insecurities, had completely spun it out of context. She laughed at the silliness of the past few hours. When would she learn not to let her imagination run away with her?

  ‘Oh my goodness . . .’ she said, staring at the ring.

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘Shane, it’s beautiful, it’s utterly perfect, I—’

  ‘You haven’t yet answered my question,’ he reminded her gently and Cara shook her head, still somewhat numb from the surprise of it all.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Finally she flung herself into his arms and laughed while he placed the ring on her finger. They kissed deeply and passionately and all of Cara’s insecurities and worries immediately left her mind. It was just them – her and Shane – and it would always be them; together, making their own way.

  ‘Are you really surprised?’ he asked, smiling. ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘Oh yes, very much so,’ she grinned, staring at her hand and the beautiful diamond that twinkled in the candlelight.

  ‘I thought you had figured it out, I really thought you did.’ Shane kissed her again, this time on the forehead. ‘After that guy beat me to the punch, I felt sick, I didn’t know what to do or how to recover from it. And then when you said that it was all so clichéd, I almost had to rush to the loo to throw up.’

  She laughed, remembering. ‘I’m really sorry. I just thought that you’d been spooked, like you saw that proposal and felt pressured, especially after this morning.’

  ‘Not a chance. To be honest, I’ve been planning this for a while. And when that wedding invite came yesterday, and we got to talking about it, it seemed like the right moment.’

  She kissed him again, and without another word, Shane picked her up and dramatically carried her back to their bedroom, crossing the threshold with her as if she were already a bride.

  ‘Then we’re definitely going to that wedding,’ Cara thought, realising she inadvertently had Audrey McCarthy to thank for what was the happiest moment of her life.

  Chapter 6

  The following morning, Cara hustled out her front door, phone in hand, punching her mother’s number while at the same time sneaking a peek at her newly decorated ring finger. She was an engaged woman! She could hardly believe it. But of course her newly transformed state didn’t work towards improving her timekeeping; if anything her and Shane’s late-night, erm . . . celebrations meant that she’d be even later for work this morning. She prayed Conor would understand.

  As per the norm, the phone in the Clancy household rang exactly once before Betty picked up; Cara was convinced that her mother carried the cordless handset around in her pocket from when she woke up in the morning to the time she went to bed at night.

  ‘Hello? Cara? Is that you?’

  Cara smiled. Her mother knew very well who it was. In Betty’s eyes, caller ID was right up there with the discovery of electricity.

  ‘Yes Mum, you know it’s me, didn’t it just come up on the display?’ Cara said giddily.

  ‘Why are you calling so early? Is everything all right? Are you OK? Oh my goodness, has there been an accident? Is Shane OK?’

  Cara shook her head indulgently. In Betty Clancy’s eyes, calling before ten o’clock in the morning meant that someone must have been in an car accident, fallen off a cliff or been run over by a lorry, and more than likely they weren’t wearing clean underwear when it happened.

  ‘Yes Mum, everything’s fine. I just wanted to tell you that . . . well, something has happened . . . I have some news.’ She grinned broadly.

  ‘What’s happened, Cara? Where are you, I’ll send your father to go and get you. Just stay where you are, don’t move and don’t talk to anyone.’

  Cara chuckled. There was absolutely nothing in her tone that would suggest an emergency, but her mother had no ability whatsoever to read people. Betty would definitely never have made it as a police investigator, she thought fondly.

  ‘Mum, slow down for a minute. There’s nothing to worry about, quite the opposite actually. I’m just ringing to tell you that Shane and I are engaged – he asked me to marry him last night!’

  A scream of happiness erupted at the other end of the line, so loud that Cara had to hold the phone away from her ear. She smiled delightedly.

  ‘Oh my goodness! Oh Cara, this is just brilliant news. Another wedding! I can hardly wait. Have you set a date yet? When are you going to go shopping for your dress? We can go today if you’d like. I presume you’ve taken the day off and . . . Oh where will we have it? I’ll give Father O’Brien a call about booking the church, and a hotel of course. We’ll need somewhere that could at least fit . . . oh I don’t know . . . three hundred, I suppose? And get going on the guest list of course. Oh I think a spring wedding is always much nicer than the summer, don’t you . . .?’

  ‘Mum, we haven’t even considered any of that yet,’ Cara said, laughing at her mother’s excitable ramblings but at the same time slightly taken aback. What was it she had she said . . . church wedding? Three hundred people on the guest list? Just because Heidi’s marriage to Paul last year had been a colossal, pompous affair didn’t mean that she and Shane wanted the same thing. The opposite in fact, she thought, remembering how much of a bridezilla her little sister had been. And given both her and Shane’s reaction to Audrey McCarthy’s wedding invitation, she guessed he felt the same way.

  They’d both want something small and simple, nothing overblown.

  ‘The proposal only happened last night,’ she replied, laughing easily. ‘We haven’t had a chance to even think about any of those things, let alone start planning anything.’

  ‘Well, you have to start making plans soon. All the good hotels in Dublin get taken up quickly, so we need to get a date set and a deposit put down straight away,’ Betty insisted.

  ‘Mum, honestly, there’s plenty of time,’ Cara said, trying to keep her voice casual, although inwardly she was a little unnerved. She’d been so looking forward to sharing the news with her mother, but hadn’t anticipated that Betty would actually be that excited about everything. ‘And there’s no point in booking anything just yet, as Shane and I aren’t really sure what we want. As for three hundred guests . . . I really don’t think so. We were thinking along of the lines of something smaller, something intimate.’

  ‘But how small, Cara? Think about Shane’s people alone – all that fancy developer crowd, sure there must be hundreds of them. Never mind the crew on our side, especially your father’s. The list of Clancy relations alone would probably have over eighty on it. Really, I don’t see how you can make this wedding small. Not without excluding tonnes of people,’ she said matter-of-factly.

  ‘But we don’t even know all that many of Dad’s family,’ Cara protested nervously. True enough, outside of her uncle and a couple of her aunts and immediate cousins, she didn’t know the bulk of the Clancy cohort, and she certainly didn’t understand why she should have to invite all of them to her wedding.

  As for Shane’s side, well yes of course, by the nature of his father’s business his parents were connected to many important people, but Cara didn’t know those people, and it was very likely Shane didn’t either. Therefore, why would they need to be invited?

  ‘Really Mum, Shane and I haven’t decided anything yet,’ she repeated, trying to be diplomatic. ‘But I really don’t think some big affair is our style. We like the idea of keeping it nice and simple, and having just people we love and who are important to us there. We don’t
need lots of show.’

  There was silence on the other end of the line and Cara’s heart sank as she hoped she hadn’t disappointed her mother.

  ‘Really Mum, let’s not worry about it just now,’ she continued, ‘there’ll be lots of time to decide. Now is the time to celebrate. We can talk about everything on Sunday, at dinner?’

  Betty routinely had the family over for Sunday dinner at the Clancy home in Greygates, so Cara figured this would be the perfect time to talk about it all. It would also be a great excuse for her and Shane to share their news with the rest of the family and celebrate.

  ‘You know, that lovely church that Heidi got married in – Saint Joseph’s – would be perfect, wouldn’t it?’ Betty said, as if Cara hadn’t even spoken.

  She’d hoped that her protestations might have bought her some time, but it seemed that her mother was determined to get her commitment to the aforementioned church wedding while on the phone, right now.

  At the mention of her sister’s nuptials the year before, she couldn’t help but feel her hackles rise. ‘Well, I’m not sure if Heidi and I have the same style or taste when it comes to things like this,’ she managed to say tactfully. The very last thing she and Shane wanted was a wedding like Heidi and Paul’s.

  She remembered the ice swans that Heidi had insisted upon – to match the real swans she’d had Betty and Mick rent for the day as accessories on the pond on the grounds of the lavish, five-star hotel at which the wedding reception had been held. She recalled the flowers, which had cost her parents just shy of ten grand (ten grand!) that had decorated every surface at the church and the hotel, as well as a litany of other pointless embellishments that Heidi had insisted upon. It was utter craziness, and she knew that her parents were still paying for it.

  ‘Well, I suppose I will have to go back to the bank with your father soon. We still have some of the equity release left from Heidi's, but we could always try for another top-up . . .’

  ‘No Mum, no way,’ Cara interjected vehemently, horrified at the very thought. ‘Shane and I will be taking care of this ourselves – we don’t want anyone else paying for anything to do with our wedding. It’s not your responsibility—’