We carried on walking, holding hands. Every so often a giggle would bubble out of me. Matt kept glancing sideways at me, half incredulous.
“I keep thinking you’re going to say ‘got you!’” he said. “And it’ll all have been a hilarious joke.”
I turned to him and put my gloved hands up to his face. The pale winter light bleached out his skin, removing the crows’ feet from the corners of his eyes. His stubble looked very dark; I could feel it catch on the wool of my gloves.
“I wouldn’t joke about that,” I said.
He kissed me and then drew back. “Aren’t I supposed to ask your father for your hand in marriage, or something?”
I’d been smiling and, at his words, I could feel the smile die on my face. I hadn’t thought of Angus once since I’d asked my question; a small miracle. Was I scared of Angus’s reaction? I wasn’t scared of him, I decided, I just couldn’t stand his relentless negativity. I just knew he wouldn’t approve of what I’d done. Maybe – and this was another thought I pushed away as soon as I’d had it – maybe that was why I’d done it.
“Oh, don’t worry about that nonsense,” I said as carelessly as possible. “I’m a modern girl, I’ll go and ask him. Tell him, I mean.”
Matt looked uncertain. “If you’re sure–”
I nodded and took his hand. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’ll all be fine. Leave it to me.”
Angus was in the sitting room, in his usual chair by the fire. The door was fully open. I paused in the hallway, out of his line of sight. Matt stood beside me and I turned and whispered to him to leave me.
“Are you sure?” he asked. I nodded. He walked away and I watched his long, flat back disappear around the turn of the staircase. Then I took a deep breath, and knocked on the open door.
He looked up from his paper. I had a smile on my face that at once felt forced and over-bright.
“Maudie,” he said, nothing more than an acknowledgement.
I remembered him sitting by the side of my bed, during the bad time. The bedclothes were tight about me; I couldn’t move my arms properly. He said something to me; what was it, now? You’re all I have. That sounded like something born out of love, but was it? Perhaps what he meant was that I wasn’t enough.
“Angus,” I said, hesitantly.
“What is it?”
I stepped forward and warmed my hands at the fire so I didn’t have to look at him directly. All of a sudden I was quaking.
I took a deep breath. Angus had put down his paper and was looking directly at me.
“Maudie?”
I forced a smile on my face as I turned to face him. “I’ve got some wonderful news. Matt and I–” my throat closed up suddenly and I couldn’t finish. I coughed and tried again. “Matt and I are going to be married.”
It still sounded ridiculous. Angus was very still.
“Is that so?”
I nodded, again unable to speak. There was a long moment of silence, but I kept the smile on my face. After a while, my cheeks began to ache.
Angus still said nothing. His hard grey eyes were fixed on my face, his gaze pinned to mine.
“Aren’t you pleased?” I asked, immediately cringing. Why had I said that? Why did I say things like that, why did I ask, when I knew the answer was never, ever what I wanted to hear? Why did I lay myself open, scraping and bowing for his approval, when it never, ever came?
There was another moment’s silence. “I assume by your demeanour,” he said, “that you’ve replied in the affirmative?”
He didn’t need to know that I’d actually asked Matt, rather than the other way round. I could just imagine his incredulity at the idea. I made a mental note to warn Matt not to say anything.
“Yes,” I said. Courage came to me from somewhere. “And I’m very happy about it.”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” he said, in a neutral tone. At long last he moved his eyes from my face to look at the fire and I felt as if two long sharp pins had been removed from my face.
I floundered for something else to say, to fill up the silence. “We haven’t set a date yet. Or where it’s going to be, or anything really. I don’t know exactly what you’re supposed to do first – do you have to register something? Or fill in a form? It’s all new to me, I haven’t a clue what you’re supposed to do.”
Angus picked up the fire tongs and added another log to the fire. Sparks flowered out of the glowing coals in the grate.
“I assume,” he said. “That you’ve already spoken about a pre-nup?”
I’d been watching the fire, half-hypnotised by the flames and didn’t hear him properly. Or, if I did, I didn’t understand him.
“Sorry?”
“A pre-nuptial agreement,” said Angus. “I assume you and Matthew have already spoken about one?”
“No,” I said blankly.
“If you haven’t mentioned it to him already, that’s the very next conversation you should have.”
I hesitated. I began to feel that familiar flutter of confusion, of not knowing the right thing to say. I knew I must have had that look on my face, the look that drove Angus’s voice to sharper, louder depths.
“Maudie, you must have thought about it. How could you not have?”
“I don’t – I mean, I hadn’t–” I started to stammer and shut my mouth.
“Maudie,” he sighed, exasperated. “I know you’re old enough to make your own decisions, wrong-headed as they might sometimes be. But I’ll tell you this now, I cannot sanction this marriage, or give it my blessing, unless you promise me to enter into a full and appropriate pre-nuptial agreement with Matthew.”
I stared into the fire. I could feel something, some emotion, begin to swell inside me and I couldn’t work out what it was. I took a deep breath, trying to choke it down. “You’re not serious,” I said.
He continued to look at me. “I am completely serious.”
I laughed a laugh that had no mirth in it. “That’s ridiculous.”
Angus stood up. I took a step back. I knew what I was feeling now; it was anger. My entire neck felt stiff with it.
“Maudie,” said Angus, quietly. “You are my only child. At some point in the future, you will be an extremely wealthy woman. It would be remiss of me not to give you every opportunity of protecting yourself for the future. You’re so naive about the world sometimes – you think you know everything about it, but you don’t.”
The anger had reached my throat, my voice. I couldn’t stop the words coming out. “And what I want doesn’t come into it?” I asked him through a stiff jaw. “Do you actually think I would be stupid enough to marry someone who’s just in it for my money? Do you actually think that little of me?”
“Maudie, listen to me–”
“No, you listen to me! How dare you say that about Matt? Do you think that he thinks like that? Do you think I am some stupid little girl who can’t even be trusted to pick out her own husband? Would you have preferred to get one for me yourself? Or would you prefer that I never had one at all? Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? Why can’t you just admit it?”
“Oh, stop being so melodramatic, for Christ’s sake,” said Angus. The contempt in his voice penetrated the fog surrounding me. I dropped my eyes to the dancing flames of the fire. I had more words inside me, a torrent of them, all the words I’d never said to him before. I put my hands up to my mouth, clamping it shut to stop them flowing out.
Angus sighed and sat back down. His hands fell loosely against the arms of the chair and I noticed for the first time how the bones of his fingers were beginning to protrude through skin growing papery. He’s getting old, I thought. I couldn’t work out if that made me feel better, or worse.