This time, he didn’t sound judgemental, and Grace felt comfortable enough with him to tell him. ‘I don’t like myself very much for what I did. I know I hurt Howard and I feel bad about that.’ She grimaced. ‘But if I’d married him it would’ve been so much worse.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ he said, ‘I’ve already worked out that you’re not a spoiled princess. Not even close. So that must’ve been a serious case of cold feet.’
She nodded. ‘If I’m honest, I’d been feeling that way for quite a while, but I thought I could still go through with it.’
‘So what happened to change your mind?’
She took a deep breath. ‘The Fifty Shades of Beige party.’
* * *
Roland almost choked on his coffee. Had he just heard right? ‘The what?’
‘Howard—my ex—it was his parents’ golden wedding anniversary,’ Grace explained. ‘I wasn’t looking forward to the party, and Bella drew me this cartoon to make me laugh. She called it “Fifty Shades of Beige”.’
He smiled. ‘From what Tarq says about her, I can just see Bella doing that.’
‘Except the awful thing was that she was right,’ Grace said. ‘I was the only woman there not wearing beige.’
‘And it was a problem?’ he asked.
‘Not for me. For... Well.’ She grimaced. ‘Don’t get me wrong—I did love Howard. But that’s when I finally realised that I wasn’t in love with him.’
‘And there’s a difference?’
‘A very big difference,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t fair to marry him, knowing that I didn’t love him enough—I didn’t love him the way he deserved to be loved. I think we were each other’s safe option. We were settling for each other instead of looking for what we really wanted.’
‘Why did you need a safe option?’ He only realised he’d spoken the question aloud when he saw her wince. ‘Sorry. That was intrusive and you don’t have to answer,’ he said hastily.
‘No, it’s fine. Just don’t tell Bella any of this, OK?’
He frowned. From the way Grace talked, she was clearly very close to her sister. ‘Why doesn’t Bella know?’
‘Because,’ Grace said, ‘she’s my little sister and I love her, and I don’t want to burden her with it. Basically, my dad’s really unreliable and I didn’t want to be like my mum. I wanted my partner to be someone I could trust.’
Roland frowned. ‘But I met Ed at the wedding—he seemed really nice and not at all unreliable.’
‘Ed is utterly lovely. He’s Bella’s biological dad, but he’s my stepdad and he adopted me after he married Mum,’ Grace explained. ‘I think of him as my real dad, and he’s been a better father to me than my biological dad could ever have been. But the first time round my mum married a charming man who let her down over and over again. He was terrible with money and he never kept his promises. He hardly ever turned up when he’d promised to be there to see me. We’ve pretty much lost touch over the years. I just wanted to avoid making my mum’s mistake.’
‘And in the process you made your own mistake,’ he said. ‘Picking someone who was reliable but not right for you.’
She nodded. ‘Howard’s a nice man. He’s kind and gentle.’
‘But?’
‘But he made me feel like part of the furniture, and I probably did the same to him,’ she admitted. ‘I never once felt swept off my feet. And I think we both secretly had doubts—after all, we were engaged for four years.’
In the twenty-first century, that was an unusually long engagement, Roland thought. ‘Were you saving up for a house?’
‘Avoiding it, I think, if I’m honest,’ Grace said. ‘We didn’t even live together. And if we’d really loved each other, the wedding and everything else wouldn’t have mattered—we would’ve been together regardless. But we weren’t.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘The truth is, if I’d married Howard, his mother would’ve run our lives—right down to the tiniest detail.’
‘Ah, the old cliché—the interfering mother-in-law.’
‘Sadly,’ Grace said drily, ‘in this case Cynthia more than lived up to the cliché. She wanted us to get married on her fiftieth wedding anniversary, and she wasn’t very pleased when I said that I thought she ought to be the centre of attention on her special day rather than having to share it with her son’s wedding.’