A Perfect Proposal (30 page)

‘Come on,’ she said when she had paid for the tickets. ‘Let’s get you something less townie to wear. Although that coat is lovely,’ she added, giving it a surreptitious stroke, hoping that one day she’d be able to work with beautiful fabrics for a living.

When Luke was kitted out with jeans, a battered leather jacket and a pair of ‘sneakers’, which mercifully were brand new (Sophie knew she’d never get him into second-hand shoes), she felt he looked a little more suitably dressed for a spell in the country.

‘Think of it as the same as you buying me clothes suitable for that brunch,’ she said when he protested. ‘It’s a matter of fitting in.’

In the back of her mind was the thought that they might
need to hitchhike round the Cornish lanes. She hadn’t done it herself for years but if they had to, they had to. Doing it with Luke looking so much like a New York banker would be hugely embarrassing.

When they arrived back at Uncle Eric’s house she collapsed into a chair beside Luke and accepted the huge glass of whisky Uncle Eric put into her hand. It had been a long day.

‘I know,’ said Uncle Eric, ‘why don’t we have fish and chips?’

Sophie looked at Luke and chuckled.

‘Haven’t had them for years. Used to eat them out of newspaper in my day. I think the newsprint added something to the flavour,’ Uncle Eric persisted.

‘Now they serve them in polystyrene containers with little wooden forks,’ said Sophie.

‘I must say, I would love to try fish and chips,’ said Luke.

‘Uncle?’ said Sophie.

‘Yes?’

‘Can you stand us the fish and chips? I promise you, when we’ve sorted out these drilling rights I’ll pay you back for everything.’

‘Make sure you do, you minx.’ He found his wallet and pulled out a twenty-pound note and handed it to Sophie. ‘You’d better get him some mushy peas while you’re about it. And maybe a pickled egg. Young man in his position’ – he looked at Sophie – ‘needs to keep his strength up.’

‘You’re a naughty old devil,’ said Sophie, kissing him. ‘But I think maybe Luke has suffered enough.’

Walking back through the winter streets, with tightly wrapped parcels smelling faintly of vinegar, Sophie felt she wanted to put her arm through Luke’s and pretend they were the item everyone seemed to think they were. A girl
could dream. He’d come with her, to get the ‘whole fish-and-chip experience’, as he’d put it, and he’d put his own clothes back on. His overcoat and shiny shoes were in some ways incongruous, but he was still very attractive.

‘I really like to eat fish and chips out of the paper as I walk along, but it’s terribly bad form to eat on the street,’ said Sophie wistfully.

‘I didn’t think you cared about things like that. You seem very much a free spirit to me,’ said Luke, a little surprised.

‘I know. I am a free spirit and if it wasn’t for Uncle Eric waiting at home for his, I probably would suggest we opened them and sat on a bench and ate them. It’s best when you’ve got them really fresh and burn your fingers and your mouth.’ She paused. ‘My mother would be appalled.’

‘You are a bit of a changeling, aren’t you?’

She chuckled. ‘Maybe. But I look too much like my mother to have been swapped at the hospital.’

‘Your mother is a very handsome woman,’ said Luke.

‘Well, thank you! I’ll take that to mean that when I’m my mother’s age, I’ll be handsome too.’

‘And before that, very attractive.’

Sophie was blushing again. ‘And you’re very attractive too.’

He laughed and she realised that this wasn’t the sort of remark the women who usually surrounded him would make, however much they thought it.

‘Would Matilda eat fish and chips in the street, do you think?’ she said to move the conversation on from compliments.

‘I’m not sure about my grandmother. I never know what she’s likely to do next. Like finding this house. Why hasn’t she thought of it before?’

Suspecting he was going to blame her again for his grandmother’s flight of fancy, she said quickly, ‘I don’t know
but I do hope we can find it for her. How thrilled she’d be!’

Luke, just shook his head slightly, smiling.

‘These chips are very soggy,’ complained Luke, watching Sophie divide them on to plates she had just taken out of the oven.

‘They’re supposed to be,’ said Sophie. ‘Or at any rate, that’s how they always are. The sogginess somehow makes them even more of a guilty pleasure because you know they’ve absorbed more fat.’

‘Used to fry ’em in beef dripping in the good old days,’ said Uncle Eric.

Sophie was surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you knew so much about fish and chips, Uncle Eric!’

‘You’d be surprised what I know, young lady.’

‘You do seem to have a very eclectic knowledge,’ said Luke, looking dubiously at his plate.

‘Let me make you a real treat.’

Sophie buttered the end of the new loaf and then cut off the slice and buttered another bit. Then she laid a few chips on to the soft, white bread and handed it to Luke. ‘Eat that and tell me it’s not delicious.’

‘What is it?’ Luke regarded it as if it might bite.

‘A chip butty. You can put Tommy-K on it if you want to. It does have cancer-preventative properties,’ said Sophie. ‘Want one, Uncle Eric?’

‘And what is ‘”Tommy-K”?’ her great-uncle asked.

‘Tomato ketchup,’ said Sophie. ‘How’s your butty, Luke?’

‘Surprisingly nice.’

‘See! Told ya!’

It was evening when they arrived in Truro the following day. They’d hardly slept on the coach and they were both exhausted.

‘But I did get to see a lot of the country,’ said Luke gallantly.

‘And we had that cute little loo on the bus. That helped,’ said Sophie.

‘I wouldn’t describe it as cute, but it had its uses.’

‘When we’ve stopped having the Pollyanna competition, I think we need to find a bed and breakfast. Two rooms,’ she added, wistfully.

‘One room would be cheaper,’ said Luke.

‘Yes,’ said Sophie, ‘but they might give us a double bed and then where would we be?’

Luke laughed. ‘I think we know where we’d be. In bed together.’

‘I think I should tell you, Luke, that I never sleep with anyone on the first date,’ she said, matching his teasing tone.

‘I’m glad to hear that, Sophie, but I should point out that this must be at least our fifth date, one way or another.’

Sophie eyed him firmly. ‘They haven’t really been dates and we’re still not sharing a room.’

Luke shrugged. ‘You’re in charge!’

Sophie decided that being in charge was not all it was cracked up to be.

Finding a bed and breakfast that was open in January was a bit of a struggle, but they managed to do so, and it had at least two rooms.

‘So, are you just friends?’ asked the man who showed them the rooms, curious about surprise visitors in winter.

‘I’m gay,’ said Luke blandly. ‘We prefer not to share.’

Sophie suppressed a giggle. Lack of sleep was making Luke frivolous – she loved it!

The man nodded. ‘We get all sorts here. No problem. What time would you like breakfast?’

‘Eight o’clock,’ said Sophie. ‘Is that OK for you, Luke?’

‘It’s fine if we can go to bed really early. I need to stretch out or my muscles will forget how to do it.’

‘What about something to eat?’

‘There’s a great little restaurant round the corner,’ said the man.

Sophie gulped. She wasn’t at all sure they could afford a ‘great little restaurant’.

Fortunately Luke seemed to realise this. ‘I’m too tired to eat,’ he said to the man. ‘Jet lag.’

‘Oh, right. I understand,’ said the man.

‘Me too,’ said Sophie, knowing that thanks to Uncle Eric, there were sandwiches left in the bag.

‘Can you get “coach lag”?’ asked Sophie when they had met up in her room to eat the sandwiches and drink tea.

‘Definitely.’ Luke stretched out on one of the single beds. ‘I definitely have coach lag.’

Sophie chuckled. ‘Well, brace up and let’s get these sandwiches out.’

Uncle Eric had insisted that she made them sandwiches because they were going ‘on a journey’. He explained that during the war you never knew when you were going to get fed again. Sophie had felt it easier to make ‘sangers’ as he called them than discuss whether or not England was at war and if the fact there was no rationing made any difference. It would definitely save her money.

‘The Marmite ones have held up best,’ she said, having unwrapped a foil package. ‘Just as well you like it.’

Luke took the offered sandwich. ‘Mm, although I’m not sure the trip in your bag has really added much to the flavour.’

Sophie nodded, eating a horribly soggy cheese and salad sandwich. ‘I know, but better than nothing.’

‘Definitely better than nothing,’ agreed Luke. ‘Now, what about the tea?’

Amused that Luke had become so fond of tea during his trip to England, Sophie got off the bed and made it.

‘So that was the “Full Cornish”,’ said Luke when they had paid their dues and left the bed and breakfast the next morning.

‘Yup, almost indistinguishable from the Full English.’

‘But Cornwall is in England, isn’t it?’ Luke seemed confused.

‘It depends on who you talk to. It does have its own language.’ Her phone rang. ‘Oh, it’s for you!’

Luke took her phone away and talked on it for some time. While she was on her own, Sophie got out her wallet and counted her money. Then she looked at the statement she’d got when she had last been to the cash machine. She had fifty pounds left in her account. She still had her savings, but she couldn’t easily get at them. It was worrying.

Luke hurried back to her, looked pleased. ‘Hey! We have money!’

‘Do we?’

‘Yup! Ali has arranged for money to be left in the bank here.’

‘Which bank?’

He named it. ‘I can withdraw it all in cash. It’ll stop me being utterly dependent on you.’

‘Brilliant!’ Actually Sophie didn’t know how she felt about this. Apart from the worry about not having enough, she’d quite enjoyed Luke being financially dependent on her.

‘We can hire a car,’ Luke went on, jubilant. ‘No more public transportation!’

‘Have you got your driving licence with you?’ asked Sophie.

‘Er, nope. But you have.’

‘Mm,’ Sophie admitted, unwilling to confess she wasn’t a
very experienced driver. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll hire the car and then you can drive.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m an attorney. It means I have to obey the law. But I have to confess, I’m not a good passenger.’

‘Great,’ said Sophie quietly. Still, what better way to get driving practice than driving a millionaire through Cornish lanes?

Hiring a car took until way past Sophie’s lunchtime, but eventually they were ushered into a nice little Renault Clio. Sophie was at the wheel; Luke folded his long legs into the passenger seat. Luke took hold of the maps that came with the car.

‘We might need to buy an Ordnance Survey map,’ said Sophie, ‘if we’re going to find the place suggested in that email. It’s tiny.’ Sophie had had two leads emailed to her, both in roughly the same area. They had decided the simplest thing to do would be to start with the one nearest Truro.

Luke folded the map back perfectly and almost instantly. Sophie looked at him. No one who could do that was properly human, in her eyes. He was probably from another planet; she’d always suspected it.

‘OK, let’s drive to a shop where they can sell us one of those maps.’ He might not like being a passenger, but having a car and money obviously made Luke feel in control.

‘Do you happen to know what direction that might be?’ Sophie asked.

‘Nope. Try the centre of town. There’s bound to be somewhere there.’

Sophie fiddled about with the gears until she knew where they all were and set off sedately.

‘I’d forgotten about the stick shift,’ said Luke. ‘Why didn’t we hire an automatic?’

‘It would have been more expensive,’ said Sophie, who
had had to get the cheapest of everything all her life. ‘How much money have you got?’

‘Five hundred pounds,’ said Luke. ‘The car was about sixty for three days. We’ll have this sorted in three days. Britain is a small country.’

‘Yes, but distances are long,’ said Sophie, aware she probably wasn’t making sense. ‘The roads can be quite slow in the country.’ Luke hadn’t really seen Cornwall yet, she thought. She didn’t know it well herself but she had been there on holiday. She knew about the narrow lanes bounded by high walls and hedges and how confusing they could be.

‘Three days is all the time I can spend on this project,’ he said. ‘My cards and apartment and everything will be waiting for me in London by then. I will have to go back.’

‘Well, keep back a couple of hundred pounds for your train fare then,’ said Sophie, a bit hurt that he seemed so keen to get away from her now he had the means to do so, and that their time together was just a ‘project’ to him. She’d thought they’d been having fun.