Jennifer felt herself become emotional.
‘Connor, this isn’t the sort of film-making I had in mind. If you could get in touch
with your editor friend, that would be amazing,’ she said, but he clearly wasn’t listening.
‘To be honest, Jen, when you first told me about this documentary idea, I thought it was a bit ridiculous,’ he said dismissively. ‘But I’ve come to realise that actually it’s brilliant. Go and learn the trade with Richard Clarke, then we can set up on our own. Video marketing. I can tout for business with the banks. You can do the creative side. We can own the financial marketing sector by the new millennium.’
She started to shake her head. Her breathing was shallow and she felt trapped inside the confines of the pavilion.
‘Connor, have you not been listening to a word I’ve said this summer?’
He held up a hand. ‘I admit it. The gig is in New York. Of course it is. Everything is in New York. I know you hated it at Lucian’s, but I think you hated working in a gallery and it coloured your view of the city. This will be different,’ he said with a smooth reassurance that she almost believed.
‘We should probably talk about this another time,’ she said, not even looking at him.
‘No, I think we should talk about it now,’ he said with quiet, steely authority.
He was close enough to take her hands, and guided them to his chest.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I love you and I want us to be together in New York. I want to be with you. We belong together.’
An unusual hesitancy appeared in his voice. Connor was never anything other than one hundred per cent confident, but right now there was something different, and it scared her.
He let go of her hands and reached into his pocket. Her heart was pounding as he produced a small black velvet box, and she knew this wasn’t any old twenty-first-birthday present.
‘I know we’re young,’ he said lifting the lid of the box. ‘I know in an ideal world we might wait a while, but when you know, you know, right? Doesn’t matter if you’re twenty-one or forty-one.’
She looked down at a dazzling oval diamond, flecked with blue and silver in the soft moonlight. It was a beautiful stone, a beautiful ring, but her heart felt heavy as she gazed at it.
‘Jennifer Wyatt, will you marry me?’ Connor said, an increasingly confident smile pulling at his lips.
‘Wow,’ she said finally, her voice a croak.
‘I chose it myself, but we can change it if you’d prefer a cushion or emerald cut.’
She took a sharp intake of breath and steadied herself. Then she put her hand over the velvet box and shut the lid with the palm of her hand. For a moment she just looked at him, hoping he would get the message, hoping that she wouldn’t have to say anything, but his expression soured, demanding that she explain herself.
‘I can’t, Connor.’
‘Why?’ he asked incredulously.
She knew she couldn’t say anything without it sounding hurtful. Besides, she didn’t even know the answer herself.
‘I’m just not ready for this.’
Connor’s nostrils trembled as he cleared his throat.
‘I’m only asking you to marry me,’ he replied, obviously thrown. ‘We don’t have to walk down the aisle just yet. It can be a long engagement. My brother was engaged to Vanessa for three years before they got married.’
‘And divorced another three years after that,’ she said cynically.
The silence seemed to stretch out for ever.
‘Do you still love me?’ he asked finally.
Jennifer closed her eyes. There was no easy answer to that question. Perhaps she did love Connor. She certainly used to. Countless times she had felt a smug happiness when she had visited him at college, and they had watched the football, or the rowing. He’d stood behind her and put his arms around her waist and she’d known what other girls were thinking: how lucky she was to be dating the handsome Connor Gilbert, to be wearing his letterman’s sweater, to be going home with him at night. She hadn’t felt like that in a long time, though. Not this year, certainly, when exams and revisions had kept them apart most weekends, and she hadn’t really missed him.
It was not the first time she’d thought their relationship was one of convenient geography and timing. They had gone to the same school, were on the same sailing circuit, went to college in the same state. But finishing Harvard seemed to have given Connor additional purpose and taken his life off in another direction; he was moving faster and travelling further away from her, and she didn’t want to follow him on the journey.