A Perfect Husband

by Hilary Boyd

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Lily and Freddy have always had a have a wonderful relationship, but then Freddy becomes snappy and distracted. Is he having an affair? The truth turns out to be much worse... Freddy is addicted to gambling. He's been helping himself to money from his own company, and worst of all, his wife's money. Devastated, Lily leaves him, and stays with her sister in Oxford. He promises to get help, but can he be cured of his addiction? Even if he can, will Lily be able to trust him again?

Release date: July 13, 2017

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 367

Sample

Chapter 1

Freddy gazed unseeingly at the pretty Chinese girl in the sleeveless black dress on the other side of the roulette table, aware that he was doing so only when she smiled at him, giving a coy wave with a delicate, manicured hand. He smiled back, although it was a purely reflexive twitch of his mouth, never reaching his eyes. He was in the zone.

He’d been feeling sick all day, his nerves wired to the point where he felt as if he’d been flayed, the skin literally scraped from his flesh. His body smarted each time someone bumped into him, brushed against him or ran into him – heads down on their screens – on the narrow, crowded Soho pavements near the recording studio he owned. Every sound, even Lily’s worried goodbye this morning, had set his teeth on edge so that he was barely able to respond with the grace he knew she deserved. She wasn’t stupid: she knew something was up. But there was a way out of this crisis – he never questioned it. It had just eluded him recently, a run of bad luck – which he sensed would change tonight.

Now he sat in his favourite casino, embraced by the elegance of another era: warm wood-panelled walls, high ceilings, solid chandeliers, long windows looking out towards the darkness of the night-time park. It was a hushed, padded, cosseting environment, the croupiers and pit bosses polite and well trained, the clientele rich – or, at least, having the appearance of wealth. As had Freddy, of course. Most importantly, the club still used the European wheel, only one zero, not the American version so popular these days in the London gambling clubs. Popular because of the added double-zero pocket, giving a house advantage – small though it was at five and a quarter per cent – on straight bets of almost double the European system. Which mattered to Freddy. Although Fish, his cynical, world-weary American gambling crony, laughed every time he mentioned his preference, saying, ‘It’s not the house you have to worry about, buddy.’ Fish was in California tonight, thank goodness. He would only have been a distraction.

Numbers flashed through his mind like a mantra as he silently chanted the clockwise sequence: 0, 32, 15, 19, 4, 21, 2, 25 . . . He sat and watched the ivory ball’s trajectory through one, two, three and more spins of the wheel, scrutinizing the frets between the pockets to check for nicks or irregularities, assessing the twist in the croupier’s throw, before finally placing his first bet. He gave in to the mounting anticipation. His hands, meanwhile, played with the piles of black one-hundred-pound chips in front of him, the smooth clay surface like worry beads through his fingers. The satisfying click as they fell back on each other was reassuringly familiar. And, of course, a tantalizing precursor to the hit.

He selected five from the stack, placed two on 23 red, straight up, two on a ‘street’, laying his chips at the end of the line containing 7, 8 and 9, and the last on 0. The croupier was a tall, olive-skinned man, in his late thirties, Freddy judged, with dark, blank eyes and slicked-back hair, maroon waistcoat, white shirt, black tie – Eastern European would be a predictable guess despite the ‘Tom’ on his name-tag. He called, ‘Rien ne va plus,’ in a bored monotone and Freddy’s heart closed down, his breath held, his mind still, completely without thought.

This was the hit. Unconnected to the outcome, it existed entirely in and of itself, a silent, intimate realm of intense, glorious, terrifying anticipation that sent shivers up his spine and wound his body to fever pitch. No drug he’d ever taken came anywhere close, and he’d tried a few. Mere seconds it lasted as the wheel spun, the ball careened around the top space in the opposite direction, dropped, bounced the frets, dropped again, found the pocket. But it was no less powerful for its brevity. And this was only the first time: there would be more, always more . . . minutes away, anywhere, anytime.

‘Nine, red,’ the croupier intoned, placing the chunky, bevelled glass dolly on the winning square with a flourish, then quickly sweeping the losing chips from the green baize with his shiny gold-metal rake, stacking them deftly and with awesome speed in their allocated space on the table beside his station.

Freddy came out of his trance. He’d won. He took a deep breath as he watched Tom stack the round flat black chips on top of the two he’d put down, then start a new column, and a third, all even in height, sliding them towards him with his rake, barely glancing at him, uninvolved. The Chinese girl across the table raised an elegant eyebrow at him, nodded her congratulations. He clicked automatically through his chips, calculating his win. No big deal – less than two and a half thousand, not even a minute dent in the mess – but a start nonetheless, a real start, a feel for things to come. It was definitely his lucky night.

*

It was still dark, although the sky to the east was lightening, clouds streaking the horizon in what would be a beautiful spring dawn, when Freddy emerged, exhausted, from the womb world of the tables. The nightmare of his real life hit him with force, like a ball kicked at his chest, as he stepped onto the cold London pavement. Across the night hours he had won, he had lost, won again, lost again. An exhilarating ride. He had drunk a lot of coffee, eaten an indigestible burger and chips at some stage, chatted aimlessly with the girl in the black dress – who seemed to get off on watching other people lose their money rather than losing her own – and now he had close to twenty-one thousand pounds in his pocket. Good, but no good. No good at all. In fact, in the scheme of things, pretty bloody pointless.

Chapter 2

Meanwhile, Lily waited by the open doors of the West End theatre, clutching two programmes, her eyes scanning the street, filtering the crowds drifting in as she waited for her friend. It was freezing, raining, blustery, a generally vile March evening. She had come by taxi from the flat she shared with her husband, Freddy, in Sussex Square, and she wasn’t dressed warmly enough, wanting to show off the gorgeous richly coloured wool jacket Freddy had brought back from Italy a month before. She longed to get inside to the stuffy warmth of the theatre. But Prem was always late. The warning bell hadn’t gone yet, but it soon would – she wondered if she should go in now and leave her friend’s ticket at the box office.

Lily loved the theatre, loved the excitement of a live performance, the sense of anticipation as the lights went down, the absorption in another world. But she wasn’t in the mood tonight. She’d have much preferred to have a large glass of wine somewhere with Prem and spill out her worries. But the play lasted nearly three hours and it would be too late afterwards. Her friend worked long days at the shop she owned in Marylebone, selling ergonomic chairs and desks, and was always exhausted.

‘Lil!’ Prem was by her side, breathless, her beautiful face alive with amusement. ‘I’ve been shouting at you.’ She gave Lily a hug. ‘Always away with the fairies, you.’

Lily laughed, handing Prem a programme as she dug the tickets from her Chloé bag – another gift from her husband. They made their way into the bowels of the building, almost the last to do so, the bell ringing insistently now, to the house seats Freddy had been given by a client currently working at his studio. The client, Asif somebody, happened to be the star of the play. Their seats were in the middle of the row, the rest of the audience already settled and tutting irritably as Lily and Prem squeezed past the knees and feet, coats, bags and briefcases that obstructed their progress between the cramped old rows, muttering ‘Sorry’ and ‘Thank you’ as they went. But Prem was always forgiven: even at fifty-two her dark-eyed, natural beauty and the dramatic sweep of glossy hair down her back turned heads wherever she went. She didn’t seem to notice the attention, however, which always endeared her to Lily, living as she now did in Freddy’s self-conscious, privileged world where image counted for so much.

Lily did not consider herself beautiful – although Freddy often insisted she was. Her sister, Helen, had been the one with the looks. But with her floppy brown hair shining auburn in sunlight, her large hazel eyes, strong nose and slim figure, Lily possessed a diffident grace. And coupled with her restrained bohemian style and wide, forthright smile, she was a woman who caught the eye in any gathering. It sometimes brought her up short to realize she was now part of Freddy’s glamorous milieu, no longer the life-or-death theatre of brain surgery – her first husband’s profession. In fact, she’d never felt entirely part of either, her own world more solitary and internal, her comfort zone the smooth, blank paper upon which she loved to draw.

‘Go back and say hi to Asif,’ Freddy had instructed earlier. ‘I told him you’d be in tonight.’

‘Do I have to? I barely know him,’ Lily had protested. She always felt awkward hanging around in those small, stuffy West End dressing rooms, the actor half clothed, high from the performance, eyes dark with mascara, skin thick with greasepaint, searching her face to see whether she’d really liked it or was lying through her teeth to protect his or her ego. It was another world backstage, a private club from which ordinary mortals like herself were excluded, always tense with an unsettling mix of insecurity, competition and hubris. If Freddy were there, it would be fine. He always knew what to say, how to make everyone feel good, but Lily just felt stupid and out of place.

Freddy had kissed her, running his finger down her nose, smiling the loving smile that never failed to melt her heart. ‘Don’t be such a wimp, Lily. He’ll think you hated it if you don’t go back. All you need do is pop in for ten seconds, say how simply marvellous it all was, gush a bit. How hard can that be?’

She nodded. ‘I’ll see,’ she said, knowing she wouldn’t. She would make up some excuse about Prem needing to rush off. Freddy could text Asif tomorrow, gush all he liked. And anyway, he was in such a strange mood at the moment. The thought made her stomach twist and she pushed it away, opening the programme and pretending to be interested in what she was about to see.

‘Where’s Freddy tonight?’ Prem asked, leaning towards Lily as the lights in the auditorium faded.

‘Umm . . . work, the usual,’ she replied. But something in her tone must have alerted her sensitive friend.

‘You okay?’ she whispered, as Asif Baka wandered barefoot onto the stage in tracksuit bottoms and a frayed white T-shirt, which showed off his suitably toned biceps, reading a book upside down. Not a promising start.

In Lily’s opinion the play was dreadful – overacted and pretentious. Prem agreed. Lily noticed she had nodded off for a while in the first act and envied her ability to switch off like that.

‘Do you have to stay?’ Prem asked as they hovered uncertainly in the corridor by the entrance to the bar, standing back from the press of people eager for a half-time drink.

‘Freddy would say I should. But I can always tell him you weren’t feeling well or something. And if Asif is pissed off, then I’m sure he’ll get over it. It’s not as if we’re all best mates. He’s just a client of Freddy’s.’

‘Clients are important.’ Prem’s business mind kicked in. ‘I’ll do the second half if you want me to.’

Lily laughed. ‘No, let’s get out of here. It’s ridiculous sitting through something neither of us is enjoying just so we can go backstage and be fake to someone who probably won’t even register who we are.’

‘Put like that . . .’ Prem grinned and took her friend’s arm.

*

‘So what are you saying?’ Prem asked. They were sitting in the basement of a restaurant/bar just yards from the St Martin’s Lane theatre, in William IV Street. Set out on the rough wooden table between them were a bottle of Bordeaux, olives, Italian salami, chilli-garlic prawns, strips of toasted sourdough and a small terracotta bowl of cervelle de canut – a soft creamy cheese dip with shallots and chives. ‘You think Freddy’s having a thing with someone?’

Lily felt close to tears at the idea, although it was what she’d been silently thinking for weeks. ‘Well, what else can it be? He’s tense, distracted all the time, constantly checking his phone – not that he doesn’t always – coming in at God knows what time . . .’

‘Freddy’s never kept normal hours, though. Don’t musicians record all night sometimes?’

Lily nodded. ‘They do, but Freddy doesn’t have to be there all the time – he has people to do that. And he never used to, not night after night. I don’t know . . .’ She gazed at her friend. ‘It’s different. I can’t explain how, but he’s acting strangely, even for Freddy.’

Prem reached across the table and laid her hand over Lily’s. ‘God, you’re freezing.’ She patted her and withdrew. ‘Have you asked him about it?’

‘Yes. He just says he’s really busy, he’s sorry, things will improve shortly. He says to stop worrying.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Which is exactly what he’d say if he was having an affair, right?’

Prem sighed, and raised her eyebrows slightly. ‘I suppose . . . It’s just . . . Freddy adores you, Lily, you know he does. I realize he’s gorgeous and out there and every woman on the planet envies you for being married to him. But honestly, I’ve never taken him for a flirt. Whenever I see him, he just seems totally into you. I mean, you’ve only been married . . . What is it? Three years? Surely it takes longer than that to stray.’

Lily didn’t reply, just picked with her nail at a warm drop of candle wax solidifying on the table. She noticed that some saffron ink from a drawing she was doing of a girl’s face she’d studied on the Tube a few weeks ago had stained the inside of her second finger and rubbed at it absentmindedly with her thumb.

‘Don’t you think?’ Prem was asking.

‘That’s what I tell myself. But I just know something’s up, and what else could it be?’

There was silence between the two women. Then Prem, her voice tentative, asked, ‘Are you still having sex?’

After a very long pause, Lily answered, ‘No.’

She saw her friend’s mouth twist. ‘How long?’

‘Weeks.’

‘And this isn’t usual?’

Lily shook her head. For her and Freddy, not usual at all. She and Prem did not normally talk about their sex lives. She had no idea if Prem and her husband, Anthony, had a good sex life, a bad one or a non-existent one. She had never asked and didn’t want to know. She’d had other friends who went into lurid detail – one in particular who’d talked at length once about a strap-on penis, which had left seriously unwanted images in Lily’s head that were hard to dispel when next she met the couple over spaghetti bolognese. So it struck home that Prem was even asking.

‘You think that proves it?’ Lily asked, her stomach turning on the red wine she had being gulping down too fast.

‘It probably indicates he’s under some sort of stress. But maybe it’s just business. Maybe the studio isn’t doing so well, or a client has kicked off about something. It could be a host of things to do with work or money that he doesn’t want to worry you about.’

Nothing Prem had said comforted Lily. Freddy was a great businessman. He’d had his recording studio for years now and it was highly respected in the industry. It had made him rich. If there were problems he’d share them with her as he always did, giving her the lowdown on which artist was in and what they were recording and whether he thought the work was any good. He had his hand in everything.

When Lily didn’t reply, Prem went on, ‘I absolutely refuse to believe Freddy is having an affair. I just can’t see it.’ She eyed her friend for a long moment. ‘Go home and ask him. Don’t let him wriggle off the hook this time, Lil. Keep on at him till you have a proper answer. Otherwise you’ll drive yourself mad, probably over something quite trivial that’s nothing at all to do with you.’

Lily sighed, trying her best to accept what Prem had said. She was so grounded, so practical, and mostly right. She was an amazing friend. Lily thought back ten years. News of her first husband Garret’s death – so sudden, so shocking, so completely unbelievable – making Lily’s head spin so hard she could hardly breathe. Prem hadn’t made a fuss, just scooped up Lily’s then teenaged twins, Dillon and Sara, and taken them back to her house. Sara was friends with Prem’s only daughter, Aisha, at the Fulham secondary school they both attended. She’d fed them, comforted them, brought wine and groceries round to Lily’s house, while Anthony temporarily palmed off his divorce clients to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare involved in bringing Garret’s body back from Switzerland. She’d been more of a sister to Lily than her actual sister, Helen.

‘You trust Freddy, don’t you?’ Lily asked, her heart beating uncomfortably fast when Prem didn’t reply at once.

‘I don’t know him that well but, yes . . . yes, I trust him.’

‘Like you trusted Garret?’

Prem hesitated again, frowning. ‘I knew Garret from when he trained with Raj at Guy’s – twenty years at least. And he was . . . he was one of those people you’d trust with your life, literally.’ She laughed. ‘That’s the point of a brain surgeon, I suppose.’ Raj was Prem’s older brother. He and his partner, Hal, lived in Minnesota, where Raj worked at the Mayo Clinic, doing research on genetic sequencing.

Lily gave a rueful smile. ‘And you don’t feel like that about Freddy?’ She shrugged. ‘No reason why you should.’

‘As I said,’ Prem replied, ‘I’ve only known him for such a short time. And we don’t see him much – he’s always working.’

*

Lily got home late – the two women had sat for hours over the wine and then some fresh mint tea. She was fired up by Prem’s insistence she get the truth from her husband. He wouldn’t be asleep – Freddy seldom went to bed before midnight, often considerably later. She realized she was nervous, almost frightened, as she let herself into their sixth-floor penthouse in the smart block set back from Bayswater Road, minutes from Lancaster Gate. Did she really want to know what was making him so edgy, so distant? Shouldn’t she just do as he’d suggested and stop worrying, let it pass, whatever it was?

She pictured him lounging on the sofa in the soft light of their large, luxurious sitting room, probably in his habitual jeans and untucked shirt, bare feet propped on the low oak coffee table, his handsome face, framed by thick, dark wavy hair, looking up at her with its perfect light-olive complexion and those large brown eyes, which could switch from being charmingly social, to tender and so loving, to something much darker and unfathomable, all within seconds. ‘Mercurial’: that was the word someone had once used to describe Freddy March.

But the flat was dark and silent. Lily slipped her heels off – they were stupidly high and her feet had been aching almost since she’d put them on – and left them in the hall, padding over the polished floorboards in her stockinged feet to the bedroom at the end of the corridor. Maybe he was asleep after all. The door was open, though, just as she had left it hours before, the smooth, expensive white bed linen untouched, except for a sea-green cardigan she had failed to put away earlier. She glanced at the bedside clock: 1:05 a.m. Where is he? She reached for her phone to check if he had called, and rang his mobile when it was clear that he hadn’t. It went straight to voicemail: ‘Freddy March’s phone. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’ His voice was warm and strong, confident. She loved him so much.

Where are you? she texted him. I’m not asleep. Pls call when you get this. xxx

Then she wandered back to the sitting room and went to stand by the glass doors onto the balcony, staring across the roofs at the city, the lights still dotted randomly over the floors in the hotel nearby, the dark patch of Hyde Park behind. She heard a police siren in the distance, over the constant background growl of traffic which never stopped and which she barely noticed after so many years in London. Her head was thick with the tension she knew she’d been hanging onto for weeks now, and also, no doubt, from too much red wine. There was no point in waiting up, she decided. If Freddy were involved in an all-night session at the studio, he’d have his phone turned off anyway. Better to talk to him in the morning. If she confronted him when she was so tired, she’d probably accuse him of all sorts of ridiculous stuff and they’d have a row.

Chapter 3

When she jerked awake around five it was to an empty bed. She sat up, heart racing. It was chilly in the room, the heating not yet triggered. Quickly, she wrapped her naked body in the pale blue soft-wool dressing-gown Freddy had given her for her recent birthday and walked through to the sitting room, hoping her husband had crashed on the sofa, not wanting to wake her. But it was dark and empty, the dawn barely breaking outside the uncurtained glass. The previous night’s rain had blown over, and it looked clear on the horizon as Lily glanced out of the window, shivering.

Where the hell are you? she wondered, turning to curl up on the sofa, her cold feet tucked under her. She checked her phone, which she’d left charging on the glass side table by the door to the hall. No message. The flutter of anxiety grew in her gut, making her feel sick and even colder. He’s at the studio, she thought, trying to be firm with herself. Where else could he be till this time? But he always told her if he might have to do an all-nighter. And it usually meant till about four thirty, latest – even the keenest musicians ran out of fuel. So the answer seemed obvious: in someone else’s bed. She tried to picture it. Maybe they’d had sex and he’d fallen asleep by mistake. Or maybe she – whoever ‘she’ was – had insisted he stay, insisted he make a decision, forcing his hand so that he would have to confess the affair to Lily.

Her thoughts were almost detached, as if it were someone else’s husband she was picturing in flagrante. Because it was impossible for her to believe her Freddy might, right at this moment, be kissing another woman, stroking his finger down her nose as he did Lily’s, muttering his love for her, despite the tensions of the past month.

Lily reached for her sketchbook, her love of drawing a lifelong comfort and distraction since childhood when severe, life-threatening asthma had restricted her physical freedom, pinning her to her bed or, swathed in blankets – like a precious artwork – propped up on the sofa. Her wispy, anxious mother would hover over her, while her sister and friends were out in the fresh air, riding bikes, swimming, playing sport, free. She could not imagine surviving those early years without pencil and paper.

As she waited, she found herself unthinkingly sketching Garret’s face on the thick cream paper in front of her. It was strange how her hand remembered things her brain did not. She still had photos of her first husband, of course, but since her marriage to Freddy they had been shut away in albums at the top of one of the wardrobes in the bedroom. Lily had not thought it fair to Freddy to have daily reminders of a man she had once loved. A man who had acquired the inconvenient halo of those who die young. These days, she recalled Garret’s essence more than his actual features, remembered the feel of him more than his physical form. But her hand still knew every line.

Like Prem, she had trusted her first husband implicitly. Although he was just as much of a workaholic as Freddy, his job as a leading neurosurgeon in a busy London hospital taking up all hours, Lily had never for a single minute worried he wasn’t where he said he’d be. Garret was like Freddy in that he was charismatic, unconsciously seductive, someone who could command the room, his charming smile effortlessly drawing people into his circle of admirers. A big, broad-shouldered Irishman, he was warm and very physical, someone who had made her feel safe.

But Lily had often felt she was part of ‘Garret Tierney Inc’. There was no exclusivity with him, no special place where she felt she alone occupied his affections. He loved her, she thought, enormously, but only as much as he loved his children, his friends, his work, his colleagues and the beleaguered victims of the Iraqi war, one of whom he’d operated on with remarkable success – a seven-year-old child with terrible brain injuries who’d been flown to Britain by a charity.

Her second husband, although similarly warm and physical, and equally able to charm the birds from the trees, seemed to have eyes only for Lily. He made her feel as if she were the entire centre of his world, despite his moods being sometimes difficult to predict, his sudden need to be alone disconcerting. She had thought her new marriage would mirror the uncomplicated friendship she’d shared with Garret. But Freddy’s love for her was a far more exclusive, more intense, more unpredictable thing. Lily felt he understood her on a deep soul level in a way no one else in her life ever had.

But as she waited in the early spring morning for him to return, she wondered how well she really knew him. Their first meeting, four years ago in Prem’s shop, had been what her friend later termed a coup de foudre. The instant, irrefutable connection was like fitting the final, long-lost piece into a jigsaw puzzle.

Prem had bamboozled Lily into working for her after the twins had left home to go to college: Dillon to Bristol, Sara to medical school in Nottingham. Lily, two and a half years widowed at the time, had sunk into a dull despair at the lonely, empty days stretching ahead of her. Days she couldn’t find the energy to fill. She had, by absolute choice, been a full-time mother since the twins were born.

She was not ambitious, had never had a burning desire for a career. In fact, she had never wanted to do anything but be left alone to draw the small, detailed, brightly coloured pen-and-ink portraits at which she was so good. Although no one could ever convince her of this because her going to art school had broken her father Roy’s heart. ‘That’s a bloody stupid waste of a life,’ he’d told her, tugging on his bushy auburn beard as he always did when upset, his fit, wiry body rigid with outrage. ‘You have to be brilliant to make it as an artist, and you’re not brilliant, Lillian, not by a long chalk.’

He was not being intentionally unkind, Lily had thought later. He just assumed that everything in the world was black and white, categorized by a straightforward rule, like a try or a penalty. Rugby was Roy Yeats’s passion, his obsession, his raison d’être; the family came a poor second. His day job was as a tough – and, by all accounts, inspirational – games teacher at a secondary school near Potter’s Bar, where Lily had grown up. He also refereed club rugby matches all over the country, and there wasn’t a detail of any game ever played that he couldn’t instantly recall.

Lily remembered his voice, always so confident and loud, ricocheting round the house after she’d told him about her offered place at Byam Shaw in north London, broadcasting his dissent in no uncertain terms to his cowering family. But Lily had quietly gone ahead anyway, side-stepping her mother’s spurious worries – or manipulations – that college would bring back the asthma and make her ill. She was sick to the back teeth of being thought weak, an invalid, and she told no one at college about her childhood condition.

But after Garret died, her drawing hand had become paralysed. Every image she saw around her echoed with the past, every room in the house a scene set for those times when her family had been whole, when her world had seemed perfect. It had panicked her that she couldn’t draw. Her pencil hovered above the blank page, but her hand was unable to commit to the lines and shapes that were normally hard-wired to her brain, as if her hand had been disconnected.

So, although she had no need to work – her husband had left her well provided for – over time Lily came to enjoy her job and the interaction with Prem’s clients in the shop. It was better than sitting at home, moping. And buying a desk chair seemed to open up in the clients a wealth of personal disclosures. She listened while they told her about back problems, injuries, operations, fitness challenges, worries about their business and their family. They had filled her loneliness to a degree, enough to make her feel, as the years passed, that there were still pleasures to be had. She had never imagined falling in love again, despite Prem’s dismal parade of potential suitors.

Then one Monday morning – nearly six years after Lily had been widowed – a tall, confident figure, well-dressed in expensive jeans, white shirt and a tailored black corduroy jacket, with indigo trim to the turned-up collar, had pushed open the shop door and strode straight to where Lily was standing. Smiling at her, he had thrust out his hand and introduced himself as if he had been expecting to meet her his whole life.

Lily, surprised by his forth