The restaurant clung to a mountainside high in the hills of Crete, with a view of the sparkling Mediterranean below. Alice and Max sat beneath the shade of a vine-covered pergola and breathed in the stunning surroundings. The restaurant had no menu. Hunks of barbequed pork and chicken were offered, served with rice, Greek salad and chunky home-made chips. Red or white wine and local draught beer were the only drink choices. The sound of chatter and laughter from the other diners rang out around the restaurant and among the tables on the terrace.
The food was served on long, grey stone tables and benches, which somehow gave it all a medieval and magical feel. Alice sighed with contentment as she gazed across the table at her boyfriend, Max. They’d only been together for a year, but it felt like she’d known him forever. With his dark hair, handsome smiling face and bright blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, he never failed to set her heart racing. Max leant across the table and clasped one of her hands in his.
‘I could stay here forever,’ sighed Alice, feeling herself relaxing into a second glass of crisp white wine.
‘Me too,’ said Max. He looked lovingly at Alice. Her blonde hair was falling in soft curls on her shoulders. Against her brown eyes and tanned skin, it made a striking combination. Max felt like the luckiest man in the world as he turned his head to follow her gaze across the mountains. The view to the left of the restaurant was of a deep sandstone gorge, where walkers could be seen in the distance hiking across a bridge flanked by climbing forest and deep ridges.
As Alice switched her gaze to the valley below, lost in a daydream, the sound of a guitar pulled her back to the present. She turned to see a smiling Greek man wearing a white shirt and a pair of black trousers slowly heading towards them through a bougainvillea-covered archway, strumming a guitar and singing softly. Max had arranged for the pair to be serenaded and as the guitarist drew nearer, Max felt his mouth go a little dry.
Alice had just begun to wonder what on earth was going on, when Max appeared beside her and dropped down onto one knee on the crazy-paved floor, at the same time as producing a small velvet box from his pocket. As he slowly lifted the lid, Alice gasped in astonishment at the sight of a sparkling solitaire that glinted in the bright sunshine.
‘I love you, Alice,’ said Max, his voice almost breaking with emotion. ‘You’re everything I ever wanted. You’re beautiful, kind and funny and I want us to be together forever. Please say you will be my wife.’
‘Oh Max,’ said Alice, barely to take in what had just happened. ‘I… I… Yes, yes, I would love to marry you!’
Max silenced her with a kiss before slipping the diamond ring onto her finger and pulling her to him, kissing her deeply and squeezing her like he never wanted to let her go.
When they finally drew apart, they became aware of the whoops and applause of the diners, whose shouts of congratulations rang around the restaurant. Max had also arranged for a waitress, who appeared right on cue, to bring some champagne. She popped the cork and poured them each a glass, smiling as they clinked their glasses together.
Alice thought she would literally burst with happiness and struggled to stop tears of emotion, as in that very moment, she felt more love for Max that she ever thought possible.
Later, as they meandered through the cobbled streets back to their hotel, with the ring sparkling on Alice’s finger, she felt her heart swell with love. She’d fallen for Max the minute she’d laid eyes on him and she knew without a doubt that he was the one.
If only she’d been able to see then how different things would feel two years later…
‘Don’t be such a bore, Alice. Everyone has a hen party.’
My friend Ria is sitting opposite me in a café near A Sense of Occasion, the shop in Liverpool city centre where I am currently employed part-time, enjoying a panini and a skinny latte. She’s wearing an olive-green dress and a scarf with shades of orange and brown, and a slash of peach lipstick that beautifully complements her copper coloured, curly hair.
‘Not everyone. My next-door neighbour didn’t.’
‘You know that doesn’t count. Iris is seventy-four. About the age you’re behaving at the moment,’ she teases.
My neighbour Iris met a man in the aisles of Sainsbury’s last year and they bonded over a conversation about the merits of microwave porridge and how it saved them so much time in the morning. Six months later they were married.
‘Don’t get me wrong, Ria, a getaway with the girls will be perfect. It’s just that I’d been thinking maybe a spa break at a nice hotel and a few bottles of Prosecco. I mean, Malia, really? Won’t it be full of over-indulgent nineteen-year-olds?’
My future sister-in-law, Molly, has arranged the whole thing, feeling excited that she’s bagged a bargain five-day bed-and-breakfast break in a hotel with a last-minute-escapes holiday company. She colluded with Max and then booked it as a surprise for me, knowing how much I loved my last holiday to the island of Crete.
‘It’s just a walk through the hotel gardens to the beach and it has a twenty-four-hour bar,’ she gushed. ‘Ooh, I can’t wait; we’re going to have a ball.’
I tried to quell the faint feeling of panic I’d had when she told me. I hope the bargain break really is as good as it sounds, because it seems a little too good to be true and all I can think of is The Inbetweeners Movie.
Max had originally offered to pay for a five-star luxury hotel for my hen party, but I have never mentioned that to Ria. To be honest, I had been on the lookout for a bargain break myself. Although generosity is a fine quality in a future husband, and Max is an independent financial advisor so I know that he’s good with money, I do worry sometimes that if he carries on with his spendthrift ways, we’ll have nothing saved for our future.
What I just said to Ria was the truth. I’m not that fussed about having a hen party at all. Perhaps she is right though. Maybe I am behaving like a right old bore.
I never expected to be working in a gift shop, but it pays the monthly rent on my flat when sales are a little slow with the paintings I sell online. Or I should say it used to pay the monthly rent. I have recently moved in with my fiancé, Max, who appeared in my life like a knight in shining armour when I was feeling a bit down. It wasn’t exactly a dream of mine to be selling overpriced (in my opinion) merchandise in a city-centre shop, although the owner, Gail, has been very good about displaying business cards for my online business at the checkout. Not to mention displaying some of my paintings, which have sold with modest success. The unique selling point of the shop is that it sells things for every occasion, which, as Gail says, ‘you won’t find anywhere else on the high street’. This is possibly true, as I can’t think of anywhere else that sells leopard-print his-and-hers passport covers. We also sell huge, ornately framed mirrors, faux snakeskin lampshades and anything a Cheshire wife could possibly need. The shop is always really busy, so there’s obviously a demand for ‘elegant’ glitz.
To be honest, I’d hoped that by the time I was thirty I would be a successful artist, with my own gallery and commissions rolling in. But that never quite took off for me and although I’ve built up quite a collection of paintings over the last couple of years, many of which are sitting in the spare room at home, at some point I let self-doubt get the better of me. Now the thought of showing off a whole room full of my paintings terrifies me. Silly, I know, when I sell them online but, well, maybe I can’t hear people’s reactions that way. They either buy the painting or they don’t.
If I did pluck up the courage to open a gallery, I wouldn’t want anything too fancy, just somewhere to exhibit my own work, maybe alongside the works of other local artists too. There was a gallery near my old apartment in Liverpool that ran kids’ activity clubs after school – messy play and coffee morning for young mums, that sort of thing. It was a great meeting place, but there’s nothing similar around here at the moment.
It’s always good to have a catch-up with Ria. She works for the Walker Art Gallery, running art classes and entertaining children on school trips, as well as part-time teaching jewellery-making at a local college. We studied fine art together at uni, after which Ria decided to specialise in jewellery-making. Now she exhibits her work in one or two gift outlets, including the art gallery shop.
‘So, what are you making at craft club later?’ I finish up my coffee and devour the last of a slice of delicious melt-in-the mouth chocolate cake, which arguably I shouldn’t be indulging in if I want to fit into my wedding dress.
‘Scarecrows. The kids love doing those. I like how they all look so different, although sometimes they can be terrifying.’ She laughs. ‘Last time, one kid painted black, angry-looking eyebrows on his and gave it spiky cardboard teeth. His mother said it would scare the postman out of the garden, never mind the crows.’
‘He’s creative at least,’ I say. ‘Was this the same boy who made a coffin with air-drying clay? You don’t think he could be Happy Wilson’s son, do you?’
We both roar with laughter. Ria once told me about a boy she’d sat next to at school called ‘Happy’ Harry Wilson. Apparently, he was a humourless character who’d informed her on a regular basis that the world would end the following day, and Ria would complain that it was never on a day when they had a double science lesson.
‘That’s the one, although to be fair it was a sarcophagus. He’d been learning about the Egyptians at school,’ she says, smiling. ‘By the way, I just saw the love of your life on the way over here.’
‘Max?’ I ask, surprised. ‘I thought he had back-to-back meetings at the office all morning.’ Max is never one to leave the office, apart from when he has a meeting with a prospective client.
‘He said he’d just driven in on his lunch break, to pick something up from a shop. I’m sure he’ll fill you in later. Perhaps it’s something for the wedding. I can’t believe it’s only a couple of months away now. The time has just flown by. It feels like only yesterday that he doused you in ketchup at the park.’
I laugh at the memory. Ria was there the day Max and I met, three years ago. I hadn’t felt like going out that day but Ria had persuaded me. Following a bout of pneumonia, I’d been a bit down and she’d told me that the fresh air would do me good.
Finding Max was like a gift from heaven at the time. My career was going nowhere and I’d taken a long time to recover from the pneumonia, which had completely knocked me off my feet.
I also had big problems with my flat that caused me additional stress as well, let’s just say that the landlord’s idea of maintenance had been to add another coat of paint over the damp walls. For a while, I’d noticed a damp patch on the ceiling spreading outwards, but the landlord had reassured me that he had checked it out and it was nothing to worry about.
One evening, as I sat alone, watching a Netflix series, I heard a rumbling sound above my head. At first, I thought it was the ancient boiler system groaning into life, but as the rumbling sound grew louder, I instinctively made my way to the landing outside, before hearing an almighty crash. I kid you not, when I returned there was a bath in my lounge. An actual bath, full-sized, which had crashed through the ceiling. Thankfully, no one had been sitting in it at the time, but it had obviously been filled as water had cascaded everywhere, completely flooding the lounge. As well as ruining everything in sight, the disaster finally sealed the fate of my previously half-dead house plants, drooping miserably in pots before the bath crushed them.
I had no choice but to move back home to my mum’s. My sister Lexie was working away in Jersey as a nanny at the time, freeing up the second bedroom. It felt strange moving back home, like a failure somehow, despite the situation being thrust upon me. I remember feeling a stab of regret that Dad lived so far away in Edinburgh or I might have considered staying with him. He and I were always closer than I was with my mum.
One afternoon, when I finally felt like I was getting my strength back, Ria and I went to a food festival in Sefton Park and that was where I met Max. It was a glorious sunny day and we were standing next to Max, ordering a burger from a food truck, when Max managed to squirt a load of ketchup over me. He was mortified and paid for Ria’s lunch and mine to make up for it. And when he tapped my number into his phone a while later, I realised that I was already looking forward to seeing him again.
We just sort of clicked from that first date, quickly realising that we had a lot in common. We’re both foodies and love sampling all sorts of cuisine at street markets. We also enjoy hikes through the local pine forests and moonlit walks along Formby Beach. Max really seems to appreciate the efforts I go to provide delicious picnics with home-made treats, in contrast to my previous boyfriend who ‘didn’t see the point of picnics’. Things with Max are so different. He even bought me a new picnic basket from Fortnum & Mason as a present for our first anniversary, which he filled with tasty treats that we ate leisurely in Calderstones Park overlooking the lake. As we sipped Prosecco and dined on salmon blinis and strawberries, I had never felt so content in all my life.
Max is always surprising me with his zest for life and it’s one of the things I love the most about him. His gestures are not necessarily expensive (apart from the picnic basket), but might be a bunch of wild flowers, or perhaps a flavour of filter coffee that I’m particularly partial too. He once gave me a new pencil sharpener after I told him that I had mislaid mine and that my new eye pencil was now rendered useless. His gifts are thoughtful treats.
It’s true that, as his financial advice firm has become more successful over the last couple of years, Max’s gifts are also more generous: a weekend spa with my mum, which she cancelled at the last minute and so I took Ria instead; a Gucci bag from the actual Gucci shop. Previously, Ria and I would trawl shopping villages for designer-brand discounts and even that was only if we had a special occasion to attend. I was grateful for it all, really I was. It’s just that sometimes I missed the thrill of bagging a fabulous bargain in a sale. Or feeling the excitement of winning an auction item on eBay.
I’m so happy, though, that at least one aspect of my life is going well and I’m sure that, given time, my professional life will give me the same sense of satisfaction.
‘I know, I can’t wait. Who would have thought I’d find the love of my life standing outside a fast-food truck?’ I say now, with a happy smile.
‘Gourmet fast food. To this day I’ve never tasted a burger as good as the one I had that day.’
We wrap up lunch and Ria tells me she’s just popping into Monsoon as there’s a sale on.
‘There’s always a sale on somewhere. No wonder you never have any money.’
‘You can’t take it with you when you go.’ She waves her designer purse in the air and laughs.
Watching her walk away, her copper curls bouncing as she walks, I feel blessed to have such a great friend. She’s seen me through so many ups and downs and her positive, upbeat personality shines through like a ray of sunshine even on the darkest day. We’ve been friends since the day she found me dithering in a corridor at university, looking for the canteen, and invited me to sit with her and her friend Kerry for lunch. I just can’t imagine my life without Ria.
I always feel happier when I’ve had a catch-up with my friend and I head back to the shop with a spring in my step. As I walk back to work, my thoughts return to my forthcoming hen party and I tell myself I should make the most of it and count my blessings that I have such wonderful women in my life to celebrate with. Ria, Molly, Kerry and my sister Lexie will be joining me, so it should be a lot of fun. And Crete is a beautiful island, which will always hold a special place in my heart as it’s where Max proposed.
I do need to try to be more positive. It’s been a good week so far: I’ve sold two of my paintings online, not for an awful lot of money, but I was thrilled to sell them all the same. One was of some tall ships at the Royal Albert Dock, the other was a painting of the Metropolitan Cathedral set against an orange sunset, which was one of my favourites. I rarely do portraits of people, as I never feel that I’ve quite captured their likeness. Unlike Ria, who can sketch a perfect likeness of someone even with an ordinary pencil, which I consider to be a real talent.
Arriving back at work, I find the rest of the day passes quickly as I ring up a couple of purchases of some black and white city prints (painted by yours truly) and an assortment of gifts and wrapping paper. As I serve a customer with some crystal champagne flutes, my thoughts turn to my wedding dress, which is currently hanging in Boutique Brides of Crosby, which is in a nearby village. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was the one and was thrilled when I tried it on and it fitted like a glove. It’s a long, ivory, off-the-shoulder number with a slight fishtail. Mum came dress shopping with me and preferred a fuller, meringue style that I’d tried on, calling it ‘a proper wedding dress’, but I stuck to my guns. I was pleased that she’d been with me that day and hadn’t had to dash off somewhere. It had ended up being a really lovely outing and we had even enjoyed lunch together at a vintage tea room close by. But, for some reason, thinking about wearing that beautiful dress in front of a room full of people all staring at me now fills me with anxiety that I force myself to shake off.
My fiancé Max runs his own financial advice business in Formby village, a suburb of Liverpool, which is also where we live. We bought our three-bedroom. . .
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