THE PRETENDERS
Domestic Thriller
BY AGATHA ZAZA

Excerpt

Chapter 14, beginning page 84

‘It’s great to see you again,’ Jasper had said.

She’d opened her mouth to reply, but his eyes were already flitting around the room.

‘Do you mean it’s genuinely lovely to see me again – or are you just being polite?’ Holly had surprised herself at how forceful she sounded.

‘Oh,’ Jasper had said, and he’d hesitated. ‘I’m just being polite.’

Her stomach had sunk, but then their eyes had locked, and she’d caught the spark of humour in his – something she hadn’t seen in him before.

‘But you knew I was coming.’ She’d wanted him to say he was interested in her, not to just infer it. ‘You could have called or sent a text – maybe invited me for drinks first?’

He’d smiled. ‘I was hoping you’d call me. I’m a bit slow at these things.’

‘Bad breakup?’ Holly had suggested. Jasper had looked over her shoulder at an enormous installation behind her and focused on it for a moment.

‘Stuff going on in my head.’

‘Like depression or something?’ she’d asked, her eyes wide in sympathy. Occasionally, she looked back at that moment and asked herself if he had or hadn’t nodded. Had the almost imperceptible motion he’d made been in agreement? Or had she simply interpreted it as such? Depression made sense. Perhaps she’d found an explanation that suited her,

so she took it.

‘So, would you like to go for a drink with me sometime?’ Holly had asked, just as Saskia joined in.

‘Oh my God! He’s smiling, like really smiling!’ Saskia had said. ‘Holly, you’ve saved my life!’ She’d elbowed her friend. ‘I’ll just leave you alone then.’

It still had taken another month before they were finally alone together. In that month, always in the presence of others, she’d learned that he could be funny at times, that

he would listen as she spoke, exuding concern and interest. She had also learned that he could stare at the ceiling, oblivious to her presence, or snap at her, annoyed at an inconsequential joke or what she thought was an exciting anecdote.

‘Then yesterday – a year and half later – he proposed, while we were at his parents’.’ Holly smiled at the memory of the hours that came afterwards in the room that had been his since he was a child. His childhood bed had long ago been replaced with a much bigger one, and the room was now decorated for an adult in hues of green and blue, mementos from his youth now on display in a glass-fronted cupboard in the corner.

‘On his knees, tears in his eyes, everything – according to the texts from our mother,’ Edmund interjected. ‘And he asked after dinner.’

Holly was pleased when Edmund spoke. She had been sure he wasn’t listening. He looked impassive, responding to the highs of her story with a nod. But she thought, happily, Jasper had probably told him all about her, and who likes to hear a story twice?

‘At least if she’d said no, you’d have already eaten. Nothing like rejection to ruin your appetite,’ Ovidia continued.

They all laughed except Jasper. Holly hadn’t considered refusing. The moment Jasper had lowered himself onto one knee, her heart had begun racing and knees trembling. She’d blushed and felt her stomach begin to churn as she began to understand what he was doing.

When he’d taken the ring from his pocket, fumbling with the little box, she’d clasped her hands over her mouth and shrieked, ‘Oh!’

It had been simple, nothing forced, nothing contrived, but Holly knew she’d remember it for the rest of her life. The proposal came as an affirmation that, regardless of his silences, his sudden bursts of emotion, and occasional disappearances for which he didn’t want her company, Jasper wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.