Page 104 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“I know whose idea it was to get married,” he said. “I don’t need to ask

around—I was there. And so were you, just another stunner among the many,
many stunners of London town, drunk on a sofa with one of your best mates—”
“Excuse me . . . the best mate may have been legless, but seeing as I’m a hero
of the kingdom of alcohol, I was mildly tipsy. Also don’t forget to mention that
this best mate was a moderately attractive man who’d never once made so much
as a hint of a move on me in all the twenty-eight years we’d known each
other . . .”

“Maybe he thought it was too obvious. I mean, Jack and Jill? Anyway the two
of you were thirty-nine years old, prime of life, and both solvent to boot, so the
man plucked up the courage to say . . . Hang on, what did I say again?”
Do you think that maybe we’re able to love someone best when that person
doesn’t know how we feel? That’s what Jacob had said, and she’d looked at him

and asked if he was about to say something weird to her. She’d rather he didn’t.
Having weird things said to her was a large part of her day job and why couldn’t
she have time off? Jacob’s answer was that he was about to say something
weird, but only a tiny bit, and maybe what he wanted to say wouldn’t come out
sounding as wrong as they thought it would. Maybe it would sound normal.
Let’s get married and have sublime blasian babies before it’s too late, Jacob
had blurted after she’d nodded at him to continue. Jill stretched an arm out and

refilled both their shot glasses. It was already too late for babies. She’d had a
sort of deadly serious running joke with both her previous husbands that having
children would have to wait “until the war’s over.” But none of the ongoing wars
looked likely to ever end, and she could no longer see carrying a child in her
future. Not physically, and not mentally either. Maybe that had always been the
case.

“I’m not going to marry you, mate.”
“Oh. That’s . . . well, I mean, why not? Because I said blasian? Because we
haven’t known each other for long enough?”
In her head she’d replied: Because I can’t just keep getting married all the
time, and also because I’m pissed off with you for making me sit through two of
my own weddings and one of yours before it occurred to you that maybe we
should have tried it together first.

Aloud she’d said that they were too old, adding that they didn’t need to get
married. She said they could just see each other, if he wanted. She advised
sleeping the question off. Maybe he’d wake up and realize that he only wanted
to get married when he drank a lot of soju.