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THE THIRD SUMMER – 2013

She’d always imagined that one day Tom might propose to her in Paris.

Although when she’d pictured it, they’d been twenty-five at least, thirty maybe. A few years more into their relationship. But she knew that Tom was planning it on this, their third holiday in Paris, and the fact of it hung over everything they did.

It was farcical almost, she thought.

She knew he had a ring in his pocket.

He knew he had a ring in his pocket.

And she was pretty sure that he knew she knew he had a ring in his pocket.

It seemed they were going through the pantomime of it anyway. Both acting as if he didn’t have a ring box at all, but was just especially pleased to see her.

It was her third time in Paris, a year since they’d got back together here. And it had been a good one. His internship had morphed into a managerial position (perhaps thanks in part to his dad having a word in the right ear at the right time) and she’d passed her gruelling NQT year and become a proper teacher.

They’d managed six months of long-distance dating – train and car rides to and from London almost constant – before he’d found a leg up that got him into an office in Cambridge. Then there’d been his flat, the top floor of a Victorian house in a gorgeous central location. She’d done all the relationship commuting after that. Taking a Greyhound bus from the local town which wound around every backroad en route, or convincing her mum to drop her at the station in Ashwell, from which there was a direct link.

She’d stayed over so frequently that she’d started to think of it as their place, rather than his. But she’d never admit it; not unless he said something first.

And here they were. The stresses of the classroom left firmly behind her, the office – other than the odd phone call – barely interrupting his thoughts. Back in the city that had become their city, on a yearly trip that was starting to become a tradition.

‘We’ll do a proper holiday too,’ he’d told her when he’d suggested the trip. ‘I just thought it would be romantic to go again. An anniversary thing.’

‘It’s not a proper holiday?’

‘No. It’s Paris. Proper holidays have sunshine, beaches, cocktails, that sort of thing,’ he’d said, as if going to Paris were just an appetiser and the Maldives a main meal.

But she’d learned to laugh at his assumption that everyone must have had childhoods like his, that holidays were only holidays if they were ten days long or more, and involved tans and fancy meals and very little else.

‘If you insist,’ she’d joked instead.

In reality, even though he could definitely afford it – they could, actually, with her salary too – she still felt a little uncomfortable looking at the cost per night of the hotel off the Champs-élysées he’d chosen, where they were the youngest guests by a country mile and where they earned slightly suspicious looks, as if they’d just wandered in off the street and were chancing their luck.

She’d seen the proposal coming a few weeks ago, when he’d started trying to subtly find out about her favourite jewels, and she’d caught him going through her jewellery box looking for a ring to size. The day he arrived home late from work with a bulging suit pocket and the fact she later saw an Ernest Jones bag stuffed in the recycling had left her in no doubt about what he was planning to do.

Poor Tom. He’d tried so hard to be subtle, but he clearly didn’t have it in him.

She almost felt sorry for him. Like she should have put him out of his misery by saying: ‘Look, I know you’re going to pop the question. The answer’s yes. Now can we just go to the little place around the corner for a pizza rather than the special restaurant you said you’d booked – I’m not going anywhere where they serve foie gras.’ But she hadn’t. Because while it might relieve him in some ways, it might ruin something he was trying to build up to.

And she was going to say yes. Even though, in her gut, she felt it was far too soon. That she’d have preferred to give it another year or more before breaking out the jewellery. She’d thought about it over the preceding weeks and realised that if she wanted to be with Tom, she really had no option. He’d never recover from the humiliation of a ‘no’, or a ‘not yet’.

Instead, she’d decided to do the delighted squeal – or as near to it as she could bear – that he was probably hoping for. She’d take photographs of her left hand to show her parents and friends later. She’d… well, she’d find a way to tell her parents that wouldn’t lead to them trying to convince her she was too young and making a mistake.

They’d just have to have a long engagement, was all.

Mum and Dad liked Tom; they’d met him several times in recent months. The most recent, at the flat where she’d tried and failed to cook duck à l’orange and ended up buying Chinese. They’d made polite conversation with him, and everything on the surface had seemed completely fine. It was only because she knew them so well that she could read between the lines of their behaviour, and see their occasional glances when Tom mentioned his slightly-righter-than-theirs political views, or talked about investment schemes, or asked them where they liked to holiday each summer and had seemed amazed that they’d visited the same cottage in Cornwall for the past twenty years.

‘Don’t you ever fancy going farther afield?’ he’d said, biting on the end of a spring roll. ‘Doing a safari or something?’

‘Um, not really,’ her dad had replied politely.

Because they couldn’t afford it! Sophie had wanted to say, but hadn’t.

She was confident that her parents would come to love Tom the way she did. To see through their differences and find the man inside who, while a little misguided sometimes – mostly on account of his upbringing – meant well and loved her fiercely and protectively and with a passion that sometimes took her breath away.

Things with his folks were odd too. She’d seen more of them than her own parents in the past year – they met up for meals regularly, sometimes at his family home which seemed to her the kind of place that gets featured on one of those property design shows – and sometimes in restaurants. And each time she felt herself trying to become the sort of girlfriend they’d probably hoped for for their son.

She liked them – of course she did. But she’d cringed a little at his dad’s rather loud, sexist comments, at his tendency to treat wait staff in a haughty manner; tried to ignore the fact that Tom seemed completely unaware of the way she felt about the kind of world his parents inhabited.

She looked at him again, as they walked quickly towards the Eiffel Tower – his pace betraying his agitated state of mind – and reminded herself that she wasn’t her parents any more than he was his. And she wasn’t marrying his extended family, just him. And not yet, in any case.

What she was doing now, when he finally got around to dropping onto one knee, was making him happy in the moment, securing their relationship right now. Because she didn’t want it to end. And if that changed, well, she could always give the ring back.

She jumped a little when she realised he was looking at her.

‘What are you thinking?’ he said. ‘You look miles away.’

‘Sorry. Just… you know. It’s nice to be here again. It feels like it’s our place , doesn’t it?’

He laughed. ‘Sophie conquers Paris. I love it.’

‘You know what I mean,’ she said, giving him a dig in the ribs with her finger. He twisted out of her way and grabbed her hand.

‘Sorry, Your Majesty,’ he said, eyes twinkling. ‘Queen Sophie of France. I’d be careful if I were you, the French don’t take kindly to being ruled.’

‘Good point,’ she said with mock sincerity.

An hour later they were at the top, her breath taken away by the view, her mind inundated with a mixture of wonder and the slight fear she always had in high places that she might have a sudden temptation to jump into the void for no particular reason.

She stood as close to the edge as she dared – despite the criss-crossed metal barrier, she was still irrationally afraid of the drop – and gasped as the city lay before her, its tall buildings and mismatched architecture seeming more uniform and map-like than on the lower level.

‘Two hundred and seventy-odd metres,’ Tom said, his mouth close to her ear. He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Better hang on tight.’

‘Any excuse,’ she said, leaning one of her arms around his neck, but not taking her eyes off the view.

There were more people here with them than she’d bargained on and the area felt a little claustrophobic. Soon they’d take the lift down and she’d look at the tower from her preferred angle – feet clamped firmly to the ground – she decided.

His arms seemed to drop from her waist and he moved away slightly. At first, she thought he’d gone to look at the view from the other side – see another area of Paris as it fell flatly away from view. But then there was a cough, and she noticed one or two heads turned her way.

Although she’d been onto him for a while, she’d got one thing wrong. The restaurant tonight was meant to be the after-party. The real event was happening right here, right now at the top of the Eiffel Tower in front of delighted tourists, some of whom had already snapped pictures of Tom kneeling, looking up at her with his earnest eyes and holding an open box in which she saw an almost comically large diamond ring.

‘Oh!’ she said.

‘Sophie Baker, will you do me the honour of being my wife?’

She smiled. ‘Yes, Tom Gardner, I will.’

She was no longer in her body, but playing a part for those around her, imagining how each of the people here would go and tell their story about the proposal at the summit of the Eiffel Tower. The good-looking, earnest boy, the enormous diamond ring. Her delighted, emphatic ‘yes’.

As he slipped the ring on her finger, she felt slightly shaky. ‘Shall we go?’ she said quietly, and he nodded.

He held her hand as they made their way to the lift and put his arm around her. ‘Are you happy?’ he asked her.

‘Yes,’ she said. And she realised that she really was.