The most stressful few days of my career ended with a round of congratulations and thanks from a whole selection of people; all of them rich, and the majority either powerful, famous, or both. These were the movers and the shakers, and they loved my work. Even Kernigan found me, sitting in the park and watching the celebs from a distance, and thanked me for my contributions to an event that he had truly enjoyed. He promised me again that I would get exactly what I had hoped for, and that was a whole weight off my mind.
As the celebs started drifting away, one or two at a time, I could finally relax. Bracewell had been very firm that cleanup was not my responsibility. She said that she'd seen the number of times that I had popped up to help with some unexpected drama from the Hollywood crowd late at night, early in the morning, or at a whole range of different times; and that she was certain that I was now tired enough to hand the reins over to one of my subordinates. So Ken Heeling was in charge of the teams tidying up the site and restoring the parks, courtyards, and conference rooms of Upper Ashfields to their usual state, while Jessop and Carter were chosen to handle any last queries from the guests who were still on site.
I walked back to my car, ready to go home and see how much my baby had missed me. But there was someone waiting for me before I got there. As I got closer, I recognised the profile of probably the last person I had expected to see again, Tyler Walthamstone. It looked like it could have been the start of even more drama; but he was just begging me not to share anything with his legions of fans. And this time he had something to bribe me with: He promised that he could get his hands on a copy of the movie before it was actually available. That sounded like a significant bribe; and the kind of thing that would probably have kept me from sharing incriminating photos online, if I had actually taken any.
Was it immoral to accept something that was probably itself illegal as an encouragement not to do something I'd never had any intention of doing in the first place? Probably. But I consoled myself with the thought that he should have learned to keep his door locked; or to avoid indulging those particular fantasies when he was supposed to be working. It would have been so easy for him to control himself; and I liked to think that I was teaching him an important lesson in maturity.
And then, home. Or not. Because this was the first day in a while that I wouldn't be working from first light until late in the evening, or even all night. And so it was my first opportunity in some time to do some shopping.
I had ordered a wedding dress already. Maybe that was a little presumptuous; I didn't even know how long our engagement would be. But it had seemed like the right thing to do, when everything was going so well. It was almost like the universe itself was giving me subtle hints, telling me what I should be doing. It would have been senseless of me to refuse. But now that I had the dress, I had been reminded that there were other details I needed to story out. And things that I needed to do sooner, at that. Because I only needed the dress before our wedding day, but I would need a ring long before that.
It wasn't actually as hard as I might have expected. I could probably have found a reputable jeweller in Greater Ashfields, if I had looked, but I remembered a recommendation that a distant friend had made some time ago, and when something reminded me of that, I thought that it seemed a good time to trust my instincts. I took the back way out of Upper Ashfields, and followed quiet roads for ten minutes until I reached the junction I was aiming for, and merged into four lanes of traffic all cruising along slightly above the speed limit.
Moistville wasn't the quickest place to go shopping, nor was it one that I would normally have thought about. But it had a whole shopping centre dedicated to traditional craftsmen, where most of the businesses had been passed down in some family for a century or more. I knew a lot of people in town; or I had once upon a time. I'd spent one year here when I was at university, and gotten to know a lot of people in the area. That was when I'd fallen in love with the scenery in this part of the world, and decided that I wanted to live around here after graduation. But when I thought back to the wonderful people I'd met in a placement year at Moistville, I wondered how many of them would have moved on already. How many of them would have graduated. Because that was the big deal with this place. Although they talked about their pride in local culture, the whole town was really Moistville University, in the same way that Upper Ashfields was SYL Incorporated. The city centre had lecture halls and student residences, linked by a complex spiderweb of pedestrian paths hanging in the air above the streets. There were bars and coffee shops along every street, and no restaurant could succeed unless it offered either a break from work or an opportunity for students to snack while they completed their assignments. Almost the whole town was built around academic timetables, stores whose primary customers were students mixed in with all their residences and university buildings. The particular street I was aiming for was the only real exception to that rule.
And when a town had a single purpose like that, it was hard to imagine that anyone I might have known would have stuck around past the end of their course. It made me feel old, in a way, to realise how long it had been since I was a nervous teenager, sitting in those coffee lounges and coming to terms with the fact that the world finally considered me an adult.
The place hadn't changed all that much in the last few years, and all the buildings still looked familiar. There were some new constructions, and some of the ones I remembered had gone; and like any new town, there were scattered areas where constructions was still ongoing, constantly striving to create something more modern than what had gone before. The street signs were in bright colours, and I knew that once you knew the colour of a particular building, it would be easy to find your way there. So even when I hadn't come back in several years, I would have no trouble finding the place that a college friend had once recommended.
I wasn't after a conventional ring; I had a very clear idea in my mind of what I wanted it to look like. Early in our courtship, we'd seen a market stall selling jewellery where flawed or broken gems were made whole with tiny bits of glass; a passion project by a friend of a friend who thought her idea was due to be the next big thing. We hadn't bought anything, but Ffrances had thought long and hard about one of them, saying that it was the most romantic ring design ever. Two semi precious stones fused together with glass, to create the appearance of two becoming one. I'd thought it was a little cheesy, but I could appreciate the symbolism.
I showed a middle-aged jeweller a photo that had been sitting in my phone's camera roll through at least three upgrades, and he said it would be difficult to make something like that. Exactly the words I had hoped for. Difficult meant expensive, and it would take a long time. But neither of those was really a problem for me. And while I was waiting for him to work out whether he could make what I wanted, I thought again about why I was doing this. Not the proposal; I knew that there was no way I could have made any other choice. It was the right time to ask her to stay with me forever. But the ring... I wasn't doing this just because I wanted to give her an expensive trinket. I wasn't doing it because I wanted to be quirky. It wasn't even because of an offhand comment about how romantic a design was. I was getting a unique ring made from two diamonds of different colours because it was romantic, and because it was a memory for us even if she didn't remember those words. I would know what it meant, and those memories mattered. The times when we had been able to work together perfectly, seeing the world in the same day. I wanted to remind her of that, and I wanted to put my hope that we would always have that closeness into a tangible form.
We didn't sign something as serious as a contract. We shook on the deal instead, once he had told me the price. I knew that his payment plans would be no problem, and after looking at pictures of all the other things he had designed, and some of the rings in the front of the shop, I was confident that he had the skill to create exactly what I had asked for. It was a question of trust.
Perhaps I should have gone straight home. I was already tired, even though it was only early evening. The whole of the day had passed in a blur. Like a dream, a series of moments that were all important, but none of the details had stuck in my mind. Perhaps the last couple of days had tired me out more than I thought. I was eager to see Ffrances now, and I was sure that she would comment on my smile just as soon as she saw me. Would I be able to keep this a surprise for a couple of weeks until Golden Ring hit the shelves? I hoped so, but when I was so excited it might be easy for Ffrances to know I was up to something.
And as excited as I was to get home, I knew that I should probably let my brain rest a little and my adrenaline levels return to something closer than normal. So I found a student bar whose decor looked something like a factory crossed with the inside of a gaming PC. The industrial grunge aesthetic wasn't really my thing, but I could find a dark corner to order some food and relax before the evening crowd started coming in. It was pretty quiet now, and nobody bothered me. I knew it was time to go when flashing lights in all a dozen primary colours flickered into life, and by the time I got outside I didn't even remember what I had just eaten.
I climbed back into the car, sure that I was a little more awake now than I had been. I slipped my phone into the charging cradle on the dash, and noticed that Ffrances had sent me a dozen messages, which I hadn't even heard. She wanted to know if I was going to be home for dinner; and then if there was something wrong. It wasn't usual for me not to respond to her messages, even if I was working. And then I saw that she had sent one of the messages to trigger an automatic response from the apps on my phone; asking where I was. She knew I'd been in a bar in Moistville, nearly an hour's drive from home, and so she must have guessed that I wouldn't be back soon. That was when the messages had stopped.
"Running some errands," I responded, tapping quickly with both thumbs. I hit all the keys without errors, so I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to fall asleep on the road, although my judgement now might have been a little less perfect than it would normally be. "Sorry I didn't hear your messages, I forgot to unmute my phone after the last meeting. I'll be back as soon as I can, I already ate. Missing you. Love you."
I stared at the messages on the tiny screen, and hoped they didn't sound too much like a lame excuse. But that just put an edge on my feelings. I needed to see her now; her smile was the only thing needed to make a perfect day complete, and the only thing that could keep me going when I arrived home. The drive passed in a blur, but I noticed another message appearing on my phone: "I'll see you when you get here." I couldn't wait. And I knew that even without knowing why I felt so alive, she would be ready to reciprocate my feelings tonight.
Twenty minutes farther, and I was backing the car up and grabbing my bags. I told myself that I couldn't be too amorous right away, no matter how much we wanted to. It wasn't as late as it felt, and Tess might still be awake. I walked up the path and opened the back door; wondering whether my love would greet me with some expression of love, or curiosity about the business that had occupied me this evening. Would she expect a present from my shopping trip, or would I be enough? I wished I'd thought to buy something. But out of all the possible responses she could have given, I never even considered a slap.
"How dare you!" my Mistress barked, power and disappointment in every outraged syllable. "I wanted to think I could trust you, but this is a new low." I knew at once that this wasn't some kind of game. I stood there on the doorstep, desperately searching my memories for clues as to what she might have misunderstood, while she massaged the life back into her fingers and strode away.
Author's Note: I really enjoyed writing this chapter, and hope the lack of detail as I skip through a bunch of events isn't too distracting. I wonder if anyone was expecting that last paragraph; and if there's anyone who managed to put the hints together and figure out the answers that Gabby is currently failing to see.