Page 56 of Consider Yourself Kissed

She shrugged, because she was a bit drunk by then, and it was hard to admit that she was seeing him in a whole new light, just because he was cherished and rich. It made her seem shallow. Shewasshallow.

The risotto was lovely: yellow from saffron, creamy, buttery, very rich and cheesy. “It’s delicious,” Coralie kept saying.

Barbie took the compliments as his own. “I keep telling him he should open his own place.”

“But then you’d never see me,” Dan said.

“Okay, Coralie. I insist.” Barbie set down his fork. “The name.”

“It’s boring, really.” She paused to check he was listening. “Coralie. It’s just a small town in the middle of nowhere in Queensland. My dad grew up in a bigger town nearby. Not that big, really. Not that nearby.”

“Where was the bigger town?”

“Cairns? If you know it.”

“I don’t, but I’ve been up north—to Darwin, with Danny.”

It was a betrayal. “When?”

“After we…” Dan took a breath. “Got married,” he said. “We went to visit Mum’s ashes. In October.”

Adam looked from Dan to Barbie. “Married?”

“It was a visa thing,” Dan mumbled.

Barbie rolled his eyes. “Maybe for him it was!”

“Okay, no, it was a love thing, but my visa was going to run out, you know, Cor. I was on the youth one.”

“We should have brought champagne,” Adam said. “Or at least more expensive wine. Well, congratulations, you two. Wow!” He dropped his fork on the table and rushed around to hug Barbie. When it was Daniel’s turn, he gave him a kiss on the cheek.

Daniel was watching Coralie. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Did you have a party? And not invite me?”

“No, no. We had a Hackney Town Hall wedding. The witnesses were our neighbors.”

“Hackney Town Hall,” Adam said. “That’s what we’re going to do.”

“At some point,” Coralie said.

Barbie hunched over his bowl. “You haven’t put a ring on it?”

The question was for Adam, but Coralie shook her head. “I mean, my visa was from work—they did it for me. We didn’t have to get married—for me to stay.”

But why hadn’t they? They’d become a couple so easily, so quickly, so romantically! She had moved in—an instant family with Zora. The renovation, even—making Adam’s house (“my fucking house”) intotheirhouse, with an investment of her care and money. And then Flo. All these things were bigger than a ceremony; they were the momentous daily commitments oflife.

“Excuse me for a second, would you?” Adam did a funny stork-like walk to mime searching for a bathroom.

“Just in the hall, at the back,” Coralie said.

Barbie refilled Coralie’s goblet. “Why didn’t you want to tell me where your name was from?”

“First, because you were doing something I fear and hate—asking me a question but not waiting for the answer.”

“Oh, sorry, I do care. It’s my ADHD; it makes me bounce around. Okay, go on, you said ‘first.’ What was second?”

“I don’t like being attached to a town I know nothing about and that no one knows anything about.”

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