Winter in London Without You novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Winter Lunch

Verity walks into the Mayfair lunch in her hospital band, tells sixty staff plainly, drops her ring in his wine, and a courier hands her a letter saying she must leave the house by six.

I walked into the restaurant in Mayfair with a hospital band still on my wrist.

It was twenty past four. The winter lunch had been going since noon.

The doorman looked at my stained coat and my bare face and opened his mouth to stop me.

"I'm Mrs Wrenfield," I said. "I'm his wife."

He stepped aside.

The private room was at the back, with a long table dressed in white and green and sixty people at it.

Someone was laughing. Someone else was clinking a glass for a toast.

Alistair stood at the far end with his jacket open and a drink in his hand.

Bryony sat at his right, in cream, with her phone held up to film him.

She saw me first.

Her smile dropped for half a second, and then it came back brighter.

"Verity!" she said. "Oh, you poor thing, you shouldn't be out of bed."

The laughter thinned out and stopped.

Alistair turned.

I watched him take in the coat and the band and my face, and for a moment he had no answer ready.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

"You hung up on me," I said.

"Not here."

He said it quietly, with a smile for the guests.

"I called you from a taxi," I said. "I was bleeding."

Nobody at the table moved.

"I lost the baby at about two o'clock today. I was sixteen weeks. They kept me in a room at St Mary's until half past three."

I said it plainly, in a voice that carried to the back wall.

A woman near me put her hand to her mouth.

"Verity," Alistair said. "That's enough. We'll talk about this at home."

"You said that in a text."

"Verity, darling." Bryony was on her feet, one hand out. "The hospital rang me, and I was going to tell him the second the speeches were done. He was in the middle of presenting. He didn't know it was that serious."

"I told him it was."

"I'm sure you did, but you've been through so much." She touched my sleeve. "Let me get you a car. Let me look after you."

I looked at her hand on my arm.

It was a warm hand, with a gold ring on the middle finger.

I moved my arm away.

"Alistair," I said. "Look at me."

He looked at the table, then at his watch, and then at me.

"What do you want me to say?" he said. "I'm sorry. Obviously I'm sorry. Can we not do this in front of my staff?"

"They're not doing anything. They're listening."

"Verity."

"You blocked my number again today," I said. "You wrote it into my chart that I was to go through her."

His jaw tightened.

"Don't be dramatic."

That was the word.

It was what he had said when I cried at my father's grave, and when I came home from the first scan and wanted to talk, and when I said I missed him.

I took off my wedding ring.

It was tight from being pregnant and it didn't want to come, so I twisted it over my knuckle until it did.

Then I walked down the length of the table, past sixty people who would not meet my eyes.

I stopped at his place.

There was a glass of red wine beside his plate, still nearly full.

I dropped the ring into it.

It made a small sound and sank to the bottom.

"I'm going," I said. "You know where my things are. You'll find I've taken nothing of yours."

"Verity, don't be absurd," Alistair said, very low. "Where would you even go?"

I didn't answer him.

Bryony called after me, "Take care of yourself, sweetheart!"

I kept walking, out through the restaurant and into the cold.

It had started to get dark. The Christmas lights were on all along the street, white and gold.

I stood on the pavement with twelve pounds and no key to anywhere that was mine.

A man in a courier's jacket stepped out of a van.

"Verity Wrenfield?"

"Yes."

"Sign here, please."

I signed with a pen that didn't work properly. He handed me a thick cream envelope, and he left.

It was from a firm of solicitors in Lincoln's Inn, dated that morning.

I read it standing under a streetlamp, with my hands not quite steady.

It said that under the agreement I had signed before the wedding, I had no claim on my husband's property, income or homes.

It said I would be required to leave the house in Chelsea by six o'clock this evening.

It was already five.

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