'I might do after tonight,' she said, a reluctant smile tugging at her mouth and as their eyes met it was as if the two of them were alone for a tiny moment in a private world.
Josh was the first to look away. 'It's good of you to have gone to so much effort,' he said looking around the kitchen.
'Yes, it all looks lovely,' said Aisling, who had observed the way their eyes had locked with a narrowed gaze.
Bella had found an antique damask cloth for the old pine table where she and Kate and Phoebe had spent so many hours drinking wine and putting the world to rights, and she was pleased with the effect now that it was laid with gleaming glasses and flowers and lit candles.
It all looked just as romantic as she had intended-if you looked one way, at least. The effect was rather spoiled if you looked the other by all the dirty dishes piled up beside the sink. She had used just about every implement in the kitchen already and there was still so much to do. She had always loved the big cosy kitchen, but sometimes you could see the point of a separate dining room where you could pretend everything was under control.
'I do like this kitchen,' Aisling was saying. 'It's the main reason I was hoping to move in at one time.'
'I'm sorry,' said Bella, remembering how she had turned down the idea when Josh had suggested it.
She swallowed. That brief, intense exchange of looks had left her feeling peculiar, almost jarred, as if she had stumbled in the dark. You weren't supposed to gaze into a man's eyes when you were just friends, and especially not when you were celebrating his engagement to someone else.
'I must have seemed very unfriendly when I insisted on keeping the house to myself,' she said by way of an apology.
'Don't worry about it,' said Aisling, waving a careless hand so that the diamond on her finger glinted in the candlelight. 'I'm sure I'd have felt exactly the same. And anyway, as things turned out it was best thing that could have happened, wasn't it, darling?'
She took Josh's arm in a proprietorial manner. 'If you'd agreed to let me come here, I wouldn't have moved in with Josh, and we would never have discovered just how compatible we were,' she said. 'We probably wouldn't even have thought of getting married, would we, Josh?'
'It's hard to know,' he said.
'So it's all thanks to you, Bella.' Aisling lifted her glass with the hand that wasn't clutching Josh and sent her a glittering smile. 'Thank you!'
Bella's own smile was feeling more than a little fixed, and she turned away to pick up a plate. 'Have a canape,' she said.
'Ooh, I shouldn't really…' Aisling inspected the plate. Bella was proud of her way with nibbles, and she had spent hours making these look spectacular with exquisite garnishes.
'These are the only part of the meal that have worked, so I should make the most of them if I were you,' she told Aisling.
'Well, maybe just one.' Aisling let go of Josh and her hand hovered over the plate until she had selected the one she evidently judged the least fattening. 'Delicious,' she said.
'Have another.'
'Oh, no, thanks.' She patted her perfectly flat stomach complacently. 'I've seen the perfect dress already but I can't afford to put on so much as a milligram if I want to get into it for the wedding.'
'Have you decided when it's going to be?'
Bella was hugely grateful to Phoebe for coming up and joining in the conversation just then. Possibly she had seen that Bella herself was close to taking her canapes and shoving them down Aisling's ample cleavage.
'Next May,' said Aisling. 'I think a spring wedding is lovely, don't you?'
There was a feverish glitter in Aisling's green eyes and she seemed on a high. Bella supposed she couldn't blame her. She would be euphoric if she were wearing Josh's ring and had Josh to go home with at the end of the evening, but she hadn't anticipated that every word Aisling spoke would be like a knife twisting inside her.
'Excuse me,' she said, suddenly desperate to get out of the kitchen so no one could see her face. 'I must just go and see about the starter.'
Phoebe was listening to Aisling's increasingly manic wedding plans, and Josh looked down into his champagne with a slight frown.
'Don't worry,' Gib said in his ear. 'I brought some beer with me.' He peered into his own glass with a grimace. 'I don't know why women insist on drinking this stuff! Down that, and I'll get you a proper drink.'
Josh grinned and drained his glass obediently. Gib could always make things seem better.
The meal couldn't be described as a culinary triumph- Bella's never were-but there was plenty of wine and good company. While Aisling was on extra sparkling form, Bella was much quieter than usual, but once she stopped jumping up and down to see to the food she did relax, and it was a great evening.
When she got up much later to make some more coffee, Josh followed her to the working end of the kitchen to give her a hand while the others carried on a spirited argument at the table.
'In case I don't get a chance to say it later, thank you,' he said.
'Sorry about the beef,' she sighed. 'And the pudding. It was all a bit of a disaster, wasn't it?'
'It was delicious,' Josh lied manfully. 'And anyway, it doesn't matter what the food was like. What matters is all the trouble you went to. It's been a very special evening, and I really appreciate it. So does Aisling,' he added as he put his arms around Bella and gave her a hug.
For a second or so she leant into him, but then pulled away and made a big deal of filling the kettle.
'Still no word from Will?' Josh asked.
'I see him occasionally,' she said, carefully spooning coffee into the cafetiere, 'but it's not the same.'
'Isn't it getting any easier?'
Bella stopped and looked straight at him. 'No,' she said.
Right, she was going to have to get on with her life, Bella told herself the next morning as she tackled the monumental pile of washing up. Oh, for a dishwasher!
Miracles were not going to happen. Aisling was hell-bent on marrying Josh, and judging by the conversation at dinner last night had turned overnight into an obsessive who could talk about nothing else. They had heard all about Aisling's plans for the wedding, some of which were clearly news to Josh, and had even been treated to a summary of every possible honeymoon location.
'We're off to the Seychelles in a couple of weeks anyway,' Aisling rattled on, 'so we can check it out and see if it's a place we'd want to go back to. It looks beautiful, but there might not be enough to do there apart from diving.'
'Most honeymoon couples don't have any problem finding something to do!' said Gib, amused, but Aisling took him seriously.
'Josh and I aren't like that. We need to be able to climb or sail or go white-water rafting. We'd both be bored to death lying on a beach all day.'
Bella had been unable to resist exchanging a speaking glance with Kate and Phoebe.
'Not one of us!' Kate had mouthed back.
'She's protesting too much if you ask me,' Phoebe had murmured in Bella's ear a bit later. 'Bet she hates all that tough stuff really.'
Bella didn't think Phoebe was right. Aisling might have rattled on obsessively about weddings all night, but she was equally at home out in the wild like Josh, and once the wedding of the century-as theirs was clearly intended to be-was over, she would settle down and be good for Josh.
Which meant that
Easier said than done. Bella did try. She made herself go to parties again, and she tried to keep herself busy the rest of the time so that she didn't have too much time to think, but the thought of Josh was like a constant ache inside her. It was the first thing Bella was aware of when she woke, and the last thing before she went to sleep, and in between it throbbed dully and insistently and made it impossible to think of anything else.
She lost weight, which didn't suit her, and she knew that her skin looked tired and there were dark shadows under her eyes. Kate and Phoebe tutted in concern when they saw her.
'You look awful!'
'Thanks!'
