The Honeymoon Hotel Read Online Free Page B

couldn’t quite put my finger on until I saw
Pirates of the Caribbean
, and realized he was one of the few men in London who could genuinely be described as ‘swashbuckling’. Four months and many meals later, during which he actually listened to my thoughts about food (something Ant had hated because ‘you sound like you’re still at work’) I’d moved my electric toothbrush into Dominic’s garden flat in Kensington, which he shared with his collection of unopened review-copy cookbooks and an unused exercise bike.
    We’d been living together for two years now, and I’d progressedto a chest of drawers of clothes and a shelf of the bathroom cabinet not taken up by indigestion remedies. Ours wasn’t a traditional relationship, given our weird working hours meant we didn’t spend much ‘supermarket and DIY’ time together, but Dominic had put my coffee choices on his Nespresso coffee pod delivery reorder, and I’d made a list of all his family birthdays and anniversaries so he could send cards before his mother told him to. We had the same taste in Chilean wine and American comedy shows, and neither made the other feel bad about late working nights or long lie-ins. And we made each other laugh. What more could you ask? as I often said to Helen.
    All in all, I felt that Dominic and I were ready to take the next step and make things official. Not by getting married – Dominic thought weddings were just an excuse for couples to go on a shopping dash round the homewares departments of John Lewis, and I wasn’t in a hurry to do it again – but by buying somewhere together. Our own place, to relax and cook and have people over for dinner – something we’d never been able to do, because Dominic hadn’t seen the point in renting a flat with an adequate kitchen when he ate out for every meal but breakfast. The lease on his flat was up just after Christmas, and we’d talked seriously about pooling our resources which were just enough to buy something small in roughly the same area. Dominic was all for it – it was, he said, a smart move in the current market. That, for me, was a sign that he saw an active future in our relationship, much more so than if he’d just drifted into proposing like Anthony had.
    Besides, let’s face it, a joint mortgage is for twenty-five years. And unlike a marriage, you can get insurance to cover yourself if one party decides to bail out.
    *
    On Wednesday night I pushed open the door to the newest gastropub laying itself open to Dom’s razor-sharp assessment, with a sheaf of estate agents’ details tucked into my bag. I’d downloaded the particulars of some flats that were more or less on the outskirts of the areas Dominic would consider living in, while being just about inside our budget. According to my notebook, this was the two hundredth meal out we’d eaten together, and it felt like an auspicious moment to start moving on to the next phase in our relationship.
    The property details were tucked into my own food notebook, a leather-bound sketchpad with my initials on that Dominic had given me for Christmas. Well, not my initials, exactly. My nom-de-plume’s initials. BC.
    Like most food writers’ partners, I featured in the column. I was Betty, short for Betty Confetti, Dominic’s nickname for me on account of the weddings that dominated my working day. I almost recognized myself: Betty was a hearty eater who cracked the occasional dry joke, although Dominic had an annoying habit of attributing Betty’s best dry jokes to himself in the editing of the column, something I forgave in return for all the free meals.
    Tonight’s gastropub was in Kensington, round the corner from our flat, a newly refurbished former spit-and-sawdust boozer called the Loom, which I thought was pretty appropriatesince the fashionably rustic staff loomed over you within thirty seconds of arriving, even before you’d got your coat off.
    ‘Ooh, nice. Like that,’ said Dominic when I muttered