Forget Me Knot Read Online Free Page A

spiral, Toby, dear?” she trilled.
    As Toby’s visits became more frequent, Jean and Hugh started to relax. Jean felt able to make him a cup of tea in an Ikea mug, and Hugh began serving £6.99 Aussie red with dinner.
    Like Abby, they, too, picked up on Toby’s maturity. “Such a sensible, dependable young man,” Abby heard Jean telling Aunty Gwen on the phone. “Hugh and I think the world of him. Abby is so lucky. He’s perfect for her. Just perfect.”
    Jean and Hugh certainly weren’t surprised when, after eight months, Abby and Toby announced their engagement.
    Overjoyed, Jean’s thoughts turned at once to the wedding reception. “I thought we could put up a tent in the garden,” she’d said to Abby on the phone the other day. “We can have sparkling wine and nibbly bits when everybody arrives, followed by a hot and cold buffet. The fishmonger has said he can do me a dozen salmon en croute so long as I give him plenty of notice. And then there’s your aunty Gwen’s tiramisu. Everybody was raving about it at Uncle Phil’s retirement do.” She paused. “Look, darling, I know it won’t be the kind of grand affair that Toby’s mother is used to, but he’s such a lovely boy—not at all the snob your dad and I were expecting—and I’m sure his mother’s the same and that she’ll understand it’s the best we can do.”
    “I’m sure she will,” Abby said. “And it all sounds absolutely lovely.” She decided not to tell her mum what Toby had said about his mother’s personality. Nor was she about to confess to her doubts about whether Lady P would take kindly to her son’s wedding reception being held in a tent in a Croydon back garden, where she would be expected to drink Waitrose Fizz and queue up with all the other guests for a plate of Aunty Gwen’s tiramisu.
    When Abby told Soph that she was going to marry Toby, her friend had hugged and congratulated her and then broken into a chorus of “My Sweet Lord.”
    AS THE Edgware Road train finally pulled in, Abby stood up and her thoughts returned to her present anxieties. Even though Toby would be there to defend her against Lady Penelope, Abby was certain that tonight’s dinner with her ladyship was going to be something akin to being hauled upbefore her old headmistress, the formidable Miss Raffan. She imagined Lady Penelope catching her using the wrong glass or fork. “Abigail Crompton,” she would boom across her vast and noble bosom, “you have let your school down. You have let your house down, but most of all you have let yourself down.”
    The train doors hissed open and Abby stepped inside. There was barely any standing room, let alone a spare seat. She found some space for her hand on one of the metal poles and felt the train lurch out of the station.
    On the bench seat opposite, a young couple with backpacks at their feet were studying an Italian guidebook to London. The young woman’s head was resting on her boyfriend’s chest. Every so often he would stroke her hair. She kept trying to pronounce names in the book and getting them hopelessly wrong. His English was better than hers and he tried to correct her. She would repeat the names after him, but when she still got them wrong, the two of them would start giggling.
    As Abby observed the pair, she felt an unexpected wave of emotion. She couldn’t quite put a name to the feeling. It wasn’t jealousy exactly, more sadness and disappointment. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Toby had been giggly and affectionate together. Not that it was anybody’s fault. She worked six days a week at the shop, and Toby put in such long hours at the office that he was permanently exhausted. Corporate lawyers—particularly ones as anxious to make their mark as Toby—couldn’t pack up and go home at six. More often than not he was still at his desk at eight or nine in the evening. Usually he would come to her place for supper, but afterward all he wanted to do was watch Newsnight