LITMIR.BIZ

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1

      It really doesn’t matter how brilliant your life is, the last day of your holiday is always depressing. I’m talking Monday dread plus post-Christmas blues multiplied by a maxed-out credit card with the added bonus of knowing there are at least another twelve holidayless months stretching out in front of you before you’ll be able to get away again. Unless you’re Beyoncé. I imagine nothing other than dinner with Kanye is quite that depressing if you’re Beyoncé, but for the rest of us, the last day of a holiday is right up there with doing your taxes, getting a bikini wax and that time you went to the fridge for your favourite bar of chocolate and found out someone had already eaten it.

      Kneeling on the sofa, I rested my chin on my forearms and stared out the window. Bright blue skies bled into dark blue seas with flashes of pink and purple smeared through the middle to let me know that night-time was on its way. The sun was literally setting on my vacay and it just wasn’t on. I had a tan, seventeen insect bites, a suitcase full of tat I didn’t need – but I still didn’t have the one thing I’d been waiting for which could only mean one thing.

      Tonight was the night.

      ‘Liv?’

      ‘Adam?’

      ‘Is it me or can you see my knob through these trousers?’

      Not exactly the question I was waiting for him to ask.

      I craned my neck to see six feet four inches of blond boyfriend framed by the bedroom doorway, thrusting his crotch in my general direction with a vexed expression on his face.

      Hmm. He was wearing his Best Trousers. My heart started to beat a little bit faster.

      ‘I don’t think so?’ I said, squinting at the general area. You could sort of see it, but only if you were looking for it and, really, how many people were strolling around Tulum on a Monday night, staring at my boyfriend’s crotch? I hoped it wasn’t that many. ‘I can’t see anything.’

      ‘“I can’t see anything” isn’t exactly what I want to hear when you’re looking down there.’ Adam bent his knees slightly and bounced up and down in front of the mirror. ‘You sure there isn’t, you know, an outline? I forgot how thin these trousers are.’

      ‘You look nice,’ I reassured him with a smile while he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and checked his reflection at every angle. ‘I like those trousers.’

      ‘I’m going to get changed,’ he said, more to himself than me. ‘I can’t put anything in these pockets. And you can totally see my knob.’

      ‘What do you need to put in your pockets?’ I asked, the attractive high pitch of desperation squeaking into my voice. ‘I can put your wallet in my bag.’

      ‘My phone?’ Adam muttered, giving the mirror one last thrust then pottering back into the bedroom. ‘Stuff?’

      ‘Stuff?’

      I glanced down as my own phone buzzed on the windowsill.

      ‘You know,’ he called from the other room. ‘Stuff.’

      ‘Oh, OK,’ I replied, nodding as I opened the text message. ‘Stuff.’

       HAS HE DONE IT YET?????????

      Cassie had sent me the same text thirty-six times in the last fourteen days. Anyone would think she was the one whose blood pressure had been hovering around stroke-inducing levels every day for the last two weeks. And that wasn’t an exaggeration, I’d been checking, such were the perks of a background in medicine.

      No, I tapped out as quickly as my little fingers would allow, not yet. I added three sad faces just in case she wasn’t sure how I was feeling and then a unicorn, just because. There’s always room for a unicorn.

      Three little dots thrummed across the bottom of the screen while Adam sang an off-key Rihanna song to himself in the bedroom.

      Maybe he’s nervous? Cassie suggested. Give him an in.

      I looked up from my phone just in time to see our very large, very hairy neighbour in nothing but a pair of tiny trunks walk right by my window and raise his hand in a polite hello. There were downsides to staying in a cottage on the beach. They certainly hadn’t shown him on the website. Waving back quickly, I stood up and leaned against the arm of the settee, shaking out the creases in my long skirt.

      Give him an in?

      That was easier said than done. Maybe I could start a casual conversation on the way to dinner with ‘Did you know nine out of ten boyfriends that want to live to see another day propose to their girlfriends on holiday?’ Or perhaps ‘Hey Adam, the third finger on my left hand is cold; do you have anything sparkly I could borrow to warm it up?’

      Working on it, I replied, despondent.

      No emojis this time.

      Truth be told, we’d had a lovely holiday but it would have been considerably lovelier if I hadn’t been constantly waiting for Adam to drop the P bomb. Nothing kills the mood like waiting for a proposal that never comes. And I want to be clear, it’s not as though I’ve been sat around the house for the last three years, draped across a fainting couch and waiting for him to swoop in with the promise of a yearly allowance of a hundred pounds and a new topcoat every winter. The chance would have been a fine thing. When you’re the only local vet in a five-village radius, you spend most of your time in surgery with your hand up a Chihuahua or in your bed, fast asleep. After you’ve washed your hands, of course. Ideally, at the end of a dog-bothering day, all I wanted was to be up to my eyeballs in a Real Housewives marathon and two-thirds of a bottle of rosé with Adam by my side. Marriage hadn’t really crossed my mind. There were so many other things I still had to accomplish, I wanted to travel, I wanted to start drinking whisky, I wanted to finish watching the last series of Doctor Who before the new one started.

      However, things had changed. Supposedly, Adam had told his brother he was going to propose in Mexico, then his brother had told his wife, who just so happened to be my best friend. Of course, everyone knew Cass couldn’t keep a secret and it only took half a bottle of Pinot Grigio before she was bursting to tell me everything, and now here I was at the end of our trip, still unengaged. I had been told there was a ring, I had been told the ring was coming in Mexico – and now I wanted the bloody ring. I was Gollum, only with slightly better hair.

      ‘Ready?’ Adam re-emerged from the bedroom, best trousers replaced by regular jeans, paired with a nice, but hardly special, shirt.

      I looked at him and wondered. Why would you tell someone you were going to propose to your girlfriend and then not do it?

      ‘Ready,’ I replied with a curtsey, dropping my phone in my bag, out of sight and hopefully out of mind.

      He frowned for a moment, giving my ensemble the once-over before fastening and then unfastening his top button. ‘Is that what you’re wearing?’

      ‘What’s wrong with it?’ I stood up and let my long, floaty white dress drift down to the floor. ‘I love this dress.’

      It was a great dress. It was loose around my backside, tight around my boobs and, most importantly, I could eat in it without feeling like I was wearing my nana’s girdle. It had also cost an obscene amount of money but Cassie had assured me it was The Dress and I’d put it on my credit card without thinking about the damage. That was until the bill came. He had better propose – I needed a joint income to pay for this bugger.

      ‘Makes me feel a bit of a scruff, that’s all. Are you sure you’re all right to walk in those shoes?’

      ‘I could run a marathon in these shoes.’ I picked up a foot to inspect my three-inch heels. Maybe a marathon was pushing it. ‘We’re not walking that far, are we?’

      ‘Google Maps says it’s ten minutes,’ he replied, patting himself down then sticking his

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