Beautifully Unexpected by Lily Morton
Epilogue
Two Years Later
Laurie
Mags calls out, “Laurie,”and smiling, I put my brush down.
“And that’s the sign we’re done today,” I say to my client. He’s a famous politician who’s being touted for the top job, and I sincerely hope he’s better at politics than he is at sitting still. I watch as he accepts my dictate happily, standing up and stretching.
He wanders over to the small glass case on the table. “I’ve been staring at this all day. What is it?”
I grin at him. “It’s a cassette tape. Why?”
He taps the glass. “I’m not sure why it should be in a case. Is it special?”
I look down at the cassette case with my name scrawled over it. I’d put it in that glass box when we returned to London, much to Mags’s hilarity, but I made sure to transfer the songs to my Spotify playlist first. I listen to the song choices a lot. They’re like Mags—beautiful and a bit quirky. He calls it mawkish sentimentality, but I don’t miss the fond looks he throws at the tape every so often.
“It’s more special than you’ll ever know,” I finally say.
He wrinkles his nose in confusion. “And why is there a red ribbon in there?”
“Memories,” I say vaguely, having no intention of ever telling him the story of how I once wore a ribbon for Mags. That had been a good night.
Luckily, Mags chooses that moment to walk into the studio. My client looks up and smiles. “Magnus,” he says in a voice better suited to shouting across the floor in the House of Commons. “How are you?”
Mags smiles at him. “Julian. I’m fine. How is Laurie treating you? Is he cracking the whip?”
Julian chortles merrily. “I think that’s something you should probably keep private between you and Laurie.”
“No whip,” I say sweetly. “If I had a whip to hand, I’d probably strangle Mags with it.”
Mags breaks into laughter. “It is the truth,” he assures Julian, looking far too happy about that than a sane man ever should.
The two of them launch into a conversation about something that happened at a dinner party in Islington once, and I half-listen as I clean my brushes, smiling at the sound of Mags’s voice.
Julian eventually shakes our hands and leaves with promises of being early tomorrow, and when he’s gone, Mags turns to me, drawing me into a hug.
“Alright?” he asks, and I nuzzle into him, inhaling the scent of warm cologne and Mags for a precious second.
“Fine,” I say. “And if I’m not, my human alarm clock partner will make it so.”
He rolls his eyes. “Ack. Such ridiculous words. It is time to put the brushes down, yes? You’ve had long enough. You know what the doctor said.”
“I do, and I’m not overdoing it. Not with you around.”
“You need me,” he says in his highhanded manner. “It is why I’m here.”
I do need him, although I don’t tell him that very often, for fear of stroking his ego. He seems to view our patio declarations two years ago as being a binding contract. We flew back to London, and he’s never left my side since.
In the end, I’d had to have two operations, and many were the times that I lay in a hospital bed, my vision blurred while Mags read to me in that beautiful voice that always manages to push away my fears. He greeted the final operation’s success with joy, but I know he’d have stayed even if the results hadn’t been favourable.
He’s assumed a supervisory role in my recovery, and he’s never far away when my allotted painting time, which was agreed upon by my doctors, is up. Then in he’ll breeze, making himself at home in my studio, ready to whisk me off to dinner or another adventure.
Although he might tease me for displaying my mixtape, he’d shown off his own brand of sentimentality when he framed my London sightseeing list. It’s now in his office at his chambers along with the painting I did for him. He says they’re there to remind him that something is more important than work, and I’m it. He’s also made a new list, and whenever we’re in London, we’ll visit out-of-the-way places. Lately, we’ve visited a three-hundred-year-old tea shop and a roman temple hidden under some city offices. Our sightseeing is less desperate now and more about making shared memories, and the lists have become part of the secret language that only Mags and I share.
I nudge him. “You’re in my way,” I say. “You barristers have no concept of personal space.” I jerk as he cups my groin.
“And you have been glad of that too many times to count, Laurie.”
I lean in and kiss him, making it slow and sweet, and he cups my face in his big palms, running his fingers through my hair. I pull back, dabbing a kiss on his nose that makes him give a moue of disgust, and then I move about the studio, putting things away as he launches into a description of my stepfather hobbling a colleague of his in court.
I listen idly as I admire the former bedroom that Mags had converted to a studio for me when we got together. It’s the best room in the flat, light-filled and airy, with a fantastic view of London and the river.
“You like him,” I say finally. “I don’t know why you have to conceal the fact. You’re always in a corner chatting the law.”
“What a shocking expression,” he says, wrinkling his nose. “It’s more the fact that I don’t move quickly enough when he gets near me.”
“Oh, okay,” I say, grinning at him. “Whatever you say, dearest.”
He kisses me, his lips warm and soft. I smile against the kiss, feeling him do the same. I’m ridiculously in love with him. He’s everything to me. Best friend, co-conspirator, confidant, and fierce defendant. I bless the day I came down that corridor and saw the big man and the beribboned twink. It sounds rather like an odd book by Barbara Cartland, but the truth is that it was the start of our own love story. Strange and beautiful.
I suppose it’s because of him that my family are back in the foreground of my life. Through his friendship with Lennie and Chris, he leveraged his way in with the rest of my siblings. My mother adores him, and even my stepfather is happy to have the former bane of his life to talk to at dinner parties. In fact, Mags might be the one person who none of my siblings have a problem with.
I’ve met his family too. His father is a physical vision of how Mags will look in the future, although Mags won’t have the very dramatic woman who is his father’s fourth wife. I inveigled Mags into visiting him the first time by claiming that I needed to get out of the city. He obliged with that fierce concentration he focused on my rehabilitation, but it went so well that we now visit them every month. It’s usually a visit filled with tons of marital drama that I love, and Mags treats with a blithe equanimity. Nevertheless, his father adores him, and I make every effort to bring him into our circle, and they’ve grown closer over the years.
His mother is a lost cause, though. She treats Mags with vague pleasure when he arrives in Denmark. Like he’s a nice coat she’s found unexpectedly around her house. It raises my hackles, but Mags doesn’t seem bothered, so I keep my mouth shut.
Mags wanders out of the studio. “Have you packed for France yet?” he calls. “I’ve booked the ferry for ten. Endof is already excited about being able to make those lovely desperate lunges at the railings again. Those lunges that the people around us interpreted as him trying to escape us.” He huffs. “As if there’s another imbecile in Europe who’d want to adopt the strange creature.”
I laugh, but I’m already looking forward to being back in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. I want to feel the sun on my face and inhale the scent from the bougainvillaea that grows up the back of our house in all its shocking pink glory.
Mags is happy living there too, but then, I’ve learnt he’s comfortable anywhere. He seemed to know everyone within a few weeks, and wherever we go, he’s hailed as though he’s Elvis. He accepts this as naturally as if it’s his due. It helps that he speaks so many languages.
I’ll often find him in the little bar up the road telling one of his flamboyant stories in Danish or French or Spanish. He will, of course, be surrounded by laughter and eager expressions that are no help at all in levelling his ego. However, what I like most is the way his face lights up when he sees me. It happens every time and never gets old.
When he first arrived there and declared his arrogant decision to live with me, he requisitioned a small bedroom and declared it to be his study. I repressed a smile at seeing him in the room like a T Rex in a paddling pool and let him get on with it. He lasted three months before he promptly bought the house next door, knocked the two houses together, and commenced making a home.
When I told him he was nesting, he looked as revolted as if I’d said he’d sat in dog shit. It didn’t stop me noticing out loud the size of the study he’d given himself, but as he was heavily involved in writing his much-vaunted legal treatise, I left him to it. The book was, of course, a huge success and shows every sign of being adopted as a staple university textbook.
He never got around to writing his fictional legal epic, but instead, he settled down and penned the first part of his memoirs. The first part, because apparently, his life has been much too full to confine it to one book. His memoirs are frank and at times painfully honest when he sums up the current UK judicial system, but they’re also warm and incredibly funny like the man himself. There was a bidding war over the rights, which Mags accepted as if it was his due, and the winning publishers tell us they’re going to be a massive hit. I can well believe it, but my biggest joy was the inscription.
To my darling Laurie.
For all the years of unsolicited advice.
My mother was horrified, declaring that it wasn’t at all romantic, but I laugh every time I think of it.
He still works hard after taking time off for the books, but he takes on fewer legal cases than he did before, and we split our time happily between London and France. If he’s away, I always follow him and take on a commission somewhere nearby. I find that I don’t want to be without him, and he seems just as happy embracing our funny little co-dependency.
All this has led to my work being even more in demand than before, and that’s been helped by Mags organising me. Left to my own devices, I’ll float along in a haze of paint fumes, but Mags’s assistant deals with both of our diaries, and she’s as scarily organised as him. So now I have a bulging appointments book, and I don’t miss seeing my Mags.
We argue, of course. Nothing in life is ever plain sailing, and sometimes I’ll announce my intention of retiring to my studio to get away from him. He treats this with patent disbelief, but even in there, he surrounds me. It’s a huge room at the bottom of the garden converted from a garage and stocked with everything he knew I needed because he’s an artist’s son. His years with his mother are only a footnote in the story of his life, but they allow him to better understand me and my sometimes incoherent ramblings about my art. I like that it’s just me who knows this about him.
You see, that’s the thing. He may have settled with me, but Mags Carlsen is still the same forthright grumpy bastard who I met in the hallway that fateful day. The only difference is that he’s my grumpy bastard, and as such, I know that he’s a hidden softie, and he loves me deeply and more than I ever expected. His love humbles me. It’s fierce and uncompromising and impossibly loyal, like having a giant wolfhound at your back. And I love him in return. With others, I can be distant and distracted. I can solve their problems and avoid becoming involved, but I can’t be that with Mags because he holds my eyes and heart and full attention.
It’s lucky he understands artists and leaves me alone to paint, because otherwise, I’d follow this gentle grumpy giant around devotedly and never get any work done. I don’t know how much time we’ll be given together, but every day I spend with him is a blessing. My Mags. Min elskede.