One Hundred Christmas Proposals. Holly Martin

because Alexander is giving me total freedom to create the proposal I want. And you know I love St Dunstan’s. I’d like us to get married there one day – you, me, the stars above us. Nothing could be more romantic.’

      Harry turned back to the computer and made a noncommittal sound. I felt the smile fall off my face. Everything had been perfect between me and Harry since we had got engaged. We were with each other twenty-four hours a day, we never argued, our friendship had intensified instead of becoming strained and I counted my lucky stars every day that this perfect, wonderful man was with me. But there was one niggle, one thing that was gnawing at the back of my mind. Harry didn’t seem to want to get married.

      I had thought we would get married the very next day after I’d said yes, especially after he’d spent a hundred days proposing to me. But we had returned home after a week of pure honeymoon type bliss without a ring on my finger.

      I’d thought then that we would get married in London shortly after our return, with our friends and family around us, but that didn’t happen either.

      I had brought it up on countless occasions about setting a date and what plans did he have but he always shrugged it off.

      It had only been six months and some people liked a long engagement, but this was normally because the couple were saving up.

      But I didn’t think it was from a lack of money – our little company was going from strength to strength and it wasn’t like I wanted an all singing, all dancing big wedding. I’d have been happy if it was me, Harry, the registry office and a trip down the fish and chip shop afterwards. I just wanted to be married to him, to be Mrs Forbes and shout from the rooftops that this man was mine.

      I wasn’t sure if it was the demons from his past that were making him hesitate. His parents abandoning him as a child had messed him up spectacularly, but I thought we had moved past his inability to trust.

      I knew he loved me, I knew we were going to spend the rest of our lives together, but he seemed to be in no rush to actually get married – which struck me as a little weird with the amount of effort he had put in to ask me to marry him in the first place.

      I stood up and scooted onto his lap – he immediately wrapped his arm round my waist, holding me tight as if he never wanted to let me go.

      He was scrolling through some photos of us, putting them into some kind of slideshow.

      ‘What are you doing?’

      ‘The projectionist wanted us to send some photos over so he can test what they look like projected onto a stone wall. As Alexander hasn’t sent through his photos yet, I’m just sending through some of us so he can test it.’

      I looked at the photos of us he was fiddling with and smiled. He uploaded them onto an email, pressed send, and then gave me his undying attention.

      ‘Harry… we are getting married right?’

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘I just kind of thought we’d be there by now.’

      ‘We’ll do it next year. It’s just been so manic for the last few months. Besides, it won’t change anything between us. Everything is pretty damned perfect, right? We don’t need rings on our fingers to prove our love for each other.’

      ‘You’re not putting it off for some reason?’

      ‘We’re getting married baby, I promise you that. There is absolutely nothing that will stop me walking down the aisle with you. I just…’ The phone rang again. ‘We’ll talk about it properly when we go away, when we’re not dealing with this every day.’

      He picked up the phone, effectively ending that conversation, but he kissed my forehead to soften the blow.

      I went to stand up, but he caught my hand, kissing my ring finger in the exact place my wedding ring would be. I smiled. He was right, we had been ridiculously busy. There was nothing to worry about. No one would propose one hundred times without actually wanting to get married.

      ‘We’re leaving in five minutes,’ he whispered, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.

      I nodded. Finn and Molly’s proposal was going to be a fun one – and was going to be our seventy-fourth December one so far. Most of the others were happening on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve but we had the details for them so even if we couldn’t be there for the proposal itself we had asked for videos or photos to be sent in and we would still put them on the blog. The bonus reward of free champagne, flowers and chocolates with every December proposal booked with us was encouraging a lot of people to be a part of it.

      I grabbed my coat, wrapped a gold fluffy scarf round my neck and pulled on Harry’s favourite gold and red toadstool hat. He grinned at me when he saw me wearing it.

      ‘Yep, I can send you over the basic package now, if you give me your credit card details…’

      I left him to it and wandered downstairs to our living room. Ours. I smiled at the haphazard Christmas tree, teetering at a very wonky angle as the sheer size of it forced the top three feet to be bent across the ceiling. It was decorated with hundreds or probably thousands of baubles, icicles, funny Santa ornaments, snowmen, angels, candy canes and it was rammed full of fairy lights and tinsel. There was quite simply no part of the tree left untouched.

      Harry was so excited about this Christmas, our first together. Christmases in his past hadn’t really been that fun. In the short few years he had spent with his mum after his dad had left, there had been no Christmas at all. His mum had drifted along in a drunken stupor for much of those four years and she had barely bothered to care for him and his sister, let alone buy presents or decorate the house. Even before his dad left, he had no recollection of a tree with presents stacked neatly underneath, or stockings filled with oddly shaped lumps and bumps. His years in and out of foster care hadn’t been that much better. They had at least celebrated Christmas, in a sort of fashion, but with several unwanted angry children in whichever house was unlucky enough to have them over Christmas it never made for a pleasant environment. After that, Harry had spent several years celebrating Christmas in the most unconventional ways possible – gambling in casinos in Vegas, at a barbeque on Bondi Beach, hiking up Snowdon, anything to avoid the happy, rose-tinted, sparkly traditional Christmases that happened inside the homes of thousands of British families.

      We had at least spent the last few years together, but we had normally gone out to a pub for lunch and then met up with friends later in the evening.

      This year Harry was determined to do it right and every surface, every wall, every picture had been draped with Christmas decorations. Garlands of holly, ivy and other leaves and berries curled around doorways, the fireplace and up the stairs. It looked like Santa’s grotto, albeit a Santa that had collected decorations from all over the world for the last hundred years and emptied his entire collection inside our house.

      But the thing that made me smile the most was the two stockings hanging from the fireplace, side by side.

      ‘It’s too much isn’t it,’ Harry said, wrapping his arms round my waist as he snuggled into my neck.

      ‘No, it’s gaudy and it clashes and I love it, but you do realise that the fake snow you’ve sprayed on the windows will never come off.’

      I felt him smile against my neck. ‘I don’t care. I may even leave the Christmas decorations up all year round, I love it all so much. Would you be ok with that?’

      ‘If it makes you happy then yes.’

      He slid his hand down my arms and took my hand, pulling me towards the door. ‘Come on, we’re going to be late.’

      *

       Proposer’s Blog

       Christmas Proposal 74: December 21^st. Finn and Molly’s Proposal. Location: Leicester Square

       Finn and Molly have been together for four years, eight months and three weeks,