“When did you realise that?”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll never marry her, will you? She’ll be better off with me. You must agree…”
Anyone would think he was trying to persuade me to give him a piece of property for safekeeping.
“Why are you asking me to agree? Maybe we should ask her?”
He gets a bit embarrassed then, and squints sideways at a piece of rusty piping. He seems to find it very interesting.
“I have asked,” he admits after his detailed examination of the pipe. “She agreed.”
“What? You’ve already spoken to her?”
He raises his honest eyes to look at me and withstands my gaze as a matter of principle.
“Yes. I told her I want to marry her, and she agreed.” It all sounds quite incredible, like some stupid kind of joke — the idea of him suddenly deciding to get married, and her
