A Hopeless Romantic

Laura vaguely remembered some email from Jo, but she paid little attention to emails these days, unless they were marked URGENT or were from ‘Floyd, Dan’. The crackle on the line meant it was hard to work out whether Jo was pissed off or not, but Laura couldn’t help feeling she was the one who should be cross, not Jo. Jo should have told her. She should have been in touch more. It wasn’t Laura’s fault Jo was out of circulation now, with her husband and her nice house. Lucky Jo, with her beautiful brown eyes, her pale heart-shaped face, her tiny frame, her sensible, neat ways, with a great job and an adoring husband. It wasn’t fair.

Even thinking ‘it wasn’t fair’ made Laura feel pathetically childish, but a small voice inside her was saying she had a right to be. It wasn’t fair. But then, she thought, it was no more than she deserved.

She sighed, and leant against the window. ‘Look, I’d better let you go,’ she said, keeping her voice light and chatty. ‘I’m sorry, I had no idea. You lucky things! Have a great time!’

‘We are,’ said Jo. ‘Thanks, love. How are you, then? How’s things?’

‘Fine, fine,’ said Laura hurriedly. ‘All good. Let’s do something when you get back, OK?’

‘That’d be great,’ said Jo warmly. ‘We’re back in five days – are you around on Saturday?’

‘Not sure,’ said Laura, hedging her bets, then hating herself for it. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes. Yes I am. Let’s do something then. Give my love to Chris, won’t you? And don’t spend loads of money on leather purses you don’t need.’

‘Hardly,’ said Jo firmly. ‘I don’t fall for cheap sales tricks. You know me.’

Laura put the phone down, vaguely dissatisfied, and thinking she was right in feeling Jo had been a bit crap not to let her know. She checked her mobile in case Dan had texted whilst she’d been on the phone. Nothing. Nothing all weekend.

She told herself it was just a matter of time. Dan had told her he was biding his time, waiting for the moment when he could pick the big fight that would wrap things up. Laura was partly horrified by this tack, since there is not a woman alive who understands why men do that, and not a man alive who will voluntarily sit down and say, ‘Look, we need to have a long talk about our relationship, touching on all points in order, including why I’m not more sensitive to your needs or aware of what I’ve done wrong.’ No, Dan was waiting for Amy to crack – it was a kind of Who Will Blink First situation.

Laura still didn’t know a) how often they were seeing each other, b) if they were sleeping together, and c) what the timescale was. In her happy, optimistic moments, when Dan was next to her in bed, his arms wrapped around her, she would answer a) hardly ever, b) of course not, they couldn’t be, and c) any day now. In the bleak moments of reality, when a combination of she and Paddy, Jo and Chris, Hilary, Dan and assorted others (but mercifully rarely Amy, who preferred the company of her girl-gang in the flashier West End bars) were in the pub, she would gaze desperately at Dan as best she might without giving anything away, torturing herself and crying long into the night as she remembered how he hadn’t looked at her, or had made a joke to someone else that he’d made to her the day before, then she would answer those questions differently. a) probably more than she realised, b) well, they might be, and c) she had no idea.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_524386ab-f57c-5b4b-b3df-3b5c565ecc27)

In May, Amy suddenly came out fighting. She started making plans for her thirtieth birthday in September. She let it be known that she wanted to hire a villa in Spain for two weeks, she and Dan, and have various friends fly out at different times, all gathering together on the middle Saturday for a huge party in the garden of the villa, which Dan was going to organise. She was back in the game. She even made an appearance at the pub.

Laura hadn’t seen Amy for about six months. She had become, in her mind, this vast, beauteous Amazonian woman, with tiny stick-thin wrists and a huge expensive handbag and matching shoes. She was dazzlingly beautiful, terrifyingly confident, and she knew something was up with Laura and Dan. In Laura’s nightmares, Amy walked up to Laura and dragged her by the hair out of the pub, pulled all her hair out, then kicked her into the road.

The trouble was, in these nightmares Laura kind of sided with Amy, not with herself. If she’d heard just the facts without knowing the details of it, she would side with Amy. But, she kept telling herself, just a little longer, and then it’d be over. And when she and Dan had been together for twenty-five years and were as happy as ever, no one would remember the slightly murky beginnings of their relationship. It would be lost in the mists of time, and Amy would be off married to a billionaire banker – it wasn’t even as if she and Dan were happy, after all. She was doing her a favour, in the long run.

So when Laura walked into the Cavendish and saw Amy, as tall and beautiful and stick-thin as ever, sitting on the sofa laughing girlishly with Jo, and realised that she was the terrifying Amazonian beauty of her nightmares, and that she, Laura, was still – well, normal, normal height, normal hair, normal everything, it was all she could do not to walk out. Amy gave her a lizard-like, thin-lipped smile, which meant nothing, as Amy pretty much hated all girls, except her own, incredibly similar friends, who were kind of like the Pussycat Dolls mixed with the clique in Mean Girls.

‘Hey,’ said Chris as Laura came over to the bar. ‘There’s your tube buddy, Dan!’

‘Hey, tube buddy,’ said Dan, bending over to kiss Laura. How could he be so nonchalant, Laura wondered, as his hand squeezed her shoulder fleetingly and he kissed her on the cheek. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘Oh, a beer thanks, tube buddy!’ said Laura. ‘Hi, Jason. Hey, Chris. How was Morocco?’

‘Haven’t seen you since then, have we? Can’t believe it. It was great,’ said Chris, hugging her. ‘Got some fantastic photos to show you! The girls are over there, go and say hi.’

The girls. Laura went over to where Amy and Jo were sitting. Jo jumped up immediately. ‘Laura, hi!’ she said, her eyes sparkling. ‘God, it’s so good to see you, babe! How long’s it been? How long? This is crap, we mustn’t leave it that long next time.’

‘Hi, Laura!’ said Amy. She looked down at Laura, both actually and metaphorically, thought Laura, and all three sat down again. Woah, what an evening of direness lies ahead of me, she thought. Dan put her beer down on the table and smiled at her. Amy leant back and caught his hand. He smiled mechanically at her, and released himself, walking back over to the bar to rejoin Chris. Laura didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

‘I know we’ve had our problems over the past year,’ Amy confided to Jo and Laura, an hour and a couple of drinks later. ‘But lately, he’s been…so different, I think he’s realised.’

‘Realised what?’ said Jo.

‘Oh, I really hope he’s realised…Gosh, it’s awful saying it out loud, isn’t it?’

‘Oh honey,’ said Jo. She patted her hand. ‘I know…’

Jo was no fan of Amy’s either, but she was a far more tolerant person than Laura. Laura looked at her best friend, the blister of resentment that bubbled inside her building ever more. She was still cross with Jo, who had got back from Morocco and hadn’t rung her – Laura had given in, after a few days’ silence. In the old days, before this started, they knew everything about each other. Of course, Jo had no idea about her and Dan. But Jo hadn’t even tried to have any idea. In Laura’s addled mind, Jo was somehow to blame for not having supernaturally guessed her best friend’s deepest, darkest secret, which she was going to endless lengths to conceal. But Laura thought she should have worked it out, should have known this huge, all-consuming thing that had happened to her. Laura was dying of love, hopelessly entangled, obsessed – couldn’t Jo see that? Was she blind? Or just not the friend Laura thought she was?

‘Well,’ Amy blinked slowly, her huge eyes gazing at Jo with intensity. ‘That, you know, he’ll lose me. I’m going to finish with him if he doesn’t shape up, and I’ve told him that.’

Laura looked round to see if Dan could hear any of this conversation. Chris and his brother were at the bar, talking to Hilary, but she couldn’t see Dan anywhere. She turned back and looked at Amy, and suddenly felt the old hot flush of guilt wash over her. Oh god, this is awful, she thought, through the waves of agony this conversation was inflicting on her, not least of which was a huge dose of shame and mortification at her own behaviour over the last few months.

‘Well, that’s great, Amy,’ said Jo kindly. ‘I hope it works out, if that’s what you want.’

Laura flashed her a look as if to say, We hate Amy, what are you doing? But Jo only glanced at her briefly in return.

‘I really think it will,’ said Amy, smoothing down her hair and smiling. ‘I hope by then…well, I’m going to drop some gentle hints about what I’d like more than anything else for my thirtieth. If you know what I mean!’

‘Great,’ said Jo, taking a sip of her drink. ‘Well, we’ll just have to wait and see!’

‘What?’ Laura asked stupidly, thinking, What does she want? Some new shoes, probably, knowing Amy.

‘Oh Laura…!’ Amy looked at Laura as if she was a little alien, or a Mexican peasant unfamiliar with her ways, and Laura thought again to herself that girls who had been at school together many years ago and weren’t friends should not be allowed to mix socially. It disrupted the natural order of things. She and Amy should be people who blanked each other in the street, not people who had to pretend to be pally and share bowls of olives in a gastropub. This, she told herself, was why she hated Amy, of course. It was nothing to do with the fact she was going out with Dan.

Amy delicately ate an olive, and licked one of her fingers. She smiled at Laura pityingly. ‘An engagement ring, of course.’

A pip from the lemon slice in Laura’s gin and tonic wedged itself in her throat and she nearly choked. ‘Right,’ she gasped, determined not to lose control. ‘Right. Aaah. Aaaaah. Loo. Excuse me,’ and she got up and stumbled outside, to the clear fresh air of the May night. She stood there taking big gulps of air, one hand clutching her throat, the other rubbing her stomach, a habit she had had since she was little. Right indeed. She looked in through the big glass windows of the Cavendish, over to the squashy leather sofas where her friends sat, and wondered how things had come so far, got so out of control, so ridiculous. She looked at Jo, methodically folding up her cardigan, neatly stowing it in her bag, and felt helpless. She felt a million miles away from her best friend, from those she thought she knew.

As if by magic, Dan appeared around the corner. He had been to get some cigarettes. He jumped when he saw Laura standing outside, and she nearly screamed.

‘What the…what are you doing out here?’ Dan said testily.

‘Having a breather,’ Laura replied, suddenly furious at him, especially at his tone. ‘Listening to your girlfriend talking about her thirtieth birthday in September, how she wants us all to fly out to Valencia and watch whilst you propose to her in front of all of us – oh Dan, Dan…’

She started sobbing, great racking, heaving sobs that shook her, and Dan pushed her away from the window and against the shop next door. He put his arms around her, holding her so tightly she thought she might not be able to breathe.

‘Now, listen,’ Dan said, putting a thumb up to her cheek to wipe away a tear. ‘I have been such a shit to you. And to her, but this is about you. I promise you, that is not going to happen. I promise you I’m going to talk to her in the next couple of weeks. This has to end. I can’t be with her any more, I just can’t stand it. And I want to be with you.’ He held her tighter and kissed her. She could feel him growing hard against her leg. ‘I want to be with you, do you understand me?’

‘Yes,’ Laura whispered. ‘So…it’s over with her, then?’

‘Yes,’ Dan said solemnly. ‘Shit. I’m going to have to do something about it now, aren’t I?’

‘Yes, you are,’ Laura said, hiccupping.

‘Good. Now,’ Dan bent down and kissed her again. ‘I’m so sorry I’ve been so useless. It’s not fair on her, or me, and especially not on you. We will be together, I promise.’

‘You really promise?’ Laura said, wanting a final reassurance.

Dan gripped her wrists and pressed himself against her. ‘Shit, Laura, I don’t know what else I can say…’ He looked around, shaking his head. ‘I want you to believe it, I really do, but until I’ve talked to her I can’t…if only there was some way.’

Laura said slowly, ‘How about that holiday? In July? That one we talked about. Florida road trip? Ending up in Miami. Two weeks, just us.’

She looked into his eyes, and could see the glimmer of uncertainty – of something else, what was it? – there. He looked back at her, trying to breach that final gap between them. Laura started to turn away and Dan grabbed her again and said, ‘No, fuck it. Book it. I’m just scared. But I’m being weak and crap. Book it.’