A Hopeless Romantic

‘Yep,’ said Laura, standing at the doorway. She waved as her mother disappeared down the curving staircase, and wandered back into the flat, kicking a stray football out of the way. As she stood in the hallway she realised it had been Christmas when she’d last seen her grandmother. That was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if she could say she lived in the middle of nowhere, either. Mary lived behind Baker Street – ‘within walking distance of Selfridges, good for the soul, my dear’ – in Crecy Court, a Thirties apartment block that Laura absolutely loved. It was like a step back in time, a veritable Who’s Who. She shared the block with Cedric Forsythe, an old Rank actor from the Fifties, who’d starred opposite Margaret Leighton and Celia Johnson; Jasper Davidson, a painter who’d lived in St Ives until he’d broken his hip three years ago; and Dilys Darcy, a long-forgotten Fifties crooner who’d been best mates with Alma Cogan and whose memory was sharper than a tack.

She went to pick up her mobile, to get her grandmother’s number off it. There was a text from Dan.

Can I come over? Have told Amy I’ll be late tonight. I really need to see you and I want you. I miss you so much, beautiful girl. Please say yes. D

As Laura stood holding the phone, the doorbell rang. She started, dropped the phone, and went over to the intercom.

‘Hello?’ she said.

‘Did you get my text?’ said the voice. ‘Is Paddy there? Can I come up?’

‘Dan?’ Laura said shakily.

‘Yes, it’s Dan,’ the voice said, amused. ‘Who else sends you text messages saying they want to come over and give you a good seeing-to? Am I one in a long line, should I join a queue?’

‘Aaagh,’ said Laura. ‘I was just confused. I was about to call someone and I was just conf—oh, come up, sorry, I’m just being thick.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Dan. He lowered his voice. ‘I can’t stay long, I just wanted to see you.’

Laura’s legs wobbled a bit and she smiled into the intercom. And then, out of nowhere, she found herself saying, ‘I’d love you to come up. But not if you can’t stay. Oh Dan, I’m sorry.’

‘What?’ said Dan.

‘I mean,’ said Laura, ‘you’re not just coming up for a quick fuck and then scooting off again. Not that that wouldn’t be nice. It would –’ and she almost wavered, then checked herself. ‘Hm. I want you too, but no, that’s not going to happen. I’m really sorry. Night, darling.’

‘OK,’ said Dan. He paused. ‘I’m sorry,’ he went on. ‘You’re right. Shit, oh well. I deserve it. Soon, soon, you know? Can you do me a favour?’

‘Depends,’ Laura said cautiously, dreading him asking her to come outside and do it on the porch.

‘Can you look out of the window and wave, just so I can see you tonight? Right, I’m off then. Bye my darling. I wish…’

‘Bye Dan,’ Laura said softly. ‘I love you.’

The line went dead as she stuffed her fist into her mouth. I love you? Why? Why had she said that? Damn. She ran over to the window, and gazed out across the quiet suburban North London street. The rain had stopped and the night was clear, and on the street below she could see a tall figure staring up at her. She opened the window and looked down, and there he was, a small figure below her, his gorgeous face turned up towards her.

‘I love you too,’ he shouted, and his voice echoed in the silence of the street. ‘I love you.’

Laura stood there, her eyes filled with tears. And then she blew him a kiss and shut the window.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_f0609e81-05d8-509f-a5b0-ae652a192d35)

Laura’s parents still lived in the house she and Simon had grown up in, on the nicer edges of Harrow – Eastcote, really. In the late Seventies George and Angela had stretched themselves to the limit to buy the semi-detached, mock-Tudor villa with off-road parking at the front, three (and a half) bedrooms, a downstairs lavatory and a separate dining room. The garden was large enough for a climbing frame, a barbecue, a shed and a vegetable garden, as well as a conservatory-cum-patio where the Fosters would entertain in the summer months. There was an excellent primary school a ten-minute drive away, and the neighbours were all very nice. It was a good area. Respectable. Quiet. Theirs was the sort of road no one drove down to get to anywhere else, and the sort of neighbourhood where the nearest corner shop was a drive away, through quiet tree-lined streets with identical Thirties houses, and the only break in the monotony of the houses was the occasional car dealership on the corner. Cars – make and model – maps, routes and the price of petrol were all very important in Eastcote. And the garden centre at Syon was a nice drive away, too.

When Guy died eight years before, the family-minded George had hoped that Mary would want to move in with them. He thought she might be lonely, since Guy and Mary had been such a twosome. They had never really sat easily within the extended family as a whole – especially as Angela and Annabel were not naturally close. They were almost better grandparents than they had been parents, fond and funny, interested, interesting, wildly exotic to Simon and Laura. And they complemented each other perfectly: where Mary was amusing, a fund of endless stories and pearls of wisdom, Guy was kind, reliable. He could make things out of bits of string, could tell stories about places on the Silk Route, of emperors thousands of years old. His affection was boundless – for animals, strangers, loved ones – but most of all, for Mary. Always Mary; and she, in turn, only had eyes for Guy.

So when Guy had had a heart attack, unexpectedly (because he was the kind of person whom you expected would live forever), George and Angela drove over to Oxford to help Mary pack up, and as they were putting Indian carvings and strange Egyptian rugs into boxes, Angela asked her mother breezily if she’d like to come and live with them in Harrow. Simon and Laura had both moved out by then. Besides, no matter what you thought of Mary (and her daughter and son-in-law both thought her a little unconventional), you had to agree she was fun to have around.

But Mary said no. She sold the Arts and Crafts-style house in North Oxford where she and Guy had lived happily together for twenty years – when they were in the country, or not by the seaside, that is – packed up all her possessions (of which there were an exotic few – she had lived in Cairo, India and Jerusalem, as well as all over England), and moved into the tiny flat in Marylebone, where she proceeded to have a whale of a time, much to the consternation of her daughter, but to the great amusement and delight of her grandchildren.

For the teenage Laura, her overactive imagination permanently on the go, it was the very idea of sophistication, and going back to dreary, dank Harrow afterwards, with its identical houses, its small-town morals and ideas, was always horribly depressing. To this day, her grandmother’s flat was still a magical place for her, stuffed with silk kimonos, old sequinned evening capes, oil paintings and blurred black-and-white photos showing the bygone days of a Colonial age. And Harrow was…well, boring street after boring street, where the neighbours knew all the latest details of your job and your flat, and secretly hoped you weren’t doing as well as their own daughter of the same age.

Laura had never loved Harrow much, especially compared to Mary and Guy’s house in Oxford, or Seavale in Norfolk, but she’d never really thought about it. Now, it came to represent everything that was hollow and dreary in her life. When Easter came and went with no change in her own situation, and she found herself spending an especially miserable bank holiday at home with her parents, watching her father’s new DVD of Morecambe and Wise, she found herself loathing Harrow, loathing pretty much everything, even Morecambe and Wise. Normally Laura loved Morecambe and Wise, they made her snort with laughter, but sitting on the sofa in between her mum and dad, whilst they chuckled along merrily to the ‘There is Nothing Like a Dame’ sketch and tried to identify the Seventies TV presenters – ‘Oh look, Angela, is that old Reggie Bosanquet?’ – was almost painful.

Also painful was her brother’s absence. Simon had been in Peru for a few weeks now, and Laura found her thoughts drifting to him, resentment at his freedom mingling with missing him. He should be on the sofa in suburbia, enjoying salmon en croute and the bank holiday crossword in The Times, not her. She should be in Tuscany, walking hand in hand with Dan through an ancient piazza, stopping for an espresso at a café in the shade of a cathedral, laughing at each other in the bright spring sunlight. Laura in big shades and a headscarf, a stone lighter, dressed in Missoni, or a cheap version of Missoni; Dan handsome and tall in chinos and a polo shirt. But no.

Her father dropped her at the station on bank holiday Monday, since it was on his way to the garage to get some replacement wiper blades. As Laura waved him off he said, ‘Great to see you, Laura love. Thanks for coming over. It’s been really good, hasn’t it?’

No, Laura wanted to say, it has been wrong. It has been very wrong. You have made me listen to your Seekers albums three times. You and Mum spent Sunday afternoon rearranging the pot plants on the patio in height-ascending order, and laughing about it like it was actually funny. Parents. She would never understand them for as long as she lived. She leant into the car and smiled at her dad. George coughed, and said, ‘We’ve loved having you over, Laura, you know. You know, love, you can always come and stay, it’s not that far, is it.’

Laura was taken aback; she raised her hand to her cheek, suddenly moved, despite herself, and felt awful for having had such impure thoughts.

‘Ta Dad,’ she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. ‘See you soon.’

‘See you soon, my love. Have a great week. Call your grandmother!’

Paddy was out when Laura got back. Dan was away for the weekend, she knew it. She thought he was with Amy – she hadn’t asked, she didn’t want to seem clingy, she loathed girls like that. Ho hum. She went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, feeling rather low after a weekend with people, and realised that the evening stretched ahead of her, nothing to do. She tried her grandmother, but the crisp message on Mary’s phone said clearly yet elliptically, ‘I am not here, please try later,’ and in the background could clearly be heard the sound of Jasper or Cedric – one of the old roués who lived in her block of flats – saying loudly, ‘Come on, Mary, we’ll miss the train, old girl!’ and another voice, also either Jasper or Cedric, saying, ‘Have you got the cocktail shaker?’ Since Mary had apparently told George and Angela the reason she was unable to spend the Easter weekend with them was that she was staying with a sick old friend in a nursing home near Oxford, Laura heard this message with something amounting to rage, and not a little admiration, too.

Jo, she thought with a start. I’ll ring Jo, of course, haven’t seen her for ages and ages – perhaps I could pop over there tonight and have a catch-up. She still hadn’t seen the final photos from the wedding – gosh. That was a big deal with Jo, whose desire to record every moment of her life on film was only matched by Chris’s. Paddy had predicted their first child would be called Pixel.

Laura sat down on the sofa with a cup of tea and dialled Jo’s mobile.

It rang for a while, the ringtone rather strange, and then Jo’s voice answered, muffled.

‘Hello?’

‘Jo?’ said Laura, discomfited.

‘Hello?’

‘Jo, it’s me,’ said Laura. ‘Hello?’

Jo’s voice said brightly, ‘Laura! Hello. What’s up?’

‘Well –’ said Laura. ‘I was just ringing to say hi.’

‘Hi! Look, I can’t talk for long, Laura. We’re just on our way into the souk.’

‘The what?’ Laura asked, confused. She stood up and looked out of the window.

‘The souk!’ said Jo. She raised her voice suddenly. ‘Chris, wait for me! Don’t go in without me! And don’t give that man money!’ Her voice lowered again. ‘We’re in Marrakesh, aren’t we.’

‘You’re where?’ Laura said.

‘Marrakesh! For ten days! Oh, it’s so cool here, Laura, you’d love it.’

‘I didn’t know you were going to Morocco,’ said Laura.

‘No,’ said Jo. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages, have I? You’ve been invisible lately, Laura. I emailed you last week but you didn’t reply.’