One Thing Led to Another

‘For God’s sake, mum, dad’s not going to drop down dead. He’s got more energy than you and me put together.’

This is true. My dad owns a construction company so he’s up and down ladders, lifting sacks of cement daily. On top of that, he’s on the golf course every weekend and last year he ran the Morecambe 10K race dressed as a shrimp for Cancer Research. What my mum lacks in get up and go, my dad makes up for ten fold. If anything it’s my mum whose health is dodgy, the amount of time she spends sitting on her backside scoffing stilton and watching Emmerdale.

‘You’re right lovey, you’re absolutely right,’ she sighs. ‘But the mind does boggle. I mean, alive one minute, dead as a doorpost the next. He was just mowing his lawn at the time, can you believe it? Who’d have thought mowing your lawn could kill you.’

I chuckle to myself at the characteristic lunacy of this comment. If mum had her way, we would all be bubble-wrapped and crash-helmeted in order to protect us from the potentially life-threatening nature of grass cuttings.

It’s ten more minutes at least before she shows any sign of hanging up and allowing me to get ready for work.

‘Now, don’t forget Ed’s birthday will you? It’s next Monday so make sure you post a card on Saturday because there’s no post on a Sunday and…’

‘Yes mum. Contrary to popular belief, I am not a complete imbecile.’ I hold the receiver under my chin as I attempt to put on knickers. ‘I’ll speak to you soon. Bye! Bye…!’

I press ‘end call’ and feel instantly guilt-ridden. Poor mum. Living in London, I never seem to have the time for leisurely phone calls with her anymore and I sometimes worry she feels jealous that I manage it with my dad. It’s just, me and dad have an understanding. Whereas my mum and my brother were born with a tendency to gossip and dramatize, to expect the very worst and then delight in going on about it when that prophecy is fulfilled, me and my dad have always come at life rather more sunny-side-up: in the belief that everything and everyone is good, until proved otherwise.

I finally leave the house at 8.40 a.m. thinking I’ll just have time, if I’m quick, to pop into Star’s before catching the bus. Star’s is the dry cleaners on New North Road. Its run by a family of Turkish Cypriots, headed up by Emete, whose numerous spare tyres and racoon-ringed eyes belie an energy level so phenomenal, you wonder if this woman could pop out another five babies to add to her brood this week, and still get the whole street’s ironing done.

The bell sounds as I push open the door. Emete bustles to the front of the shop, a tape measure around her neck.

‘Tessa, my love. What a wonderful start to the day!’ She opens her arms – each the size of one of my thighs – and places an enthusiastic kiss on both cheeks.

‘Hi Emete. Morning Omer!’ I shout, peering through the rows of plastic bags to the back of the shop where Emete’s husband sits, coffee in hand, reading the newspaper. He raises a hand without looking up.

‘Now angel, what can I do for you?’ Emete pins a pink ticket to somebody’s jacket and hangs it up on a rail to her right.

I hear the doorbell go again and am half-aware of a presence beside me.

‘It’s this shirt,’ I say, taking the linen shirt out of the bag and laying it out in front of us. ‘It was in my last lot of dry cleaning but it’s not mine, there must have been a mix up.’

Emete puts the safety pin she was holding between her teeth and holds it up to the light. ‘How strange,’ she says.

‘Very strange,’ says a voice. I recognize it instantly. ‘I’ve got the same problem.’

Another item of clothing appears on the counter.

I stare at the white linen dress in front of me, and then at the hands placed on top of it: tanned, big, with slender fingers and round, shell-pink nails. I’d know those hands anywhere. I trace the arms, lean, boyish, a perfect covering of fine, black hair and then the face, I’m looking at the face. My hand goes to my mouth, my heart starts to race.

‘Laurence?!’

Brown eyes, behind which lie albums and albums of memories of us, are staring at me now, flickering with disbelief. He covers them with his hands. Those oh so familiar hands. ‘Tess?’ He uncovers his eyes again. ‘Shit, it is you.’ He looks at the shirt. ‘And that’s my shirt!’

Emete, prone to fits of the giggles at the best of times, is doubled up now, great wheezy laughs making her bosom heave.

‘You know her?!’ Her bulbous eyes are round as gobstoppers. ‘You know him?!’ She summons Omer from the back of the shop. ‘In fifteen years, Omer! I’ve never known…oh! How wonderful!’ Omer shuffles forward, puts his arm around his wife and gives a silent, toothless grin in appreciation of the moment.

We exchange clothes – Laurence gives me my white dress, I try to give him his shirt, but my hands are shaking so much that I drop it, at his feet.

‘Sorry, whoops.’ (What sort of a word is whoops?!)

‘It’s alright, I’ve got it.’ He picks it up. When he stands up, his face is so close to mine I can see the subtle bumpiness of this morning’s shave. Laurence has hardly aged at all. Hairline slightly retreating perhaps, but only to reveal two sun-kissed Vs and some fine laughter lines around those lazy, pretty eyes. I hold his gaze for as long as I can bear, then look away, embarrassed.

‘Hello,’ he says.

‘Hi,’ I say. Then we look at each other, but we’re flabbergasted, half laughing, not having the slightest clue what to say. I haven’t seen him for five years. Not since that freezing November morning at Heathrow airport.

‘It really is you’ he says eventually.

‘I know, I know!’ I say, giggling like an idiot and wishing I’d at least had time to put some mascara on this morning.

‘I cannot believe…’ He steps back, as if to get a better look at me.

‘Nor can I!’ I look at Emete, who’s still shaking with laughter like a mountain in an earthquake. ‘It’s totally freaky!’

We stand there, all four of us laughing, not really sure what we’re laughing at except that this is turning out to be the most extraordinary, wonderful, glorious morning.

Omer finally speaks and when he does, it’s worth every syllable.

‘So how do you two know each other?’ he says, flashing his gummy smile.

Laurence takes hold of one of my hands. He looks at me from under those heavy lids.

‘She was my girlfriend,’ he says finally, proudly even. ‘We went out together, for two years. Till I went and ballsed it up.’

Laurence and I met in April 2000 – the unseasonably warm spring of our final year – and all I was doing in Manchester was lazing about campus with Gina, sipping beer out of plastic glasses.

‘Do you fancy coming to this party?’ Gina asked one day.

‘Er, yeah!’ I said. (Was the Pope a Catholic?) ‘What kind of party? Count me in.’

‘A garden party,’ she said. ‘At my mate Laurence’s parents’ house in Sussex. They have one every year.’

She said Laurence was studying media studies at Leeds University and was a mate from boarding school. I can’t say that ‘garden party’ really got my pulse racing but as with most things involving Gina, there were a few surprises in store. For starters, any preconceptions I had about ‘parents’ and ‘garden party’ were swiftly eradicated the moment we accelerated up to the main gates in Gina’s Fiat Bravo (the purchase of which I hold entirely responsible for me delaying learning to drive). There was some kind of French rap music, the sort you expect to throb from Parisian banlieue, reverberating from their huge, sprawling farmhouse as we walked up the long gravel path. Huge red and gold lanterns adorned the front of the house. A barefoot, wild-haired woman wearing a sequinned waistcoat and holding an enormous glass of red wine almost ran towards us, arms out-stretched. ‘Bienvenue and welcome!’ she cried, kissing Gina then me on both cheeks. (I immediately had a personality crush.) She was Laurence’s mum – or Joelle as she insisted we call her – something which seemed biologically impossible since she looked about thirty. She’d been in England for twenty years, even though her French accent was still treacle-thick. Joelle and Laurence’s dad, Paul, had met when he was a student in Aix-en-Provence and Joelle was working as a life model (so French! I loved her even more). Now he was a lecturer in French at the University of Sussex and skulked about the house wearing Woody Allen-style glasses and smoking Camel Reds. Joelle poured us equally huge glasses of wine. ‘Make yourselves at home,’ she said. ‘All my boys are outside.’

At that point, a bare-chested young man sauntered into the kitchen, wrapped his arms around Joelle, who was stirring something sweet and spicy on the Aga, and kissed her on the cheek. ‘And this,’ she said, reaching on her tip toes and kissing him back, ‘is my most beautiful and most idle one.’

I should have let that be my warning, but I fell in love – well, it was all-consuming, primeval lust at that point – on the spot.

Laurence was six foot two with closely cropped black curls which looked like they would spring to life like his mother’s if he let them, sultry dark eyes with languorous lids and an exquisite dimple in his left cheek. He was wearing Levis twisted jeans and white flip-flops that showed off the most perfect tanned toes. I remember curling mine, complete with chipped purple nail varnish and the odd unsuccessfully frozen verucca, inside my trainers.

We’re standing outside the dry cleaners now, Emete and Omer still watching from the window.

‘So what are you doing now?’ Laurence says it as if we have options.

(A coffee maybe? Stiff G&T? I suppose a quick session back at mine would be out of the question?)

‘Oh, work, unfortunately,’ I say, hoisting myself back down to earth. ‘And you?’

‘Yeah, work,’ says Laurence.