A Hopeless Romantic (3 page)

Her friend Hilary was in the loos when she got there, washing her hands. “Oi,” she said. “Hi.”

Laura jumped. “Oh. Hi!” she said brightly. “Hey. Great speech, wasn’t it.”

“Not bad,” said Hilary, who didn’t much like public displays of affection, verbal or physical. She ran her hands through her hair. “That idiot Jason’s here, did you see?”

“Yeah,” said Laura. “He’s quite nice, isn’t he?”

“Well,” said Hilary in a flat tone. “He’s okay. If you like that kind of thing.”

“He’s split up with Cath,” Laura said encouragingly.

“Yeah, I know,” Hilary said coolly. “Hm. I might go and find him.”

“’Kay. See you later,” said Laura, and shut the door of the cubicle. She rested her pounding head against the cool of the white tiles. She was stressing out, and she didn’t know what to do. Dan had got to her. The worst bit of all was, she didn’t just fancy him something rotten. She really
liked
him, too.

She liked the way he was always first to buy a round, that the corners of his blue eyes crinkled when he laughed, the rangy, almost bowlegged way he walked, his strong hands. She liked the way he rolled his eyes with gentle amusement when Yorky said something particularly Yorky-ish. She liked him. She couldn’t help it. And she knew he liked her, that was the funny thing. She just knew, in the way you know. She had also come to know, in the last couple of months, that there was something going on between her and Dan. She just didn’t know what it was. But somehow, she knew tonight was the night.

Dan was a friend of Chris’s from university. He’d moved about five minutes away from Laura, round the corner from Jo and Chris toward Highbury, about six months ago—though she’d known of him vaguely since Jo and Chris had got together. In July, Dan had started a new job, and more often than not Laura found herself on the Tube platform with him in the morning. The first couple of times, it was mere coincidence. By the end of summer, it was almost a routine. They would buy a coffee from the stall on the platform and sit together in the second-to-last carriage, deserted in the dusty dog days of August, and go down the Northern Line together till they got to Bank. And they would read
Metro
together and chat, and it was all perfectly innocent—“Dan? Oh, yeah, we’re Tube buddies,” Laura would say nonchalantly, her heart thumping in her chest. “They’re transport pals,” Chris and Jo would joke at lunch on Sundays. “Like an old married couple on the seafront at Clacton.” “Ha-ha-ha,” Laura would mutter, and blush furiously, biting her lip and shaking her hair forward over her face, burying herself in a newspaper. Not that they ever noticed—it’s extraordinary what people don’t notice right under their noses.

But to Laura, it was obvious, straightforward. From the first time she’d recognized him on the Tube platform that sunny summer day, and he had smiled at her, his face genuinely lighting up with pleasure—“Laura!” he’d said, warmth in his voice. “What a nice surprise. Come and sit next to me”—through the sun and rain of September and October, her running down the steps to the Tube platform, not knowing what was going on, knowing it was completely strange but not wanting to know any more. They had built up a whole lexicon of information. Just little things that you tell the people you see each day. She knew when his watch was being mended, what big meeting he had that day, and he knew when Rachel, her boss, was being annoying, and asked how her grandmother had been the previous day. Out of these little things, woven over and under each other, grew a web of knowledge, of intimacy, and one day Laura had woken up and known, with a clarity that was shocking, that this was
not
just another one of her crushes, or another failed relationship that she couldn’t understand. She and Dan had something. And she was in love with him.

Oh, the level of denial about the whole thing
was
extraordinary, because you could explain it away in a heartbeat if you had to: “We go to work together, because we live round the corner from each other. It’s great—nice start to the day, you know.” Whereas the truth was a little more complicated. The truth was that both of them had started getting to the station earlier and earlier, so they could sit on the bench together with their coffees and chat for ten minutes before they got on the Tube. And that was weird. Laura knew that. Yes, she was in denial about the whole thing. She knew that, too. It had got to the stage when something had to give—and she couldn’t wait.

Laura collected herself, breathed deeply, smoothed the material of her dress down, and came out of the loo to put on more lip gloss. She realized as she looked in the mirror that she was already wearing enough lip gloss to cause an oil slick—it was a nervous reflex of hers, to apply more and more when in doubt. She blotted some on the back of her hand, and strolled out the door nonchalantly, looking for Yorky, or Hilary, someone to chat to. It was strange, wasn’t it, she mused, that at her best friend’s wedding, knowing virtually everyone in the room, she could feel so exposed, so alone. That on such a happy day, she could feel so sad. She shook her head, feeling silly. Look over there, she told herself, as Jo and Chris walked through the tables of the big ballroom, hand in hand, smiling at each other, at their friends and family. It was lovely. It was a privilege to see. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hilary pinning Jason against a wall, yelling at him about something, her long, elegant hands waving in the air. Jason looked scared, but transfixed. Another man scared into snogging Hil, she thought. Well done, girl.

Someone handed her a glass of champagne, and she accepted it gratefully and turned to see who it was.

“Sorry,” whispered Dan casually, though he didn’t bend toward her. He said it softly, intimately, and clinked his glass with hers. “I thought I’d better leave you to deal with Yorky’s sartorial crisis by yourself. Where did you go?”

“Loo,” said Laura, trying to stay calm, but it came out, much to her and Dan’s surprise, as a low, oddly pitched growl. He smiled. Laura smiled back, and ran her hand through her hair in a casual, groomed manner. But she’d forgotten the lipstick mark of gloss adhering to the back of her hand; her hair stuck to the gloss, and her fingers got tangled in her hair as she flailed wildly around with her hand in the air.

“Arrgh,” said Laura, despair washing over her. Her hand was stuck in her hair. Dan took the champagne glass out of her other hand and put it on a table, then held her wrist and slid her fingers slowly out of her hair. He smoothed it down and swiftly dropped a kiss on the crown of her head in a sweet, intimate gesture, then put his palm on the small of her back as she picked up her glass and guided her through the room onto the terrace.

“Thanks,” whispered Laura, trying to walk upright and not cower with embarrassment. “I should go back in, to see the first dance, look—”

“No problem,” said Dan calmly. “In a minute. I just want to do this.” And he slid his hand round her waist, drew her toward him, and kissed her. No one else was watching; they were all turned toward the dance floor where Mr. and Mrs. Lambert were dancing. They were alone on the terrace, just the two of them. Dan pulled her toward him, his hands pressing on her spine, his lips gentle but firm on hers. He made a strange, sad sound in his throat, somewhere between a cry of something and a moan. Laura slid one arm around his neck and drew him farther toward her. Her other hand, by her side, was still holding the champagne glass. It tilted and the champagne spilled; neither of them noticed.

After a short while, they broke apart slowly, and said nothing. There was nothing to say, really. Laura drained the meager contents of her glass and leaned into Dan. They stood there together as the music died away and applause rippled out toward them, aware of nothing but themselves, alone in their bubble.

“Well,” Dan said eventually. “I didn’t know
that
was going to happen tonight,” and he put his arm around her.

Laura twisted round, looked up at him. “Oh, yes you did,” she said, smiling into his eyes. “Of course you did.”

That was Laura’s second glass of champagne; shortly afterward, she found Yorky and Scary Hilary on another terrace having a cigarette, so she joined them. After her third glass, thirty minutes later, she was a bit tired. After her fourth, she felt better again—and she’d eaten from the buffet as well. After her fifth and sixth, she danced for an hour with Jo and Chris and their other friends. And after her seventh glass, she didn’t know how it happened, but she found herself in a taxi going home with Dan Floyd, and they were kissing so hard that her lips were bruised the next day. And that was when it really started, and Laura went from knowing lots of things about Dan and how she felt about him and her place in the world in general to knowing nothing. At all.

At one point during the night, she propped herself up on her elbow and leaned over him and kissed him again, and he kissed her back and they rolled over together, and Laura pulled back and said, “So…what does this mean, then?” It just came out. And Dan’s face clouded over and he said, “Oh, gorgeous, let’s not do this now, not when I want you so much,” and he carried on kissing her. Something should have made Laura pull away and say, “No, actually, what
does
this mean? Are you going to tell your girlfriend? When will you leave your girlfriend? Do you like me? Are we together?” But
of course
she didn’t….

chapter three

Y
es, Dan had a girlfriend, Amy. Just a tiny detail, nothing much. They were as good as living together, too—although she still had her own place. Another detail Laura tried to forget about. She had
almost
managed to convince herself that if she didn’t tell anyone about her—well, what was it? A “thing”? A “fling”? A fully formed relationship just waiting to move into the sunlight of acceptance?—her liaison with Dan, then perhaps the outside world didn’t matter so much. And it didn’t, when she was with him. Because he was The One, she was sure of it. So it became surprisingly easy for Laura, who was basically a good girl, who never ever thought she could do something like this, to turn into a person who was sleeping with someone else’s boyfriend.

After Jo and Chris’s wedding, she told herself—and Dan—that it wasn’t going to happen again. She bit her nails to the quick about it because, much as Laura might be clueless about some things, she was clear about other things, and one of those was: Don’t sleep with someone who has a girlfriend. She’d already tried going cold turkey from him, as autumn gave way to winter and she realized she was falling for him, badly. She tried avoiding him at the Tube station—but she couldn’t. She tried to forget him—but she couldn’t. When she thought about him, it was as if he were talking to her, pleading with her, communicating with her directly. Laura, it’s you I want, not Amy. Laura, please let me see you, his eyes and his voice would say in her head, until the noise got so loud it was all she could hear. Every time was the last time. Every time was the first time.

Laura knew it was wrong to be thinking like this. But she assuaged her secret guilt with the knowledge that Dan and Amy weren’t getting on well. Dan himself had told her it wasn’t working out. Well, he had in so many words, with a sigh and a shake of the head, in the early days of their coffee mornings together on the Tube platform. And she knew from Jo that Dan was going out with Chris and his other mates more, playing more football, watching more football, in the pub more, working harder. Added to which, no one in their group ever really saw Amy. She and Dan were together, but they were never actually together. She was completely offstage, like a mystery character in a soap opera whom people refer to but who never appears. You know when a couple are happy together—mainly because you don’t see either of them as much, and when you do, they’re either together or they talk about each other. Or they’re just happy. You know. Laura knew—as did everyone else—that Dan wasn’t happy with Amy. Dan wanted out, he just didn’t know how to get out.

And, actually, Amy wasn’t really her friend. They occasionally all went out for drinks, Jo and Chris, Dan and Amy, Hilary, Yorky, and Laura, and so on, especially now that Dan had moved nearby. But Amy rarely came along, and in any case, Laura had long ago realized she couldn’t stand her. Never had been able to, in fact. Because not only was Amy a quasi-friend of hers, they had also been at school together, many moons ago, and there is no more mutually suspicious relationship than that of two ex-schoolmates who are thrown together several years later. Added to which, Amy had been one of the mean girls who had teased Laura relentlessly about her love for Mr. Wallace, the oboe teacher, and the subsequent rumors surrounding Laura’s giving up the oboe. She’d even told Laura’s mother about it at a school concert, all wide-eyed concern. Angela Foster had got the wrong end of the stick, and assumed Laura was being pestered by Mr. Wallace. She’d complained. He’d nearly been fired. The whole thing had been deeply embarrassing. So Laura’s dislike of Amy was historical, rather than based upon the fact that Amy was with the man Laura felt quite sure she loved. It made her feel better, in some obscure way.

Amy ate nothing, exercised obsessively, talked about shoes and handbags the entire time (like, the
entire time
), and played with her beautiful red hair—nonstop. It was her thing. She always had, even when she and Laura had been eight-year-olds in plaits and kneesocks at school. Twenty years later, the same soft white hand would smooth down the crown of its owner’s hair as Amy softened her voice to tell a sad story—about a friend’s mother’s death, or something bad in the news. Or said something deeply meaningful at the pub, which made Laura want to gag childishly on her drink, and then made her hate herself even more.

The thing was, Laura knew Amy was the kind of girl men fell for, even though she led them on a merry chase. Laura wasn’t. She was nice, she was funny, but she knew she was ordinary, nothing special. She knew that. It perplexed her, as much as it exhilarated her. Why would anyone, especially Dan, choose her when they could be with Amy? Why did he understand her so well, laugh at her jokes? What amazing thing had led him to think of her as this perfect person for him, just as she felt the same way, knew that he was her Mr. Right? It was extraordinary, it was magical; and so, even though it was underhanded and stressful, she carried on doing it.