‘Try not to make any snap decisions when you meet David tonight? You probably won’t think he’s your type on first sight, but trust me, he’s hilarious. And he’s kind, Laurie. I mean, he gave up his chair for me the other day in a meeting. How many guys do you know who’d do that?’ Sarah delivers this speech while on her knees pulling as many dusty wine glasses as she can find from the back of the kitchen cupboard in our tiny shared flat.
I cast around for an answer and, to be honest, it’s slim pickings. ‘The guy from the bottom flat moved his bike out of the way to let me through the front door this morning. Does he count?’
‘You mean the same one who opens our mail and leaves trails of cold kebab on the hall floor every weekend?’
I laugh under my breath as I immerse the wine glasses in hot foamy water. We’re throwing our annual Christmas party tonight, which we’ve held every year since we first moved into Delancey Street. Though we’re kidding ourselves that this one will be much more sophisticated now we’ve left university, it’s mostly going to involve students and a few colleagues we’re still getting to know descending on our flat to drink cheap wine, debating things we don’t really understand and – for me it would seem – getting off with someone called David who Sarah has decided is my perfect man. We’ve been here before. My best friend fancies herself as a matchmaker and set me up a couple of times when we were at uni. The first time, Mark, or it might have been Mike, turned up in running shorts in the depths of winter and spent the entire dinner trying to steer my food choices away from anything that would take more than an hour to work off in the gym. I’m a pudding girl; the main thing off the menu as far as I was concerned was Mike. Or Mark. Whichever. In Sarah’s defence, he bore a passing resemblance to Brad Pitt, if you squinted and looked at him out of the corner of your eye in a dark room. Which I have to admit I did; I’m not normally one to sleep with guys on a first date, but I felt I had to give it a go for Sarah’s sake.
Her second choice, Fraser, was only slightly better; I can at least remember his name. He was far and away the most Scottish Scotsman I’ve ever met, so much so that I only understood about fifty per cent of what he said. I don’t think he mentioned bagpipes specifically, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was packing a set underneath his jacket. His tartan bow tie was disconcerting, but none of that would have mattered. His real downfall came at the end of the date; he escorted me home to Delancey Street and then kissed me in the style of someone trying to administer CPR. CPR with an entirely inappropriate amount of saliva. I made a dash for the bathroom as soon as I got inside, and my reflection confirmed that I looked as if I’d been snogged by a Great Dane. In the rain.
Not that I’ve got an impressive track record at choosing boyfriends for myself, either. With the exception of Lewis, my long-time boyfriend back at home, I seem to somehow keep missing the mark. Three dates, four dates, sometimes even five before the inevitable fizzle. I’m starting to wonder if being best friends with someone as dazzling as Sarah is a double-edged sword; she gives men unrealistic expectations about women. If I didn’t love her to pieces, I’d probably want to poke her eyes out.
Anyway, call me stupid, but I knew none of those men were right. I’m a girl given to romance; Nora Ephron is my go-to answer for fantasy dinner party guest and I yearn to know if nice boys really do fucking kiss like that. You get the idea. I’m hoping that amongst all these frogs will one day come a prince. Or something like that.
Who knows what David is going to be like, perhaps it will be third time lucky. I’m not going to hold my breath. Maybe he’ll be the love of my life or maybe he’ll be hideous, but either way I’m undeniably intrigued and more than up for letting my hair down. It’s not something I’ve done very often over the course of the last year; we’ve both had the upheaval of moving out of the cushioned world of uni into the reality of work, more successfully in Sarah’s case than mine. She practically walked into a junior position with a regional TV network, whereas I’m still working on the reception desk at the hotel. Yes, despite my New Year’s Resolution I am decidedly not working in my dream job yet. But it was that or go home to Birmingham, and I fear that if I leave London I’ll never get back again. It was always going to come more easily for Sarah; she’s the gregarious one and I’m slightly socially awkward, which means interviews don’t tend to go so well.
None of that tonight though. I’m determined to get so drunk that social awkwardness is a complete impossibility. After all, we’ll have the buffer of New Year to forget our ill-advised, alcohol-fuelled behaviour. I mean, come on, that happened last year for God’s sake. Move on already!
It’s also the night that I finally get to meet Sarah’s new boyfriend. She’s known him for several weeks already but for one reason or another I’ve yet to lay eyes on him in the apparently incredibly hot flesh. I’ve heard enough about him to write a book, though. Unfortunately for him, I already know he’s a sex god in bed and that Sarah fully expects to have his children and be his wife once he’s the high-flying media celeb he’s clearly on track to becoming. I almost feel sorry for him having his future mapped out for the next ten years at the age of twenty-four. But hey, this is Sarah. However cool he is, he’s still the lucky one.
She can’t stop talking about him. She’s doing it again now, telling me far more about their rampant sex life than I’d ideally like to know.
I scatter bubbles in the air like a child waving a wand as I hold my soapy fingers up to halt her flow. ‘Okay, okay, please stop. I’ll try not to orgasm on sight when I finally clap eyes on your future husband.’
‘Don’t say that to him though, will you?’ she grins. ‘The future husband thing? Because he doesn’t know that bit yet and, you know, it might, like, shock him.’
‘Far better if he thinks it’s all his own brilliant idea in a few years’ time.’ She dusts off the knees of her jeans as she stands up.
I nod. If I know Sarah, which I do, she’ll have him wrapped round her little finger and more than ready to spontaneously propose whenever she decides the time is right. You know those people that everyone gravitates towards? Those rare effervescent birds who radiate this aura that draws people into their orbit? Sarah’s that person. But if you think that makes her sound insufferable, you’d be wrong.
I first met her right here, the first year of uni. I’d decided to go for one of the university rentals rather than halls and I’d picked this place. It’s a tall old townhouse split into three: two bigger flats downstairs and our attic perched on the top like a jaunty afterthought. I was utterly charmed when I first viewed it, my rose-tinted glasses jammed all the way on. You know that shabby-chic little flat Bridget Jones lives in? It reminded me of that, only more shabby and less chic, and I was going to have to share it with a total stranger to meet the rent. None of those drawbacks stopped me from signing on the dotted line; one stranger was easier to contemplate than a crowded, noisy hall full of them. I still remember carting all of my stuff up three flights of stairs on moving-in day, all the time hoping that my new flatmate wasn’t going to crush my Bridget Jones fantasy dead.
She’d tacked a welcome note to the door, big, loopy red handwriting scrawled across the back of a used envelope:
Have gone to buy cheap fizzy piss to celebrate our new home. Take the bigger room if you like, I prefer being in stumbling distance of the bog anyway!
S x
And that was it. She had me in the palm of her hand before I’d even laid eyes on her. She’s different to me in lots of ways, but we share exactly enough middle ground to get on like a house on fire. She’s in-your-face gorgeous with waves of fire-engine red hair that almost reach her bum, and her figure is amazing, though she doesn’t give a toss about how she looks.
Normally someone as gorgeous as her would make me feel like the ugly sister, but Sarah has this way of making you feel good about yourself. The first thing she said to me when she got back from the corner shop that day was, ‘Fucking hell! You’re a dead ringer for Elizabeth Taylor. We’re going to have to get a deadlock on the door or else we’re gonna cause a riot.’
She was exaggerating, of course. I don’t look very much like Elizabeth Taylor. I have my French maternal grandmother to thank for my dark hair and blue eyes; she was quite a celebrated ballerina in her twenties; we have the prized programmes and grainy press cuttings to prove it. But I’ve always thought of myself as more of a failed Parisian; I have inherited my grandmother’s form but not her grace, and her neat brunette chignon has become a permanently electrocuted mass of curls in my hands. Besides, there’s no way I’d ever have the discipline for dancing, I’m far too fond of an extra chocolate biscuit. I’m going to be a goner when my metabolism catches up with me.
Sarah jokingly refers to us as the prozzie and the princess. In truth, she’s not got an ounce of slut in her and I’m nowhere near ladylike enough for a princess. Like I said, we meet in the middle and we make each other laugh. She’s Thelma to my Louise, hence the reason I’m disconcerted that she’s suddenly fallen hook, line and sinker for a guy I haven’t even met or vetted for suitability.
‘Do we have enough booze, do you think?’ she asks now, casting a critical eye over the bottles lined up across the kitchen work surface. No one could call it a sophisticated collection; it’s pile ’em high and sell ’em cheap supermarket special offer wine and vodka we’ve been hoarding for the last three months to make sure our party is one to remember.
Or not remember, perhaps.
‘More than. People will bring a bottle too,’ I say. ‘It’s going to be great.’ My stomach rumbles, reminding me that neither of us has eaten since breakfast.
‘Did you hear that?’ I say, rubbing my middle. ‘My guts just asked you to make a DS special.’
Sarah’s sandwiches are the stuff of Delancey Street myth and legend. She’s taught me her holy breakfast trinity of bacon, beetroot and mushrooms, and it took us the best part of two years to settle on our signature dish, the DS special, named after our flat.
She rolls her eyes, laughing. ‘You can make it yourself, you know.’
‘Not the way you do it.’
She preens a little, opening the fridge. ‘That’s true.’
I watch her layer chicken and blue cheese with lettuce, mayo and cranberry, an exact science that I’ve yet to master. I know it sounds hideous, but trust me, it’s not. It may not be your average student food, but ever since we hit on the winning combo back in our uni days we make sure to always have the ingredients in the fridge. It’s pretty much our staple diet. That, ice cream and cheap wine.
‘It’s the cranberry that does it,’ I say after my first bite.
‘It’s a quantity thing,’ she says. ‘Too much cranberry and it’s basically a jam sandwich. Too much cheese and you’re licking a teenager’s dirty sock.’
I raise my sandwich for another bite, but she lunges and pushes my arm down. ‘Wait. We need a drink with it to get us in the party mood.’
I groan, because I realize what she’s going to do when she reaches for two shot glasses. She’s laughing under her breath already as she reaches into the back of the cupboard behind the cereal boxes for the dusty bottle.
‘Monks’ piss,’ she says, pouring us each a ceremonial shot. Or Benedictine, to give the old herbal liqueur that came with the flat its proper name. The bottle informs us that it’s a special blend of secret herbs and spices, and on first taste not long after we moved in we decided that one of those secret ingredients was almost certainly Benedictine monks’ piss. Every now and then, usually at Christmas, we have one shot each, a ritual we’ve come to enjoy and loathe in equal measures.
‘Down the hatch,’ she grins, sliding a glass across the table to me as she sits back down. ‘Happy Christmas, Lu.’
We clink and then knock our shots back, banging the empty glasses down on the table and wincing.
‘Doesn’t get any better with age,’ I whisper, feeling as if it’s taken the skin off the roof of my mouth.
‘Rocket fuel,’ she rasps, laughing. ‘Eat your sandwich, you’ve earned it.’
We lapse into sandwich silence, and when we’ve finished she taps the rim of her empty plate.
‘I think, because it’s Christmas, that we could add a sausage.’
I shake my head. ‘You can’t mess with the DS special.’
‘There isn’t much in life that can’t be improved by a saveloy, Laurie.’ She raises her eyebrows at me. ‘You never know, you might get lucky tonight and see David’s.’
Given the last two blind dates Sarah set me up on, I don’t let the prospect overexcite me.
‘Come on,’ I say, dumping the plates in the sink. ‘We’d better get ready, they’ll be here soon.’
I’m three glasses of white in and definitely very relaxed when Sarah finds me and literally drags me from the kitchen by the hand.
‘He’s here,’ she whispers, crushing the bones of my fingers. ‘Come and say hi. You have to meet him right now.’
I smile apologetically at David as she pulls me away. I’m starting to see what Sarah meant about him being a grower. He’s made me laugh several times already and he’s kept my glass topped up; I’d just been considering a tiny exploratory snog. He’s nice enough in a vaguely Ross from Friends kind of way, but I find I’m more intrigued to meet Sarah’s soulmate, which must mean that Ross from Friends would be a regret come tomorrow. It’s as good a barometer as any.
She tugs me through our laughing, drunk friends and a whole load of people I’m not sure either of us even know, until finally we reach her boyfriend standing uncertainly by the front door.
‘Laurie,’ Sarah is jittery and bright-eyed. ‘Meet Jack. Jack, this is Laurie. My Laurie,’ she adds, for emphasis.
I open my mouth to say hello and then I see his face. My heart jumps into my throat and I feel as if someone just laid electric shock pads on my chest and turned them up to full fry. I can’t get any words to leave my lips.
I know him.
It feels like just last week I saw him first – and last. That heart-stopping glimpse from the top deck of a crowded bus twelve months ago.
‘Laurie.’ He says my name, and I could cry with the sheer relief of him being here. It’s going to sound crazy but I’ve spent the last year wishing, hoping I’d run into him. And now he’s here. I’ve scoured countless crowds for his face and I’ve searched for him in bars and cafes. I’d all but given up on ever finding bus boy, even though Sarah swears I’ve banged on about him so much that she’d even recognize him herself.
She didn’t, as it turned out. Instead she’s presented him to me as the love of her life.
Green. His eyes are green. Tree moss vivid around the iris edges, warm amber gold seeping in around his pupils. But it’s not the colour of his eyes that strikes me so much as the look in them right now as he gazes down at me. A startled flash of recognition. A dizzying, headlong collision. And then it’s gone in a heartbeat, leaving me unsure if the sheer force of my own longing made me imagine it had been there at all.
‘Jack,’ I manage, thrusting my hand out. His name is Jack. ‘It’s so good to meet you.’
He nods, a skittish half-smile flickering over his lips. ‘Laurie.’
I glance towards Sarah, crazy guilty, certain that she must be able to sense something amiss, but she’s just grinning at us both like a loon. Thank God for cheap wine.
When he takes my hand in his, warm and strong, he shakes it firmly, politely almost, as if we’re meeting in a formal boardroom rather than at a Christmas party.
I don’t know what to do with myself, because all of the things I want to do wouldn’t be okay. True to my word, I don’t orgasm on the spot, but there is definitely something going on with my heart. How on earth has this colossal fuck-up happened? He can’t be Sarah’s. He’s mine. He’s been mine for an entire year.
‘Isn’t she fabulous?’
Sarah has her hand on the small of my back now, presenting me, actually propelling me towards him to hug because she’s desperate for us to be new best friends. I’m wretched.
Jack rolls his eyes and laughs nervously, as if Sarah’s obviousness makes him uncomfortable.
‘Just as splendid as you said she was,’ he agrees, nodding as if he’s admiring a friend’s new car, and something horribly like an apology creeps into his expression as he looks at me. Is he apologizing because he remembers or because Sarah is behaving like an overeager aunt at a wedding?
‘Laurie?’ Sarah turns her attention to me. ‘Isn’t he every bit as gorgeous as I said he was?’ She’s laughing, proud of him, as well she should be.
I nod. Swallow painfully, even as I force a laugh. ‘He certainly is.’
Because Sarah is so desperately keen for us to like each other, Jack obligingly leans in and touches his lips briefly against my cheek. ‘It’s good to meet you,’ he says. His voice matches him perfectly; coolly confident, rich, shot through with gentle, knowing wit. ‘She never shuts up about you.’
My fingers close around the familiarity of my purple pendant, looking for comfort as I force a laugh, shaky. ‘I feel as if I know you too.’ And I do; I feel as if I have known him for ever. I want to turn my face and catch his lips with my own. I want to drag him breathlessly to my room and close the door, tell him that I love him, strip off my clothes and climb into bed with him, drown in the woody, clean, warm scent of his skin.
I’m in hell. I hate myself. I take a couple of steps away from him for my own sanity and grapple with my wretched heart to stop it banging louder than the music.
‘Drink?’ Sarah suggests, light-hearted and loud.
He nods, grateful to be thrown a lifeline.
‘Laurie?’ Sarah looks at me to go with them.
I lean back and peer down the hallway towards the bathroom, jiggling as if I’m in dire need of the loo. ‘I’ll catch you up.’ I need to get away from him, from them, from this.
In the safety of the bathroom, I slam the door and slide on to my backside with my head in my hands, gulping air down so as not to cry.
Oh God, oh God. Oh God! I love Sarah, she’s my sister in all but biology. But this … I don’t know how to navigate safely through it without sinking the ship with all of us aboard. Hope flares bright in my chest as I fantasize running out there and just blurting out the truth, because maybe then Sarah will realize that the reason she’s so drawn to him is that, subconsciously, she recognized him as bus boy. God knows I’ve all but drawn him for her. What a misunderstanding! How we’ll laugh at the sheer absurdity! But … then what? She graciously steps aside and he is my new boyfriend, easy as pie? I don’t even think he recognized me, for Christ’s sake!
Lead-heavy defeat crushes the delicate, ridiculous hope as reality creeps in. I can’t do it. Of course I can’t. She has no clue, and Jesus, she’s so happy. It shines from her brighter than the star of fucking Bethlehem. It might be Christmas, but this is actual life, not some crappy Hollywood movie. Sarah is my best friend in the entire world, and however much and for however long it kills me, I’ll never silently, secretly hold up signs to tell Jack O’Mara, without hope or agenda, that to me he is perfect, and that my wasted heart will always love him.