A Hopeless Romantic Part 1

A Hopeless Romantic.

by Harriet Evans.

For the magnificent specimen, my mother, Linda. With all my love.

acknowledgments.

With many thanks to Kim Witherspoon, David Forner, Beth Davey, and all at Inkwell. No thanks to David for revealing the Desperate Housewives finale secret, though. And a huge thank-you to Louise Burke and all my friends at Pocket, especially Maggie Crawford.

How to understand it all! How to understand the deceptions she had been thus practicing on herself, and living under!-The blunders, the blindness of her own head and heart!-she sat still, she walked about, she tried her own room, she tried the shrubbery-in every place, every posture, she perceived that she had acted most weakly.

-Emma, Jane Austen.

part one.

chapter one.

L aura Foster was a hopeless romantic. Her best friend, Jo, said it was her greatest flaw, and at the same time her most endearing trait, because it was the thing that most frequently got her into trouble, and yet falling in love was like a drug to her. Having a crush, daydreaming about someone, feeling her heart race when she saw a certain man walk toward her-she thrived on all of it, and was disastrously, helplessly, hopelessly incapable of seeing when it was wrong. Everyone has a blind spot. With Laura, it was as if she had a blind heart.

Anyone with a less romantic upbringing would be hard to find. She wasn't a runaway nun, or the daughter of an Italian count, or a mysterious orphan. She was the daughter of George and Angela Foster, of Harrow, in the suburbs of London. She had one younger brother, Simon, who was perfectly normal, not a secret duke, or a spy, or a soldier. George was a computer engineer, and Angela was a part-time translator. As Jo once said to her, about a year after they met at university, "Laura, why do you go around pretending to be Julie Andrews, when you're actually Hyacinth Bucket?"

But Laura never allowed reality to get in the way of fantasy. By the time she was eighteen, she had fallen for: a runny-nosed, milk-bottle-gla.s.seswearing, primary-school outcast called Kevin (in her mind, Indiana Jones with gla.s.ses); her oboe teacher, Mr. Wallace, a thin, spotty youth, over whom she developed a raging obsession and calluses on her fingers, so ferociously did she practice; and about fifteen different boys at the boys' school around the corner from hers in Harrow.

When she went to university, the scope was even greater, the potential for romance limitless. She wasn't interested in a random pickup at a club. No, Laura wanted someone to stand underneath her window and recite poetry to her. She was almost always disappointed. There was Gideon, the budding theater director who hadn't quite come out of the closet. Juan, the Colombian student who spoke no English. And the rowing captain who was much more obsessed with the treadmill at the gym than with her; her dentist, who charged her far too much and then made her pay for dinner; and the lecturer in her humanities seminar whom she never spoke to, and who didn't know her name, whom she wasted two terms staring at in a heartfelt manner.

For all of these, Laura followed the same pattern. She stopped eating, she mooned around, she was acutely conscious of where they were in any room, thought she saw them around every corner-was that the back of his curly head going into the newsagents? She became a big, dumb idiot whenever any of them spoke to her; so fairly often they walked away, bemused that this nice girl with dark blond hair, a sweet smile, and a dirty laugh who'd seemed to like them then behaved like a tourist in a strange land, eyes downcast, virtually mute. Or they'd ask her out-and then Laura, for her part, usually came tumbling down to earth with a bang when she realized they weren't perfect, weren't this demiG.o.d she'd turned them into in her mind. It wasn't that she was particularly picky, either. She was just a really bad picker.

She believed in The One. And every man she met, for the first five minutes, two weeks, four months, had the potential in her eyes to be The One-until she reluctantly realized he was gay (Gideon from the Drama Society), psychopathic (Adam, her boyfriend for several months, who eventually gave up on his MA in the Romantic poets and joined the Special Air Service to become a killing machine), against the law ( Juan, the illegal immigrant from Colombia), or Josh (her most recent boyfriend, whom she'd met at a volunteer reading program seminar at work-she worked for the local council-decided was The One after five minutes, and dated for over a year, before realizing that, really, all they had in common was a love of local council literacy initiatives).

It's fine for girls to grow up believing in something like The One; but the generally received wisdom by the time Laura was out of university, as she moved into her midtwenties, as her friends started to settle down, was that it didn't really exist-well, it did, but with variations. Not for Laura. She was going to wait till she found him. To her flatmate and childhood friend Yorky's complaints that he was sick of sharing his flat with a lovesick teenager all the time, as well as a succession of totally disparate, odd men, Laura said firmly that he was being mean and judgmental. To Jo's pragmatic suggestions that she should join a dating agency, or simply ask out that bloke over there, Laura said no. It would happen the way she wanted it to happen, she said-you couldn't force it. And that would be it-until five minutes later when a waiter in a restaurant would smile at her, and Laura would gaze happily up at him, imagining herself and him moving back to Italy, opening a small cafe in a market square, having lots of beautiful babies called Francesca and Giacomo. Jo could only shake her head at this, as Laura laughed with her, aware of how hopeless she was, compared to her pragmatic, realistic best friend.

Until, one evening about eighteen months ago, Jo came round to supper at Yorky and Laura's flat. She was very quiet; Laura often worried that Jo worked too hard. As Laura was trying to digest a mouthful of chickpeas that Yorky had marvelously undercooked, trying not to choke on them, Jo wiped her mouth with a piece of paper towel and looked up.

"Um...hey."

Laura looked at her suspiciously. Jo's eyes were sparkling, her heart-shaped little face was flushed, and she leaned across the table and said, "I've met someone."

"Where?" Yorky had said stupidly.

But Laura understood what that statement meant, of course she did, and she said, "Who is he?"

"He's called Chris," Jo said, and she smiled, rather girlishly, which was even more unusual for her. "I met him at work." Jo was a real estate solicitor. "He was buying a house. He yelled at me."

And then-and this was when Laura realized it was serious-Jo twisted a tendril of her hair and then put it in her mouth. Since this was a breach of social behavior in Jo's eyes tantamount to not sending a thank-you card after a dinner party, Laura put her hand out across the table and said, "Wow! How exciting."

"I know," said Jo, unable to stop herself smiling. "I know!"

Laura knew, as she looked at Jo, she just knew, she didn't know why. Here was someone in love, who had found The One, and that was all there was to it.

Chris and Jo moved into the house she'd helped him buy after six months; four months after that, he proposed. The following December, a couple of weeks before Christmas, he and Jo were to be married, in a London hotel. Jo had eschewed grown-up bridesmaids, saying they were deeply, humiliatingly tacky, much to Laura's disappointment-she was rather looking forward to donning a nice dress, and sharing with her best friend the happiest day of her life. Instead, she was going to be best woman, and Yorky an usher.

It seemed as if Jo and Chris had been together forever, and Laura could barely remember when he hadn't been on the scene. He fitted right in, with his North London pub ways, his easy, uncomplicated personality, so laid-back and friendly compared to Jo's dry, rather controlled outlook on life. He had friends who lived nearby-some lovely friends. They were all a gang now, him and Jo, his friends, Yorky and Laura, sometimes Laura's brother, Simon, when he wasn't off somewhere being worthy and making girls swoon (where Laura was always falling in love, Simon was always falling into bed with a complete stranger, usually by dint of lulling her into a false sense of security by telling her he worked for a charity). And Hilary, also from university and christened Scary Hilary-because she was-and her brother, Hamish, their other friends from work or university, and so on. Laura's easy, happy, uncomplicated life went on its way. She had a brief, intense affair with a playwright she thought was very possibly the new John Osborne, until Yorky pointed out that he was, in fact, just an idiot who liked shouting a lot. Yorky grew a mustache for the autumn. Laura got a raise at work. They bought a PlayStation to celebrate-games for him, karaoke for her. Yes, everything was well within its usual frame, except that Laura began to feel, more and more, as she looked at Jo and Chris so in love and looked at the landscape of her own dull life, that she was taking the path of least resistance, that her world was small and pathetic compared to Jo's. That she was missing out on what she most wanted in the world.

Under these circ.u.mstances, it was hardly surprising that the next time Laura fell, she fell hard. Because one day, quite without meaning to, she woke up, got dressed, and went to work, and everything was normal, and by the next day, she had fallen in love again. But this time, she knew it was for real. And that was when everything started to go wrong.

chapter two.

L aura's grandmother, Mary Fielding, was the person Laura loved most in the world (apart from whomever it was she was in love with at that moment), even more so perhaps than her parents, than her brother. Mary was a widow. She had lost her husband, Xan, eight years before, and she lived on her own, in a small but perfectly formed flat in Marylebone. There were various reasons why Laura idolized Mary, wanted to be just like her, found her much more seductive than her own parents. Mary was stylish-even at eighty-four, she was always the best-dressed person in a room. Mary was funny-her face lit up when she was telling a joke, and she could make anyone roar with laughter, young or old. But the main reason was that Mary had found true love. Her husband, Xan, was the love of her life to an extent Laura had never seen before or since. They had met when each was widowed, in Cairo after the Second World War. Mary had a daughter, Angela, Laura's mother. Xan also had a daughter, Annabel, whom Laura and Simon called aunt, even though she wasn't really related to them, and neither was Xan.

Because of her mother's natural reserve, it was Mary whom Laura told about her love life, her latest disaster, the person she was in love with. Because she lived in central London, and so not far from Laura on her way into and out of work, it was Mary Laura called in to see, to talk to, to listen to. And it was Mary whom Laura learned from, when it came to true love. She did not learn it from her own unemotional parents. No, she learned that true love was epic stuff, as told by Mary.

One of Laura's favorite stories was how Mary and Xan had realized they were in love, on a trip out to the pyramids to see the sun rise. It had been pitch black as they rode out, crammed in a jeep with the other members of their club in Cairo. And as the sun rose, Xan had turned to Mary and said, "You know I can't live without you, don't you?" And Mary had said, "I know."

And that was that. They were married six months later.

George and Angela, by contrast, had met at a choral society function off the Tottenham Court Road, when they were both at university. Somehow, Laura felt this wasn't quite the same.

"You are the love of my life. The woman I want to grow old with. I love you."

He was staring at her intensely, his eyes boring into hers. Laura raised her hand to his chest and said breathlessly, "I love you, too."

Beyond them, the sun was rising, flooding the vast desert landscape with pink and orange color. Sand whipped her face, the silk of her headscarf caught in the breeze. She could feel the cold smoothness of the material of his dinner jacket against her skin as he caught her and pulled her toward him.

"Tell me again," Laura whispered in his ear. "Tell me again that you love me."

Suddenly, a microphone crackled loudly, jerking Laura back to reality, as someone cleared his throat and said, "To my beautiful wife, Jo!"

"Aah," the wedding guests murmured in approval, as Laura came back down to earth with a b.u.mp. There was some sniffing, especially from Jo's mother up at the top table, as Chris raised a gla.s.s to his new bride, kissed her, and then sat down, to a welter of applause and chair shuffling.

"Aah," Laura whispered to herself, leaving her daydream behind with a sigh. She looked at Jo, her best friend, so beautiful and happy-looking, and found tears were br.i.m.m.i.n.g in her eyes. She turned to her flatmate, Yorky, who was sitting next to her, and sniffed loudly.

"Look at her," she said. "Can you believe it?"

"No," said Yorky, raising an eye at Chris's cousin Mia. Yorky had recently begun to teach himself how to raise one eyebrow, in a "come to me, pretty laydee" way. This had involved several hours of grimacing into Laura's hand mirror in the sitting room of their flat, whilst Laura was trying to watch TV. She got very irritated when he did this, and frequently told him that being able to raise one eyebrow was not the key to scoring big with the ladies. Wearing matching socks was. As was having a tidy room. And not acting like a crazy stalker when some girl said no after you asked her out. These were the things that Laura frequently told Yorky he should be concentrating on; yet, much to her deep chagrin, he ignored her every time. For Yorky's retort was always that what Laura knew about dating was worthless.

What a perfect, happy day, Laura thought as she gazed around the room, clapping now that the speeches were over. She was gripping her gla.s.s, searching for someone she couldn't see. Suddenly her eye fell on Jo and she watched her for a moment, truly radiant, happy and serene in an antique lace dress, her hand resting lightly on her new husband's as they sat at the top table. Laura couldn't help but feel a tiny pang of something sad. It wasn't just any bride sitting there in the white dress with the flowers and the black suits around her. It was Jo, Jo with whom she had danced all night in various Greek nightclubs, with whom she had spent hours in Top-shop changing rooms, with whom she had stayed up all night when she sobbed her heart out after her last boyfriend, Noel, dumped her. It was her best friend, and it was weird.

She blinked and caught Jo's eye, suddenly overcome with emotion. Jo smiled at her, winked, and mouthed something. Laura couldn't tell what it was, but by the jerking of her head toward the best man, Chris's newly single brother, Jason, Laura thought she could guess what Jo meant. Laura followed her gaze, shaking herself out of her mood. Jason was nice, yes. Definitely. But he wasn't...d.a.m.n it, where was he?

"Who are you looking for?" said Yorky suspiciously, as Laura cast her eyes around the room.

"Me?"

"Yes, you. Who is it? You keep looking round like you're expecting to see someone."

"No one," said Laura rather huffily. "Just looking, that's all."

"There's Dan," said Yorky.

"Who?" said Laura.

"Dan. Dan Floyd. He's raising his gla.s.s. He's talking to Chris."

"Right," said Laura calmly. "Ah, there's Hilary. And her mum. I should go and say-"

"Laura!" said Jo, coming up behind her, dragging someone by the hand. "Don't go! Here's Jason! Jason, you remember Laura?"

"Hey. Of course," said Jason, who was an elongated, blonder version of Chris. "Hi, Laura."

"Er," said Laura. "Hi, Jason, how are you?"

There is nothing more likely to induce embarra.s.sment in a single girl than the obvious setup at a wedding in front of friends. Laura smiled at Jason, and once more cast a fleeting glance around the room. Where was he?

"Good, thanks, good," said Jason, as Jo nudged Yorky and grinned, much to Laura's annoyance.

"See the match on Wednesday?" Yorky asked Jason, in an attempt at bloke-ish comradeship.

"What match?" said Jason.

"Oh..." Yorky said vaguely. "You know. The match. The big game."

"What, mate?" Jason repeated, scratching his head.

"Anyway, great to see you, mate," said Yorky, changing tack and banging Jason hard on the shoulder, so that he nearly doubled up. "So, Laura was just saying-Laura? Help me out here."

Jason gazed at Yorky, perplexed. Laura looked wildly around her, seeking an escape, and then someone over Jason's shoulder caught her eye.

"Jason split up with Cath two months ago," Jo hissed in her ear, in a totally unconvincing stage whisper, as Laura gazed into the distance. It was him, of course it was him, she would know him anywhere. "You know he's living in Highbury now? Laura, you should-"

But Laura was no longer standing next to her; she had turned around to say h.e.l.lo to their friend Dan, who had appeared by her side. Vaguely she heard Jo's tut-tutting; vaguely she was aware that she should be making an effort.

For Jo hadn't seen the look on Laura's face after Dan tapped her on the shoulder. In fact, Jo and Yorky hadn't been seeing quite a lot of things lately, and if they had, they would have been worried. Especially knowing Laura as they did.

"You had a good evening, then?" Dan was saying to Laura, smiling wickedly at her.

"Yes, thanks," she replied, looking up at him, into his eyes. "Good speeches."

"Great," he said, shifting his weight so that he was exactly facing her. It was a tiny movement, almost imperceptible to Jo, Yorky, or any of the other hundred and fifty people in that room, but it enclosed the two of them together as tightly as if they were in a phone box.

Dan smiled at her again as Laura pulled her shawl over her shoulders, and she smiled back, helplessly, feeling her stomach turn over at his sheer perfectness. His dark blond hair, the boyish crop that curled over his collar. His tanned, strong face, wide cheekbones, blue eyes, lazy smile. He reminded her of a cowboy, a farmhand from the Wild West. He was so relaxed, so easy to be with, so easy to be happy with, and Laura glowed as she gazed up at him, simply exhilarated at the prospect of a whole evening in his company-a whole evening, during which anything could happen. Suddenly she could barely remember whose wedding it was, why those rich people were there-she didn't care.

He was here. She was here with Dan, and he was hers for the rest of the evening, and for those hours only, she could indulge herself with the secret fantasy that they were a couple who'd been going out for years. Perhaps they were married already. Perhaps Jo and Chris had been the only witnesses at their beach wedding in Barbados two years ago. Dan in a sarong-a sarong would suit him, unlike most men. She in a silk sundress, raspberry pink, her dark blond hair falling loose down her back. Some spontaneous locals and other couples gathered at the seash.o.r.e, crying with joy at how perfect, how in love they obviously were, totally poleaxed by the strength of their emotion, the purity of their love. Laura and Dan, Dan and Laura. Perhaps- "Laura!" a voice said sharply. "Listen!"

Laura realized she was being prodded in the ribs. The lovely bubble of daydream in her head burst, and she tore herself away from Dan and looked around to see Yorky glaring at her.

"I was talking to you!" he said, affronted. "I asked you a question four times!"

"I'll see you later," Dan murmured, shifting away from her. "Come and find me, yeah?" And he very lightly ran his hand over her bare arm, a tiny gesture, unnoticeable to anyone else, but Laura shuddered, and looked up at him fleetingly, even more sure than ever. As Dan moved off, he raised his gla.s.s to her and smiled a regretful smile. Laura screamed inwardly, and turned away from him toward Yorky. "Sorry, love," she said. "What was it?"

"Is this fob watch too much?" said Yorky, fingering the watch hanging from his waistcoat. "I think it is. I'm not sure, but perhaps it overloads the outfit. What do you think?"

"Ladies 'n' gentlemen," came a bored-sounding voice from a loudspeaker in the back of the room. "Please make your way back into the ballroom. Mr. and Mrs. Lambert are about to perform their first dance. Ah-thann yew, verrimuch."

Laura looked wildly around, as if trying to prioritize the many tasks on her mind. She glared at Yorky, who was still waiting for an answer.

"Yes, it is. Far too much. I totally agree. In fact, it's hideous," she said crossly. "You'd better take it off and throw it away. I'm going to the loo, see you in a minute," she finished, and hurried away.

Dan, Dan, Dan. Dan Floyd. Even saying his name made her feel funny. She muttered it on her way to the loo, feeling sick with nerves, but totally exhilarated. Laura had got it bad. She knew it was bad, and she knew if any of her friends knew they'd tell her it was futile, that she should get over it, but she couldn't help it. It was meant to be. She was powerless in the face of it, much as she'd tried not to be. Dan, Dan Floyd, looking like a ranger or an extra from Oklahoma!, calm, funny, and so s.e.xy she couldn't imagine ever finding any other man remotely attractive. Laura wanted him, plain and simple.

She had constructed a whole imaginary life for them, based around (because of the Oklahoma! theme) a small house in the Wild West with a porch, a rocking chair-for Laura's granny, Mary-corn growing in the fields as high as an elephant's eye, and a golden-pink sunset every night. Mary would drink gins on the porch and dispense wise advice, and would sit there looking elegant. Dan would farm, obviously, but he would also do the sports PR job thing that he did. Perhaps by computer. Laura would-well, she hadn't thought that far. How could she do her job on the prairie? Perhaps there were some dyslexic farmhands who'd never learned to read properly, yes.

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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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.