A Hopeless Romantic Part 8

"Sure, sure," Jo crooned, putting her arm around her friend. "Yes, of course you have."

"No, I mean it," said Laura firmly. "You sound like Yorky. I have. Well, you'll just have to see. I'm a changed person. Anyway. Forget it." She eyed the bottle of wine. "Screw-top, yum. Come and get a gla.s.s."

"Great," said Jo. "So, tell me all about it. It happened on Friday, right?"

"Right," said Laura, retreating into the kitchen. "So..."

Laura suffered a setback on Wednesday. She knew she'd been doing so well, but it was hard being good and kind and Mrs. Danverslike all at the same time. She woke up with a vicious hangover ( Jo had stayed till eleven o'clock, and they'd got through a lot of wine together), and the dramatic avowals of friendship and cathartic chats of the previous night seemed a little empty the next day, when her tongue was furry again and she was tired and miserable and still jobless, penniless, Danless. She made herself a cup of tea and crawled back into bed, chewing her fingernails. What was she going to do with her life now? The practical side of her started to worry. How was she going to convince Rachel to give her another chance, trust her again? Future invented phantoms crowded into her mind; she couldn't stop thinking everything over, over and over, and she cried again, huge, self-pitying sobs.

She was still lying there when her phone rang. Laura reached out and patted the bedside table without looking at it, feeling blindly and knocking over her lamp and book. She picked it up and brought it under the duvet to see who it was.

Amy Mobile.

Laura pressed BUSY, her fingers fumbling. She turned the phone off and put it down the side of the bed by the wall, terrified, and curled up into a ball and hugged herself. It was more than an hour before she moved again and put her hand gingerly down to the floor, squeezing her knuckles through the tight fit between the bed frame and the wall, to pick up the phone. She turned it on. It seemed to take hours. The screen lit up, the welcome message trinkled at her, and then the voicemail rang. Laura pressed answer, her jaw set. Perhaps...

"Laura. You know who it is." She hadn't seen Amy for so long, hearing her voice came as a huge shock. Sickly sweet, slightly rasping, scary. It didn't sound violent, or overly emotional, or hormonal. It sounded in control. "Don't hang up on me, you b.i.t.c.h," she hissed. "You fat, spotty, spineless little b.i.t.c.h. Dan finally told me who he's been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, like I couldn't guess anyway. Okay? You're too f.u.c.king coward to talk to me after what you've done, are you? Fine. Let me spell it out for you. I know what you did. If you ever go near him again, I'll find you and I'll make your life misery. Even more miserable than it must be now. You fat, stupid dog. He told me how you chased after him, how you begged him, just like the ugly dog you are. Like you were at school, always begging. You're pathetic, Laura. You are pathetic.

"We're going on holiday next week, dog-girl. Just so you know. We're going to Florida. I would ask you along, but they don't allow dogs in the hotel. So why don't you just f.u.c.k off and think about what you've done. I hope it eats you alive. So long, dog-girl."

Laura couldn't feel her fingers, her hands, they were shaking so much, and the mobile fell onto the bed. She deleted the message and looked at the phone, terrified of its power all of a sudden, that something so nasty could come out of it. She turned it off again and slid it under her new duvet, feeling slightly sick. Would it always be like this? She could feel Amy's presence nearby, coming out of the phone, coming in through the windows. She was close, too close; so was Dan. Laura wished she were anywhere but here. She closed her eyes, but she didn't cry. She didn't know how to.

It was her mother who finally sorted her out. She swept into Laura's room on Thursday and drew back the curtains. Laura was watching a talk show on her TV, and her eyes bulged with amazement at her mother's nerve.

"How-how dare you! Get out!" she screamed, waving her finger at Angela rather like a French aristocrat to a peasant caught wandering in his garden.

"h.e.l.lo, dear," said Angela, opening the window. "I spoke to your grandmother last night."

"Oh," said Laura, sinking down in the bed and chewing her little finger.

"She-well, she said she thought you've been having a hard time lately," said Angela, who wasn't half as insensible as her daughter thought she was. "Darling. Aren't you...needed at work at the moment?"

"No," said Laura, m.u.f.fled.

Angela bit her lip. "And...are you still going on holiday next week?"

"No," said Laura, with the sheet over her head. "Go away."

Angela twisted her hands together and said, "Listen, dear. I have a suggestion. Why don't you come to Norfolk with your father and me instead? And Granny, of course. How about it?"

"Absolutely no way, ever ever ever," came the voice from under the duvet. "I'd rather eat...I'd rather eat-er-this duvet. No way!"

The next day-Friday-should have been Laura's last day in the office before her holiday. She should have been getting ready to go to Florida, packing her gorgeous new print hot pants, her halter-neck bikini, her new digital camera, her cool cowboy hat.

As she was sorting through some clothes in her wardrobe, Laura found the cowboy hat. She took it down from the shelf and looked at it wonderingly, as if it were something from another planet. She stood there, running her fingers around the rim, letting her mind drift aimlessly over the past few days, weeks, months. Yes, in another life, the cab would have been coming to collect her in an hour. If it actually arrived now with Dan inside, calling up to her, telling her he loved her, that it was all a big mistake, what would she do? She put the hat back in the wardrobe and closed the door. She knew what she would do.

A few minutes later, Laura rang up her mother.

"Mum," she said. "I've...now that my plans have sort of changed, I was wondering...can I come to Norfolk with you?"

Angela knew her daughter far better than Laura realized. Laura could tell she was smiling into the phone as she said, "Yes, of course you can, darling. Oh, that's wonderful. How nice. I'll start on the packed lunch right now."

Laura put the phone down. Sitting there on the polished wooden floor, she leaned against the armchair and gazed around the sitting room. It was early Friday afternoon, too early for anyone to have left work. The air was still, and out on the street not a leaf stirred on the trees. It was very quiet. She brought her knees up under her chin and hugged her legs, and she stayed like that, thinking, for a long time.

part two.

chapter twelve.

T he Foster family had been going to Seavale for their summer holidays since before Laura was born. About thirty years ago, when Xan and Mary started spending less time living as nomadic Bedouins or traveling through South America on diplomatic missions and more time in the UK, they had bought the bungalow overlooking the sea. The house had been built in the 1920s, a pretty, if small, Arts and Crafts villa, crammed with books and cushions and dancing light from the water. Beside the sitting room was a terrace, partly sheltered, and on the other side of the terrace was a single-room structure of gla.s.s and wood-Xan's studio, where he would spend the majority of the day in his smock, chewing his pipe and looking out to sea. It was now an extra bedroom, hung with his watercolors.

Mary's eighty-fifth birthday party was to fall on the following Sat.u.r.day, when the clan would gather for one day only. Because it was a momentous occasion, Angela and George were to be joined that day by Aunt Annabel, Uncle Robert, and Lulu, Fran, and Fran's boyfriend, Ludo. Laura could only feel relief that she'd already said she had to be back in London that Sat.u.r.day evening (some b.o.l.l.o.c.ks about a party somewhere, she'd told her mother), and would not be exposing herself to the Sandersons for longer than necessary. She could cope with the formidable Aunt Annabel, just about. Robert was a bore and a boor, but he was pa.s.sable; he spent most of the time either drunk or asleep. It was Lulu and Fran whom Laura wanted to run in the opposite direction from. As with her mother's rather strained relationship with her stepsister, Laura wanted to like her cousins. She just couldn't bring herself to do it.

Lulu and Fran were famed throughout their teenage years for being creative, superintelligent, and well-behaved, always clearing up the tea trays, writing thank-you letters, and saying, "Oh! How lovely!" about things, rather than slouching grumpily around and grunting, thinking the world was against them, which was how Simon and Laura spent their teenage years. But Simon and Laura had quite liked them then, because they were naughty, too, and were up for things like the disco in the village next to Seavale, or having sneaky cigarettes in the sand dunes. But the years since had highlighted the gap between their respective families, and Laura now thought of them as sn.o.bbish, hyperartificial, and fake, and "creative" in the way that rich pointless people are, i.e., they become feature writers for Posh Person's Monthly or open their houses once a month to sell expensive jewelry they bought for next to nothing in Morocco. Lulu lived in Notting Hill and was skeletally thin and unbearable; Fran, actually, was slightly more bearable, but had gone native in Lulu's eyes. She lived in Putney with her boyfriend, Ludo, was a sports physiologist, had thick hair and thick ankles, and spent her life either running with Ludo or getting bladdered with him in an All Bar Onetype pub on the river.

"Thank G.o.d they're not related to us," Simon and Laura would moan.

"I know," Angela once answered in a rare display of solidarity.

They were just different from the Fosters, and Laura didn't like the way she sensed the Sandersons looked down their collective noses at the Fosters, just because their house was a semidetached and they lived in Harrow, and only had one car. The Sandersons had two cars and lived in tony Holland Park; Lulu and Fran went to a super-exclusive school, and Annabel sat on several committees and cowrote cookbooks like The Glorious Twelfth and Buffets for Debutantes, or Picnics for Countryside Alliance Marches, which was ridiculous, since they lived practically in the heart of London and Annabel actually didn't like meat that much.

So, Laura had one week with her parents and her grandmother to get through, climaxing in the gathering of the extended family-with a guest appearance from Simon, who was supposedly returning from Peru on Friday and coming up on Sat.u.r.day morning. Her brief was pretty simple, really: Be good, be nice, be kind. Put what's happened behind you and move on. A clean slate, a blank wall, a new dawn, and a new leaf.

But, of course, nothing ever turns out the way you expect it to.

Laura sat in her deck chair on the beach, her mouth knitted unconsciously into an expression of bitter disdain. She glared at her parents from under her sun hat, then realized she was actually wearing a sun hat, and threw it on the ground in a gesture of indignant irony-one that went totally unremarked-upon by her parents and grandmother, who were blithely unconcerned with her suffering.

She looked at the water. The sea was a rough, choppy gray. Clouds loomed overhead, menacing and bulbous, as if they might burst at any moment. The sand, which should have been glowing golden yellow, was a dirty cement color. And the huge beach was deserted, apart from a lone tatty-looking dog that was deliriously running around in circles in the distance, almost at the tide. An empty tar barrel rolled on its side, creaking. The sea gra.s.s rustled ominously in the wind. Why was she surprised the weather was bad? It was Britain. It was August. It was a typical summer holiday by the seaside.

George Foster hummed to himself as he carefully opened the National Trust Members' Guide on the blanket in front of him and fastidiously turned the pages till he got to "Norfolk's Stately Homes and Castles." Beside him on the blanket, Laura's mum was devouring her book club's selection, her mouth half open in absorption.

Mary was dozing. Her tanned hands rested lightly on her lap, one loosely clutching her book. She stirred slightly as Laura watched her, hitching an old shawl up around her shoulders again. Laura meanly thought about coughing sharply to wake her up, but she wasn't so far sunk beneath hope as to seriously consider giving her beloved grandmother a heart attack just so she could have someone to talk to. She picked up Take a Break, which she had thrown aside in disgust, and tried to concentrate on the story she'd been reading, about a woman whose husband was fooling around with their neighbor, but her attention wandered, or rather marched purposefully away, after only one sentence. She put the magazine down and gazed thoughtfully out to sea.

She'd been so good so far this holiday, but now she was in the grip of an irrational anger, and there was nothing she could do about it except hunker down and wait for it to pa.s.s. It was Tuesday, day four of the holiday, and acting like an angel with a blank slate, a new leaf, and all that was starting to wear her down because, much as she loved her parents and her grandmother, four days of constant exposure to them at a time when her reserves were low was not ideal. It put her in a kind of limbo-she didn't know whether she was a grown-up with a responsible place in society or a child, a total screwup with no job, no boyfriend, and no morals, who should just stop trying and give up. So she did a lot of gritting her teeth, till her jaw ached.

The first few days had pa.s.sed, and despite the cold weather, Laura had tried to feel as if she were-well, not exactly on holiday, but still, away from it all. She helped her mother in the garden; Mary's hip was playing up. They all went to see a steam train display, and Mary made best friends with the driver and got to ride in his cab; George was jealous. They watched Midsomer Murders together, and Mary rolled her eyes and said things like, "It's the vicar, you total idiot!" while Angela gripped the sofa and screamed every time the incidental music played.

Laura made salad dressing, mixed drinks, and did not object to her parents' choice of television, newspaper, or plans for the week, one of which included the fulfillment of their long-held ambition to see the Seekers tribute band; as extraordinary luck-or ill luck, depending on your point of view-would have it, they were playing that week in the nearest resort's little theater. She'd managed to politely decline her parents' offer of a ticket. (They were actually called the Seekers Tribute Band, her mother had informed her that morning; Laura felt irrationally furious with them, that they couldn't have come up with a better moniker, Desperately Seeking the Seekers, or They Seek Them Here, or something like that. This did not contribute to a lightening of her mood.) She had played Trivial Pursuit with her grandmother, who disputed the result every time the question was a modern one. ("Britney Spears? Well, how on earth am I supposed to know that? Ridiculous question. Give me another one. That's not Art and Culture, don't be stupid, Trivial Pursuit, you should be ashamed of yourself. Honestly.") She had tried to go for a long, moody walk by herself, but her mother and father had joined her and raved for a good two miles about the progress the National Trust was making with the coastline around the area, how the litter bins were so well placed, and how the cafes were much nicer than they used to be, until Laura tried walking slightly faster, ahead of them, but they merely caught up with her and carried on talking. So she had just smiled politely again, and gritted her teeth.

She had smiled agreeably at dinner each night as George briefly outlined the agricultural and economic history of Norfolk in the eighteenth century, and had asked a couple of pertinent questions, much to her father's obvious delight. She'd listened politely as her mother went through every family in their enclave in Harrow and delineated each member, what they were doing, what their children were doing, what their children's boyfriends or girlfriends were doing-people Laura hadn't seen for years, much less cared about. And she nodded wisely as Mary, for the umpteenth time, told Laura some marvelous story of derring-do about Xan and herself, this time in Jerusalem in the early sixties. Normally, Laura loved these stories. But this wasn't normal.

Laura shifted in her deck chair and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She looked around again, to see if Mary was awake. Nothing doing. She checked her phone, but there was nothing. Her mind wandered again. Scary Hilary had a party on Sat.u.r.day night to celebrate being single again; Jo had promised to let her know what happened, and what the view was from the terraces, now that Dan and Amy were in the States and it was clear everything was out in the open. If Dan had told Amy, which he obviously had, who else knew? And would she have to pay penance for it? She wished she could ask him, but of course she couldn't, and she had heard nothing from him, nothing at all, after their last meeting. It seemed Amy was speaking for both of them now.

Thinking about Dan and Amy was all the reminder she needed. It was her own fault that here she was, on the beach at Seavale, having the same stupid summer holiday she'd had since she was five. Only when she was five, she'd had Simon and Lulu and Fran and various other grubby holidaying children to play with. It was fine when she was five, Seavale was a nice place to go on summer holiday. The beach was vast, the tides were gentle, the sea was warm. There were ice creams and donkeys! And when she was thirteen and had kissed Robert Walden behind the beach huts and had her first cigarette with Lulu, or had gone to the disco in stonewashed jeans when she was fifteen, or had gone on a long last walk with Xan when she was twenty, over the dunes, into the fields, over the river and toward the next village, it was all fine-it was more than fine; it was her favorite place in the world. But not now. If only Simon were here now, she thought, moodily wrapping her scarf around her. But no. My brother has a life. He's traveling. And I'm here.

A seagull croaked viciously overhead, dangerously low, stirring Laura out of her torpor. She shook her head, ashamed to find tears were in her eyes. She pulled herself together and decided she'd be better off back at the house, rather than here making the others worry about her, because they already clearly thought she was mad. And it was freezing, apart from anything else. She turned to tell her mother this, and found her grandmother was watching her. Laura met her eyes, and saw that Mary was smiling with understanding.

"I'm going back up," Laura whispered. "See you in a bit." Mary nodded, gave her a quick smile, and picked up her book again.

Laura's dad murmured, "Mmm...mmm, see you, then," and Laura's mother looked up blankly and said, "You going back, darling?"

"Yep," said Laura briefly. "I'm cold. I'll put the kettle on, shall I?"

"Ooh, lovely," said Angela. "There's some of that fruitcake we bought from the craft fair in the tub, you could get that out."

"Right," said Laura, repressing the urge to scream, "I hate fruitcake! You know I do!" Instead, she said, "Okay, see you in a bit, then."

"Great," said Angela. "Dad and I are going to write our postcards later," she added inconsequentially, in the way that parents have when you are trying to leave them, a delaying tactic of some sort.

"Look, is that a crested grebe?" said Mary from behind her book, and Angela's head swiveled round. "Oh, no, my mistake." She carried on reading, the corners of her mouth twitching.

Laura flashed her grandmother a grin and, thankful for her escape, snapped her deck chair closed and propped it under her arm. Swaying slightly in the wind, she began the trudge across the cold sand up to the path back to their house.

Her bag made a vibrating sound as Laura reached the cafe by the lifeboat station. She stopped, fumbling eagerly in her bag, hoping against hope that it was Jo, or Yorky, that some kind of salvation from Parents World was on its way. She flipped open her phone eagerly.

Just reminding you to stay away from me, you stupid little b.i.t.c.h. And from Dan. Why don't you just f.u.c.k off? No one wants you, dog-girl. P.S. Miami is gorgeous, by the way. Wish you were here-not.

Stumbling blindly, her eyes stinging with tears, Laura ran back to the bungalow.

chapter thirteen.

B ack in her room, Laura threw the beach bag on the bed. She was trying not to crumble into little bits again, to go back to what she'd felt like before, but she couldn't help it. She cried. About five minutes later, footsteps sounded across the terrace, followed by tapping on the door.

"Darling, it's me," said her mother's voice anxiously. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine!" Laura said unneccessarily loudly, and buried her head in the sodden pillow again. After a few seconds, the footsteps retreated. She howled silently for what seemed like several hours but was in fact about fifteen minutes, feeling deeply, deeply sorry for herself, the pitiable, unattractive, unlovable, friendless girl she was.

And then, all of a sudden, she stopped and sat up. She dried her eyes, wiped her nose on her hand, and looked thoughtful.

Laura had a pragmatic streak running through her, often not in tandem with the romantic streak, but following close behind. Listen to yourself, she said firmly. You have had your lowest moment, that was last week, in bed in your room. Remember the box of stupid romantic stuff now in the bin. Remember the pigeon. Your lowest moment was then; you're not allowed any more. You've been here four days now. Okay, it's pretty duff, but actually it's doing you a lot of good, and Mum and Dad and Granny are having a great time, don't ruin it for them. This is over, now.

She suddenly felt a hot bolt of anger shoot through her at Amy's text, at her message, at Dan's total weakness, the way he was willing to string both of them along and still end up the winner. This man, whom she'd thought was The One. He wasn't. Boy, he wasn't. Waiting for Mr. Right, The One, the great, great romance, was a waste of time-it had been a waste of time, and that's what she'd been getting so wrong all these years. It wasn't just Dan, it went back much further than that, but he was the one who'd totally, comprehensively stomped out her romantic strain. And perhaps she should thank him for it. She was going to be better off without it.

"Great," she said out loud. "Great." And she felt a little more cheerful.

Angela knocked on the door again. "Darling, we're having a sherry, do you want one?"

Laura was silent for a moment. Then she said, "Yes, please," and jumped off the bed. She pulled her tangled hair into a ponytail. "Just coming," she said, and opened the door.

That evening, as a storm raged around the bungalow and the leaded windows rattled and shook in their drafty wooden cas.e.m.e.nts, the female Fosters and Mary sat around the table in the kitchen eating lasagna and not saying much, while George chatted merrily away about something. Conversation was slightly lagging, four days in, and Laura wasn't as much in the mood as she wanted to be. She knew her mother was staring at her, wanting to ask if she was okay, but she also knew Angela wouldn't. She knew her father was trying to jolly everyone along, but it wasn't really succeeding. And Mary, though Laura loved her, was always slightly hard to read, her mood hard to predict from day to day. She, Laura, had to make the effort.

She looked up as her mother said, "George, more broccoli, dear?"

"Yes, please," said George, breaking off his very interesting monologue about the great aristocratic families of the North Norfolk coast, and how they had fared during the Civil War back in the 1600s. Angela looked at him, her face softening with affection, and Laura's heart turned over. Her father took the bowl and smiled at his wife, the corners of his mouth crinkling, his ears wagging with pleasure, and Laura felt a rush of love for her parents. Yes, maybe Dad did often discuss heraldic symbolism at the dinner table for too long, and maybe he was just a normal bloke, not an orchestra conductor, or a deep-sea diver, or something. Deep down, Laura had always thought Mary found him a bit...boring. Laura knew why. Angela wanted a home, a family, roots. A back garden, a rose trellis. She didn't want the ex-pat life, the faded glory, the c.o.c.ktail parties, stucco hotels, servants, bygone eras. She was normal, sensible. Un-romantic, if anything. Laura smiled at her mother, who was looking from her to her grandmother.

"Is there any more sauce, dear?" said Mary.

"Gosh, you two do look similar," said Angela fondly.

Laura stared at her grandmother. "Who?"

"You, dear, you and Granny."

Mary looked at Laura. "We do, don't we."

"It's odd sometimes," said Angela. "Just now, the two of you, next to each other. You looked rather fierce, Laura."

"Just like Granny, you mean?" Laura said, laughing, and Mary looked affronted.

"Angela dear, is there some more sauce?" Mary repeated. Angela shook her head. "Well, can you get up and check for me, dear? Thanks."

Angela stood up, looking from her daughter to her mother again, and went to the larder. Mary carried on eating quietly, and Laura gazed into s.p.a.ce, her fork suspended in her hand. George was still talking as Angela returned with a small bowl of tomato sauce.

"...fascinating that, actually, he never visited the house again! After she died. Heartbroken, they said. Of course, Sir John's additions were anathema to him, he loathed Palladian architecture, said it was a betrayal of the old English ways.... Still, fascinating to think that, wouldn't you say?"

There was silence. Neither grandmother, mother, nor daughter replied, partly because they couldn't think of anything to say, mainly because they hadn't been listening to a word.

"Well," said George, looking rather pink. "That's nice, isn't it. Was no one listening?"

"I wasn't," Mary said frankly. "I was thinking, Will Jasper remember to water my mint plant while I'm away?"

George scowled.

"I was, darling," said Angela. "I just had to get up to get the mustard, that's why I lost the train of what you were saying. Were you talking about the Devereaus?"

"No," George huffed. "Well, it doesn't matter. Let's talk about something else, shall we?"

Laura caught her grandmother's eye and smiled. Poor Dad.

"Pa.s.s the sauce, George," Mary said serenely, wiping her mouth elegantly with her napkin. "Now, I brought along the Elvis '68 comeback special on DVD. Who fancies watching it with me after supper?"

"I'm going to mend the shed door," George said remotely.

"In this weather? Don't be ridiculous," said Mary briskly.

"The catch is very loose. Someone has to do it. I don't mind," said George with the air of one willing to martyr oneself for one's family over a loose catch on a shed. "I can talk to myself out there. At least the deck chairs don't answer back."

"I don't know," said Mary. "You carry on talking to them for long enough, they may well walk off to another shed."