Harriet Evans - A Hopeless Romantic

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

‘Sorry,’ whispered Dan casually, though he didn’t bend towards her. He said it softly, intimately, and clinked his glass with hers. ‘I thought I’d better leave you to deal with Paddy’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 forgot the lipstick mark of gloss still adhering to the back of her hand. Her hair stuck to the gloss, and her hand became caught up in her hair as she flailed wildly around with her hand in the air, covered in hair.

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

‘Thanks,’ whispered Laura, trying to walk upright and not cower with embarrassment. ‘I should go back out, 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 him towards her, and kissed her. No one else was watching, they were all turned towards the dance floor where Mr and Mrs Johnson were dancing. They were alone on the terrace, just the two of them.

Dan pulled her towards 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 further towards her. The other arm was by her side, she was still holding the champagne glass. It tilted, the champagne spilt, and neither of them noticed.

After a short while, they broke apart slowly, and said nothing. There was nothing to say, really. Laura drained the meagre contents of her glass and leant into Dan. They stood there together as the music died away and applause rippled out towards them, aware of nothing else 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, and she found Paddy and 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 one of the free taxis going home with Dan Floyd, and they were kissing so hard that her lips were bruised the next day. And that’s 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 leant 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…

Yes, 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.

She had tried, 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 as she realised 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 was 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 that secret guilt in her head 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. They 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 – 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, Paddy and Laura and so on, especially now Chris and Dan had moved nearby. But Amy rarely came along, and in any case, Laura had long ago realised 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 had spread the subsequent rumours surrounding Laura giving up the oboe. She’d even told Laura’s mother Angela 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 was deeply embarrassing. So Laura’s dislike of Amy was genuinely historical, rather than based upon the fact that Amy was with the man Laura felt quite sure she loved. This made her feel better, in some obscure way.