Katy Regan - One Thing Led to Another

‘It really is you’ he says eventually.

‘I know, I know!’ I say, giggling like an idiot and wishing I’d at least had time to put some mascara on this morning.

‘I cannot believe…’ He steps back, as if to get a better look at me.

‘Nor can I!’ I look at Emete, who’s still shaking with laughter like a mountain in an earthquake. ‘It’s totally freaky!’

We stand there, all four of us laughing, not really sure what we’re laughing at except that this is turning out to be the most extraordinary, wonderful, glorious morning.

Omer finally speaks and when he does, it’s worth every syllable.

‘So how do you two know each other?’ he says, flashing his gummy smile.

Laurence takes hold of one of my hands. He looks at me from under those heavy lids.

‘She was my girlfriend,’ he says finally, proudly even. ‘We went out together, for two years. Till I went and ballsed it up.’

Laurence and I met in April 2000 – the unseasonably warm spring of our final year – and all I was doing in Manchester was lazing about campus with Gina, sipping beer out of plastic glasses.

‘Do you fancy coming to this party?’ Gina asked one day.

‘Er, yeah!’ I said. (Was the Pope a Catholic?) ‘What kind of party? Count me in.’

‘A garden party,’ she said. ‘At my mate Laurence’s parents’ house in Sussex. They have one every year.’

She said Laurence was studying media studies at Leeds University and was a mate from boarding school. I can’t say that ‘garden party’ really got my pulse racing but as with most things involving Gina, there were a few surprises in store. For starters, any preconceptions I had about ‘parents’ and ‘garden party’ were swiftly eradicated the moment we accelerated up to the main gates in Gina’s Fiat Bravo (the purchase of which I hold entirely responsible for me delaying learning to drive). There was some kind of French rap music, the sort you expect to throb from Parisian banlieue, reverberating from their huge, sprawling farmhouse as we walked up the long gravel path. Huge red and gold lanterns adorned the front of the house. A barefoot, wild-haired woman wearing a sequinned waistcoat and holding an enormous glass of red wine almost ran towards us, arms out-stretched. ‘Bienvenue and welcome!’ she cried, kissing Gina then me on both cheeks. (I immediately had a personality crush.) She was Laurence’s mum – or Joelle as she insisted we call her – something which seemed biologically impossible since she looked about thirty. She’d been in England for twenty years, even though her French accent was still treacle-thick. Joelle and Laurence’s dad, Paul, had met when he was a student in Aix-en-Provence and Joelle was working as a life model (so French! I loved her even more). Now he was a lecturer in French at the University of Sussex and skulked about the house wearing Woody Allen-style glasses and smoking Camel Reds. Joelle poured us equally huge glasses of wine. ‘Make yourselves at home,’ she said. ‘All my boys are outside.’

At that point, a bare-chested young man sauntered into the kitchen, wrapped his arms around Joelle, who was stirring something sweet and spicy on the Aga, and kissed her on the cheek. ‘And this,’ she said, reaching on her tip toes and kissing him back, ‘is my most beautiful and most idle one.’

I should have let that be my warning, but I fell in love – well, it was all-consuming, primeval lust at that point – on the spot.

Laurence was six foot two with closely cropped black curls which looked like they would spring to life like his mother’s if he let them, sultry dark eyes with languorous lids and an exquisite dimple in his left cheek. He was wearing Levis twisted jeans and white flip-flops that showed off the most perfect tanned toes. I remember curling mine, complete with chipped purple nail varnish and the odd unsuccessfully frozen verucca, inside my trainers.

We’re standing outside the dry cleaners now, Emete and Omer still watching from the window.

‘So what are you doing now?’ Laurence says it as if we have options.

(A coffee maybe? Stiff G&T? I suppose a quick session back at mine would be out of the question?)

‘Oh, work, unfortunately,’ I say, hoisting myself back down to earth. ‘And you?’

‘Yeah, work,’ says Laurence.

‘What kind of…?’

‘Bar manager. I manage a bar in Clerkenwell,’ he says, hands in pockets. ‘My dad’s gutted I’m not a lawyer or a doctor or a fucking philosopher come to think of that but you know me.’

‘I know you.’

‘Never one to do as I’m told.’

We shuffle from foot to foot grinning inanely and not knowing quite what to do with ourselves.

‘So God, I mean, how come I’ve never seen you around here before?’ I say, wanting to keep him here, not wanting this to end. ‘Where are you living?’

‘Not here. I mean, here for now, but not usually. I’m staying at a mate’s. And you? You live with Gina of course, for which you clearly deserve a medal.’

‘She’s alright, is Marshall,’ I laugh. ‘You’ve just got to be strict. We live on Linton Street. You come out of that dry cleaners and turn first right. Bit of a party house as you can imagine…’

‘So I’m told,’ says Laurence. ‘So how is work in the big bad world of publishing? Still tragedy correspondent?’

‘Tragedy correspondent?’

‘Yeah, Gina said you earn a living hearing other people’s sob stories.’

‘Cheeky cow!’

He backtracks with a smile.

‘In a good way.’

‘It’s “triumph over tragedy”, get it right. Even if they’ve been taken in by a polyamorous cult, had all their limbs amputated and all their family have been massacred by a crazed gunman, there’s always a positive angle. And if there isn’t, we just make one up.’

‘Like?’

‘Like he didn’t like his family anyway. Or his legs come to think of it.’

Laurence laughs. I find my face reddening with pleasure.

‘I forgot how funny you are.’ He studies me. ‘And quite how foxy.’

It’s a good job we both see a bus trundling towards us at that point, otherwise I might have had to react to that statement and it would definitely, have been idiotic.

‘Well, this is me,’ Laurence says, taking his wallet out of his pocket. ‘But here, here’s my card.’

‘And here’s mine,’ I say, hastily rummaging in my bag and handing over my fuscia pink business card with Believe It! ’s slogan emblazoned all over it: From the touching to the twisted, every single week! Classy.

‘Thanks, um…’ As Laurence reads the card I see his eyebrows flicker and inwardly cringe. He says, ‘Just ring the bar, I’m usually there. Well, I come and go.’

Like a cat. An elusive cat.

He gives me a kiss on the cheek ‘Bye,’ he says.

‘Yeah, bye,’ I say dumbly.

Then he runs across the road, and I keep watching him. He’s almost jogging now, his rucksack over one shoulder, his jacket riding up. Cute arse. Gorgeous arse. Round and perfectly formed and slightly uplifted and filling out those jeans like an arse should. He still makes the blood rush to my nether regions. He still makes my head surge with indecent thoughts.

It’s 8.30 a.m., barely an hour since I got up, and I am walking to work in broad daylight, wondering how the hell we buggered that one up.

‘When I said my vows, “In sickness and in health”, little did I know how far that would be tested. But when I saw Howard in hospital bandaged and bloodied, his face unrecognisable from the burns, there was no doubt in my mind that he was still my Howard. Freddie was born three weeks after the bomb and it’s been so hard. But even now, I look at both my boys and all I see is that they are the spitting image of each other.’