The Keeper of Lost Things(37)

“What on earth are you doing here?” Laura asked as she filled the kettle.

“Well, the six very drunken and virtually unintelligible messages which you left on my voice mail in the early hours of this morning might have had something to do with it.”

“Oh God! I didn’t, did I?” Laura hid her face in her hands.

“You most certainly did. And now I want to hear all about it. Every last sordid detail. And I think we’ll begin with ‘Poor Graham.’ Who the devil is ‘Poor Graham’?”

Laura told her almost everything. Beginning with the dress, which was still hanging half out of the bin, and ending with the sinking of the second bottle of prosecco in front of the fire. The rest of the night—including the phone calls—had disappeared forever into alcohol-induced oblivion.

“Poor Graham,” Sarah was now able to agree. “Whatever made you agree to go out with him in the first place?”

Laura looked a little embarrassed.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe just because he asked. Nobody else has. He always seemed nice enough. Nothing obviously wrong with him.”

Sarah shook her head in disbelief.

“Nothing wrong doesn’t make him ‘Mr. Right.’”

Laura sighed. If only she could stop thinking about “Mr. Wrong” as “Mr. Right.”

She hid her face in her hands again.

“Damn that ruddy gardener!”

She had said it out loud, before she could stop herself.

“Who?”

Laura smiled ruefully. “Oh, nothing. I’m just talking to myself.”

“That’s the first sign, you know.”

“First sign of what?”

“The menopause!”

Laura threw a biscuit at her.

“I should have known it was never going to work when he started going on about Nordic walking.”

“He was trying to impress you with his pole!”

Sarah spluttered with laughter and even Laura couldn’t stifle a guilty giggle.

And then she told her about the kiss on the porch. That dreadful, interminable kiss.

Sarah looked at her and shrugged her shoulders in exasperation.

“Well, what in God’s name did you expect? You don’t fancy him. You never have. It was always going to be like kissing cardboard!”

Laura shook her head emphatically.

“No. It was much, much worse. Cardboard would have been infinitely preferable.” She remembered the slug with disgust. “And a lot less wet.”

“Honestly, Laura, why didn’t just offer your cheek, or failing that, pull away a bit quicker?”

Laura’s cheeks were blotched with laughter and embarrassment.

“I didn’t want to be rude. And anyway, his lips locked on to my face like a lunar module docking.”

Sarah was helpless with mirth. Laura felt bad. Poor Graham. He didn’t deserve to be ridiculed. She remembered the bewildered look on his face when she finally broke the suction between them and garbled her good-bye before fleeing inside the house and slamming the door behind her. Poor Graham. But that didn’t mean that she ever wanted to see him again.

“Poor Graham be damned!” Sarah always had the uncanny ability to know what Laura was thinking. “Sounds more like ‘Poor Laura’ to me. He’s a bad kisser with a dodgy pole. Swill your mouth out and move on!”

Laura couldn’t help but smile, but just as her spirits were beginning to lift, a memory knocked them down like a rogue breaker, toppling a tentative paddler.

“Shit!” She slumped forward in her chair and once again buried her head in her hands.

Sarah put down her cup of tea, ready for the next revelation.

“Freddy!” groaned Laura miserably. “He found me this morning.”

“So?”

“He found me this morning; my face stuck to the sofa with dribble, wearing last night’s smudged makeup and not much else, surrounded by empty bottles and two glasses. Two, Sarah! He’ll think Graham ‘came in for coffee’!”

“Well, however compelling the evidence might be, it is purely circumstantial. And anyway, what does it matter what Freddy thinks?”

“He’ll think I’m a drunken harlot!”

Sarah smiled and spoke gently and slowly, as though to a small child.

“Well, if it matters that much, tell him what really happened.”

Laura sighed despondently. “Then he’ll think I am just a ‘dried-up, scruffy old bag lady.’”

“Right!” Sarah slapped the palms of her hands down on the table. “Enough of this moaning and wallowing. Upstairs, bag lady, and make yourself look presentable. After you’ve dragged me away from work to listen to your pathetic and tedious complaining, the least you can do is take me out to lunch. And I don’t just mean a sandwich, I mean a proper hot meal. And a pudding!”

Laura clipped the top of Sarah’s head playfully as she passed her on the way out of the kitchen, mussing up her perfect cut and blow-dry. Almost immediately, Freddy came in the back door.

Sarah stood up and offered him her hand and her brightest smile.

“Hello again. I’m afraid I didn’t introduce myself properly. I’m Sarah Trouvay, an old friend of Laura’s.”

Freddy shook her hand but refused to meet her gaze, turning instead to the sink to fill the kettle.