If I Never Met You(55)

‘She’s spannered, leave her,’ said a Zorro, after they propped the girl upright in a seat. You could just about imagine she was OK if you didn’t notice her eyes were closed, like the corpse in Weekend At Bernie’s.

‘We can’t leave her like this,’ said a Hot Dog. ‘Where are her friends?’

They gingerly poked around in a purse that was attached to the drunk girl’s wrist by a small loop of leather, and found a halls of residence card.

‘Here’s her room number,’ said Zorro.

At this, Laurie swigged the last of her drink and approached. ‘Hi. I don’t know her, but might be better for me to take her home?’

‘Hell-LOH!’ said Austin Powers, truly inhabiting the role. ‘I can’t speak for her but I wouldn’t mind you taking me home.’

‘Hi,’ said Hot Dog. ‘And thank you.’

‘I’m Laurie,’ she said, feeling uncharacteristically confident.

‘Lorry? As in haulage?’ said Zorro.

‘L-A-U-R-I-E.’

‘What a great name,’ Hot Dog said. ‘It would be much, much better if you’d take her, thank you so much.’

‘No problem.’ Laurie squatted down to level of Drunk Girl. Drunk Girl appeared to briefly focus on her and gave her a sloppy little grin.

‘Harro,’ she slurred. ‘You look nice.’

‘Thank you.’ Laurie grinned back. ‘Let’s get you home, eh? More fun to be sick in your own bed than here.’ She hoisted her up, wrapping her arm around her tiny frame, and prepared to exit Bar CaVa.

‘Here’s her halls card,’ Hot Dog said, handing it over. ‘Thank you.’

Laurie read the name on the card. EMILY CLARKE.

She noticed Hot Dog had kind eyes. In fact, he had eyes with so much personality, they could blaze out of a hot dog costume. They focused on her intently. You didn’t see that every day. You didn’t expect to get sex looks from a foam sausage.

‘Thank you, really,’ Hot Dog said. Can I get in touch with you? Find out if she’s OK?’

Even though his concern was supposedly for Drunk Girl, Laurie knew it wasn’t her he was chiefly interested in.

Laurie found a lip liner pencil in her bag and wrote her room number and halls on Hot Dog’s proffered hand. Swapping mobile numbers would’ve made more sense, but they were away from home, playing roles in a realm where normal rules didn’t apply. Laurie was almost self-consciously acting a filmic moment, to be quirky, to be a manic Pixies-liking black girl. And Dan later admitted: ‘Can I have your phone number?’ was too obviously hitting on her.

It was so easy, that was what Laurie remembered. This funny, cute Welsh lad with a slight lisp and a dry wit was everything she didn’t know she wanted until that moment. They couldn’t stop smiling at each other because it was so right, and they both knew it.

Over the next month, Laurie lost her virginity, discovering sex wasn’t that big a deal when you found someone you wanted to do it with; who liked you as much as you liked them, who was exhilarated and terrified about passing that milestone as you were.

And she’d made a fast friend in Emily, the drunken wraith she’d rescued.

It was all good things turning up at once, and Laurie felt her life had finally taken off.

One day, lolling on her bed in the Amsterdam-window red light cast by the thick orange curtains in her halls room, a lovestruck Dan was discussing infidelity. They both recoiled from the idea, that they would ever break the sacred covenant between them. It was unthinkable. They were Romeo and Juliet without the balcony, the warring dynasties or the suicide misunderstanding. They’d had whispered conversations in the dark about the future, they both knew this was it.

‘Let’s promise each other, here and now,’ Dan said, putting out his hand for Laurie to shake. ‘Let’s pledge that if either of us even thinks about being unfaithful, we tell the other one, before it can start. That way neither of us ever have to worry. Complete and total honesty.’

The improbability they were ever going to do it made the sweetness of explicitly pledging all the greater. Laurie shook his hand, and they kissed.

She felt like laughing, remembering that now. The way life was so simple to kids in love. Find the right person, promise not to cheat on them. It’s not difficult! They were never going to make the strange, tawdry messes their parents’ generation had. The idea their parents had once felt the way they did, hadn’t occurred to them. Eugh.

Dan stalking Jamie’s online presence: it was a tiny glimmer of being wanted by him again, and Laurie craved it like a drug.





22


‘How can you think it’s real when you’re not a toothless crone in the Middle Ages? I’m reading from Wikipedia here it has no scientific validity or explanatory power,’ Bharat said.

‘See, they can’t explain it!’ Di said.

‘No you div, it means astrology can’t explain anything.’

‘Then how do you explain star signs describing people perfectly? My sister is a completely typical Pisces, dreamy and creative. I am a classic Virgo.’

‘Credulous?’

They were doing an old favourite, running through a Bharat and Di greatest hit. In its familiarity, Laurie was finding it as relaxing as pan pipes in a birthing suite, although perhaps the analogy was unwise and a bout of unmedicated searing pain was also on the way.