One Day in December(16)

‘Spoken like a true mafia moll.’ He leans forward to slide his empty beer bottle on to the table. ‘A mafia ninja. You’re turning out to be a dangerous woman to be around, Laurie.’

Especially when I’ve had a bottle of wine and I half love you, I think. I really should go to bed now, before I scrub the chalk line out and move it forward again.





Jack


You’re turning out to be a dangerous woman to be around, Laurie.

What the bloody hell are these words coming out of my mouth? It sounds like a cheap pick-up line in a naff made-for-TV movie, when all I was trying to do was say we’re friends. You stupid Jackass; I berate myself using the nickname I carried through school like a badge of honour. My school reports were littered with variations of the same comment, though more politely put: ‘If only Jack applied as much effort to his studies as he does to acting the fool, he’d go a long way.’

I like to think I proved them wrong; when it came to the crunch my grades were just about decent enough to scrape into my first choice of uni. Truth is that I was lucky; I’ve been gifted with a near photographic memory, so those textbooks and theories only needed to go in once and they stayed there. With that and an ability to talk crap to anyone, I’ve done okay. Though for some reason my ability to talk doesn’t seem to extend to Laurie.

‘So, Laurie. What else should I know about you, besides the fact that you’ll beat me black and blue if I hurt your best mate?’

She looks startled by my question. I don’t blame her. The last time I asked anyone a question like that was my one and only hideous attempt at speed dating. What am I doing, interviewing her?

‘Umm …’ She laughs, music-box light. ‘There’s not really very much to tell.’

I try to bring it back to normal, shooting her a ‘try harder’ look. ‘Come on, throw me a bone here. Sarah wants us to be best buddies. Give me your three most embarrassing facts, and then I’ll give you mine.’

She narrows her eyes and her chin comes up a little. ‘Can we take it in turns?’

‘Go on then. As long as you go first.’

I tell myself that I’ve suggested this because Sarah is so keen on me and Laurie being friends, and that honestly, genuinely, is partly the reason. Partly. But the other part just wants to know more about her, because she intrigues me, and because I’m comfortable here on the other end of the sofa, and because I find myself relaxed in her company. Maybe it’s the wine she’s drunk, and it’s probably the beer I’ve sunk, but I think I could be good friends with this girl. That’s okay, isn’t it? I know some people don’t believe that platonic friendships can happen between men and women.

I’m going to trade truths with Laurie, and we’re going to become the best of friends. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my grand plan.

She drums her nails against the edge of her glass, thinking, and I find I’m really interested to hear what she’s going to say. She looks down into the dregs of her wine, and when she raises her eyes, she’s laughing.

‘Okay, I was fourteen, fifteen maybe.’ She breaks off and presses her hand to her red cheek, shaking her head. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this.’

That giddy laugh again, and she lowers her lashes, making me duck down to catch her eye.

‘Come on, you’ve got to tell me now,’ I cajole.

She sighs with resignation. ‘I was with Alana, my best friend at the time, and we were at the school disco trying to pretend we were super-cool. I think we might even have had a box of cigarettes, although neither of us smoked.’

I nod, wanting to hear more.

‘And there was this boy, as there always is, and I really fancied him. Half the school did, in actual fact, but by some miracle he seemed to like me too.’

I want to butt in and tell her that it’s not a miracle or even a surprise really, but I don’t.

‘So he finally asks me to dance at the end, and I nonchalantly accept, and it’s all going really well until I look up sharply just as he looks down at me, and I full-on headbutt him in the face and break his nose.’ She looks at me, wide-eyed, and then laughter bubbles up in her throat. ‘Blood everywhere. They had to call him an ambulance.’

‘No way.’ I shake my head slowly. ‘Wow, you’re a really shit date, Laurie.’

‘I wasn’t even dating him,’ she protests. ‘I wanted to, but it never got off the ground after that. No surprise, really.’ Knocking her knuckles on her skull, she shrugs. ‘Iron hard, by all accounts.’

‘Okay, so now you’re a ninja mafia moll with an exceptionally hard cranium. I can understand what Sarah sees in you.’

She plays it straight. ‘I reckon I must make her feel safe.’

‘I’ll say. You really should think about charging protection money. Pay your student loan off in no time.’

Laurie puts her wine glass on the table and leans back, tucking her dark hair behind her ears as she settles cross-legged, facing towards me. When I was a kid we went on annual family holidays to Cornwall, and my mother had a thing for those tiny little pixies you could buy, usually sitting on toadstools or something equally twee. Something in the neatness of Laurie’s lotus position and the point of her chin when she smoothes her hair behind her ears reminds me of those pixies now, and for a second I experience a jolt of homesickness out of the blue. As if she is familiar, even though she isn’t.