One Day in December(4)

I laugh, remembering our comedy sketch struggle to lug the rolled-up carpet down the stairs from our top-floor flat. By the time we reached the bottom we were sweating like miners and swearing like sailors, both plastered in chunks of loose foam underlay. We high-fived each other after we slung it into a neighbour’s skip; it’s been there half full of junk for ever, I don’t think they’ll even notice.

The old oak floorboards have come up beautifully – in years gone by someone had obviously gone to the trouble of restoring them before the current landlord hid them beneath that patterned monstrosity. Our arm-aching efforts to buff them up all feel worth it now that we’re standing in our mellow, light-filled room thanks to the fresh white walls and big old sash windows. It’s a tired building with glamorous bones, Artex ceiling notwithstanding. We’ve added a cheap rug and covered the mismatched furniture with throws from our bedrooms, and all in all I think we’ve performed a shoe-string miracle.

‘Boho chic,’ Sarah declares.

‘You’ve got paint in your hair,’ I say, touching the top of my head to show her where and promptly adding a whole new splodge to mine.

‘You too,’ she says, laughing, then looks at her watch. ‘Fish and chips?’

Sarah has the metabolism of a horse. It’s one of the things I like most about her, because it allows me to eat cake guilt-free. I nod, starving. ‘I’ll go.’

Half an hour later, we toast our newly fabulous living room over fish and chips eaten off our knees on the sofa.

‘We should jack in our jobs and become TV home-makeover queens,’ Sarah says.

‘We’d kill it,’ I say. ‘Laurie and Sarah’s Designer Do-overs.’

She pauses, her fork halfway to her mouth. ‘Sarah and Lu’s Designer Do-overs.’

‘Laurie and Sarah’s sounds better,’ I grin. ‘You know I’m right. Besides, I’m older than you, it’s only fair I should come first.’

It’s a standing joke; I’m a few months older than Sarah and I never miss a chance to pull rank. She splutters on her beer as I lean down to pick my bottle up off the floor.

‘Mind the boards!’

‘I’ve used a coaster,’ I say, grandly.

She leans down and peers at my makeshift coaster, this month’s supermarket offers flyer.

‘Oh my God, Lu,’ she says slowly. ‘We’ve become coaster people.’

I swallow, sombre. ‘Does this mean we’re going to grow old and have cats together?’

She nods. ‘I think it does.’

‘Might as well,’ I grumble. ‘My love life is officially dead.’

Sarah screws up her finished-with fish-and-chip paper. ‘You’ve only got yourself to blame,’ she says.

She’s referring to bus boy, of course. He’s reached near-mythical status now, and I’m on the very edge of giving up on him. Ten months is a long time to look for a complete stranger on the off-chance that they’ll be single, into me and not an axe murderer. Sarah is of the vocal opinion that I need to move on, by which she means I need to find someone else before I turn into a nun. I know she’s right, but my heart isn’t ready to let him go yet. That feeling when we locked eyes – I’ve never had that before, ever.

‘You could have trekked around the entire globe in the time since you saw him,’ she says. ‘Think how many perfect men you could have shagged doing that. You’d have had tales of Roberto in Italy and Vlad in Russia to tell your grandkids when you’re old.’

‘I’m not going to have kids or grandkids. I’m going to search vainly for bus boy for ever and have cats with you instead,’ I say. ‘We’ll start a rescue centre, and the queen will give us a medal for services to cats.’

Sarah laughs, but her eyes tell me that the time has come to pack my bus boy dreams away and let him go.

‘I’ve just remembered I’m allergic to cats,’ she says. ‘But you still love me, right?’

I sigh and reach for my beer. ‘It’s a deal-breaker, I’m afraid. Find someone else, Sarah, we can never be together.’

She grins. ‘I’ve got a date next week.’

I clutch my heart. ‘You got over us so fast.’

‘I met him in a lift. I held him to ransom with the stop button until he agreed to ask me out.’

I really need to take life lessons from Sarah – she sees what she wants and grabs it with both hands. I wish for the millionth time that I’d had the balls to get off that bus. But the fact is, I didn’t. Maybe it’s time to wise up, to stop searching for him and drunk crying every time I fail. There are other men. I need to make ‘What would Sarah do?’ my life motto – I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t spend a year of her life moping.

‘Shall we buy a picture for that wall?’ she says, looking at the empty space over the fireplace.

I nod. ‘Yeah. Why not? Can it be of cats?’

She laughs and bounces her screwed-up chip paper off my head.





18 December


Laurie


‘Try not to make any snap decisions when you meet David tonight? You probably won’t think he’s your type on first sight, but trust me, he’s hilarious. And he’s kind, Laurie. I mean, he gave up his chair for me the other day in a meeting. How many guys do you know who’d do that?’ Sarah delivers this speech while on her knees pulling as many dusty wine glasses as she can find from the back of the kitchen cupboard in our tiny shared flat.