One Day in December(54)
I laugh at her sarcasm. ‘We both have.’
‘You know who I genuinely had a drink with last week?’ She slants her eyes at me, up to no good. ‘Amanda Holden.’
‘No!’ I clutch my stomach as if she’s stabbed me. ‘I knew it.’
She brushes her shoulders off with her fingertips and arches her eyebrows at me, then relents and starts to laugh. ‘We were in the same bar, anyway.’
I roll my eyes. ‘One day.’ And I mean it. She was promoted over New Year to a regular spot on the lunchtime news bulletin; she’s becoming someone who people know they’ve seen before but can’t think where. Give her a few years and she’ll need to wear a baseball cap and dark glasses to meet me for coffee.
‘What did you get Oscar for his birthday?’
A flicker of excitement licks through me. I can’t wait for him to see his gift. ‘I’ll show you,’ I say. ‘Come on.’ I lead her down the hallway towards our bedroom and push the door open. ‘There. What do you think?’ Hanging in pride of place over our bed is a large canvas painting. ‘Carly, one of the girls at work, painted it for me from a photograph I gave her.’
‘Wow.’ Sarah’s soft exclamation tells me that she’s as blown away as I am by the way Carly has managed to capture so much more than just the dawn colours and the dimensions of our little shack on the beach in Thailand. The painting vibrates with life and serenity; as I look at it I can almost hear the gentle rush of the sea and smell the strong-but-sweet black coffee as we sit on the front step and watch the sun come up. I nearly cried the first time I saw it.
‘I know,’ I say, not wanting to take my eyes away from it. ‘God knows why she works at the magazine. People would queue round the block if they knew how good she is.’
‘I wish I had a talent like that,’ Sarah sighs.
‘You’re kidding me, right?’ I say, ushering her from the bedroom and clicking the door closed. ‘I have to shade my eyes when you’re on TV.’
‘Piss off,’ she says, but I can hear in her voice that she’s bolstered by my words. Sarah’s always been a funny mix of brilliant and insecure; one second she’ll be prancing around the room like an overexcited show horse and the next she’ll be agonizing over a word she got wrong in her last broadcast.
‘What time is Oscar coming home?’
I look at the clock, working out how long I have to get everything and everyone in place. ‘His plane touches down just after six,’ I say. ‘So around half seven? I’ve asked everyone to be here for seven just to be sure.’
She grimaces. ‘I really hope Jack remembers.’
She doesn’t add ‘this time’. But I think both of our thoughts turn back to that other night a few months back, and I send up a silent hope that tonight will be memorable for all the right reasons.
Jack
I’m pretty sure Sarah is expecting me to be late. I can’t seem to win with her any more, despite my almost-constant apologies. She banged on and on about me finding a job, and now I have one again she’s on at me because I’m always at work. It’s not as if it matters whether or not I’m there for the big jazz-hands surprise when Oscar arrives at his party. Who has those anyway? I thought they were the domain of American sit-coms. Sarah’s perfectly able to manage the Spotify playlist without me, and I’m pretty certain I don’t feature on Oscar’s ‘it’s not a party until you’re here’ list. That’s okay. He wouldn’t feature on mine, either.
But despite all that, for some reason I’m here just about on time. I can see the gracious terraced house they live in as I turn the corner on to their road. My breath mists on the cold air in front of me, but still I drag my feet to make the most of the last few minutes before I have to go inside and pretend to like his braying friends. Or their braying friends, I suppose I should call them, seeing as he and Laurie are joined at the hip these days. I sometimes think she would have been better off hooking up with Billy. At least he’s a laugh, and he doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not. Every now and then Sarah and Laurie drag us into the hell of a double date, where they laugh like sisters and we make civil chat like neighbours who don’t especially care for each other. Not that we could ever be neighbours, because he lives in Wankerville and I live in Stockwell. And whatever world we live in, we’re just not similar enough to be friends. The only thing we have in common is Laurie, and she’s becoming more like him and less like us by the day.
I’m outside the house now. I consider walking straight past, but Laurie is framed in the open doorway welcoming someone I don’t recognize, and she spots me and half raises her hand in greeting. I loiter until her guest’s gone inside, then I saunter up and try for a grin.
‘Lu.’
‘Jack. You made it.’
She heroically resists looking at her watch, and I try, and fail, not to look at the starfish nestled between her collarbones. Her fingers move to cover it, as if she fears I might fly into a hulk-rage and rip it from her neck again.
‘You look nice,’ I say.
She glances down at her dress as if she hasn’t seen it before. It’s an unusual style on her; black and vintage-looking with blue piping and a skirt that flips around her knees. It takes me back to Barnes Common, to drinking beer in the sunshine and riding the Ferris wheel.