I’m sorry, Sarah, I really and truly am.
‘Let me take your coat.’
Let me take your coat? What the hell am I, the maid? I’m just glad I didn’t call him sir for good measure. Jack walked into our flat thirty seconds ago and already I’m acting like a moron. His smile is nervous as he unwinds his scarf and shrugs out of his winter coat, handing them to me almost apologetically even though I asked him for them. I have to work hard not to bury my face in the dark navy wool as I hang it on the already-packed coat hooks beside our front door, almost laying it over my own jacket before pointedly hanging it as far away from it as possible. I’m trying, I really am. But he’s half an hour early, and has managed to arrive just as Sarah ran down the fire escape off the kitchen, as if they are theatre actors in a farce.
‘Sarah’s just nipped to the shop for wine,’ I flounder. ‘It’s round the corner. She’ll be back soon. Five minutes, I should think, unless there’s a queue. Or anything. It’s only round the corner.’
He nods, his smile still hovering despite the fact I’ve repeated myself at least three times.
‘Go through, go through,’ I say, bright and overanxious, flapping my hands in the direction of our tiny living room. ‘How was your Christmas?’
He perches on the end of the sofa, and I momentarily falter over where to sit before choosing the chair. What else was I going to do? Join him on the sofa? Accidentally press myself against him?
‘Yeah, you know.’ He smiles, almost bashful. ‘Christmassy.’ He pauses. ‘Turkey. Too much beer.’
I smile too. ‘Sounds a lot like mine. Except I’m more of a wine drinker.’
What am I doing – trying to make myself sound sophisticated? He’s going to think I’m some kind of pretentious knobber.
Come on, Sarah, I think. Come back and rescue me from myself, I’m not ready to be on my own with him yet. I’m horrified as I find myself wanting to snatch this chance to ask him if he remembers me from the bus. I can feel the question climbing up my windpipe like it’s being pushed from behind by a determined colony of worker ants. I swallow hard. My palms are starting to sweat. I don’t know what I hope to gain from asking him if he remembers, because I’m ninety-nine per cent certain that the answer would be no. Jack lives in the real world and has a super-hot girlfriend; he’d probably forgotten about me before my bus turned the corner of Camden High Street.
‘So, Laurie,’ he says, clearly casting around for something to say. I feel the way I sometimes do when I get my hair cut; as if the stylist finds me hard work and I’m shortly going to need to lie about where I’m going on holiday. ‘What did you study?’
‘Media and Journalism.’
He doesn’t look surprised; he must know that Sarah and I were on the same course at Middlesex.
‘I’m a words person,’ I elaborate. ‘Magazines, hopefully, when I can get my foot in the door somewhere. I don’t plan on a career in front of the camera.’ I stop myself from adding ‘unlike Sarah’, because I’m sure he already knows that Sarah’s life plan involves presenting the local news before moving up the ranks towards the national broadcasters. There’s a trite quote I see bandied around on Facebook every now and then, ‘Some girls are born with glitter in their veins,’ or something similar. Sarah is that, but there’s grit mixed in with her glitter; she doesn’t stop until she gets what she wants. ‘How about you?’
He lifts one shoulder. ‘Journalism at uni. Radio’s my thing.’
I know this already, because Sarah has tuned the kitchen radio into the station he works at, even though he’s only ever on it if the late-night presenter isn’t there, which has been next to never. Everyone starts somewhere though, and now I’ve heard his voice I know that it’s only a matter of time before he moves up the ranks. I have a sudden, hideous vision of Sarah and Jack as TV’s golden couple, the next Phil and Holly, shining out of my TV at me every day with their in-jokes, finishing each other’s sentences and winning every People’s Choice award going. It’s so realistic that I’m winded, and I’m relieved to hear Sarah’s keys clatter in the lock.
‘Honey, I’m home,’ she calls out, slamming the door so hard she rattles the old wooden sash window frames in the living room.
‘Here she is,’ I say unnecessarily, springing up. ‘I’ll just go and help her.’
I meet her in the doorway and take the unchilled wine from her hands. ‘Jack’s just arrived. You go and say hi, I’ll stick this in the freezer to cool down for a bit.’
I withdraw to the kitchen, wishing I could climb into the freezer drawer too as I shoehorn the bottle in beneath the bag of frozen berries we use for smoothies when we feel like we might die from lack of nutrients.
I open the bottle of wine we’ve already chilled in the fridge and pour out a couple of decent glasses. One for me, one for Sarah. I don’t pour one for Jack, because as I already know, he’s more of a beer kind of guy. I’m warmed by the fact that I know what he’d prefer without needing to ask, as if this one tiny snippet is a new stitch in the quilt of our intimacy. It’s an odd thought, but I run with it, imagining that quilt as I pull out a bottle of beer for Jack and flick the lid off, then close the fridge and lean my back against it with my wine glass in my hand. Our quilt is handmade, carefully constructed from gossamer-thin layers of hushed conversations and snatched looks, stitched together with threads of wishes and dreams, until it’s this magnificent, wondrous, weightless thing that keeps us warm and protects us from harm as if it were made of steel. Us? Who am I kidding?
I take a second mouthful of wine as I catch hold of my train of thought and try to reroute it along safer tracks. I force myself to see that quilt on Sarah and Jack’s king-size bed, in Sarah and Jack’s gorgeous house, in Sarah and Jack’s perfect life. It’s a technique I’ve been testing out; whenever I think something inappropriate about him, I make myself counter it with a sickly, positive thought about them as a couple. I can’t say it’s working all that well yet, but I’m trying.
‘Come on, Lu, I’m gagging in here!’ Sarah’s voice runs clear with carefree laughter as she adds, ‘Don’t bother with a wine glass for Jack, though. He’s too unsophisticated for our five-quid plonk.’
I know, I want to say, but I don’t. I just shove Jack’s beer under my arm and refill my glass before I go back through to join them in the living room.
‘Pineapple on pizza is like having, I dunno, ham with custard. They just don’t go together.’ Sarah shoves two fingers down her throat and rolls her eyes.
Jack picks up the offending piece of pineapple that Sarah has flicked disdainfully into the corner of the box. ‘I had banana on pizza, too, once. Trust me, it worked.’ He squidges the extra pineapple down on to his slice and grins at me. ‘You can have the casting vote, Laurie. Pineapple yay or pineapple nay?’
I feel disloyal, but I can’t lie because Sarah already knows the answer.
‘Yay. Definitely yay.’
Sarah snorts, making me wish I’d lied. ‘I’m starting to think that getting you two together was a bad idea. You’re going to gang up on me.’
‘Team J-Lu.’ Jack winks at me as he laughs, earning himself a good punch on the arm from Sarah that makes him groan and rub it as if she’s broken it.
‘Easy. That’s my drinking arm.’
‘That’s for trying to split up team Sa-Lu.’ She’s the one winking at me now, and I nod, keen to show that I’m on her side even if I do like pineapple on my pizza.
‘Sorry, Jack,’ I say. ‘We’re wine sisters. It’s a stronger bond than pineapple on pizza.’ And I have to say, the wine is definitely helping me get through this situation.
Sarah shoots him a ‘suck on that’ look and high-fives me across the gulf between the mismatched sofa and armchair. She’s curled into the end with her feet shoved under Jack’s ass, her long red hair plaited round her head like she might nip out the back and milk her herd of goats at any moment.