Читать книгу A Hopeless Romantic - Harriet Evans - Страница 18

Laura couldn’t remember going to bed. She didn’t remember much, and when she woke up it was early Saturday afternoon. Which meant that she had slept for around twelve hours. She had no job to go to on Monday, no friends, no money, no Dan…She rolled over and closed her eyes again. Her pyjamas were sweaty, and so was she. She tried to think about the previous night, reached for her phone to check for messages, and then swallowed and gripped her hands into fists. She wasn’t going to. She felt nothing, nothing at all, and she closed her eyes again, and sank back into an exhausted, defeated sleep.

When Laura woke up again, it was later in the afternoon and she realised she was starving. She pulled on her jeans and, zombie-like, went downstairs to go to the shops round the corner. She was stumbling back, clutching in her arms a paper, some crisps, some wine and some chocolate, when she felt dizzy and thought she was going to collapse. When she reached home, she leant against the wall of the communal hallway, unsure how she was going to get up the stairs again, feeling so totally alone and sad she didn’t even know how to respond to her own feelings. Should she cry? Scream? Yell? Smile bravely? She didn’t know, she was simply sick of the treadmill in her head going round with the same old thoughts over and over again. What was she going to do now?

What she really wanted to do, Laura realised, was curl up under the pigeonholes and go to sleep for a year. Would anyone notice, would they care? No. And she deserved it. More than anything, she realised helplessly, she wanted a shoulder to cry on, and the reason she had no one was entirely her own fault.

Laura gritted her teeth. She would go upstairs. She would.

Back on the fifth floor at last, she fumbled for her keys, and the door behind her opened. It was Mr Kenzo, who lived in the flat opposite.

‘Laura!’ he cried at her back, as Laura held her haul from the shops in one scooping motion and tried to turn the key in the lock. The paper and can of coke slid out of her hand, and the sections of newspaper feathered across the floor.

Laura stared at them, and tried not to cry. She bent down, as Mr Kenzo also bent down, tut-tutting, and folded them deftly up.

‘My dear, my dear,’ he said, handing them and the can back to her. ‘Are you OK? You look not well, let me tell you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Laura blankly. ‘I’m going in now,’ and she turned away and tried to unlock the door.

‘Do you need some help?’ said Mr Kenzo, unfazed by her rudeness. He stepped forward, and took the key from her. As he turned it in the lock, it was pulled open from inside, and Mr Kenzo half-fell forward into Paddy’s arms. Paddy had opened the door and was watching them both with bemusement, his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown. Laura just stood there, numbly holding her things, not wanting to go in or stay out, not really caring. Paddy looked at her and gave a grimace of concern. He pulled his hands out of his dressing gown and scratched his long, thin nose, then set Mr Kenzo back down on the ground and said heartily,

‘Sorry, Mr Kenzo! How are you? Helping Laura out there, are you?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Kenzo, clasping his hands rather nervously – he found Paddy rather hard to read, clearly being from the school of thought that said men should work with their hands and sit around in cafés waving those hands and yelling at their friends, rather than opening the door in the early evening in a dressing gown and jeans, unshaven, with long, messy hair.

Mr Kenzo gave Paddy a packet of crisps. ‘She dropped these, take them please.’

A voice on the stairs said cautiously, ‘Er – James? Laura?’

Not really caring who it was, Laura turned for the door again, but the expression on Paddy’s face stopped her. He was smiling in a dazed, stupid fashion, and running his hands through his hair.

‘Becky!’ he said. ‘Hi! Hi-ya!’

Becky-from-downstairs, who was still very much the object of Paddy’s affections, appeared on the landing. ‘Hello, Mr Kenzo,’ she said, not at all ruffled by the strangeness of the scene in front of her. She shifted her bag on her shoulder. ‘Hi, James – er, someone’s signed for this recorded delivery, and they pushed it through my door, and I think it’s for you.’ She held out an envelope bearing the legend ‘Ticketmaster’ on it.

‘Oh, yeah!’ said Paddy, leaping forward and taking the tickets from Becky. Laura watched as he gave her a super-enthusiastic smile. ‘Thanks. Thanks Becky! Yeah, that’s great. Just my…er…it’s my, er, Snow Patrol tickets. Yeah!’

‘It’s your tickets for We Will Rock You, isn’t it?’ said Laura, with an interested expression.

‘Queen?’ said Mr Kenzo. ‘Ah, fabulous.’

Paddy kicked her in the shin, and Laura took this as her cue to leave. ‘Thanks again, Mr Kenzo. Bye, Becky.’

‘Er, bye Laura,’ said Becky.

She pushed past Paddy into her own corridor, turned and said again, ‘Sorry, Mr Kenzo.’

Mr Kenzo’s creased face smiled kindly at her. ‘Why you saying sorry? You are having bad day. Go in. And look after her,’ he said confidentially to Paddy, as Laura stared blankly at him, wondering if perhaps he were the Angel of Death.

‘Thanks again,’ Paddy said to Becky. He swivelled from her to Laura, standing in their hallway. ‘Er…’ he said.

Becky smiled at him expectantly. Laura cleared her throat.

‘I’ll – see you around, Becky,’ said Paddy. ‘I’d better go in. That’s really kind of you. Great, thanks again.’

As the door slammed behind him, Paddy turned to his flatmate in the corridor with an exasperated expression. ‘You’re awake. At last! I didn’t know where you’d gone. You’ve been asleep all day, you know?’

‘Yes,’ said Laura, walking towards her room. She stood in the doorway. ‘I’m going back to bed. I don’t know when I’m coming out again. Go after Becky, Pads. Ask her out. And when you get back, if anyone calls, tell them I’m not here.’

‘Laura –’ Paddy was looking after her, a plaintive expression on his face.

‘Sorry, Pads,’ she said.

‘But –’

‘Leave me alone,’ said Laura, a sob rising in her throat, batting her hand at Paddy, who was standing incredulously in the corridor watching her as she walked away. ‘I’m so tired.’ She said it almost to herself. ‘I just want to sleep. Just leave me alone.’

Laura went back to bed. She ate the food she could eat without leaving the bed. The wine she left – it wasn’t a screw-top and she couldn’t face getting the corkscrew from the kitchen. She ate a Crunchie bar in two mouthfuls. She was too tired to read the paper. She picked it up, scanned it, but the story about a school of orphans in Zimbabwe made her cry again, so she threw the paper on the floor and turned over, facing the wall, tears rolling across her face. The salty, MSG flavour of the crisps was around her mouth, and she licked her lips, sniffing. She closed her eyes.

About an hour later there was a knock at the door.

‘Laura?’ came a voice tentatively.

Laura opened her eyes, but said nothing.

‘It’s me,’ said Paddy. ‘Look. Are you OK?’

Laura chewed her lip, praying he wouldn’t come in, banking on a bloke’s natural aversion to crying women. This was particularly strong in Paddy, sweet though he was in other ways.

‘What’s wrong, Laura? I’m…I’m worried about you!’

Laura pulled the duvet over her head as tears filled her eyes again.

‘Look,’ said the voice again. ‘I’m going out now. I don’t want to bother you. I’m not going to come in. Will you just say “Yes” now to let me know you’re alive and you haven’t been attacked or anything?’

It was a good tactic. Laura patted the duvet away feebly with her hands, and said quietly, ‘Yes.’

‘Right,’ came Paddy’s voice, sounding relieved. ‘Look, darling. I’m sorry about whatever’s happened. Is it Dan?’

‘Yes,’ Laura said. ‘Don’t. Don’t worry.’

She didn’t know why she said it, except she really didn’t want Paddy thinking she was actually dying or something. It was her problem, not his, poor man.

Paddy said cheerily, ‘Oh. Well, you’ll sort it out, I’m sure. I know you, Laura! You know what you want, don’t you?’

There came no answer, so he said, ‘Well, bye then,’ and seconds later Laura heard the front door slam. She lay there quietly for a moment, then put a pillow over her head and screamed, as hoarsely and loudly as she could, till the urge to shout had gone out of her and she was crying quietly again until she fell asleep.

All through Sunday, Laura slept or lay in bed feeling sorry for herself, not moving. She didn’t have anything to do, and she had absolutely no one to answer to, and all she wanted to do was hate herself a little bit more, and the solution to that seemed to be to lie festering in a hot, sweaty bed, with greasy hair and greasy fingernails and skin, feeling achy and uncomfortable. White saliva remains crusted in the corners of her mouth. Her breath smelt rank. That day she ate only a packet of crisps and another chocolate bar. Her stomach rumbled, she felt alternately sick and hopelessly weak, with head-rushes every time she sat up or turned over. Her pyjamas were bunched up around her, uncomfortable, twisted in the baggy sheets. She left her room twice, to go to the loo, scuttling each way like a crazy person so she didn’t see Paddy. She heard sounds of him moving about, a television on in the sitting room at the other end of the flat, but he didn’t come near her and for that she was grateful. She just wanted to be alone, to feel as totally rotten as it was possible to feel, to push herself as far away from the hopeful, deluded girl who ran out to see Dan every week with smooth silky tanned legs and clean, shiny hair.

She slept fitfully, and she kept dreaming. She dreamt she was running to tell Dan something, but she couldn’t get to him; though her legs were long and she was running as fast as she could, she never seemed to make it any further. She dreamt Dan was lying next to her, his arms wrapped around her, and that he was kissing her neck, her shoulders. She dreamt he had texted her to tell her it was all a mistake, but each time she woke up and checked her phone there was nothing. She dreamt she was on holiday with Dan and Amy and her friends, in a huge villa somewhere, and she could hear them laughing but didn’t know where they were, where any of her friends were.

Early on Monday morning she was awake, gazing around the room, looking at the detritus of her self-incarceration through the grey haze cast by the curtains. By this time Laura had been in her room for over two days, and she was starting to freak herself out. But the thing about self-loathing is it stops you from taking the smallest of steps to make yourself feel better – even tying your hair back in a ponytail, or opening the window for some fresh air. She desperately wanted to get up, get out of bed, have a shower, but she couldn’t. It was easier to lie there and not do anything. She couldn’t go in and talk to Paddy. He’d told her all along she was stupid for seeing Dan! She couldn’t tell her parents; the shock of the whole sorry mess would kill them. She couldn’t call Jo, though she desperately wanted her wise, sanguine best friend’s advice. Of course she couldn’t call her – imagine what she’d say! Imagine how she’d enjoy it. And then there was the job, the money too…Laura closed her eyes again, and realised that perhaps of all the lows over the past couple of days, this was probably her lowest moment. She didn’t even have the energy to cry, and somehow that made it much worse.

She thought about what she had to do now, and the enormity of it overwhelmed her. Fix things, fix things left, right and centre. And then, in the middle of it all, get over this man. Straight away. Laura knew she’d been stupid, but three days on, she still knew Amy’s pregnancy drew a line under their affair once and for all. There was no way they could carry on. She wouldn’t even have wanted to, even if Dan had left Amy for her. No, it was over. Apart from the baby, being with Dan had effectively ruined her life. She had to understand the consequences of a bad relationship.

When she looked across the months to come, long Dan-less months of not sharing things with him, telling him things, being with him, her stomach clenched in sharp pain and her heart beat so loudly in her chest she felt it might burst. It was over. And so was that part of herself. When she thought about how she’d misjudged it, how she’d run ahead and fallen in love with him without stopping to look at whether he was the person she thought he was – well, she wanted to kick herself. Except this wasn’t the first time and she knew enough to recognise she’d done it before. One thing was for sure, though: it was the last time.

Yes, the last time she’d fall like that. Absolutely the last time. A clean slate. A smooth, glowing feeling washed through Laura, stopping the cramps in her stomach. A clean slate, a project, someone to be, a new her. She looked past the grey-blue curtains at the crack that let the sunlight in. Yes, the good feeling persisted. She would be someone new. That was the only way to be. She was going to change.

Laura’s problem was that she kept casting men in roles they weren’t suited for. Just as, aged sixteen, she had cast Mr Wallace in the role of a Pre-Raphaelite-esque musician when in fact he was a rather weedy, nervous, weak man unable to withstand the breathless attention of a budding, pubescent girl. Just the same as she had been with lovely Josh, for a year before Dan, casting him in the role of decent, kind househusband, the perfect partner, the modern male, when – what was it that she had actually loved about him, really? Laura tried to think, and couldn’t come up with the answer. He was a great man – kind, funny, clever, hard working – but there was no way he was the man for her, she realised now. Why hadn’t she seen it? And why hadn’t she seen it with Dan? Why had she learnt so little from her time on earth and not bloody seen it at all with Dan? The man she’d cast in the role of ultimate love of her life, Mr Dependable, ride-off-into-the-sunset-with soul mate. Well. Hah.

The sun was growing brighter. Laura swallowed, tasting a bitter, mouldy fur on her tongue. She sat up, her hands on her knees, and was considering what to do with this newfound zeal – whether to convert it into something by taking the first of a thousand small steps and jumping in the shower, or whether to lie back and think about it some more. What should she do? The energy of the question fazed her, and she would have probably lain back down and closed her eyes again, a fatal tine of the fork to take, when, thank god, fate intervened.

Laura didn’t know what happened first, the sight of it or the sound, but as she was sliding back down under the duvet again there was a sickening thump noise, and the window flew into a million pieces, hitting the curtains and flying past, hurling fragments onto the bed. A pigeon landed at Laura’s feet. Dead. Or dying.

It took a few seconds before Laura realised the person screaming loudly was her, and it was involuntary, her first involuntary action of the last two days. She couldn’t move. She sat staring and screaming at this twitching, bloodied pigeon, its feathers scraggy and ugly, its red-pink worm-like claws convulsing on her duvet, as Paddy burst into the room.

‘Stop!’ shouted Laura. ‘Don’t come any further! There’s glass on the floor – STOP!!!’

Paddy slid to a halt, inches from a huge dagger-shaped shard of glass.

‘Fuck! Fuck me!’ he yelled. ‘What the fuck! Laura! What have you done!’

The pigeon twitched again. Laura suddenly heard her mother’s voice saying (every time she wanted to feed pigeons in Trafalgar Square or Piccadilly Circus), ‘They’re flying rats, dear. Vermin. Crawling with fleas and god knows what else.’

‘Get away from me!’ she said incoherently to the pigeon. ‘Fuck! Off!’

Paddy calmed down before she did. He looked from the broken window, where the curtains were fluttering plaintively in the summer breeze, across the path of devastation wrought by the flying glass, now in a shower across the floor, to the bed where the pigeon lay a couple of feet from Laura, who was surrounded by feathers, blood and glass, as well as crisp packets, cans, chocolate wrappers and bits of paper. He said, slowly, ‘I think you should get out of there. Where are your slippers?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Laura helplessly. She added, ‘I don’t wear them in summer. They’re too hot.’

‘Oh good grief,’ said Paddy. ‘Flip-flops?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Laura. ‘Oh – there.’ She pointed at her chest of drawers, below the window, which was covered in glass, and below it a collection of glass-strewn flip-flops.

‘Wait there,’ said Paddy, and he trotted lightly down the corridor, returning with a pair of wellington boots which he used for fishing trips (last year’s Paddy craze).

‘I’m going to throw them gingerly at you,’ he said.

Laura looked at him. ‘What does “throw them gingerly at you” mean?’ she said crossly. ‘Just throw them. Don’t knock me out. And don’t – urgh! Oh Paddy – urgh. Don’t throw them at the pigeon. Urgh!’

Paddy had prided himself on his spin bowling at school, and indeed was reckoned to be rather good at it. He tossed each welly in the air, and miraculously each landed, in a slow, spinning arc, in Laura’s outstretched hands. She pulled them on and climbed out of bed. Stepping around the glass and rubbish by her bed, she leapt across the mound of it by the door, and landed next to Paddy.

‘Er…’ she said, not knowing how to ask. ‘Paddy…?’

Paddy stepped forward and gently picked up the dead pigeon. He dropped it into Laura’s wastepaper basket, and picked the receptacle up.

‘Cup of tea?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Laura. She pulled her hair back and tied it into a ponytail. ‘Yes, yes please.’

‘Going to buy a new duvet and bin?’ said Paddy, as he pulled the bedroom door firmly shut behind them.

‘Oh, you bet.’

It was Paddy’s last week of term, so he left for work a while later, by which time they had had several cups of tea, called a glazier (Laura), deposited the pigeon in some newspaper and a bag in the rubbish bins outside (Paddy), and donned rubber gloves and begun the work of – once again gingerly – collecting each piece of glass that had managed to spray itself remarkably widely around Laura’s room (Laura). By the time the glazier showed up after lunch, Laura had showered and dressed and had stripped and washed her sheets. She threw away the duvet – she knew it was wrong and a waste of the world’s resources, but it was almost fetid AND covered in dead pigeon. There was no way she’d ever sleep with it again, she knew, and no amount of boil washes could clean it for her.

The glazier was a short, squat man, who looked as if he had been born in blue dungarees. He was called Jan Kowolczyk.

‘Well, well,’ he said when Laura came to check on him after a little while. ‘Nearly finished here, young lady, then all will be good as new again.’

Laura nodded. She agreed. It was all part of it, she knew. Her feeling of having been evangelically cleansed. She had had her time in the wilderness, and A Sign had come to her to show her The Way. Sure, it was a disease-ridden pigeon, and it had almost given her a heart attack, but she had felt and interpreted its symbolism as keenly as if she were an A-level student reading Emily Brontë for the first time. And she knew what she was going to do next.

‘Thank you,’ said Laura, smoothing her long, black linen skirt down with her hands and then clasping them lightly in front of her. Her hair was clean and soft, tied up in a neat ponytail which brushed the back of her neck. The breeze through the window blew gently across her face and chest. She felt so in control now. She glanced around the room, her eye falling on the bookshelf, piled high with her own books and videos, the self-indulgent ones she daren’t have out in the sitting room. It was an unspoken agreement between her and Paddy. The Godfather and Spinal Tap were out in the sitting room, along with various thrillers and classics and the usual clutter of shared possessions. But each flatmate kept their own personal tastes to their bedroom. So Paddy’s room had all his weird sci-fi and fantasy novels, his Buffy and Angel boxed sets, whilst Laura kept all her Georgette Heyers and her romantic comedy videos in her room.

She looked at them affectionately, the rows of pink and purple plastic video-box covers and the lines of paperback books, their spines cracked with repeated rereading. An idea came into her head, one so terrible she shrank from putting it into action, but she realised that to make a fresh start she would have to. She gazed unseeingly at these architects of her doom. Really, she could blame them for a lot of what had happened. Putting ideas in her head. She needed a different role model now. Perhaps she didn’t need them any more. Perhaps – no, that was a bit too extreme, wasn’t it?

Her eye fell upon an old hardback of Rebecca, at the end of the shelf, and she picked it up, idly leafing through the pages. Maybe it was time to read it again. She needed cheering up.

Laura adored Rebecca, it was one of her favourite books. She loved the poor, unnamed Mrs de Winter with a passion, wanted to be her, and desperately loathed evil Rebecca, whom she saw in her mind’s eye as looking very much like Amy. And Maxim…well, he was the embodiment of everything a romantic hero should be…in every way. Brooding, dark, passionate, brusque – just perfect, and she…

Laura brought herself up short. The breeze through the window picked up and she suddenly felt her blood run cold, as Mr Kowolczyk the glazier whistled quietly in the corner.

That’s it. You see? she said to herself. This is why you’re in so much trouble. Get a grip! Mrs de Winter was a complete idiot! She should have married some nice banker from Cheam and lived a nondescript life with him instead of falling head over heels in love with Max de Winter, driving around Monte Carlo, weeping hopelessly over people and fleeing burning buildings. There, right there, was a symbol of what she was doing wrong. She, Laura Foster, would not behave like that any more. She would emulate someone else instead. Mrs Danvers, in fact. The good old reliable housekeeper.

At this idea Laura felt her heart beat faster. Yes, Mrs Danvers. OK, she was a bit mad. In fact, you could call her a homicidal maniac with an obsession with a dead person, namely Rebecca, and an unpleasant penchant for appearing silently in doorways. And she was a pyromaniac. But – but, Laura thought, as this idea took root – at least she wasn’t a fool. She was neatly dressed, ran the house beautifully, moved silently, and was always in control of her emotions. It was so true, Laura couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it before. Mrs Danvers was the kind of person one would do best to follow (well, up to a certain point), not useless Mrs de Winter, who bleated and cried and kept saying things like, ‘Oh Max, what shall we do? Oh Max, I do love you so much! Oh Max, I have just fallen over as I have no spine to support me.’ No, Mrs Danvers knew keeping the house in order was best. Keeping yourself busy. Putting aside bad things. Having respect for one’s friends and family. OK, perhaps sometimes in a rather extreme way. But it was as good a place to start as any. As Laura ran through the list of broken fences she had to mend, she felt slightly sick, and then suddenly she realised what she had to do, whom she had to see. Not just because she ought to, because she actually wanted to.

Laura straightened herself up. She smoothed down her skirt and pursed her lips.

‘May I get you a drink, Mr Kowolczyk?’ she asked politely. ‘A cup of tea, maybe? Or can I offer you some coffee?’

She gave a thin smile, and raised one eyebrow, as Mrs Danvers would. Mr Kowolczyk looked at her, somewhat bemused.

‘What?’ he said.

Laura came to. ‘Er, sorry, sorry,’ she said, collecting herself hurriedly. ‘Just – er. Coffee? Tea?’

‘Yes, coffee please,’ said Mr Kowolczyk. ‘Three sugars. Look –’ he waved vaguely towards the window with his chisel, and smiled kindly at her. ‘Fresh air, yes? Nice to get fresh air into your room.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Laura darkly, nodding at him. ‘Fresh air. Oh yes.’ She paused in the doorway, and gave him another cold smile, before gliding (she hoped) smoothly down the corridor to the kitchen.

‘Thank you,’ Mr Kowolczyk called out.

Laura reappeared in the room. ‘Er, I’ve just realised I have to pop out in about five minutes,’ she said in her normal voice. ‘Will you be OK to finish up by yourself, and let yourself out?’

‘Of course,’ said Mr Kowolczyk. ‘Going somewhere nice?’

‘Yes,’ said Laura, standing in the doorway. She smiled at him. ‘I’m going to see my grandmother.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Mr Kowolczyk. ‘Good girl. She old lady? You see her a lot?’

‘She’s amazing,’ said Laura. ‘And, no, I haven’t seen her a lot. Not for a while. I think that might be part of the problem.’

‘What problem?’ said Mr Kowolczyk, but she had disappeared again.