One Day in December Read online

  God, I need another drink. The search for bus boy is three months old. I better find him soon or I’m going to wind up in rehab.

  * * *

  Later, back at Delancey Street, we kick off our shoes and flop.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Sarah says, crashed out on the other end of the sofa from me. “There’s this new guy at work, I think you might like him.”

  “I only want bus boy,” I sigh, costume-drama melodramatic.

  “But what if you find him and he’s a twat?” she says. Our experience in the bar earlier obviously hit home for her too.

  “You think I should stop looking?” I ask, lifting my heavy head off the arm of the sofa to stare at her. She flings her arms wide and leaves them there.

  “Just saying you need a contingency plan.”

  “In case he’s a twat?”

  She raises her thumbs, probably because it’s too much effort to raise her head.

  “He could be an A-class, top-drawer super-knob,” she says. “Or he could have a girlfriend. Or Christ, Lu, he could even be married.”

  I gasp. Actually gasp. “No way!” I splutter. “He’s single, and he’s gorgeous, and he’s somewhere out there waiting for me to find him.” I feel it with all the conviction of a drunk woman. “Or maybe he’s even looking for me.”

  Sarah props herself up on her elbows and stares at me, her long red waves the worse for wear and her mascara end-of-the-night smudged.

  “I’m just saying that we, you, might have unrealistic expectations, and you, we, need to proceed with more caution, that’s all.”

  I know she’s right. My heart almost stopped beating in the bar earlier.

  We look at each other, and then she pats my leg. “We’ll find him,” she says. It’s such a simple gesture of solidarity, but in my boozy state it brings a lump to my throat.

  “Promise?”

  She nods and draws a cross over her heart, and a great snotty sob leaves my throat, because I’m tired and pissed and because sometimes I can’t quite bring bus boy’s face to mind and I’m scared I’ll forget what he looks like.

  Sarah sits up and dries my tears with the sleeve of her shirt.

  “Don’t cry, Lu,” she whispers. “We’ll keep looking until we find him.”

  I nod, dropping back to gaze at the Artex ceiling that our landlord has been promising to repaint ever since we moved in here several years ago. “We will. And he’ll be perfect.”

  She falls silent, and then waves her pointed finger vaguely over her own head. “He better be. Or else I’ll carve ‘twat,’ right here in his forehead.”

  I nod. Her loyalty is appreciated and reciprocated. “With a rusty scalpel,” I say, embroidering the grisly image.

  “And it’ll get infected and his head will drop off,” she mumbles.

  I close my eyes, laughing under my breath. Until I find bus boy, the lion’s share of my affection belongs to Sarah.

  OCTOBER 24

  Laurie

  “I think we’ve nailed it,” Sarah says, standing back to admire our handiwork. We’ve spent the entire weekend redecorating the tiny living room of our flat; we’re both covered in paint splatters and dust. We’re pretty close to done now and I’m feeling a warm glow of satisfaction—I only wish my crappy job at the hotel would make me feel even half as accomplished.

  “I hope the landlord likes it,” I say. We aren’t really allowed to make any material changes, but I don’t see how he can object to our improvements.

  “He should be paying us for this,” Sarah says, her hands on her hips. She’s wearing cut-off dungarees over a Day-Glo pink vest that clashes violently with her hair. “We’ve just increased the value of his flat. Who wouldn’t love these boards more than that threadbare old carpet?”

  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 neighbor’s trash can; it’s been there half full of junk forever, 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 shoestring 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 splotch 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 quit 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.”

  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, somber. “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 forever and have cats with you instead,” I say. “We’ll start a rescue center, 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.

  DECEMBER 18

  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 wineglasses as she can find from the back of the kitchen cupboard in our tiny shared flat.

  I cast around for an answer and, to be honest, it’s slim pickings. “The guy from the bottom flat moved his bike out of the way to let me through the front door this morning. Does he count?”

  “You mean the same one who opens our mail and leaves trails of cold kebab on the hall floor every weekend?”

  I laugh under my breath as I immerse the wineglasses in hot foamy water. We’re throwing our annual Christmas party tonight, which we’ve held every year since we first moved into Delancey Street. Though we’re kidding ourselves that this one will be much more sophisticated now we’ve left university, it’s mostly going to involve students and a few colleagues we’re still getting to know descending on our flat to drink cheap wine, debating things we don’t really understand and—for me it would seem—hitting it off with someone called David who Sarah has decided is my perfect man. We’ve been here before. My best friend fancies herself as a matchmaker and set me up a couple of times when we were at university. The first time, Mark, or it might have been Mike, turned up in running shorts in the depths of winter and spent the entire dinner trying to steer my food choices away from anything that would take more than an hour to work off in the gym. I’m a pudding girl; the main thing off the menu as far as I was concerned was Mike. Or Mark. Whichever. In Sarah’s defense, he bore a passing resemblance to Brad Pitt, if you squinted and looked at him out of the corner of your eye in a dark room. Which I have to admit I did; I’m not normally one to sleep with guys on a first date, but I felt I had to give it a go for Sarah’s sake.

  Her second choice, Fraser, was only slightly better; I can at least remember his name. He was far and away the most Scottish Scotsman I’ve ever met, so much so that I only understood about fifty percent of what he said. I don’t think he mentioned bagpipes specifically, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was packing a set underneath his jacket. His tartan bow tie was disconcerting, but none of that would have mattered. His real downfall came at the end of the date; he escorted me home to Delancey Street and then kissed me in the style of someone trying to administer CPR. CPR with an entirely inappropriate amount of saliva. I made a dash for the bathroom as soon as I got inside, and my reflection confirmed that I looked as if I’d been kissed by a Great Dane. In the rain.

  Not that I’ve got an impressive track record at choosing boyfriends for myself, either. With the exception of Lewis, my longtime boyfriend back at home, I seem to somehow keep missing the mark. Three dates, four dates, sometimes even five before the inevitable fizzle. I’m starting to wonder if being best friends with someone as dazzling as Sarah is a double-edged sword; she gives men unrealistic expectations about women. If I didn’t love her to pieces, I’d probably want to poke her eyes out.

  Anyway, call me stupid, but I knew none of those men were right. I’m a girl given to romance; Nora Ephron is my go-to answer for fantasy dinner party guest and I yearn to know if nice boys really do fucking kiss like that. You get the idea. I’m hoping that among all these frogs will one day come a prince. Or something like that.

  Who knows what David is going to be like; perhaps third time’s a charm. I’m not going to hold my breath. Maybe he’ll be the love of my life or maybe he’ll be hideous, but either way I’m undeniably intrigued and more than up for letting my hair down. It’s not something I’ve done very often over the course of the last year; we’ve both had the upheaval of moving out of the cushioned world of college into the reality of work, more successfully in Sarah’s case than mine. She practically walked into a junior position with a regional TV network, whereas I’m still working at the reception desk at the hotel. Yes, despite my New Year’s resolution I am decidedly not working in my dream job yet. But it was that or go home to Birmingham, and I fear that if I leave London I’ll never get back again. It was always going to come more easily for Sarah; she’s the gregarious one and I’m slightly shy, which means interviews don’t tend to go so well.

  None of that tonight, though. I’m determined to get so drunk that shyness is a complete impossibility. After all, we’ll have the buffer of New Year to forget our ill-advised, alcohol-fueled behavior. I mean, come on, that happened last year for God’s sake. Move on already!

  It’s also the night that I finally get to meet Sarah’s new boyfriend. She’s known him for several weeks already, but for one reason or another I’ve yet to lay eyes on him in the apparently incredibly hot flesh. I’ve heard enough about him to write a book, though. Unfortunately for him, I already know he’s a sex god in bed and that Sarah fully expects to have his children and be his wife once he’s the high-flying media celeb he’s clearly on track to becoming. I almost feel sorry for him having his future mapped out for the next ten years at the age of twenty-four. But hey, this is Sarah. However cool he is, he’s still the lucky one.

  She can’t stop talking about him. She’s doing it again now, telling me far more about their rampant sex life than I’d ideally like to know.

  I scatter bubbles in the air like a child waving a wand as I hold my soapy fingers up to halt her flow. “Okay, okay, please stop. I’ll try not to orgasm on sight when I finally clap eyes on your future husband.”

  “Don’t say that to him, though, will you?” She grins. “The future husband thing? Because he doesn’t know that bit yet and, you know, it might, like, shock him.”

  “You reckon?” I deadpan.

  “Far better if he thinks it’s all his own brilliant idea in a few years’ time.” She dusts off the knees of her jeans as she stands up.

  I nod. If I know Sarah, which I do, she’ll have him wrapped around her little finger and more than ready to spontaneously propose whenever she decides the time is right. You know those people that everyone gravitates toward? Those rare effervescent birds who radiate this aura that draws people into their orbit? Sarah’s that person.

  I first met her right here, the first year of college. I’d decided to go for one of the university rentals rather than halls and I’d picked this place. It’s a tall old townhouse split into three: two bigger flats downstairs and our attic perched on the top like a jaunty afterthought. I was utterly charmed when I first viewed it, my rose-tinted glasses jammed all the way on. You know that shabby-chic little flat Bridget Jones lives in? It reminded me of that, only more shabby and less chic, and I was going to have to share it with a total stranger to meet the rent. None of those drawbacks stopped me from signing on the dotted line; one stranger was easier to contemplate than a crowded, noisy hall full of them. I still remember carting all of my stuff up three flights of stairs on moving-in day, all the time hoping that my new flatmate wasn’t going to crush my Bridget Jones fantasy dead.

  She’d tacked a wel
come note to the door, big, loopy red handwriting scrawled across the back of a used envelope:

  Dear new housemate,

  Have gone to buy cheap fizzy piss to celebrate our new home. Take the bigger room if you like, I prefer being in stumbling distance of the john anyway!

  S x

  And that was it. She had me in the palm of her hand before I’d even laid eyes on her. She’s different from me in lots of ways, but we share exactly enough middle ground to get on like a house on fire. She’s in-your-face gorgeous with waves of fire-engine-red hair that almost reach her ass, and her figure is amazing, though she doesn’t care how she looks.

  Normally someone like her would make me feel like the ugly sister, but Sarah has this way of making you feel good about yourself. The first thing she said to me when she got back from the corner shop that day was, “Fucking hell! You’re a dead ringer for Elizabeth Taylor. We’re going to have to get a deadlock on the door or else we’re gonna cause a riot.”

  She was exaggerating, of course. I don’t look very much like Elizabeth Taylor. I have my French maternal grandmother to thank for my dark hair and blue eyes; she was quite a celebrated ballerina in her twenties; we have the prized programs and grainy press cuttings to prove it. But I’ve always thought of myself as more of a failed Parisian; I have inherited my grandmother’s form but not her grace, and her neat brunette chignon has become a permanently electrocuted mass of curls in my hands. Besides, there’s no way I’d ever have the discipline for dancing; I’m far too fond of an extra chocolate biscuit. I’m going to be a goner when my metabolism catches up with me.

  Sarah jokingly refers to us as the prozzie and the princess. In truth, she’s not got an ounce of slut in her and I’m nowhere near ladylike enough for a princess. Like I said, we meet in the middle and we make each other laugh. She’s Thelma to my Louise, hence the reason I’m disconcerted that she’s suddenly fallen hook, line, and sinker for a guy I haven’t even met or vetted for suitability.