onto her plate and assessing it for carcinogens. ‘Is Daniel not eating with us?’ said Holly.
‘No, he’s got a night shift at the hospital again, poor bastard,’ Bella said.
‘Ah, shame,’ Holly said, secretly thinking it might have been handy to have a member of the medical profession on standby, but then feeling guilty for being so mean and having done nothing to help prepare dinner. She watched Lawrence digest a whole mouthful before taking one of her own.
Olivia picked up a fork full of food, but then opened her mouth to carry on speaking: ‘But anyway, a friend of mine is just about to put his gorgeous flat in Dalston on the market, so if Ross can buy me out of our flat in Didsbury in time, I’ll be able to nab that and move straight in!’
Bella’s eyes widened. ‘Dalston? As in, East London?’
To Bella, East London was a hallowed kind of a place. Legend had it, it was where all the hot men in London were being kept. Bella had stumbled across it one day while navigating a Walk of Shame through an unknown neighbourhood somewhere North of Bethnal Green. Quite by accident, she’d found herself in a quaint little strip called Broadway Market. It was all fancy deli stalls, fit-as-fuck buskers, and dashing men with oversized spectacles on fixed-gear bikes. Ever since then, there was sometimes talk in hushed tones of ‘going East’, as if it was some kind of promised wonderland. Bella would bring up the notion of warehouse parties in Dalston once in a while, but the thought of venturing somewhere new always lost out to the easy walk home from the local.
‘Anyway, Liv,’ Holly said, feeling the need to change the subject, ‘if I can say so, you seem to be doing very well considering.’
‘You really are,’ Bella said, ‘I mean, if it was me, I’d be needing round-the-clock care to help me do basic things like getting dressed and swallowing solids.’
‘Yeah well, when you know, you know,’ Olivia said.
‘Any more, Liv?’ Holly said, holding out more food towards her.
‘Oh no, I’m stuffed,’ Olivia said, slotting her knife next to her fork and laying it to rest. Her plate looked as full now as it had at the start of the meal, only everything on it appeared to be in a slightly different position. ‘That was great though, thank you!’
Some hours later, they had retreated to the lounge. Lawrence was snoozing on the faded blue sofa in a post-gluttonous coma. Olivia sat perfectly upright next to him, staring at her phone, and Bella was picking at the yellow strips of foam that were leaking out of the sides of the sofa like oven chips. Over time, the hole had grown so large that these chips were now a regular feature of the lounge décor. Lawrence was forever coming into the kitchen after a big night out, picking them off the floor and going to eat them in his drunken stupor. Then, once Holly reminded him they had slightly less nutritional value than their real-life counterparts, he would drop them back onto the floor. But not before placing one of them on her shoulder and saying, ‘Look, you’ve got a chip on your shoulder.’ Every time.
‘We really should stitch up that hole. Can anyone sew?’ Holly said.
Naturally, Bella did not respond. Her filter for all things domestic was now so advanced, the vibrations of Holly’s speech were physically shielded from penetrating her eardrum and making the journey to the middle ear. Instead, she stood up, a puddle of chips at her feet, and began the preparations for a round of Analogue Netflix. This was a game Bella had devised some time ago, borne out of her reluctance to pay for what she called ‘special television’, and her belief that they should all learn to appreciate the one thousand films they already owned between them. In reality they spent far more time deciding what to watch than they did watching anything, so in many ways it was exactly like the real Netflix.
Bella stretched up towards the Jenga-like tower of DVDs and plucked some out at random, as Holly began laying them out on the coffee table. Bella started calling out titles.
‘OK, so what have we here… The Notebook.’
‘Nope. Boring, saccharine, predictable…’
‘It’s beautiful!’ Bella said, staring daggers at Olivia.
‘Pride and Prejudice?’
‘Too long. And too… period,’ Lawrence said, rubbing sleep dust from his eyes.
‘How about… The Curious Case of—’ Olivia began.
‘Benjamin Boring? The film that editing forgot?’ Holly said.
‘Love Actually.’
‘Um, get a life, actually,’ Holly said, and Lawrence nodded in agreement.
‘But it’s a wonderful film,’ Bella insisted. ‘So affirmative of the power of love as life’s great leveller—’
‘If I can just stop you there, Miss Bella. I’ve nothing against Richard Curtis per se,’ Lawrence began to pontificate, ‘I mean, let’s be honest, Blackadder was pure televisual perfection. But the trouble with Love Actually – nay, the whole Curtis canon – is that he’s clearly being paid by the people at Visit Britain to promote a wildly inaccurate view of London to the rest of the world. Take Notting Hill. There is no way the character William Thacker would be able to afford to live in such an attractive period property – with a gargantuan roof terrace – in the real Notting Hill. I mean, let’s be real here: HE WORKS IN AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOP!’
Lawrence was getting more irate than was probably necessary. Holly felt her stomach constrict, and looked round the room to see if anyone else had noticed him being a little too shouty.
‘But maybe house prices shot up after the film? Maybe Notting Hill used to be like Hackney?’ Bella posed, desperately still wanting to believe.
‘Hey, you know what would be fun?’ Holly began, her eyes on Lawrence. ‘We should make a tongue-in-cheek mash-up of all the Curtis films, where the characters live in properties which actually correspond to their income. So, let’s see… Will Thacker would live in an ex local authority one-bed in Kensal Rise, with a Juliet balcony at best.’
Lawrence laughed. ‘Yes! And we’d replace all the friendly cabbies and romantic Routemasters with those charmless new buses with grumpy drivers that refuse to stop for you.’
‘We’ll have it raining the whole time! And we’ll call it Stamford Hill!’
‘Perfect! And Love Actually could be – Dumped Actually,’ Lawrence said, smirking.
‘Or, Shat on from a Great Height, Actually!’ Holly added, and they both fell about laughing.
‘Yeah, yeah. Whatevs,’ Bella said. ‘So. Anyone for Four Weddings? Oldie but a goodie?’
Holly began to realise she and Lawrence were outnumbered. An hour and twenty minutes later, she was feeling her usual bout of nausea at the scene where Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell kiss in the rain, when she noticed Lawrence’s eyelids closing out of the corner of her eye, his wine glass hanging off his fingers at a precarious angle. In slow motion, she saw his fingers relax and the glass slip, sending Shiraz cascading to the floor. As everyone leapt up to try and stem the tide with a whole roll of extra-quilted kitchen roll, Holly reached a conclusion. It was time to take Lawrence to a place where other people were not.
Twenty
