turn over at his sheer perfectness. His dark blond hair, the boyish curling crop which curled over his collar. His tanned, strong face, wide cheekbones, blue eyes, lazy smile. He reminded her of a cowboy, a farmhand from the Wild West. He was so relaxed, so easy to be with, so easy to be happy with, and Laura glowed as she gazed up at him, simply exhilarated at the prospect of a whole evening in his company – a whole evening, where anything could happen. Suddenly she could barely remember whose wedding it was.
He was here. She was here with Dan, and he was hers for the rest of the evening, and for those hours only she could indulge herself with the secret fantasy that they were a couple who’d been going out for years. Perhaps they were married already. Perhaps Jo and Chris had been the only witnesses at their beach wedding in Barbados two years ago. Dan in a sarong – he would suit a sarong, unlike most men. Her in a silk sundress, raspberry pink, her dark blonde hair falling loose behind her back. Some spontaneous locals and other couples gathered at the seashore, crying with joy at how perfect, how in love they obviously were, totally pole-axed by the strength of emotion, the purity of their love. Laura and Dan, Dan and Laura. Perhaps…
‘Laura!’ a voice said sharply. ‘Listen!’
Laura realised she was being prodded in the ribs. The lovely bubble of daydream in her head burst, and she tore herself away from Dan, and looked around to see Paddy glaring at her.
‘I was talking to you!’ he said, affronted. ‘I asked you a question four times!’
‘I’ll see you later,’ Dan murmured, shifting away from her. ‘Come and find me, yeah?’ and he very lightly ran his hand over her bare arm, a tiny gesture, but Laura shuddered, looked up at him fleetingly, even more sure than ever, then turned back to Paddy. As Dan moved off, he raised his glass to her, and smiled a regretful smile. Laura screamed inwardly, and turned away from him towards Paddy.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘What was it?’
‘Is this fob watch too much?’ said Paddy, fingering the watch hanging from his waistcoat. ‘I think it is. I’m not sure, but perhaps it overloads the outfit. What do you think?’
‘Ladies ’n’ gennlemen,’ came a bored-sounding voice from the back of the room. ‘Please make your way back into the Ballroom. Mr and Mrs Johnson are about to perform their first dance. Ah-thann yew, verrimuch.’
Laura looked wildly around her, as if trying to prioritise the many tasks on her mind. She glared at Paddy, who was still obviously waiting for an answer.
‘Yes, it is,’ said Laura wildly. ‘Far too much. I totally agree. In fact, it’s hideous,’ she said crossly. ‘You’d better take it off and throw it away. I’m going to the loo – see you in a minute,’ she finished, and hurried away.
Dan, Dan, Dan. Dan Floyd. Even saying his name made her feel funny. She muttered it on her way to the loo, feeling sick with nerves, but totally exhilarated. Laura had got it bad. She knew it was bad, and she knew if any of her friends found out they’d tell her it was futile, she should get over it, but she couldn’t help it. It was meant to be. She was powerless in the face of it, much as she’d tried not to be. Dan Floyd, looking like a ranger or an extra from Oklahoma!, calm, funny, and so sexy she couldn’t imagine ever finding any other man remotely attractive. Laura wanted him, plain and simple.
She had constructed a whole imaginary life for them, based around (because of the Oklahoma! theme) a small house in the Wild West with a porch, a rocking chair – for Laura’s granny Mary – corn growing as high as an elephant’s eye in the fields, and a golden-pink sunset every night. Mary would drink gins on the porch and dispense wise advice, and would sit there looking elegant. Dan would farm, obviously, but he would also do the sports PR job thing that he did. Perhaps by computer. Laura would – well, she hadn’t thought that far. How could she do her job in the prairie? Perhaps there were some dyslexic farmhands who’d never learnt to read properly. Yes.
Her friend Hilary was in the loos when she got there, washing her hands. ‘Oi,’ she said. ‘Hi.’
Laura jumped. ‘Oh. Hi!’ she said brightly. ‘Hey. Great speech, wasn’t it?’
‘Not bad,’ said Hilary, who didn’t much like public displays of affection, verbal or physical. She ran her hands through her hair. ‘That idiot Jason’s there, did you see?’
‘Yeah,’ said Laura. ‘He’s quite nice, isn’t he?’
‘Well,’ said Hilary, in a flat tone. ‘He’s OK. If you like that kind of thing.’
‘He’s split up from Cath,’ Laura said encouragingly.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Hilary replied coolly. ‘Hm. I might go and find him.’
‘OK. See you later,’ said Laura, and shut the door of the cubicle. She rested her pounding head against the cool of the white tiles. She was stressing out, and she couldn’t help it. It was the first time she’d seen Dan since they’d kissed, so fair enough. But she didn’t know what to do. Dan had got to her. The worst bit of all was, she didn’t just fancy him something rotten. She really liked him, too.
She liked the way he was always first to buy a round, that the corners of his blue eyes crinkled when he laughed, the rangy, almost bowlegged way he walked, his strong hands. She liked the way he rolled his eyes with gentle amusement when Paddy said something particularly Paddy-ish. She liked him. She couldn’t help it, she did. And she knew he liked her, that was the funny thing. She just knew, in the way you know. She had also come to know, in the last couple of months, that there was something going on between her and Dan. She just didn’t know what it was. But somehow, she knew tonight was the night.
Dan was a friend of Chris’s from university. He’d moved about five minutes away from Laura about six months ago, round the corner from Jo and Chris towards Highbury – and she’d known of him vaguely since Jo and Chris had got together. In July, Dan had started a new job, and more often than not Laura found herself on the tube platform with him in the morning. The first couple of times it was mere coincidence. Now, at the end of summer, it was almost a routine. They would buy a coffee from the stall on the platform and sit together in the second-to-last carriage, deserted in the dusty dog days of August, and go down the Northern line together until they got to Bank. And they would read Metro together and chat, and it was all perfectly innocent.
‘Dan? Oh yeah, we’re tube buddies,’ Laura would say nonchalantly, her heart thumping in her chest.
‘They’re transport pals,’ Chris and Jo would joke at lunch on Sundays. ‘Like an old married couple on the seafront at Clacton.’
‘Ha, ha, ha,’ Laura would mutter, and then she would blush furiously, biting her lip and shaking her hair forward over her face, burying herself in a newspaper. Not that they ever noticed – it’s extraordinary what people don’t notice right under their noses.
But to Laura it was obvious, straightforward. From the first time she’d recognised him on the tube platform, that sunny July day, and he had smiled at her, his face genuinely lighting up with pleasure – ‘Laura!’ he’d said, warmth in his voice. ‘What a nice surprise. Come and sit next to me.’ Through the sun and rain of August, September and October she would run down the steps to the tube platform, hoping he’d be there, not knowing what was going on between them. They had built up a whole lexicon of information. Just little things that you tell the people you see each day. She knew when his watch was being mended, what big meeting he had that day; and he knew when Rachel, her boss, was being annoying, and asked how her grandmother had
