A Hopeless Romantic (11 page)

Yes, the last time she’d fall like that. Absolutely the last time. A clean slate. A smooth, glowy 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 gray-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.

The sun was growing brighter. Laura swallowed, tasting a bitter, moldy 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 probably would have lain back down and closed her eyes again when, thank God, fate intervened.

Laura didn’t know which happened first, the sight of it or the sound, but as she was sliding back down under the duvet, there was a sickening
thump
and the window flew into a million pieces, hitting the curtains, and a pigeon hurtled in and landed on the bed at Laura’s feet. Dead. Or dying.

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

“Stop!” shouted Laura. “Don’t come any farther! There’s glass on the floor—STOP!!!”

Yorky 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 the 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!”

Yorky 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 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. “I don’t wear them in summer. They’re too hot.”

“Oh, good grief,” said Yorky. “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 Yorky, and he trotted lightly down the corridor, returning with a pair of Wellington boots that he used for fishing trips (last year’s Yorky 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, Yorky—urgh. Don’t throw them at the pigeon. Urgh!”

Yorky had prided himself on his spin bowling at school, and indeed was reckoned to be rather good at it. He tossed each wellie 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 leaped across the mound of it at the bottom, and landed next to Yorky by the door.

“Er…” she said, not knowing how to ask. “Yorky…?”

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

“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 Yorky as he pulled the bedroom door firmly shut behind them.

“Oh, you bet.”

It was Yorky’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 (Yorky), 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 the bed 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 under it again, she knew.

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 down her long black linen skirt and then clasping her hands lightly in front of her. Her hair was clean and soft, tied up in a neat ponytail that 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 Yorky.
The Godfather
and
This Is 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 his or her own personal tastes to the bedroom. So Yorky’s room had all his weird sci-fi and fantasy novels, his
Buffy
and
Angel
boxed sets, while Laura kept all her Georgette Heyer novels 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 realized 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 anymore. 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 favorite 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 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 anymore. 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. Okay, she was a bit mad. In fact, you could call her a homicidal maniac with an obsession for a dead person, namely Rebecca, and an unpleasant penchant for appearing silently in doorways. And pyromania. 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. 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. Okay, 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 realized what she had to do, whom she had to see. Not just because she ought to, but because she actually wanted to.

chapter ten

S
o, just before lunchtime, Laura rang the doorbell of Mary’s flat.

“It’s me,” she said nervously, when the well-known, rather imperious voice of her grandmother said, “Yes?” over the intercom. “Your long-lost granddaughter, come to reintroduce herself to you.”

“Goodness gracious,” said Mary. “This is a surprise. Come up, darling, come up.”

Laura had walked a lot of the way, enjoying being outside amongst the normal people and not in her head. But now she was tired, her early enthusiasm waning, and she felt naked and exposed, being out in the normal world again. She kind of wanted to go back to bed, but stiffened her sinews and climbed the stairs to the third floor. There in the doorway, a gin and tonic in her hand and a smile on her face, was her grandmother.

Mary Fielding was still as beautiful at eighty-four as she had been thirty years before. She carried her age with an elegance that owed nothing to expensive clothes or fine airs. She could tap-dance, she could sew, she adored Elvis and Clint Eastwood films, and she spoke five languages. She was the best grandmother, all in all, and as Laura saw her standing there, she knew she’d been right to come.

“It’s been far too long,” she said as Laura came toward her. “You’re practically a stranger, darling.” She saw Laura’s face. “Good grief. What’s happened?”

“Everything,” mumbled Laura, wiping her nose inelegantly on her hand. “I’m sorry I’ve been so crap, Gran. I haven’t seen you for ages.”

“No,” said Mary, “but you’re here now. Let’s get you a drink. Come inside and tell me all about it.”

Laura sat on the gray velvet sofa, a drink in her hand, not knowing how to start or what to say next. She was feeling infinitely calmer now she was inside Mary’s tidy, crowded flat, crammed with mementos of her old life with Xan. She looked around the room, thinking briefly how much it reminded her of all of her life, more in a way than her parents’ house in Harrow, where she’d grown up. The photos on the wall; the drawings that each of them had done as children in a clip frame above Mary’s writing desk; the tusks and knickknacks; Xan’s pipe in the corner of the room—legacies of a life spent together, crammed into this flat for one person.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been by for ages,” she said awkwardly, breaking the silence.

“Me too,” said Mary. “Well, you’re here now, darling.”

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“Of course I do, if you want to tell me,” Mary said, lowering herself into the chair next to the sofa. She looked across at her granddaughter.

Laura clutched the wide base of her tumbler, feeling the ice cool her hand. She looked out the window at the identical apartment building opposite, down toward where she had just been walking. Through the open window, the sun was shining and the purr of early-afternoon traffic sounded in the distance. From the balcony upstairs, she could hear the sound of laughter.

“Jasper and his boyfriend—they’ve just got back from Skye,” Mary explained. Her upstairs neighbor, Jasper Davidson, was a painter.

“Right,” said Laura, even then amused by the comings and goings of the inhabitants of Crecy Court. Mary took another sip of her drink, and looked expectantly at her granddaughter. Laura shifted in her chair.

“Okay. Shoot,” said Mary, who had a fondness for the early oeuvre of Clint Eastwood.

“Well—I’ve messed everything up,” Laura said calmly. “And I don’t know what to do.”

Mary leaned forward in her chair, her earrings glinting in the sunlight. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that,” she said. “Now, my love, suppose you tell me about it, and we’ll see what we can do.”

“It is bad,” said Laura. “The worst.”

“Well, you’re still alive. I’m still alive. I got a postcard from Simon in some small village in Peru today, so clearly he is still alive, and when I spoke to your mother an hour ago, she and your father were still alive, so that’s not true, is it, darling? Come on,” she said, crossing her capri-pant-clad legs. “I’ll just sit here, and you tell me in your own time, how about that?”

So Laura told her, absolutely everything, safe in the knowledge that her grandmother wouldn’t judge her or frown or be shocked. As she finished, culminating in the dinner at the Newman Pie Room, the retreat to the bedroom, and the pigeon, there were tears running down her cheeks again.

“I’m sorry,” Laura said, trying to breathe properly. “I just…God.”

Mary smiled at her granddaughter. She put her smooth hand under Laura’s chin and wiped away a tear with her thumb.

“My darling girl,” she said. “Stop crying. Stop it. From what you tell me, I imagine you have had the luckiest of escapes. Now, dry your eyes, and sit still, and I’ll get you another drink. It’s over now, don’t you see? Isn’t that wonderful?”