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‘Liv!’ she squealed into the intercom. ‘Hey love. Come on up.’
Some moments later, Olivia Mahoney appeared under the curved archway next to the kitchen. Unlike Holly and Lawrence, who had both emerged from the stairs looking like they’d just been traversing the Pennines, Olivia was barely out of breath.
‘Hello!’ she sang, with a smile that made everyone stop what they were doing. Olivia had always been disarmingly stylish, but today she appeared to have actually been curated by Dolce & Gabbana themselves – if her freshly straightened mahogany hair and immaculate shift dress that perfectly highlighted her curves – were anything to go by. In short, this was not the look of a recent refugee from Dumped Ville, Tennessee.
‘Holly! It’s been so long! Oh my days, you look so healthy!’ she said, going in for a hug.
‘Thanks,’ Holly smiled, wondering mid-hug whether to take this as a compliment, or some sort of backhanded suggestion of weight gain.
‘I’m so sorry to hear about you and Ross,’ Holly lamented as she squeezed her tight, ‘how are you coping?’
‘Oh! I’m fine, really,’ Olivia said, disentangling herself, ‘actually, I’m sort of loving all this free time I’ve got now. And it’s given me a great excuse to move back to London. Didsbury is lovely and all, but it can be a bit provincial.’
‘Liv,’ Holly said, ‘this is the lovely Bella, one of my flatmates. We met when we temped together at a bleak call-centre after uni.’
Bella took Liv’s hand and shuddered. ‘Oh God, don’t remind me! “Good afternoon, may I speak with the named home-owner?”’ she said in her best admin nasal. ‘“Are you entirely happy with your current broadband provider?” Aaaahh! Kill me now!’ she yelled, curtailing her skit at the sight of Olivia’s muddled expression.
Meanwhile Lawrence had wandered in. Apparently in some kind of hunger trance, he walked towards the fridge, opened it and leaned in to study the contents.
‘And this is Lawrence,’ Holly said, sounding apologetic. ‘We’ll be eating soon, Lawrence.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ Lawrence said, shutting the fridge and turning to face Olivia. ‘Sorry to hear about your break-up and all.’
‘Oh, thanks, but as I was just saying to Hol, I’m fine about it, really. We’d definitely reached the end of the line,’ she said, blinking while running through a word-perfect speech about all the benefits of being single – and how her newfound free time meant she could now take up all the things she’d secretly been craving. Just as she was immersed in the virtues of learning your way round the stock market, Bella inserted a glass of wine into her hands a little too forcefully.
‘So Liv, tell me to shut up if you’d rather not go there, but what happened?’ Holly said. ‘Last I remember, you and Ross were really happy?’
Olivia inspected her nails. Sensing a girl chat brewing, Lawrence grabbed his bag of tobacco and retreated to the terrace.
Olivia sighed. ‘All right. I’ll talk about it – for five minutes, max – then we’ll move on to something more interesting!’ She took a large sip of wine. ‘So, as you may recall, Ross is something of a computer boffin. Sorry, was,’ she added a beat later, remembering with a jolt he belonged to her past tense now.
‘Geeks can be hot though,’ Bella said, ‘what did he do for a living?’
Olivia smirked. ‘If you really want to know, he was a “Backend Developer”.’
Bella snorted. ‘That’s never a real job title.’
‘I’m afraid it is. I think it means he does coding for websites. But don’t quote me.’
A mobile phone on the table began to flash and vibrate, and Olivia’s skin tone turned a few pantones lighter.
‘Is it he?’ Bella asked, leaning forwards. She picked up the mobile and examined the flashing photo. Then she looked at Olivia and grinned. ‘Wait, that’s your Ross?’
Olivia nodded.
‘Well, he can backend develop me, anytime…’
‘Bella!’ screeched Holly, elbowing her in the ribs.
Olivia gave a knowing smile. ‘He’s all yours,’ she said, retrieving the phone and cancelling the call. She put it back into her bag and for a nanosecond looked wistful.
‘You’re not going to talk to him?’ Holly asked.
Olivia shook her head; her eyes belying more grief than she perhaps wanted them to. ‘No. When it’s over, it’s over,’ she said as the phone made a loud beep from within her bag. ‘Stick a fork in it, I say.’
‘You’re not even going to see what that is? He’s probably left a voicemail?’ Holly said.
‘Nah.’
No surprises there, Holly reasoned, remembering how at university they’d always joked that Olivia must have been having a cheeky manicure the day God was dishing out the batches of needy female hormones. Which went some way to explaining why the last time Holly had seen her, Olivia had declared herself in the midst of a ‘friendship audit’. Although Holly had been spared this time around, Olivia’s plan had been to prune away anyone peripheral, Facebook or otherwise, that she hadn’t seen in a year. One by one, she had called up each unsuspecting friend for a fond farewell, in the hope that streamlining her social life would have a Zenifying effect. Now that Olivia was newly single, Holly couldn’t help wondering whether she might be regretting the mass cull.
‘So you were telling us what happened?’ Bella said.
Olivia rolled her eyes like a child being told she had to eat her peas before any pudding. ‘All right then. Just quickly. So, as you know, he was a bit of a computer nerd – which was sexy in the beginning. You know, he had a proper geek-chic thing going on. But then he went freelance, set up his own company, and it all changed. He started working from home a lot more, sleeping in and working late. Then one day he just stopped getting dressed at all – he’d just sit around festering, in these rancid jogging bottoms. Until eventually, you couldn’t tell where the pyjamas ended and the tracksuits began.’
‘Wow, that’s so strange,’ Holly said. ‘He was Mr Charisma at uni.’
‘I know,’ Olivia’s eyes moistened as she threw back the rest of her glass of wine. Then like Olivia Twist, she held out the empty receptacle in front of Holly, who immediately filled it up.
‘I remember,’ chimed in Holly, ‘he was that guy in Fresher’s week. The one every girl wanted to… you know, and every guy wanted to be.’
‘But it’s easy to be nostalgic about Old Ross – before he killed his personality off with a lethal concoction of daytime TV and JavaScript.’
‘So what did you do? How did it end?’ Bella tipped her head to one side, her empathy palpable.
‘Fairly predictable stuff. Me saying I thought he’d let himself go, that I just didn’t love him anymore, and we’d grown apart, blah blah… Him saying, “Shit, Olivia, I’m sorry. I wish I could just press Control Z.”’
‘No way,’ Holly said, while Bella’s brow furrowed.
‘That’s Apple Z, for the benefit of Mac Monks. As in, to undo?’ she added, and Bella’s brow un-furrowed. ‘Yes. So then I said, “Ross. I think we both know, it’s a case of Control Alt Delete now.”’
‘Well,’ Holly began, ‘it sounds like you’ve done the right thing. It must feel like such a massive shock to your system though, after seven years.’
‘It’s been brewing for a long time – it’s a relief to have finally done it.’
‘So where are you going to live now?’ Holly asked. ‘Do you want to come and stay with us?’
‘Oh thanks, but I’m staying with my parents in Hampstead for a bit; just while I get myself sorted with a new job down here. But chances are, I’ll only be allowed a week in the show home before I’ll have to be out again!’ Olivia smiled, then covered her ears as the incredibly loud smoke alarm began to go off.
Bella leapt up. ‘That’s dinner!’ She poked her head in the oven. At the sight of smoke she began turning off all the knobs and dials. Holly began prodding at the smoke alarm with a broom to make it stop. This was all done with complete composure, as though it was an everyday ritual.
‘So, everyone, dinner’s kind of a buffet type thing. Just pile on,’ Bella said, as she handed out partially-chipped plates to everyone.
‘Looks amazing, thanks,’ Holly said, spooning some of the blackened food 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 minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom and smiled. Once again Lawrence lay on top of her bed, eyes closed, with all his clothes on. His muddy Adidas trainers hung off the edge of the bed. A trickle of drool was slowly wandering from his lips and onto her freshly laundered pillowcase.
‘Lawry…’ she said, peeling off her clothes and hopping into bed beside him. She kissed him on the back of his neck, noticing that, as ever, he smelled very strongly of unwashed hair. She told herself this was sexy and manly, and not that Lawrence was a disciple of the ‘your hair starts to clean itself after a while’ gospel of hair care.
She began unlacing his shoes, rolling down his jeans and unbuttoning his shirt.
‘Hey, I’m fine,’ he said, as though bidding his manservant off duty.
‘Oi,’ she said, resorting to prodding.
After a few more inaudible grunts that sounded like ‘No… sleeping…’, he turned his back to face the wall and resumed snoring. Following a couple more failed attempts at erotic coercion via the means of spooning and shiatsu, Holly gave up and turned around so they could do that less talked about but equally popular sexual position – the back-to-back ‘we’re in a strop’ position, where they remained for some time. Occasionally, their bare bottoms made contact, but they quickly moved apart on impact as though electrically repelled.
An hour later, she felt someone kissing the back of her neck.
‘Hey. I miss you.’
‘I’m right next to you,’ she said, but she knew what he meant.
She felt his arms tighten around her. She turned to face him and they shared a slow, sleepy kiss.
‘Meet me somewhere?’ he said when they stopped. ‘Old Havana?’ His eyes closed again, his last words dispatched.
Holding his head to her chest, she closed her eyes and thought of vintage motor cars, cigars and salsa dancers and everything else they knew about the city they planned to visit together. She attempted to teleport herself there, to join him in his sleep-world. This wasn’t a low-budget version of Inception; it was a game they’d invented when they first got together. It had been one of those nights where they’d laid together talking and cuddling all night, amazed at having found each other and wondering how other couples ever got any sleep. This had been their way to make parting for sleep just that bit easier: to pretend they would meet in their dreams.
Sometimes it didn’t work so well. Tonight in particular, there was heavy congestion on the teleporting highway. Five hours later, Holly was staring vacantly at the ceiling, listening to the busy traffic noises of Holloway, not Havana. She closed her eyes as she heard the recycling van belting out its one-hit wonder, ‘Stand Clear. Vehicle reversing’. Sometimes the traffic was so unfeasibly loud that she had to check her mattress wasn’t actually in the middle of the road.
After a while, she became aware of how spectacularly un-tired she was, and lay watching Lawrence snoring blissfully away. Attempting to locate some inner yogic calm, she tuned in to the rise and fall of her boyfriend’s snores. Loud to soft. Heavy breathing to quiet breathing, then back to blissful silence. Another chorus of heavy breathing, a guttural snort, then back to more quiet breathing. Holly listened to this on a loop for hours, wondering when she’d first become an insomniac. Gradually, the room stopped being so dark, and Lawrence’s snoring solo found some backing singers in the baby blackbirds outside her window.
Two hours later, she switched off her alarm and wanted to weep at the time. She stared down at Lawrence sleeping and whispered, ‘Lawry, I’ve got to go. See you later.’
A freckly and toned forearm emerged from under the covers, attempting to pull her back into the warm, feathery world under the duvet. Half asleep, he planted kisses on her cheeks, moving down to her neck.
‘Hey, I’ve got to go to work,’ she said as he drew her further inside and pulled the duvet high above their heads. He tucked it round them, so they were hidden from the world, in their own dimly lit universe. And then she remembered. When things were good with Lawrence, there was nowhere she’d rather be than under the duvet with him. Hiding from responsibility, from pretending to be a grown-up.
‘Stay.’
