‘Thanks a lot.
I…well.’
A watery ray of pale sunshine was shining weakly in through the window. Laura turned and left, her head bowed in thought.
‘I’ve cancelled lunch,’ she announced as she came back into her room.
Dan sat up in bed and spread his arms wide. ‘Great, great news, my gorgeous darling girl,’ he said. His hands slid inside her ratty old dressing gown, slipped open the tie, and he pulled her towards him. Laura laughed.
‘Let me put the pot down,’ she said, as he started kissing her. She crouched down, put the paper and the teapot on the floor, stood up again, and said, as Dan flung the duvet to one side, ‘So, what do you want to do today?’
‘You,’ Dan said, jumping on her with the kind of alacrity usually reserved for sailors on shore-leave. ‘God, I could be with you all day, you are so fucking gorgeous. Mm.’
‘No,’ Laura said, laughing, as he pulled off her dressing gown. ‘I mean later. I’ve cancelled lunch. We could go out, you know. Maybe…er, Kenwood House for…er, hot chocolate.’
Dan didn’t answer, but carried on doing what he was doing. Laura sighed, and pushed him away. ‘Dan, listen.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Dan said. ‘Hot chocolate.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean we go out to get hot chocolate, at Kenwood.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Dan asked, looking down at her. ‘Why do you want to go and get hot chocolate at Kenwood? Is there a festival there or something?’
‘No,’ Laura explained. ‘I mean – what shall we do today, then? We should do something. Go out, you know, make the most of it. The sun’s just come out.’
Dan cupped her breast in his hand and bent over to kiss her again. ‘I can’t, darling,’ he said. ‘We can’t. Someone might see us. Imagine if they did.’ He looked up, his expression anguished. ‘I’m sorry. This is crap.’
‘But,’ Laura said, trying to be patient, ‘who are we going to bump into amongst the yew trees at Kenwood?’
‘The what?’ Dan asked. Laura watched him intently. ‘No, we just can’t. We should…we have to stay here. Not for much longer, I promise. But things might be tricky for the next couple of months.’
‘Why?’ said Laura, not understanding, and reluctantly waving goodbye to her winter wonderland dream of laughing and joking in a Missoni print cape as she and Dan carelessly drank hot chocolate and held hands amidst the frosty trees.
‘I mean,’ said Dan, ‘if I’m going to split up with Amy, you and I won’t be able to see each other whilst it’s going on. I mean on our own, not the usual in the pub with everyone else there. Right?’
‘Oh right,’ said Laura, not daring to hope he was saying what he was saying. ‘So…’
‘So,’ said Dan, bending over her nipple and kissing it gently, ‘this might be the last time we get to do this for a long time. So – we should – make the most of it…’
‘Yes,’ gasped Laura suddenly, understanding him, and pulling him down. ‘Yes…I see…’
As Dan moved down her body, Laura closed her eyes, and the last thing she saw was the crumpled cover of the Guardian’s travel section. ‘Road Trip: Florida’s Hidden Treasures’, the front page declaimed. A road trip, she thought, and abandoned herself to something more immediate.
Laura worked for an inner-city London council, as a schools and business co-ordinator. She loved her job, contacting local businesses, trying to get them to support their nearby schools, arranging volunteer reading programmes or school sponsorships – where companies or individuals could sponsor a school, donate money, and feel good about themselves. She loved it because she could see how it made a tangible difference, how much disillusioned company secretaries enjoyed reading with a six-year-old once a week, or how much it benefited a school to have a thousand pounds for new computers that some corporation or anonymous donor could easily spare. She had been there for nearly four years now, and the previous year had been put in charge of their new fundraising scheme, and the reading volunteer programme, which meant a lot more work, but she loved it. At least, she used to love it. Like everything these days, it seemed to have lost a little of its allure.
If Laura had stepped back from her situation, chances are she would have seen that she was behaving badly. The trouble was, her lack of perspective meant she couldn’t see the main reason why she was in thrall to Dan: he made her feel gorgeous. He made her feel devastatingly attractive, that she was so powerful to him he had to have her, he couldn’t control it. It made her feel just marvellous, and a little bit dirty too. It was dangerous, because Dan was like all the others, in that Laura had fallen for him hook, line and sinker, without really stopping to think about it. Only this time it was harder and deeper than ever before – and with no control over the situation she’d got herself in, and no endgame in sight. Having always thought of herself in the bottom half of the class in terms of looks, attractiveness and intelligence – not to mention sporting prowess – Laura couldn’t quite believe the effect she had on Dan.
Laura knew she wasn’t working as hard as she should; she knew her boss Rachel was on her case about things. She knew she hadn’t been a good friend, or daughter, or sister, since Dan came along. She forgot birthdays, she was late for work, her mind wandered. But she consoled herself with the knowledge this was a temporary situation, and in a few short months – by the summer – they would have sorted it out and could be together. And then she would make everything all right.
Dan just needed a push, that was all. Just a little something to let him know she wasn’t going to wait around forever, that she had deadlines of her own, too. She had another life apart from him and she was neglecting it, he had to see that.
The following Wednesday afternoon, Laura was in the office when the phone rang. It was pelting with rain, which rattled on the windows of the shabby, draughty Victorian building in Holborn. It was an old school, and hadn’t been redecorated since the pupils had been moved into the big glass comprehensive south of the river, close to London Bridge, in 1972. In summer Laura would wander up to Lamb’s Conduit Street and around the Inns of Court. On days like today she and her four other colleagues stayed inside, reheated soup in the ancient, sticky microwave and huddled around the fan heater which guzzled electricity and dispensed minimal heat.
Laura looked up wearily from her emails and glanced suspiciously at the caller display panel. A teacher from St Catherine’s primary school nearby had said she would be calling to discuss a problem with the latest batch of teaching volunteers, who’d just started at the school once a week, helping individual children with their reading. This was a pretty big firm of financial advisers called Linley Munroe, and it was something of a coup to have them onboard – perhaps they might be induced to get involved in other ways. Laura didn’t particularly like Mrs McGregor, though she could see how devoted she was to the school and the children. She knew from experience that Mrs McGregor was the kind of person who had her own world view and couldn’t be persuaded that anyone else’s was admissible. In her own way, she was pretty hard-line, especially since her arrest during the demo she’d organised the previous spring at the NUT conference. This had renewed her zeal in a way that made her even harder to deal with, and Laura knew why she was ringing – she made the same complaint, along different lines, every year. Laura picked up the phone with a heavy heart.
‘Hello?’ she said tentatively.
‘Laura? Laura Foster?’ came a slightly husky voice down the phone.
‘Yes,’ said Laura, resigned.
‘Oh Laura, I really must talk to you. I’m afraid this is a very bad situation, very bad indeed. Something’s