A Hopeless Romantic Read Free Page B

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. By 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 till 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 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 recognized him on the Tube platform that sunny summer 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 September and October, her running down the steps to the Tube platform, not knowing what was going on, knowing it was completely strange but not wanting to know any more. 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 been the previous day. Out of these little things, woven over and under each other, grew a web of knowledge, of intimacy, and one day Laura had woken up and known, with a clarity that was shocking, that this was not just another one of her crushes, or another failed relationship that she couldn’t understand. She and Dan had something. And she was in love with him.
    Oh, the level of denial about the whole thing was extraordinary, because you could explain it away in a heartbeat if you had to: “We go to work together, because we live round the corner from each other. It’s great—nice start to the day, you know.” Whereas the truth was a little more complicated. The truth was that both of them had started getting to the station earlier and earlier, so they could sit on the bench together with their coffees and chat for ten minutes before they got on the Tube. And that was weird. Laura knew that. Yes, she was in denial about the whole thing. She knew that, too. It had got to the stage when something had to give—and she couldn’t wait.
     
    Laura collected herself, breathed deeply, smoothed the material of her dress down, and came out of the loo to put on more lip gloss. She realized as she looked in the mirror that she was already wearing enough lip gloss to cause an oil slick—it was a nervous reflex of hers, to apply more and more when in doubt. She blotted some on the back of her hand, and strolled out the door nonchalantly, looking for Yorky, or Hilary, someone to chat to. It was strange, wasn’t it, she mused, that at her best friend’s wedding, knowing virtually everyone in the room, she could feel so exposed, so alone. That on such a happy day, she could feel so sad. She shook her head, feeling silly. Look over there, she told herself, as Jo and Chris walked through the tables of the big ballroom, hand in hand, smiling at each other, at their friends and family. It was lovely. It was a privilege to see. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hilary pinning Jason against a wall, yelling at him about something, her long, elegant hands waving in the air. Jason looked scared, but transfixed. Another man scared into snogging Hil, she thought. Well done, girl.
    Someone handed her a