A Hopeless Romantic by Harriet Evans

went over to the intercom. “Hello?”
    “Did you get my text?” said the voice. “Is Yorky there? Can I come up?”
    “Dan?” Laura said shakily.
    “Yes, it’s Dan,” the voice said, amused. “Who else sends you text messages saying they want to come over and give you a good seeing-to? Am I one in a long line, should I join a queue?”
    “Aaagh,” said Laura. “I was just confused, I was about to call someone and I was just—oh, come up, sorry, I’m just being thick.”
    “Are you sure?” Dan lowered his voice. “I can’t stay long. I just wanted to see you.”
    Laura’s legs wobbled a bit and she smiled into the intercom. And then, out of nowhere, she found herself saying, “I’d love you to come up. But not if you can’t stay. Oh, Dan, I’m sorry.”
    “What?” said Dan.
    “I mean, you’re not just coming up for a quick fuck and then scooting off again. Not that that wouldn’t be nice. It would…” Laura wavered, then checked herself. “Hm. I want you, too, but no, that’s not going to happen. I’m really sorry. Night, darling.”
    “Okay,” said Dan. He paused. “I’m sorry,” he went on. “You’re right. Shit, oh well. I deserve it. Soon, soon, you know? Can you do me a favor?”
    “Depends,” Laura said cautiously, dreading him asking her to come outside and do it on the porch.
    “Can you look out the window and wave, just so I can see you tonight? Right, I’m off then. Bye, my darling. I wish…”
    “Bye, Dan,” Laura said softly. “I love you.”
    The intercom went dead as she stuffed her fist into her mouth. I love you? Why? Why had she said that? Damn. She ran over to the window and gazed out over the quiet surburban North London street. The rain had stopped and the night was clear, and on the street below she could see a tall figure staring up at her. She opened the window and looked down, and there he was, his gorgeous face turned up toward her.
    “I love you, too,” he shouted, and his voice echoed in the silence of the street. “I love you.”
    Laura stood there, her eyes filled with tears. And then she blew him a kiss and shut the window.

chapter five
    I n May, Amy, who had been very much in the background, suddenly came out fighting. She started making plans for her thirtieth birthday in September. She let it be known that she wanted to hire a villa in Spain for two weeks, she and Dan, and have various friends fly out at different times, all gathering together on the middle Saturday for a huge party in the garden of the villa, which Dan was going to organize. She was back in the game. She even made an appearance at the pub.
    Laura hadn’t seen Amy for about six months. She had become, in Laura’s mind, this vast, beauteous Amazonian woman, with tiny stick-thin wrists and a huge expensive handbag and matching shoes. She was dazzlingly beautiful, terrifyingly confident, and she knew something was up with Laura and Dan. In Laura’s nightmares, Amy walked up to Laura and dragged her by the hair out of the pub, pulled all her hair out, then kicked her into the road.
    The trouble was, in these nightmares, Laura kind of sided with Amy, not with herself. If she’d heard just the facts without knowing the details of it, she’d side with Amy, too. But, she kept telling herself, just a little longer, and then it’d be over. And when she and Dan had been together for twenty-five years and were as happy as ever, no one would remember the slightly murky beginnings of their relationship. It would be lost in the mists of time, and Amy would be off married to a billionaire banker—it wasn’t even as if she and Dan were happy, after all. Laura was doing her a favor, in the long run.
    So when Laura walked into the Cavendish and saw Amy, as tall and beautiful and stick-thin as ever, sitting on the sofa laughing girlishly with Jo, and realized that she was the terrifying Amazonian beauty of her nightmares, and that she, Laura, was still—well, normal, normal height,