I pull a face. ‘How can that be averaged? Everyone’s different.’
‘Go on your own experience. You know how hard you fell for all those guys I set you up with at uni.’ She laughs. ‘What was his name in the shorts again?’
I don’t dignify the question with an answer, because my champagne-soaked brain can’t drag up anything beyond his hairy legs.
‘Twice, maybe?’ I take a stab at the answer.
Sarah puts the card down in favour of reaching for our wine glasses.
‘I think more. Five.’
‘Five? You reckon? That’s a lot.’
She shrugs. ‘You know me. I like to spread it around.’
We both laugh, and she rolls her head sideways against the sofa to look at me.
‘So the two loves of your life have been Oscar and who? Bus boy?’
It’s been years since she mentioned him. I was sure she’d forgotten all about him. I shake my head. ‘Oscar, obviously, and my college boyfriend.’
‘Then your magic number is three, Lu, because you totally fell in love with bus boy. Hook, line and sinker. We spent an entire year looking for him. You were obsessed.’
I feel a bit cornered, so I swill my wine around and try to think of a quick change of subject. I’m too slow.
‘I wonder what would have happened if you’d ever found him. Maybe you’d have been married now with a baby. Imagine that!’
Because I’ve had too much wine, I do imagine it. I see a little boy with green-gold eyes, grubby knees and a gap-toothed smile, and the reality of him winds me. Is that what might have happened in another version of our lives, one where I found Jack first? Or one where he’d just got on that damn bus? I close my eyes and sigh, trying to send the make-believe child back on his way to never-never land.
‘Did you ever stop looking for him?’
Her softly spoken question knocks me off guard. ‘Yes.’
She’s staring at me oddly, probably because that sounded more heavy and resigned than it should have.
Her sharp intake of breath is the only warning I get of impending danger.
‘Laurie, did you find him and not tell me?’ she breathes, her eyes round.
I struggle to lie convincingly or fast enough. ‘What, no! Of course I didn’t! I mean, God, you’d know if I had and you don’t know so I can’t have.’
She narrows her eyes, and I start to panic because she’s like a dog with a bone. A sniffer dog with a T-bone. ‘I think you’re holding out on me. Tell me or I’ll flash my knickers at Oscar’s family in the church.’
I shake my head. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’ I try to muster up a light-hearted laugh, but I misjudge it and it comes out with too much force.
‘Oh my God! There is something,’ she says, sitting bolt upright. ‘Laurie James, you bloody well tell me this minute or I swear I’ll flash the bloody vicar as well!’
How I wish she didn’t know me so well or that I hadn’t drunk too much champagne. ‘No,’ is all I can manage. I daren’t look her in the eye yet.
‘Why won’t you tell me?’
She’s starting to sound hurt and I feel hideous, so I reach for her hand. ‘Let’s just talk about something else.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she says, then she falls quiet and slowly, slowly extracts her hand from under mine. ‘Shit. Lu.’
I still can’t look at her. I want to; I want to fall around laughing and say something smart that stops us going from where we’re heading, but I’m a champagne-soaked rabbit in the headlights.
‘It was Jack.’
She doesn’t phrase it as a question. She enunciates every word as if she’s sober as a judge, as if she’s known forever. Then she gasps, a delayed reaction, slapping her hand over her mouth. I shake my head, but I can’t force the lie out of my trembling lips.
‘Jack was bus boy.’
‘Stop saying it,’ I whisper, and a hot tear runs down my cheek.
She holds her head in her hands.
‘Sar …’ I struggle upright and put my wine glass on the table. When I lay my hand on her shoulder, she shrugs me off. I feel as if she slapped me. I almost want her to. I sit and wait, agonized, and then she gets up sharply to her feet.
‘I always knew there was something. I – I think I’m going to be sick.’ She lurches for the bathroom.
I think of Delancey Street, of the times I used to hold her hair for her after a big night out. Knowing that I’m the one who’s made her feel like this is the worst feeling in the world. I find myself automatically following her, but can only hover silently outside the door, hearing her retch. After a moment I sit back down. When she comes out again a few minutes later, white and drawn, she sits down on the chair opposite me rather than alongside me on the sofa.
‘Did you recognize him straight away?’
‘Please don’t,’ I say. I don’t know how to deal with this. I thought it was history, I’ve made it so in my head, but now it’s all coming out.
‘We’ve been friends for a fucking long time, Laurie. Tell me the truth.’
She’s right, of course. Our friendship deserves to be honoured with honesty.
‘Yes,’ I say, flat. ‘I recognized him the second you introduced us. Of course I did.’ I can’t get the words out at much above a whisper. They’re razor blades in my throat.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? You could have told me there and then, or the next morning at least, or any other damn day.’ Her voice rises as she speaks. ‘You should have told me.’
‘Should I?’ I say. ‘Should I, Sarah? When? When you brought him home and told me he was the man you were going to marry? What should I have said? Oh dear, there’s been some silly mix-up, you’ve inadvertently gone and fallen in love with the same man as me?’ I swipe my hands across my tearful face. ‘Don’t you think I wanted to? Don’t you think I thought about it every day?’
We stare at each other.
‘2009,’ she says, counting the years up on shaky fingers. ‘Four years, and all of that time you were secretly in love with my boyfriend and didn’t think it was important enough to tell me?’
I have no defence, and I can’t expect her to understand. I doubt if I would if the boot were on the other foot.
‘I didn’t secretly love him,’ I say, wretched. ‘It was an impossible situation and I hated it. I can’t tell you how much I hated it.’
She’s not really listening to me. I don’t think she can, the shock is still sinking in. ‘All those stupid nights we spent together in Delancey Street …’ She’s shaking her head slowly, throwing all the pieces of our lives in the air and putting them back together in a different and terrible pattern. ‘Were you just waiting for your moment to pounce?’
She’s being cruel because she’s hurt, but I can’t help it, I bite back. ‘Of course I wasn’t,’ I say, louder, clearer, harsher. ‘You know me better than that. I tried my best every damn day not to feel anything at all for him.’
‘Am I supposed to say thank you?’ She slow claps me. ‘Well done, Laurie! You’re a pal.’
‘You could at least try to understand. I was horrified when you introduced us.’
‘I very much doubt that,’ she spits. ‘At least you’d found him.’
‘No. You’d found him. I wish I’d never laid eyes on him.’
We fall into silence, and then she makes a sound that’s horribly like a hiss.
‘Did he know too? Were you both laughing about it behind my back?’
I’m mortified that she could imagine either Jack or I could do that. ‘God, Sarah, no!’
‘Were you snogging in doorways, shagging in our flat when my back was turned?’
I get to my feet. ‘That isn’t fair. You know full well I’d never do that.’
She stands too, facing me down across the coffee table. ‘You swear on my life you never so much as kissed him?’
It’s in that moment I realize I’m about to lose my best friend for ever.