I finally leave the house at 8.40 a.m. thinking I’ll just have time, if I’m quick, to pop into Star’s before catching the bus. Star’s is the dry cleaners on New North Road. Its run by a family of Turkish Cypriots, headed up by Emete, whose numerous spare tyres and racoon-ringed eyes belie an energy level so phenomenal, you wonder if this woman could pop out another five babies to add to her brood this week, and still get the whole street’s ironing done.
The bell sounds as I push open the door. Emete bustles to the front of the shop, a tape measure around her neck.
‘Tessa, my love. What a wonderful start to the day!’ She opens her arms – each the size of one of my thighs – and places an enthusiastic kiss on both cheeks.
‘Hi Emete. Morning Omer!’ I shout, peering through the rows of plastic bags to the back of the shop where Emete’s husband sits, coffee in hand, reading the newspaper. He raises a hand without looking up.
‘Now angel, what can I do for you?’ Emete pins a pink ticket to somebody’s jacket and hangs it up on a rail to her right.
I hear the doorbell go again and am half-aware of a presence beside me.
‘It’s this shirt,’ I say, taking the linen shirt out of the bag and laying it out in front of us. ‘It was in my last lot of dry cleaning but it’s not mine, there must have been a mix up.’
Emete puts the safety pin she was holding between her teeth and holds it up to the light. ‘How strange,’ she says.
‘Very strange,’ says a voice. I recognize it instantly. ‘I’ve got the same problem.’
Another item of clothing appears on the counter.
I stare at the white linen dress in front of me, and then at the hands placed on top of it: tanned, big, with slender fingers and round, shell-pink nails. I’d know those hands anywhere. I trace the arms, lean, boyish, a perfect covering of fine, black hair and then the face, I’m looking at the face. My hand goes to my mouth, my heart starts to race.
‘Laurence?!’
Brown eyes, behind which lie albums and albums of memories of us, are staring at me now, flickering with disbelief. He covers them with his hands. Those oh so familiar hands. ‘Tess?’ He uncovers his eyes again. ‘Shit, it is you.’ He looks at the shirt. ‘And that’s my shirt!’
Emete, prone to fits of the giggles at the best of times, is doubled up now, great wheezy laughs making her bosom heave.
‘You know her?!’ Her bulbous eyes are round as gobstoppers. ‘You know him?!’ She summons Omer from the back of the shop. ‘In fifteen years, Omer! I’ve never known…oh! How wonderful!’ Omer shuffles forward, puts his arm around his wife and gives a silent, toothless grin in appreciation of the moment.
We exchange clothes – Laurence gives me my white dress, I try to give him his shirt, but my hands are shaking so much that I drop it, at his feet.
‘Sorry, whoops.’ (What sort of a word is whoops?!)
‘It’s alright, I’ve got it.’ He picks it up. When he stands up, his face is so close to mine I can see the subtle bumpiness of this morning’s shave. Laurence has hardly aged at all. Hairline slightly retreating perhaps, but only to reveal two sun-kissed Vs and some fine laughter lines around those lazy, pretty eyes. I hold his gaze for as long as I can bear, then look away, embarrassed.
‘Hello,’ he says.
‘Hi,’ I say. Then we look at each other, but we’re flabbergasted, half laughing, not having the slightest clue what to say. I haven’t seen him for five years. Not since that freezing November morning at Heathrow airport.
‘It really is you’ he says eventually.
‘I know, I know!’ I say, giggling like an idiot and wishing I’d at least had time to put some mascara on this morning.
‘I cannot believe…’ He steps back, as if to get a better look at me.
‘Nor can I!’ I look at Emete, who’s still shaking with laughter like a mountain in an earthquake. ‘It’s totally freaky!’
We stand there, all four of us laughing, not really sure what we’re laughing at except that this is turning out to be the most extraordinary, wonderful, glorious morning.
Omer finally speaks and when he does, it’s worth every syllable.
‘So how do you two know each other?’ he says, flashing his gummy smile.
Laurence takes hold of one of my hands. He looks at me from under those heavy lids.
‘She was my girlfriend,’ he says finally, proudly even. ‘We went out together, for two years. Till I went and ballsed it up.’
Laurence and I met in April 2000 – the unseasonably warm spring of our final year – and all I was doing in Manchester was lazing about campus with Gina, sipping beer out of plastic glasses.
‘Do you fancy coming to this party?’ Gina asked one day.
‘Er, yeah!’ I said. (Was the Pope a Catholic?) ‘What kind of party? Count me in.’
‘A garden party,’ she said. ‘At my mate Laurence’s parents’ house in Sussex. They have one every year.’
She said Laurence was studying media studies at Leeds University and was a mate from boarding school. I can’t say that ‘garden party’ really got my pulse racing but as with most things involving Gina, there were a few surprises in store. For starters, any preconceptions I had about ‘parents’ and ‘garden party’ were swiftly eradicated the moment we accelerated up to the main gates in Gina’s Fiat Bravo (the purchase of which I hold entirely responsible for me delaying learning to drive). There was some kind of French rap music, the sort you expect to throb from Parisian banlieue, reverberating from their huge, sprawling farmhouse as we walked up the long gravel path. Huge red and gold lanterns adorned the front of the house. A barefoot, wild-haired woman wearing a sequinned waistcoat and holding an enormous glass of red wine almost ran towards us, arms out-stretched. ‘Bienvenue and welcome!’ she cried, kissing Gina then me on both cheeks. (I immediately had a personality crush.) She was Laurence’s mum – or Joelle as she insisted we call her – something which seemed biologically impossible since she looked about thirty. She’d been in England for twenty years, even though her French accent was still treacle-thick. Joelle and Laurence’s dad, Paul, had met when he was a student in Aix-en-Provence and Joelle was working as a life model (so French! I loved her even more). Now he was a lecturer in French at the University of Sussex and skulked about the house wearing Woody Allen-style glasses and smoking Camel Reds. Joelle poured us equally huge glasses of wine. ‘Make yourselves at home,’ she said. ‘All my boys are outside.’
At that point, a bare-chested young man sauntered into the kitchen, wrapped his arms around Joelle, who was stirring something sweet and spicy on the Aga, and kissed her on the cheek. ‘And this,’ she said, reaching on her tip toes and kissing him back, ‘is my most beautiful and most idle one.’
I should have let that be my warning, but I fell in love – well, it was all-consuming, primeval lust at that point – on the spot.
Laurence was six foot two with closely cropped black curls which looked like they would spring to life like his mother’s if he let them, sultry dark eyes with languorous lids and an exquisite dimple in his left cheek. He was wearing Levis twisted jeans and white flip-flops that showed off the most perfect tanned toes. I remember