of them still strewn across the living-room floor, and I figure pineapples will offend them less than my naked arse. Shit, it’s pretty bloody short though. I’ll just do a quick dash.
‘Water,’ Sarah croaks, flinging her hand out towards me as I skirt round the edge of the bed.
‘I know,’ I murmur. Her eyes are still closed as I lift her arm and carefully tuck it back under the quilt, and she makes a noise that might mean Thanks and might be For God’s sake help me. I drop a kiss on her forehead.
‘Back in a sec,’ I whisper, but she’s already slid under the fog of sleep again. I don’t blame her. I plan to climb back in there and do the same thing myself within the next five minutes. Glancing at her again for a long second, I back quietly out of the room and click the door shut.
‘If you need paracetamol, they’re in the cupboard on the left.’
I pause for a beat, swallowing hard as I open the cupboard door and root around until I spot the small blue box.
‘You read my mind,’ I say, turning to Laurie. I force a casual smile, because in truth this is really fucking awkward. I’ve seen her before – before last night, I mean. It was just once, fleetingly, in the flesh, but there have been other times in my head since: random, disturbing early-morning lucid dreams where I jolt awake, hard and frustrated. I don’t know if she remembers me. Christ, I hope not. Especially now I’m standing in front of her in a ridiculous pineapple-strewn ball-grazing dressing gown.
Her dark hair is piled high on her head in a messy bun this morning and she looks as if she’s as much in need of medication as I am, so I offer her the box.
Sarah has banged on about her best friend so much that I’d built a virtual Laurie in my head already, but I’d got her all wrong. Because Sarah is so striking, I’d lazily imagined that her choice of friend would be equally colourful, like a pair of exotic parrots perched up here in their cage. Laurie isn’t a parrot. She’s more of a … I don’t know, a robin, maybe. There’s a contained peace about her, and a quiet, understated sense of being okay with herself that makes her easy to be around.
‘Thanks.’ She takes the tablets, popping a couple out into her hand.
I run her a glass of water and she raises it to me, a grim ‘bottoms up’ as she knocks the pills back.
‘Here,’ she says, counting how many are left in the packet before she hands it over. ‘Sarah likes –’
‘Three,’ I jump in, and she nods.
‘Three.’
I feel a little as if we’re competing to prove who knows Sarah best. She does, of course. Sarah and I have only been together for a month or so, but Christ, it’s been a whirlwind. I’m running to keep up with her most of the time. I met her first in the lift at work; it jammed with just the two of us inside, and by the time it moved again fifteen minutes later I knew three things. Firstly, she might be a fill-in reporter for the local TV station now, but one day she’s likely to take over the world. Two, I was taking her for lunch as soon as the lift got fixed, because she told me so. I was going to ask her anyway, for the record. And lastly, I’m pretty sure she stopped the lift herself and then released it once she’d got what she wanted. That mildly ruthless streak is a turn-on.
‘She’s told me a lot about you.’ I fill up the kettle and flick it on.
‘Did she tell you how I like my coffee?’
Laurie reaches for some mugs out of the cupboard as she speaks, and I hate the reflex that sends my eyes down her body. She’s in PJs, more than respectably covered, yet still I observe the fluidity of her movements, the curve of her hip, the navy polish on her toes.
‘Erm …’ I concentrate on hunting down a teaspoon, and she stretches across to tug out the drawer to show me where they are.
‘Got it,’ I say, reaching in at the same moment as she does, and she jerks her hand away, laughing to soften the suddenness.
As I start to spoon the granules out she folds herself on to a spindle-backed chair, one foot tucked underneath her