Love by the Book - Softcover

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March

This project was born, like so many things, from an egg. Two, to be exact.

Adrian walked in just in time to see me crack two eggs on the side of the pan and pour them into the sizzling butter. I leaned into him when he wrapped his arms around me and peered over my shoulder at the stove.

“You making eggs?” he said, voice still gravelly with sleep.

“How did you guess?” I said, turning to give him a quick kiss. “I remembered you saying you liked them, so I thought I’d make them for you.” I gave the eggs a quick flip and slid them out of the pan onto the waiting buttered toast.

“You made these for me?” Adrian said, eyes widening.

“Yep,” I said, placing the plate on the table before grabbing my bowl of granola and yogurt off the counter. I pulled the yellow terrycloth robe around me and looked at him.

“You’re not having any?” he said, looking at his own plate with even more suspicion.

“Nope. I’m not a big egg fan.”

“I see. You made these eggs just for me.” I watched his pupils dilate out of fear. “Right.”

“Christ, they’re only eggs. Calm down. Do you want some pepper?”

I could see the wheels turning in his head. Eggs led to Sunday afternoons in antique shops, dinner parties with other couples, meetings with the parents, a marriage proposal, an elaborate wedding, three screaming children, a wife with fat ankles and, eventually, the sweet release of death. In his mind, eggs led to stuff. Scary stuff.

Within minutes of polishing off the plate, the man was up and out like a shot, pulling his shoes on and mumbling something about getting back in time to watch Football Focus with his roommate.

I had scared a man with eggs. I’d scared him so badly that he had chosen Football Focus over having sex with me. It wasn’t looking good for me or for my vagina.

It had all started so promisingly. Last summer, I had moved into my room in Old Street with a heart filled with hope: that this move from Portland to London would be a fresh start for me, that I would wipe clean the traces of a relationship with the strong-jawed, kind-eyed man I’d left behind, that the job I had nabbed as the events coordinator at the Science Museum would lead to even bigger and better things and, possibly most pressingly, that I would have lots of great sex with attractive Englishmen who were as uninterested in commitment as I was.

I’d seen the apartment advertised on Gumtree just before I’d left Maine and had immediately sent through a request. It looked amazing in the pictures—the bedroom was painted a pale yellow and the furniture was all weathered white wood—and according to Google maps, the location was perfect. The woman renting out the room, Lucy, agreed to reserve it for me until I arrived in London the following week after I sent several pleading emails and the promise of a jar of Marshmallow Fluff.

When I arrived at the address, I was a little surprised to find a towering council estate rather than the little Victorian conversion I’d expected, but I took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer, images of the bedroom still dancing in my head. I was furry-mouthed with jet lag and essentially homeless; I couldn’t afford to write the apartment off before seeing it.

Lucy met me at the door. “Hello! You must be Lauren. Come on in, babe.” I took in her wide smile, bright blue eyes and head of insane blond curls and felt immediately better about the situation. She led me into the cramped kitchen and put the kettle on.

The kitchen didn’t quite match the design standards I’d seen in the photographs. Lucy had obviously made the best of things, filling the countertop with pots of fresh herbs and a bright pink set of scales, but the oven door was hanging at a precarious angle and there was a large hole gouged into the MDF floor. It wasn’t exactly Martha Stewart Living.

Lucy flicked on the kettle. “Coffee?”

I nodded.

“How do you take yours?”

“Just black would be great, thanks.”

“I don’t know how you can drink it like that. I need about eight sugars and three pints of milk in mine. Especially today: I have such a hangover. Anyway, I’m glad you’re here and seem normal—the last girl who lived here was a born-again Christian and didn’t drink. Can you imagine? After the third time she tipped my bottle of rum down the sink, I said, good luck to you, love, but you’re not staying here.”

She handed me a mug and I took a sip.

“Let me show you the rest of the place.” Lucy led me on a short but thorough tour of the apartment. “This is the lounge”—an enormous brown faux-leather couch marooned in the middle of four blood-red walls—“and there’s a balcony, too”—a concrete slab slapped onto the side of the tower block with a strip of barbed wire running along the top—“here’s the bathroom”—a microbe’s paradise with one of those electric showers we Americans have nightmares about—“and this would be your room”—a bare mattress balanced atop a metal frame and a dilapidated IKEA wardrobe, the saving grace being a tiny window displaying an amazing view over London.

“Would you mind if I took a look at your room?” I asked. “Just to get an idea of the difference in size.”

“Of course! Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess at the moment.” Lucy opened the door to her bedroom and—lo and behold—the fabled yellow room was revealed. It looked like Laura Ashley had spontaneously combusted in there—everything was pastel and floral and very, very neat.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “It gives me hope that I might be able to do something decent with my room.” I had a sudden vision of shabby-chic industrial interiors and reclaimed bookshelves made from old French wine crates, and made a mental note to sign up to Pinterest.

Lucy smoothed an imaginary crease on the pale pink duvet. “Thanks, love. Just takes a lick of paint and some elbow grease,” she said. “Come on, let’s sit in the lounge and have a chat.”

I perched on the enormous couch and Lucy drew up a chair opposite.

“So, Lo,” she said, taking a sip from her mug, “tell me how you ended up in London.”

“I’ve always wanted to live here,” I said with a shrug. That was an understatement: I’d dreamed of living in London ever since I was little. The childhood bedroom I’d shared with my sister had been covered with pictures of the London skyline, and I’d gorged myself on the Beatles and Carry On films from a young age. London was my fabled land and I’d managed to pull myself onto its shores like a shipwreck survivor.

Of course, I knew I had been at the helm of that ill-fated ship and had spent the past few months driving it straight into the rocks. I thought of the look on Dylan’s face when I packed my bags, and the look on my father’s face when he dropped me off at the airport, and pushed them both deep down to the dark recesses of my brain where I couldn’t see them. I wasn’t ready to admit to myself what I’d done, never mind a relative stranger.

I turned to Lucy with a bright smile. “Have you ever been to the States?”

Her eyes took on a misty quality. “No, never, but I’ve always wanted to go. One day!”

“Well, I’d be happy to give you some tips when the time...