Break-Up Club: A smart, funny novel about love and friendship. Lorelei Mathias

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      Lawrence smiled from across the carriage. ‘You realise it’s just a recording? She’s not real?’

      ‘She probably was, once…’ Holly mused, a scene unfurling in her mind of a glamorous actress in a Soho sound booth, trying out different tones – from jovial to breezy, to downright matronly.

      ‘Fair,’ Lawrence said, staring at the Tube map like it was some kind of exciting code to be cracked. ‘But in other news, we need to get off in a minute.’ He grabbed his denim jacket off the floor.

      Holly pressed pause on the sound session and looked up at the map. ‘No we don’t.’

      ‘Yes. Ours is the next stop,’ he said with the over-focused determination of Rain Man.

      ‘But we’re nowhere near Tufnell Park.’ She gave Lawrence a knowing smile, her left dimple popping out as she did.

      ‘Ah, but my dear Folly, that is a simplistic way of looking at things.’

      ‘Why’s that then?’ She moved into the proverbial brace position.

      Adopting an old-fashioned BBC accent, Lawrence went on, ‘We should alight at Stockwell and change to the Victoria line.’

      Holly’s brow furrowed. ‘Or, surely we just get the Northern line all the way to Tufnell Park?’

      Lawrence smiled knowingly and shook his head. He began picking at the dilapidated shell-top of his left trainer. He pulled at the rubber flaps until they were dislodged, at which point he looked up.

      ‘Of course,’ his eyes widening with his trademark blend of smugness and childish excitement, ‘that is what London Transport’s Flawed Journey Planner would have you believe. However, I might remind you that there are a limited number of secret shortcuts and portals on the underground network, which only the truly seasoned Londoner is privy to.’

      ‘Wow. You have literally never been sexier.’

      He grinned with pride. Lawrence, for all his charms, suffered from a rare yet socially debilitating condition known as Tube Tourette’s. Having grown up in the Midlands, Holly was distinctly less interested in Tube trivia than Lawrence. His fascination for it was so all-consuming, she firmly believed that under his skin were not veins or arteries, but a full replica of the London Underground map (first designed by underground electrical draughtsman Harry Beck in 1933, he’d hurry to tell you, too).

      ‘The Northern line boasts two such changes,’ he went on. ‘One at Stockwell, and another at Euston. While they might appear pointless at first, these two changes will actually shave off a substantial section of your journey time. Not to mention the fact that the Northern line is heinously unreliable, frequently beset by the twin evils of signal failure and engineering works.’ Holly let out a small sigh. Being an avid book-reader (a fact she loved about Lawrence), he had a habit of talking as if he was choking on a thesaurus (a fact she loved less so). There was a time when this had charmed her. Now it just niggled at her sanity.

      ‘Lawrence you douche, just give it to me in English.’

      ‘We’ll cut out loads of time if we change lines here. FACT.’

      ‘I have seventeen bags with me after staying at yours. I don’t fancy changing trains and schlepping all this about.’

      There comes a moment in most long-term relationships when you realise your identity has irreversibly eroded. You might have been a relatively normal individual once, breezing in and out of buildings, nothing but a shoulder bag about your person. But five years into a relationship in a big city, and you’re The Bag Lady of the Northern Line – lugging around so much in the way of work clothes, unwashed gym wear and toiletries that you practically need your own carriage. Holly had recently begun duplicating all her worldly goods for North and South London. She’d had to call time on the doppelganger cosmetics project shortly after shelling out for the second set of GHD hair straighteners. Still, anything to avoid actually moving in with Lawrence.

      As the train drew nearer to Stockwell and the first of Lawrence’s shortcuts, he shifted about in his seat.

      ‘OK, if you’re so bothered, why don’t you go?’ Holly said sarcastically. ‘I’ll meet you there.’

      Lawrence’s big blue eyes widened. He stood up. ‘OK, here’s the plan. No really, this’ll be fun. You take the Northern line all the way. I’ll change to the Victoria line and back again. Then finally we’ll know the DEFINITIVE answer of which is quicker! This age-old debate will have been answered, once and for all!’

      ‘Oh, Lawrence… I was kidding. Please sit down,’ she scolded before noticing that they now had an audience the size of a small fringe venue. All they needed now was a man in a tux selling programmes and overpriced ice creams.

      ‘Aren’t you just a bit curious to know who’s right?’ Lawrence said. As he dispatched one of his daintier breeds of kisses onto her forehead (the ones he liked to call ‘fairy kisses’ when no one else was listening), she couldn’t stop the smile from creeping across her face.

      Lawrence shot up from his seat, his eyes pogoing with excitement. The doors were opening. The old lady across the carriage seemed, from her enormous grin, to be egging them on.

      ‘You’re a freak,’ Holly replied by way of acquiescence. Then, reluctantly: ‘But listen, this has to be a fair test. We walk at a normal pace. No running up the escalators!’

      Lawrence nodded. ‘I love you,’ he whispered, the doors beeping.

      ‘Love you too. Twat,’ she said as he bounced off the train and the doors began to close.

      Flushed with a mixture of anxiety and humiliation, Holly Braithwaite watched as Lawrence stepped onto the platform and grinned back at her. Then she pulled into a tunnel deep beneath the River Thames, sank into the tired upholstery and leaned against the window.

      She pictured the scene of her boyfriend sitting on the other train, staring with intent at the stopwatch on his phone. Lawrence’s diehard competitiveness was one of the things that most riled her about him. Or was it loved? Who knew, she wondered as she pulled her black beret out of her bag and folded it into a makeshift travel pillow. She wedged it beneath the cushion of her thick brown hair, and rested her head against it. She listened to the voice reading out the names of the stops and closed her eyes. She began replaying the imaginary scene of the actress in the sound booth. She’d had that slightly clipped, RP accent, evocative of another era. Perhaps she’d done the recording many years ago, dressed in forties get-up, her hair in victory rolls? She couldn’t help smiling, until a bleak thought occurred. The recording sounded so dated that there was a strong chance the owner of the voice was no longer alive. In which case, these slightly tetchy TFL announcements could be the only echo of her that remained in this world? Her legacy. Holly struggled to think what she’d be remembered for, were she to shuffle off this mortal coil right now. An insalubrious flat-share, a dysfunctional relationship, and an intellectually emaciated TV show about a regional discotheque. Ball bags, Holly thought, looking upwards with pleading eyes and hoping it wasn’t too late for her to make a proper contribution to the world.

      Half an hour later, the train reached Tufnell Park. Holly rubbed her eyes and breathed a quiet sigh of relief to be north of the river again, and closer to home. Leaving the platform, she found herself jumping the stairs two at a time. She cleared the Oyster machines and ran through the ticket hall, where she could see that – bugger it – Lawrence was standing СКАЧАТЬ