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

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       3. Holloway

      A week later, Lawrence stood at Holly’s door, an olive green beanie grappling with his unruly curls. Holly leaned forward to kiss him on the lips.

      He broke off halfway. ‘Look, I bought Georgia!’ he said as he unhooked himself from the enormous, unwieldy guitar case that was strapped to his back.

      ‘Who?’ Holly asked, looking around her.

      ‘My new acoustic! Isn’t she the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen?’

      Holly nodded as Lawrence clambered through the door, bashing Georgia on the already scratched walls of the entrance hall.

      ‘What’s not to love?’ Holly said as they headed into her bedroom and he started bashing out a tune.

      In truth, Lawrence plus guitar equalled total subservience on Holly’s part. She could be furious with him about something, and all he’d have to do was strum three notes, and the drawbridge to her lady-garden would drop there and then. Right now, he was playing ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ – but singing the chorus over and over because it was the only bit he knew all the chords to.

      Lawrence perched on the edge of the bed, his muscular frame stooped over his guitar, his brown curls falling into his eyes like a slightly crustier Jim Morrison. He was playing a new chord sequence now, which Holly couldn’t place in his usual repertoire. After a few more beats she recognised it as ‘My Boy Lollipop’. Only, when he sang the chorus he changed the lyric to ‘Hollypop, Hollypop’ for attempted comedic gain.

      ‘Oh, that’s cute, Lawry! Although, am I a boy?’

      Lawrence grinned. ‘Yes. For the purposes of this song you are. Anyway, it’s not quite ready yet.’

      ‘It’s lovely. Thanks, baby.’

      She sat on the bed and watched him slowly pick out the chords. Lawrence had never got round to learning how to read music. But what he lacked in patience he made up for with a most amazing ear. He could usually pick out most requests just by listening for the notes that sounded right. As a result, having Lawrence and a guitar around was sometimes like having a slightly hyperactive human jukebox at your disposal.

      ‘Play it again, Lawry,’ she said, brushing some sleep out of his eye.

      ‘No. I’m bored of that one now,’ he said, pulling her towards him for a kiss.

      ‘Hey,’ Holly said, breaking away after a minute, ‘do you remember the other day, when I got a bit fixated on the woman’s voice on the Tube?’

      Lawrence squinted, trying to recall a memory lost in a distant fog.

      ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about it some more, about whether it could make an interesting story – all about the comfort people might take in the voices of their loved ones after they’ve gone? I wondered if there are any real-life TFL widows out there that we could make a documentary out of?’

      ‘Bit morbid, but there could be something in it.’

      ‘That’s what I thought, but Jez blew it out. But then I got to wondering; could it be the kernel for a short film instead? A heart-wrenching little film, about someone’s journey through grief, guided by voices…’ she looked at him, her eyes dancing with possibility, ‘but you know more about shorts than me.’

      Lawrence had been tinkering with a chord sequence all this time. He stopped for a moment and looked into her eyes. ‘It’s definitely interesting, Fol. I mean, I like the irony that to most passengers the voices are just these robotic murmurs; a necessary and repetitive part of getting from A to B. Yet, to a few people they are these ghost-like traces of someone they used to know. Someone they used to share their world with.’

      Holly’s eyes widened. ‘Exactly! I just have this feeling it could be really poignant. What do you think about us developing this into a film together? It’d be lovely to spend our time doing something creative, as opposed to box-set bingeing.’

      ‘But we love box-set bingeing!’

      ‘We could actually make it though – you direct, I’ll edit! It would be great for both our reels! Put it into festivals. Stop our careers from flatlining?’

      ‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Lawry while picking out the opening bars to ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’.

      ‘You’re better at writing than me though,’ she said, taking one of his curls and twirling it around her finger. ‘Will you help me script it sometime?’ But her voice was drowned out by a strange robotic tone coming from the bed, which sounded not unlike ‘Live’.

      ‘What the bejeezus?’ Lawrence said. But then it happened again. ‘Where is that robot voice coming from, and why is it telling us to live? Is it a new Existentialist phone line?’

      ‘It’s my new upgrade,’ Holly said, retrieving her phone from the top of her bed. ‘It’s the world’s most complicated mobile. It insists on telling me who’s calling, in a Stephen-Hawking-on-weed voice.’

      ‘Why don’t you read the manual?’ Lawrence said, infuriatingly.

      ‘Oh, you ARE my father!’

      Everyone in the world – except from Lawrence and her father – knew that life was too short for reading the manual.

      ‘Live,’ bleated Stephen Hawking.

      ‘Can you make it stop?’

      ‘Oh, hang on!’ Holly said once she’d found her phone, ‘He’s saying Liv! As in, Olivia! She tapped the answer button. Hey Liv, how you doing?’

      ‘Bored,’ came Olivia’s voice. ‘Can we go to the pub?’

      ‘Well, it would be good to walk Bella again. She’s been surgically СКАЧАТЬ