Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

High Fidelity
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Page 96 of 112
6/20/2006
Twenty-Eight
Only two weeks in, after a lot of talking and a lot of sex and a tolerable amount of arguing, we go for
dinner with Laura’s friends Paul and Miranda. This might not sound very exciting to you, but it’s a
really big deal to me: it’s a vote of confidence, an endorsement, a sign to the world that I’m going to be
around for a few months at least. Laura and I have never seen eye-to-eye about Paul and Miranda, not
that I’ve ever met either of them. Laura and Paul joined the law firm around the same time, and they got
on well, so when she (and I) were asked round, I refused to go. I didn’t like the sound of him, or Laura’s
enthusiasm for him, although when I heard that there was a Miranda I could see I was being stupid, so I
made up a load of other stuff. I said that he sounded typical of the sort of people she was going to be
meeting all the time now that she had this flash new job, and I was being left behind, and she got cross,
so I upped the ante and prefaced his name with the words ‘this’ and ‘wanker’ whenever I mentioned
him, and I attributed to him a hoity-toity voice and a whole set of interests and attitudes he probably
hasn’t got, and then Laura got really cross and went on her own. And having called him a wanker so
many times, I felt that Paul and I had got off on the wrong foot, and when Laura invited them round to
ours I went out until two in the morning just to make sure I didn’t bump into them, even though they’ve
got a kid and I knew they’d be gone by half-past eleven. So when Laura said we’d been invited again, I
knew it was a big deal, not only because she was prepared to give it another go, but because it meant
she’d been saying stuff about our living together again, and the stuff she’d been saying couldn’t have
been all bad.
As we stand on the doorstep of their house (nothing swanky, a three-bedroom terraced in Kensal
Green), I fiddle with the fly button on my 501s, a nervous habit that Laura strongly disapproves of, for
perhaps understandable reasons. But tonight she looks at me and smiles, and gives my hand (my other
hand, the one that isn’t scrabbling frantically at my groin) a quick squeeze, and before I know it we’re in
the house amid a flurry of smiles and kisses and introductions.
Paul is tall and good-looking, with long (untrendy, can’t-be-bothered-to-have-it-cut, computer-nerdy
long, as opposed to hairdressery long) dark hair and a shadow that’s nearer six-thirty than five o’clock.
He’s wearing a pair of old brown cords and a Body Shop T-shirt depicting something green, a lizard or a
tree or a vegetable or something. I wish a few of the buttons on my fly were undone, just so I wouldn’t
feel overdressed. Miranda, like Laura, is wearing a baggy jumper and leggings, and a pair of pretty cool
rimless specs, and she’s blond and round and pretty, not quite Roseanne Barr round, but round enough
for you to notice straightaway. So I’m not intimidated by the clothes, or by the house, or the people, and
anyway, the people are so nice to me that for a moment I almost feel a bit weepy: it’s obvious to even
the most insecure that Paul and Miranda are delighted that I am here, either because they have decided
that I am a Good Thing, or because Laura has told them that she is happy with the way things are (and if
I’ve got it all wrong, and they’re just acting, then who cares anyway, when the actors are this good).
There isn’t any what-would-you-call-your-dog stuff, partly because everyone knows what everyone
does (Miranda is an English lecturer at an FE college), and partly because the evening isn’t like that for
a moment. They ask about Laura’s dad, and Laura tells them about the funeral, or at least some of it, and
also some stuff I didn’t know—like, she says she felt a little thrill, momentarily, before all the pain and
the grief and everything hit her—“Like, God, this is the most grown-up thing that’s ever happened to
me.”
And Miranda talks a bit about her mum dying, and Paul and I ask questions about that, and Paul and
Miranda ask questions about my mum and dad, and then it all somehow moves on from there to
aspirations, and what we want, and what we’re not happy about, and … I don’t know. It sounds stupid to
say it, but despite what we’re talking about, I really enjoy myself—I don’t feel afraid of anybody, and
whatever I say people take seriously, and I catch Laura looking fondly at me from time to time, which
helps morale. It’s not like anyone says any one thing that’s memorable, or wise, or acute; it’s more a
mood thing. For the first time in my life I felt as though I’m in an episode of thirty something rather than
an episode of … of … of some sitcom that hasn’t been made yet about three guys who work in a record