Eight Perfect Hours: The hotly-anticipated love story everyone is falling for in 2021!

by Lia Louis

  ‘I’m sorry. That’s awful.’

  Sam exhales, nods weakly. ‘Something about that makes you feel like it can all be over in a second, so what’s the point in fearing it.’ Then he pauses, ducks his head, and says with a small smile, ‘Plus. Who says I’m normal?’ and I know, with that joke, he doesn’t want to give away any more. And I get it. More than anyone, I understand.

  Rain pummels the glass of the launderette, raindrops making trails down the glass between the mosaic of pamphlets and ads. We talk, and Sam tells me he’s got ‘a crazy’ few weeks coming up, and I’m reminded how busy his life is, compared to this tiny pocket of time in the cosy launderette. Work, a charity event in Scotland, and flying home, to Oregon. ‘I’m there about a week,’ he says. ‘It’s my mom’s birthday. She’ll be sixty. And then a friend of mine and Jenna’s – he’s getting married.’

  I nod, but feel like someone just stuck a huge pin in my mood. Bang. ‘And how’re things going with Jenna?’

  Sam fidgets, runs a finger under his black watch strap absentmindedly. ‘It’s – OK. Which – I don’t know if OK is OK, you know? I’ve known her my whole life and it’s so easy for us to just fall back into some sort of routine, of how it always was, but then how it always was is how we ended up in this mess, so … but she’s looking at visas.’

  ‘To move here?’

  He nods.

  ‘I see,’ I reply because I don’t know what else to say, and he knocks back his coffee as if it’s something stronger.

  Someone outside bursts into laughter and there’s the sound of a police siren – a whole world going on outside – and I suddenly feel all filled up with tears and confusion and emotions I don’t recognise, with nowhere to go.

  ‘And how’s Ed the Ped?’ Sam asks.

  ‘It’s – it’s OK.’ I force a smile. Easy, to fall into a routine, I think but don’t say, for us to crawl in and curl up in the comfortable hollows we left in the past, like indents on an old sofa. Easy for it to be how it always was. And that’s how we ended up in the mess we did too.

  I check my phone. No text from Ed. Nothing from home, or Charlie. Nobody needing me for anything. So, we sit, quietly together, listening to the rain for a while, the sound of a button in one of the dryers, tapping like a tambourine, exactly every two seconds. Warm. Safe. Slow. Another Noelle and Sam bubble, away from the rest of the world.

  Half an hour later, after Petal’s feed – which Sam and I managed between us by unpacking the entirety of the changing bag and barking orders at each other like people on some sort of game show – ‘no, not that bottle’ and ‘those are nappy bags, not wipes!’ and ‘quick! Quick !’ – we begin packing up and preparing to leave the warm little nook of the launderette. Outside, the rain has stopped, and the skies are blue, and I wheel the stroller back and forth on the lino beneath our feet, as Sam methodically re-packs the bag in the way a mountaineer does, I expect. Zipping it up, everything neatly packed and slotted in tightly. Then he holds my keys in his hand and looks down at them, jerking his hand so the keys fan in his palm.

  He looks up at me slowly.

  ‘Noelle, where did you get this?’

  ‘What?’

  He’s holding my heather keyring – the square. My old, little breathing square. And he’s looking at me, his lips parted in a quizzical half smile.

  ‘That’s my breathing square,’ I laugh, as Sam looks down at it in his hand, rubs a thumb over the clear resin. ‘It’s heather. Real, I think, in resin.’

  ‘I had one of these.’ Sam looks at me and then laughs – a surprised burst. ‘Seriously, I had one the exact same.’

  ‘Really? What, heather––’

  ‘Yeah! Heather, clear resin, silver chain.’ He looks down at it, swallows, and when he looks back up at me, his eyes are glassy.

  ‘I found it,’ I say. ‘I was about seventeen and I found it on the street—’

  ‘On the street?’

  ‘Yeah, not far from here actually. Outside the leisure centre, near Greggs of all places, which for me is predictable because … pasties.’ I laugh. Sam doesn’t. ‘Sam, are you OK?’

  Sam shakes his head, as if shaking himself out of a trance. His chuckle is unconvincing. ‘Yeah, totally, I just – mine was exactly like this. My grandma gave it to me when I was like, seven or eight and – I lost it. It was heather. For protection. She believed in all that crap––’

  ‘Oh my God.’ I stop pushing the buggy and stare at him. ‘Do you think it’s yours?’

  Sam pauses, then laughs. He puts the keys back in the changing bag, slots my phone in the side pocket. ‘No,’ he says. ‘But that would’ve been a turn-up, right?’

  ‘But I mean, it could be!’ I say, eagerly. ‘Did you lose it over here? When you were visiting your dad?’

  ‘I don’t know. Could have. But God, they must’ve made hundreds – it was cheap. From a museum gift shop.’ He’s hanging the bag on the handle of the pushchair now, adjusting the strap, making sure it’s secure. ‘Thousands of them, Noelle.’

  ‘But it’s quite an unusual thing to have, though, isn’t it? It’s not like it was a Disney keyring, or something completely mass-produced.’

  ‘Well, this probably is too.’

  Sam pulls the launderette door and holds it open. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘We better go while the rain is holding off.’ And I can tell he wants me to stop talking about it, for whatever reason, and so I do. But something is fizzing inside of me. Imagine. Imagine if that was his. That all along, I’ve been carrying it around with me, something that Sam once carried around too …

  ‘Noelle? Are you coming?’

  ‘S-sorry. Yeah.’

  Outside on the pavement, the air smells earthy, the way it does after the sun comes out and warms the rain on the pavements, and Sam looks down at his watch. I suddenly want him to put his arms around me, but he steps away, throws his bag over his shoulder.

  ‘Well, thanks for the coffee, Noelle. And Petal.’ He reaches a hand down and strokes a finger over her chubby, peachy cheek. ‘See you around, OK?’ He turns and I watch him get smaller and smaller over my shoulder as I walk, two magnets pulling away.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  iMessage from Candice: Noelle, would you be able to call me when you get a minute? Total SOS wedding situation! Need your help!

  Dilly appears in the doorway, his blond, iced-gem tuft of hair on end, a huge flowing blood-red silk scarf spilling from the back of his skinny jeans’ pocket. He’s home again, for three nights, and tonight, he’s playing a local gig in Bath city centre, but of course acting as though he’s about to go on stage at Wembley Stadium and we are lucky to merely breathe his air.

  ‘Say it,’ he says, smirking over at me and giving a slow wink.

  I stop, twine between my lips, three heavy blooms of baby-blue hydrangeas in my hand. ‘Mm?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Mum looks over her mug of tea at him, her proud eyes twinkling, as if he is in fact already on that Wembley stage. ‘You look gorgeous, darling Dilly,’ she says. ‘A true rock star. Isn’t he, Noelle?’

  ‘Too good, right?’ Dilly shrugs, as if it bores him to be this cool. ‘I mean, that’s what I think, anyway. A total ten out of ten.’

  ‘You look ace,’ I say, and he nods, satisfied. He won’t sleep tonight. He never does when he gets home from a gig. The adrenaline, the need to retell us over and over, with accents and gestures how certain people reacted when he played a certain guitar solo, when he sang a particular note. ‘Sometimes I really do feel like Jesus,’ he’ll say, and I will laugh and ask how Jesus fancies cleaning out the food waste bin.

  The back door rattles open and then closed, and Dilly poses in the hallway, his skinny, pale elongated arm above his head, his head bowed like Freddie Mercury and I wait, for Ian’s faux surprise and admiration.

  ‘My goodness,’ says Ian, his voice travelling down the hallway. There it is. ‘Do you know, for a minute I thought that was Roger Daltrey.’ He appears
in the living room doorway, dressed from top to bottom in the colour of rich tea biscuits. From his polo shirt, to his combat trousers and socks. Beige. Always beige. ‘Did you hear what I said, Belinda? Hello, Noelle.’

  ‘Hiya, Ian,’ I say, the twine muffling my words.

  ‘Roger Daltrey,’ grins Mum. ‘Doesn’t he look the part, Ian? You can just see it, can’t you? Him, on the ol’, you-know-what – MTV awards.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ says Ian, meandering around the coffee table and pulling at the knees of his trousers as he sits. He sets an oven timer shaped like a pig down on the table. ‘Although, I’d hazard a guess that NME is far more suited to Dillon. If I know my music, and I won’t ever pretend to be an expert, then I’d say a rock group like his wouldn’t fit in at MTV at all. It’s all manufactured pop music.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Mum woundedly.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Dilly, lifting his chin, looking at something invisible in the air. ‘Superficial bullshit. Pretentious posers. That’s not us.’

  ‘No,’ I laugh. ‘Definitely not you.’ Dilly rolls his eyes. ‘What’s with the timer, Ian?’ I ask.

  ‘That’ll mean the first coat of the anti-mould emulsion is dry.’

  ‘Then you’ll nip back and do another coat?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Clever,’ says Mum, picking up the egg timer as if analysing a rare fossil, and looking over at me, impressed. ‘Ever such a domestic man, isn’t he, Elle? He reminds me of … who’s that handsome gay man with the lovely, soothing voice? Very clean-looking. Very wise.’

  ‘Me?’ Dilly says, angling his guitar case on his shoulder.

  ‘Apart from you.’

  ‘Nigel Slater?’

  ‘Yes, Noelle! That’s it! Oh, he’s lovely, he is, Ian. Very domesticated. Ever so good with all things in the home. He wraps all his food in brown paper. You know, steaks and things? You’re like that.’ Mum looks at me. ‘Isn’t he, Noelle? With his cling film?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I say. ‘Cling film.’

  Ian looks really pleased with himself, straightens a little in his seat. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I do think it’s important to ensure all things are wrapped safely in a fridge. Especially when dealing with meats.’

  I make a mental note to tell Charlie – to type out the chat exchange later on WhatsApp, like a screen play. She’ll get it. She’ll piss herself laughing and say, ‘Oh God bless Bel and Ian. Fucking love them.’ And I don’t want to just keep texting her to ask how she is – like she’s something defective that I have to keep checking in on. She went to the GP yesterday, with Theo. The doctor offered her CBT and suggested trying a course of anti-depressants which she started taking this morning. She was so worried to tell Theo about what happened at the weekend, but within seconds of talking to him, I knew she was so glad she did. I saw it with my own eyes, the relief trickling into her blood stream, colouring her cheeks. ‘I love you,’ is all Theo said. ‘I love you so much.’ I cried on the way home, for Charlie, and I cried out all of those tears I kept locked in, in the launderette. And I still don’t really know what they’re for. I’m confused. I am. I even sat down with a pen and paper last night in bed after sketching out something for Candice, just to try to tease out the tangles in my mind.

  ‘Ed was my forever,’ I wrote. ‘My world ended when he left. And now he’s back. But it feels too easy? There’s more to it? Why did he come back?’ Then I’d buried my head in my hands and groaned as I wrote, ‘I like Sam’ on the page before I punctuated it with a question mark that would fool no man, and slammed the book shut and pulled the duvet over my head. I’m confused. A complete tangle of heart and head and gut and logic and what is probably fifty per cent bloody mountaineering lust. He followed me on Instagram after the launderette – I’d mentioned the photos I took of the hydrangeas in the park, and I felt like I’d been shot with a dart when the notification came through. SamAts followed you. He doesn’t update much, and when he has, it’s all beautiful landscapes, weird knots, ‘how to wash your ropes’ tutorial (who knew?) and beaten up go-pro cameras with breezy captions like ‘this little buddy is still going strong.’ But there are some of him. One of which was taken a few weeks ago. Sam, with a group of four others, completely suited up – hats, and helmets, and gloves and smiles, nothing but ocean blue sky behind them. Of course, I spent ages scrolling his grid, the patchwork collage of Sam Attwood’s vast and colourful life. Cataluña, Chulilla, Mount Elbrus in Russia. These beautiful places I’ve only ever seen on the front of gift biscuit tins – a kaleidoscope of colour and nature. Then of course, there was the photo that made me so hot, I felt like I’d rolled obliviously into a bonfire. It was from last year. A huge sandy, bark-coloured rock face, with Sam, clinging to it effortlessly, his back to the camera, and topless, the muscles of his back, large and defined and sun-tanned. I’d sent a screenshot to Charlie. Shitting. Hell. She had texted back. I’m deeply aroused.

  ‘Wow.’ Ian looks at me over his glasses, shakes me out of my muscle trance. ‘Those hydrangeas are lovely. Who’s the lucky recipient?’

  ‘Candice,’ I say. ‘This woman at Jetson’s. Her florist has let her down and she’s asked me––’

  ‘To do the wedding?’ cuts in Mum.

  I freeze. ‘Well. Yes,’ I say carefully, ‘but I said I wouldn’t be able to and I’d just make her up a bouquet for her to copy. She said she might have to do them herself if she can’t find anyone in time, at such short notice––’

  ‘When is it?’ Mum asks, urgently, the words blending into one.

  ‘September twenty-eighth. In Edinburgh. But I’d have to leave on the twenty-seventh – they would. The florist I mean.’ I hadn’t mentioned it to Mum, when Candice had called me, and asked me to fill in for her florist, who’d somehow double booked. My heart when she asked me – I couldn’t put into words I don’t think, how I felt. I felt like it was too large for my body all of a sudden. I felt like it was going to fill with air, send us upwards, into the clouds. But I said no. How could I leave everything at home, travel hundreds of miles away, do a job I’ve never, ever done before.

  Mum stares at me. ‘Right,’ she says.

  ‘Well, you have to do it,’ says Ian, giving a deep nod, and Mum and I look at him like he’s just Morris danced on the table in nothing but his beige Y-fronts.

  ‘Well, I’d love to do it, Ian, but––’

  ‘I’ll stay with Mum,’ says Dilly, his hazel eyes on the phone in his hand, his skinny nibbled thumb cycling up the screen. ‘I’ll be back on the um – yep, here we go, the twenty-seventh. About midday?’

  I look at Mum, my lips parted, words jammed in my throat, struggling to arrange themselves into a sentence. ‘I – well – I don’t – I’d need to leave really early. Like, really early. About six.’

  Mum nods, staring ahead, as if psyching herself up for a marathon.

  ‘Honestly, it’s too short notice and I’ve never––’

  ‘No,’ Mum swoops in. ‘No, I’ll be all right. You – you have to go, Noelle. Ian’s right.’ She looks as if she might cry, and I feel like I might too because – can I really do this?

  ‘Mum, I don’t have to.’

  ‘Noelle, you must.’ Mum’s eyes shine, and she digs her two front teeth into her quivering lip. ‘You have to.’

  ‘And you’re definitely sure you’ll be here by noon, Dilly?’ asks Ian, tentatively. He’ll get his iPad out in a minute, his fingertips tapping in a flurry of reminders and countdowns.

  ‘Yeah, should be. We’re only over in Newcastle so should be mint.’

  Something flutters inside of me, wings opening, taking flight. Could I? Could I really do flowers for a wedding? An actual wedding with posies and guests and wedding breakfasts and of course, the token drunken sweaty fight? And in Edinburgh. I’ve always wanted to go to Edinburgh! Oh, God, I feel sick. With longing, with nerves, with the Can I actually pull this off? and the Is this avenue open, for someone like me?

  ‘So – I should say yes?’ I as
k. ‘Really?’

  Mum looks at me and nods. ‘Yes,’ she says tearfully, her words quivering at the edges, like blancmange. ‘Please say yes, Noelle.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘I said yes. I said yes to Candice.’

  ‘Finally! Nell, this is amazing. How much have you charged her? Did you take her through the price list we did?’

  ‘Yes, but we haven’t agreed on a final figure or anything yet. I’m still trying to work out the details.’

  ‘Like?’

  And there he is. Blunt, straight to the heart of the matter Ed. Everything is A to B. Anything in between: fluff. We’d met the next day, after we’d arranged, Mum, Ian, Dilly and I, that I’d say yes to the wedding. And Ed’s face changed. Brightened, widened. ‘This is brilliant, Nell. Now, make sure you charge her a reasonable amount, yeah? Don’t undersell yourself.’ And before I could open my mouth to speak, he was whipping out his phone, opening up his notes app. ‘So, how much is labour for this stuff?’ he’d asked, as we’d plonked onto the sofa and two hours later, I’d left his flat with a price list and my head banging with information – about taxes and profits and savings. It almost sucked the fun right out of it. Almost, though. It’d take a lot to rain on the parade I’m leading at the moment, I’m like an excited conga dancer at the front of the line. I’m all feather boas and whistles.

  ‘You know, you’d have known I was looking out for all this if you were to actually accept my Instagram request. I put a call out on my stories. For recommendations …’

  ‘I told you,’ laughs Ed. ‘I don’t ever go on it. And recommendations – for what?’

  ‘Like … suppliers up in Edinburgh, for a start,’ I tell Ed now, back on that sofa, a few days later. We’re seeing more and more of each other lately, and I’ve seen less and less of Sam. I’ve barely heard from him since the launderette. It’s just been texts about Frank really. I send him an update, and he replies with ‘Great!’ or ‘Thanks.’ Unlike Ed, he does sometimes watch my Instagram stories, though, and he likes every post, and butterflies tussle inside of me every time I open the app now and see a new message. And they die, fall like a flock out of the sky every time I see it isn’t him. I got one yesterday and dove on it like it was catnip, but of course it was someone pretending to be a god-fearing soldier needing a good wife and I’d blocked, deleted and cursed myself for being so bloody needy. Because of course, he’ll be with Jenna, at the wedding, falling back in effortless bloody love beneath fairy lights and stars. He doesn’t have time to be on Instagram, and especially to ‘react’ to a photo of my supplier waffle or hefty sausage sandwich breakfast.