“Oh. Thanks,” Laurie said, completely at a loss for what she was supposed to say. Kerry was terrifying.
“Laurie! Call for you!” Di said, hanging out of the office doorway, and Laurie bit down her irritation that, strictly speaking, when someone had their coat on you should take a message.
“Hello, Mrs. Watkinson?” said an accented older male voice, after she accepted the receiver from Di.
“Miss,” Laurie said. “Or Ms.”
“This is Mr. Atwal, from Atwal’s News. The Doolally boy who beat me, you were his lawyer today?”
Laurie’s heart sank still further. It was rare she got shit-o-grams from the victims of those she defended, partly because the serious cases she dealt with got kicked up to crown court. It was uniquely unpleasant, explaining to someone why you’d done everything you could to minimize the impact of what they’d suffered, and put the best possible spin on the version of the person who’d inflicted it. Laurie didn’t think she was in the wrong, but at moments like that, she couldn’t feel it.
Oh God. Not today, Satan. She took a deep breath and prepared to justify her role in a fair and open legal process. “Yes?”
“I thought you might like to know, he came in and gave me a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates! I do not drink, but the thought was very nice. He said he was very sorry and your kindness has helped him see a better way. Well done, young lady.”
In a moment, Laurie’s ratty temper vanished. Not only was she very glad to hear Darren Dooley had made amends, there was something absurdly touching in him thinking Laurie doing her job in a courteous manner was some sort of inspirational tenderness. Poor lad. What a life he’d led.
“That’s great to hear. I’m very pleased he has apologized, Mr. Atwal. I hope this is a corner turned for Darren and that you don’t get any more trouble.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Mr. Atwal said in his lovely, musical, old-fashioned cadence, “There are some real, how do you say, dismal little cunts around these days.”
Laurie ended the conversation trying desperately not to hysterical-giggle. If life was entirely different, she’d be repeating that phrase to Dan tonight while they fell about.
Hell, maybe she would hire Darren Dooley to rough up him and Megan. It might give him a sense of purpose and a nice fee.
Laurie hated how powerless she was, the mask she had to wear that ate her face. Dan had done so much to her, and she could do nothing.
11
“Are you going to the Christmas do?” Diana asked on Friday, all innocence, though Laurie knew exactly why she was asking and Di knew she knew.
It was weeks away, but S & R always revved up for it as soon as the clocks changed.
“Oh. Hadn’t thought,” Laurie said. “Maybe.”
Diana fell quiet, as there was nothing she could do with this equivocal response.
“Rumors of karaoke,” Bharat added.
“Jesus. I long for death’s sweet release.”
“Don’t know that one—Shania Twain?” He paused. “I can imagine it’s the last place you want to be this year, but it’s a shame for us, because you are the very finest company.”
In times of crisis, you saw the best of people and the worst of people. Another dose of the worst had arrived yesterday, a gruelingly awkward phone call from Dan’s mother, Barbara, who was clearly desperate to get the formality of a goodbye to Laurie over with and get on with being excited about her first grandchild. She had no time for any negativity about her son’s behavior, simply saying primly, when Laurie ventured a comment about its brutality: “I can’t comment on that, really,” like she was an MP being grilled by Jeremy Paxman. It turned out “adoring Dan” had been the vital shared interest, and once gone, there was nothing.
“I suppose sometimes you want what you want,” was Barbara’s in summary insight on Dan’s historic fuckery.
To which Laurie wanted to reply: No shit, psychopaths want to strangle strangers with their stockings—it’s possible to pass a verdict on what someone wanted, and how they went about having it.
“Thank you,” Laurie said to Bharat. “I’ve not ruled out going to the party.”
Yes, she had.
It had been a working week since the Dan and Laurie exclusive landed on front pages. Everyone was still subtly rearranging their positions around her, figuring out the altered rules of engagement.
Michael kept asking her to come out for a lunchtime sandwich, and on the day Laurie couldn’t fob him off, she picked at a tuna wrap in Pret, braced for his gambit.
“How are you?” came before he’d gotten the cardboard ring off his plowman’s baguette.
Laurie said: “Buggering on” brightly, and “I’d prefer not to talk about it if that’s OK.” Michael nodded in obvious disappointment; as much as she knew he liked to compare cases with her, it was the gore on Dan’s messy exit that he really wanted.
Also, score to Emily: Laurie had indeed received weird messages from men. Among them, a quiet mousy husband of a couple they’d met once at Tom and Pri’s, who volunteered, “Dan must be mad!” and, without mentioning his marital status: “Anytime you want to get it off your chest, I am available for drinks and light supper.” (Laurie wasn’t going to go anywhere near someone who used the words “light supper.”)
And Richard, a short solicitor at another firm, contacted her. He’d often been talkative in court and observed on email: “I’ve always had a thing for café au lait / mixed-race girls. You know, you look like Whitney Houston (before she became a bit of a crack whore, I hasten to add!).”
Oh, and the university friend, Adrian, who asked if she wanted to meet up given he was in town on business, and when she politely declined, replied: “I’m in a five-star hotel room. What am I meant to do with this enormous erection in front of me?”
Laurie blinked at this message for a full minute and replied: “Ask him politely to leave?”
She screen-grabbed the exchange and sent it to Emily, who said she wanted it framed and on her wall.
It all appealed to Laurie’s sense of the ridiculous, until she remembered this was What Many Men Are Like, and these were what she was left with. She wasn’t ever going to experience desire again, simple as that.
So there were two dates in the calendar to dread: first, the looming Christmas party. When she and Dan were together, they jointly invented a reason to miss it. They’d been creative: for many years, a phony anniversary worked. Then Salters moved it by a week and they had to find fresh excuses. So they tag teamed. One went one year, the other the next. As long as the event featured one of them, it gave the appearance of attendance.
It was Laurie’s turn to give it a miss, by the old rules. But if Laurie ducked it this year, everyone would know why. And Dan was a head of department, so he’d have to be there. He’d dumped Salter’s favorite to impregnate a woman at the much reviled Rawlings; he’d want to reaffirm his loyalty.
Laurie had a binary grim option: absenteeism, which spelled shame and cowardice and everyone feeling sorry for her. It stank of defeat. Or a party with Dan, during which everyone would get pissed enough to stare, commentate. The things people said sober were bad enough. Jan had already asked if she’d had her eggs frozen.
Laurie had considered asking Dan not to go, and all things considered, he’d probably have to oblige her. That also reeked of defeat, however. She didn’t want him to know she couldn’t cope.
The second date she feared: the birth. She knew whatever recovery she thought she’d managed would be destroyed that day. Laurie genuinely might accept Emily’s Valium for that. Chemically coshing her way through it seemed the only way.
Oh, and not forgetting her dad’s wedding. That party loomed next month. Laurie felt like life contained nothing but hurdles. Hurdles, toil, and sadness. Too early for a drink?
“You doing anything this weekend?” Bharat asked.
“Not really. You?”
Laurie smiled as Bharat told her what, or rather who, he was doing. (“He
’s called Hans, he has a beard and he is every bit as gorgeous as Alan Rickman as terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard! Grubby Hands, I’m calling him.”)
She stared out at the streetlights, chin propped on palm, morose. Rain streaked the fogged-up office windows, which were forbidding, ink-black panels by half four. The precious daylight was over well before the working day was.
It was the kind of wuthering, northern, wintery Friday night that was designed for being in a relationship, Laurie thought. Even your wildest nocturnal adventurers might shrink from going out buccaneering when it was this bone-marrow chilling, and saturating damp. It was weather made for big socks, takeaway curry, Shiraz, and episode four of that spy drama thing on Netflix. Laurie would still have all those things tonight, plus a bath.
She would be in bed by midnight, trying and failing to go straight to sleep, mind churning on endless questions. Desolate in the dark, doing the kind of crying where you make heaving noises, face screwed up, childlike. She’d been doing that off and on ever since Dan left, unless she drank enough that she could go to sleep fast enough to outrun her imagination.
Laurie never thought of herself as a dependent person, not at all, but it turned out you needed things—or people—you depended on to be taken away from you to judge that.
Bharat and Diana left and Laurie did her bravest, most authentic grin and wishes for them to “have a good ’un, see you Monday,” knowing full well that as soon as Di was out of earshot she’d be clucking her pity that Laurie wasn’t at all herself.
As the clock hit six, Laurie gave a deep inward-sucking sigh as she thrust things into her briefcase. Around her were spinning chairs, not many at Salter & Rowson played presenteeism on a Friday night. And Laurie knew if she stayed later than this, she might get nobbled by Michael, who would correctly deduce that Netflix could wait.
She got to the lift without anyone stopping her and felt relief as the doors rolled shut. Any small talk was agony. The place was pretty much deserted now anyway, just dribs and drabs and beyond closed doors, Misters Salter and Rowson. When the doors were an inch apart, the tip of an umbrella appeared between them, whacking from side to side. The doors stopped, and tiredly trundled open again.
Laurie felt a pang of irritation at her space being thus invaded, and her journey being delayed. The fully opened doors revealed Jamie Carter, now resting the umbrella against his shoulder, as if he was Steed in The Avengers.
Ugh, of course it was him holding her up, in a self-consequential manner. Of course he couldn’t wait the forty-five seconds it would take for the lift to take Laurie down and come back up again. And, of course he was making the display of being last out on a Friday night.
He gave her a raffish “forgive me” half smile, and Laurie polite-grimaced in return. Yeah, it still doesn’t work on me, pretty boy.
Were they going to attempt stilted conversation? She hoped not. She angled her mouth down into the funnel neck of her coat and stared at her prim patent Mary Jane shoes, hand gripping the bag strap on her shoulder, to signal it was certainly not expected.
When her sight flickered sideways, she saw Jamie, clad in a somehow conspicuous dark charcoal trench coat, absorbed in his phone screen, mirroring her body language.
They bumped down one floor in silence, until a loud mechanical screeching startled Laurie. Jamie Carter frowned.
After a brief silence, it happened again. Crrrrrrbmmmmpfff, a metal-on-metal squealing noise that made them physically grit their teeth. The lift shuddered to a halt, with the lurching sensation of a drunk tripping over. There were a few unpromising glitching noises of clicking and whirring, as if the lift was discussing what had happened with itself.
Then, nothing.
12
Laurie and Jamie looked at each other. A quality of silence had descended that seemed quite final, in terms of the lift changing its mind. Jamie prodded his index finger against the G button several times. Still nothing.
“Try going back up?” Laurie said.
Jamie pressed the floor 2 button and again, no response.
He shook his head and jammed his finger against the button marked HELP.
After a tense few seconds, the speaker below crackled into life. “Hello! Who is this?”
“Hi,” Jamie said. “It’s Jamie Carter, in criminal. This lift has stopped.”
“Hold on!” Mick the security guard bellowed.
Jamie and Laurie gave each other polite eye rolls, shoulder shrugs. A minute ticked by. Then another. What felt like a small era passed, and both Jamie and Laurie muttered “fuck’s sake” under their breath in unison, as they reached what must be a gargantuan seven minutes of standing in silence with a near stranger in a lift.
“We’re in danger of evolving as a species here,” Jamie tutted, making Laurie laugh.
“Any news?” Jamie said, after pressing for attention again.
“I said hold on!” Mick said, his exasperation carrying through the tinny speaker.
Jamie looked at Laurie, checked his watch under the cuff of his coat; they both made more British tutting noises, muttered “typical,” did more shrugs and more eye rolls.
“You in a rush?” Jamie said eventually.
“No . . . not really,” Laurie said, feeling her lack of vibrant social life when standing opposite the Captain of Friday Night Plans. “You?”
“Yep.” Jamie looked at an expensively solid silver watch again. “What’s he doing?” He pressed the buzzer again. “Hi. Still here.”
“I just said hold on!”
“I don’t know if time’s moving differently down there, but up here it’s been ten minutes.”
Moments ago, Laurie had resented Jamie’s intrusion; now she felt quite fortunate to be able to delegate this problem to the most entitled and pushy of the firm’s advocates.
“Yeah, well, get used to more of that,” Mick said.
“What?” Jamie’s brow furrowed as he leaned on his forearm and jabbed the intercom again. “Speak to us, Mick.”
“Right . . . The maintenance company say it’s going to be an hour. Hang tight.”
Jamie’s brow furrowed further and Laurie gasped.
“Sorry, that sounded like you said an HOUR?” Jamie said.
Pause. Crackle. “At least. Sorry. How many of you are there?”
“Two of us. Myself and . . .” Jamie looked over.
Laurie couldn’t help but grin as a stricken blankness spread across his face.
“Laura?!” he said triumphantly, palms up, a how did I do? to play up the fact he hadn’t been sure.
“Laurie,” Laurie corrected, with a smile.
“Laurie. I knew that! Sorry. Long week.”
“Do a crossword together,” Mick said, audibly chortling.
“Ha fuckin’ har,” Jamie said, after letting the button go. “An hour?!”
He looked at his watch. “Fuck’s sake. Gone seven?” Jamie fiddled with his phone. “No coverage at all?! Fucking HELL.”
This aspect of captivity was obviously a major sting for Jamie Carter, whereas Laurie wouldn’t have thought about whether she could get online or call anyone for another five minutes at least. Maybe Dan was right, maybe she had become insular and boring. Should she be trying to Snapchat with dog ears filters, from inside this Faraday cage?
Jamie yanked his coat sleeve up, checked the time again—although in the last minute, Laurie was guessing it had only moved forward by a minute—and jabbed at his phone again and then waggled it. “What about you?”
Laurie rifled her own iPhone out of her bag and peered at the screen. It was covered in spidery cracks and fractures. It looked like she felt. She shook her head.
“Absolutely wonderful,” Jamie said, looking at his phone again in disgust. He threw his umbrella and briefcase down and pressed the button.
“Hi, Mick. Would you do me a favor—would you call my date for tonight and tell her I’m trapped in a lift?”
Laurie laughed out loud, a real belly laugh.
<
br /> “What?” Mick barked.
“Call her. And say I’m trapped in a lift, put our date back an hour.”
Wait, he was serious?
“OK, here’s her number . . .” Jamie read it from his iPhone. “0-7-9-1 . . .”
Jamie took his coat off as he did so, shucking it over his shoulders in a manner that somehow felt showy even though he was simply taking a coat off.
“What?” he said, glancing over, unbuttoning a cuff and rolling a sleeve up.
“He’s got a job to do, he’s not your PA!”
Jamie rolled his eyes and ignored her.
“No one is answering that number,” Mick said over the intercom moments later.
“I bet she thinks an unrecognized Manchester landline is PPI.” Jamie sighed. “Thanks for trying, Mick.” He rolled up his other sleeve and sat down, sighing heavily.
Laurie realized there was no longer any reason for her to be standing up either, and followed suit.
“Are you claustrophobic?” Jamie said.
Laurie shook her head, self-conscious that the wave of panic she’d just felt was obviously visible.
She was telling the truth; she wasn’t, to her knowledge, claustrophobic. But right now she’d been unexpectedly reacquainted with the sensation of breaking her arm as a kid, having a heavy plaster cast on it, and waking up in the dead of night freaking out: “Get it off me, get it off me!” She’d been fine in this lift, until that very second, when the four walls pressed in and with no hope of escape, her chest tightened, and her fists clenched, nails digging into her palms.
“Breathe,” Jamie said, watching Laurie. “Concentrate on breathing. We’ll be out of here before you know it.”
Despite what she said, he was smart enough to spot she wasn’t coping. Typical lawyers, she thought. We read people constantly. We don’t necessarily care about what we discover, but we read them.
She breathed, and calmed.
Laurie and Jamie had exhausted polite, banal chat about Salter & Rowson’s internal politics, and the gnarly attitudes of certain magistrates, and the clock had barely shifted. Twelve minutes had passed since Laurie last looked.
If I Never Met You Page 9
