Nadia rejoined them.
“Nads, I feel as if we are always doing intimate details about my life at the moment, like . . . emotional gynecology,” Laurie said, high on running, solidarity, and Captain Morgan. “I was asking Emily if I was a massive idiot to forgive Dan a one-night stand on a stag do, ten years ago.”
“Yes,” Nadia said.
Emily gasp-laughed and Laurie just laughed.
Nadia gave a small bewildered smile. Laurie suspected she was used to other women being upset by her, and it was a novelty to be taken straight, in good faith.
“I love your clarity!” Laurie said.
“Would he have forgiven you the same?” Nadia said.
“No. He said he wouldn’t have.”
“There’s your answer, then. Why should you have done?”
Laurie wasn’t often stunned into contemplative silence. Dan had played this aspect as hugely romantic—I couldn’t bear it! Ugh, the thought! Kill me now rather than make me think this thought—and Laurie had taken it as proof that their relationship should be saved. His misstep wasn’t the start of: Hey, yeah, we’ll fall off the wagon from time to time, maybe we should make things open; it reaffirmed they wanted to protect it.
And yet—how had Laurie, living in such an outwardly modern, feminist, and equal partnership, actually been quite unequal? Dan got his way, pretty much all the time. He didn’t give to Laurie what Laurie gave to him. She’d never noticed. She’d thought sassy humor, sharing the chores, and her own salary was the whole story.
But they developed roles, and it was Dan as cossetted and indulged tearaway kid to Laurie’s doting, responsible adult. She never got to be delinquent.
In this moment, she made herself a promise: in the very unlikely event she found herself in love with anyone again, she’d assert herself. She’d say what she wanted, not endlessly accommodate his needs. If that made her a bitch at any point, so be it. There were no rewards to being a walkover.
“I’m Ubering,” Emily said, outside, phone in hand. “Donal is one minute away. Ah, here he is!” she said, as the car drew up alongside her. “Thanks for a great night out, girls. We can’t go back to that bar for the time being by the way.”
“What? Why?” Laurie said. “I liked it there.”
“I’ve swapped numbers with the barman, Rob, so we need to see how that plays out.” She looked at her phone. “Sweet Lord, he’s messaging me pictures already. Keeno.” Emily made a face. “Ooh. Filth.”
“What? His . . . thing?” Nadia said.
Emily peered at her screen and swiped. “Bit of thing, some of the other.”
“Bumhole?” Laurie asked cheerfully. She was never dating again, simple as that.
“Not bumhole, I mean clothed ones too!”
“How has he taken that during service? He better not have touched my drinks!” Nadia said.
Emily started screeching: “He’s not taken it NOW, has he?! He’s not made off to the men’s.” Emily mimed sticking a phone down her leggings.
Laurie held on to the car roof, shaking with laughter.
“I don’t know how it works, do I!” Nadia said.
“You are being charged for this time,” Donal the driver said, out of the open window.
25
Jamie
Can I talk to you privately? Vegetarian Pret at 10? It needs to be somewhere we won’t be overheard (and no one here’s vegetarian, right?) Jx
Laurie
Can’t believe you’ve escaped hearing about Kerry’s adventures in veganism with pulled jackfruit burritos, you lucky bastard ☹ Sure, see you there x
An otherwise boring Wednesday, the following week, and Laurie was happy to oblige. Bail application paperwork could wait. When she approached, Jamie was loitering outside in a long coat, looking as if he might pull a bunch of flowers from behind his back. But he wasn’t smiling, brow furrowed.
“All right?”
“I’ve been better, to be honest,” he said.
“Oh?”
Jamie put a palm to his forehead.
“Oh God, so. This is so awkward.”
“Hah, I’ve got a pretty thick skin these days. Try me.”
“This is something that puts you on the spot, though,” Jamie said, hands thrust in his pockets, staring at his feet.
“If we need to call the deal off, it’s OK, you know. I’m sure between us we can work out a decent excuse that saves both our faces.”
A thought occurred to her: Has he been caught with someone else? In a way that everyone will hear about? She really didn’t fancy facing the peculiar repercussions that would involve, pretending they were polyamorous.
“The thing is. I’ve had some bad news.” Jamie looked at her directly. She could see the real pain and difficulty, then, and that it was nothing to do with her. Or not yet.
“My dad called last night. He’s got cancer. Gallbladder. It’s not curable.”
Jamie’s face was stricken, his eyes flat and empty.
“Shit, Jamie, I’m so sorry.”
He nodded and there was a moment they didn’t speak.
“He’s got a year, maybe eighteen months . . . He doesn’t want chemo.”
There was an elastic band tautness to his voice that made it clear the last four words had in fact been a volatile debate, and that was the conclusion.
Laurie nodded and put her hand on Jamie’s arm. Then moved it away again.
“It’s his sixty-fifth birthday this weekend, back home. He’s still having the party. He said: ‘I can use it to say goodbye to everyone now,’” Jamie said, and as he said it, his voice cracked, and Laurie winced slightly for him that he was being forced to show this emotion in front of her, when he clearly didn’t want to. Jamie glanced away as he composed himself.
She patted his arm supportively again and Jamie said thickly, “It’s not sunk in, to be honest. I’m walking around that office in a daze.”
“I don’t blame you.”
He cleared his throat.
“But my best friend Hattie has helpfully told them about you . . .”
“Ah.”
As with his owning a cat seeming off-brand, Laurie didn’t see Jamie as a man with a female best friend, somehow; though given his popularity rankings with women versus men she guessed it made sense.
“Yeah. I mean obviously if I throw myself ’round social media saying I am madly in love, I have to expect some inquiries. She wasn’t meant to tell my bloody parents. She’s shown them the pictures.” Jamie gritted his teeth. “Having heard you exist, now they—my mum and dad—are guns blazing that I have to bring you to his do.”
Laurie smiled. “Ah . . .”
“My dad’s argument was that without his diagnosis, I’d have brought you to meet them sooner or later. He wants this party to be celebratory and sociable and not at all sad, and they’re dying to meet you. He actually used those words and said ‘no pun.’” Jamie tried to roll his eyes, swallowing hard with the effort of acting casual, and Laurie’s heart went out to him. “Honestly, I tried to argue against it, but I was floored with the news he’d given me. He even pulled ‘what if it’s my only chance to meet her.’ What do I say to that?”
Jamie’s eyes glittered with the threat of tears, and he blinked.
There was a steadying pause.
“You see the quandary,” Jamie said.
“Do you want me to go?”
“Ah, God. I’m not sure I could ask you to do that? I’m more setting out the problem. To a smart and sensitive person, who might know what to say to them.”
Laurie was touched.
“If you want me to go, that’s cool,” Laurie said evenly. “But do you want me to? If you find this too weird, then I don’t mind figuring something else out.”
Jamie raised his eyebrows, face suffused with surprise.
“I’d love you to go, Laurie, and I’d be forever grateful. But are you sure? My parents, a whole weekend? A sixty-fifth birthday, with sausage rolls and ‘Come On
Eileen’?”
“I like sausage rolls and coming on Eileen,” Laurie said, and she hadn’t meant to be bawdy but accepted Jamie’s laughter as if she had intended it.
“This is so kind. I’d be forever in your debt, to be honest,” Jamie said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Laurie said. “. . . If they’ve seen photos, they know I’m black? They’re fine with that?”
Jamie did a small double take. “Yeah. They’re not racist?”
“Sorry, not saying they are, but still worth checking. I’ve had some funny moments in job interviews and meeting friends’ parents in my time. ‘But your name sounds English,’ and so on.”
“God,” Jamie said. “No, it’s fine. Obviously.”
Laurie nodded. He meant well, but it wasn’t an “obviously”: she had learned not to take acceptance for granted, but now wasn’t the time to get into that.
“And . . . they’re not going to let us stay at a hotel,” Jamie said. “But, what I could do is sleep on the floor? The spare room is big enough.”
Laurie hooted. “Oh God, I’d not thought of that! Yeah, sure.”
Jamie looked many degrees less anxious than when they’d met. “Thanks, Laurie. Really.”
She liked being this unflappable Laurie again. Go-with-the-flow-and-handle-it Laurie. Not the stifling presence, who made life feel like a tunnel. She might have stumbled into a moment of liking herself.
“No worries.” Laurie adjusted her bag on her shoulder. “Friday to Sunday?”
“Yeah. I’ll get the train tickets and text you the time, say seven-ish, we can meet at Piccadilly station?”
“See you then. I’m going in for a coffee, want one?”
“I’m already awash with adrenaline, going to leave the caffeine alone.”
She nodded.
“Oh, Jamie?”
He abruptly turned on his heel. Laurie’s heart gave a little squeeze that she could see he looked less stricken, and a weight—if not the greater one—had clearly been lifted. Why had he been so worried about asking her? Perhaps he had a slightly skewed version of Laurie, as she’d had of him: angry ballbuster who in the face of his anguish, would still say aw hell no.
“Duh, just thought! Where do they live?”
“Oh! Lincoln. I’m from Lincoln. It’s a Wild West kind of a town, brace yourself.” He grinned that heartbreaker’s grin.
Laurie nodded and held a palm up as farewell.
Inside the shop, Laurie felt pensive, and the feel-good factor of helping Jamie faded further as she walked back to the office, gripping the paper cup.
It was one thing to pantomime a relationship to the audience of Salter & Rowson solicitors. They were now going to pretend to be a couple in front of his dying father and soon-to-be-widowed mother?
What if they found out that she’d lied to them, and in effect made a mockery of their kindness, hospitality, and interest in her? What if they couldn’t stand her and she let Jamie down, and he wished he’d never asked her? What if they fell for her so hard, they expected to see her throughout Jamie’s father’s illness? Once you started a charade, it was tricky to work out the optimum time to end it.
It had felt so rewarding to say hey, I’d love to, to Jamie, but she now felt the size of what she’d promised. However, Laurie reasoned with herself, you didn’t have a choice. If you’d made up an excuse, they’d have invited you the following weekend. She had to do it; this was the least worst option.
You’ve told lies. The law of unintended consequences.
Laurie wheeled her trolley case across the concourse at Piccadilly in early evening and immediately spotted Jamie amid the crowd, his expression mirroring her own suppressed discomfort.
Going away for the weekend together, sharing sleeping arrangements—it was a huge gear shift up from steak dinners and silly photo ops, occasions when they amicably parted ways at quarter past nine. Laurie was about to intrude on a family in a key moment of crisis, under false pretenses. A trespasser, pranking them. She couldn’t think of it without her stomach somersaulting, so if she could help it, she would try not to think about it.
Damn Emily for being so right, to the point of being a prophet (of doom). Intensely intelligent people were expected to wear it heavily, to present as polysyllabic, and with a bibliography. Emily was every bit as sharp in her understanding of human nature, but because she knew her way around MAC, you weren’t primed to expect it in the same way.
Jamie, off duty, was a different kind of showy: a dark pea coat with the collar turned up (Laurie could not have done that without feeling a fool); a cable sweater and dark jeans; and lace-up, artfully scuffed chestnut-brown shoes, which had definitely been sold as scuffed by a fashionable brand. Laurie was in her duffle jacket and opaque navy tights, and felt her inadequacy as companion to this off duty member of Take That, with the chiseled jaw.
“Hi!” Jamie said. “We’re on the 19:42, change at Sheffield.”
“Right you are.”
“Want me to carry that?” he gestured at her trolley case.
Laurie smiled. “No, no, thank you.”
“I might get a Greggs pasty, and then we’ll find the platform?”
Laurie grinned. Not that posh. Jamie hoisted a brown leather duffel bag onto his shoulder and they navigated the post–rush hour crush as polite companions, like colleagues attending an out-of-town conference.
On the train, they got a table, window seats facing each other. They were hemmed in by two corpulent men who fell asleep as soon as they were at Manchester Oxford Road, snoring like warthogs.
“Are any brothers or sisters heading back too? This journey is the Mr. and Mrs. opportunity for me to get some girlfriend crib notes. Revision for any tests,” Laurie said.
“No, just me,” Jamie said.
“Are you an only child, like me?”
“You’re an only? Pictured you having older brothers. You’re so feisty and resilient in dealing with twats in our office,” Jamie said. “And clients too, I’m sure.”
“No. I wish. I’d have liked siblings a lot. Whenever friends talk about fights over remote controls, I’m green-eyed. You have someone else who shared your upbringing. There’s nothing that can replace that. I’d love a protective older brother to deal with some of the shit.”
Jamie splayed his hands, palms down on the train table, expensive metal watch face clinking on the molded plastic.
“Laurie . . . There’s something I should tell you. It might come up.”
“OK . . . ?”
“I had a brother. Joe. He died when we were kids. He was hit by a car.”
“Oh! Jamie, I’m so sorry.”
“I was nine and he was eleven. Feels wrong to say I’m an only child. Like I’m erasing him from existence. I have a brother. He’s not here.”
“Yes, I see that,” Laurie said, not knowing what else to say.
Jamie looked out the window at the dark scenery rushing past, muscles tensed in his jaw.
“I’m sorry,” Laurie said again, and Jamie nodded.
Even mentioning his name had caused grief to rise to the surface in an instant. As with her mother and her father’s behavior, some things you were never past, the way others expected or wanted you to be. Instead, you lived with it.
She didn’t know what to say other than, eventually, “Want some biog for me?”
“Yes. Very much so,” Jamie said, smiling and relaxing slightly.
“My mum and dad had a fling when they were twenty. My mum knew my dad was a scoundrel, and decided the way to get him to stay was to get up the duff with me. She told him she was on the pill, and wasn’t. Then she’s like ‘Butterfingers, we’re going to be parents!’ and my dad says: ‘No, you are, see ya.’ And leaves her.”
“Christ alive!”
“Yep. Then, Mum has a terrible labor with me and there are complications that mean she can’t have any more children. There she is, coming to terms with that, single parent, now twenty-one, relationship over, her pare
nts back in Martinique. Hellish.”
Laurie wondered if her mum had experienced the emotions that Laurie had on Dan’s departure. Peggy had been in love with her father, she’d never doubted that. It was clear from the wedding announcement, she felt something. Would Laurie feel anything when she heard Dan was marrying, as he probably would? It felt somewhat lesser compared to fatherhood. Yeah: it’d still hurt. She couldn’t bear to think she’d now carry this cross for the rest of her life.
“Oh God! And you’ve never seen your dad since?”
Laurie raised and dropped her shoulders. “I see him every year or so; he has a fancy loft he rents out in Manchester and a place in Ibiza. It’s not a relationship as such, though. It’s like he has a recurring cameo in my life. Austin Watkinson, if you’ve heard of him?”
Jamie’s mouth opened slightly and he said: “Haaaang on, not Austin Watkinson? Producer—DJ guy? Madchester, etc.?”
“Yep, him. Dancing around in the background of the Happy Mondays ‘Kinky Afro’ video, hanging out with Tony Wilson. That’s my pops.” Laurie made the scathing intonation clear.
Jamie’s mouth was now fully open. “That’s crazy! Austin Watkinson is your dad . . . Why doesn’t anyone at work know this? Or do they, and they dislike me enough not to tell me the interesting stuff?”
“No, they don’t know. Bharat knows, and obviously Dan knew, but I said not to mention. It’s not a dread secret or anything, but I have so little to do with him, it’s pretty irrelevant. It’s not a conversation I want to have.”
“You’re so insanely cool,” Jamie said, and she could see he meant it, that he’d blurted it and was now going pink at having gushed. “Not that . . . not because of your dad, but because you don’t show off. You are all substance, not image.”
“Hah, I am definitely not image.”
He blushed harder. “I didn’t . . . you know what I mean.”
Laurie’s heart swelled. Silly girl, because the good-looking younger man called you cool?! Then: No, I’m allowed this. Ever since Dan left me, I’ve seen myself as a frumpy millstone. Adjusting my self-image, it’s welcome.
Laurie rescued him by adding: “It’s an extra mindblower because of the ethnicity.” She pointed at her face. “As much as you logically know there was a white parent involved, it’s somehow still unexpected, right?”
If I Never Met You Page 19
