Jamie smiled and nodded.
“How did your mum cope, after your dad dropped her in it?”
She was impressed Jamie asked a thoughtful, considerate question, rather than carrying on asking her about her notorious dad’s pills and raves.
“Up and down. She’s a singer and that didn’t pay the bills, so she had admin temp work and things.”
“Your dad didn’t help?”
“Only when he was flush. Every once in a while he’d dump a thousand or even two into my mum’s current account and that night we’d have a chippy tea and I got a can of Fanta. But you never knew when the next installment might arrive. You couldn’t rely on it. Or him.”
“Jesus. I mean. If you don’t support your kid, you’ve failed at the most basic test of adulthood haven’t you?”
“Yep. Mum had a lot of boyfriends, and when one of those was around they tended to help out. She’s a hippie free-spirit type. Free love, no rules . . .”
“She must be so proud of how well you’ve done in life, though?”
“Um . . . not . . . as such. The problem for my mum is I’m the kid who trashed her relationship and ruined her womb. I think she . . .”
One of the large men awoke with a snort and it provided humorous punctuation to a speech where Laurie’s voice was growing thick.
“I think she’s struggled not to blame me. If you want me to be honest. I was the reason he left.”
Laurie hadn’t meant for things to turn profound, and Jamie was staring at her with a look so full of concern it was almost too heavy to receive.
“Laurie,” he said quietly. Not a question, or an opening to saying anything else. A full sentence in itself.
“He used to promise to come to see me as a kid and take me on a trip back to Manchester, I’d get ready, bag packed—I remembered I had this rucksack with a rabbit on it—and wait and wait. He’d call . . . oh, he’d forgotten. Was next week OK, sweetheart? As if kids work on that sort of timetable or delayed gratification.”
“As if anyone does,” Jamie said.
“Yes. Still. Not as big a crime as his albums of incredibly lucrative ‘chillout anthems,’” Laurie said, and Jamie laughed. She could see he was vaguely bedazzled. That his view of her had shifted.
While Laurie was pleased, it felt cheap, as these were things that had happened to her, not things she’d chosen to do. Someone who’d behaved as badly as her dad didn’t deserve this aura, bestowing his civilian daughter with a frisson of rascally excitement. It was one of the things that had frustrated her most about Dan, that despite his being on her side in most things, all her dad had to do was crack a joke and Dan would be badgering her to let bygones be bygones.
“You’re going to find my family soooo conventional, after this . . .” Jamie said.
“Fine by me.”
Laurie paused. “I know the obvious psychoanalysis is I settled down with my first boyfriend as a direct result. But I wouldn’t have grabbed on to anyone. I was happy with Dan. Or we were.”
“You’re a survivor,” Jamie said. “Of some difficult things. What needs explaining or apologizing for about that?”
Laurie had never thought of it that way before. She’d never been called a survivor. She turned the word over in her mind: she liked how it sounded, applied to her. It wasn’t victimhood and it wasn’t self-aggrandizing, it was about coping. And she had definitely done that. Her spirits rose. Jamie was an unlikely champion. They shared a look of new understanding, as the refreshments trolley rattled into view.
Not all unintended consequences were bad.
26
“There he is.” Jamie gestured with the crook of his arm, hand stuffed in coat pocket, at a tall beaming man, a few yards away.
Jamie’s dad, Eric, was waiting for them on the platform in a windbreaker, jangling car keys in his hand. He doesn’t look ill, Laurie thought. He was balding, with rounded features and spectacles, no trace of Jamie whatsoever, to Laurie’s eyes. Jamie had told her he was a retired law lecturer and that was exactly what he looked like. He had the right bearing.
“They’re very British, I wouldn’t expect too much cancer talk,” Jamie had said during the journey. “My dad sees self-pity as a vice.”
They did hearty introductions, Jamie giving his dad a hug. She stepped back while there was some clapping of shoulders and second round hugging, then Jamie’s dad leaned down and pecked her on the cheek with a hello. He took her case from her without asking.
“Easy drive here?” Jamie said, and they made the obligatory small talk about traffic on the way to the car, over the noise of luggage wheels on concrete.
Laurie could almost see the Jamie Carter of myth and legend dissolve on contact. No one, not even Prince at the height of his fame, Laurie reckoned, could maintain their adulthood persona around their parents. Your closest family returned you to whence you’d came, when you were still a work in progress. They weren’t fooled for a second. Older you was a construct.
He drove them home in his Volvo, Laurie having to insist to be allowed to sit in the back, saying Jamie should be up front with his dad.
“Now it’s too late for a proper dinner obviously, but we thought you might be peckish, so your mother’s got a lump of Stilton and some pork pies.”
“Do you like pork pies, Laurie?” Jamie said, turning in his seat.
“Love them. Especially with pickle and mustard.”
“I’m sure Mary will have some. Or we can send Jamie to the shop!”
“Good for you, Jamie,” Laurie said, and Jamie mock huffed.
They arrived at the house, and Laurie thought: had anyone asked her, a few short weeks ago, what Jamie Carter’s background was, she’d have said, he’s definitely from money. Possibly privately schooled. You didn’t get his sort of confidence from nowhere.
Yet here they were, in a very pleasant but ordinary three bed semidetached in a suburb of Lincoln.
Jamie’s mum was who he took after physically, dark—presumably dyed her original color—hair in a bob, slender frame, high cheekbones, the same neat nose, dark blue eyes. She was a retired religious education teacher and reminded Laurie of Baroness Joan Bakewell.
They poured lots of red wine and they sat around a table in a dining room stacked with bookshelves, and insisted Laurie eat, eat.
Laurie wolfed down cheese on crackers and grapes and slices of pie and discussed the law, crime in Manchester, politics. Her twitchiness disappeared in small increments, until she was having a thoroughly nice time. She was less ashamed of the false pretenses that brought her here. Yes, she might not be what they thought she was, but her pleasure in their company was sincere, and she hoped vice versa.
The Carters appeared delighted she had plenty of opinions and insights. Dan’s parents were nice people, but they were principally interested in things immediately around them, the neighbor’s intrusive extension, the weather, their own children.
Jamie’s parents wanted Laurie’s take on world affairs, they wanted to know where she was from (but in a “you sound northern . . . ?” kind of way), what motivated her. When Jamie had said they badly wanted her to visit, she thought that it was excitement or relief their wayward son was settling down. While it might still be that, she could see they simply enjoyed meeting people.
“I’m very impressed at your commitment to legal aid cases,” his mother said, when Laurie described why she first wanted to study criminal law, and that everyone deserved a defense. “My son wants to make the world a better place, but only for himself.”
They all laughed.
“Nothing wrong with starting with the man in the mirror, as Michael Jackson said,” Jamie said.
“I think at some point you’re supposed to stop looking in the mirror,” Laurie said, and his parents hooted, slapped their thighs.
“Oh, I like her, Jamie, I really like her,” his mum said, putting her hand on Laurie’s wrist. Laurie squeezed her hand in return and met Jamie’s awestruck gaze of gratitude, and it w
as in some ways, the most unexpectedly rewarding split second of Laurie’s life.
They asked how Jamie and Laurie met, and Jamie told the lift story with much light wit. Laurie was glad to let him take over there, still prickling at the falsehood.
“We sparked, you know, and that was that.”
Laurie gave a forced smile.
Jamie had been right that the cancer wasn’t present. They obviously wanted normality, to still meet the girlfriend and talk interestedly with her, without the Sword of Damocles hanging over them.
When it came time to turn in, Laurie went ahead and Jamie hung back, tacit agreement it’d be easier for her to change without him.
It had been peculiar, when packing, to plan around the hitherto unexplored social occasion of “sharing a bedroom with a straight man you were not intimate with.” She had a Lycra tank top to stand in for the support of a bra overnight, and on top of that, baggy granddad pajamas. She’d brought a silk pillow, because she was too self-conscious to wear her usual turban to protect her hair from breaking against cotton. Eesh, she’d thought this would be easier because they weren’t sleeping together; in some ways, it was harder.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” Jamie said in hoarse whisper, tiptoeing in quietly when Laurie was in bed.
“Jamie,” Laurie hoarse-whispered back. “Don’t, it’ll be crazy uncomfortable for you, and if your mum comes in with a cup of tea and sees you, it’s going to be a disaster. You’ll have to start making up lies I’m a True Love Waitser. We can put this big pillow between us like this”—she flumped it onto the bed—“as a breakwater.”
“Are you sure?” Jamie hissed.
“Yeah.”
“OK, thanks.”
“I’ll shut my eyes while you get changed,” Laurie whispered and they started giggling, stupid uncontrollable giggling, as if they were naughty kids at a sleepover.
“This is so fucking bizarre,” Jamie whispered; and Laurie said, “Telling me!”
She twisted around and buried her face in the pillow.
Moments later, Jamie got into bed beside her.
“Am I safe to look?” Laurie said in stagy whisper.
“No, I am doing a naked dance, it’s a nightly ritual of mine,” Jamie replied.
Laurie was shaking with laughter. It was welcome and necessary, this puncturing of the tension.
“Your parents are fantastic,” Laurie said.
“Aw, thanks. They liked you too. You look like a ‘young Marsha Hunt,’ apparently. I’m not sure who she is.”
“She was bedded by Mick Jagger.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down really, does it?”
“Says you!”
“Oh, for fu— I’m sick of this perception of me as the greatest man slag of the northwest,” he said.
“Then be less man slag. Be the unslaggy man you want to see in the world.”
“Pffft. I’m selective.”
“Then select fewer of them.”
“This country. It’ll soon be illegal to be a human man.”
Laurie heaved with laughter.
They whispered “n’night” to each other and Laurie felt grateful that she didn’t, to the best of her knowledge, snore.
The next thing Laurie knew, it was dawn, and she had an extremely disorientating moment when she awoke, remembering she was in the East Midlands, not Chorlton, and that the sleeping male form next to her wasn’t Dan. She couldn’t help wondering what would happen if she moved the pillow away, slipped her arms around him. Would he respond?
How did I get here? she wondered dozily, then it occurred to her that was a bloody good question.
27
Jamie decreed a Full Tourist Day was in order to Laurie, and pointed out that it would yield some killer content for the ’Gram.
Laurie was increasingly unsure she wanted to be killer content for the ’Gram, but agreed. It was obvious they could sell it as look how serious I am, I’ve taken her to meet the folks and yet neither of them said so, because it was exploiting the real reason they were compelled to be here, his father’s illness.
They started with a trip to Lincoln Cathedral, and Jamie showed Laurie the Lincoln Imp, a little stone grotesque with sticky-outy ears, nestled in the eaves.
“First, he and his mates went to Chesterfield and twisted the church spire, a proper imp ruckus. Probably all had cans on the train, you know the sort of thing. In a medieval justice version of a life term, this one’s behavior was so bad, he got turned to stone,” Jamie said. “Very punitive, considering he was a youth offender.”
“Brutal,” Laurie agreed, taking a photo. “Obviously Satan wanted to send a message to the other imps.”
“The lesson we take from this is, keep your demonic children under close supervision. Something anyone who’s eaten in a fast-food restaurant full of schoolkids can fully agree with.”
Laurie laughed. “Do you want kids?”
Jamie shuddered. “One hundred percent no, no thank you. Do you?”
“I’m more fifty-fifty.”
Laurie got a mental flash image, pulled straight from Boden Kids catalogue, of her and Jamie bumping a winter-bundled toddler up steps, holding one tiny hand each. She never fantasized her children with Dan; this must be happening because she was entirely safe from its possibility. She tested her emotions on this for the umpteenth time. It still felt like Item 5(ii) on the great agenda of life questions, and couldn’t be answered without 5(i)—If I Find Appropriate and Willing Father.
They walked Steep Hill, Laurie had a nosy around the florists and the gift shops. She admired a silver necklace, a leaf on a chain. “Can’t justify it, I have so much trinketry already.”
They walked on.
“Hey, Laurie!” She turned and Jamie snapped a photo of her above him on the street, turning to smile down at him. “Great for Christmas shopping, ’round here,” he said, “Entre nous.”
“Are you inviting me back?” Laurie said, grinning over the bundle of her scarf.
“My parents would have you back in a heartbeat.”
“Unlike you,” Laurie said, and Jamie rolled his eyes in an impression of a truculent pubescent.
“OK, I would too. Whatever, yeah. Girls are stupid.”
It was so easy, this platonic romance. She and Jamie could communicate their liking of and respect for each other without any fear of it shading into and I want to jump your bones. Here was why she didn’t believe the caricature of Jamie at Salter & Rowson—he was so much a comfortable, easy joy to be around. A genuinely terrible person couldn’t mimic warmth like this, surely.
Laurie thought of something she’d not faced fully until now—she was very likely going to be alone on Christmas Day. Emily went somewhere long haul and hot, the day before Christmas Eve, having always declared herself “against Christmas.” Laurie would be welcome to join, except she neither had the money nor the inclination for Bali, and Salter & Rowson wouldn’t give her the days off to make the travel worth it.
Laurie’s mum didn’t celebrate it and went to her friend, Wanda’s, in Hebden where they made a whole sea bass and everyone got their instruments out after lunch for a singalong. She would most likely be happy to have Laurie, but the place was crammed to the rafters with randoms and she didn’t feel comfortable imposing herself. Also singalongs? Shudder forever.
Her dad, hah. God only knows where he spent the twenty-fifth. Facedown in a pile of substances. She wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t keep track of the calendar well enough to know it was Christ’s birthday.
She and Dan had always either gone to Cardiff or hosted his parents, his sister, and her boyfriend. She supposed it would be Megan’s debut, meeting the family.
Oh well. Laurie would shop and plan for a complete single-woman bacchanal. And she fancied adopting a kitten, sod society’s sexist stereotypes.
They had lunch at the Wig & Mitre, a pub that had leaped straight from a magazine shoot of the coziest and most picturesque in the country.
> Jamie had posted the photo of Laurie—Showing Laurie the historic birthplace of a legend etc.—and his phone was the usual cascade of likes and comments.
Then something else pinged, a different color notification that wasn’t Instagram, and in a smooth, practiced move Jamie palmed his phone and turned it over, screen facing down. Laurie knew it was something she wasn’t meant to see and that it must be female interest, and yet wondered why he was hiding it from her. Did he imagine she’d object?
They both plowed through lamb shanks and mounds of mashed potato. Well, Laurie did, Jamie declared himself short on appetite.
“I’m stressed about my dad’s speech to everyone at the party tonight,” he said. “I don’t know if he’s going to tell them about the diagnosis.”
“You don’t want him to?”
“I don’t . . . know. I want him to if he wants to, but I’ll find it overwhelming. I haven’t started to work through how I feel, so having tons of his mates from college and my mum’s sewing club all coming up to me tearful, expecting me to discuss it . . .”
“I see that.”
“But if he doesn’t mention it . . . it’ll still be exceptionally emotional, knowing something everyone else doesn’t.”
Laurie put her hand on Jamie’s shoulder and said: “It’ll be OK. You’ll be OK.”
“How do you know that?” Jamie said, but with a smile.
“Because you’re you and he’s him and everyone coming tonight cares.”
“Thank you,” Jamie said, brightening. “How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Say the right thing.”
“Oh . . .” Laurie blushed. “Well . . . You’re pretty good at that too. Hey, look at us. Becoming actual sort of maybe almost friends.”
Jamie’s grateful smile faded, just a little. Oddly, Laurie suddenly had a sense she’d said the wrong thing. Maybe he didn’t like the responsibility toward each other that might imply.
The party was in a function room at a pub near the cathedral called the Adam & Eve Tavern, and Jamie’s parents went on ahead to do some prep.
If I Never Met You Page 20
