“Let me know if anything scintillating kicks off? Di’s had three Babychams, so she’ll not remember.”
Laurie faithfully promised Bharat she’d be his surveillance detail.
People were standing up now, ties loosened, bottles of beer in hand, covert snogging in the darker recesses of the room. The nighttime sky was visible through the vast stained-glass windows; and as she walked back to the table, Laurie thought about how she’d go home alone, but wasn’t really lonely anymore. Or if she was, it was only in passing, not as a constant state. Her powers were returning. She’d met Dan when she was eighteen, when she had the confidence to stride up to a bunch of lads in freshers’ week and tell them she’d sort the problem out. That girl wasn’t created by him, she existed already.
Dan had chosen a future without her, and as sad and harrowing and unexpected as that had been, now she got to choose a future for herself. It was exhilarating.
“Dance with me?” Jamie said, as she reached him, pushing his chair out and taking Laurie’s hand.
“Is this for their eyes?” Laurie said, behind the back of her hand, and gestured toward Misters Salter and Rowson. Rowson looked like an angry schoolmaster in a Dickens adaptation, wiry with a square set face, a thatch of brown hair that looked as if it was made from wire wool, beetling eyebrows, and black-rimmed glasses. “’Cos I think you’re all right, they’ve clocked us together.”
“No, it isn’t,” Jamie said, affronted. “Sometimes I think your opinion of me is as bad as everyone else’s at this company.”
Laurie exhaled and long-suffering-smiled and let herself be led on to the floor, feeling the many eyes following them.
Prince’s “Purple Rain” was starting.
“Are you good at slow dancing?” Laurie said with difficulty over the music. “I’m never quite sure what to do.”
“I think it works like this.”
Jamie put one arm around her waist and placed her hand on his shoulder. With their free hands, they held hands. The moment her fingers closed around his, she felt a jolt of something, an aliveness where she was acutely conscious of every point of contact between their bodies. His palm slipping toward her hip bone, the fabric of his shirt and his shoulder muscle underneath her fingertips. The light pressure of her corseted chest pressed against his—it was completely G-rated, family friendly, and yet somehow the sexiest thing Laurie had ever experienced.
She couldn’t look him in the eyes, and laid her head against his chest, breathing their closeness in. Laurie had been in proximity to Jamie numerous times, yet there was something in this moment, this sustained embrace, it forced her to face chemistry she’d been assiduously avoiding.
They were consciously creating the closing credits to their story, the one that started in a broken lift. How should it end? Should she turn her head upward, tilt it slightly, and finally kiss him, before the stage curtain fell?
But how would she know he had genuinely wanted to kiss her? Did she want someone to pretend to want to kiss her, however well he did it?
I only wanted to be some kind of friend
Even the song seemed to be speaking to them, a sense of something spinning off its axis, going awry. She couldn’t see Jamie’s face, or judge if he was feeling anything like what she felt.
When they broke apart at the end of the song, she looked up at him in wonder to see if his face held any clue, and he was looking back at her with a completely intent, lovestruck expression she knew she’d try to hold on to in her mind’s eye until her dying day. You didn’t get many of those looks in a lifetime.
“I need the loo,” she mumbled, breaking away before Jamie could say anything, picking her way through the increasing Christmas party carnage to the ladies’ room.
On her way, she passed Dan, who looked like the time on the caravan holiday when he’d found rat droppings in his Coco Pops box after eating them for four days.
“Hi!” Laurie said, and swept onward before he could reply.
Slow dancing with Jamie, and it hadn’t even occurred to her whether Dan was witnessing it.
What would success feel like to you? She could finally answer that: self-respect.
It felt like not caring anymore.
She washed her hands in cold water and looked at her face in the mirror and tried to make sense of why three minutes of clinging to Jamie Carter like a koala had left her in this state. Alcohol, Prince, him looking great in a black suit, these were factors. They didn’t add up to the full answer. She balled a paper towel in her hands.
A toilet flushed and Megan came out of a cubicle, looking as dumbstruck to see Laurie as Laurie was to see her. She stood perfectly still for a second.
The only noise was the burble of the music beyond a thick wall and the dripping of a tap.
“I didn’t think I’d ever be this person,” Megan said eventually.
“Neither did I,” Laurie said. “And I didn’t have a choice about it.”
She threw the paper towel into the bin, and left Megan standing there.
When she returned to the main hall, she could see Jamie at a distance, chatting with a good-looking girl from another table, and wanted to wolf howl with possessiveness. She felt a wash of confusion, yearning, and rivalry.
He thought he was falling for Eve, but no one would hold him back for long, would they? He was no doubt constitutionally incapable of monogamy.
Laurie wouldn’t do this, she refused to do this. She wouldn’t break her own heart in the style of a raving idiot. Jamie Carter was sold as seen, she had no cause to criticize him for being who he was, and she was glad of that. She wanted to keep liking him.
She backed out of the door and through an anteroom and she was in blessed fresh air, albeit blessed fresh air that was going to feel Arctic within seconds.
“Hello, again,” said a friendly giant in a kilt.
“Hello, Angus from Experian,” Laurie said.
“Hello, Laurie the lawyer. What are you doing out here?”
“It got too much. Briefly.”
“I know what you mean. The lass I was seeing until November is tonguing Duncan from Complaints. I wonder if he’ll listen to my complaint. How about you? What got too much?”
“Ah, tricky. My ex of eighteen years is here with his pregnant girlfriend. Always going to be challenging.”
“Whoa,” Angus said. “That’s some deep water. You’re single?”
“Single,” Laurie said. It now felt natural to say it. Even positive.
“That won’t last long. You’re crazy pretty,” Angus said. “You look like that girl out of that soap opera.”
“Angela Griffin,” Laurie supplied.
“Oh my . . . ! How on earth did you get there that quick?”
Laurie laughed. “Because when you’re half black, black-ish, everyone has the same five reference points for you. I’m collecting them. I’ve had Missandei from Game of Thrones and Marsha Hunt already this year. What’s funny is, none of them look remotely like each other.”
“Shit, sorry,” Angus said, and she winced: he was obviously a benevolent character.
“No, no, I’m flattered!”
“Better than who I get. Alex Salmond, usually.”
Laurie hooted. “Not true.” She paused. “Singlehood. I’m quite nervous about the idea of being with someone new.”
“It’ll be grand. Like riding a bicycle.”
He had a friendly face, a kind face. Was Jamie going to go home with that girl?
“You’re so pretty,” Angus repeated.
“Thanks.”
Angus leaned down and put his mouth on hers, and Laurie only processed she was about to be kissed, once the kiss had begun. She responded at a delay, feeling as if she was standing outside herself and observing what it was like with someone unfamiliar, who moved their mouth differently. It was neither unpleasant nor that great, she decided. One milestone passed though. The first kiss after Dan.
A coughing, right by them, and they moved apart. Jamie
was watching them, holding Laurie’s coat.
“Shall I get you your taxi? Looks like you’ve had enough,” Jamie said, and with his tone of voice, Angus said, “Right ho,” and made himself very scarce, very fast.
Jamie whisked Laurie around the corner, propelling rather than holding her, and when he was sure they were alone, said: “What the actual fuck? Remember the whole thing about no cheating during our dating? It being a humiliation for the other person? And the Christmas party being kind of important?”
He looked utterly furious and Laurie found herself stuttering apologies.
“Seriously, outside the Christmas party? Are you for fucking real?”
“Sorry,” Laurie said hanging her head like a naughty schoolgirl. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t think.”
Jamie stared at her, as much it seemed in disbelief as fury.
“Thank God it was only me who saw, I guess. And I don’t matter.”
“Well. Neither do I.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re drunk,” Jamie said, but she wasn’t, and he knew she wasn’t, and it was merely a welcome way out for both of them.
40
Torrential rain, the emphatic Manchester sort, the size of stair rods and sounding strong enough to break glass, bucketed down. It was as if the weather had reacted to what she’d done. The sky had exploded, the way Jamie did.
At home, Laurie lay down on the sofa, kicking her shoes off, feet hooked over the arm. She should take the dress off but she couldn’t bring herself to de-Cinderella yet—it might be years before she wore this again. Then she got up, lit some candles and put a Prince compilation on.
He was completely within his rights to let fly at her, she’d been reckless and selfish. She was trying to escape from herself, and everyone’s expectations, and their deal was collateral in testing what it felt like to tart about.
She couldn’t shift the sense she and Jamie were broadcasting on multiple frequencies now, that things were no longer necessarily about what they were about. Emily’s prophecies kept on coming true.
Ding-dong.
Laurie’s heart went bang and she sat up straight. She knew who it was at the door; knew, and yet pretended to herself she didn’t. If it was anyone else, her dismay would swallow her. In that split second, she’d learned something about herself.
“It’s Jamie.”
She slid the bolt. THANK GOD, and, OH NO.
She opened the door. He was drenched, water running from hairline down his face, coat wrapped around himself like a dressing gown. The clematis over the porch had a small waterfall pouring from it.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hi.”
A short pause, Laurie’s pulse still thundering in her ears.
“Do you want to come in?”
“It’d be better than being out here.”
She stood back as he brushed past, soaked enough that he left a wet streak on her dress.
“Do you want a towel or something?” Laurie followed him into the front room trying to keep her voice even, trying to conceal how jittery she was.
“Yeah, if I can?”
Laurie ran upstairs and grabbed one from the bathroom rail. She handed it to Jamie, who patted his face and hair ineffectually.
“Take the coat off and I’ll stick it on the radiator,” Laurie said, trying not to notice the wet white shirt underneath.
“Lovely house,” he said, glancing around.
“Thank you, I’m still paying for it,” Laurie said, smiling. “Maybe in more than one way.”
“It looks exactly like the one on that Oasis album cover.”
“Ha. Yep. Not entirely unintentional. Maybe I have some of my father in me after all.”
They smiled at each other. Laurie took the towel back and held it over her arms, a small barrier. There was an excruciating silence.
“Did you know they wanted cans of Red Stripe on that album cover, instead of the red wine, but they weren’t allowed the product placement?”
Stop wittering, Laurie! And he’s turned up on your doorstep, it’s for him to announce his business and fill awkward pauses. I am scared about what he’s going to say.
“I didn’t know that. Are you some sort of an Oasis superfan?”
“No! I liked that . . . decor.”
Jamie gazed at the floor.
“I’m sorry to turn up like this. I’m sorry I shouted at you. Only, I’ve been turning it over and over in my head. I need to know why you kissed that bloke. I can’t work it out at all.”
Laurie took a shaky breath.
“Can’t I have kissed him for the reason anyone kisses someone, when knee-deep in cheap plonk at a Christmas party?”
“Number one, he was a right dozy twat. Number two, if it was to make your ex jealous, he wasn’t witnessing it. Number three, it contravened the agreement we made, so you were taking a risk. Number four, fucking kilt. There are four compelling reasons for not kissing Angus from Experian.”
“. . . You know when you want to do something totally out of character? The fact I’d never kiss someone like that or do something like that. That was why. It was spontaneous stupidity. That was all.”
Jamie looked at her from under his brow, the muscles in his jaw visibly clenching.
“OK. I didn’t ask exactly what I wanted to ask. What I really meant is: Why did you kiss him, and not me? It seems to me that if you take a Fake Boyfriend to a party, and you’re going to do some meaningless copping off, you probably would do it with the Fake Boyfriend. I know we’re in an unusual situation and a lawyer should be able to cite precedent, and I can’t, but, you know . . .”
Laurie folded her arms, playacting insouciance when she was in a state of excited terror.
“Jamie, do you think you’re so irresistible it’s against the laws of physics for a woman to kiss another man, instead of you?”
“Objection: deviation. I knew you’d say that and, in the words of District Judge Tomkins, it’s a fallacious argument.”
She saw that look again in Jamie’s eyes. That look of starstruck fondness she wanted to see so much and didn’t trust.
“What’s Angus got, except a stupid kilt, the goofy tartan-wearing nationalist?”
“It would’ve been . . . weird to kiss you. We’re friends.”
“Friends,” he repeated.
Laurie nodded.
“When we were dancing together, it felt like two people who are much more than friends.” He paused. “It’s the closest I’ve felt to anyone in my entire life.”
That, in a nutshell, was what Laurie felt.
A silence developed. Laurie didn’t trust her voice.
“When the song finished, you gave me this look, this look like we were . . . actually in bed together, or something, this total intimacy that I felt too, and then you bolted. Next I know? ANGUS.”
Laurie sucked in air and wished she’d not lit candles or put Prince on.
“Please, don’t do this. Don’t turn one of the best friendships I’ve had into the shock twist that we sleep with each other for a while, and then fall out when one of us, who, shock twist, will be you, doesn’t want to keep doing it anymore. It would turn gold into scrap metal. I don’t want to be your millionth fling. This is bigger and better than that.”
“I agree with all of this.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“To tell you that . . .” Jamie paused. “I don’t want to pretend anymore. I want to be together. Somewhere along the line this stopped being a pretense for me.”
A beat of blood in her ears; time seemed to slow. Should she try to stop this?
“What about what you said about thinking you were falling in love with someone? What happened to her?”
“In Lincoln?”
“Yes.”
“I was talking about you.”
Laurie’s jaw dropped. “No, you weren’t, because you said . . .”
“I m
ade a dick of myself by blathering about how I’d know and not thinking you’d ask why and then I had to do that lame mislead. I thought you guessed?!”
“No,” Laurie said, replaying it in her head. Her? She was Eve?
“Take anything I’ve said as part of this performance art from, oh, I don’t know, at least from Lincoln onward. Possibly at fancy steak restaurants. I meant everything I said. I felt what I felt before I knew what I felt, you know what I mean?”
She remembered how reluctant he’d been to tell her how he rebuffed that girl at Hawksmoor: I don’t want to share you. He’d spooked himself because as he’d said it, he knew it was true?
Laurie laughed in nerves and shock and disbelief, and, yes, even if she didn’t admit it, joy. “You said love was a temporary manic state, like a debilitating psychosis!”
“Yes, and I was wrong. I was ignorant, and arrogant. I thought because I’d never experienced it, it didn’t exist. It’s not being out of your mind. It’s being in it, it’s complete certainty. When I’m with you, I know I’m where I belong. I want this to be real, Laurie. I want you to be mine. I want to be yours.”
Prince started on “I Wish U Heaven”: his music should be regulated as a Class A intoxicating substance.
“And,” Jamie said, “I think you feel the same way, but you won’t trust it, or me, because of who I was when you met me.”
Laurie sucked in a breath that went to the bottom of her rib cage.
“It’s true that I haven’t got the strength for another rejection, after you try out being a one-woman man and find it’s not for you.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
“Bit risky . . .”
“What if I’m right?” His hair was so dark when it was wet. Laurie felt this sort of detail was unhelpful, in coming to a reasoned decision. “The risk isn’t worth it? I’d risk anything for what I felt between us tonight.”
“I’ve only recently mended myself. I don’t feel so brave,” she said, a small wobble in her words.
“OK. I’ll be brave for both of us. Kiss me. Afterward you can tell me that there’s not enough here worth taking a chance on, and we should leave it as mates.”
If I Never Met You Page 29
