If I Never Met You(107)

Salter and Rowson boggled at her confidence.

‘We don’t want you to leave, Ms Watkinson,’ Salter said, though from Rowson’s expression she thought he might’ve considered it. ‘I would like to know this, however. Why were you helping Jamie Carter to a partnership, rather than applying for it yourself?’

‘Oh …’ Laurie was stunned. ‘I suppose I’m content doing what I am. I didn’t think I was partner material to be honest.’

That’s a shame, as I would like you to apply for it in the New Year,’ Mr Salter said. ‘I was thinking of asking you to put yourself forward anyway. The sangfroid with which you’ve dealt with this, despite your mistakes, has convinced me. We don’t only divine character in how people handle wins. You see more in the disasters.’

Ain’t that the truth.

‘Oh … OK.’ She was getting a promotion out of this?! ‘Thank you.’ She paused, and blurted: ‘You think the criminal department lads will cope with a female boss?’

‘No,’ said Mr Salter, and they shared an unexpected bout of conspiratorial laughter.

Laurie’s phone went with an unrecognised mobile number on Christmas Eve afternoon and despite her conviction that those were always best to leave to ring out, she picked up.

‘Hello, sweetie! It’s Hattie! Jamie’s best mate. We met at Eric’s sixty-fifth. In Lincoln. I was drunk. I made you ingest plum vodka.’

‘Oh, hi!’ Laurie said, smiling at the number of descriptors Hattie felt necessary, to identify her among all the Hatties that Laurie had met at sixty-fifth birthdays in Lincoln recently.

‘I will get to the point as you probably have presents to wrap and shit. I know everything, Jamie told me. And I mean everything. Well, I don’t know everything, like not how many positions in a night.’

Laurie laughed, despite herself.

‘I know about the deal you two made. I’ve known for a while.’

‘Did you know before Lincoln?!’

‘… Yeah. Dread secret. Only at the last minute after I’d blabbed to his parents that I knew he was seeing you. Jamie said I had to stop getting their hopes up and explained why.’

Hah, he’d told his best friend too. Wait – so when Hattie said Jamie was besotted, it wasn’t based on any fibs they’d told?

‘You asked me if I was in love with him?!’

‘Ha. Jamie said you were sharp! How do you remember that? I was bladdered! You were more like a couple than anyone else in that room and I couldn’t resist stirring.’

‘Hah,’ Laurie said, but the atmosphere of that night was now roaring back in her memory.

‘From the way he was talking about you constantly I thought it must be more complicated than he was saying, and then I saw you both together, and I knew for sure.’

‘Right.’

‘I know why he lost his job.’

‘Yeah. Not been a few weeks I’ll forget in a hurry!’ Laurie said, with fake jollity.

‘Your decisions are your decisions, for your reasons, but if it was because you thought Jamie was some lying manipulator, I want you to know that Jamie really, really loved you. I’ve known him since we were small, and yes, he’s broken some hearts but only in the way anyone as beautiful as him does; he’s not nasty. It’s beyond unfortunate that Past Him bit him on his arse when it did. For what it’s worth, he told me about the Eve thing at the time. He told me the same thing he told you: he knocked her back. And Laurie, look: he had no reason to lie to me.’

‘This really kind of you, and you’re a great mate to him,’ Laurie said. ‘I think Jamie and I are just not meant to be.’

This was said off the top of her head, given Laurie wasn’t otherwise one for fate, and mystical catechisms.

‘Fuck “meant to be”!’ Hattie said, heartily, ‘Meant to be is too passive, in a crisis. He’s talking about moving to London. I know he’d stay in Manchester if he thought you wanted him. Part of the reason he’s going is to avoid seeing you around. He said it’s not even about seeing you with other men, just that simply seeing you would hurt too much.’

‘He said that, did he,’ Laurie said, with a doubtful tone.

‘Yes, he did.’ But, said that little voice, he’d hardly tell his best gal pal, he was up to no good.

‘He’s right, he probably needs to go,’ Laurie said. At least she’d be spared seeing him draped over someone from Office Angels in that tiki bar.

‘Laurie, seriously, I am going to back my claims up. I’m going to show receipts. He and I always stay in touch over email. Massive long Gmails about all sorts of things you know, and it’s quite personal. Things we wouldn’t tell anyone else.’

‘… OK?’

‘He sent me one the Sunday after you got together. Let me read it to you …’

‘Hattie …’ Laurie said, but she obviously wasn’t going to be diverted.

‘Hats, big news: I finally told Laurie how I feel. I was absolutely bricking it, but seeing her with another man, briefly (explain another time) (God I am still fuming, I knew that beefy beta mope was going to crack on to her from the start) put me into the kind of state where a man listens to Nick Cave albums at top volume and smashes back bottles of whisky, while primitive roaring. It spurred me into action, and I turned up on her doorstep at midnight and declared myself. She said she felt the same way, but, understandably was very wary of me after the times I’d bragged about being Poundshop Errol Flynn.