If I Never Met You(28)
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.
‘Rumours 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 gruellingly 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 behaviour, 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 got the cardboard ring off his ploughman’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 mousey 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 a short solicitor at another firm called Richard who’d often been talkative in court, who 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, everyone would know why. And Dan was a head of department this year, so he’d have to be there. He’d dumped Salter’s favourite 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.