If I Never Met You(29)
Oh, and not forgetting her dad’s wedding. That loomed next month. Laurie felt like life contained nothing but hurdles. Hurdles, toil and sadness. Too early for a drink?
‘You doing owt this weekend?’ Bharat asked.
‘Not really. You?’
Laurie smiled as Bharat told her what, or rather who, he was doing. (‘He’s called Hans, he has a beard and he is every bit as gorgeous as terrorist Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard! Grubby Hands, I’m calling him.’)
She stared out at the street lights, chin propped on palm, morose. Rain streaked the fogged-up office windows, which were forbidding, ink-black panels by half four. The precious daylight was over well before the working day was.
It was the kind of wuthering, northern, wintery Friday night that was designed for being in a relationship, Laurie thought. Even your wildest nocturnal adventurers might shrink from going out buccaneering when it was this bone-marrow chilling, and saturating-damp. It was weather made for big socks, takeaway curry, Shiraz and episode four of that spy drama thing on iPlayer. Laurie would still have all those things tonight, plus a bath.
She would be in bed by midnight, trying and failing to go straight to sleep, mind churning on endless questions. Desolate in the dark, doing the kind of crying where you make heaving noises, face screwed up, childlike. She’d been doing that off and on ever since Dan left, unless she drank enough that she could go to sleep fast enough to outrun her imagination.
Laurie never thought of herself as a dependent person, not at all, but it turned out you needed things – or people – you depended on to be taken away from you to judge that.
Bharat and Diana left and Laurie did her bravest most authentic grin and wishes for them to have a good ’un, see you Monday, knowing full well that as soon as Di was out of earshot she’d be clucking her pity that Laurie wasn’t at all herself.
As the clock hit six, Laurie gave a deep inward-sucking sigh as she thrust things into her briefcase. Around her were spinning chairs, not many at Salter & Rowson played presenteeism on a Friday night. And Laurie knew if she stayed later than this, she might get nobbled by Michael, who would correctly deduce that iPlayer could wait.
She got to the lift without anyone stopping her and felt relief as the doors rolled shut. Any small talk was agony. The place was pretty much deserted now anyway, just dribs and drabs and beyond closed doors, Misters Salter and Rowson. When the doors were an inch apart, the tip of an umbrella appeared between them, whacking from side to side. The doors stopped, and tiredly trundled open again.
Laurie felt a pang of irritation at her space being thus invaded, and her journey being delayed. The fully opened doors revealed Jamie Carter, now resting the umbrella against his shoulder, as if he was Steed in The Avengers.
Ugh, of course it was him holding her up, in a self-consequential manner. Of course he couldn’t wait the forty-five seconds it would take for the lift to take Laurie down, and come back up again. And, of course he was making the display of being last out on a Friday night.
He gave her a raffish ‘forgive me’ half smile, and Laurie polite-grimaced in return. Yeah it still doesn’t work on me, pretty boy.
Were they going to attempt stilted conversation? She hoped not. She angled her mouth down into the funnel neck of her coat and stared at her prim patent Mary Jane shoes, hand gripping the bag strap on her shoulder, to signal it was certainly not expected.
When her sight flickered sideways, she saw Jamie, clad in a somehow conspicuous dark charcoal trench coat, absorbed in his phone screen, mirroring her body language.
They bumped down one floor in silence, until a loud mechanical screeching startled Laurie. Jamie Carter frowned.
After a brief silence, it happened again. Crrrrrrbmmmmpfff, a metal-on-metal squealing noise that made them physically grit their teeth. The lift shuddered to a halt, with the lurching sensation of a drunk tripping over. There were a few unpromising glitching noises of clicking and whirring, as if the lift was discussing what had happened with itself.
Then, nothing.
12
Laurie and Jamie looked at each other. A quality of silence had descended that seemed quite final, in terms of the lift changing its mind. Jamie prodded his index finger against the G button, several times. Still nothing.
‘Try going back up?’ Laurie said.
Jamie pressed the floor 2 button and again, no response.
He shook his head and jammed his finger against the button marked HELP.
After a tense few seconds, the speaker below crackled into life. ‘Hello! Who is this?’
‘Hi,’ Jamie said. ‘It’s Jamie Carter, in criminal. This lift has stopped.’
‘Hold on!’ Mick the security guard bellowed.
Jamie and Laurie gave each other polite eye rolls, shoulder shrugs. A minute ticked by. Then another. What felt like a small era passed, and both Jamie and Laurie muttered ‘fuck’s sake’ under their breath in unison, as they reached what must be a gargantuan seven minutes of standing in silence with a near stranger, in a lift.
‘We’re in danger of evolving as a species here,’ Jamie tutted, making Laurie laugh.
‘Any news?’ Jamie said, after pressing for attention again.
‘I said hold on!’ Mick said, his exasperation carrying through the tinny speaker.
Jamie looked at Laurie, checked his watch under the cuff of his coat, they both made more British tutting noises, muttered ‘typical’, did more shrugs, and more eye rolls.