If I Never Met You(32)
‘Oh yeah. As separated as you can be,’ Laurie said, and tried for a satirical smirk that came off as strained.
‘I don’t know him that well,’ Jamie said, and trailed off, obviously struggling to judge what was appropriate.
‘I feel like if I say anything polite about him it’ll stick in my throat and if I say anything negative, it’ll make me look bitter,’ Laurie said. ‘Safe to say working together is fucking awful.’
Laurie thought again about the day to come, when Dan dashed out because Megan was in labour. Having to hear about it on the office grapevine, the glances, the whispers, who’s gonna tell her. She’d be expected to put her anger aside and wish him well. A baby carries all before it, how could Laurie’s feelings matter more?
How Dan would be in a floating state, partly due to sleeplessness, and briefly imagine the hatchet could be buried in the wash of love and wonder he felt. She could imagine the horrifically misjudged Laurie, meet my son/daughter xx text and photo already. The retraction later, which would come via mutual friends: ‘He feels so stupid about that, he’d been up for twenty-seven hours straight. It was a difficult birth in the end, ventouse I think, and you’re still very much a part of him/on his mind.’
Then they’d think they could tell Laurie he’d taken naturally to fatherhood, as if that wasn’t akin to driving hot nails into her hands and expecting her to say: Oh that’s nice. It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good: from the ashes of us, comes the miracle of new life. It’s an ill fucking wind alright and I’ll give him a ventouse.
She’d be furious and scorched by this until the end of her days. She felt delirious thinking about it.
‘I bet it’s a nightmare,’ Jamie said. ‘I actually left the last firm I was at in Liverpool over a similar, uh, complication. Not anything like as serious a relationship. But we didn’t function well as colleagues, after.’
Laurie suppressed a smile and nodded. No shit, Jamie Carter had left an angry trail of women in his wake. However, he’d inadvertently hit on a rich seam of conversation – Liverpool. He and Laurie discussed the city she knew from her university years versus the one he knew from his twenties, and that launched them into student times, and the pressures of their early lawyering. Laurie was starting to feel light pressure from her bladder, too. She had visions of having to squat in the corner while Jamie Carter turned his back and whistled a Maroon 5 tune.
Eventually, like the Voice Of God, Mick interrupted in the intercom and said ‘We’re getting you moving! Only a couple of minutes,’ and both of them whooped their relief.
The lift jolted into life and Laurie would 1. never take its movement for granted again and 2. be getting the stairs from now on anyway.
Mick was waiting for them on the ground floor, looking delighted.
‘Were you about to start drinking your urine?’
‘I’m certainly going to drink some imported Czech urine now,’ Jamie said.
‘Hell yes,’ Laurie said, and wondered if she and Jamie Carter would ever speak again, outside shop talk. Sharing this ordeal was worth a ‘hi’ in the corridor, and a head nod if their eyes met in departmental meetings. Maybe not much more.
They said their hearty goodnights to Mick, and thanked their saviour, the man in the boiler suit with the monkey wrench.
As Jamie held the front door for Laurie, he said: ‘Hey. You might very much want to get straight off, and please say so if you do. But given we’ve both had our Friday nights trashed, fancy a quick drink? Drown our sorrows?’
‘Oh …? Sure.’
Laurie surprised herself by not only accepting, but wanting to. She was secretly gratified that after an hour and a half of confinement together, he didn’t want to get away from her as fast as possible. And she didn’t think for a second Jamie was trying it on, either. She understood what he meant, she felt it too: going home now to dinner for one was pure surrender. They couldn’t let the lift win.
‘Nice one,’ Jamie said, with a dazzling smile, and she momentarily saw a flash of the powers that inflamed boss’s nieces.
13
They went to Trof, an artfully scruffy bar for hipster youth and middle youth in the Northern Quarter, barmen in beanies with beards, on the basis the usual pub nearby would be overrun with their own.
What if anyone saw them? Laurie wasn’t worried, despite being recently uncoupled. When she asked herself why, it was because the idea she and Jamie Carter would have a dalliance was such a leap, the speculation wouldn’t get off the starting blocks. She’d explain and guffaw and everyone would concede, yeah, we were reaching, there. Laurie didn’t know whether to feel reassured or saddened by this.
In some sort of devilishly brilliant coincidence, ‘You’re So Vain’ was playing at volume as they entered, as if they knew Jamie Carter walked into bars like he was walking on to a yacht.
Laurie loved the interior’s golden glow and heaving warmth, compared to the violet-black cold of Manchester outside. She did like being around people, she realised, just not people she knew and was required to talk to.
‘What’re you having?’
‘Big red wine please,’ Laurie said.
‘Right you are.’
What was his accent? It wasn’t straight up northern but it definitely wasn’t southern, either.