If I Never Met You(49)

20


‘Morning!’ Laurie said, cheerfully, power-walking up the stairs on Monday, as the two receptionists present, Jan and Katy, both detained by phone calls, almost screeched with disappointment that they couldn’t bang down the receivers fast enough to commence interrogation.

It was also possible their round eyes and look of fascination was Laurie’s change of image. She’d pulled Honey’s curly hairdo up into a ponytail but it was still far more bushy than her usual more severe style. As Laurie had fretted about being conspicuous, she wondered if her mum had a point, back at school, that she could allow. Laurie’s afro curls weren’t a crass bid for attention, they were genetics, and yet she flattened them to move less observed in a mostly white world. To fit in. How much of her existence had been about trying – with varied success – to fit in? To keep her head down?

‘Morning, team,’ Laurie said heartily to Bharat and Di, and Bharat said, ‘Oh here she is, whoring her way to her desk as if she’s not Manchester’s most notorious slut. Careful she doesn’t try to shag you on her way past, Di!’

‘Things have come to a pretty pass when a woman can’t go for five mojitos, two toots of coke, a bump of ket and a game of strip Boggle in The Britannia Hotel without being called loose any more,’ Laurie said as Bharat chortled. ‘Honestly, you make one sex tape with a girthy dildo …’

‘Bit harsh to call Jamie Carter a girthy dildo but you know him best I guess,’ Bharat said.

Laurie and Bharat honked, and Di looked stunned. How many years had she sat opposite Laurie, and the biggest scandal Laurie had ever offered was admitting she’d never seen X Factor.

All three of them started at the sudden sight of Dan in the doorway. He was wearing that pale pink shirt of his she always liked. Laurie felt oddly pleased with the optics of him interrupting at that moment, because she’d been doing proper corpsing laughter. Dan shot Laurie a direct, purposeful look she couldn’t decipher.

‘Uh, do you have Mick’s sixtieth collection?’

‘Oh, yeah …’ Bharat rifled through his trays in a tense silence and handed over an A4 brown envelope, baggy at one end with coins. Laurie’s heart pounded.

‘Ta.’ Dan promptly departed and they all did a ‘hmm mm’ throat clearing at one another, as a way of communicating not sure what that was without saying so, in so many words.

It was a condition check, Laurie decided, a way of letting her know he’d seen the picture and wasn’t going to react.

But, this was the first time since they broke up that he’d found a pretext to visit her desk, so given actions spoke louder than (barely any) words, it had backfired.

Having run the gauntlet and survived, Laurie was feeling almost smug, until the first loo break of the morning ran her slap-bang into Kerry as she exited the cubicle. A one-woman gauntlet.

‘Oh, hello you. Belle of the ball. Apple of daddy’s eye.’ Laurie had long suspected Mr Salter’s fondness for her made her especially problematic to Kerry. Kerry’s snaky, wry tone always implied she’d caught you up to something, and was deciding whether or not to dob you in for it. It was very Lauren Bacall, the same delivery as: You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?

‘Your selfie with Jamie Carter is the talk of the office. Are you seeing each other?’

‘Haaah,’ Laurie washed her hands, ‘Thought it might be. He asked me out and I thought it’d be fun.’

‘Out for a drink, then? Nothing more happen?’ Kerry said, running a lipstick round her mouth, eyes moving to the side to catch Laurie’s expression.

‘Bit personal!’ Laurie said, in what she hoped was a jolly way. ‘How was your weekend?’

‘Hmm,’ Kerry said, capping the tube as if she’d not heard, or the question was rhetorical.

Laurie wished she’d rehearsed this more, had her tactics more finely worked out. She’d been reckless. The plan went 1. Post Photo 2. Bullshit that she and Jamie were involved.

There was a lot of grey area, and now she’d made an enemy of Kerry by not preparing a fob off when directly asked if they’d slept together. It was utterly outrageous Kerry felt entitled to know this of course, but these were the unofficial rules of Salter & Rowson. Kerry either got what she wanted from you or she spin-doctored her way around and made life a misery. She Peter Mandelson-ed you the fuck up.

At lunchtime, Laurie received a WhatsApp from Bharat to meet her at Starbucks, and she suspected if he wouldn’t risk saying it on premises, it was nothing to be pleased about.

Laurie was right.

As they queued, Bharat said:

‘Kerry’s telling everyone that this was clearly a totally contrived stunt to make Dan jealous and you and Jamie Carter can’t possibly be seeing each other.’ This tacit support from Bharat was a kindness; it was always accepted that you needed to know what line Kerry was pushing about you, to push back on it.

Laurie gulped.

‘What a cow! Why on earth wouldn’t it be true?’

Laurie knew Bharat would accept Laurie’s word over Kerry’s as a point of honour, and felt both glad and guilty. Laurie had already spun him the line that she was deliberately doing things that felt out of character – broadly true – and threw the bonding-in-lift incident in, relieved that wasn’t an invention.