If I Never Met You(50)

‘Timing too quick, and that you dodged saying if you’d gone home with him. She doesn’t want to lie, but she wants to make us all think something happened. Laurie is not a natural liar.’

‘As if I’m going to tell her!’

‘I know. She said it’s totally out of character for you, you’re too “straight-edged” to go for a man like Carter, and we all know you’re still in bits over Dan. I quote: “one hundred per cent set up, including the Toni & Guy, Sasha Fierce do.”’

Laurie flinched.

‘Anyway, she’s stirred the cauldron good and proper and even taken it upon herself to tell Dan he obviously provoked this, and that you must be in a real state to go this far.’

Laurie cringed again, and cursed Kerry.

‘What an ultra bitch.’

She was badly needled, like everyone was laughing at her. That she couldn’t see herself the way others so plainly did.

Kerry could find anyone’s weak spot; it was her superpower. Somehow she’d immediately identified that the worst things for Laurie would be pointing up the implausibility of her as Jamie’s paramour, and the humiliation of her ex thinking it was for his benefit.

‘How dare she,’ Laurie said, as they left, holding cups bearing the names LORI and BAWAT. ‘And my hair wasn’t Toni & Guy!’

‘That was the biggest burn of all,’ Bharat agreed. ‘My friend Jessie you met was given the worst time there, she came out looking like Rod Stewart. Not even Faces Rod, Nana Hair Rod.’

‘I don’t think I’ve met Jessie?’

‘Yeah you did. Her sister was the practice nurse in Alderley Edge who gave one of the Spice Girls her abnormal smear test remember? Forget which one. It was fine, she only needed some pre-cancerous cells lasered.’

Laurie guffawed, ‘What a bio!’ and then, ‘Thank you, Bharat, somehow you always lighten the mood.’

‘Like the NYPD, I protect and serve.’

Laurie had seen a case on the whiteboard for this afternoon, with the initials JC next to it. She’d heard Michael and others mutter that because he shared them with Jesus Christ, he thought he was the Second Coming.

If she got to the mags court before the hour, she could possibly intercept Jamie outside without anyone seeing. This conversation was too involved for WhatsApp. She timed it right as he was ten paces ahead of her on the pavement the whole way, talking into his phone for much of it.

‘Jamie,’ she said, pouncing on him as he put his phone in his pocket.

Laurie glanced around to check they weren’t being observed and motioned for him to duck round the side of the building with her.

Laurie was slightly out of breath, skin still warm with not only the exertion of tracking him, but prickling shame at Kerry’s cruelties.

‘It’s over,’ she said, urgently, under her breath. ‘Kerry is going round saying it’s obviously fake and a ploy to get back at Dan.’

Jamie shrugged. ‘And?’

‘And, we’ve been made. Or I have. They’re not going to buy the idea we’re together.’

‘This is to be expected, as they get their heads round it.’

‘Why would they change their minds?’

‘You keep saying they, plural. This is Kerry. Kerry gonna Kerry. Why do you care what she thinks?’

‘Uh, I thought what people think was the whole point of this? Why else are we doing it?’

‘Kerry is one person, and someone everyone knows is about as reliable a news source as the Daily Star,’ Jamie said. ‘Let her say what she wants. It’s more fuel thrown on to the fire, which we have set.’

‘But if it’s out there, the idea that it’s not real and it’s for Dan’s sake, from now on I look stupid!’

‘Will you calm down?’ Jamie said. ‘You don’t look stupid. We carry on. The plan is the plan.’

Being told to calm down made Laurie feel even more foolish.

‘This has fallen at the first hurdle. It’s simply not plausible. God, the last thing I wanted was for people to think I am in such a mess over Dan I’d do this.’

‘Your sensitivity over his reaction is clouding your judgement,’ Jamie said, frowning. ‘Absolutely nothing’s changed. See it from the outside, beyond Salter & Rowson’s microclimate. The idea it’s impossible two single people in their thirties who work in the same office might be dating – it’s not “out there”, is it? It’s not “persuading people that 9/11 was an inside job” level of buy in?’

Laurie could see how exasperated Jamie was with her. Someone so ambitious and confident probably had low tolerance for what he perceived as weak nerves and cowardice.

‘You only want to press on because it might get you a juicy promotion!’

‘No shit, that’s why I’m doing this? Not much of a gotcha, is it? It doesn’t make my analysis wrong.’

Laurie was silent.

‘OK, look,’ Jamie rubbed the bridge of his nose, moving his Clark Kent glasses upwards, and Laurie suspected he was regretting it too, whatever he said, ‘If you drop it now, Kerry has won, because if it stays a one-off then it will look like a stunt. Carry on, and she looks more and more wrong. Which’ll it be?’

Laurie had no comeback. He was right.