If I Never Met You(56)

The mood on Monday at Salter & Rowson Towers was decidedly different, Laurie noticed. Lots of lines of sight resting upon her, more frantic whispering, conversations that happened to end as she neared them. There was a noticeable tension, like the hush of expectation when you walk into a room prior to public speaking.

Jamie was correct: if the Ivy photo had set everyone wondering, the Hawksmoor shot had convinced them. Now the gossip wasn’t if she and Jamie were sleeping together, it was that they were.

As Laurie grabbed some paperwork from the criminal office, Michael intercepted her.

‘Can I have a quick word?’ he said, briskly leading Laurie to a store cupboard which was known colloquially as Churchill’s War Rooms, given it was solely used for hatching plots, strategic planning, and arguments too vicious or sensitive for the shop floor. And storage. It smelled of cardboard, and a newly fitted carpet.

After the door clicked shut, Michael turned to her. ‘You’re hanging out with Jamie Carter, I hear?’ putting an emphasis on hanging out that made it sound impossibly obscene.

‘Yes …?’

He exhaled in disbelief and disgust at the confirmation, hands on hips, shaking his head. Laurie got the feeling he had to get himself steady before he could speak.

‘This is a very poor judgement call, and the last thing I expected from you. I know Dan has hurt you, but this is …’ Michael trailed off. ‘Jesus, really? Him?’

Laurie shrugged. ‘It’s only a casual thing.’

‘I would’ve asked you for a drink if I thought you were ready. I’m sure a lot of guys here would’ve. But it was what, first come first served?’

Laurie’s eyes widened and she took a sharp breath at this insult: the entitlement, the sense of ownership. The idea she had no right to have sex with someone else, when Michael had been on the waiting list longer.

‘You what?’

‘I’m struggling to see why else you’d choose Carter.’

‘Er … Because he’s fit?’

‘He’s fit? Are you seventeen? And without moral compass? C’mon, Loz! Who body-swapped you?’

Laurie snorted.

If Michael was in All Bar One, if this was a fair fight, she’d give him verbals that would stop short of a knee in the crotch. But this wasn’t quite so easy. Michael was tacitly wielding the only power over Laurie that he had – the threat of becoming an enemy who would do her unspecified harms within Salter & Rowson. As with Kerry, she had to tread carefully, swallowing down the urge to tell him to fuck off.

‘I wasn’t aware I needed your sign-off before I could start seeing someone,’ Laurie said, calmly.

‘This isn’t someone, Lozza, this is Jamie fucking Carter. He’s a rattlesnake. He’s ricin. He’s the kind of enemy you only get rid of by pushing him over the Reichenbach Falls. Do you know what the lads are saying? They’re saying they don’t want to discuss cases with you in case it turns into pillow talk. You know everyone’s always liked you and trusted you, but that’s going to change if you don’t wise up. Fast.’

Laurie folded her arms and looked at the floor. Some part of her had known this was coming. She’d always been aware Salter & Rowson was a toxically sexist environment. She only needed to hear the way the men in the criminal department discussed the people they represented, or look at the gender of who answered phones and made coffee, and who got the bonuses and departmental headships.

Laurie had been protected. The counterpart to a senior man; A Nice Girl. But as a single woman, she was fair game for the rough and tumble of such politics. She was – apparently – daring to have carnal relations with a male the testosterone club didn’t like, and that had to be punished.

‘What exactly is Jamie supposed to have done to you lot be so hated?’

Michael spluttered, as if this was like asking why Mexicans didn’t rate Donald Trump.

‘Tell me,’ Laurie said. ‘All I hear is bitching about his suits being too flash and expensive.’

‘I assume we’re speaking in confidence,’ Michael said, eyes blazing.

‘Yes of course,’ Laurie snapped. ‘I’m still capable of independent thought.’

‘When he first turned up and wanted to make his mark, he was a total tosser. He poached loads of Ant’s caseload and then badmouthed his work.’

‘I thought he was given Ant’s caseload, because Ant was off with his Crohn’s?’

‘Yeah, Ant was off sick and came back to find Jamie Carter’s all but taken his job. There’s big trials that Ant has prepped for, like the drugs four-hander, and Carter waltzes in, gets two suspended sentences and takes the credit with Statler and Waldorf. Swaggering around like a cock.’

Laurie saw how the trick was worked: the alleged villainy was entirely subjective, a matter of taste not substance: waltzing and swaggering. She increasingly suspected Jamie’s offence was his refusal to play the popularity game.

‘So, essentially, his big misdemeanour is that he efficiently took care of the work he’d been asked to cover?’

Michael’s eyes bulged.

‘He’s really done a number on you, hasn’t he? There’s a theory, it’s a rumour, but – rumblings that he might be going for a partnership. Can you imagine? He’s been here five minutes, and tries to get made our boss. The nerve of the little twat.’