If I Never Met You(65)
Laurie rescued him by adding: ‘It’s an extra mind blower because of the ethnicity.’ She pointed at her face. ‘As much as you logically know there was a white parent involved, it’s somehow still unexpected, right?’
Jamie smiled and nodded.
‘How did your mum cope, after your dad dropped her in it?’
She was impressed Jamie asked a thoughtful, considerate question, rather than carrying on asking her about her notorious dad’s pills and raves.
‘Up and down. She’s a singer and that didn’t pay the bills, so she had admin temp work and things.’
‘Your dad didn’t help?’
‘Only when he was flush. Every once in a while he’d dump a thousand or even two into my mum’s current account and that night we’d have a chippy tea and I got a can of Fanta. But you never knew when the next instalment might arrive. You couldn’t rely on it. Or him.’
‘Jesus. I mean. If you don’t support your kid, you’ve failed at the most basic test of adulthood haven’t you?’
‘Yep. Mum had a lot of boyfriends, and when one of those was around they tended to help out. She’s a hippy free spirit type. Free love, no rules …’
‘She must be so proud of how well you’ve done in life, though?’
‘Um … not … as such. The problem for my mum is I’m the kid who trashed her relationship and ruined her womb. I think she’s …’
One of the large men awoke with a snort and it provided humorous punctuation to a speech where Laurie’s voice was growing thick.
‘I think she’s struggled not to blame me. If you want me to be honest. I was the reason he left.’
Laurie hadn’t meant for things to turn profound, and Jamie was staring at her with a look so full of concern it was almost too heavy to receive.
‘Laurie,’ he said, quietly. Not a question, or an opening to saying anything else. A full sentence in itself.
‘He used to promise to come to see me as a kid and take me on a trip back to Manchester, I’d get ready, bag packed – I remembered I had this rucksack with a rabbit on it – and wait and wait. He’d call … oh he’d forgotten. Was next week OK, sweetheart? As if kids work on that sort of timetable or delayed gratification.’
‘As if anyone does,’ Jamie said.
‘Yes. Still. Not as big a crime as his albums of incredibly lucrative “chillout anthems”,’ Laurie said, and Jamie laughed. She could see he was vaguely bedazzled. That his view of her had shifted.
While Laurie was pleased, it felt cheap, as these were things that had happened to her, not things she’d chosen to do. Someone who’d behaved as badly as her dad didn’t deserve this aura, bestowing his civilian daughter with a frisson of rascally excitement. It was one of the things that had frustrated her most about Dan, that despite his being on her side in most things, all her dad had to do was crack a joke and Dan would be badgering her to let bygones be bygones.
‘You’re going to find my family soooo conventional, after this …’ Jamie said.
‘Fine by me.’
Laurie paused. ‘I know the obvious psychoanalysis is I settled down with my first boyfriend as a direct result. But I wouldn’t have grabbed onto anyone. I was happy with Dan. Or we were.’
‘You’re a survivor,’ Jamie said. ‘Of some difficult things. What needs explaining or apologising for about that?’
Laurie had never thought of it that way before. She’d never been called a survivor. She turned the word over her in mind: she liked how it sounded, applied to her. It wasn’t victimhood and it wasn’t self-aggrandising, it was about coping. And she had definitely done that. Her spirits rose. Jamie was an unlikely champion. They shared a look of new understanding, as the refreshments trolley rattled into view.
Not all unintended consequences were bad.
26
‘There he is,’ Jamie gestured with the crook of his arm, hand stuffed in coat pocket, at a tall beaming man, a few yards away.
Jamie’s dad, Eric, was waiting for them on the platform in a Millets cagoule, jangling car keys in his hand. He doesn’t look ill, Laurie thought. He was balding, with rounded features and spectacles, no trace of Jamie whatsoever, to Laurie’s eyes. Jamie had told her he was a retired law lecturer and that was exactly what he looked like. He had the right bearing.
‘They’re very British, I wouldn’t expect too much cancer talk,’ Jamie had said during the journey. ‘My dad sees self-pity as a vice.’
They did hearty introductions, Jamie giving his dad a hug. She stepped back while there was some clapping of shoulders and second round hugging, then Jamie’s dad leaned down and pecked her on the cheek with a hello. He took her case from her without asking.
‘Easy drive here?’ Jamie said, and they made the obligatory small talk about traffic on the way to the car, over the noise of luggage wheels on concrete.
Laurie could almost see the Jamie Carter of myth and legend dissolve on contact. No one, not even Prince at the height of his fame, Laurie reckoned, could maintain their adulthood persona around their parents. Your closest family returned you to whence you’d came, when you were still a work in progress. They weren’t fooled for a second. Older you was a construct.