If I Never Met You(69)

As Laurie sipped her wine, she realised this what had slipped away, in the last few years with Dan – his seeing her. She became scenery, a prop. In the grim ordeal that was Tom and Pri’s wedding, perhaps what he hated about dancing to ‘Someone Like You’ was that for three minutes, Laurie had a full claim on his attention.

Laurie wished she had this sort of family, she thought, as she saw Jamie’s dad call him over, dragging him to his side in a rough embrace in front of ruddy-faced men of a similar age, talking animatedly. Her soul ached somewhat. You could miss so much and not notice or mind, until the ‘here’s what you could’ve won’ comparison was right in front of you.

Imagine a proud dad, who was there for you. The solidity of it.

‘Hello! You must be Laurie? I’m Hattie!’

Laurie turned. A pale, plump girl with enormous eyes, in a low cut 1950s style dress with fruit on it, smiled at her.

‘Oh, you’re Jamie’s best friend!’ Laurie shook her hand. She’d said the right thing, as Hattie lit up.

‘Do you mind if I hang with you; virtually everyone here is someone who last saw me naked as a kid, apart from red wellies, playing in the sprinkler in Jamie’s garden.’

‘Not at all. I don’t know anyone either. But thankfully absolutely no one here has seen me naked.’

‘Apart from Jamie,’ Hattie said.

‘Ah, yeah.’ Nice one, Laurie.

They were distracted by the banging of a fork on a glass and in a moment, Jamie was back by Laurie’s side, pausing to give Hattie a kiss on the cheek and a hug.

Maybe it was the emotion or the sauvignon blanc, but Laurie sensed Jamie had moved back to be near her for the speech, not for appearances’ sake, but as she alone here knew he found it hard.

She slid her arm around Jamie supportively, without pausing to think if this was a trifle gropey. They were somewhat off the map, in terms of what was and wasn’t appropriate contact. She noticed she’d never once feared Jamie taking advantage of that. He might have nihilistic views on monogamy but he was no letch, or so far, opportunist.

Jamie moved her arm away from his body and for a heart-stopping moment, Laurie thought he was rejecting the gesture. Instead, he swung her round to directly in front of him, and linked his arms around her waist, the stance beloved of annoyingly touchy-feely couples at gigs. She put her hands over his.

This felt … good. Surprisingly good. Laurie hadn’t realised how much she missed being held close like this.

‘Thank you for coming here tonight everyone. Sixty-five, how did that happen! Maurice and Ken here will confirm it when I say that we were at school ten years ago, so there’s been some awful accounting error.’ He paused. ‘I don’t want to drone on self-importantly and this is keeping you from the buffet and the bar, so merely a quick thank you for being here. You don’t know what it means to me, especially tonight. You get to an age in life where what really matters, becomes obvious. And it’s family and friends. Look after each other, be kind to each other. I can’t abide old bore pub philosophers who think age confers wisdom upon them, I’m sure there are twenty-year-olds here who are wiser than me …’

‘My son isn’t!’ shouted a voice, and everyone laughed.

‘But there’s something about getting to the final furlong that allows you to see clearly what mattered, and what didn’t.’

Laurie squeezed Jamie’s hands. He gripped hers more tightly in response.

‘Money didn’t matter. Promotions didn’t matter. Feuds and competitions and arguments, they didn’t matter. Being soundly beaten at golf … OK that still matters,’ – loud whoops from the golf contingent – ‘But I tell you what I know for sure. You all matter, very much. Time with the ones you love. That’s all that matters.’

Applause.

‘With the power vested in me as the birthday boy, I now declare the buffet open,’ Eric concluded. More applause.

She and Jamie disentangled to join in, and once the clapping subsided,

Hattie grabbed a paper plate and announced she was going to hammer the egg sandwiches. The stampede for the de-clingfilmed food pushed Jamie and Laurie into a corner.

They looked at each other, expectantly, both waiting for the other to speak, but neither did. Laurie felt her stomach do a slow lazy flop forward as looking at each other turned into Looking At Each Other. Their being tactile, it had affected her. She couldn’t stop staring at Jamie’s mouth. He was gazing at her equally intently and she thought, are we … going to kiss …?

Their heads moved closer. Her hands were on his lower arms and he moved them around her waist. Oh God, this was genuinely on. There was no other reason for them to be entangled, this was explicit.

Laurie didn’t know what this meant, or why she suddenly wanted to do it, she only knew she wanted to kiss him, badly. She even felt an anticipatory throb, somewhere in the region of her groin. She didn’t expect lust to make a surprise reappearance in her life, so soon.

For fuck’s sake, she was meant to be immune to him! She was Penn & Tellering his act, remember? Yeah yeah, said her libido, emerging from its long winter. Laurie didn’t know what status they would have, on the other side of the kiss.

‘Are you Eric’s son?’ said a somewhat booze-amplified, mature female voice right by them, causing them to abruptly step back.