If I Never Met You(74)
‘How do you know, when you’ve fallen for someone in a long-term, could marry, settle down forever sort of way? Please don’t say ‘you can’t imagine life without them’ or similar because I can’t imagine life without Hattie but I don’t want to marry her. Something that might give me real insight.’
‘Oh … er.’ This was a role reversal, Laurie feeling like the knowledgeable one. ‘Hmmm. It feels like a conversation that you never want to end, I suppose. A renewable energy source. You know how with some people you can’t get chatting off the ground? They’re hard work? Falling in love is the extreme opposite. Endless fascination. It’s effortless. A spark turns into a flame turns into a fire. That doesn’t go out. Unless you meet some leggy ginger whore specialising in Contentious Trusts and Probate.’ She smiled.
‘Endless fascination,’ Jamie said. ‘OK.’
‘Yeah. I mean, that makes it sound a bit like a one on one seminar with my brilliant old law tutor, Dr McGee. Obviously there’s the part where you would gladly lick them like an ice cream in any place they asked. I would not lick Dr McGee anywhere he asked.’
‘Funnily enough, I did,’ Jamie said. ‘Got a first though.’
‘Ahahahaa.’
‘Why are you wondering what love is like? Do you want to know what love is, like Foreigner?’ Laurie said.
‘I might have … met someone,’ Jamie said, meeting her eye, looking supremely ill at ease, eyes darting away again.
‘Wow,’ Laurie said, feeling an odd sharp heat flare inside her.
Ah, that text. The hasty phone flip. It made sense now. ‘After everything you said!’
‘Yeah.’ Jamie looked sheepish. ‘No one’s more surprised than me.’
‘Hey – but you’re going to wait until we’ve ended our pretending, right?’
‘Oh, definitely,’ Jamie said. ‘The faking has to be over.’
As she walked to the shower, feeling stirred up, Laurie thought: well damned if I know what almost putting his tongue down my throat was about, then. Rotter. She disliked the fact she had a little ache, a pulse of envy for this unknown woman. Oh to be loved like that again.
30
‘Alright, this is huge. You’re no longer giving me the “just fooling around”, line,’ Bharat said, ‘You went to his home town and met his parents?! For the weekend? What the hell? Should I buy a hat?’
Bharat insisted they buy pastries as an alibi to get a table in Starbucks and stay for a fifteen-minute catch-up. ‘We’ll buy Di’s foul eggnog latte at the end, so she won’t spot it’s gone cold.’
Manchester was in full swing winter, lights on Deansgate, the bloody Slade song starting to peal from shop doorways.
‘I can’t go into any detail without betraying confidences but can I say, there was a purpose for the trip. It was … circumstances driving it, not necessarily a massive urge to take things up a notch.’
They’d left yesterday with foil packages of leftover food from the party foisted on them, extracted promises from an uneasy Laurie to return soon, and Jamie’s mum indeed wailing: ‘We didn’t get the photo albums out! Wait wait, Laurie, you have to at least see this.’ She disappeared off and returned with a photo of a stark naked toddler Jamie in a cowboy hat, on the driveway, poking his tongue out defiantly.
‘Oh MUM,’ Jamie said, turning scarlet, as Laurie mimed covering her eyes.
‘Nice penis,’ Laurie whispered as they got into his dad’s car.
‘I will hate you forever, you vile bully.’
Laurie had to fight to keep her voice level when chatting with Eric on the way to the station.
The train ride had zoomed by, as they discussed Jamie’s long-range career plans – pro bono work in Chicago’s ghettoes. ‘You are such a clichéd hipster, don’t use your pulling lines on me!’ Laurie said – and listening in on the hungover students playing Cards Against Humanity on the table across the aisle. When they embraced warmly at Piccadilly, Laurie’s heart had felt full and her life felt wholesome.
‘Were they alright, his parents? Are you going to get engaged? Is the sex off the CHAIN?’ Bharat said, sipping his cappuccino.
Laurie counted the answers off on her hand: ‘Yes very, no lol, and what, staying in his parent’s spare room?’
Bharat gurgled.
‘It’s great to see you upbeat again. After what happened with Dan it was obvious you were destroyed,’ Bharat said, adding hastily: ‘I mean, you didn’t make it obvious, but I could tell. He’s not who I’d have predicted putting a smile back on your face in a million years, but I’m glad he has.’
They went different ways as Laurie was due in court, a first hearing for a public order offence. For once, for the first time she could think of since the benders of her twenties where she still thought she could cane it on a Tuesday night and work a respectable Wednesday, she was winging it slightly. She had to admit, there was more preparation she could’ve done, but her weekend was hectic and she wasn’t in the mood for her caseload on Sunday night. She’d had a long bath, red wine and thought about Jamie Carter’s inviting mouth a bit too much.
So, Laurie flunked it. She didn’t flunk it in a discreet way. It was a flamboyant flunking, in grand style, as she’d forgotten to follow up on an alcoholic client’s alibi that he was in a boozer across town when the fighting was occurring.