If I Never Met You(91)
She’d never been asked about her premature exit from the wedding party, which she put down to 1. Her dispensability and 2. Neither of them being able to remember much the next day.
Laurie was glad she’d gone for a low key showy offy Sunday outfit, a floral dress with a biker jacket over the top, as the clientele here were very much sporting the Woke Up Like This look that took an hour to create.
She got seated bang on time at half twelve, asked for a mulled cider. It was soon quarter to one: her dad was late, of course he was. Laurie relaxed into people-watching instead. She thought back to doing the same in Refuge in the summer, spying Jamie on his date with Eve. God, that felt like a lifetime ago.
It was one o’clock now. Her dad wasn’t only going to be late, he was going to be flamboyantly late. Laurie pushed down the rising querulousness inside her, the outrage of: how is forty-five minutes late, when we hardly ever see each other, OK? How is it not a massive indication of indifference? Because whenever she got a height up, as Dan liked to call it, her dad would sweep in with bonhomie and fulsome apologies and a stupidly indulgent present of some sort, and in a finger snap, she had to convert her mutinous mood into a welcoming one.
How did you fall out with a parent you barely saw from the end of one year to the next? Arguments needed to be something out of the ordinary from generally getting on. If you had a row, then that was it for another year: the row defined the relationship. At some level her dad knew this, of course. He depended upon it. No wonder her mum hated him.
Laurie asked for another cider (‘Did you want to order food?’ ‘No, I’ll wait, thank you.’), then another. The third was a poor decision but it was now quarter to two and Laurie was half-pissed and entertaining the possibility she had been stood up. By her own dad.
There should be a clever word, a German word, for that feeling when someone lets you down and it’s not remotely surprising and yet still shocking. She drained her glass. A fourth was probably crazy, though she could really fancy one. Because drunk.
‘Excuse me?’
Laurie looked up at the Belfast-accented waitress with the cheekbones, through her slightly cider-fogged gaze.
‘I’m really sorry. We need the table back?’ She held her slender arm out and twisted the strap on her wristwatch so the clock face was visible to Laurie, to underline her point.
Of course, Laurie had forgotten the harsh table turning in popular places like this. She couldn’t squat here and get smashed even if she wanted to.
The waitress did indeed look really sorry for Laurie and Laurie was aflame with the heat of the room’s fire pits for what her father had put her through. She left cash with a big tip for the beers and tore out of Albert’s Schloss without making eye contact with anyone.
Outside, Laurie checked her phone to see if her dad had messaged – lol of course he hadn’t – and called him. It rang out, unanswered. Hi this is Austin! I know we all hate talking into these things but speak after the beep if you can bear it. She could leave a stinging rebuke on answerphone but what would be the point?
When she glanced up, she started at Jamie walking towards her, looking like the essence of young gorgeous Manchester wanker in a black sweater, dark jeans and black trainers. Jacket thrown over the crook of his arm, even though it was minty-fresh cold. Vanity, always.
He was with another heavyset young man in a red jacket and two girls, one with short dark hair and another with a ballet dancer’s bun. They were both, it was evident from a distance, gorgeous.
‘Hi!’ Laurie and Jamie both said, in unison.
They mutually exchanged an alarmed look that said: If we are meant to be dating then this should be handled a certain way but we’ve not really thought what that might involve.
‘You go ahead, I’ll have the house beer,’ Jamie said, fixing it hastily, gesturing his friends inside.
When they’d safely trooped through the door, he said, ‘That’s a mate from my Liverpool days and some other friends. Somehow I didn’t think when you said you were coming here, it’d be Sunday. You waiting for your dad?’
‘Well I was.’
Laurie explained to Jamie why she was leaving, and Jamie grimaced and said: ‘That’s completely shit. And he’s not picking up? Wow.’
‘Yep. Also, don’t turn round and look, but be aware they’ve given your friends seats in the window, and they have a direct line of sight to us right now.’
‘I’ve never felt as guilty in my life as I do, doing absolutely nothing wrong with you.’ Jamie grinned and Laurie tried to smile, but she couldn’t manage much of one.
It was good to see him, if in excruciating circumstances. Was he on a double date …?
‘Are you OK?’ he said.
Being asked if she was OK, a friend seeing her not OK-ness, tipped the balance. Laurie’s eyes stung in the bright winter sunlight and she said, morose with alcohol on an empty stomach: ‘Was there something in Dan that was like my dad, that I unconsciously homed in on? I feel like I wore a please kick my arse some more sign. Without knowing it. Should I have treated them both differently?’
‘No. Listen,’ Jamie put his hand on her side and moved Laurie further out of the way of the door, as more customers arrived. ‘Listen to me on this, I know what I’m talking about. It’s got fuck all to do with you. I’ve let down some great people in my time and it was never, ever anything to do with them. In fact, sometimes the fact they were great sent me spinning off even harder in the opposite direction.’