If I Never Met You(92)

Laurie gulped. She was right on the precipice of tears and this sort of kindness could push her right over.

‘They are messing up. This is their inadequacy. Don’t put it on yourself. That your dad can’t be a father and Dan can’t not be a treacherous dickhead are faults in their own stars. You’re over here.’ Jamie gestured a circle around Laurie. ‘Doing you. And you are completely fucking great.’

‘Thank you,’ Laurie said, tightly.

‘If you ever believe that you’ll be completely unstoppable. I kind of hope you don’t.’

He smiled and Laurie smiled back, weakly.

‘Jamie …?’ The ballet bun hair girl hung off the door, in an insouciant way, like a child playing. In skinny jeans, she had a pelvis the size of a banjo. Laurie wondered if Jamie was playing it. She felt a pang of insecurity.

‘We need to order food?’

‘Get me the roast dinner thing. Do they have that? OK, one of those please.’

The girl lingered, looking to Laurie, then Jamie, then back to Laurie again, disconcerted.

‘Can I have a moment with Laurie, please?’ Jamie said to her, and her eyes widened.

The door slapped shut as she scuttled off inside. The girl watched them with bug eyes, from beyond a pane of glass, her mouth moving rapidly as she no doubt updated her tablemates.

‘Are you seeing her?’ Laurie said, blurting, slightly taken aback at the idea. What a tangled web this was: what about his fake girlfriend, and what about Eve?

‘No,’ Jamie said, frowning. ‘I thought we agreed we wouldn’t do that, while this was going on. Are you seeing anyone?’

Laurie shook her head, thinking, I should’ve thought that was obvious. Who’d date this gibbering wreck. She can’t get a date with her own dad.

‘I’d not say what I just did to her, if I was, would I?’ Jamie looked perplexed, even faintly annoyed, and Laurie couldn’t entirely read why.

‘Sweetheart!’

They both turned at the male voice behind them.

Worse than her dad not turning up, was her dad turning up now. So of course that’s what he’d done.

‘We did say half two, didn’t we? Hello there, Jamie, was it?’

Slovenly. That’s what her father was. It was an odd word nowadays, you only ever heard it when detective sergeants read from their notebooks in court to describe the defendant.

Not in appearance, quite the opposite: another immaculate checked shirt, a bauble of a watch and spotless Harrington jacket. Austin Watkinson was slovenly in his habits, in his attitude, his care for others. Slapdash. Blew one way and then the other.

‘No. We said half twelve.’

‘Oh.’

Her dad looked at Jamie, who was staring at him.

‘Shall we go in?’ he said.

‘We can’t. Our reservation was for half twelve, until half two. They’ve thrown me out after I sat waiting for you for the entire time,’ Laurie said.

‘Oh. Right. Whoops. Sorry, love. Let’s think about where else we can go, then. It’s on me!’

Her dad rummaged in his coat pocket, produced a carton of Marlboro Lights. He tapped one out of the packet and lit it behind a cupped hand. After he blew the smoke out sideways, he said, ‘Why are you both so glum and why are you looking at me like that?’ He addressed Jamie, then Laurie. ‘Why is he looking at me like that?’

‘Because you’re two hours late and short of one decent excuse?’ Jamie was perfectly direct and steady and Laurie was quite impressed at him deciding to stay put, and stay in character.

‘Oh dear!’ her dad clapped his shoulder in a faux matey manner. ‘Very chivalrous defence, young man. You have my approval.’

Jamie looked at Laurie in disbelief and Laurie almost winced at how cheap and glib her father was. When she was younger, she briefly thought the devil may care routine was impressive. It had aged badly.

‘Do you think after I’ve sat staring into a beer for two hours, without you having had the basic courtesy to use your phone, I want to go to lunch like nothing happened?’ Laurie said.

‘I’m sorry! I wasn’t sure what time we said and then Linus called me and we were on the blower for an age and when I got off I thought it made more sense to race here than …’

‘Translation, you didn’t give enough of a shit to check, or it didn’t suit you to be here at half twelve and you thought messing me around was a price worth paying for that convenience.’

‘Oh, it was hardly that considered, it’s an honest mistake. Do we have to do this in front of him? I feel like I’m going to be finishing this conversation being tape recorded in the nick. What is your problem?’ He half laughed at Jamie. He didn’t like Laurie having support, she could tell, probably used to Dan smoothing over any gaps in realities in the past. And his manipulation had always worked better on her alone; he didn’t like a witness.

‘My problem is wondering what you did to deserve a daughter like this, when you treat her like this,’ Jamie said, simply.

‘Christ alive, I think you might be extrapolating hard based on one cock-up, don’t you? Hello, I’m Austin, we met a minute ago. Let’s start again, shall we?’

‘We met at the wedding reception,’ Jamie said.

‘Oh? Look, that was a busy room, I met a lot of people. Bet you liked the free bar though.’