Her mum used to play Paul Simon’s Graceland on a loop, and Laurie kept thinking of the line about losing love being like a window into your heart. She wanted it shuttered. And she had to see him here, interact? The thought made her insides seize up.
It was with intense apprehension, aware that a longer absence would generate more interest, Laurie had come back into work today.
Only to find, thanks to a God with a sick sense of humour, Dan loitering outside at nine a.m., finishing a call with a client. It was harrowing, but better she faced him straight away, and without them being watched.
‘How are you?’ he said, looking, it had to be said, completely shit scared of her.
‘Fine,’ she replied, and marched past. Knowing her half stone weight loss, haunted baggy eyes and near palpable despair said different.
‘Laurie,’ Dan caught her arm, lowered his voice, ‘I said you had a stomach flu. People asked me.’
She gave a curt nod in response, because this wasn’t the time or place to be cutting or contemptuous, then pulled her arm away firmly and marched into the building.
Salter & Rowson was an old-fashioned law firm, a few streets away from Deansgate. It was a looming Victorian building housing criminal, civil and family departments, a brace of legal secretaries and four receptionists. Mr Salter, sixty-ish, and Rowson, fifty-something, had started the firm in the early 1980s when Salter still had hair and Rowson was still on his first wife and family.
A large portion of their business was legal aid. Laurie spent much time in the magistrates’ court defending individuals who Dan categorised as ‘toerags and scallies.’ He was in civil, which as the name suggested, offered a slightly more stately pace. Laurie was old enough not to have to do the on call shifts, where she had to hack out at one in the morning.
The criminal department was the largest, and for reasons lost to the mists of time, when Laurie joined over ten years ago she was seated in a crappy adjunct office next to Bharat – litigation, specialising in medical negligence – and Diana, secretary to Bharat and anyone else in the vicinity.
She was eventually offered a move into criminal next door but declined: she’d already struck up a friendship with Bharat and Di.
Climbing the stairs that morning, the idea she and Dan could convincingly feign being on friendly terms had been ambitious before, and was now worthy of cousin Munni’s sci fi. But Laurie had no fortitude for making major personal announcements. Did they leave the Other Woman and the rogue conception out of it, at first? How long would it take the office’s sleuths to uncover it, once the game was afoot? Even without the weekend’s trauma, it had been – count them – ten weeks now with no one getting a sniff at their break-up, but Laurie knew every day they were a day closer to inevitable discovery.
‘I’m going out on a limb and saying the “cure for death” idea’s probably been done, several times,’ Bharat said. ‘However, this could still hinge on whether Liam Neeson is prepared to play the sexy sexagenarian warrior, Jeremiah Mastadon.’
Laurie forced a laugh. ‘I’m off to defend a Darren Dooley. You don’t get many heroes called Darren Dooley, do you?’
Alliteration, like Megan Mooney.
‘What’s Munni calling this film?’ Diana asked.
‘PROLIFERATION. But with some sort of weird semi colon between PRO LIFE: and RATION,’ Bharat said, scrolling his email. ‘Pro Life, ration. Geddit? No? Let’s hope the head of Paramount and Liam Neeson do. Oh God, he’s cc-ed Liam Neeson!’ Bharat collapsed in mirth again and Diana queried how Munni knew Liam Neeson’s email address – ‘he’ll have guessed it as ‘Liam Dot Neeson At Hollywood Dot Com’ – while Laurie collected up her files for court. The world had gone digital but courtrooms still required reams of A4 paper.
Jamie bloody Carter appeared in one of his narrow suits that looked like he was in a menswear advert and should be photographed laughing, sat with his knees apart while holding a tumbler of malt whisky. Or walking down a cobbled street in a European city with a dickhead Rat Pack in tow.
He said, ‘I don’t mean to push,’ – yes you do, Laurie thought, giving him grit-teeth smile – ‘Could you update me on the Cheetham case?’
Laurie gave him a brusque run down, off the top of her head.
‘You don’t need to check the file?’ he said.
‘No, I have this thing called a memory,’ Laurie said. Patronising git, he was how old, twenty-eight?
‘Ooooh summarily dismissed! Nicely done!’ Bharat said, after Jamie raised his eyebrows, and departed. ‘He’s a self-sucking cock of a man, isn’t he?’ Di and Laurie chortled evilly.
This morning for Laurie held an assault on a kindly shop keeper. Laurie really didn’t want to get her client a reduced sentence due to first time offending and the context of peer pressure, and yet she probably would.
A sheaf of notes had gone missing and Laurie was delayed five minutes, hunting them out. A crucial five minutes, as it turned out.
Diana came back from the loo and stared directly at Laurie, in an unnerving way.
‘When were you going to tell us you and Dan had split up?!’
‘What?’ Laurie said, dully.
‘What?!’ Bharat shrieked.
‘Dan’s talking to Michael and Chris about it. He said that it happened a while back. And he’s having a baby? With someone at Rawlings?’
Laurie suppressed a full-body shiver of despair, a fresh wave of stunned humiliation.
‘Yeah it’s true. All over a while back. I didn’t know how to break it. There it is.’ That bastard. He couldn’t even give her a week to come to terms with it herself. To show her feelings would only inflame the office tattle, so she kept her face impassive and raised and dropped her shoulders. The seconds it took them to say anything lasted an eternity.
‘Wait, how long ago was it that you separated, if he’s with someone else? And having a baby?’ Bharat said; it was fruitless to downplay it.
‘Months back. Don’t really want to discuss it. I’m due in court.’
She got up and strode out quickly, looking neither left nor right, trying to keep a poker face. She could still sense the heads snapping up and whispers from receptionist’s viewing gallery as she passed.
A WhatsApp from Bharat.
V sorry if that was an insensitive question Loz, I blurted, wasn’t thinking. Are you OK? Xx
Laurie
Yep, thanks, don’t worry. As much as is possible, can you reassure people I’m fine? You & I can talk in private sometime. Can’t face Team Kerry’s gang of lookalike raptors in Charlotte Tilbury descending on me Xx
Bharat
LOL. Perfect description Sure Xxx
Bharat was raucous and silly, but he was good people, and she was deeply grateful for his friendship at that moment. He loved drama, but he was ethical about it: not at the expense of the feelings of those he liked.
Her phone rang with a call from Dan as she neared the mags court. He was breathless and discomposed, as well he might be.
‘Laurie, Laurie, I didn’t decide to tell everyone. Someone at Rawlings saw Louise Hatherley from ours at the cop shop and she came straight back and blabbed it, and I had to face it down as best I could.’
‘Megan’s told people at her place?’