‘Duh, just thought! Where do they live?’
‘Oh! Lincoln. I’m from Lincoln. It’s a wild west kind of a town, brace yourself.’ He grinned that heartbreaker’s grin.
Laurie nodded and held a palm up as farewell.
Inside the shop, Laurie felt pensive, and the feel-good factor of helping Jamie faded further as she walked back to the office, gripping the paper cup.
It was one thing to pantomime a relationship to the audience of Salter & Rowson solicitors. They were now going to pretend to be a couple in front of his dying father, and soon-to-be-widowed mother?
What if they found out that she’d lied to them, and in effect made a mockery of their kindness, hospitality and interest in her? What if they couldn’t stand her and she let Jamie down, and he wished he’d never asked her? What if they fell for her so hard, they expected to see her throughout Jamie’s father’s illness? Once you started a charade, it was tricky to work out the optimum time to end it.
It had felt so rewarding to say hey, I’d love to, to Jamie, but she now felt the size of what she’d promised. However, Laurie reasoned with herself, you didn’t have a choice. If you’d made up an excuse, they’d have invited you the following weekend. She had to do it; this was the least worst option.
You’ve told lies. The law of unintended consequences.
Laurie wheeled her trolley case across the concourse at Piccadilly in early evening and immediately spotted Jamie amid the crowd, his expression mirroring her own suppressed discomfort.
Going away for the weekend together, sharing sleeping arrangements – it was a huge gear shift up from steak dinners and silly photo ops, occasions when they amicably parted ways at quarter past nine. Laurie was about to intrude on a family in a key moment of crisis, under false pretences. A trespasser, pranking them. She couldn’t think of it without her stomach somersaulting, so if she could help it, she would try not to think about it.
Damn Emily for being so right, to the point of being a prophet (of doom). Intensely intelligent people were expected to wear it heavily, to present as polysyllabic, and with a bibliography. Emily was every bit as sharp in her understanding of human nature, but because she knew her way round MAC, you weren’t primed to expect it in the same way.
Jamie, off duty, was a different kind of showy: a dark pea coat with the collar turned up (Laurie could not have done that without feeling a fool), a cable sweater and dark jeans, and lace up, artfully scuffed chestnut brown shoes which had definitely been sold-as-scuffed by a fashionable brand. Laurie was in her duffle jacket and opaque navy tights, and felt her inadequacy as companion to this off-duty member of Take That, with the chiselled jaw.
‘Hi!’ Jamie said. ‘We’re on the 19.42, change at Sheffield.’
‘Right you are.’
‘Want me to carry that?’ he gestured at her trolley case.
Laurie smiled. ‘No, no thank you.’
‘I might get a Greggs pasty, and then we’ll find the platform?’
Laurie grinned. Not that posh. Jamie hoisted a brown leather duffle bag onto his shoulder and they navigated the post rush hour crush as polite companions, like colleagues attending an out of town conference.
On the train, they got a table, window seats facing each other. They were hemmed in by two corpulent men who fell asleep as soon as they were at Manchester Oxford Road, snoring like warthogs.
‘Are any brothers or sisters heading back too? This journey is the Mr & Mrs opportunity for me to get some girlfriend crib notes. Revision for any tests,’ Laurie said.
‘No, just me,’ Jamie said.
‘Are you an only child, like me?’
‘You’re an only? Pictured you having older brothers. You’re so feisty and resilient in dealing with twats in our office,’ Jamie said. ‘And clients too, I’m sure.’
‘No. I wish. I’d have liked siblings a lot. Whenever friends talk about fights over remote controls, I’m green eyed. You have someone else who shared your upbringing. There’s nothing that can replace that. I’d love a protective older brother to deal with some of the shit.’
Jamie splayed his hands, palms down on the train table, expensive metal watch face clinking on the moulded plastic.
‘Laurie … There’s something I should tell you. It might come up.’
‘OK …?’
‘I had a brother. Joe. He died when we were kids. He was hit by a car.’
‘Oh! Jamie, I’m so sorry.’
‘I was nine and he was eleven. Feels wrong to say I’m an only child. Like I’m erasing him from existence. I have a brother. He’s not here.’
‘Yes, I see that,’ Laurie said, not knowing what else to say.
Jamie looked out the window at the scenery rushing past, muscles tensed in his jaw.
‘I’m sorry,’ Laurie said again, and Jamie nodded.
Even mentioning his name had caused grief to rise to the surface in an instant. As with her mother and her father’s behaviour, some things you were never past, the way others expected or wanted you to be. Instead you lived with it.
She didn’t know what to say other than, eventually, ‘Want some biog for me?’
‘Yes. Very much so,’ Jamie said, smiling and relaxing slightly.
‘My mum and dad had a fling when they were twenty. My mum knew my dad was a scoundrel, and decided the way to get him to stay was to get up the duff with me. She told him she was on the pill, and wasn’t. Then she’s like “Butterfingers, we’re going to be parents!” and my dad says: “No, you are, see ya.” And leaves her.’
‘Christ alive!’
‘Yep. Then, Mum has a terrible labour with me and there are complications that mean she can’t have any more children. There she is, coming to terms with that, single parent, now twenty-one, relationship over, her parents back in Martinique. Hellish.’
Laurie wondered if her mum had experienced the emotions that Laurie had, on Dan’s departure. Peggy had been in love with her father, she’d never doubted that. It was clear from the wedding announcement, she felt something. Would Laurie feel anything when she heard Dan was marrying, as he probably would? It felt somewhat lesser compared to fatherhood. Yeah: it’d still hurt. She couldn’t bear to think she’d now carry this cross for the rest of her life.
‘Oh God! And you’ve never seen your dad since?’
Laurie raised and dropped her shoulders. ‘I see him every year or so, he has a fancy loft he rents out in Manchester and a place in Ibiza. It’s not a relationship as such, though. It’s like he has a recurring cameo in my life. Austin Watkinson, if you’ve heard of him?’
Jamie’s mouth opened slightly and he said: ‘Haaaang on, not Austin Watkinson? Producer – DJ guy? Madchester, etc?’
‘Yep, him. Dancing around in the background of the Happy Mondays “Kinky Afro” video, hanging out with Tony Wilson. That’s my pops.’ Laurie made the scathing intonation clear.
Jamie’s mouth was now fully open. ‘That’s crazy! Austin Watkinson is your dad … Why doesn’t anyone at work know this? Or do they, and they dislike me enough not to tell me the interesting stuff?’
‘No, they don’t know. Bharat knows, and obviously Dan knew, but I said not to mention. It’s not a dread secret or anything, but I have so little to do with him, it’s pretty irrelevant. It’s not a conversation I want to have.’