They walked Steep Hill, Laurie had a nosy around the florists and the gift shops. She admired a silver necklace, a leaf on a chain. ‘Can’t justify it, I have so much trinketry already.’
They walked on.
‘Hey, Laurie!’ she turned and Jamie snapped a photo of her above him on the street, turning to smile down at him. ‘Great for Christmas shopping, round here,’ he said, ‘Entre nous.’
‘Are you inviting me back?’ Laurie said, grinning over the bundle of her scarf.
‘My parents would have you back in a heartbeat.’
‘Unlike you,’ Laurie said, and Jamie rolled his eyes in an impression of a truculent pubescent.
‘OK, I would too. Whatever yeah. Girls are stupid.’
It was so easy, this platonic romance. She and Jamie could communicate their liking of and respect for each other without any fear of it shading into and I want to jump your bones. Here was why she didn’t believe the caricature of Jamie at Salter & Rowson – he was so much a comfortable, easy joy to be around. A genuinely terrible person couldn’t mimic warmth like this, surely.
Laurie thought on something she’d not faced fully until now – she was very likely going to be alone on Christmas Day. Emily went somewhere long haul and hot, the day before Christmas Eve, having always declared herself ‘racist against Christmas.’ Laurie would be welcome to join, except she neither had the money nor the inclination for Bali, and Salter & Rowson wouldn’t give her the days off to make the travel worth it.
Laurie’s mum didn’t celebrate it and went to her friend, Wanda’s, in Hebden where they made a whole seabass and everyone got their instruments out after lunch for a singalong. She would most likely be happy to have Laurie, but the place was crammed to the rafters with randoms and she didn’t feel comfortable imposing herself. Also singalongs? Shudder forever.
Her dad, hah. God only knows where he spent the twenty-fifth. Face down in a pile of substances. She wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t keep track of the calendar well enough to know it was Christ’s birthday.
She and Dan had always either gone to Cardiff or hosted his parents, his sister and her boyfriend. She supposed it would be Megan’s debut, meeting the family.
Oh well. Laurie would shop and plan for a complete single woman bacchanal. And she fancied adopting a kitten, sod society’s sexist stereotypes.
They had lunch at the Wig & Mitre, a pub that had leapt straight from a magazine shoot of the cosiest and most picturesque in the country.
Jamie had posted the photo of Laurie – ‘Showing Laurie the historic birthplace of a legend etc’ – and his phone was the usual cascade of Likes and comments.
Then something else pinged, a different colour notification that wasn’t Instagram, and in a smooth practised move Jamie palmed his phone and turned it over, screen facing down. Laurie knew it was something she wasn’t meant to see and that it must be female interest, and yet wondered why he was hiding it from her. Did he imagine she’d object?
They both ploughed through lamb shanks and mounds of mashed potato. Well, Laurie did, Jamie declared himself short on appetite.
‘I’m stressed about my dad’s speech to everyone at the party tonight,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if he’s going to tell them about the diagnosis.’
‘You don’t want him to?’
‘I don’t … know. I want him to if he wants to, but I’ll find it overwhelming. I haven’t started to work through how I feel, so having tons of his mates from college and my mum’s sewing club all coming up to me tearful, expecting me to discuss it …’
‘I see that.’
‘But if he doesn’t mention it … it’ll still be exceptionally emotional, knowing something everyone else doesn’t.’
Laurie put her hand on Jamie’s shoulder and said: ‘It’ll be OK. You’ll be OK.’
‘How do you know that?’ Jamie said, but with a smile.
‘Because you’re you and he’s him and everyone coming tonight cares.’
‘Thank you,’ Jamie said, brightening. ‘How do you do that?’
‘What?’
‘Say the right thing.’
‘Oh …’ Laurie blushed. ‘Well … You’re pretty good at that too. Hey, look at us. Becoming actual sort of maybe almost friends.’
Jamie’s grateful smile faded, just a little. Oddly, Laurie suddenly had a sense she’d said the wrong thing. Maybe he didn’t like the responsibility towards each other that might imply.
The party was in a function room at a pub near the cathedral called the Adam & Eve Tavern, and Jamie’s parents went on ahead to do some prep.
Laurie had brought a trusty favourite with her to wear, a cream dress with bracelet-length sleeves and a full skirt that Dan used to say looked ‘proper swit swoo’ in. It was nicely modest for a family do, she thought, dressy up but not loud, and no excess tits or leg.
Laurie could hear Jamie bumping around downstairs and risked changing without warning him. She was holding it against her front, pulling her arms through the sleeves, when Jamie walked into the bedroom and said, ‘Shit, sorry!’ backing out fast.
‘No, it’s fine! I’m decent! Could you zip me up?’
She knew this dress to be a proper fiddle, it was one that Dan always did for her, putting down the console for Call of Duty Black Ops 4 on request, as long as the game wasn’t at a critical juncture.
‘Er … sure.’
She sensed Jamie’s reluctance. Odd, she thought, that someone whose principal hobby involved removing clothes with people he didn’t know very well, would get discomposed by a woman he didn’t fancy, almost wholly wearing an L.K. Bennett prom dress. Maybe it was the not fancying that made it tricky.
Laurie turned her back and held her hair clear, and Jamie fumbled with the zipper. It snagged at bra level and he said: ‘Oh … arse it. No wait, I’ll undo it and redo it again, some of the fabric’s got caught.’
Was she imagining his jitters? Was he already antsy about his dad’s speech?
He pulled it back down to the base of her spine and suddenly Laurie felt a frisson at the physical contact, the warmth of Jamie’s hands on her skin and the air on her exposed back. He pulled again and this time it sailed past her bra, up to the back of her neck. She let go of her hair.
‘Do I look OK?’ Laurie said, upon turning round, an automatic reflex in a relationship. Jamie looked awkward once more and said: ‘More than OK. Lovely. What’s the famous Eric Clapton song?’
‘“Layla”?’
Jamie laughed.
‘Not the one about diddling George Harrison’s wife, no. I meant, “Wonderful Tonight”.’
She’d forever be a big city rather than a town or village person, and Lincoln wasn’t a city-city by Laurie’s reckoning, but she was thoroughly charmed by it. The Adam & Eve was a gable-roofed, white-bricked eighteenth-century tavern with low exposed beams and that whiff of characterful mustiness that elderly ale houses always had.
In the Lounge Bar, a banner hung across a buffet table of sausage rolls, scotch eggs and crisps, declared HAPPY 65th ERIC!!!!
Jamie was immediately claimed by the mostly pensionable-age throng, people declaring ‘Last time I saw you, you were that high!’ – gesturing a diminutive height with an open palm – discussing bike rides, the whereabouts of long lost friends, asking where he worked now.