‘Oh yeah,’ said Nadia, disgorging three packets of cherry tomatoes from her backpack.
Laurie tore a packet open and started building an ‘R’.
‘What are you doing?’ Emily said.
‘I’m writing ROB HATES WOMEN in tomatoes, which you are then going to take a photo of, send to him, and block him before he can reply. Nadia, you work on “women”,’ Laurie said.
Laurie thought Emily might argue but she observed their quiet industry in awe.
‘This is …’ Emily teared up. ‘Everything.’
32
Dad
Darling just seen this, sorry to hear – his loss!! The wedding piss-up is at Cloud 23 a week this Friday, we’ve hired the place out so give them your name on the door. Bring a friend if you want. Can’t wait to see you! Nic’s gone completely fucking bridezilla by the way, she’s absolutely spanked the plastic. She’ll probably look like something out of the Moulin Rouge with fuckin’ ostrich feathers. So get your gladrags on. Love you darling. Austin. Xxx PS no gifts ta, we’re drowning in towels
A wedding reception, notice given, ‘a week Friday.’ On a Wednesday. So what, nine days? Her dad had outdone himself.
And Laurie wasn’t going to tell him that the way modern messaging services worked, ‘just seen this’ no longer cut it as a fob off. It had never cut it anyway. ‘His loss’ and a sad face emoticon, after eighteen years, wow.
Laurie wanted to get through this party as fast as possible, merely showing her face, without the encumbrance of a plus one.
She and Jamie had no dates in the diary other than the Christmas party now, and she felt them both giving each other breathing space as they geared up for it. Was he finding it hard to keep himself away from whoever he was falling in love with?
Laurie bumped into Jamie, in the middle of the following week, as he was leaving court and she was on her way in. She hadn’t seen him in the Atticus Finch glasses for a while, maybe her teasing had put him off.
After an awkward hello where neither of them knew quite how to greet each other physically, and ended up settling for a chaste cheek-kiss, Jamie asked after her weekend plans.
‘Oh it’s a doozy, this one. My dad’s got married, and the party is at Beetham Tower bar this Friday night. In case anyone asks about it, now you know, but don’t worry about coming along.’
‘Uhm, if it’s your dad’s wedding reception, shouldn’t I go?’ Jamie said.
‘Oh, nah. No one here’s going to know it’s happening. You’re safe to swerve it.’
‘There’s still a chance it could get out that I wasn’t with you. I’m not doing anything on Friday and I’m only going to need a cover story for not being there, and one good enough that if anyone asks me, it fits with whatever’s been on social media if they check up.’
Laurie kept forgetting that asking some people to keep a low profile online for a weekend was akin to requesting them spending it locked in a cupboard.
‘Coming along seems easier. Unless you really don’t want me to?’ Jamie said.
‘No, sure, come!’ Laurie said. She finally saw Jamie was looking slightly hurt. ‘It’d be good to have the company, actually.’
Why hadn’t she asked Jamie from the off? Having expected him to put a distance after Lincoln, was she doing that herself, rejecting him before he could reject her? Maybe.
It could also be because fake boyfriend and forever-faking-it father was too much fake, for one event. And yet Emily thought Emily was the fake?
But when she was with Dan, he’d have felt like an anchor. Jamie Carter was like holding on to a balloon.
And yet … which one of the two, recently, had been completely attentive in a room where she didn’t know anyone? And had heard her story of her childhood, and treated it like proper testimony, not a little bit of a sob story she should get over?
‘Hmmm. I feel like I am forcing myself on you now,’ Jamie said, and Laurie sensed he was hinting, I will do this, but you need to make up for not inviting me from the start.
‘No, seriously Jamie, please come,’ Laurie said, more imploring and certain now. She put her hand on his arm. ‘My reluctance was nothing to do with not wanting you there, my dad is just … a basket of snakes for me, I guess, and I thought it was simpler to deal with it alone rather than put someone else through it.’
‘After what you did for me in Lincoln, don’t you think I want to repay you?’
Laurie beamed. ‘Yeah of course. But I didn’t do that so I could hand you a bill afterwards. It didn’t come with any strings.’
‘I know,’ Jamie said, and gave her a quick hard hug that shocked the air out of her lungs.
On Friday night, she met Jamie at a rowdy pub on Deansgate for a resolve stiffener and they walked to Beetham Tower together. Jamie was in a blue suit that matched his eyes – that flash wardrobe of his was coming in handy – and Laurie, a black jumpsuit and red lipstick. She’d consulted her feelings and gone with strong-defiant rather than a flouncy dress, plus the Ivy-date maxi dress now felt too special to want to waste on her father, wedding or no.
‘It’s the whole bar? Hiring this must’ve cost a fortune,’ Jamie said, squinting at the skyscraper slab of glass, slicing upwards into the Manchester evening sky.
‘Yeah, my dad’s always liked to spend money. Nicola’s not short of a few bob either.’
After a soaring, seasick lift ride, they were welcomed into Cloud 23, trumpeted as ‘the highest point in Manchester.’
‘This works, because my dad is usually the highest in Manchester,’ Laurie whispered, and Jamie laughed, looking the way he did at her on the train. As if she was … what did his mate call her? Exotic. Don’t admire me for this, she thought. None of it is about me.
Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’ was on loud, the room a hubbub of dressed up people, pretty much none of which Laurie knew.
They handed their coats over. Floor to ceiling windows displayed the city beyond at dusk, inside it was mink velvet modern sofas and white leather chairs, vertical tombstones of mirror breaking up the space. It was like a VIP airport lounge. A waitress with a tray of lowball glasses full of amber liquid and orange peel appeared, Laurie and Jamie lifted one each, sipped. It tasted to Laurie like three fingers of Cointreau.
‘There she is! My little girl!’
Laurie heard her father’s familiar buoyant tones and allowed herself to be pulled into a hug, mumbling ‘congratulations, congratulations’ on repeat as substitute for anything more meaningful to say. You didn’t need to be told Austin Watkinson made his money in a creative field: a very well preserved late fifties in immaculate designer labels, the mod hair, trim figure, violently expensive chestnut brogues.
She did the same with Nicola, who tottered over in a cloud of fruity perfume, clad in a rainbow sequin dress, volumised hair fanning out like a lion’s mane.
‘God, you’re a bit of alright, who are you?’ she said to Jamie, who smiled and shook hands with her. Laurie noticed Nicola was wearing an engagement diamond next to a wedding band, the size of a grape.
‘I’m with Laurie,’ he said.
‘Ahhhh so you found someone!’ her dad said. ‘I was ready to set you up with Harry over there, after you said you were going to be on the hunt tonight.’