‘Telling me.’
Laurie spent a small fortune on a fire engine red, one-shouldered dress, that pulled in tight at the waist and had a chiffon skirt that flared out in soft folds, in a Strictly Come Dancing sort of way. Laurie felt as if she should be raised overhead in it by a ripped Eastern European hunk, to a big band reinterpretation of a Lady Gaga song. She wore her hair out and big, having gone for a blow-dry. And utilised the siren lipstick that Emily got her. The look was almost comically ‘Thank U, Next’ defiant to an ex, and yet Laurie had no qualms about making an effort, not like her apprehension before The Ivy. Anything less than a pyrotechnical show of strength, when faced with your ex and his pregnant mistress, was unconscionable.
When she removed her outerwear at the coat check, Jamie said: ‘You look utterly, completely hot,’ and seemed to mean it. Laurie could only give him a tense smile.
Jamie was in a black suit, white shirt, black tie. (‘I look like a waiter or a Reservoir Dog but I’m not wearing a tuxedo. Unless you get one made, they never fit, and I’m not wearing a baggy hired one and feeling like I’m in Boyz II Men.’)
‘It’s going to be OK,’ he said quietly, taking her hand, as they entered the main hall.
‘But we split up after tonight!’ Laurie hissed at him, with a smile. They’d reaffirmed that post-Christmas do, it was time to draw things to a close.
‘True. This is so meta,’ Jamie said.
They studied the seating plan and located their table, seeing they’d been put directly next to Michael and his date for the night, a nervy vape smoker called Sam.
Given the bile that Michael had sprayed at Jamie previously, Jamie was extremely gracious and solicitous to both him and Sam, while Michael looked stormy and murderous throughout.
Sam took to Jamie, the way most women did. Laurie noted that as soon as it was in danger of becoming obvious, Jamie found a way to refer back to Laurie and bring her into the conversation, so there was no danger of Michael claiming Jamie had flirted. Except, Laurie was sure that Michael would claim that anyway. Once you despised someone with that sort of Old Testament fervour, you could always find the material.
They were cheek by jowl with lads from Experian, and a six-foot-something giant in a kilt called Angus insisted that, as he and Laurie were back to back, they had to introduce themselves to each other. She shook his hand and felt glad of the merry goodwill all around. However tempting, it would’ve been so wrong to stay away tonight.
Angus angled his chair towards Laurie and made conversation with her until the salmon mousse appeared.
As the starters were being swept away and the right combination of people were out of their seats at the same time to provide a direct line of sight, Laurie saw them.
Dan was in an old suit she remembered helping him choose, Megan, a small but prominent bump visible, was in a pale blue strappy dress, a shiny curtain of poker straight red hair tucked behind her ears. Laurie gazed at the bump. Now it was in front of her, as simple fact, its power was considerably dispelled. It was nothing to do with her.
Megan didn’t appear to be interacting much with anyone, inclining her head to say something to Dan every so often. Then someone spoke to them, and she saw Megan place her hand on Dan’s knee in a proprietorial fashion. Laurie flinched, but after a moment’s analysis, realised it was a flinch at the strangeness of seeing this, not Megan’s rights over Dan. It felt disorientating and peculiar, like selling a piece of family furniture and seeing it in someone else’s house. But you knew it didn’t fit in your place anymore.
Megan leaned in, doing a cutesome and stagey head tilt, as if someone was taking a photograph of them, before bursting into peals of girlish giggles and petting at his face. Dan received this with tolerance but slight embarrassment, Laurie detected.
And in another moment of observation, Laurie got it – she finally figured it out. The clear difference that Megan offered, compared to her: uncomplicated adoration. Dan was running the show and being made to feel in charge and manly.
She recalled that moment in the spare room, Dan saying resentfully: ‘You’re so bloody clever, you are.’
Laurie had thought she and Dan being a match was a good thing, that she kept him on his toes. They sparred. But a woman had come along offering to play-act the supplicant, do the You Tarzan Me Jane, and he couldn’t resist. He’d started to find Laurie wearing, by comparison.
She never thought she’d have an explanation, or closure, and now she did. Huh. It felt relieving and slightly flat, like finding out whodunnit in a murder mystery and realising the question was more intriguing than the answer. Megan looked over at Laurie, and Laurie fought her inclination to glance away and returned Megan’s gaze, steadily. After a long moment, Megan dropped her eyes and fussed with the napkin on her lap.
‘Yep,’ Laurie said, to no one but herself, picking up a bottle of wine and refilling herself.
‘You OK?’ Jamie asked again, in her ear, arm round the back of her banqueting chair with the broad festive red and green sash ribbon round it.
‘Yes,’ Laurie said. ‘I’m more OK than I’ve been in a long while, and I have no idea how or why.’
‘I do,’ Jamie said, with a smile.
‘Oh?’
‘I told you when you started to believe in yourself, you’d be unstoppable.’
Jamie Carter, what an unlikely hero. In that second, she wondered if she loved him.
39
‘The Idiocy Hours are well underway.’
Laurie and Bharat were leaning against the bar on a leg stretch, and Bharat was looking around the room with a curl to his lip. The dancefloor had appeared after a third of the tables were whisked out of sight, replaced by stretch of parquet floor, scattered with disco ball fragments of light. ‘This’ll be a scene of horrifying carnage pretty soon. A few will have to be Medi Vacced out by helicopter.’
Laurie laughed. Bharat strongly believed that anything that happened after 9.30 p.m. at the Christmas do was best heard about rather than participated in, and was preparing to make good his departure.
‘Let me know if anything scintillating kicks off? Di’s had three Babychams so she’ll not remember.’
Laurie faithfully promised Bharat she’d be his surveillance detail.
People were stood up now, ties loosened, bottles of beer in hand, covert snogging in the darker recesses of the room. The night time sky was visible through the vast stained-glass windows and as she walked back to the table, Laurie thought about how she’d go home alone, but wasn’t really lonely any more. Or if she was, it was only in passing, not as a constant state. Her powers were returning. She’d met Dan when she was eighteen, when she had the confidence to stride up to a bunch of lads in Fresher’s Week and tell them she’d sort the problem out. That girl wasn’t created by him, she existed already.
Dan had chosen a future without her, and as sad and harrowing and unexpected as that had been, now she got to choose a future for herself. It was exhilarating.
‘Dance with me?’ Jamie said, as she reached him, pushing his chair out and taking Laurie’s hand.
‘Is this for their eyes?’ Laurie said, behind the back of her hand, and gestured towards Misters Salter and Rowson. Rowson looked like an angry schoolmaster in a Dickens adaptation, wiry with a square set face, a thatch of brown hair that looked as if it was made from wire wool, beetling eyebrows and black-rimmed glasses. ‘’Cos I think you’re alright, they’ve clocked us together.’