A very sad-faced Mick, the security guard, was guiding Jamie towards the stairs. Laurie made to go after him.
‘I wouldn’t follow him out,’ Michael said, arms folded, ‘Or they might just lock the door after you. You don’t want any more of his reputation smeared over you.’
‘He’s my boyfriend, so I’ll see him out, thanks,’ Laurie said, to an audible ‘ooh!’ from the crowd, presumably both at the declaration and the insubordination. She glimpsed Dan, looking pig sick at the back. At least her honesty with him had stopped this being any gotcha.
‘You can stop the show now, we’ve all seen the email,’ Kerry snapped.
Laurie turned.
‘You know what, I couldn’t care less what you do or don’t think, Kerry. You’re not the policewoman of my private life. Or anyone else’s here for that matter.’
‘Can I get an Amen!’ Bharat shouted, from the back of the crowd, and incredibly, a reasonably hearty ‘AMEN’ went up. Kerry scowled, looking green as a parrot.
Laurie walked down the stairs with Jamie and out through the lobby, Mick holding the door for them, beckoning for Jamie to hand over his security pass and pulling the door shut behind them.
Once they were outside in the street, Jamie turned and said: ‘I hate to say it, but Michael’s right. Go back in, now. Salter’s temper’s on a hair trigger. If he hears you’re out here with me you could get sacked too.’
‘I can’t believe they sacked you and not me?!’ Laurie said.
‘Laurie, now I’m gone, blame the whole idea of the phony relationship on me,’ Jamie said. ‘When Salter’s calmed down, he won’t want to fall out with his best defence lawyer.’
‘But this is unfair! And probably illegal, getting rid of you but not me for the same offence.’
‘Hah. They know every loophole and can safely get rid of anyone. I’ve struck a deal where they say it was my decision and I get some gardening leave. Word will get round, of course, so I have to be quicker than the word before the pay runs out. He knows I couldn’t stay, Laurie, not when they loathe me. It was untenable.’ He paused. ‘They didn’t only sack me for our relationship.’
‘What then?’
He didn’t speak for a few seconds. ‘They think I was involved with Eve.’
‘You said … you didn’t …?’ Laurie said, and trailed off. Oh, no.
‘Yeah, I wasn’t. But I haven’t told you the whole story of that night.’
Laurie swallowed hard. ‘OK.’
‘It was dinner, nothing more. But Eve had booked a room at the hotel. She made a play for me at the end of the evening and I said no, stakes are too high here, thanks. She was not impressed. She had a point. I shouldn’t have been seeing her out of hours. It was mixed messages and it was undignified to have to put her straight. For both of us.’
‘Right …’
‘I told you I was networking, but quite specifically, I wanted to know if Salter was thinking of retiring. I thought she might have information, as family, that’d help me with the timing of my pitch for partner. Short version, I used her. She’s whip smart. She figured that out.’
Jamie continued: ‘Then the photos of you and I started going up, and Eve got in touch and said, I see what you’re doing and I know what was said in your promotion meeting – she’d fished with her uncle. She said, you’re using another woman to get ahead. I told her you were happily in on it but she didn’t believe me. This sounds strange, but she didn’t want you to feel used in the same way that she had done. She thought I was playing you and wanted to find a way to make you see sense – she’d clearly worked out that if she said anything to you directly, she’d sound jealous.’
The text, in Lincoln, that Laurie wasn’t allowed to see.
‘What was the lunch time visit about?’
‘To unsettle me, and it worked. More pertinently, to give Michael my phone passcode. She asked me to find something on my phone, moments after you’d gone upstairs, and she leaned right in as I did it. I think Michael reached out to her to see if we’d slept together, they discovered a common cause. She had the idea of unmasking me to “save” you and Michael probably laid it on thick about how vulnerable you were. But Michael probably spotted that to be absolutely sure I got the heave overboard, she needed to tell her uncle I had form.’
They stood in silence for a moment. Laurie felt numb.
‘How did Michael get your phone?’
‘I leave it on my desk plenty. It’s locked, so I don’t think anything of it. I guess he’d have gone in, searched for your name for incriminating material, and bingo. There’s no other emails between us.’
Laurie absorbed this. ‘He sent it global, for maximum damage.’
‘Oh yes. No one’s asked how he got hold of it, from what I can tell. Fuck this place, it’s a clique and it’s rotten. I’m glad to go.’
‘But I should stay?’
Jamie looked discomfited. ‘Unless you have any other irons in the fire. The bosses love you.’
‘Correction. They used to.’
She’d been in denial, but this was it. Jamie was off, into the horizon, and Laurie’s standing at her workplace was irreparably soiled. Much as she hated Dan and Michael’s intervention, their premonitions had come to pass.
‘Did you split up with me in there, when Salter asked us point blank?’
‘No. I knew I was fucked and I thought any more idea from Salter that we were a couple, and you would be too.’
‘What if he’d not sacked you? How would we have managed that? We start keeping a real romance secret?’
Jamie shrugged. ‘I suppose so?’
‘Or, or. You would’ve split up with me to keep them happy?’
This felt eminently possible, despite everything. She believed in Jamie’s feelings for her but she’d never seen a second’s self-sacrifice regards his career, for anyone. All this time worrying about another woman coming between him, but was his job the thing she could never compete with?
‘No,’ Jamie said, frowning. ‘I never wanted the promotion that much. Wow.’
‘You sure? It seems to be all that’s driven you since I’ve known you.’
‘I’ve changed since I’ve known you.’
People don’t change. Do they?
Laurie couldn’t let this go.
‘It was pretty mortifying, me saying yes when you said no.’
‘Well, sorry. It didn’t mean anything.’
‘If you’ve changed, why still lie? Why not say, hey Mr Salter, yeah I shouldn’t have done it but now here is the situation and yes I am with Laurie.’
‘The truth wasn’t what was needed, here, or what was going to help.’ He clenched his jaw and jutted his chin slightly and they were clearly skirting the territory of their first big fight. Or, the last one?
‘Jamie, the truth is sometimes of value in itself. Not working out what it’ll get you.’
‘Oh Laurie, of all the times to go all “inspirational meme over a sunset” on me.’ Jamie smiled, weakly, and it felt so much like Dan’s brush-offs that her hair stood on end.