Then they’d think they could tell Laurie he’d taken naturally to fatherhood, as if that wasn’t akin to driving hot nails into her hands and expecting her to say: Oh that’s nice. It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good: from the ashes of us, comes the miracle of new life. It’s an ill fucking wind alright and I’ll give him a ventouse.
She’d be furious and scorched by this until the end of her days. She felt delirious thinking about it.
‘I bet it’s a nightmare,’ Jamie said. ‘I actually left the last firm I was at in Liverpool over a similar, uh, complication. Not anything like as serious a relationship. But we didn’t function well as colleagues, after.’
Laurie suppressed a smile and nodded. No shit, Jamie Carter had left an angry trail of women in his wake. However, he’d inadvertently hit on a rich seam of conversation – Liverpool. He and Laurie discussed the city she knew from her university years versus the one he knew from his twenties, and that launched them into student times, and the pressures of their early lawyering. Laurie was starting to feel light pressure from her bladder, too. She had visions of having to squat in the corner while Jamie Carter turned his back and whistled a Maroon 5 tune.
Eventually, like the Voice Of God, Mick interrupted in the intercom and said ‘We’re getting you moving! Only a couple of minutes,’ and both of them whooped their relief.
The lift jolted into life and Laurie would 1. never take its movement for granted again and 2. be getting the stairs from now on anyway.
Mick was waiting for them on the ground floor, looking delighted.
‘Were you about to start drinking your urine?’
‘I’m certainly going to drink some imported Czech urine now,’ Jamie said.
‘Hell yes,’ Laurie said, and wondered if she and Jamie Carter would ever speak again, outside shop talk. Sharing this ordeal was worth a ‘hi’ in the corridor, and a head nod if their eyes met in departmental meetings. Maybe not much more.
They said their hearty goodnights to Mick, and thanked their saviour, the man in the boiler suit with the monkey wrench.
As Jamie held the front door for Laurie, he said: ‘Hey. You might very much want to get straight off, and please say so if you do. But given we’ve both had our Friday nights trashed, fancy a quick drink? Drown our sorrows?’
‘Oh …? Sure.’
Laurie surprised herself by not only accepting, but wanting to. She was secretly gratified that after an hour and a half of confinement together, he didn’t want to get away from her as fast as possible. And she didn’t think for a second Jamie was trying it on, either. She understood what he meant, she felt it too: going home now to dinner for one was pure surrender. They couldn’t let the lift win.
‘Nice one,’ Jamie said, with a dazzling smile, and she momentarily saw a flash of the powers that inflamed boss’s nieces.
13
They went to Trof, an artfully scruffy bar for hipster youth and middle youth in the Northern Quarter, barmen in beanies with beards, on the basis the usual pub nearby would be overrun with their own.
What if anyone saw them? Laurie wasn’t worried, despite being recently uncoupled. When she asked herself why, it was because the idea she and Jamie Carter would have a dalliance was such a leap, the speculation wouldn’t get off the starting blocks. She’d explain and guffaw and everyone would concede, yeah, we were reaching, there. Laurie didn’t know whether to feel reassured or saddened by this.
In some sort of devilishly brilliant coincidence, ‘You’re So Vain’ was playing at volume as they entered, as if they knew Jamie Carter walked into bars like he was walking on to a yacht.
Laurie loved the interior’s golden glow and heaving warmth, compared to the violet-black cold of Manchester outside. She did like being around people, she realised, just not people she knew and was required to talk to.
‘What’re you having?’
‘Big red wine please,’ Laurie said.
‘Right you are.’
What was his accent? It wasn’t straight up northern but it definitely wasn’t southern, either.
Jamie pushed his way into the scrum at the bar. He had a sort of natural swagger she’d admittedly probably loathe in a member of her own sex. Watching women watch Jamie, Laurie allowed herself a split second of feeling relevant and hip by being with him, even though she wasn’t with him. She threw her scarf down and hummed along:
You gave away the things you loved
And one of them was me
Laurie wondered if in fact this song was in fact about Dan, and her dreams had been clouds in her coffee. Dan would’ve been jealous of her being out with some handsome interloper, once upon a time. You’re where? What about your dinner? Why’s he asked you out, might I ask?
She’d lost Dan’s interest, she didn’t know when. She needed to identify the week, the day, the moment. The habits she’d got into that must’ve snuffed out his interest, bit by bit.
Now, Dan neither knew nor cared where she was. It was funny being in a raucous barn like this, not psychically tethered to him. Her soul concaved and she forced herself not to think about him, or his evening dispensing foot rubs and leafing through the JoJo Maman Bebe catalogue.
‘Has Gina been in touch?’ Laurie said, after Jamie returned with the drinks, and she saw him surreptitiously glance at his iPhone.
‘Yeah, I explained my predicament and she thinks I’m making it up, so that’s that. To be fair it does sound a bit made up. What about you? Not “back out there” yet?’
‘Ah. No. I’m scheduled to get “back out there” in about 2030, I think.’
‘Quitters’ talk! Was it a bad break-up?’ He put his lips to his pint. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’
‘You didn’t hear?’
‘No? People don’t tell me much and I don’t really ask. Only he’s with someone else and no one saw it coming. Typical of our place that they’d expect to, what’s it got to do with them?’
Laurie gave Jamie a precis. She shared more than she intended. Once she’d started speaking to a neutral party, it was like staring into the unjudgemental face of a counsellor.
Except he did judge it. At least Jamie Carter, man of the world, doing an authentic jaw drop at these details confirmed it was a shocking ordeal, even to a soulless womaniser.
‘Fuck! Knocked up already? Oh, Laurie. That sounds torrid. Having to still share an office, beyond grim. Can’t you make him find another job?’
She knew sympathy and liberal use of her name was part of Jamie Carter’s repertoire, his deliberate charm, but she let herself be charmed by it anyway. Also, he was probably emphasising he knew her name now.
‘Nope. He’s got a kid to support soon,’ Laurie said these words quickly, before she could care about them, ‘I can’t imagine he’ll be willing to move. She’s got a good job here. And I don’t want to lose my house; my mortgage has got much bigger. I don’t want to commute. I won’t let him make me leave. I’m trapped!’
Jamie shook his head.
Laurie concluded, ‘I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life figuring out what the hell happened.’
‘He’s not worth that much of your time,’ Jamie said, knocking his glass to hers, and Laurie appreciated it, while thinking, from the man who’d never give anyone much of his.