Her dad finished his cigarette, threw the stub on the floor and ground it underfoot. ‘This wild overreaction based on one foot wrong is strongly reminiscent of your mother in her heyday, I’m sorry to say.’
Invoking her mum, thinking Laurie would hate the comparison with a woman he’d rejected. What an utter arsehole.
Those who said family mattered above all else were wrong. People you love, who love you back, matter above all. Crap people you happen to be related to: you need to stop thinking you owe them a limitless number of chances to hurt you.
Laurie inhaled deeply, tasting the freedom from expectation like the first tang of salt air at the seaside.
‘I was a mistake, I know that. You didn’t want me. When I was a baby, you walked away and left Mum to deal with everything alone. Well, now I’m the one calling you a mistake, and walking away.’
Her dad said nothing for a moment, his eyes flicking from Laurie to Jamie and back again.
‘Jeez Louise. OK. I’m going to have a pint in there,’ he jerked his head towards Brewdog. ‘When you’ve calmed down, feel free to join me. If and when you and laughing boy detach yourselves from each other.’
Laurie belatedly noticed Jamie had his arm around her waist. It made her straighten her back.
Her dad thrust his hands in his jean pockets and slouched off to the pub, with very much a careworn air of: the things I have to put up with.
Jamie turned round and hugged Laurie to him. It felt like he absorbed her anxiety, defused it.
‘That can’t have been easy. But I think you did the right thing,’ he said, while Laurie breathed hotly into his jumper.
She got herself back under control as quickly as possible, not wanting to be street theatre for Jamie’s gang. She’d stopped looking to see if they were looking.
‘Do you want me to stay with you? That lot will understand. Or they’ll be told to understand it,’ Jamie said, with a winning smile. Those smiles were hitting Laurie harder, lately.
‘Ah. No,’ Laurie said, fully disentangling, wiping her eyes, ‘Thanks but no, I’m fine. Walk home will do me good.’
‘OK.’
Jamie leaned down and kissed her on her cheek, gave her shoulder a supportive squeeze, turned and went into the restaurant.
Laurie walked down the road, past Brewdog where her dad was sinking Estrella, past The Midland where she and Dan once spent a hedonistic forty-eight hours, and drew her coat together against the cold. Why had she been in denial about her dad for so long, and accommodated so much? It was strange, but she realised, partly because Dan would’ve disapproved of her getting shot. Whenever her dad took the bare piss, Dan made the case for Not Making A Scene or Not Blowing It Up Into Something or You Know What he’s Like, Though.
If he’d been here this time, he would’ve undercut Laurie, said: Not here, not now, let it go. Let’s have a pint. Come on, you two hardly ever see each other. Her dad would’ve divided and conquered.
Afterwards whenever Laurie fumed: But, Dan, he deserved it, he’d have said oh true. But the moment had always gone.
Dan came from his lovely safe middle-class parents, and Laurie’s dad was the rogue who offered Dan lines in the toilet, the first time they met. Dan couldn’t take him seriously, in every sense.
When they still spoke in theory of a wedding, Laurie always said to Dan, ‘I’m not having my dad give me away, nope, no way.’
And Dan always protested, quite vociferously. ‘Come on, Lolly,’ (she was only ever babied as Lolly when he wanted to shut down a debate) ‘he’s your dad. Your dad gives you away. It wouldn’t be a day for grudges.’
No matter how many times she explained it, Dan didn’t get it.
Jamie got it. She could hear his voice in her head now, clear as a bell. Fuck him, why should he, why couldn’t it be your mum? She raised you. If it’s for any parent to ‘give you away,’ it’s her. His lack of sentimentality about tradition had its uses. She smiled at the thought.
When this was over, she wanted to stay friends with Jamie. She’d been wrong about him – she suspected in part because Jamie had been wrong about himself. They might be chalk and cheese but he was a whole person, a grown-up, the real deal. She valued him, his perspective on things. She felt like he valued her.
Laurie felt her phone go brrrrp in her pocket and yanked it out. It’d be her dad saying: ‘Where have you got to? Come on let’s make up. Got some champagne in here and a pint for your fella.’
The way he spent money was to guilt you, to indebt you, to bewitch and befuddle you. Only later you’d realise you’d been bought.
Jamie
If you’re a mistake you’re the greatest one ever made. I’m really proud to know you. xx
Laurie’s eyes pricked with tears and her heart soared and she remonstrated with herself, as cartoon stars started to dance around her head: this is a warm friendship. He cares. And you’re vulnerable, and cider isn’t meant to be hot.
He got two kisses after her thank you, though.
A small voice inside her head whispered to her, and she hissed at it to shut up. The voice insisted. Jamie was there on purpose, to see you. He wanted to be there. He knew you were going for Sunday lunch. You said Sunday. Definitely.
Oh, shut up, Laurie nearly said out loud.
I’m not wrong, said the voice.
38
There was a certain type of celebration thrown by people who didn’t do parties and they were significantly worse than those organised by people who liked parties.
The difficulty with Salter & Rowson’s annual Christmas bash was it was conceived by two men in their sixties who never socialised beyond their golf clubs, trying to imagine what people in their thirties might do for a knees-up. It resulted in Greek restaurants with traditional dancing and taramasalata the colour of bubblegum and baskets of dry pitta corners. Or deafening volume wine bars trying to moonlight as mass caterers, serving forty-five turkey risottos with a cranberry jus and parsnip tuile.
This year was at the university, and with its wood panelling and organ and chandeliers, it looked pleasingly like the Hogwarts banqueting hall. The plus, no karaoke. The drawback was that in order to make it profitable, it accommodated multiple companies and hundreds of people.
For all the elegance of the surroundings, it would’ve been tons nicer to have a lesser place to themselves. Hey ho. Or HO HO HO, as the giant illuminated letters on stage had it.
However, it wouldn’t have mattered if they threw tonight’s shebang in the Palace of Versailles, it only mattered to Laurie that Dan was taking Megan. This was confirmed by a message shortly after the company email, asking if it was OK. Wanker. Bastard. One of the worst things about you, Laurie decided, is I thought I was a good judge of character.
But Laurie, so soon after announcing them free agents, could hardly object, and it was face loss to care, anyway. The chutzpah of this woman, too; Laurie couldn’t make the imaginative leap where she thought it was acceptable, let alone desirable, to sit at a table in the same room as Laurie.
‘She’ll have rationalised: we didn’t do anything until they were over, if they were right they wouldn’t be over, and I’m the one with the baby, which is a complete and final answer to what matters here, so stand aside,’ Emily said. ‘None of which makes her any less of a bitch.’