Page 106 of If I Never Met You

‘Oh. Sunday lunch at Albert’s Schloss with my dad. Before he goes back to the Balearics for the winter.’

She told Jamie how his advice to tell her mother had been spot on. ‘I thought you were a new soul but you might be an old soul. As my mother says,’ Laurie said.

‘Being strictly accurate you thought I was an arsehole,’ Jamie said, laughing. He paused and she thought he might be ruminating on her paternal relationship, except he said, ‘Mind if I copy that venue idea? I’m meant to be organising something lunch-like myself.’

‘Sure.’

As they arrived back at the office, a slender, striking young woman, with slicked-back hair and co-ordinated belted coat and spike-heeled shoes, reached the door at the same time as them.

‘Eve!’ Jamie said, more of an exclamation than a greeting.

‘Oh, hey you.’

She swung in for a wholly nothing-like-a-former-intern kiss on his cheek. Her eyes flickered to Laurie and back again.

‘I’m here for lunch with my uncle,’ she said.

She was clearly lingering to say more to Jamie, and Laurie muttered polite excuses and left them to it.

Jamie’s relief at her absenting herself was palpable, his nerves crackling and swooping in the dead air, like a radio trying to find a signal.

Suddenly, as much as she wanted to believe that nothing untoward had happened between them, she didn’t. They were birds of a feather: sly, stunning, up to Machiavellian shenanigans that remained mysterious to plodding mortals like Laurie.

Wait,wait: Eve was the woman he’d fallen for? Of course! It was forehead slap obvious. No wonder Jamie had seemed so discomfited just now, no wonder he’d been edgy in Lincoln. What a quandary! He was going to get his partnership, then figure out how to broach it with Salter? Woo hoo.

How life surprised you: not so long ago, she’d have thought,ideal match, those two can sit on thrones side by side in hell together. Now, frankly, it seemed more like heaven.

She’d grown so fond of Jamie, and just like that, he was returned to the magical realm he was from. This would be true even without Eve – Jamie wasn’t going to stay doing his job long. If he didn’t get made partner, as Michael correctly predicted, he’d be off to London, no doubt.

Back at her desk, Laurie had a feeling of missing him, before he’d left her life.

37

Laurie liked to go to noisy, busy venues with her father. It plugged any gaps in conversation or understanding between them like insulation foam.

Albert’s Schloss was everything Laurie expected: a barn-like space heaving with people who saw themselves as part of the city’s scene, fire pits dotted around the room, a live jazz band on acoustics. The festive season reflected in some additional red-green napery and strings of gold bells.

‘Is Nic joining us?’ Laurie had texted, when making the booking.

‘Nah, she’s got business to do in Liverpool.’

She’d never been asked about her premature exit from the wedding party, which she put down to 1. Her dispensability and 2. Neither of them being able to remember much the next day.

Laurie was glad she’d gone for a low key showy offy Sunday outfit, a floral dress with a biker jacket over the top, as the clientele here were very much sporting the Woke Up Like This look that took an hour to create.

She got seated bang on time at half twelve, asked for a mulledcider. It was soon quarter to one: her dad was late, of course he was. Laurie relaxed into people-watching instead. She thought back to doing the same in Refuge in the summer, spying Jamie on his date with Eve. God, that felt like a lifetime ago.

It was one o’clock now. Her dad wasn’t only going to be late, he was going to be flamboyantly late. Laurie pushed down the rising querulousness inside her, the outrage of:how is forty-five minutes late, when we hardly ever see each other, OK? How is it not a massive indication of indifference?Because whenever she got a height up, as Dan liked to call it, her dad would sweep in with bonhomie and fulsome apologies and a stupidly indulgent present of some sort, and in a finger snap, she had to convert her mutinous mood into a welcoming one.

How did you fall out with a parent you barely saw from the end of one year to the next? Arguments needed to be something out of the ordinary from generally getting on. If you had a row, then that was it for another year: the row defined the relationship. At some level her dad knew this, of course. He depended upon it. No wonder her mum hated him.

Laurie asked for another cider (‘Did you want to order food?’ ‘No, I’ll wait, thank you.’), then another. The third was a poor decision but it was now quarter to two and Laurie was half-pissed and entertaining the possibility she had been stood up. By her own dad.

There should be a clever word, a German word, for that feeling when someone lets you down and it’s not remotely surprising and yet still shocking. She drained her glass. A fourth was probably crazy, though she could really fancy one. Because drunk.

‘Excuse me?’

Laurie looked up at the Belfast-accented waitress with the cheekbones, through her slightly cider-fogged gaze.

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