Page 33 of If I Never Met You

‘He’s got a job to do, he’s not your PA!’

Jamie rolled his eyes and ignored her.

‘No one is answering that number,’ Mick said over the intercom, moments later.

‘I bet she thinks an unrecognised Manc landline is PPI,’ Jamie sighed. ‘Thanks for trying, Mick.’ He rolled up his other sleeve, and sat down, sighing heavily.

Laurie realised there was no longer any reason for her to be standing up either, and followed suit.

‘Are you claustrophobic?’ Jamie said.

Laurie shook her head, self-conscious that the wave of panic she’d just felt was obviously visible.

She was telling the truth; she wasn’t, to her knowledge, claustrophobic. But right now she’d been unexpectedly reacquainted with sensation of breaking her arm as a kid, havinga heavy plaster cast on it, and waking up in the dead of night freaking out: ‘Get it off me, get it off me!’ She’d been fine in this lift, until that very second, when the four walls pressed in and with no hope of escape, her chest tightened, and her fists clenched, nails digging into her palms.

‘Breathe,’ Jamie said, watching Laurie. ‘Concentrate on breathing. We’ll be out of here before you know it.’

Despite what she said, he was smart enough to spot she wasn’t coping. Typical lawyers, she thought. We read people constantly. We don’t necessarily care about what we discover, but we read them.

She breathed, and calmed.

Laurie and Jamie had exhausted polite, banal chat about Salter & Rowson’s internal politics, and the gnarly attitudes of certain magistrates, and the clock had barely shifted. Twelve minutes had passed since Laurie last looked.

Out there, 6.25 p.m. would’ve arrived without noticing, it would’ve been an eye blink, a long stride in the short distance to the tram. In here, it was an eternity.

Jamie saw Laurie clicking her phone agitatedly to check the time and she remembered he knew she couldn’t be picking up messages, and stopped.

‘How is only twenty-five past six?’ she said, mournfully.

‘Yeah this feels like the filmInterstellar,’ Jamie said, ‘If Matthew McConaughey came back to Earth and his daughter’s an old woman, my date’s probably married with three kids by now.’

‘Has this taken a real crap on your plans, then?’ Laurie said.‘Was it a first date?’ she said, in a ‘I’m not just an uptight workaholic!’ way, she hoped.

‘Yeah it was. And Gina, twenty-nine, from Sale, is not likely to be impressed at being stood up. We met on Tinder, actually, so she’ll be on to five other standbys after half an hour. Gina twenty-nine from Sale waits for no man.’

Laurie laughed: this sounded less like dating, more like studying a menu in a specialist sauna. She wasn’t made for being single in this time. A sad weight pressed on her ribs.

Tinder. Or Deliveroo for dick, as Emily called it. Laurie inwardly shuddered.

The intercom buzzed. ‘Hello?’

Jamie was on his feet in one bounce, in a feat of agility: ‘Mick! Hello!’

‘Hello. There’s good news and bad news.’

Jamie sagged. ‘The bad first?’

‘It’s going to be another hour. Sorry.’

‘Oh for fu— And the GOOD?’

‘They’re certain it’ll only be an hour from now.’

‘Mick, that’s all bad news!’

‘Sorry.’

Jamie turned back and slithered down the wall.

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