Page 68 of If I Never Met You

‘Were there … readings?’

Di pursed her lips. ‘A couple of short ones.’

‘Hahahaha! Oh my life! Imagine if the neighbours looked over the fence. Oh here I am, having a totally normal one, reciting a passage from Corinthians, over the burial site of a Persian cat.’

The details of the passing of Noodle were interrupted by Kerry.

‘Laurie. Mr Salter wants to see you,’ she said, wearing malignity and triumph like a heady perfume. ‘Are you free now?’

‘Oh? Yeah.’

Laurie hard gulped and got up. This was … not good. The timing suggested that he’d either heard about Jamie or the arsonist or both, and she was about to face a reckoning. Kerry was animated by an expectant energy that certainly suggested so.

‘Go straight through,’ Kerry said, with a moue of her mouth, smoothing her pleated skirt under her behind as she sat back down at her desk.

Laurie knocked softly and waited for ‘Come in’, because Kerry was more than capable of sending Laurie in unannounced like that, to make her look bad.

Mr Salter’s office was a strange separate realm, like being in Dumbledore’s.

You only ever saw this interior on hiring, firing, promotions or significant bollockings, so it was impossible to disassociate it with quaking fear.

It probably looked a lot like many a provincial law partner’s lair – bookcases with deeply boring tomes on Tort, a crystal water decanter, framed photos of privately schooled progeny. Mr Salter had two upright twenty-something identical twin sons, known among the workers as the Winklevosses. Mr Salter himself was a ringer for Bernie Sanders.

‘Ah, Laurie, hello,’ he said, looking up from papers on his desk, putting down a pricey-looking pen. It remained a status symbol of fully private office space. If Laurie had a solid silverballpoint, it’d mysteriously go missing within hours. He didn’t sound enraged. But then Salter never raised his voice; why would he, when his carefully chosen words could slice you into slivers like sashimi.

‘You wanted to see me?’

He gestured for her to sit. Jesus, had Michael been in to see him?

‘Yes.’ He leaned forward on his desk, arms folded. Mr Salter was about five foot five, so he had a chair that must’ve been jacked to the highest level so that he could try for a vague looming when you sat opposite.

‘Now I want you to understand that everything we are about to say to each other is both entirely confidential and entirely of a voluntary nature. You are not in any trouble.’

‘Oh,’ Laurie said.

‘You sound surprised?’ he smiled.

‘Hah, well … you worry, don’t you.’

‘What goes on outside these offices is by and large, none of mine or Mr Rowson’s business. It only becomes our business if it has any significant bearing on the company’s operational ability or reputation.’

‘Yes.’Not quite tallying with what Jamie said, but go on.

‘Yet we also feel we have a duty of pastoral care towards long-standing employees of great value to us. Such as yourself.’

‘Thank you.’

‘In the spirit of that care, not in feeling we are owed an account – I’m told that you and my head of civil Daniel Price are no longer in a relationship?’ He waved at Laurie not to speak yet as she opened her mouth, ‘And that yourselfand Jamie Carter are now involved. As a boss who would also like to think of himself as a friend …’

Woah. Laurie had known she had a ‘favourite’ status but Salter getting so gooey as to claim himself her friend was, as Bharat would say, some next level shit.

‘I’d like to think that you feel you’re being treated well by young Mr Carter. I think he’s very fortunate if he has secured your affections.’

‘Thank you. Yes, very well. He’s great and we have a lot in common.’ Laurie blathered this off the top of her head as she’d rather die a thousand deaths than say anything to Salter that could be construed as code for rampant boffing.

‘Do you?’ he said, with a tone that was a real question, not courtesy.

‘Yes, we’re both very serious about our work …’ Laurie smiled. ‘And equally serious about eating and drinking well at the weekend.’

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