Page 79 of If I Never Met You

‘You don’t want him to?’

‘I don’t … know. I want him to if he wants to, but I’ll find it overwhelming. I haven’t started to work through how I feel, so having tons of his mates from college and my mum’s sewing club all coming up to me tearful, expecting me to discuss it …’

‘I see that.’

‘But if he doesn’t mention it … it’ll still be exceptionally emotional, knowing something everyone else doesn’t.’

Laurie put her hand on Jamie’s shoulder and said: ‘It’ll be OK. You’ll be OK.’

‘How do you know that?’ Jamie said, but with a smile.

‘Because you’re you and he’s him and everyone coming tonight cares.’

‘Thank you,’ Jamie said, brightening. ‘How do you do that?’

‘What?’

‘Say the right thing.’

‘Oh …’ Laurie blushed. ‘Well … You’re pretty good at that too. Hey, look at us. Becomingactual sort of maybe almost friends.’

Jamie’s grateful smile faded, just a little. Oddly, Laurie suddenly had a sense she’d said the wrong thing. Maybe he didn’t like the responsibility towards each other that might imply.

The party was in a function room at a pub near the cathedral called the Adam & Eve Tavern, and Jamie’s parents went on ahead to do some prep.

Laurie had brought a trusty favourite with her to wear, a cream dress with bracelet-length sleeves and a full skirt that Dan used to say looked ‘proper swit swoo’ in. It was nicely modest for a family do, she thought, dressy up but not loud, and no excess tits or leg.

Laurie could hear Jamie bumping around downstairs and risked changing without warning him. She was holding it against her front, pulling her arms through the sleeves, whenJamie walked into the bedroom and said, ‘Shit, sorry!’ backing out fast.

‘No, it’s fine! I’m decent! Could you zip me up?’

She knew this dress to be a proper fiddle, it was one that Dan always did for her, putting down the console forCall of Duty Black Ops 4on request, as long as the game wasn’t at a critical juncture.

‘Er … sure.’

She sensed Jamie’s reluctance. Odd, she thought, that someone whose principal hobby involved removing clothes with people he didn’t know very well, would get discomposed by a woman he didn’t fancy, almost wholly wearing an L.K. Bennett prom dress. Maybe it was thenot fancyingthat made it tricky.

Laurie turned her back and held her hair clear, and Jamie fumbled with the zipper. It snagged at bra level and he said: ‘Oh … arse it. No wait, I’ll undo it and redo it again, some of the fabric’s got caught.’

Was she imagining his jitters? Was he already antsy about his dad’s speech?

He pulled it back down to the base of her spine and suddenly Laurie felt a frisson at the physical contact, the warmth of Jamie’s hands on her skin and the air on her exposed back. He pulled again and this time it sailed past her bra, up to the back of her neck. She let go of her hair.

‘Do I look OK?’ Laurie said, upon turning round, an automatic reflex in a relationship. Jamie looked awkward once more and said: ‘More than OK. Lovely. What’s the famous Eric Clapton song?’

‘“Layla”?’

Jamie laughed.

‘Not the one about diddling George Harrison’s wife, no. I meant, “Wonderful Tonight”.’

She’d forever be a big city rather than a town or village person, and Lincoln wasn’t acity-city by Laurie’s reckoning, but she was thoroughly charmed by it. The Adam & Eve was a gable-roofed, white-bricked eighteenth-century tavern with low exposed beams and that whiff of characterful mustiness that elderly ale houses always had.

In the Lounge Bar, a banner hung across a buffet table of sausage rolls, scotch eggs and crisps, declared HAPPY 65th ERIC!!!!

Jamie was immediately claimed by the mostly pensionable-age throng, people declaring ‘Last time I saw you, you were that high!’ – gesturing a diminutive height with an open palm – discussing bike rides, the whereabouts of long lost friends, asking where he worked now.

Nevertheless, Jamie barely left her side, his hand often lightly on her lower back, fetching her a drink as soon as her glass was empty, making introductions. Laurie felt looked after. She was being better looked after by a pretend boyfriend than she had been by her real one. The dynamic with Dan at parties was that he was loud, drunk and funny and she scooped him up at the end, when he’d be slurring how much helubbedher.

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