Page 84 of If I Never Met You

Jamie mumbled something that sounded like agreement.

‘You have survivor’s guilt. I think you push yourself super hard to try to be both sons, to make them doubly proud.’

Laurie hadn’t known she’d thought this until she’d said it, and yet as she said it, she knew it to be true.

‘But they’re already proud of you,’ she added. ‘You’re enough as you are.’

Jamie hugged her tighter.

‘I can’t begin to imagine how terrible it was for you. Andyour parents.’ God, Jamie must have been with his brother, he must have seen it …? The guilt he must have had to carry, as a nine-year-old.

‘It changed us completely. There was life before Joe was killed and life after. I think a lot of the pulling through my parents did was for my sake. They didn’t want my childhood to be a vale of tears.’

Jamie’s breathing steadied.

‘I try not to think about it for the most part. That’s what living life is, isn’t it? Coping,’ Jamie said.

‘Yes.’ God, yes.

‘Thank you for what you’ve said. I mean it. I’m going to think about these words and try to remember them when things get shaky. If someone as intelligent as you thinks this, it can’t be completely wrong.’

He had too high an opinion of her brains, but let him find the comfort there.

‘I really do.’

How had a lift breaking down ended with Laurie in a bedroom in North Hykeham, sleeping with and yet not sleeping with a colleague, consoling him about bereavements, both past and future tense?

It was so strange and yet the strangest thing of all was that it didn’t feel strange. For the first time since Dan left her, Laurie hadn’t thought about him much at all. If she could be helpful to Jamie in a time of need, it was therapeutic for her.

Something else dawned on Laurie. She understood Jamie, at last. He hadn’t developed his self reliant, streamlined,take no passengerspersona because he was superficial, arrogant andselfish. He wasn’t, as she’d assumed, playing life on the easy setting.

The world had dealt him an almost intolerable blow at a very early age and this constant forward motion, and refusing to care too deeply about anyone, it was his coping strategy.

‘Lau …’ Jamie said, mumbling. He wasn’t awake anymore, he was drifting off, sleep-talking. ‘I want …’

‘What?’ she said.

‘I want to hold on to you.’

‘Sure,’ Laurie whispered.

Laurie wondered if he meant it literally, or as a statement of intent. She’d gently disengage right before she nodded off, she thought. Sleeping in someone else’s arms was one of those things that worked in movies and was uncomfortable as piss in reality.

Next thing she knew, she was waking up wound round him, the grey-yellow light of early winter morning creeping in under the blinds. It felt reassuring, and sort of oddly healing.

Laurie listened to Jamie’s heartbeat through his T-shirt and inhaled the faded scent of his aftershave, mentally reassembling where she was, what they’d done and said last night. She thought again about a traumatised nine-year-old boy, a vulnerability that reappeared now he was losing his father. Would Jamie push her away after this? Laurie had grown fond of him but she wasn’t naïve, he hadn’t wanted her involved, it was necessity. If the situation was reversed, she’d not want Jamie to see her like this.

He stirred and blinked and stared at her in a moment of dumb incomprehension.

‘… Morning.’

‘Morning.’

She pulled away and sat up, self-conscious, smoothing her hair and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

‘Did we …?’ he said, looking down at the bedclothes.

‘No, we did not, how dare you!’ Laurie said in an indignant, jokey half-whisper.

---