Page 95 of If I Never Met You

Jamie frowned. Now safely through the door, she’d briefly thought they might have fun tonight, watching the Hogarthian gin hall scenes and squalid tableaus of her father’s life unfold. Looking at Jamie and his taut expression, she knew it was one of those nights when communication doesn’t flow and drink sits heavy.

‘Are you regretting this? The showmance,’ Jamie said, taking a swig of his welcome cocktail.

Laurie paused, before the glib automatic denial sprang to her lips. ‘Yes. A bit. But that’s nothing to do with you. It’s the situation at work, Dan and Michael’s paltry attacks.’

‘You know they’re both in love with you, right?’

‘What?’ Laurie said, screwing up her face. ‘Nah. A fifty per cent hard “nah”, given what Dan did.’

Jamie was undeterred. ‘Don’t let them make you think that their problems are your problems. They are trying to do a head-wrecking number on you, to undermine you, and you have to resist.’

‘Hah. I told my best friend something very similar the other day.’

‘Were you right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So am I.’

Laurie had plans to slink out of the party in full swing and go for a late drink with Jamie elsewhere, but the lure of ‘just one more here’ after they’d seen off two welcome cocktails was too strong. It was a long way down.

Laurie was at the bar when a late middle aged man at her elbow turned towards her. She felt she recognised him, and he said: ‘Hello you,’ as if he knew her.

Laurie didn’t reply.

It wasn’t often in life that a revelation came in an instant. They were usually delivered in stages, sometimes across years, and you had to do some self-assembly to make sense of them. But this man’s features, a ghost from Christmas past – he in a split second summed up why she had been so reluctant to come tonight. He encapsulated what was wrong with spending time in her father’s world.

Looking him in the face, she realised there was something she’d not looked at directly in a long, long time. Since it happened, in fact.

‘What’re are you having?’ said the barman and Laurie couldn’t remember a thing. ‘Gin … and tonic and lager.’

‘Which one?’

‘Whichever,’ Laurie said, dully.

‘Let me get these,’ the man said.

‘Are you … Pete?’ Laurie said dumbly.

‘Yeah! Crikey, how do you know that? Are you? Hang on, you’re not Austin’s girl, are you?’

It had downloaded from nowhere. He was called Pete. The sensation of looking at him was that of the bogeyman threat appearing in a nightmare, a leering ghostly visage between the bedstead posts. You tried to scream for help, but nothing came out.

A voice inside her said:You don’t have to stay here, you know. So she walked away.

33

Laurie found her way back to where Jamie stood, on legs that felt like the bones in them had dissolved.

‘We have to go,’ Laurie said. ‘Now.’

‘OK,’ Jamie said. ‘You’re very pale, are you OK?’

‘If we go, I will be,’ Laurie said.

‘Understood.’

Unfortunately, leaving involved collecting their coats, which attracted the attention of Laurie’s new stepmother.

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