Page 111 of If I Never Met You

And in another moment of observation, Laurie got it – she finally figured it out. The clear difference that Megan offered, compared to her: uncomplicated adoration. Dan was running the show and being made to feel in charge and manly.

She recalled that moment in the spare room, Dan saying resentfully: ‘You’re so bloody clever, you are.’

Laurie had thought she and Dan being a match was a good thing, that she kept him on his toes. They sparred. But a woman had come along offering to play-act the supplicant, do theYou Tarzan Me Jane, and he couldn’t resist. He’d started to find Laurie wearing, by comparison.

She never thought she’d have an explanation, or closure, and now she did. Huh. It felt relieving and slightly flat, like finding out whodunnit in a murder mystery and realising the question was more intriguing than the answer. Megan looked over at Laurie, and Laurie fought her inclination to glance away and returned Megan’s gaze, steadily. After a long moment, Megan dropped her eyes and fussed with the napkin on her lap.

‘Yep,’ Laurie said, to no one but herself, picking up a bottle of wine and refilling herself.

‘You OK?’ Jamie asked again, in her ear, arm round the back of her banqueting chair with the broad festive red and green sash ribbon round it.

‘Yes,’ Laurie said. ‘I’m more OK than I’ve been in a long while, and I have no idea how or why.’

‘I do,’ Jamie said, with a smile.

‘Oh?’

‘I told you when you started to believe in yourself, you’d be unstoppable.’

Jamie Carter, what an unlikely hero. In that second, she wondered if she loved him.

39

‘The Idiocy Hours are well underway.’

Laurie and Bharat were leaning against the bar on a leg stretch, and Bharat was looking around the room with a curl to his lip. The dancefloor had appeared after a third of the tables were whisked out of sight, replaced by stretch of parquet floor, scattered with disco ball fragments of light. ‘This’ll be a scene of horrifying carnage pretty soon. A few will have to be Medi Vacced out by helicopter.’

Laurie laughed. Bharat strongly believed that anything that happened after 9.30 p.m. at the Christmas do was best heard about rather than participated in, and was preparing to make good his departure.

‘Let me know if anything scintillating kicks off? Di’s had three Babychams so she’ll not remember.’

Laurie faithfully promised Bharat she’d be his surveillance detail.

People were stood up now, ties loosened, bottles of beer in hand, covert snogging in the darker recesses of the room. The night time sky was visible through the vast stained-glasswindows and as she walked back to the table, Laurie thought about how she’d go home alone, but wasn’t really lonely any more. Or if she was, it was only in passing, not as a constant state. Her powers were returning. She’d met Dan when she was eighteen, when she had the confidence to stride up to a bunch of lads in Fresher’s Week and tell them she’d sort the problem out. That girl wasn’t created by him, she existed already.

Dan had chosen a future without her, and as sad and harrowing and unexpected as that had been, now she got to choose a future for herself. It was exhilarating.

‘Dance with me?’ Jamie said, as she reached him, pushing his chair out and taking Laurie’s hand.

‘Is this for their eyes?’ Laurie said, behind the back of her hand, and gestured towards Misters Salter and Rowson. Rowson looked like an angry schoolmaster in a Dickens adaptation, wiry with a square set face, a thatch of brown hair that looked as if it was made from wire wool, beetling eyebrows and black-rimmed glasses. ‘’Cos I think you’re alright, they’ve clocked us together.’

‘No it isn’t,’ Jamie said, affronted. ‘Sometimes I think your opinion of me is as bad as everyone else at this company.’

Laurie exhaled and long-suffering-smiled and let herself be led on to the floor, feeling the many eyes following them.

Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’was starting.

‘Are you good at slow dancing?’ Laurie said, with difficulty over the music. ‘I’m never quite sure what to do.’

‘I think it works like this.’

Jamie put one arm round her waist, and placed her hand on his shoulder. With their free hands, they held hands. Themoment her fingers closed round his, she felt a jolt of something, an aliveness where she was acutely conscious of every point of contact between their bodies. His palm slipping towards her hip bone, the fabric of his shirt and his shoulder muscle underneath her fingertips. The light pressure of her corseted chest pressed against his – it was completely U Rated, Family Friendly and yet somehow, the sexiest thing Laurie had ever experienced.

She couldn’t look him in the eyes, and laid her head against his chest, breathing their closeness in. Laurie had been in proximity to Jamie numerous times yet there was something in this moment, this sustained embrace, it forced her to face chemistry she’d been assiduously avoiding.

They were consciously creating the closing credits to their story, the one that started in a broken lift. How should it end? Should she turn her head upwards, tilt it slightly, and finally kiss him, before the stage curtain fell?

But how would she know he had genuinely wanted to kiss her? Did she want someone to pretend to want to kiss her, however well he did it?

---