Page 59 of If I Never Met You

Laurie was seated in the bar with something strong and marmalade-flavoured, tapping her foot to New Order’s ‘True Faith’, when Jamie messaged to say he’d been detained by a domestic crisis. He wasn’t a man who one pictured having either domesticity or crises. She snickered to herself, liftingthe glass to her lips, imagining one of the torches had puttered out in his BDSM dungeon.

He arrived twenty minutes later, pale face wind chilled, in a flurry of apologies and Acqua Di Parma and a Paul Smith scarf.

‘No worries,’ Laurie said, ‘The waitress has been over to say they cocked up and had us down for an hour later, so we’re in the bar for the meantime anyway.’

Jamie kept apologising and Laurie said, ‘It’s no issue to sit here with a drink on my own for half an hour. It’s quite nice in fact.’

He looked faintly quizzical at her serenity, so she asked, ‘Do the women you usually see get very upset at being on their own somewhere?’

Jamie muttered something.

What a very old-fashioned dynamic for a modern swinger. It might not hurt Jamie to spend time with other grown-ups.

Laurie was going to politely avoid the nature of the domestic crisis, but Jamie volunteered a washing machine overflow.

‘You live in the city centre?’

‘No, out towards Salford.’

‘I totally pictured you in a central flat,’ Laurie said, not wanting to say, a shag pad with sheepskin rugs.

‘Unfortunately my tyrannical lodger Margaret has her needs, and they include a bedroom of her own, and a garden,’ Jamie swiped to open his phone and showed Laurie a picture of a giantly plump tortie with a near-human frown.

‘Haha! Oh. I didn’t think of you as a cat person at all.’

‘I’m not really, I’m a Margaret person. A colleague inLiverpool found her in a hedge as a kitten and she was living in the office store room until I volunteered. She was the only one in the office I got on with, by the end.’

Laurie thought:persona non grata in two workplaces, Jamie, I might start to look at the common factor.

‘Yeah Miss Eyebrow Raise, I know you’re thinking “oh he pisses everyone off” but it wasn’t like that. My ex decided to turn it into Israel and Palestine in terms of who took which side, and eventually pretty much everyone decided the quieter life was on hers.’

‘So I guess you could say she did bring peace and unity to the West Bank eventually?’

Jamie almost spat his ‘Shaky Pete’s Ginger Brew’.

‘I’d have preferred a two state solution. You do make me laugh – slash – say the strangest things.’

They beamed at each other, a moment of unadulterated mutual appreciation, the sort of brush with excitement Laurie had forgotten how to feel. Was this some sort of chemistry? Or the marmalade-flavoured intoxicator? She looked away first, taking another sip.

‘It’s so novel to me to be the talk of the office and have a drama with an ex …’ Even calling Dan her ex still sounded weird. ‘What with us having been going steady since eighteen. He’s my only serious boyfriend.’

She presumed Jamie picked up on the implication of serious, she wasn’t going to spell it out.

‘Wow. Yeah. Can imagine.’

‘Can you though? You probably think I should be stuffed and in a museum,’ Laurie said, grinning.

‘I definitely think you should be stuffed,’ Jamie said and then, ‘No no no no come on,’ as Laurie did a shock-shriek of laughter. ‘You made that too easy, rude not for me to take the punchline when offered up. And I don’t know why you have this idea that I find different choices to my own so repulsive. They’re different choices, that’s all.’

‘To be fair, you made getting married sound like a Russian prison without the sex, so you’re not that accepting.’

God, was he a younger version of her dad? Is this how the oldest swinger in town started out? Ugh, and there was still the wedding reception she’d been trying not to think about to get through. Horrors.

‘Haha, sorry yes, I overdid the cynicism that evening. That’s spending hours in Salter & Rowson’s lift for you. There are long-term relationships I think are great. My mum and dad’s. My best mate Hattie and her husband Padraig. But they’re few and far between. I’m over thirty, I’m not so arrogant or as optimistic as to think I’m ever going to meet the person I could have that with.’

Laurie nodded. ‘Yeah I probably won’t again.’

‘You will. But I already feel sorry for him, you and your steel-trap mind.’

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