Laurie groaned while Emily grinned triumphantly.
‘Did you briefly forget your pain?’
‘Absolutely,’ Laurie said, leaning her head on Emily’s tiny shoulder. She had the proportions of a malnourished Hardy heroine on a windswept moor. She was definitely a heroine though, never a victim.
This call from Dan was officially the first time he’d reached out to her to ‘talk’ in ten weeks though. Could it be … could he be …? No, squelch that thought.
‘Yeah. What, to pick stuff up? You still have your key?’ she said to Dan, hedging her bets, though she knew ‘picking up some stuff’ was a text, not a phone call.
‘No, I’m coming round to see you.’
‘What for?’
‘I need to talk to you.’
Laurie breathed in and breathed out. Right. She’d known this would happen. Almost from the first moment Dan had said he was going. Yet it coming true so soon still took her aback.
‘What about?’
‘I think it’s best said face to face. Is seven alright?’
Laurie’s heartbeat sped up, because she could hear the strain behind the casual delivery. Dan was scared. She felt oddly scared herself. What did she have to be frightened about? It was for her to weigh her answer.
She already knew what her answer would be. So did he.
They would have to creak through the formalities of his grovelling apologies, his prepared explanations for how he could’ve got it so catastrophically wrong, his vigorous heartfelt promises that he’d never mess her around again. The pledge to live in the dog house at first, to do better, to try harder. (That’s a point, there’d never be a better time to get that Lurcher she’d unsuccessfully campaigned for.) Tentatively working out how penitent he was prepared to be – did they raise the issue of Laurie being on or off the pill? Did Laurie want to proceed directly to parenthood with a man who’d left her on her own, while he worked through his fear of death in a sterile semi-furnished place near Whitworth Street?
No, absolutely not. He could move back into the spare room and they could take it slowly. Laurie was still in love with Dan but she was also realistic enough to know they would have a different relationship after this. It was a large wound. It had left her unable to trust him. It would take years to recover, fully. It would take years before, if he said they needed to talk, she wouldn’t be expecting rejection and a mad flit again.
She got in and put the lights on, tried to figure out what outfit she could change into that would make her look attractive enough to suit her dignity but not like she’d dressed up for him. In the end she went for jeans and a hip-length jersey top she’d not worn in a while that showed off her more prominent collarbones, and a dark shade of lipstick, from a worn down nub of an Estée Lauder matte long-lasting she rummaged for in the bathroom cupboards. Then she rubbed it off with loo roll and grimaced at herself. She wasn’t going to look like she’d been yearning and praying for this moment, even if she had been.
Dan knocked on the door dead on seven p.m. and Laurie felt his nerves in this uncharacteristic punctuality. When you’re so far on the back foot that you don’t want any other single thing counting against you.
He was in a new jacket, a sage green padded puffy thing she’d have told him not to buy, and she vaguely wondered if he’d dressed up for this, too. Him having clothes she’d not seen jangled her. It wasn’t how she pictured him, in the intervening time. She’d been wondering if she could stand to turn him down, to make him spend longer in purgatory. The fact she felt undermined by the fact he’d bought winterwear without consulting her told her she didn’t have anything like the strength.
Dan sat down and refused Laurie’s offer a beer – ‘I’m driving’ – which she took to be him signalling that he didn’t expect a yes, wasn’t being complacent.
‘Thanks for seeing me,’ he said, and Laurie frowned.
‘A bit formal? Are we communicating as lawyers now?’
He shifted his weight and coughed and didn’t make any cautious gesture of amusement.
A tiny amount of dread entered Laurie’s body. She couldn’t read him.
‘Was it to say something in particular?’
‘Yes … OK. God. There’s no good way of saying this.’
Using that line again? Jesus. She remained impassive. He didn’t deserve the smallest amount of help and she’d hate herself if she gave it to him. It was bad enough she was taking him back.
‘I wanted you to be the first to know.’
Laurie’s palms were suddenly slick, and she could feel the pulse in her wrist. I wanted you to be the first to know was a REALLY fucking odd introduction to ‘I made a mistake.’ If not that, what?
Was he off to find himself in the Outback, despite her mockery over his poor globetrotter credentials? She was going to have to grit her teeth through Christmas, desperately hoping he’d not encountered any misfortune while hiking through remote dusty areas of the planet? Desperately scanning his Facebook, hoping he’d post a proof of life photo, looking tanned and craggy?
‘First to know what?’ Laurie said finally, into the agonising silence, during which Dan’s face was etched with grave worry.
‘I’ve met someone.’
The phrase smashed into the living room like a meteorite, taking out the fireplace, leaving a smoking crater. She physically recoiled. He’d come here to say he was with another woman? Already? Laurie had not, for a single second, entertained that this was what happened next. Not this fast. He’d only just moved out? How was this possible?
‘Met someone?’ she repeated incredulously, staring at the pre-faded, pretend-worn knees on his indigo jeans, clothes which she realised she’d not seen before either.
Dan nodded.
‘You’re together, like a couple?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve slept with someone?’
This was patently a stupid question, a teenager’s question, given he’d called them a couple. Laurie was so far beyond dealing with this that she had no process between the rapid firing in her brain, and her mouth.
Dan twisted his hands together and said:
‘Yes.’
Laurie wanted to scream, or sob. Until now, his leaving was only words, a temporary absence, and a three-month lease. A few patching-up conversations with their parents, and Emily, a year that you ‘put behind you’ when you raised a glass at the New Year bells.
Now it was definitive, he’d done something he couldn’t undo. Laurie steadied herself, with great effort, and asked, ‘But – we’ve barely split up? It’s been weeks?’
Dan didn’t reply to this, but carried on. ‘She’s called Megan. She works at Rawlings.’
Giving her a name made it real. Laurie tried to quell her spinning stomach, and racing mind, to focus. There would be time to fall apart later. Lots of it. Rawlings, a rival firm. Someone he’d met in court.
‘And you started seeing her, when?’ she said, with restrained force.
Dan twisted his hands some more.
‘Few weeks back. A month or so.’
‘But you knew her already?’
‘Yeah. A year, year and a half.’
‘Did I really mean this little? That you could move on this quick?’