If I Never Met You: A Novel

Laurie and Jamie looked at each other. A quality of silence had descended that seemed quite final, in terms of the lift changing its mind. Jamie prodded his index finger against the G button several times. Still nothing.

“Try going back up?” Laurie said.

Jamie pressed the floor 2 button and again, no response.

He shook his head and jammed his finger against the button marked HELP.

After a tense few seconds, the speaker below crackled into life. “Hello! Who is this?”

“Hi,” Jamie said. “It’s Jamie Carter, in criminal. This lift has stopped.”

“Hold on!” Mick the security guard bellowed.

Jamie and Laurie gave each other polite eye rolls, shoulder shrugs. A minute ticked by. Then another. What felt like a small era passed, and both Jamie and Laurie muttered “fuck’s sake” under their breath in unison, as they reached what must be a gargantuan seven minutes of standing in silence with a near stranger in a lift.

“We’re in danger of evolving as a species here,” Jamie tutted, making Laurie laugh.

“Any news?” Jamie said, after pressing for attention again.

“I said hold on!” Mick said, his exasperation carrying through the tinny speaker.

Jamie looked at Laurie, checked his watch under the cuff of his coat; they both made more British tutting noises, muttered “typical,” did more shrugs and more eye rolls.

“You in a rush?” Jamie said eventually.

“No . . . not really,” Laurie said, feeling her lack of vibrant social life when standing opposite the Captain of Friday Night Plans. “You?”

“Yep.” Jamie looked at an expensively solid silver watch again. “What’s he doing?” He pressed the buzzer again. “Hi. Still here.”

“I just said hold on!”

“I don’t know if time’s moving differently down there, but up here it’s been ten minutes.”

Moments ago, Laurie had resented Jamie’s intrusion; now she felt quite fortunate to be able to delegate this problem to the most entitled and pushy of the firm’s advocates.

“Yeah, well, get used to more of that,” Mick said.

“What?” Jamie’s brow furrowed as he leaned on his forearm and jabbed the intercom again. “Speak to us, Mick.”

“Right . . . The maintenance company say it’s going to be an hour. Hang tight.”

Jamie’s brow furrowed further and Laurie gasped.

“Sorry, that sounded like you said an HOUR?” Jamie said.

Pause. Crackle. “At least. Sorry. How many of you are there?”

“Two of us. Myself and . . .” Jamie looked over.

Laurie couldn’t help but grin as a stricken blankness spread across his face.

“Laura?!” he said triumphantly, palms up, a how did I do? to play up the fact he hadn’t been sure.

“Laurie,” Laurie corrected, with a smile.

“Laurie. I knew that! Sorry. Long week.”

“Do a crossword together,” Mick said, audibly chortling.

“Ha fuckin’ har,” Jamie said, after letting the button go. “An hour?!”

He looked at his watch. “Fuck’s sake. Gone seven?” Jamie fiddled with his phone. “No coverage at all?! Fucking HELL.”

This aspect of captivity was obviously a major sting for Jamie Carter, whereas Laurie wouldn’t have thought about whether she could get online or call anyone for another five minutes at least. Maybe Dan was right, maybe she had become insular and boring. Should she be trying to Snapchat with dog ears filters, from inside this Faraday cage?

Jamie yanked his coat sleeve up, checked the time again—although in the last minute, Laurie was guessing it had only moved forward by a minute—and jabbed at his phone again and then waggled it. “What about you?”

Laurie rifled her own iPhone out of her bag and peered at the screen. It was covered in spidery cracks and fractures. It looked like she felt. She shook her head.

“Absolutely wonderful,” Jamie said, looking at his phone again in disgust. He threw his umbrella and briefcase down and pressed the button.

“Hi, Mick. Would you do me a favor—would you call my date for tonight and tell her I’m trapped in a lift?”

Laurie laughed out loud, a real belly laugh.

“What?” Mick barked.

“Call her. And say I’m trapped in a lift, put our date back an hour.”

Wait, he was serious?

“OK, here’s her number . . .” Jamie read it from his iPhone. “0-7-9-1 . . .”

Jamie took his coat off as he did so, shucking it over his shoulders in a manner that somehow felt showy even though he was simply taking a coat off.

“What?” he said, glancing over, unbuttoning a cuff and rolling a sleeve up.

“He’s got a job to do, he’s not your PA!”

Jamie rolled his eyes and ignored her.

“No one is answering that number,” Mick said over the intercom moments later.

“I bet she thinks an unrecognized Manchester landline is PPI.” Jamie sighed. “Thanks for trying, Mick.” He rolled up his other sleeve and sat down, sighing heavily.

Laurie realized there was no longer any reason for her to be standing up either, and followed suit.

“Are you claustrophobic?” Jamie said.

Laurie shook her head, self-conscious that the wave of panic she’d just felt was obviously visible.

She was telling the truth; she wasn’t, to her knowledge, claustrophobic. But right now she’d been unexpectedly reacquainted with the sensation of breaking her arm as a kid, having a heavy plaster cast on it, and waking up in the dead of night freaking out: “Get it off me, get it off me!” She’d been fine in this lift, until that very second, when the four walls pressed in and with no hope of escape, her chest tightened, and her fists clenched, nails digging into her palms.

“Breathe,” Jamie said, watching Laurie. “Concentrate on breathing. We’ll be out of here before you know it.”

Despite what she said, he was smart enough to spot she wasn’t coping. Typical lawyers, she thought. We read people constantly. We don’t necessarily care about what we discover, but we read them.

She breathed, and calmed.

Laurie and Jamie had exhausted polite, banal chat about Salter & Rowson’s internal politics, and the gnarly attitudes of certain magistrates, and the clock had barely shifted. Twelve minutes had passed since Laurie last looked.

Out there, 6:25 p.m. would’ve arrived without noticing, it would’ve been an eye blink, a long stride in the short distance to the tram. In here, it was an eternity.

Jamie saw Laurie clicking her phone agitatedly to check the time and she remembered he knew she couldn’t be picking up messages, and stopped.

“How is it only twenty-five past six?” she said mournfully.

“Yeah, this feels like the film Interstellar,” Jamie said. “If Matthew McConaughey came back to Earth and his daughter’s an old woman, my date’s probably married with three kids by now.”

“Has this taken a real crap on your plans, then?” Laurie said. “Was it a first date?” she said, in a “I’m not just an uptight workaholic!” way, she hoped.

“Yeah it was. And Gina, twenty-nine, from Sale, is not likely to be impressed at being stood up. We met on Tinder, actually, so she’ll be on to five other standbys after half an hour. Gina twenty-nine from Sale waits for no man.”

Laurie laughed: this sounded less like dating, more like studying a menu in a specialist sauna. She wasn’t made for being single in this time. A sad weight pressed on her ribs.

Tinder. Or Deliveroo for dick, as Emily called it. Laurie inwardly shuddered.

The intercom buzzed. “Hello?”

Jamie was on his feet in one bounce, in a feat of agility: “Mick! Hello!”

“Hello. There’s good news and bad news.”

Jamie sagged. “The bad first?”

“It’s going to be another hour. Sorry.”

“Oh, for fu— And the GOOD?”

“They’re certain it’ll only be an hour from now.”

“Mick, that’s all bad news!”

“Sorry.”

Jamie turned back and slithered down the wall.

“Permission to cry, Laura?”

“Laurie!”

“Haha, oh God, sorry. I’ve got a blind spot where I’m determined to call you Laura. I’m turning into my dad. LOOK IT UP, MARJORIE!”

Laurie laughed again and decided to enjoy Jamie, when he was the only pleasure to be had.

“It’s a very cool name. Is it after anyone or anything?” he added.

“Laurie Lee, who wrote Cider with Rosie.”

Jamie squinted. “Wasn’t he a man?”

“Very good!” Laurie said. “Five points to Slytherin.”

“Oh wow, presumed ignorant. And I’m in Slytherin, am I?” Jamie said. Laurie grinned.

Resigned to their fate, they crossed an imaginary boundary—she felt herself relax—where making the best of limited resources for entertainment felt oddly nice. Like the final days before Christmas, where you can’t wait to break out on holiday, but no one’s doing any work and are pelting each other with Quality Street candy. Sometimes it’s more enjoyable than the holiday itself. Must be something to do with relief of having choices removed and expectations very low. Laurie wondered if she was a chronic overanalyzer.

“Cider with Rosie was a set text for my English Lit GCSE so I won’t pretend to be better read than I am,” Jamie said.

“And you got the Harry Potter reference too—don’t be hard on yourself,” Laurie said with a smile. “My mum didn’t know Laurie Lee was a man, she just liked it. It’s very much like my mum to trot off to register the name without even checking she had the gender right.”

Jamie smiled back.

“I wish I had a quirky story about my name, but nah.”

Silence fell again. Jamie hung his glossily curly head, temporarily out of conversation.

They had another hour to kill. Laurie decided to chance her luck.

“It didn’t work out with Eve, then?”

“Eve?” Jamie looked up and his forehead creased in what seemed genuine rather than feigned confusion. She was probably a few conquests ago, to be fair, Laurie thought.

“Niece of Mr. Salter? Long hair? I saw the two of you in the Refuge back in the summer, remember?”

“Ohhhh, Eve!” Jamie said in a possibly faked moment of comprehension. “Nah. Went out for dinner and career advice chat, but that was it. More than my life’s worth anyway, what with the family connections here. Like messing with a mafioso’s wife. And she’s very young.”

There was a pause as Laurie intuited Jamie was doing some internal sums, in light of Laurie’s knowledge.

“You didn’t say anything to anyone else here about seeing us, did you?”

“Nope. Why would I? You asked me not to, if I recall right.” Although if you didn’t do anything, why so edgy? Laurie thought.

“Well, thanks,” Jamie said. “There’s lots of people here who’d have it on a global email before they’d knocked the lid off their macchiato.”

“It’s a very gossipy place,” Laurie said.

“You’re telling me. I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me, don’t worry,” Laurie said, trying not to snort at what sort of “one” Jamie might owe her. “I can’t stand the way people here feel entitled to know others’ business.”

“Hah. Agreed.”

Another silence descended and Laurie knew it was because Jamie was in a quandary: the only other possible topic was her ex, and yet that fell under category heading: other peoples’ business.

“You’re, er . . . separated from Dan Price in civil, is that right?”

He risked it. Probably for the same reasons Laurie mentioned Eve. If Mick had given them a time frame of fifteen minutes, there was little chance that these hot potatoes would be gaily lobbed about the place.

“Oh yeah. As separated as you can be,” Laurie said, and tried for a satirical smirk that came off as strained.

“I don’t know him that well,” Jamie said, and trailed off, obviously struggling to judge what was appropriate.

“I feel like if I say anything polite about him, it’ll stick in my throat, and if I say anything negative, it’ll make me look bitter,” Laurie said. “Safe to say working together is fucking awful.”

Laurie thought again about the day to come, when Dan dashed out because Megan was in labor. Having to hear about it on the office grapevine, the glances, the whispers, Who’s gonna tell her. She’d be expected to put her anger aside and wish him well. A baby carries all before it—how could Laurie’s feelings matter more?

How Dan would be in a floating state, partly due to sleeplessness, and briefly imagine the hatchet could be buried in the wash of love and wonder he felt. She could imagine the horrifically misjudged Laurie, meet my son/daughter xx text and photo already. The retraction later, which would come via mutual friends: He feels so stupid about that, he’d been up for twenty-seven hours straight. It was a difficult birth in the end—ventouse, I think—and you’re still very much a part of him/on his mind.

Then they’d think they could tell Laurie he’d taken naturally to fatherhood, as if that wasn’t akin to driving hot nails into her hands and expecting her to say: Oh, that’s nice. It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good: from the ashes of us comes the miracle of new life. It’s an ill fucking wind all right and I’ll give him a ventouse.

She’d be furious and scorched by this until the end of her days. She felt delirious thinking about it.

“I bet it’s a nightmare,” Jamie said. “I actually left the last firm I was at in Liverpool over a similar, uh, complication. Not anything like as serious a relationship. But we didn’t function well as colleagues, after.”

Laurie suppressed a smile and nodded. No shit, Jamie Carter had left an angry trail of women in his wake. However, he’d inadvertently hit on a rich seam of conversation—Liverpool. He and Laurie discussed the city she knew from her university years versus the one he knew from his twenties, and that launched them into student times, and the pressures of their early lawyering. Laurie was starting to feel light pressure from her bladder too. She had visions of having to squat in the corner while Jamie Carter turned his back and whistled a Maroon 5 tune.

Eventually, like the Voice of God, Mick interrupted on the intercom and said, “We’re getting you moving! Only a couple of minutes,” and both of them whooped their relief.

The lift jolted into life and Laurie would: (1) never take its movement for granted again and (2) be getting the stairs from now on anyway.

Mick was waiting for them on the ground floor, looking delighted.

“Were you about to start drinking your urine?”

“I’m certainly going to drink some imported Czech urine now,” Jamie said.

“Hell yes,” Laurie said, and wondered if she and Jamie Carter would ever speak again, outside shoptalk. Sharing this ordeal was worth a “hi” in the corridor and a head nod if their eyes met in departmental meetings. Maybe not much more.

They said their hearty good-nights to Mick, and thanked their savior, the man in the boilersuit with the monkey wrench.

As Jamie held the front door for Laurie, he said: “Hey. You might very much want to get straight off, and please say so if you do. But given we’ve both had our Friday nights trashed, fancy a quick drink? Drown our sorrows?”

“Oh . . . ? Sure.”

Laurie surprised herself by not only accepting but wanting to. She was secretly gratified that after an hour and a half of confinement together, he didn’t want to get away from her as fast as possible. And she didn’t think for a second Jamie was trying it on either. She understood what he meant, she felt it too: going home now to dinner for one was pure surrender. They couldn’t let the lift win.

“Nice one,” Jamie said with a dazzling smile, and she momentarily saw a flash of the powers that inflamed bosses’ nieces.