If I Never Met You: A Novel

“Morning!” Laurie said cheerfully, power walking up the stairs on Monday, as the two receptionists present, Jan and Katy, both detained by phone calls, almost screeched with disappointment that they couldn’t bang down the receivers fast enough to commence interrogation.

It was also possible their round eyes and look of fascination was Laurie’s change of image. She’d pulled Honey’s curly hairdo up into a ponytail, but it was still far more bushy than her usual more severe style. As Laurie had fretted about being conspicuous, she wondered if her mum had a point, back at school, that she could allow. Laurie’s Afro curls weren’t a crass bid for attention, they were genetics, and yet she flattened them to move less observed in a mostly white world. To fit in. How much of her existence had been about trying—with varied success—to fit in? To keep her head down?

“Morning, team,” Laurie said heartily to Bharat and Di, and Bharat said, “Oh, here she is, whoring her way to her desk as if she’s not Manchester’s most notorious slut. Careful she doesn’t try to shag you on her way past, Di!”

“Things have come to a pretty pass when a woman can’t go for five mojitos, two toots of coke, a bump of ket, and a game of strip Boggle in the Britannia Hotel without being called loose anymore,” Laurie said as Bharat chortled. “Honestly, you make one sex tape with a girthy dildo . . .”

“Bit harsh to call Jamie Carter a girthy dildo, but you know him best I guess,” Bharat said.

Laurie and Bharat honked, and Di looked stunned. How many years had she sat opposite Laurie, and the biggest scandal Laurie had ever offered was admitting she’d never seen X Factor.

All three of them started at the sudden sight of Dan in the doorway. He was wearing that pale pink shirt of his she always liked. Laurie felt oddly pleased with the optics of him interrupting at that moment, because she’d been doing proper corpsing laughter. Dan shot Laurie a direct, purposeful look she couldn’t decipher.

“Uh, do you have Mick’s sixtieth collection?”

“Oh, yeah . . .” Bharat rifled through his trays in a tense silence and handed over a brown envelope, baggy at one end with coins. Laurie’s heart pounded.

“Ta.” Dan promptly departed and they all did a “hmm-mm” throat clearing at one another, as a way of communicating not sure what that was without saying so, in so many words.

It was a condition check, Laurie decided, a way of letting her know he’d seen the picture and wasn’t going to react.

But this was the first time since they broke up that he’d found a pretext to visit her desk, so given actions spoke louder than (barely any) words, it had backfired.

Having run the gauntlet and survived, Laurie was feeling almost smug, until the first loo break of the morning ran her slap-bang into Kerry as she exited the cubicle. A one-woman gauntlet.

“Oh, hello you. Belle of the ball. Apple of daddy’s eye.” Laurie had long suspected Mr. Salter’s fondness for her made her especially problematic to Kerry. Kerry’s snarky, wry tone always implied she’d caught you up to something, and was deciding whether or not to dob you in for it. It was very Lauren Bacall, the same delivery as: You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?

“Your selfie with Jamie Carter is the talk of the office. Are you seeing each other?”

“Haaah.” Laurie washed her hands. “Thought it might be. He asked me out and I thought it’d be fun.”

“Out for a drink, then? Nothing more happen?” Kerry said, running a lipstick around her mouth, eyes moving to the side to catch Laurie’s expression.

“Bit personal!” Laurie said in what she hoped was a jolly way. “How was your weekend?”

“Hmm,” Kerry said, capping the tube as if she’d not heard or the question was rhetorical.

Laurie wished she’d rehearsed this more, had her tactics more finely worked out. She’d been reckless. The plan went: (1) post photo, (2) bullshit that she and Jamie were involved.

There was a lot of gray area, and now she’d made an enemy of Kerry by not preparing a fob off when directly asked if they’d slept together. It was utterly outrageous Kerry felt entitled to know this, of course, but these were the unofficial rules of Salter & Rowson. Kerry either got what she wanted from you or she spin-doctored her way around and made life a misery. She twisted you the fuck up.

At lunchtime, Laurie received a WhatsApp from Bharat to meet her at Starbucks, and she suspected if he wouldn’t risk saying it on premises, it was nothing to be pleased about.

Laurie was right.

As they queued, Bharat said:

“Kerry’s telling everyone that this was clearly a totally contrived stunt to make Dan jealous and you and Jamie Carter can’t possibly be seeing each other.” This tacit support from Bharat was a kindness; it was always accepted that you needed to know what line Kerry was pushing about you, to push back on it.

Laurie gulped.

“What a cow! Why on earth wouldn’t it be true?”

Laurie knew Bharat would accept Laurie’s word over Kerry’s as a point of honor, and felt both glad and guilty. Laurie had already spun him the line that she was deliberately doing things that felt out of character—broadly true—and threw the bonding-in-the-lift incident in, relieved that wasn’t an invention.

“Timing too quick, and that you dodged saying if you’d gone home with him. She doesn’t want to lie, but she wants to make us all think something happened. Laurie is not a natural liar.”

“As if I’m going to tell her!”

“I know. She said it’s totally out of character for you, you’re too ‘straight edged’ to go for a man like Carter, and we all know you’re still in bits over Dan. I quote: ‘one hundred percent set up, including the Toni & Guy, Sasha Fierce do.’”

Laurie flinched.

“Anyway, she’s stirred the cauldron good and proper and even taken it upon herself to tell Dan he obviously provoked this, and that you must be in a real state to go this far.”

Laurie cringed again, and cursed Kerry.

“What an ultra bitch.”

She was badly needled, like everyone was laughing at her. That she couldn’t see herself the way others so plainly did.

Kerry could find anyone’s weak spot; it was her superpower. Somehow she’d immediately identified that the worst things for Laurie would be pointing up the implausibility of her as Jamie’s paramour, and the humiliation of her ex thinking it was for his benefit.

“How dare she,” Laurie said as they left, holding cups bearing the names LORI and BAWAT. “And my hair wasn’t Toni & Guy!”

“That was the biggest burn of all,” Bharat agreed. “My friend Jessie you met was given the worst time there—she came out looking like Rod Stewart. Not even Faces Rod, Nana Hair Rod.”

“I don’t think I’ve met Jessie?”

“Yeah, you did. Her sister was the practice nurse in Alderley Edge who gave one of the Spice Girls her abnormal smear test, remember? Forget which one. It was fine, she only needed some precancerous cells lasered.”

Laurie guffawed. “What a bio!” and then, “Thank you, Bharat, somehow you always lighten the mood.”

“Like the NYPD, I protect and serve.”

Laurie had seen a case on the whiteboard for this afternoon, with the initials JC next to it. She’d heard Michael and others mutter that because he shared them with Jesus Christ, he thought he was the Second Coming.

If she got to the mags court before the hour, she could possibly intercept Jamie outside without anyone seeing. This conversation was too involved for WhatsApp. She timed it right, as he was ten paces ahead of her on the pavement the whole way, talking into his phone for much of it.

“Jamie,” she said, pouncing on him as he put his phone in his pocket.

Laurie glanced around to check they weren’t being observed and motioned for him to duck around the side of the building with her.

Laurie was slightly out of breath, skin still warm with not only the exertion of tracking him, but prickling shame at Kerry’s cruelties.

“It’s over,” she said urgently under her breath. “Kerry is going ’round saying it’s obviously fake and a ploy to get back at Dan.”

Jamie shrugged. “And?”

“And, we’ve been made. Or I have. They’re not going to buy the idea we’re together.”

“This is to be expected, as they get their heads ’round it.”

“Why would they change their minds?”

“You keep saying they, plural. This is Kerry. Kerry’s gonna Kerry. Why do you care what she thinks?”

“Uh, I thought what people think was the whole point of this? Why else are we doing it?”

“Kerry is one person, and someone everyone knows is about as reliable a news source as the Daily Star,” Jamie said. “Let her say what she wants. It’s more fuel thrown on to the fire, which we have set.”

“But if it’s out there, the idea that it’s not real and it’s for Dan’s sake, from now on I look stupid!”

“Will you calm down?” Jamie said. “You don’t look stupid. We carry on. The plan is the plan.”

Being told to calm down made Laurie feel even more foolish.

“This has fallen at the first hurdle. It’s simply not plausible. God, the last thing I wanted was for people to think I am in such a mess over Dan I’d do this.”

“Your sensitivity over his reaction is clouding your judgment,” Jamie said, frowning. “Absolutely nothing’s changed. See it from the outside, beyond Salter & Rowson’s microclimate. The idea it’s impossible two single people in their thirties who work in the same office might be dating—it’s not ‘out there,’ is it? It’s not ‘persuading people that 9/11 was an inside-job’ level of buy-in?”

Laurie could see how exasperated Jamie was with her. Someone so ambitious and confident probably had low tolerance for what he perceived as weak nerves and cowardice.

“You only want to press on because it might get you a juicy promotion!”

“No shit, that’s why I’m doing this? Not much of a gotcha, is it? It doesn’t make my analysis wrong.”

Laurie was silent.

“OK, look.” Jamie rubbed the bridge of his nose, moving his Clark Kent glasses upward, and Laurie suspected he was regretting it too, whatever he said. “If you drop it now, Kerry has won, because if it stays a one-off then it will look like a stunt. Carry on, and she looks more and more wrong. Which’ll it be?”

Laurie had no comeback. He was right.

“. . . OK.” She shrugged in defeat.

There was a pause as they prepared to part.

“Do you wear glasses?” Laurie adjusted the files she was carrying.

“Uh?” Jamie pointed at them, on his face.

“I mean sometimes you’re in them and sometimes you’re not.”

“Have you heard of long-sightedness and shortsightedness?”

“Yes, but I can’t work out which you have.”

“Is this relevant in some way I’m not grasping?” Jamie said testily.

“It’s not relevant. I’m being nosy.” Laurie smiled. “I’m meant to know stuff about you, now we’re going out.”

“They’re clear,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Clear? As in no prescription?”

“Yes.”

“So why wear them?”

Jamie turned his head up to the heavens briefly. “When I first started going to court I looked young, OK, and I noticed I got treated differently when I wore them. They’re a . . . prop.”

“OK.”

“Don’t tell anyone at the office, please. I will get roasted for it.”

“I will definitely not tell anyone at the office.”

“Thank you.”

“. . . That you do Atticus Finch cosplay! Hahahahoohoo.”

Jamie glowered as Laurie doubled over. She had a feeling no one had ever sent him up like this. Certainly no female. Laurie didn’t know why she dared with Jamie, she just knew she did.

“Oh, up yours. Great. Right I’ve got a murder committal in court nine, going to do that before I do one myself. Catch you later.”

He stalked off, leaving Laurie wiping her eyes, not sure if she should regret her mockery.

When Laurie’s WhatsApp pinged at five p.m., she expected Jamie to be saying You know what, maybe you’re right, let’s leave it.

Jamie

Big guns: Why don’t we do dinner at the French? The French is spendy, it would say: we mean this. If we go at an awkward time like 6 or 9:30. I bet we could get a last-minute booking. Our photos wouldn’t need to point that out of course. Thoughts? J

She noticed she’d forfeited the kiss, however.

Although she’d been the one wanting to can it all, she was relieved he was on board, and being constructive. If she wanted this to work, maybe she should ditch her passivity in the process. If the next move was a candlelit meal . . . ?

Laurie

Yes, except . . . the French is more for anniversaries and occasions, I think. Second date, too much pressure, it’s not quite plausible. Hawksmoor, perhaps? Steak, cocktails, moody interiors. You can even ask for date night tables when you book.

Thank you, Emily, for that intel. Laurie felt clued up and relevant for a change.

Jamie

YES. Good thinking. I will book for Friday? x

Laurie replied in the affirmative. The kiss was back, the game was once more afoot, and Laurie realized, Jamie was right (albeit probably for the wrong reasons). Time to screw her courage to the sticking place, and stick it to everyone.