If I Never Met You: A Novel

Laurie had been to Hawksmoor a year back for Dan’s birthday, and if anyone had told her the circumstances under which she’d return, she’d have said: Are you high on hallucinogens? Is that not a vision of my future but an episode of Black Mirror?

She really took to Hawksmoor, it was her kind of place: the dark Victorian tiles and white lanterns, the gloaming, felt like starring in a bloodthirsty period piece with Tom Hardy in a battered top hat. And nothing sorted out imbibing to excess like a steak the size of a mattress. “The cow gets the hangover, not you, it’s brilliant,” she’d told Dan, who’d said “ewwwww.”

She’d dug out a respectable if two-year-old navy pencil dress, put up her hair, done her own makeup this time—if she and Jamie were doing weekly dates, she wasn’t going to make Ivy levels of effort on the regular.

Laurie was seated in the bar with something strong and marmalade flavored, 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, lifting the 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 apologizing 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 center?”

“No, out toward 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 in Liverpool found her in a hedge as a kitten and she was living in the office storeroom 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-flavored 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 punch line 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.”

She laughed. Jamie shook his head.

“You know, the whole romantic comedy staple of the One Who Comes into Your Life Unexpectedly and Changes Everything. Setting aside that no one’s capable of that if you’re a grown adult who knows their own mind, why is that a good thing? I don’t want to be changed. I like myself as I am.”

“That comes across.” Laurie grinned and he rolled his eyes.

“Another?”

“It’s table service.”

“Well, I’m running a drink behind and can’t wait.”

Chin propped on palm, Laurie watched him lean on the bar, and pondered if she could save up to redecorate her house in the style of Hawksmoor.

A platinum blonde with a bob, in an oyster silk spaghetti-strap dress, slid over to Jamie’s side. She looked like Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface and had a similar aversion to wearing a bra. Laurie couldn’t stop staring. Was she hitting on Jamie . . . ?

My God, she was, arm draped around his shoulder, speaking closely into his ear, the way her body was angled, Jamie looking simultaneously gratified and vaguely startled. Laurie watched with amused curiosity: Would he weasel out of this one, given the contract stipulations?

There was some sotto voce chat between them and the woman glanced over. There was some more chat, and the woman did a “Wow what” jaw drop, and this time really scrutinized Laurie. It was hard to know how to feel when she had no idea what had sparked her interest.

Jamie broke free and came back, set their drinks down.

“Did you get propositioned at the bar?” Laurie said, quietly awestruck.

“Er. Yeah,” Jamie said, bashful and maybe a little bit proud.

“Oh my God.” Laurie didn’t want to inflate an already healthy ego but this felt like going on safari to her.

“But . . . how do . . . creatures of the night know each other? How do you tell each other is one, like the Freemasons? You could’ve been here with your wife; I could be your wife. I could be barreling over there, handbag flying. Or you could be gay.”

Jamie laughed.

“For the most part, especially if you’re a woman approaching a man, you’re pretty sure even if you get rebuffed that the person will be flattered. Also, I can’t let you go on thinking I’m a god. While I have had a cold approach in my time, that wasn’t one. That’s Kirsten, I know her from a while back. She was dating a friend of mine at the time.”

“What did you say just now?”

“That I was here on a date.”

“That was enough to put her off?”

“Yup. Well. Apart from . . .” Jamie leaned in and whispered, “She offered for you to join in.”

Laurie sucked in her breath and looked over. “And when she was dating your friend, you . . . ?!”

Jamie shook his head rapidly: “My male friend! Male. No, thank you.”

“She looks like normal people. All the while. Soliciting threesomes.”

Laurie thought for a moment. “But you said something else to her? Something that made her go ‘Oh my!’ and look at me like I was an extraterrestrial.”

“Did she?” Jamie said blandly: this was a fob off if ever there was.

“Yes. You said I was a Mormon, or didn’t have good hygiene, or something, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t! I made it clear you wouldn’t be interested, and that was that.”

“You said, She’s not a Sex Person, you know.”

“Sex Person, hahahaha. But, no, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t tell her we weren’t really dating?”

“No! That’s verboten. We agreed?”

“Absolutely.” Laurie nodded, feeling a twinge of hypocrisy, though what risk was Emily?

“If it isn’t bad, why don’t you tell me?”

“Argh! You’re in the right job, you know that? The witness requests a glass of water.”

“Denied. The witness can have a drink of water, Your Honor, when he answers the question as clearly stated.”

“I told her . . .” Jamie paused. “I said I don’t want to share you. That’s what I said.”

“Oh,” Laurie said.

A look passed between them and Laurie felt . . . unusual. Despite knowing it was fiction created for a purpose, she felt a flicker in her stomach. Then returned herself to reality:

“She was that shocked at the idea you might be dabbling in fidelity?”

Jamie shrugged and changed the subject.

Something tweaked at Laurie about it, something she still didn’t understand, and as they were being shown to their table, she realized what it was.

If what Jamie said was merely created to brush Kirsten off, why was he reluctant to tell her?

After Dan and Laurie got together, they used to blow student loan cash on dinners à deux. What Laurie remembered was going wild at the Pizza Hut as-much-as-you-can-eat salad bar, and being so smitten and full of chemicals, her stomach like a balloon knot, she could only pick at it. A twelve-inch stuffed-crust pepperoni would appear to be the size of the Isle of Wight and, anyway, she didn’t want to do something as unsexy as masticate it in front of her new obsession. There were a lot of doggy bags in her halls of residence fridge. Dan thought that Laurie had a birdlike appetite for the first year they were together. (His scoffing ability was unaffected, however.)

By contrast, the benefit of not being on a real second date with Jamie Carter, or high on the natural drug of infatuation, was that Laurie was more than able to do justice to a shared T-bone steak, bone marrow gravy, dripping fries, cheesy mash, and creamed spinach, after Jamie had taken the obligatory photographs. This was the squarest meal she’d had since the breakup, and she’d returned to the fray with gusto.

“I can’t look at another chip without crying,” Jamie said after twenty-five minutes.

“Quitter. Wouldn’t want you fighting alongside me in any war.” She shoveled them over onto her plate.

“I’m trying to work out what evidence we produce from this evening,” Jamie said. “As a stern critic of my own work, I think the Ivy was a trifle obvious, a bit on the nose. I shouldn’t have gone Facebook, I never do Facebook, really. This one will be strictly for Instagram.”

Laurie nodded. “You know best.”

“But I’m still worried that another selfie is a bit . . . meh. And laboring the point. It doesn’t feel genuine. You know?”

Laurie rubbed her hands on her napkin. “Not really, being a grandma with all this.”

“You’d be so good at it though. You’re photogenic and witty.”

Laurie beamed. She’d take it.

He found no further inspiration by the time the bill came, and said in dismay, “I’ll put our posh Hawksmoor dinner on an Instagram story but other than that, I got nothing. I can’t tag you in it, as you’re not on Instagram, but I will hint you were there in the caption.”

“Imagine if we’d known this would be adulthood.”

As they walked away from the restaurant, two girls in front of them were giggling and holding a phone up, shivering bare legs going knock-kneed in the cold.

“Hang on . . . hang on. I’ve got it, I’ve got the idea,” Jamie said in a low voice. “I’m pretty sure we’re in the background of their photos.”

He drew Laurie a few steps forward and discreetly checked where the girls were again. “OK, put your hand over my hand.”

Jamie placed it on Laurie’s cheekbone, pulling her in and cupping her face as if in adoration or about to kiss, lowering his gaze as he did so. Laurie almost snorted, but Jamie hissed: “Hand, now!” Laurie put her palm over his, feeling distinctly foolish.

Seconds later and Jamie was being unspeakably charming to the two girls—who he thought might’ve inadvertently snapped him and his girlfriend, would they mind if . . . ?

They were delighted to AirDrop him the photos, and Jamie was as pleased with the results as they were to send them. Laurie squinted. Two happy twenty-somethings, mouths jammy with lipgloss, pouting in the front of the frame. To their rear, Jamie and Laurie, looking to be indeed in what the tabloids would term a clinch.

Props to his artistic direction—it was a very Richard Curtis pose, like Bridget Jones with Mark Darcy in the snow. It invited you to imagine what might have been said seconds before, and what might happen seconds after.

Laurie remembered a film and director guy they’d met at a party of upwardly mobiles in Chorlton who said that “what works on screen can be too much in the room” and that “Michael Caine is like a ship’s foghorn!”—the same seemed to apply here. The face clasping had seemed very “swelling strings” and purple in real life, but on the phone screen, it looked like an authentic private moment. Jamie’s look of passion, Laurie’s hand over his, so affectionate and natural. Laurie made a note to never, ever trust photographs posted online. They could be as designed and stage-managed as much as any political poster.

“No need to praise me to the skies for this gonzo BRILLIANCE,” Jamie said, almost hugging himself with glee. He skimmed through filter options, turned the light up on it so Jamie and Laurie were more distinct, and posted it to his Instagram. He flashed his screen at Laurie. She read the caption.

“When you accidentally photobomb someone’s birthday but they’re nice enough to give you the evidence. Happy 21st, Madeleine!”

Jamie was fizzing.

“It’s perfect. No one’s going to guess we saw them taking the selfies and maneuvered ourselves into it, even if they were skeptical of the Ivy shot. It’s too high-concept. They’ll apply the simplest explanation, and for once, Occam’s razor is wrong.”

“You call me a natural lawyer but you’re no slouch yourself.”

When Laurie got in, her phone blipped.

Jamie

You know how you thought this was a washout and no one would believe we were seeing each other?

Laurie

Yes

Jamie

A recently joined Instagram user, with no photos posted yet, who doesn’t follow me—one “Dan Price Mcr”—watched my story with the Hawksmoor food. So you officially have his attention. Enough to set up a stalking account.

Laurie

OMG. But . . . why did he use his real name, if he knew you’d see his name?

Jamie

If he’s new to Insta, my guess is he doesn’t realize Stories aren’t like posts on your general profile, you can see who’s looked at them. It won’t be his finest minutes on Earth when he realizes . . . x

Laurie went to bed with an increased heart rate, mind whirring. She had been scared she could no longer win Dan’s attention, so much so she’d not forecast how she’d feel, knowing for sure she had it. It was unexpectedly daunting.

Lying in bed, she wondered once more how they’d gotten to this point.

She and Dan had had a good origins story, and they were often prompted to tell it for new arrivals at any Chorlton parties they went to.

It was freshers’ week at Liverpool, and Laurie was so homesick she’d cried herself to sleep every night, pasting on bravado every day, along with her Rimmel Lasting Finish in Mauve Maxx.

She could remember with total clarity how it felt, as if everyone else had been introduced on some other occasion and were right in the flow of it, while she ached with insecurity and inadequacy. No one else, she was sure, felt the way she did. And what were they doing?

Laurie was a virgin, she’d never taken drugs unless you counted weed, which came to an abrupt end after a terrible reaction to being cross-faded at Dean Pollock’s house when she was sixteen. She secretly didn’t really like how beer tasted, or want to get paralytic, or swallow pills: she was sure she’d end up the cautionary misadventure story with her inquest reported in the Daily Mail.

She had been Saffy to her mum’s Eddy in Ab Fab—what did a Saffy do as a student?

This Friday night, Laurie was in the eye of the storm in a rowdy barn called Bar CaVa. It catered exotically foul-flavored shots to the undergraduate population, and was the place you went to preload before getting even more steaming at second or third locations.

She was in a Pixies T-shirt and jeans, hair in ironic schoolgirl plaits (she was in the student mode of immediately glomming on to the things she would have scorned and rejected back home, including hankering after the batty flavor combinations in her mum’s vegetarian cooking). She was with a bunch of girls she met in halls who seemed quite loud, posh, and not much her thing: two of them were discussing joining the hockey club.

Laurie was vaguely aware of a group of lads in fancy dress for some rag week stunt in the corner of the room but didn’t pay them any heed until a girl with long straight brown hair tumbled to the floor, dramatically pissed. The lads dashed over to help her up.

“She needs to be taken home,” said an Austin Powers, through false teeth. “Where are you staying?”

The petite girl, like a rag doll, looked to be mumbling, indistinctly.

Laurie’s ears pricked up at “be taken home.” There was no way she was letting someone who’d lost her motor functions be carried out of here by a load of men who Laurie would be unable to identify in an ID parade. She had not started her law degree, and yet with her innate fiery sense of right and wrong and moral duty, she suspected she might be a good fit for it.

“She’s spannered, leave her,” said a Zorro, after they propped the girl upright in a seat. You could just about imagine she was OK if you didn’t notice her eyes were closed, like the corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s.

“We can’t leave her like this,” said a Hot Dog. “Where are her friends?”

They gingerly poked around in a purse that was attached to the drunk girl’s wrist by a small loop of leather, and found a halls of residence card.

“Here’s her room number,” said Zorro.

At this, Laurie swigged the last of her drink and approached. “Hi. I don’t know her, but might be better for me to take her home?”

“Hell-LOH!” said Austin Powers, truly inhabiting the role. “I can’t speak for her but I wouldn’t mind you taking me home.”

“Hi,” said Hot Dog. “And thank you.”

“I’m Laurie,” she said, feeling uncharacteristically confident.

“Lorry? As in haulage?” said Zorro.

“L-A-U-R-I-E.”

“What a great name,” Hot Dog said. “It would be much, much better if you’d take her, thank you so much.”

“No problem.” Laurie squatted down to level of Drunk Girl. Drunk Girl appeared to briefly focus on her and gave her a sloppy little grin.

“Harro,” she slurred. “You look nice.”

“Thank you.” Laurie grinned back. “Let’s get you home, eh? More fun to be sick in your own bed than here.” She hoisted her up, wrapping her arm around her tiny frame, and prepared to exit Bar CaVa.

“Here’s her halls card,” Hot Dog said, handing it over. “Thank you.”

Laurie read the name on the card. EMILY CLARKE.

She noticed Hot Dog had kind eyes. In fact, he had eyes with so much personality, they could blaze out of a hot dog costume. They focused on her intently. You didn’t see that every day. You didn’t expect to get sex looks from a foam sausage.

“Thank you, really,” Hot Dog said. “Can I get in touch with you? Find out if she’s OK?”

Even though his concern was supposedly for Drunk Girl, Laurie knew it wasn’t her he was chiefly interested in.

Laurie found a lip liner pencil in her bag and wrote her room number and halls on Hot Dog’s proffered hand. Swapping mobile numbers would’ve made more sense, but they were away from home, playing roles in a realm where normal rules didn’t apply. Laurie was almost self-consciously acting a filmic moment, to be quirky, to be a manic Pixies-liking black girl. And Dan later admitted: “Can I have your phone number?” was too obviously hitting on her.

It was so easy, that was what Laurie remembered. This funny, cute Welsh lad with a slight lisp and a dry wit was everything she didn’t know she wanted until that moment. They couldn’t stop smiling at each other because it was so right, and they both knew it.

Over the next month, Laurie lost her virginity, discovering sex wasn’t that big a deal when you found someone you wanted to do it with; who liked you as much as you liked them, who was as exhilarated and terrified about passing that milestone as you were.

And she’d made a fast friend in Emily, the drunken wraith she’d rescued.

It was all good things turning up at once, and Laurie felt her life had finally taken off.

One day, lolling on her bed in the Amsterdam-window red light cast by the thick orange curtains in her halls room, a lovestruck Dan was discussing infidelity. They both recoiled from the idea that they would ever break the sacred covenant between them. It was unthinkable. They were Romeo and Juliet without the balcony, the warring dynasties, or the suicide misunderstanding. They’d had whispered conversations in the dark about the future, they both knew this was it.

“Let’s promise each other, here and now,” Dan said, putting out his hand for Laurie to shake. “Let’s pledge that if either of us even thinks about being unfaithful, we tell the other one before it can start. That way neither of us ever has to worry. Complete and total honesty.”

The improbability they were ever going to do it made the sweetness of explicitly pledging all the greater. Laurie shook his hand, and they kissed.

She felt like laughing, remembering that now. The way life was so simple to kids in love. Find the right person, promise not to cheat on them. It’s not difficult! They were never going to make the strange, tawdry messes their parents’ generation had. The idea their parents had once felt the way they did hadn’t occurred to them. Eugh.

Dan stalking Jamie’s online presence: it was a tiny glimmer of being wanted by him again, and Laurie craved it like a drug.