If I Never Met You: A Novel

“Strike one, he had empty champagne bottles used as decor in his room,” Emily said. “Strike two, he has seen Mumford and Sons”—she paused—“live.”

“He was unlikely to have seen them dead,” Laurie said, shifting the glacé cherry on the cocktail stick out of the way to drink from her glass of rum and crushed ice.

“More respect if he had, and was holding a dripping cutlass when the police arrived. Strike three, had a tattoo of the Coca-Cola logo. I asked him why and he said it was a private joke about his love of coke. I fucking mean. Rock and roll. Shine on, you crazy diamond. Farewell, Josh. It was like the ‘financial advisor has it large’ starter pack.”

Emily was holding court on her latest Tinder calamity, having organized a night at the Liars Club, a subterranean tiki bar and “tropical hideaway” of kitsch. It was all uplighters and downlighters and murals of palm trees on brickwork, and Laurie was sure she was meant to scorn it as naff, but she loved it.

Emily had invited Nadia, her radical feminist, medieval history lecturer friend who always wore a cloche hat and a scowl.

Emily was like this, an effortless collector of people, though not in a status-led or meretricious way. Just as an enthusiast. People seemed to attach themselves to her, as if she was Velcro. Emily had worked on an account at the university and come away with friends in academia.

Dan had met Nadia once and wasn’t a fan. “Like walking directly behind a sand truck,” was his view.

“She’s a lot,” Emily had said when making this plan. “Can you cope with her ‘kill all men’ stance at the moment?”

“Cope with it? I welcome it,” Laurie said.

“This is my view,” Nadia said now, after further crimes of Josh being selfish in bed had been enumerated. “Involvement with a man in our patriarchal society is like expecting homeopathic medicine to cure you. You’re not going to get better by taking a tiny dose of the thing that made you sick in the first place.”

Nadia was “self-loathing straight,” according to Emily and tried to resist entanglements on the basis of it conflicting with her politics. Some people—OK, most—would call Nadia a demented fundamentalist, but Laurie rather liked the courage of her conviction.

When Nadia was in the loo, Laurie explained the latest on Project Revenge and that, so far, she had not got the twisted pleasure from it that she was supposed to.

“I did try to warn you. You’re the wrong fit for this, because you’re overburdened with conscience,” Emily said. “I’d be cackling while looking into my Disney queen mirror, whispering to my albino pet about it, but that’s not you.”

“It’s made me wonder if . . .” Laurie paused. “If I’d still take Dan back.” It was hard and debasing to admit. Not least as that would now affect an innocent child. Laurie never had a dad around—was she really going to pay that forward?

“Would you?” Emily said.

“I don’t know.”

“The point when it’s a definite no, that’s when you’re cured.”

Laurie nodded. She knew that day would come, but she was sure it would feel like pissed-on sizzling ashes and defeat, not closure or jubilation.

“Be honest with me. Was this all written when I didn’t chuck him over the one-night stand? Is this my payback for being a walkover?”

“He said it was a horrible mistake and asked for forgiveness and you trusted him. That was a big thing to do. You have to have trust in a relationship, or what’s the point?”

Laurie nodded. “I’m never going to trust on that scale again. One strike, out.” She sounded as vehement as she felt.

It was highly secret, that detail of their past. It was so long buried and unspoken about it, Laurie occasionally forgot it had ever happened at all. Only Emily, and the lads of Hugo’s stag do from ten years ago, knew about it. Well, and Alexandra from Totnes, who had spent a quarter of an hour atop him. It was in a castle in Ireland, and a cadaverous-looking Dan had crashed back through the door on Sunday night, wailing to Laurie that he had done something so, so, so awful. Laurie assumed he’d put a round of aged malts on his credit card. He told her, then promptly ran to the kitchen and vomited in the sink.

Laurie was aghast, hurt, confused. But faced with his abject contrition, his protestations that he’d rather never drink again than do anything like that, it didn’t cross her mind it would be the end of them.

Nadia rejoined them.

“Nads, I feel as if we are always doing intimate details about my life at the moment, like . . . emotional gynecology,” Laurie said, high on running, solidarity, and Captain Morgan. “I was asking Emily if I was a massive idiot to forgive Dan a one-night stand on a stag do, ten years ago.”

“Yes,” Nadia said.

Emily gasp-laughed and Laurie just laughed.

Nadia gave a small bewildered smile. Laurie suspected she was used to other women being upset by her, and it was a novelty to be taken straight, in good faith.

“I love your clarity!” Laurie said.

“Would he have forgiven you the same?” Nadia said.

“No. He said he wouldn’t have.”

“There’s your answer, then. Why should you have done?”

Laurie wasn’t often stunned into contemplative silence. Dan had played this aspect as hugely romantic—I couldn’t bear it! Ugh, the thought! Kill me now rather than make me think this thought—and Laurie had taken it as proof that their relationship should be saved. His misstep wasn’t the start of: Hey, yeah, we’ll fall off the wagon from time to time, maybe we should make things open; it reaffirmed they wanted to protect it.

And yet—how had Laurie, living in such an outwardly modern, feminist, and equal partnership, actually been quite unequal? Dan got his way, pretty much all the time. He didn’t give to Laurie what Laurie gave to him. She’d never noticed. She’d thought sassy humor, sharing the chores, and her own salary was the whole story.

But they developed roles, and it was Dan as cossetted and indulged tearaway kid to Laurie’s doting, responsible adult. She never got to be delinquent.

In this moment, she made herself a promise: in the very unlikely event she found herself in love with anyone again, she’d assert herself. She’d say what she wanted, not endlessly accommodate his needs. If that made her a bitch at any point, so be it. There were no rewards to being a walkover.

“I’m Ubering,” Emily said, outside, phone in hand. “Donal is one minute away. Ah, here he is!” she said, as the car drew up alongside her. “Thanks for a great night out, girls. We can’t go back to that bar for the time being by the way.”

“What? Why?” Laurie said. “I liked it there.”

“I’ve swapped numbers with the barman, Rob, so we need to see how that plays out.” She looked at her phone. “Sweet Lord, he’s messaging me pictures already. Keeno.” Emily made a face. “Ooh. Filth.”

“What? His . . . thing?” Nadia said.

Emily peered at her screen and swiped. “Bit of thing, some of the other.”

“Bumhole?” Laurie asked cheerfully. She was never dating again, simple as that.

“Not bumhole, I mean clothed ones too!”

“How has he taken that during service? He better not have touched my drinks!” Nadia said.

Emily started screeching: “He’s not taken it NOW, has he?! He’s not made off to the men’s.” Emily mimed sticking a phone down her leggings.

Laurie held on to the car roof, shaking with laughter.

“I don’t know how it works, do I!” Nadia said.

“You are being charged for this time,” Donal the driver said, out of the open window.