If I Never Met You: A Novel

“Are you going to the Christmas do?” Diana asked on Friday, all innocence, though Laurie knew exactly why she was asking and Di knew she knew.

It was weeks away, but S & R always revved up for it as soon as the clocks changed.

“Oh. Hadn’t thought,” Laurie said. “Maybe.”

Diana fell quiet, as there was nothing she could do with this equivocal response.

“Rumors of karaoke,” Bharat added.

“Jesus. I long for death’s sweet release.”

“Don’t know that one—Shania Twain?” He paused. “I can imagine it’s the last place you want to be this year, but it’s a shame for us, because you are the very finest company.”

In times of crisis, you saw the best of people and the worst of people. Another dose of the worst had arrived yesterday, a gruelingly awkward phone call from Dan’s mother, Barbara, who was clearly desperate to get the formality of a goodbye to Laurie over with and get on with being excited about her first grandchild. She had no time for any negativity about her son’s behavior, simply saying primly, when Laurie ventured a comment about its brutality: “I can’t comment on that, really,” like she was an MP being grilled by Jeremy Paxman. It turned out “adoring Dan” had been the vital shared interest, and once gone, there was nothing.

“I suppose sometimes you want what you want,” was Barbara’s in summary insight on Dan’s historic fuckery.

To which Laurie wanted to reply: No shit, psychopaths want to strangle strangers with their stockings—it’s possible to pass a verdict on what someone wanted, and how they went about having it.

“Thank you,” Laurie said to Bharat. “I’ve not ruled out going to the party.”

Yes, she had.

It had been a working week since the Dan and Laurie exclusive landed on front pages. Everyone was still subtly rearranging their positions around her, figuring out the altered rules of engagement.

Michael kept asking her to come out for a lunchtime sandwich, and on the day Laurie couldn’t fob him off, she picked at a tuna wrap in Pret, braced for his gambit.

“How are you?” came before he’d gotten the cardboard ring off his plowman’s baguette.

Laurie said: “Buggering on” brightly, and “I’d prefer not to talk about it if that’s OK.” Michael nodded in obvious disappointment; as much as she knew he liked to compare cases with her, it was the gore on Dan’s messy exit that he really wanted.

Also, score to Emily: Laurie had indeed received weird messages from men. Among them, a quiet mousy husband of a couple they’d met once at Tom and Pri’s, who volunteered, “Dan must be mad!” and, without mentioning his marital status: “Anytime you want to get it off your chest, I am available for drinks and light supper.” (Laurie wasn’t going to go anywhere near someone who used the words “light supper.”)

And Richard, a short solicitor at another firm, contacted her. He’d often been talkative in court and observed on email: “I’ve always had a thing for café au lait / mixed-race girls. You know, you look like Whitney Houston (before she became a bit of a crack whore, I hasten to add!).”

Oh, and the university friend, Adrian, who asked if she wanted to meet up given he was in town on business, and when she politely declined, replied: “I’m in a five-star hotel room. What am I meant to do with this enormous erection in front of me?”

Laurie blinked at this message for a full minute and replied: “Ask him politely to leave?”

She screen-grabbed the exchange and sent it to Emily, who said she wanted it framed and on her wall.

It all appealed to Laurie’s sense of the ridiculous, until she remembered this was What Many Men Are Like, and these were what she was left with. She wasn’t ever going to experience desire again, simple as that.

So there were two dates in the calendar to dread: first, the looming Christmas party. When she and Dan were together, they jointly invented a reason to miss it. They’d been creative: for many years, a phony anniversary worked. Then Salters moved it by a week and they had to find fresh excuses. So they tag teamed. One went one year, the other the next. As long as the event featured one of them, it gave the appearance of attendance.

It was Laurie’s turn to give it a miss, by the old rules. But if Laurie ducked it this year, everyone would know why. And Dan was a head of department, so he’d have to be there. He’d dumped Salter’s favorite to impregnate a woman at the much reviled Rawlings; he’d want to reaffirm his loyalty.

Laurie had a binary grim option: absenteeism, which spelled shame and cowardice and everyone feeling sorry for her. It stank of defeat. Or a party with Dan, during which everyone would get pissed enough to stare, commentate. The things people said sober were bad enough. Jan had already asked if she’d had her eggs frozen.

Laurie had considered asking Dan not to go, and all things considered, he’d probably have to oblige her. That also reeked of defeat, however. She didn’t want him to know she couldn’t cope.

The second date she feared: the birth. She knew whatever recovery she thought she’d managed would be destroyed that day. Laurie genuinely might accept Emily’s Valium for that. Chemically coshing her way through it seemed the only way.

Oh, and not forgetting her dad’s wedding. That party loomed next month. Laurie felt like life contained nothing but hurdles. Hurdles, toil, and sadness. Too early for a drink?

“You doing anything this weekend?” Bharat asked.

“Not really. You?”

Laurie smiled as Bharat told her what, or rather who, he was doing. (“He’s called Hans, he has a beard and he is every bit as gorgeous as Alan Rickman as terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard! Grubby Hands, I’m calling him.”)

She stared out at the streetlights, chin propped on palm, morose. Rain streaked the fogged-up office windows, which were forbidding, ink-black panels by half four. The precious daylight was over well before the working day was.

It was the kind of wuthering, northern, wintery Friday night that was designed for being in a relationship, Laurie thought. Even your wildest nocturnal adventurers might shrink from going out buccaneering when it was this bone-marrow chilling, and saturating damp. It was weather made for big socks, takeaway curry, Shiraz, and episode four of that spy drama thing on Netflix. Laurie would still have all those things tonight, plus a bath.

She would be in bed by midnight, trying and failing to go straight to sleep, mind churning on endless questions. Desolate in the dark, doing the kind of crying where you make heaving noises, face screwed up, childlike. She’d been doing that off and on ever since Dan left, unless she drank enough that she could go to sleep fast enough to outrun her imagination.

Laurie never thought of herself as a dependent person, not at all, but it turned out you needed things—or people—you depended on to be taken away from you to judge that.

Bharat and Diana left and Laurie did her bravest, most authentic grin and wishes for them to “have a good ’un, see you Monday,” knowing full well that as soon as Di was out of earshot she’d be clucking her pity that Laurie wasn’t at all herself.

As the clock hit six, Laurie gave a deep inward-sucking sigh as she thrust things into her briefcase. Around her were spinning chairs, not many at Salter & Rowson played presenteeism on a Friday night. And Laurie knew if she stayed later than this, she might get nobbled by Michael, who would correctly deduce that Netflix could wait.

She got to the lift without anyone stopping her and felt relief as the doors rolled shut. Any small talk was agony. The place was pretty much deserted now anyway, just dribs and drabs and beyond closed doors, Misters Salter and Rowson. When the doors were an inch apart, the tip of an umbrella appeared between them, whacking from side to side. The doors stopped, and tiredly trundled open again.

Laurie felt a pang of irritation at her space being thus invaded, and her journey being delayed. The fully opened doors revealed Jamie Carter, now resting the umbrella against his shoulder, as if he was Steed in The Avengers.

Ugh, of course it was him holding her up, in a self-consequential manner. Of course he couldn’t wait the forty-five seconds it would take for the lift to take Laurie down and come back up again. And, of course he was making the display of being last out on a Friday night.

He gave her a raffish “forgive me” half smile, and Laurie polite-grimaced in return. Yeah, it still doesn’t work on me, pretty boy.

Were they going to attempt stilted conversation? She hoped not. She angled her mouth down into the funnel neck of her coat and stared at her prim patent Mary Jane shoes, hand gripping the bag strap on her shoulder, to signal it was certainly not expected.

When her sight flickered sideways, she saw Jamie, clad in a somehow conspicuous dark charcoal trench coat, absorbed in his phone screen, mirroring her body language.

They bumped down one floor in silence, until a loud mechanical screeching startled Laurie. Jamie Carter frowned.

After a brief silence, it happened again. Crrrrrrbmmmmpfff, a metal-on-metal squealing noise that made them physically grit their teeth. The lift shuddered to a halt, with the lurching sensation of a drunk tripping over. There were a few unpromising glitching noises of clicking and whirring, as if the lift was discussing what had happened with itself.

Then, nothing.