If I Never Met You: A Novel

Laurie stepped into a very modern hair salon with retro beehive 1950s dryers, playing Carly Rae Jepsen very loudly, and knew she was trespassing. A lumpen interloper from the ordinary world in the universe of the naturally sexual, at ease with themselves and on trend.

There were about fifteen staff milling around the front desk, most of them with experimental hairstyles and tiny BMIs, clad in spray-on PVC leggings. The look was Ziggy Stardust meets Warren Beatty in Shampoo, and no one here was alive when either was released.

Every pair of kohled eyes was momentarily on her, and she was asked if she “had an appointment” with an air of magnificent disbelief and disdain. Usually you’d have to go to restaurants in Paris in muddy wellies to get this sort of hauteur.

These looks were practiced, to repel the insufficiently cool, the narrowed eyes conveying: You know there are perfectly good neighborhood places that’ll give you Rachel-from-Friends layers and a cup of Yorkshire Gold? Laurie realized it wasn’t only her Afro hair that kept her out, she was also clearly too old, too shabby, and too unpierced. How dare they assume; for all they knew her labia minora could set airport metal detectors off.

The camp man with arched, penciled eyebrows and peculiarly shiny skin said, “You’re with Honey, she’s on her break. Take a seat.” Honey. A world where “honey” was a name and not a sweet, viscous substance.

Honey bounced out of a door within minutes. “Hiiiiii, is it Laurie? Do you want to come over? Did you want a drink? Coffee, tea, mini Prosecco?”

Laurie relaxed a degree.

“Oh . . . ooh. Mini Prosecco?” Why the hell not.

“I wish I could join ya, roll on six o’clock, hahahahah,” said Honey, rifling in a mini fridge and unscrewing the cap, before plonking a paper straw into it and handing it to Laurie.

Honey was short, with a very round face and eyes, spiky peroxide hair with an undercut, her petite frame clad in a Metallica T-shirt. Maybe it was the openness of her expression, but Laurie found her less scary than the other staff.

“What are we doing today, then?” Honey said, after guiding her to a mirror, hands on the back of Laurie’s chair, looking at her reflection.

Laurie pulled the band out of her customary ponytail and started making self-conscious British jokes about the state of her hair.

“Are you Type 3C?” Honey said, digging the tips of her fingers in the sides of Laurie’s hair and ploofing it, putting her hand at the crown and riffling from side to side.

And Laurie near-gasped. “You know your stuff.”

“Yeah, your sort of hair is my favorite, actually! Did Emily say? Yeah.” Honey proudly pointed at shelves of relevant products.

Ah, thought Laurie. Always trust Emily.

“Do you always wear it pulled back? Never loose? You’re wasting it!”

“Hardly ever. I got into the habit because it’s easier at work . . . I’m a solicitor and, you know . . . You want to keep it simple.”

Laurie was about to stutter further explanations, then thought: Honey was about twenty-four-years old, white as mozzarella, and a fan of heavy metal. She was not about to pass political judgment on Laurie for not celebrating her hair, the way her mum had. (A debate that usually ended with Laurie pointing out she hadn’t asked to be born, and thinking her dad would probably agree he hadn’t either.)

“Your skin tone is beautiful, wish I was like you instead of getting sunburned from the flash on my phone!” Honey laughed and Laurie laughed with her. Oh, to be unselfconscious like that again.

“Your hair is actually in really good condition,” Honey said, pulling a strand and rubbing it between finger and thumb. “What are you thinking?”

Laurie sucked in a breath and considered equivocating about “take some of the length off” and thought, after an empowering drag on her Prosecco straw, she might as well go for it. She’d come this far.

“My long-term boyfriend has finished with me after eighteen years and I always have my hair in that ratty pony and, to be honest, I just want to look really fucking good for a change.”

Honey’s eyes widened. “Eighteen years! Oh my God!”

“Yep.” About three quarters of your lifetime.

“This is makeover kinda territory?” Honey said, and Laurie sensed her excitement levels had shot up several notches, as she nodded.

“OK, how about this? I’m thinking a center parting, and I’ll cut you in some slightly shorter pieces that blend around the front so you can still wear it up, so it’s not all one length. Then, like, play up your natural masses of curls? I think it would be really nice to put some lights in it too. Natural ones, like chestnut and mocha, to break the block color up a bit? It’ll be totally sensational, like movie star hair. Like a cloud of curls, like boom.” Honey made a hand gesture like exploding earmuffs.

Despite the fact Laurie was sure she just got cannily upsold, she agreed, infected by Honey’s clear enthusiasm for the task ahead.

The next two hours were sitting around with foils on her head, reading about sex with ghosts in Daily Star and society weddings in Amagansett in Vanity Fair. She texted Emily to delay their coffee by forty-five minutes.

As the process continued, Laurie could see she had less hair, and that streaks of it were now light brown. For the big finish, Honey poured out some transparent glop, worked it through Laurie’s ’do with her hands, and trained an enormous dryer on it, making “scrunching a ball of paper” movements.

Gradually, the hair of Laurie’s youth emerged, but much, much better. She didn’t remember it ever having this shiny softness, and Honey had somehow produced the sort of ideal curl size you itched to poke your finger into. The caramel shot through it did indeed make it glimmer and catch the light in different ways to her pure black.

Unexpectedly, Laurie was envying herself. Emily was right: this sort of admiration for her own reflection was a very rare thing. She’d spent so long being low maintenance she’d forgotten the kick to be had in high.

“How’s that?” Honey said, standing back, with the smugly delighted intonation of someone who knows they’ve absolutely smashed it and can’t wait to collect the reviews.

“I love it! Oh my God, I love it,” Laurie said, turning her head and making her hair swish around her shoulders. “I love it so much.”

“Right?” Honey said, and started talking her through the products and processes for best maintenance, during which Laurie mumbled “hmmmm mmm” as if she was taking it all deathly seriously when in fact she was giddy. Such a small thing, a nice hairdo, but it was nice to know she could still appreciate small joys. Laurie paid a three-figure sum, tipped hard, and she and Honey giggled delightedly at their successful collaboration throughout.

“He’s gonna ask you to get back with him!” Honey called, as Laurie stepped out into the chill and felt her new curls blow about in the breeze.

“Hah. Maybe,” Laurie said, smiling, trying not to let the dagger of thinking about that right now break her skin.

“No doubt!” Honey said, waving. “Call me psychic! Psychic Honey!”

Laurie nearly said “Sounds very prog rock,” before considering that despite the number of vintage band tees being sported in the salon, no one would have the faintest clue what she meant.

While Laurie guessed the response she’d get from Emily would be positive, she didn’t bank on what actually happened—Emily not recognizing her for a moment. She passed, stopped, tracked back two steps, and let out a small startled cry.

“You look absolutely AMAZING,” Emily said, clutching her chest. “Seriously, Laurie. You look like you’re a famous person trying to go unrecognized and failing. My heart’s going like a broken clock here! I fancy you!”

“I thought you fancied me anyway?” Laurie said. “It’s all right, isn’t it?”

Emily plopped into a seat and set her latte mug down.

“It’s not all right, it’s utterly fucking fabulous. You are fabulous. I wish my hair could do that. It’s so good to see you like this. Fighting back.”

Laurie wasn’t sure she bought in as fully as Emily to a L’Oréal vision of womanhood where bouncy hair signaled being mentally robust. But she thought there’s a time and a place to be a naysayer, and now and here wasn’t it. She looked different so she felt better, that’d do.

“Aw thanks, it’s only a ’do I won’t be able to do myself. I like it, though. Feels odd,” Laurie said.

“I didn’t even know your hair could do this! Can I touch?”

“I’d forgotten too, to be honest. ’Course you can!”

Emily prodded a ringlet.

When they’d drained their coffees, Emily pulled Laurie out into the blue dusk and up to the department stores for cosmetics.

“I have makeup,” Laurie said.

“Evening-out makeup.”

“I wear my makeup on evenings out.”

“Not the same thing. Stop filibustering, feminazi.”

Emily could always make Laurie laugh.

Laurie found herself perched nervously on a stool at Emily’s favorite concession, MAC, while R&B thundered at nightclub volume. Emily tapped a photo of a Naomi Campbell lookalike in Studio 54 quantities of glittery slap above the counter, and said: “All out, Tess, go all out.”

Tess the assistant had a tool belt full of brushes, as if she was a facial mechanic who might need to contour a cheekbone in an emergency. She set to work on Laurie’s eyes with serious intent.

“Maybe keep it natural on the lips,” Laurie said nervously, as Tess snapped open the third shadow palette.

“Really, a nude lip? Because you could really carry a red,” she said.

Tess had a glint not unlike Honey’s, which said: I am about to make a right bundle on this one.

Emily nodded furiously and said: “Red. Let’s not fuck about here. We’re not here to play.”

Laurie quailed a little. The last time she wore showy makeup was at indie clubs in her twenties when she rolled glitter up her cheekbones and had a penchant for neon eye shadows. In her thirties, she was happy in her mid-range mascara and tinted balm rut.

When she was shown her face in an oval hand mirror, she let go a small “ahhh!”

This woman looked like her, but had street-sweeper lashes above large, defined sooty eyes with silver sparkles. There were iridescent, light-reflecting angles to her complexion, and a bold crimson mouth. Laurie tried to fit this brash vamp with Real Laurie, cowering inside. She was now projecting a person she didn’t feel. She didn’t entirely mind it, though. It was another mask, like the one she wore at work.

“Incredible. Really gorgeous, Laurie,” Emily breathed. “If I could look like that, I would look like that all the bloody time.”

Laurie grinned at her. “Instead, sadly you are a plain, pious, devout sort of woman.”

Emily was flushed, triumphant, and snuck off and paid for the haul before Laurie could protest. She then dragged her up two flights of escalators and forced Laurie to try on a black maxi dress with wisps of lace for sleeves. Laurie fully expected to refuse exhortations to buy it, yet when the zip flew straight up her misery-diminished frame and Laurie saw an elegant, Audrey Hepburnish creature of the night looking back at her, she needed no convincing.

If nothing else, it’d solve the whole “what to wear to first date Jamie Carter” conundrum. That sort of thing was tricky enough when you were hopeful your date would be knocked out; when you didn’t care and it was a performance for someone not present, it was yet more admin.

“Could I happen to run into you?” Emily said, as Laurie paid and Emily practically bounced up and down. “No intrusion, a drive-by eyeballing. Where is it?”

“The Ivy in Spinningfields. I guess so? Remember, on pain of death, you’re not supposed to know what we’re up to. Act like you’ve caught me out and ask who he is. Etc.”

“Ten four, Red Leader.”

Jamie had inquired if it was the kind of place Laurie went, had she been before? When Laurie answered in the negative, Jamie replied with the gnomic:

That’s no bad thing tbh

She didn’t ask if it was a Jamie Carter sort of haunt, but he added:

It’ll probably be nouveau riche AF, but.

Laurie vaguely wondered why they were going somewhere Jamie didn’t go or rate much either. As she tapped her fingers waiting for the taxi, a few hours later, the answer came to her: so he doesn’t see anyone he knows, stupid.