If I Never Met You: A Novel

Jamie

Can I talk to you privately? Vegetarian Pret at 10? It needs to be somewhere we won’t be overheard (and no one here’s vegetarian, right?) Jx

Laurie

Can’t believe you’ve escaped hearing about Kerry’s adventures in veganism with pulled jackfruit burritos, you lucky bastard ☹ Sure, see you there x

An otherwise boring Wednesday, the following week, and Laurie was happy to oblige. Bail application paperwork could wait. When she approached, Jamie was loitering outside in a long coat, looking as if he might pull a bunch of flowers from behind his back. But he wasn’t smiling, brow furrowed.

“All right?”

“I’ve been better, to be honest,” he said.

“Oh?”

Jamie put a palm to his forehead.

“Oh God, so. This is so awkward.”

“Hah, I’ve got a pretty thick skin these days. Try me.”

“This is something that puts you on the spot, though,” Jamie said, hands thrust in his pockets, staring at his feet.

“If we need to call the deal off, it’s OK, you know. I’m sure between us we can work out a decent excuse that saves both our faces.”

A thought occurred to her: Has he been caught with someone else? In a way that everyone will hear about? She really didn’t fancy facing the peculiar repercussions that would involve, pretending they were polyamorous.

“The thing is. I’ve had some bad news.” Jamie looked at her directly. She could see the real pain and difficulty, then, and that it was nothing to do with her. Or not yet.

“My dad called last night. He’s got cancer. Gallbladder. It’s not curable.”

Jamie’s face was stricken, his eyes flat and empty.

“Shit, Jamie, I’m so sorry.”

He nodded and there was a moment they didn’t speak.

“He’s got a year, maybe eighteen months . . . He doesn’t want chemo.”

There was an elastic band tautness to his voice that made it clear the last four words had in fact been a volatile debate, and that was the conclusion.

Laurie nodded and put her hand on Jamie’s arm. Then moved it away again.

“It’s his sixty-fifth birthday this weekend, back home. He’s still having the party. He said: ‘I can use it to say goodbye to everyone now,’” Jamie said, and as he said it, his voice cracked, and Laurie winced slightly for him that he was being forced to show this emotion in front of her, when he clearly didn’t want to. Jamie glanced away as he composed himself.

She patted his arm supportively again and Jamie said thickly, “It’s not sunk in, to be honest. I’m walking around that office in a daze.”

“I don’t blame you.”

He cleared his throat.

“But my best friend Hattie has helpfully told them about you . . .”

“Ah.”

As with his owning a cat seeming off-brand, Laurie didn’t see Jamie as a man with a female best friend, somehow; though given his popularity rankings with women versus men she guessed it made sense.

“Yeah. I mean obviously if I throw myself ’round social media saying I am madly in love, I have to expect some inquiries. She wasn’t meant to tell my bloody parents. She’s shown them the pictures.” Jamie gritted his teeth. “Having heard you exist, now they—my mum and dad—are guns blazing that I have to bring you to his do.”

Laurie smiled. “Ah . . .”

“My dad’s argument was that without his diagnosis, I’d have brought you to meet them sooner or later. He wants this party to be celebratory and sociable and not at all sad, and they’re dying to meet you. He actually used those words and said ‘no pun.’” Jamie tried to roll his eyes, swallowing hard with the effort of acting casual, and Laurie’s heart went out to him. “Honestly, I tried to argue against it, but I was floored with the news he’d given me. He even pulled ‘what if it’s my only chance to meet her.’ What do I say to that?”

Jamie’s eyes glittered with the threat of tears, and he blinked.

There was a steadying pause.

“You see the quandary,” Jamie said.

“Do you want me to go?”

“Ah, God. I’m not sure I could ask you to do that? I’m more setting out the problem. To a smart and sensitive person, who might know what to say to them.”

Laurie was touched.

“If you want me to go, that’s cool,” Laurie said evenly. “But do you want me to? If you find this too weird, then I don’t mind figuring something else out.”

Jamie raised his eyebrows, face suffused with surprise.

“I’d love you to go, Laurie, and I’d be forever grateful. But are you sure? My parents, a whole weekend? A sixty-fifth birthday, with sausage rolls and ‘Come On Eileen’?”

“I like sausage rolls and coming on Eileen,” Laurie said, and she hadn’t meant to be bawdy but accepted Jamie’s laughter as if she had intended it.

“This is so kind. I’d be forever in your debt, to be honest,” Jamie said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Laurie said. “. . . If they’ve seen photos, they know I’m black? They’re fine with that?”

Jamie did a small double take. “Yeah. They’re not racist?”

“Sorry, not saying they are, but still worth checking. I’ve had some funny moments in job interviews and meeting friends’ parents in my time. ‘But your name sounds English,’ and so on.”

“God,” Jamie said. “No, it’s fine. Obviously.”

Laurie nodded. He meant well, but it wasn’t an “obviously”: she had learned not to take acceptance for granted, but now wasn’t the time to get into that.

“And . . . they’re not going to let us stay at a hotel,” Jamie said. “But, what I could do is sleep on the floor? The spare room is big enough.”

Laurie hooted. “Oh God, I’d not thought of that! Yeah, sure.”

Jamie looked many degrees less anxious than when they’d met. “Thanks, Laurie. Really.”

She liked being this unflappable Laurie again. Go-with-the-flow-and-handle-it Laurie. Not the stifling presence, who made life feel like a tunnel. She might have stumbled into a moment of liking herself.

“No worries.” Laurie adjusted her bag on her shoulder. “Friday to Sunday?”

“Yeah. I’ll get the train tickets and text you the time, say seven-ish, we can meet at Piccadilly station?”

“See you then. I’m going in for a coffee, want one?”

“I’m already awash with adrenaline, going to leave the caffeine alone.”

She nodded.

“Oh, Jamie?”

He abruptly turned on his heel. Laurie’s heart gave a little squeeze that she could see he looked less stricken, and a weight—if not the greater one—had clearly been lifted. Why had he been so worried about asking her? Perhaps he had a slightly skewed version of Laurie, as she’d had of him: angry ballbuster who in the face of his anguish, would still say aw hell no.

“Duh, just thought! Where do they live?”

“Oh! Lincoln. I’m from Lincoln. It’s a Wild West kind of a town, brace yourself.” He grinned that heartbreaker’s grin.

Laurie nodded and held a palm up as farewell.

Inside the shop, Laurie felt pensive, and the feel-good factor of helping Jamie faded further as she walked back to the office, gripping the paper cup.

It was one thing to pantomime a relationship to the audience of Salter & Rowson solicitors. They were now going to pretend to be a couple in front of his dying father and soon-to-be-widowed mother?

What if they found out that she’d lied to them, and in effect made a mockery of their kindness, hospitality, and interest in her? What if they couldn’t stand her and she let Jamie down, and he wished he’d never asked her? What if they fell for her so hard, they expected to see her throughout Jamie’s father’s illness? Once you started a charade, it was tricky to work out the optimum time to end it.

It had felt so rewarding to say hey, I’d love to, to Jamie, but she now felt the size of what she’d promised. However, Laurie reasoned with herself, you didn’t have a choice. If you’d made up an excuse, they’d have invited you the following weekend. She had to do it; this was the least worst option.

You’ve told lies. The law of unintended consequences.

Laurie wheeled her trolley case across the concourse at Piccadilly in early evening and immediately spotted Jamie amid the crowd, his expression mirroring her own suppressed discomfort.

Going away for the weekend together, sharing sleeping arrangements—it was a huge gear shift up from steak dinners and silly photo ops, occasions when they amicably parted ways at quarter past nine. Laurie was about to intrude on a family in a key moment of crisis, under false pretenses. A trespasser, pranking them. She couldn’t think of it without her stomach somersaulting, so if she could help it, she would try not to think about it.

Damn Emily for being so right, to the point of being a prophet (of doom). Intensely intelligent people were expected to wear it heavily, to present as polysyllabic, and with a bibliography. Emily was every bit as sharp in her understanding of human nature, but because she knew her way around MAC, you weren’t primed to expect it in the same way.

Jamie, off duty, was a different kind of showy: a dark pea coat with the collar turned up (Laurie could not have done that without feeling a fool); a cable sweater and dark jeans; and lace-up, artfully scuffed chestnut-brown shoes, which had definitely been sold as scuffed by a fashionable brand. Laurie was in her duffle jacket and opaque navy tights, and felt her inadequacy as companion to this off duty member of Take That, with the chiseled jaw.

“Hi!” Jamie said. “We’re on the 19:42, change at Sheffield.”

“Right you are.”

“Want me to carry that?” he gestured at her trolley case.

Laurie smiled. “No, no, thank you.”

“I might get a Greggs pasty, and then we’ll find the platform?”

Laurie grinned. Not that posh. Jamie hoisted a brown leather duffel bag onto his shoulder and they navigated the post–rush hour crush as polite companions, like colleagues attending an out-of-town conference.

On the train, they got a table, window seats facing each other. They were hemmed in by two corpulent men who fell asleep as soon as they were at Manchester Oxford Road, snoring like warthogs.

“Are any brothers or sisters heading back too? This journey is the Mr. and Mrs. opportunity for me to get some girlfriend crib notes. Revision for any tests,” Laurie said.

“No, just me,” Jamie said.

“Are you an only child, like me?”

“You’re an only? Pictured you having older brothers. You’re so feisty and resilient in dealing with twats in our office,” Jamie said. “And clients too, I’m sure.”

“No. I wish. I’d have liked siblings a lot. Whenever friends talk about fights over remote controls, I’m green-eyed. You have someone else who shared your upbringing. There’s nothing that can replace that. I’d love a protective older brother to deal with some of the shit.”

Jamie splayed his hands, palms down on the train table, expensive metal watch face clinking on the molded plastic.

“Laurie . . . There’s something I should tell you. It might come up.”

“OK . . . ?”

“I had a brother. Joe. He died when we were kids. He was hit by a car.”

“Oh! Jamie, I’m so sorry.”

“I was nine and he was eleven. Feels wrong to say I’m an only child. Like I’m erasing him from existence. I have a brother. He’s not here.”

“Yes, I see that,” Laurie said, not knowing what else to say.

Jamie looked out the window at the dark scenery rushing past, muscles tensed in his jaw.

“I’m sorry,” Laurie said again, and Jamie nodded.

Even mentioning his name had caused grief to rise to the surface in an instant. As with her mother and her father’s behavior, some things you were never past, the way others expected or wanted you to be. Instead, you lived with it.

She didn’t know what to say other than, eventually, “Want some biog for me?”

“Yes. Very much so,” Jamie said, smiling and relaxing slightly.

“My mum and dad had a fling when they were twenty. My mum knew my dad was a scoundrel, and decided the way to get him to stay was to get up the duff with me. She told him she was on the pill, and wasn’t. Then she’s like ‘Butterfingers, we’re going to be parents!’ and my dad says: ‘No, you are, see ya.’ And leaves her.”

“Christ alive!”

“Yep. Then, Mum has a terrible labor with me and there are complications that mean she can’t have any more children. There she is, coming to terms with that, single parent, now twenty-one, relationship over, her parents back in Martinique. Hellish.”

Laurie wondered if her mum had experienced the emotions that Laurie had on Dan’s departure. Peggy had been in love with her father, she’d never doubted that. It was clear from the wedding announcement, she felt something. Would Laurie feel anything when she heard Dan was marrying, as he probably would? It felt somewhat lesser compared to fatherhood. Yeah: it’d still hurt. She couldn’t bear to think she’d now carry this cross for the rest of her life.

“Oh God! And you’ve never seen your dad since?”

Laurie raised and dropped her shoulders. “I see him every year or so; he has a fancy loft he rents out in Manchester and a place in Ibiza. It’s not a relationship as such, though. It’s like he has a recurring cameo in my life. Austin Watkinson, if you’ve heard of him?”

Jamie’s mouth opened slightly and he said: “Haaaang on, not Austin Watkinson? Producer—DJ guy? Madchester, etc.?”

“Yep, him. Dancing around in the background of the Happy Mondays ‘Kinky Afro’ video, hanging out with Tony Wilson. That’s my pops.” Laurie made the scathing intonation clear.

Jamie’s mouth was now fully open. “That’s crazy! Austin Watkinson is your dad . . . Why doesn’t anyone at work know this? Or do they, and they dislike me enough not to tell me the interesting stuff?”

“No, they don’t know. Bharat knows, and obviously Dan knew, but I said not to mention. It’s not a dread secret or anything, but I have so little to do with him, it’s pretty irrelevant. It’s not a conversation I want to have.”

“You’re so insanely cool,” Jamie said, and she could see he meant it, that he’d blurted it and was now going pink at having gushed. “Not that . . . not because of your dad, but because you don’t show off. You are all substance, not image.”

“Hah, I am definitely not image.”

He blushed harder. “I didn’t . . . you know what I mean.”

Laurie’s heart swelled. Silly girl, because the good-looking younger man called you cool?! Then: No, I’m allowed this. Ever since Dan left me, I’ve seen myself as a frumpy millstone. Adjusting my self-image, it’s welcome.

Laurie rescued him by adding: “It’s an extra mindblower because of the ethnicity.” She pointed at her face. “As much as you logically know there was a white parent involved, it’s somehow still unexpected, right?”

Jamie smiled and nodded.

“How did your mum cope, after your dad dropped her in it?”

She was impressed Jamie asked a thoughtful, considerate question, rather than carrying on asking her about her notorious dad’s pills and raves.

“Up and down. She’s a singer and that didn’t pay the bills, so she had admin temp work and things.”

“Your dad didn’t help?”

“Only when he was flush. Every once in a while he’d dump a thousand or even two into my mum’s current account and that night we’d have a chippy tea and I got a can of Fanta. But you never knew when the next installment might arrive. You couldn’t rely on it. Or him.”

“Jesus. I mean. If you don’t support your kid, you’ve failed at the most basic test of adulthood haven’t you?”

“Yep. Mum had a lot of boyfriends, and when one of those was around they tended to help out. She’s a hippie free-spirit type. Free love, no rules . . .”

“She must be so proud of how well you’ve done in life, though?”

“Um . . . not . . . as such. The problem for my mum is I’m the kid who trashed her relationship and ruined her womb. I think she . . .”

One of the large men awoke with a snort and it provided humorous punctuation to a speech where Laurie’s voice was growing thick.

“I think she’s struggled not to blame me. If you want me to be honest. I was the reason he left.”

Laurie hadn’t meant for things to turn profound, and Jamie was staring at her with a look so full of concern it was almost too heavy to receive.

“Laurie,” he said quietly. Not a question, or an opening to saying anything else. A full sentence in itself.

“He used to promise to come to see me as a kid and take me on a trip back to Manchester, I’d get ready, bag packed—I remembered I had this rucksack with a rabbit on it—and wait and wait. He’d call . . . oh, he’d forgotten. Was next week OK, sweetheart? As if kids work on that sort of timetable or delayed gratification.”

“As if anyone does,” Jamie said.

“Yes. Still. Not as big a crime as his albums of incredibly lucrative ‘chillout anthems,’” Laurie said, and Jamie laughed. She could see he was vaguely bedazzled. That his view of her had shifted.

While Laurie was pleased, it felt cheap, as these were things that had happened to her, not things she’d chosen to do. Someone who’d behaved as badly as her dad didn’t deserve this aura, bestowing his civilian daughter with a frisson of rascally excitement. It was one of the things that had frustrated her most about Dan, that despite his being on her side in most things, all her dad had to do was crack a joke and Dan would be badgering her to let bygones be bygones.

“You’re going to find my family soooo conventional, after this . . .” Jamie said.

“Fine by me.”

Laurie paused. “I know the obvious psychoanalysis is I settled down with my first boyfriend as a direct result. But I wouldn’t have grabbed on to anyone. I was happy with Dan. Or we were.”

“You’re a survivor,” Jamie said. “Of some difficult things. What needs explaining or apologizing for about that?”

Laurie had never thought of it that way before. She’d never been called a survivor. She turned the word over in her mind: she liked how it sounded, applied to her. It wasn’t victimhood and it wasn’t self-aggrandizing, it was about coping. And she had definitely done that. Her spirits rose. Jamie was an unlikely champion. They shared a look of new understanding, as the refreshments trolley rattled into view.

Not all unintended consequences were bad.