If I Never Met You: A Novel

Jamie decreed a Full Tourist Day was in order to Laurie, and pointed out that it would yield some killer content for the ’Gram.

Laurie was increasingly unsure she wanted to be killer content for the ’Gram, but agreed. It was obvious they could sell it as look how serious I am, I’ve taken her to meet the folks and yet neither of them said so, because it was exploiting the real reason they were compelled to be here, his father’s illness.

They started with a trip to Lincoln Cathedral, and Jamie showed Laurie the Lincoln Imp, a little stone grotesque with sticky-outy ears, nestled in the eaves.

“First, he and his mates went to Chesterfield and twisted the church spire, a proper imp ruckus. Probably all had cans on the train, you know the sort of thing. In a medieval justice version of a life term, this one’s behavior was so bad, he got turned to stone,” Jamie said. “Very punitive, considering he was a youth offender.”

“Brutal,” Laurie agreed, taking a photo. “Obviously Satan wanted to send a message to the other imps.”

“The lesson we take from this is, keep your demonic children under close supervision. Something anyone who’s eaten in a fast-food restaurant full of schoolkids can fully agree with.”

Laurie laughed. “Do you want kids?”

Jamie shuddered. “One hundred percent no, no thank you. Do you?”

“I’m more fifty-fifty.”

Laurie got a mental flash image, pulled straight from Boden Kids catalogue, of her and Jamie bumping a winter-bundled toddler up steps, holding one tiny hand each. She never fantasized her children with Dan; this must be happening because she was entirely safe from its possibility. She tested her emotions on this for the umpteenth time. It still felt like Item 5(ii) on the great agenda of life questions, and couldn’t be answered without 5(i)—If I Find Appropriate and Willing Father.

They walked Steep Hill, Laurie had a nosy around the florists and the gift shops. She admired a silver necklace, a leaf on a chain. “Can’t justify it, I have so much trinketry already.”

They walked on.

“Hey, Laurie!” She turned and Jamie snapped a photo of her above him on the street, turning to smile down at him. “Great for Christmas shopping, ’round here,” he said, “Entre nous.”

“Are you inviting me back?” Laurie said, grinning over the bundle of her scarf.

“My parents would have you back in a heartbeat.”

“Unlike you,” Laurie said, and Jamie rolled his eyes in an impression of a truculent pubescent.

“OK, I would too. Whatever, yeah. Girls are stupid.”

It was so easy, this platonic romance. She and Jamie could communicate their liking of and respect for each other without any fear of it shading into and I want to jump your bones. Here was why she didn’t believe the caricature of Jamie at Salter & Rowson—he was so much a comfortable, easy joy to be around. A genuinely terrible person couldn’t mimic warmth like this, surely.

Laurie thought of something she’d not faced fully until now—she was very likely going to be alone on Christmas Day. Emily went somewhere long haul and hot, the day before Christmas Eve, having always declared herself “against Christmas.” Laurie would be welcome to join, except she neither had the money nor the inclination for Bali, and Salter & Rowson wouldn’t give her the days off to make the travel worth it.

Laurie’s mum didn’t celebrate it and went to her friend, Wanda’s, in Hebden where they made a whole sea bass and everyone got their instruments out after lunch for a singalong. She would most likely be happy to have Laurie, but the place was crammed to the rafters with randoms and she didn’t feel comfortable imposing herself. Also singalongs? Shudder forever.

Her dad, hah. God only knows where he spent the twenty-fifth. Facedown in a pile of substances. She wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t keep track of the calendar well enough to know it was Christ’s birthday.

She and Dan had always either gone to Cardiff or hosted his parents, his sister, and her boyfriend. She supposed it would be Megan’s debut, meeting the family.

Oh well. Laurie would shop and plan for a complete single-woman bacchanal. And she fancied adopting a kitten, sod society’s sexist stereotypes.

They had lunch at the Wig & Mitre, a pub that had leaped straight from a magazine shoot of the coziest and most picturesque in the country.

Jamie had posted the photo of Laurie—Showing Laurie the historic birthplace of a legend etc.—and his phone was the usual cascade of likes and comments.

Then something else pinged, a different color notification that wasn’t Instagram, and in a smooth, practiced move Jamie palmed his phone and turned it over, screen facing down. Laurie knew it was something she wasn’t meant to see and that it must be female interest, and yet wondered why he was hiding it from her. Did he imagine she’d object?

They both plowed through lamb shanks and mounds of mashed potato. Well, Laurie did, Jamie declared himself short on appetite.

“I’m stressed about my dad’s speech to everyone at the party tonight,” he said. “I don’t know if he’s going to tell them about the diagnosis.”

“You don’t want him to?”

“I don’t . . . know. I want him to if he wants to, but I’ll find it overwhelming. I haven’t started to work through how I feel, so having tons of his mates from college and my mum’s sewing club all coming up to me tearful, expecting me to discuss it . . .”

“I see that.”

“But if he doesn’t mention it . . . it’ll still be exceptionally emotional, knowing something everyone else doesn’t.”

Laurie put her hand on Jamie’s shoulder and said: “It’ll be OK. You’ll be OK.”

“How do you know that?” Jamie said, but with a smile.

“Because you’re you and he’s him and everyone coming tonight cares.”

“Thank you,” Jamie said, brightening. “How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Say the right thing.”

“Oh . . .” Laurie blushed. “Well . . . You’re pretty good at that too. Hey, look at us. Becoming actual sort of maybe almost friends.”

Jamie’s grateful smile faded, just a little. Oddly, Laurie suddenly had a sense she’d said the wrong thing. Maybe he didn’t like the responsibility toward each other that might imply.

The party was in a function room at a pub near the cathedral called the Adam & Eve Tavern, and Jamie’s parents went on ahead to do some prep.

Laurie had brought a trusty favorite with her to wear, a cream dress with bracelet-length sleeves and a full skirt that Dan used to say she looked “proper swit swoo” in. It was nicely modest for a family do, she thought, dressy but not loud, and no excess tits or leg.

Laurie could hear Jamie bumping around downstairs and risked changing without warning him. She was holding it against her front, pulling her arms through the sleeves, when Jamie walked into the bedroom and said, “Shit, sorry!” backing out fast.

“No, it’s fine! I’m decent! Could you zip me up?”

She knew this dress to be a proper fiddle, it was one that Dan always did for her, putting down the console for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 on request, as long as the game wasn’t at a critical juncture.

“Er . . . sure.”

She sensed Jamie’s reluctance. Odd, she thought, that someone whose principal hobby involved removing clothes of people he didn’t know very well, would get discomposed by a woman he didn’t fancy, almost wholly wearing an L.K. Bennett prom dress. Maybe it was the not fancying that made it tricky.

Laurie turned her back and held her hair clear, and Jamie fumbled with the zipper. It snagged at bra level and he said: “Oh . . . arse it. No, wait, I’ll undo it and redo it again, some of the fabric’s got caught.”

Was she imagining his jitters? Was he already antsy about his dad’s speech?

He pulled it back down to the base of her spine and suddenly Laurie felt a frisson at the physical contact, the warmth of Jamie’s hands on her skin and the air on her exposed back. He pulled again and this time it sailed past her bra, up to the back of her neck. She let go of her hair.

“Do I look OK?” Laurie said, upon turning around, an automatic reflex in a relationship. Jamie looked awkward once more and said: “More than OK. Lovely. What’s the famous Eric Clapton song?”

“‘Layla’?”

Jamie laughed.

“Not the one about diddling George Harrison’s wife, no. I meant, ‘Wonderful Tonight.’”

She’d forever be a big-city rather than a town or village person, and Lincoln wasn’t a city-city by Laurie’s reckoning, but she was thoroughly charmed by it. The Adam & Eve was a gable-roofed, white-bricked eighteenth-century tavern with low, exposed beams and that whiff of characterful mustiness that elderly ale houses always had.

In the lounge bar, a banner hung across a buffet table of sausage rolls, Scotch eggs, and crisps, declared HAPPY 65TH, ERIC!!!!

Jamie was immediately claimed by the mostly pensionable-age throng, people declaring “Last time I saw you, you were that high!”—gesturing a diminutive height with an open palm—discussing bike rides, the whereabouts of long-lost friends, asking where he worked now.

Nevertheless, Jamie barely left her side, his hand often lightly on her lower back, fetching her a drink as soon as her glass was empty, making introductions. Laurie felt looked after. She was being better looked after by a pretend boyfriend than she had been by her real one. The dynamic with Dan at parties was that he was loud, drunk, and funny and she scooped him up at the end, when he’d be slurring how much he lubbed her.

As Laurie sipped her wine, she realized this was what had slipped away in the last few years with Dan—his seeing her. She became scenery, a prop. In the grim ordeal that was Tom and Pri’s wedding, perhaps what he hated about dancing to “Someone Like You” was that for three minutes, Laurie had a full claim on his attention.

Laurie wished she had this sort of family, she thought, as she saw Jamie’s dad call him over, dragging him to his side in a rough embrace in front of ruddy-faced men of a similar age, talking animatedly. Her soul ached somewhat. You could miss so much and not notice or mind, until the “here’s what you could’ve won” comparison was right in front of you.

Imagine a proud dad, who was there for you. The solidity of it.

“Hello! You must be Laurie? I’m Hattie!”

Laurie turned. A pale, plump girl with enormous eyes, in a low-cut 1950s-style dress with fruit on it, smiled at her.

“Oh, you’re Jamie’s best friend!” Laurie shook her hand. She’d said the right thing, as Hattie lit up.

“Do you mind if I hang with you; virtually everyone here is someone who last saw me naked as a kid, apart from red wellies, playing in the sprinkler in Jamie’s garden.”

“Not at all. I don’t know anyone either. But thankfully absolutely no one here has seen me naked.”

“Apart from Jamie,” Hattie said.

“Ah, yeah.” Nice one, Laurie.

They were distracted by the banging of a fork on a glass and in a moment, Jamie was back by Laurie’s side, pausing to give Hattie a kiss on the cheek and a hug.

Maybe it was the emotion or the sauvignon blanc, but Laurie sensed Jamie had moved back to be near her for the speech, not for appearances’ sake, but as she alone here knew he found it hard.

She slid her arm around Jamie supportively, without pausing to think if this was a trifle gropey. They were somewhat off the map, in terms of what was and wasn’t appropriate contact. She noticed she’d never once feared Jamie taking advantage of that. He might have nihilistic views on monogamy but he was no letch or, so far, opportunist.

Jamie moved her arm away from his body and for a heart-stopping moment, Laurie thought he was rejecting the gesture. Instead, he swung her around to directly in front of him, and linked his arms around her waist, the stance beloved of annoyingly touchy-feely couples at gigs. She put her hands over his.

This felt . . . good. Surprisingly good. Laurie hadn’t realized how much she missed being held close like this.

“Thank you for coming here tonight everyone. Sixty-five, how did that happen! Maurice and Ken here will confirm it when I say that we were at school ten years ago, so there’s been some awful accounting error.” He paused. “I don’t want to drone on self-importantly and this is keeping you from the buffet and the bar, so merely a quick thank-you for being here. You don’t know what it means to me, especially tonight. You get to an age in life where what really matters becomes obvious. And it’s family and friends. Look after each other, be kind to each other. I can’t abide old bore pub philosophers who think age confers wisdom upon them, I’m sure there are twenty-year-olds here who are wiser than me . . .”

“My son isn’t!” shouted a voice, and everyone laughed.

“But there’s something about getting to the final furlong that allows you to see clearly what mattered, and what didn’t.”

Laurie squeezed Jamie’s hands. He gripped hers more tightly in response.

“Money didn’t matter. Promotions didn’t matter. Feuds and competitions and arguments, they didn’t matter. Being soundly beaten at golf . . . OK, that still matters”—loud whoops from the golf contingent—“but I tell you what I know for sure. You all matter, very much. Time with the ones you love. That’s all that matters.”

Applause.

“With the power vested in me as the birthday boy, I now declare the buffet open,” Eric concluded. More applause.

She and Jamie disentangled to join in, and once the clapping subsided, Hattie grabbed a paper plate and announced she was going to hammer the egg sandwiches. The stampede for the de-cling-filmed food pushed Jamie and Laurie into a corner.

They looked at each other expectantly, both waiting for the other to speak, but neither did. Laurie felt her stomach do a slow lazy flop forward as looking at each other turned into Looking at Each Other. Their being tactile, it had affected her. She couldn’t stop staring at Jamie’s mouth. He was gazing at her equally intently and she thought, Are we . . . going to kiss . . . ?

Their heads moved closer. Her hands were on his lower arms and he moved them around her waist. Oh God, this was genuinely on. There was no other reason for them to be entangled, this was explicit.

Laurie didn’t know what this meant, or why she suddenly wanted to do it, she only knew she wanted to kiss him badly. She even felt an anticipatory throb, somewhere in the region of her groin. She didn’t expect lust to make a surprise reappearance in her life, so soon.

For fuck’s sake, she was meant to be immune to him! She was Penn & Tellering his act, remember? Yeah, yeah, said her libido, emerging from its long winter. Laurie didn’t know what status they would have, on the other side of the kiss.

“Are you Eric’s son?” said a somewhat booze-amplified, mature female voice right by them, causing them to abruptly step back.

“Uhm, yeah?” said Jamie, turning to the short woman who looked like a Tory peer, in the huge pearl choker necklace.

“You must be the new girlfriend.”

“Laurie,” Laurie affirmed.

“You can’t keep your hands off her, can you?” she said to Jamie, nudging him, and both Laurie and Jamie laughed awkwardly, and could no longer meet each other’s eyes at all.