If I Never Met You: A Novel

The conversation with her mum on the phone the next morning was peculiar. Finally telling her the full story after twenty-eight years, and explaining seeing the man at her dad’s wedding reception had triggered it, did not go as Laurie had expected.

She expected lots of fulminating about her father, but her mum was quiet, asking questions but not audibly reacting. The subject change wasn’t surprising but still hurtful.

“Is it still all right if me and Wanda came to see the Whitworth Gallery next week? Do you want to meet up?”

“Oh. Yes. I’ll come for the culture, and we can have lunch at mine afterward.” She knew from experience that Wanda and her mother wouldn’t accept her treating them if they went out, as they were both on tight budgets.

“Sounds lovely, love. See you then.”

Well—shoulder shrug—that was something and nothing. Why bother opening old wounds like that in return for nothing? She stopped herself: this was the cynic in her, the lawyer in her, the impatient child. Laurie had pushed this away for three decades; what if listening to it was the most her mum could manage right now?

Laurie met them outside the building the following Saturday (after a week of seeing little of Jamie due to busy work schedules, but it turned out a sympathetic, knowing smile as you passed in the corridor could do much for a feeling of someone quietly being there for you), both looking splendidly eccentric in their own ways. Her mum still favored her stage wear—over-the-knee suede boots, long dramatic coat, ensemble set off by a now-silvered close-cut Afro. Wanda was about six feet, in crushed-velvet smock, moonstone rings on every finger, thin white straggle of hair. Dan used to say she resembled Rick Wakeman.

“I was worried you’d be too thin but you look well,” Peggy said, after kissing her on each cheek. This was a compliment; her mum thought women should be “bountiful,” not “hungry.”

Wanda had been babysitter to Laurie throughout her early years, and fostered many children—her house effectively doubled as the local youth center. She gathered Laurie in a crushing embrace that brought a Proustian rush of the sweet peppery perfume Wanda always wore. It was an essential oil, which came in a tiny blue glass bottle with a rubber teat atop.

Laurie was ashamed to admit in childhood, she’d thoroughly nosied Wanda’s bathroom cupboards, a practice that was forbidden after Laurie exited it wearing Wanda’s contraceptive cap as a tiny yarmulke, asking why this hat was made out of a bendy material.

Wanda went inside the Edvard Munch exhibition, and Laurie made to follow but her mum laid her hand on her arm.

“Will you walk in the park with me?”

This mother-daughter time had clearly been pre-agreed with Wanda, who didn’t look back.

They walked through the gates of Whitworth Park, and Peggy linked her arm through Laurie’s as they strolled down dappled paths. It was a brisk, bright morning, cold enough that their breath misted but sunny enough that they were both squinting slightly.

They reached a quiet corner and Peggy guided Laurie till they were sitting down on a bench.

“I want to thank you for telling me about what happened,” she said after a long pause. “I’ve done much thinking about it. I think I understand things I never did before. Not about that incident, but in general.”

“Oh?”

“I . . . I’ve been very shortsighted, Laurie. I never thought that because your father did me harm, he did you harm too. I know he wasn’t around very much, that he could be negligent, but apart from that . . . You seemed to take him so much in your stride. I thought you enjoyed visiting him more than you liked being at home. When you came to live in this city, I thought it proved that,” she continued. “Your father always had the cash, he was fun dad. He didn’t partake in the drudgery, tell you to do your homework. He let you stay up late, watch anything, eat fried chicken and sweet things.”

Laurie grinned in spite of herself. “The KFC and butterscotch pudding was amazing, Mum, I won’t lie.”

“I didn’t want to let you go to his home for weekends, I didn’t trust him to take proper care. But you wanted to go and he accused me of ruining you having any relationship with him, when I resisted. I kept thinking, am I trying to take him away from her because I couldn’t have him?” Her mum’s eyes sparkled with tears and Laurie opened her mouth to contradict her and her mum shook her head: Let me finish. “I kept going against my instincts as a mother, Laurie. It’s my fault what happened. I knew something untoward had happened the night you ran to the station, but you wouldn’t tell me what it was. Then I let the fact you were protecting him make me angry. I took it out on you. That was wrong.”

“Dad is an abuser,” Laurie said quietly but clearly. “Of drugs of various kinds, which don’t help his judgment, but also an emotional abuser. One of the reasons I never face Dad down is I know it wouldn’t go well if I did. I’d have to see a different side to him. You live within the lines he draws or you don’t have a relationship with him at all. So I chose to live inside the lines. I wanted to have a dad.”

Peggy nodded. “Yes. I remember when you were born. I was in intensive care afterward and he wouldn’t come and take you. He said he wouldn’t know what to do. I was going to tell him then he could never see you again, or not until you were old enough it was your choice. My parents told me not to do that. That you needed a father.” She gulped, blinking rapidly in the gray-white sunshine. Laurie took her hand. “Then you were always such a determined, smart girl. Knew your own mind, made good choices. Not like me at twenty, I was a child. I had childish expectations of love.”

“It isn’t your fault that Dad is the way he is,” Laurie said. “While we’re on the offloading, I should tell you something else too, Mum: it turns out Dan lied. He left me for someone, he was having an affair, and the someone is now pregnant.”

“No?”

“Yes. I think women spend a lot of time beating themselves up about how they caused or deserved male behavior, and it doesn’t happen anything like the same way in reverse. They get on with doing what they wanna do.”

“Dan always seemed such a pleasant and devoted boy.”

“Yep. Didn’t he just. That’s the part that destroys me. How will I ever spot the signs?”

They leaned their heads against each other, looking out over the grass.

“You’re not angry at me?” Peggy said eventually.

“What for?”

“For not protecting you from your father. I knew what he was. I knew what he was from the moment I told him I was pregnant and he said, ‘What did you do that for?’”

Laurie gasped, despite herself. “No. I feel like we may have spent quite a lot of time putting feelings on each other that belonged with Dad. He kept marking those parcels Not Known at This Address, didn’t he? Sending them back.”

“You are a very clever, very emotional girl.”

“Emotional!” Laurie said ruefully with a smile, wiping her eyes.

“Emotionally wise, I mean. You have been since you were a little girl, with those watchful eyes. You take it all in. I’m sorry if you should’ve taken less in.”

Peggy started sobbing, to Laurie’s shock and she said: “Hey, don’t do that, come on. I’m OK!”

She held her mum tightly. Laurie hadn’t realized that in asking for help, she was also offering it.

Laurie seated Peggy and Wanda with a glass of red in the front room while she put the spinach and feta filo pie in the oven, enjoying looking after them.

Over the meal, Wanda said, “You were always a good cook, Laurie. Remember when you made cheese toasties for about eleven people?”

“Oh yes! I used to love doing that. Worcestershire sauce was my secret weapon.”

“You know who I found the other day, Dundee the badger!” Peggy said.

“Dundee!”

“Dundee?” Wanda said.

“I saw the name on a map and I loved it. I used to say I was going to call my son Dundee,” Laurie said. “My daughter was going to be Fife.”

Laurie noticed she could say this without loss. Maybe she would have kids. Maybe she’d have them, with someone less selfish than Dan. Think big.

“She couldn’t ever be apart from that badger, Wanda. Years and years and it went everywhere with her. Your father would send you those huge teddies and toys. When you did tea parties, Dundee had to have the highest chair at the head of the table and get his tea first, in case he thought you were favoring the new arrivals.”

“Haaah. I’d forgotten that!”

“You are a loyal person. When someone has your loyalty, it’s for life.”

“Yes, well, you keep Dundee safe for me,” Laurie said, topping her mum up, feeling self-conscious at the praise.

Laurie had earlier explained the pudding, vanilla ice cream, espresso, and liqueur: “It’s an Italian dessert, affogato.” Wanda had looked enraptured at the idea.

“Shall we have the ice cream? Let’s have ice cream!” she said now, as if this was the most transgressive thing that three adults could do. “Let me get it!”

Wanda also insisted on clearing the plates. Laurie knew it was fruitless to stop her—Wanda was one of those kinetic people with need to always be doing.

During the noises offstage, her mum looked around and said, “Keeping this beautiful place on your salary. What a successful woman you are.”

“Thanks. I don’t feel very successful at the moment.”

“You miss him?”

Laurie nodded. There was a pause full of Miles Davis, which Laurie had put on to please Wanda.

“I still don’t know exactly what went wrong. I know I’m bright, Mum. Why can’t I figure out what went wrong with Dan?”

This was as open and raw as Laurie had been about the situation with anyone, and she hadn’t predicted it would come tumbling out with her mum. Yet she knew why it had, even without their confidential in Whitworth Park.

Whatever miscommunications, whatever differences, your mum was your mum. She was the earthing cable in your circuitry. There were still things you could say to her you couldn’t say to anyone else. The connection with someone who had changed your nappies and was trusted with Dundee the badger went deep. You couldn’t deny the power of history, and genetics.

“I think I know what happened, but do you want to hear it? You won’t get cross with me?”

This surprised Laurie, that her mum had thought about it.

“I definitely want to hear it.”

“Daniel was able to flourish in your partnership, because you gave him the confidence, and because of that, he used you as base camp for his adventures. Your father used to do the same to me.”

“Oh . . . I guess . . . ?”

Laurie didn’t immediately recognize this as true, and yet when she thought on, she remembered numerous times she had urged Dan to aim high or to have good times. The headship promotion at work. The fateful stag do; she’d encouraged him to go. She’d still been pro lads weekends away afterward, in part to make it clear she trusted him. Nights out. Seeing his parents, visiting his sister in London. The running.

She worried the life she’d built for them had become a cage to Dan; she’d missed the part where she’d supported his every interest and freedom. It was, as her mum said, a base camp.

“Sooner or later, Daniel stopped realizing it was you who gave him the strength, the foundation,” Peggy continued. “He thought life could be only adventure, without you. When he realizes what he has done, he will regret it very much. But first he’ll need to recognize the value of what he had in order to mourn it.”

Laurie nodded. She wasn’t at all sure this would ever come to pass, but it matched up so neatly with Emily’s take, and that alone was satisfying. If their perspectives only meant that they both saw what Laurie had done for Dan that was enough.

“What do I do now?” Laurie said. Another question she would only ask her mum, this bluntly.

“Have your own adventures.”

Peggy leaned across the table, patted Laurie’s face and Laurie suddenly felt six years old in the school playground, with frizzy pigtails and her rabbit backpack.

“Don’t wait for him, even though he is on his way back to you. In that way, he is nothing like your father.”

“Ta-dah! Now then, Laurie, do you want to pour?”

Wanda was filling the doorway, a coffeepot in one hand and a bottle of amaretto in the other.

Laurie fetched the bowls of Häagen-Dazs and they slopped it together, Wanda demonstrating a heavy hand with the liqueur.

“Thank you for letting me crash your mother-daughter time,” Wanda said, ice cream on her chin.

“You’re welcome, Wanda, and you’re not crashing anything,” Laurie said.

“You’re a second mother to Laurie,” Peggy said, patting her hand.

“I’m more like your husband by this point, Peggy! You would’ve electrocuted yourself by now if I let you do your DIY,” Wanda said and they both roared.

Laurie smiled at them. Her mum might not have had settled relationships, but she had rock-solid friendships. Laurie hoped she could say the same.