If I Never Met You: A Novel

Torrential rain, the emphatic Manchester sort, the size of stair rods and sounding strong enough to break glass, bucketed down. It was as if the weather had reacted to what she’d done. The sky had exploded, the way Jamie did.

At home, Laurie lay down on the sofa, kicking her shoes off, feet hooked over the arm. She should take the dress off but she couldn’t bring herself to de-Cinderella yet—it might be years before she wore this again. Then she got up, lit some candles and put a Prince compilation on.

He was completely within his rights to let fly at her, she’d been reckless and selfish. She was trying to escape from herself, and everyone’s expectations, and their deal was collateral in testing what it felt like to tart about.

She couldn’t shift the sense she and Jamie were broadcasting on multiple frequencies now, that things were no longer necessarily about what they were about. Emily’s prophecies kept on coming true.

Ding-dong.

Laurie’s heart went bang and she sat up straight. She knew who it was at the door; knew, and yet pretended to herself she didn’t. If it was anyone else, her dismay would swallow her. In that split second, she’d learned something about herself.

“It’s Jamie.”

She slid the bolt. THANK GOD, and, OH NO.

She opened the door. He was drenched, water running from hairline down his face, coat wrapped around himself like a dressing gown. The clematis over the porch had a small waterfall pouring from it.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi.”

A short pause, Laurie’s pulse still thundering in her ears.

“Do you want to come in?”

“It’d be better than being out here.”

She stood back as he brushed past, soaked enough that he left a wet streak on her dress.

“Do you want a towel or something?” Laurie followed him into the front room trying to keep her voice even, trying to conceal how jittery she was.

“Yeah, if I can?”

Laurie ran upstairs and grabbed one from the bathroom rail. She handed it to Jamie, who patted his face and hair ineffectually.

“Take the coat off and I’ll stick it on the radiator,” Laurie said, trying not to notice the wet white shirt underneath.

“Lovely house,” he said, glancing around.

“Thank you, I’m still paying for it,” Laurie said, smiling. “Maybe in more than one way.”

“It looks exactly like the one on that Oasis album cover.”

“Ha. Yep. Not entirely unintentional. Maybe I have some of my father in me after all.”

They smiled at each other. Laurie took the towel back and held it over her arms, a small barrier. There was an excruciating silence.

“Did you know they wanted cans of Red Stripe on that album cover, instead of the red wine, but they weren’t allowed the product placement?”

Stop wittering, Laurie! And he’s turned up on your doorstep, it’s for him to announce his business and fill awkward pauses. I am scared about what he’s going to say.

“I didn’t know that. Are you some sort of an Oasis superfan?”

“No! I liked that . . . decor.”

Jamie gazed at the floor.

“I’m sorry to turn up like this. I’m sorry I shouted at you. Only, I’ve been turning it over and over in my head. I need to know why you kissed that bloke. I can’t work it out at all.”

Laurie took a shaky breath.

“Can’t I have kissed him for the reason anyone kisses someone, when knee-deep in cheap plonk at a Christmas party?”

“Number one, he was a right dozy twat. Number two, if it was to make your ex jealous, he wasn’t witnessing it. Number three, it contravened the agreement we made, so you were taking a risk. Number four, fucking kilt. There are four compelling reasons for not kissing Angus from Experian.”

“. . . You know when you want to do something totally out of character? The fact I’d never kiss someone like that or do something like that. That was why. It was spontaneous stupidity. That was all.”

Jamie looked at her from under his brow, the muscles in his jaw visibly clenching.

“OK. I didn’t ask exactly what I wanted to ask. What I really meant is: Why did you kiss him, and not me? It seems to me that if you take a Fake Boyfriend to a party, and you’re going to do some meaningless copping off, you probably would do it with the Fake Boyfriend. I know we’re in an unusual situation and a lawyer should be able to cite precedent, and I can’t, but, you know . . .”

Laurie folded her arms, playacting insouciance when she was in a state of excited terror.

“Jamie, do you think you’re so irresistible it’s against the laws of physics for a woman to kiss another man, instead of you?”

“Objection: deviation. I knew you’d say that and, in the words of District Judge Tomkins, it’s a fallacious argument.”

She saw that look again in Jamie’s eyes. That look of starstruck fondness she wanted to see so much and didn’t trust.

“What’s Angus got, except a stupid kilt, the goofy tartan-wearing nationalist?”

“It would’ve been . . . weird to kiss you. We’re friends.”

“Friends,” he repeated.

Laurie nodded.

“When we were dancing together, it felt like two people who are much more than friends.” He paused. “It’s the closest I’ve felt to anyone in my entire life.”

That, in a nutshell, was what Laurie felt.

A silence developed. Laurie didn’t trust her voice.

“When the song finished, you gave me this look, this look like we were . . . actually in bed together, or something, this total intimacy that I felt too, and then you bolted. Next I know? ANGUS.”

Laurie sucked in air and wished she’d not lit candles or put Prince on.

“Please, don’t do this. Don’t turn one of the best friendships I’ve had into the shock twist that we sleep with each other for a while, and then fall out when one of us, who, shock twist, will be you, doesn’t want to keep doing it anymore. It would turn gold into scrap metal. I don’t want to be your millionth fling. This is bigger and better than that.”

“I agree with all of this.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“To tell you that . . .” Jamie paused. “I don’t want to pretend anymore. I want to be together. Somewhere along the line this stopped being a pretense for me.”

A beat of blood in her ears; time seemed to slow. Should she try to stop this?

“What about what you said about thinking you were falling in love with someone? What happened to her?”

“In Lincoln?”

“Yes.”

“I was talking about you.”

Laurie’s jaw dropped. “No, you weren’t, because you said . . .”

“I made a dick of myself by blathering about how I’d know and not thinking you’d ask why and then I had to do that lame mislead. I thought you guessed?!”

“No,” Laurie said, replaying it in her head. Her? She was Eve?

“Take anything I’ve said as part of this performance art from, oh, I don’t know, at least from Lincoln onward. Possibly at fancy steak restaurants. I meant everything I said. I felt what I felt before I knew what I felt, you know what I mean?”

She remembered how reluctant he’d been to tell her how he rebuffed that girl at Hawksmoor: I don’t want to share you. He’d spooked himself because as he’d said it, he knew it was true?

Laurie laughed in nerves and shock and disbelief, and, yes, even if she didn’t admit it, joy. “You said love was a temporary manic state, like a debilitating psychosis!”

“Yes, and I was wrong. I was ignorant, and arrogant. I thought because I’d never experienced it, it didn’t exist. It’s not being out of your mind. It’s being in it, it’s complete certainty. When I’m with you, I know I’m where I belong. I want this to be real, Laurie. I want you to be mine. I want to be yours.”

Prince started on “I Wish U Heaven”: his music should be regulated as a Class A intoxicating substance.

“And,” Jamie said, “I think you feel the same way, but you won’t trust it, or me, because of who I was when you met me.”

Laurie sucked in a breath that went to the bottom of her rib cage.

“It’s true that I haven’t got the strength for another rejection, after you try out being a one-woman man and find it’s not for you.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

“Bit risky . . .”

“What if I’m right?” His hair was so dark when it was wet. Laurie felt this sort of detail was unhelpful, in coming to a reasoned decision. “The risk isn’t worth it? I’d risk anything for what I felt between us tonight.”

“I’ve only recently mended myself. I don’t feel so brave,” she said, a small wobble in her words.

“OK. I’ll be brave for both of us. Kiss me. Afterward you can tell me that there’s not enough here worth taking a chance on, and we should leave it as mates.”

“I don’t owe you a snog, Jamie Carter!” Laurie said, laughing.

“No, you don’t.”

Jamie moved in and Laurie almost sprang back with the shock of finally being at the point of something she’d thought about doing so many times.

“But that doesn’t mean I want to kiss you any less.”

He inclined his head, ducked down, and when his lips met hers, he was right: Laurie forgot every single objection she had.

She put her hand on the back of his head and her arm around his body and finally gave in to longing she had no idea she could still feel—no, that she could ever feel; this was something a few leagues above her and Dan’s most intense early years. She and Dan hadn’t known each other when their lips had first met, she and Jamie were finally expressing something that had built and built.

Time slowed, the rain thundered down outside.

After minutes of kissing passionately, he pulled back slightly.

“Why didn’t we do that ages ago?” Jamie said, his eyes blue-black.

“Because we’d have known how we felt about each other straightaway? The cat would’ve been right out of the bag, and we’d have had to deal with the cat parading around.” Laurie grinned. “I don’t think I could’ve carried off kissing you like that as just a contractual obligation.”

“Yes. That’s true.” He smiled.

“Jamie. The reason I kissed Angus is . . . after we danced together, I came back into the room, you were talking to some beautiful girl. That’s what I know being in love with you is going to be like. Like trying to keep running water in a sieve. I know this—we—are new right now, so it’s exciting. It won’t always be new.”

Jamie frowned. “Katya? From Barker’s? She’s gay.”

“OK. You still see my greater point.”

“An hour ago I had to physically detach you from another man, and your takeaway is that I might cheat?”

Laurie laughed. “Come on, though. You’re asking me to accept a major change in your outlook, here.”

“I get why you want guarantees,” Jamie said. “I can only make you a promise.”

“Which is?”

“Whatever happens next . . . you’re my soul mate.”