If I Never Met You: A Novel

Where is he—where is he—where is he?

Laurie scoured the concourse for Jamie to no avail, but looking at the Departures board, he had to be here somewhere.

She’d locked the kitten in the kitchen and dragged on any old things on top of her “it’s Christmas Eve, time to let go” outfit of baggy joggers and sloppy, shapeless wide-neck jumper. The Uber had been painfully slow to arrive but once she was in, they’d flown through the streets, past boozy office workers spilling out of the bars and up the ramp of the station, where Laurie had practically fallen out before the car came to a complete stop.

He must’ve gone through the barrier by now. At a ticket machine, Laurie endured an agonizing wait behind the world’s slowest stoner gap-year boys, wearing flip-flops with socks in December, then bought the cheapest she could find, a single to Stockport, and dashed through to the other side.

When she got to the platform, she looked right, left, right, left. He wasn’t here. Had Hattie got the time wrong?

Her eyes came to rest on a man in a navy coat with short curly dark hair and exceptional cheekbones, standing by the Coke machine, staring at her.

There.

In her haste, Laurie half skipped to him, apprehension at what she had to say briefly canceled out by the elation of finding him.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello?” Jamie said, looking at her curiously.

“Going home for Christmas?”

“Er . . . yeah. And you? Getting a train too?”

“No, I’ve come to find you.”

“OK?”

“To tell you that I’m sorry. I doubted you and I freaked out. I trusted Dan and he let me down and I wasn’t ready to go through that again.”

A silence, where she wondered if she would get the Jamie who’d been so scornful last time they met, or the tender Jamie of the messages to his best friend.

“I know. I get that. I think it was too big an ask, to be honest.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” He got his phone out of his pocket. “You can have my pass code; I can show you texts from Eve that back up everything I’ve told you. I should’ve offered that before but I was in too big a state, thinking I’d lost my job and you on the same day. I lashed out.”

“Thank you but I don’t need to see them.” Laurie paused. “I trust you. Hattie shared the email you wrote about me, with me . . .”

“Oh, did she now?”

“She did. I shouldn’t have needed to hear you’d said those things. I knew them anyway, because it’s how I feel too.” Laurie drew breath. “That’s what’s special about us. It’s funny, given I thought we were chalk and cheese, but it’s like we have some sort of telepathy. I purposely turned that intuition off, and surrendered to what everyone else thought of you. I didn’t want to rely on my own judgment because it let me down so badly where Dan was concerned.”

Jamie said nothing.

“So I didn’t think about the person I spent time with in Lincoln, or at barbecues that turned into slasher flicks, or having nervous breakdowns in skyscrapers with. Because him, I trust, and I am madly in love in with.” She paused. “Why haven’t you been in touch with me?”

“You haven’t been in touch with me. Checkmate.” Jamie smiled.

“I know. I was worried you’d say, after some thought, you were definitely sure it was over.”

“That’s exactly why I didn’t call you. I thought, let the silence speak for itself and you can avoid those crushing few seconds of certainty.”

The Manchester icy wind howled around them and Laurie pushed her hair out of her face.

“What I’m saying is, do you want to try again?” she said.

“No, not really, what’s done is done,” Jamie said. “And I’ve had a promising inquiry from a member of Little Mix.”

Laurie was stunned for a moment and then Jamie’s frown cracked, and he started laughing. “Your face, hahaha.”

“You bad bollock!”

Jamie stooped and rifled in his bag.

“Open this. I was going to post it from Lincoln.”

Laurie fumbled it open with cold hands and found a short note, wrapped around a small cardboard box. She opened it. It was the necklace she’d admired on Steep Hill.

“I’d got my mum to buy it and send it,” Jamie said.

She opened the note:

Dear Laurie,

If there’s any chance whatsoever you might change your mind, I want that chance more than anything in the world. I wouldn’t waste that chance. I’d use it for the rest of our lives, in fact.

All my love, Jamie x

Laurie looked up, tears in her eyes.

“Come here.” Jamie dropped his bag and grabbed her in a hug. “I’m so sorry for what I put you through,” he said, muttering into her hair. “I should’ve told you upfront what had gone on with Eve. Keeping my cards close to my chest became second nature.”

“You lost your job. You paid enough for it.”

The train pulled into the station.

“What are you doing for Christmas?” Jamie said. “Do you want to come to Lincoln? I’d not steeled myself to tell my parents we were no more yet. We could get a later train, after you’ve packed a bag?”

“I could, except I’ve got a wrecker of a kitten that can’t be left.”

“I’ve got a house sitter for Margaret. We could add your kitten into the deal, pay her extra?”

“Oh God. It’ll be like Clouseau and Cato!”

“I’ll tell her to charge me for some pruning gauntlets and sedatives. For her.”

“Looks like we have a plan, then,” Laurie said.

Jamie hugged her again and they walked out of the station, hand in hand, only to find Laurie couldn’t get back through the ticket barrier until she’d bought another single.

“You know, this reunion was written by fate. Hattie said she knew we had a future, as she’s psychic,” Laurie said, once they’d extricated themselves from the admin.

“If Hattie’s psychic, why did she date the lad in our twenties who pretended to be an heir to the Farmfoods fortune, and ended up rinsing her savings and disappearing to Worcester, until the fraud squad caught up with him, watching scat porn in a Premier Inn?”

“Maybe she had to date him, to find her way to Padraig?”

“Too heavy a price. And I like Padraig.”

Laurie put her hand in Jamie’s free one and pulled him to a stop.

“Do you know. I’ve had the maddest, craziest idea, and you’ll say LOL NO but hear me out on it seeming hasty. Particularly as I’d like your parents to be there. Do you fancy getting married?”

“LOL NO!” Jamie said. “Uhm. Kidding. But shouldn’t I propose?”

“Not necessarily in this day and age.”

“You’re seriously proposing to me? We’ve only been a proper couple for a weekend!”

“I’m less respectful of what you’re supposed to do, these days, if you get me. If we discover we’re horrendously ill suited after two years of bickering about overspending on the food shop and picking up wet towels, think of the fun we’ll have had before we realize? If this is a mistake, think how much fun we’ll have making it?”

“The speech is writing itself!”

“And, you know, if it’s a no, I will cope fine. It struck me as a thing I’d really enjoy doing.” She grinned up at him. He had the same look on his face as he did at the final chords of “Purple Rain.” There, they had the first dance sorted already. “I appreciate I’m asking you to go from someone who despised marriage to someone charging into one. But that’s me, now. I ask for a lot.”

Jamie reached up and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. Laurie felt loved, and, more than that, she’d remembered how to love herself. She wanted his answer to be yes, but a no wouldn’t change either of those things.

“Yes. My answer is yes. I will marry you. Can I ask you back? Feels proper. Laurie Watkinson, will you marry me?”

“Yes!”

They stopped, embraced, and kissed, the Christmas Eve crowds flowing around them, Jamie’s bag at their feet, while they stayed a fixed point, a moment in time. An irritable commuter tutted, in a broad Manc drawl. “Get a fuckin’ room.” And they laughed and carried on kissing.

Many ages of Lauries had walked through Piccadilly, since she was a little girl in fact. She liked this one best. Whatever happened in the future, Laurie would never forget the lessons of these months. She was a survivor of some difficult things, and she was happy.

They walked down the hill, hand in hand.

“My best friend Emily can give me away.”

“And Hattie can be my best man.”

“I like making up our own rules. Let’s keep doing that.”

Minutes later, over engagement champagnes in the Refuge, under tiles that declared THE GLAMOUR OF MANCHESTER, Laurie managed to make a phone ring in a province of Indonesia.

“Emily. You know how we said we had to define what happiness looks like for ourselves? Without fear of judgment? Now, there’s been no eggnog, but. Please remain as calm as possible.”