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If I Never Met You
Would she ever be ready?
What was publicly available on Megan’s profile wasn’t very informative, and when Laurie was scrolling birthday wishes from two years ago (was Dan there? Not that she could find) she moved to the photo galleries.
They were generally of groups, but Laurie clicked and clicked until she saw enough of the pictures so she could spot which was Megan, by her ubiquity.
She couldn’t help it; her first response was to compare herself.
Megan was a redhead, nothing like Laurie physically, properly Lucozade ginger. Laurie remembered something about gingerism being a ‘recessive gene’ and couldn’t remember if that meant Dan’s child would be one.
Megan had close-set eyes, a strong nose, and an intimidating, rather than pretty face. Laurie was easily conventionally prettier. Laurie both knew this to be true straight away and yet simultaneously didn’t trust it, doubted it, and hated herself for this being such a necessary measure. Laurie had never been someone who’d traded on her looks. But, as an acerbic female colleague once said to her regards the length of her coupledom, you’ve never needed to.
And much like Megan’s age, Laurie moved from a split second of relief, to confusion and intimidation. If she wasn’t a dazzling beauty, then how could a woman whose powers of attraction she couldn’t immediately see do this to her? Dan wanted her more than he wanted Laurie, so any bargaining and comparing now was futile. Megan was clearly killer sexy to Dan, as she’d killed their relationship. Her powers of attraction had annihilated an eighteen-year history.
Further poking around revealed Megan was sporty and had an incredible figure, a near-concave stomach (that was about to change. Laurie hated herself for expanding the picture with forefinger and thumb, staring morbidly at the space where Dan’s child was) and legs that went on for days.
If she needed to feel physically inferior to understand this, then Megan’s physique could do it. Laurie had a twinge of political outrage – if she’d left Dan for another man, was it likely he’d spend any time studying his rival’s calf muscles for clues as to why she’d strayed? Nope.
Here was Megan at the end of a 10k run for breast cancer research, everyone pink faced in their Lycra gear, linked arms and holding their medals up to the camera. Laurie burned at the grinning women flanking her, the sense of sisterhood in their female cause – some for me would’ve been nice, eh, ‘Megs’? (She was Megs on her tabard.) Hell hath no fury.
She came to the end of what she was able to see. The Add Friend button taunted her and she closed the window, a dampness gathering on her brow. Laurie fantasised the catastrophe of hitting it by mistake, Megan seeing the request.
Hah, Laurie was worried about that gaffe, when Megan had a foetus half made of Dan’s DNA to explain?
She shut her laptop and lay down on the sofa again.
There had been a secretive alternative universe, a budding romance, alongside Laurie’s normal life with Dan, the two timelines eventually to intersect in the most explosive way.
Laurie knew how it must have been steadily built, for them to be ready to leap into bed together as soon as the Getting Rid Of Laurie admin was complete. (Assuming that it was true they waited, of course.)
Shared glances, momentary, supposedly insignificant touching of hands, or knees, under tables. Innocent coffees after court, in which perhaps a little too much was said about their respective private lives. Rueful humour, that suggested maybe it wasn’t a bed of roses. Tiny hints that you might be open to alternatives. Texts at the weekend, only light jokes, but making it clear you were thinking about someone out of hours. Testing responses, plausible deniability always there if you got nothing back.
Knowing this had happened felt to Laurie like thinking you were healthy, going about your normal days, and not knowing a fatal cancer was flowering somewhere, unfelt, in an organ. Had Megan cheated on her partner, too? There was no sign of a significant other, but Laurie could only see a dozen or so images.
When did it start? How did it start? They were questions to which Laurie would very likely never know answers.
In a few short years, or even months, it would be past the point anyone would even think it was her business. A page had turned for Dan, and Laurie was now part of his past tense. Laurie was someone who’d appear fleetingly in shadowy form in dinner party anecdotes. Dan dandling an infant on his lap: Oh Santorini? Yeah I went there with my ex. Eighteen years, and she’d be worth a two-letter descriptor.
While Laurie did some exhausted sobbing in lieu of being willing to throw her nice crockery around the room, a clear thought solidified in her mind: I am not only a sad woman. I am a bloody lawyer. I want to know when it started. I want to get this bastard for provable infidelity, even if not sexual. So there will be evidence. THINK.
Megan was into running. And Dan had taken up running, which Laurie was sure wasn’t a coincidence. When he ran, he listened to music. She was confident he was running and not off on any rendezvous, as he regularly came back a beetroot shade and showed her his route on Runkeeper, before dramatically collapsing and saying Laurie best fetch him a medicinal beer.
Laurie was rarely online, so the place he could interact with Megan was Facebook, and the topic they’d bond over was their stupid jogging. Running groups? Laurie used her old profile to check Dan’s activity. Nothing. He wasn’t the sort of person to be fair, the NIMBYs of Chorlton Community site drove him round the bend.
Music, though. Running. She’d glimpsed a playlist on his phone screen, as he wound the earphones round it.
A combination of her professional cunning and her instincts about Dan meant the answer came to her, in a second: they made running playlists together. She was sure of it. Dan used to give her endless ‘mix tapes’ when they were first going out, it was his kind of courtship. Song choices could covertly yet powerfully declare all kinds of things you’d never dare say outright.
Laurie opened her laptop, logged in to Spotify. She’d only ever had Dan’s user name for that, and she betted he thought she’d never check in, and if she did, wouldn’t know what she was looking at.
Well, she did now.
Laurie’s skin prickled with the successful detective ‘Gotcha!’ sensation, coupled with horror at seeing it laid out, as if she’d torn back the covers on writhing bodies.
Among Dan’s playlists, there was one made six months ago, called I Wanna Run 2 U. Nice wordplay, twat. There it was, halfway down: a song added by a different user, one calling herself meggymoon. Ugh, UGH.
The track was called ‘When Love Takes Over’.
Dan’s next was ‘Go Your Own Way’ by Fleetwood Mac. Another from meggymoon: ‘Not Afraid’. It was straight call and response of two people panting for each other; Laurie hardly needed to be a Bletchley code breaker.
Dan’s next: the Stones’ ‘Start Me Up’. Puke. Laurie was embarrassed for him.
It was a very modern way to transact cheating and yet it was an age-old dynamic – over caffeinated, adolescent excitement, egging each other on by degrees.
And hiding in plain sight, because if Laurie had queried this playlist, they would be a bunch of songs, and – DUH! – loads of songs are about sex and love, dummy. She wondered how Dan would’ve denied it. Or would he have broken down, used it as a chance to tell the truth? She’d never know.
Laurie picked up her phone, not in full control of herself, and texted Dan.
I know you were messing around with her six months back, I have the proof. I have no idea who you are anymore, and I don’t want to know.
Then she turned onto her side and went to sleep. When she briefly awoke, she had three messages in reply, and managed to delete them without reading them.
10
‘Laurie, I’ve had a science fiction film pitch from my cousin Munni. Listen to this …’
As Laurie took her seat on Monday morning, her office mates, Bharat and Di, were shriek-chortling at each other in a way that was both a reminder that life went on, and at the same time seemed to be happening behind a wall of glass.
Bharat’s eccentric cousin Munni in Leamington Spa was a regular source of amusement and delight to Bharat. Munni once tried to get himself nominated for a Pride of Britain award for karate chopping a shoplifter running away with a frozen chicken in Morrisons, and according to a horrified Bharat, dried his willy in the Dyson Airblade after a shower in the gym.
‘It is the year 2030 and scientists have found a cure for death. Good news, you’d think? No. Because now because with no one dying, there are too many people. So there are two choices: kill old people, or sterilise the young. War breaks out between the breeders and the geriatrics. At first, thanks to better strength, bone density and joint mobility, plus understanding smart phones, the youth prevail.’
Bharat paused to hunch double, laughing over his keyboard.
‘Poor Munni! Does he know you share his emails?’ Laurie said.
‘He’s sent it to the head of Paramount film studios! He can stand for a few people in Manchester to hear it too.’
Laurie switched her computer on, slung her bag down, unwound her scarf.
Bharat, a Sikh man of thirty-two with a frenetic social life and love of disco, and Di, a fifty-something divorcee who adored her Maine Coon cats and Ed Sheeran, were unlikely banter partners, and yet they were devoted to each other. It was practically a marriage.
Today, Laurie was painfully grateful for the background hubbub they’d created, as she wanted minimal scrutiny of what she’d done at the weekend. It was easy enough to lie, but harder to keep her emotions totally steady while she did so. It was hard not to appear as she was – hollowed out.
Her mum used to play Paul Simon’s Graceland on a loop, and Laurie kept thinking of the line about losing love being like a window into your heart. She wanted it shuttered. And she had to see him here, interact? The thought made her insides seize up.
It was with intense apprehension, aware that a longer absence would generate more interest, Laurie had come back into work today.
Only to find, thanks to a God with a sick sense of humour, Dan loitering outside at nine a.m., finishing a call with a client. It was harrowing, but better she faced him straight away, and without them being watched.
‘How are you?’ he said, looking, it had to be said, completely shit scared of her.
‘Fine,’ she replied, and marched past. Knowing her half stone weight loss, haunted baggy eyes and near palpable despair said different.
‘Laurie,’ Dan caught her arm, lowered his voice, ‘I said you had a stomach flu. People asked me.’
She gave a curt nod in response, because this wasn’t the time or place to be cutting or contemptuous, then pulled her arm away firmly and marched into the building.
Salter & Rowson was an old-fashioned law firm, a few streets away from Deansgate. It was a looming Victorian building housing criminal, civil and family departments, a brace of legal secretaries and four receptionists. Mr Salter, sixty-ish, and Rowson, fifty-something, had started the firm in the early 1980s when Salter still had hair and Rowson was still on his first wife and family.
A large portion of their business was legal aid. Laurie spent much time in the magistrates’ court defending individuals who Dan categorised as ‘toerags and scallies.’ He was in civil, which as the name suggested, offered a slightly more stately pace. Laurie was old enough not to have to do the on call shifts, where she had to hack out at one in the morning.
The criminal department was the largest, and for reasons lost to the mists of time, when Laurie joined over ten years ago she was seated in a crappy adjunct office next to Bharat – litigation, specialising in medical negligence – and Diana, secretary to Bharat and anyone else in the vicinity.
She was eventually offered a move into criminal next door but declined: she’d already struck up a friendship with Bharat and Di.
Climbing the stairs that morning, the idea she and Dan could convincingly feign being on friendly terms had been ambitious before, and was now worthy of cousin Munni’s sci fi. But Laurie had no fortitude for making major personal announcements. Did they leave the Other Woman and the rogue conception out of it, at first? How long would it take the office’s sleuths to uncover it, once the game was afoot? Even without the weekend’s trauma, it had been – count them – ten weeks now with no one getting a sniff at their break-up, but Laurie knew every day they were a day closer to inevitable discovery.
‘I’m going out on a limb and saying the “cure for death” idea’s probably been done, several times,’ Bharat said. ‘However, this could still hinge on whether Liam Neeson is prepared to play the sexy sexagenarian warrior, Jeremiah Mastadon.’
Laurie forced a laugh. ‘I’m off to defend a Darren Dooley. You don’t get many heroes called Darren Dooley, do you?’
Alliteration, like Megan Mooney.
‘What’s Munni calling this film?’ Diana asked.
‘PROLIFERATION. But with some sort of weird semi colon between PRO LIFE: and RATION,’ Bharat said, scrolling his email. ‘Pro Life, ration. Geddit? No? Let’s hope the head of Paramount and Liam Neeson do. Oh God, he’s cc-ed Liam Neeson!’ Bharat collapsed in mirth again and Diana queried how Munni knew Liam Neeson’s email address – ‘he’ll have guessed it as ‘Liam Dot Neeson At Hollywood Dot Com’ – while Laurie collected up her files for court. The world had gone digital but courtrooms still required reams of A4 paper.
Jamie bloody Carter appeared in one of his narrow suits that looked like he was in a menswear advert and should be photographed laughing, sat with his knees apart while holding a tumbler of malt whisky. Or walking down a cobbled street in a European city with a dickhead Rat Pack in tow.
He said, ‘I don’t mean to push,’ – yes you do, Laurie thought, giving him grit-teeth smile – ‘Could you update me on the Cheetham case?’
Laurie gave him a brusque run down, off the top of her head.
‘You don’t need to check the file?’ he said.
‘No, I have this thing called a memory,’ Laurie said. Patronising git, he was how old, twenty-eight?
‘Ooooh summarily dismissed! Nicely done!’ Bharat said, after Jamie raised his eyebrows, and departed. ‘He’s a self-sucking cock of a man, isn’t he?’ Di and Laurie chortled evilly.
This morning for Laurie held an assault on a kindly shop keeper. Laurie really didn’t want to get her client a reduced sentence due to first time offending and the context of peer pressure, and yet she probably would.
A sheaf of notes had gone missing and Laurie was delayed five minutes, hunting them out. A crucial five minutes, as it turned out.
Diana came back from the loo and stared directly at Laurie, in an unnerving way.
‘When were you going to tell us you and Dan had split up?!’
‘What?’ Laurie said, dully.
‘What?!’ Bharat shrieked.
‘Dan’s talking to Michael and Chris about it. He said that it happened a while back. And he’s having a baby? With someone at Rawlings?’
Laurie suppressed a full-body shiver of despair, a fresh wave of stunned humiliation.
‘Yeah it’s true. All over a while back. I didn’t know how to break it. There it is.’ That bastard. He couldn’t even give her a week to come to terms with it herself. To show her feelings would only inflame the office tattle, so she kept her face impassive and raised and dropped her shoulders. The seconds it took them to say anything lasted an eternity.
‘Wait, how long ago was it that you separated, if he’s with someone else? And having a baby?’ Bharat said; it was fruitless to downplay it.
‘Months back. Don’t really want to discuss it. I’m due in court.’
She got up and strode out quickly, looking neither left nor right, trying to keep a poker face. She could still sense the heads snapping up and whispers from receptionist’s viewing gallery as she passed.
A WhatsApp from Bharat.
V sorry if that was an insensitive question Loz, I blurted, wasn’t thinking. Are you OK? Xx
Laurie
Yep, thanks, don’t worry. As much as is possible, can you reassure people I’m fine? You & I can talk in private sometime. Can’t face Team Kerry’s gang of lookalike raptors in Charlotte Tilbury descending on me Xx
Bharat
LOL. Perfect description
Bharat was raucous and silly, but he was good people, and she was deeply grateful for his friendship at that moment. He loved drama, but he was ethical about it: not at the expense of the feelings of those he liked.
Her phone rang with a call from Dan as she neared the mags court. He was breathless and discomposed, as well he might be.
‘Laurie, Laurie, I didn’t decide to tell everyone. Someone at Rawlings saw Louise Hatherley from ours at the cop shop and she came straight back and blabbed it, and I had to face it down as best I could.’
‘Megan’s told people at her place?’
‘She’s got morning sickness and refused a drink at some do last week and apparently someone guessed.’
‘Megan didn’t have to say it was true? Or tell people you were the dad, did she? Fuck, Dan, is this why you only told me this weekend?’
‘She said she panicked, it came tumbling out. I was going to talk to you about how we handled it here … fuck.’
‘Know something about your mistress, and soon-to-be mother of your child, Dan? She’s a fucking lying bitch,’ Laurie said.
As she spoke, she felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned. The pasty pale, grinning face of Darren Dooley was in front of her.
‘Alright, brief? Want me to sort her out for you?’
Trudging back to the office from court that afternoon was the longest walk. Darren Dooley pleaded guilty and got off with community service and a suspended sentence. By contrast to Laurie’s gloom, he was cock-a-hoop.
Coming second in a happiness contest with a boy who’d thumped a newsagent in a row over a resealable pouch of mini Wispas, what even was life? Laurie offered him a wan smile as they parted.
‘Don’t rough up any more pensioners, from now on. OK?’
Laurie had never felt the truth of the idea of work being a comfort before, and many people wouldn’t have found hers a comfort. But she was good at her job, and it always felt like an absorbing, necessary thing to be doing.
And she had high standing at Salter & Rowson. Laurie was not only talented, she was diligent, and never rested on her laurels. Usually it was the plodders who were hard working and careful, and the naturally gifted who did an Icarus. Not Laurie. She quickly learned that the scariness of standing in front of magistrates was directly proportional to how thoroughly you’d done your homework. She was often up against worse-for-wear posh lads for the prosecution, almost proud of winging it, using cut-glass vowels like a scythe. Well, Laurie thought it was way more rock’n’roll to know your case back to front and wipe the floor with them.
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