“Oh. Good?” Laurie said. She didn’t know what note to strike in the teeth of total rejection. She’d always had this knack with Dan—she could joke him out of any temper, persuade him when no one else could. “He’s proper silly for you,” a friend of his once said.
Now she felt as if anything she said would be either pathetic or annoying; she could hear it become one or the other to him as soon as it left her mouth. All the usual doors, her ways in, had been bricked up.
“I’m going to keep paying the mortgage here for the time being. Give you a grace period so you can decide . . . what you want to do.”
“Thanks,” Laurie said flatly, because no way was she going to be more fulsome than that. Dan’s larger salary came with a ton of stress at times, but had its uses. She’d have to remortgage herself up to her eyeballs and eBay everything that wasn’t nailed to the floor. Losing Dan and her home felt insurmountable.
“I’m going to get fish and chips for dinner tonight, want some?” Dan added, and Laurie shook her head. The rest of the bottle of red in the kitchen would be more effective on an empty stomach. She noticed Dan’s appetite was fine.
“When do we tell everyone at work?” she said. They’d mutually avoided this pressing question yesterday, but Laurie knew her office mate, Bharat, would sniff it out in days.
They’d be a week-long scandal, with the news cycle moving into a different phase day by day. “Have you heard?” on Monday; “Was he playing away?” on Tuesday; “Was she playing away?” on Wednesday; “I saw them arguing outside the Arndale mall last Christmas, the writing was on the wall” fib dropped in as a lump of red meat to keep it going on Thursday. “When is it OK to ask either one on a date?” nailed on by Friday, because Salter & Rowson was an absolute sin bin. There was a lot of adrenaline involved in their work at times, which was dampened by after-hours booze. Add a steady influx of people aged twenty to forty joining or interning, and you had a recipe for a lot of flirting and more.
It was a shame this had happened now, just when the Jamie-Eve gossip could have been a useful distraction. But there was no way a furtive shag, even a specifically verboten one, was going to trump the breakup of the firm’s most prominent couple. And Laurie wouldn’t have snitched on Jamie either. She wasn’t ruthless.
Dan leaned on the wall and sighed. “Shall we not? For the time being? I can’t face all the bullshit. I can’t see how they’d find out otherwise. It’s not like I’m going to put it on Facebook and you’re hardly ever on there.”
“Yeah. OK,” Laurie said. They both wanted to wait for a time it’d matter less, though right now Laurie couldn’t imagine when that might be.
“And my dad’s got married.”
“No way!” Dan’s eyes lit up. He officially disapproved of Laurie’s dad in order to stay on the right side of history—and of Laurie and her mum—but she’d always sensed Dan had a soft spot. “To, what was her name, Nicola?”
“Yeah. Some party happening here. I’m a bridesmaid.”
Barely true, but she wanted Dan to picture her in a dress, in a spotlight, in a glamorous context with scallywag dad, whom he sneakingly admired.
“Ah. Nice.” Dan looked briefly sad and ashamed as obviously, he’d not be there. “Never thought your dad would settle down.”
“People surprise you.” Laurie shrugged, and Dan looked awkward and then blank at this, muttering he needed a shower.
As Dan passed her on the stairs and his bathroom-puttering noises started, Laurie leaned her head against the bannisters, too spent to imagine moving for the moment. When they passed thirty, as far as their peer group were concerned, Dan and Laurie tying the knot was a done deal. If they weren’t thinking about it themselves, they weren’t allowed to forget it.
From acquaintances who’d drunkenly exhort, “You next! You next!” at one of the scores of weddings they attended a year, to the open pleas from Dan’s mum to give her an excuse to go to Cardiff for a day of outfit shopping (the best reason for lifetime commitment: a mint lace designer shift dress and pheasant feather fascinator), to friends who told them, once they’d finished bottles of wine over dinner, that Dan and Laurie would have the best wedding ever, come on, come ON, do it, you selfish sods.
Laurie always deflected with a joke about her not being keen what with being a lawyer, and seeing a lot of divorce paperwork, but eventually that dodge wore thin. Dan referred to Laurie as “the missus” and “the wife,” leading newer friends to think they were married.
It had always seemed a case of when, not if. Laurie had vaguely expected a ring box to appear, but it never did. Should she have been pushing the issue?
The where’s the wedding??!!! noise hit a peak around thirty-three. Having skirted around it, after news of another friend’s engagement, they discussed it directly over hangover-cure fried egg sandwiches of a Saturday morning.
“Do you not think it’s much more romantic to not be married?” Dan said. “If you’re together when there’s no practical ties, it’s really real.” He was indistinct through a mouthful of bread. “Realer than when you’ve locked yourself into a governmental contract. We of all people know that legal stuff means nothing in terms of how much you love each other.”
Laurie made a skeptical face.
“We have no ‘ties’ . . . except the joint mortgage, every stick of the furniture, and the car?”
“I’m saying, married people stay when it’s rough because they made this solemn promise in front of everyone they know, and they don’t want to feel stupid, and divorce is a big deal. A big, expensive, arduous deal. As you say, you end up having the wagon wheel coffee table arguments over stuff for the sake of it, like in When Harry Met Sally. There’s the social shame and failure factor. People like us stay together when it’s rough out of pure love. Our commitment doesn’t need no vicar, baby.”
With his scruffy hair, sweet expression, and expensive striped T-shirt, Dan looked the very advertiser’s image of the twenty-first-century Guy You Settle Down With. Laurie grinned back.
“So . . . what you’re saying is, there will be no weddings for you, Dan Price? Or, by extension, me? The Price-Watkinsons will never be. The Pratkinsons.”
He wiped his mouth with a piece of paper towel. “Ugh we’d never double barrel no matter what, right?”
Laurie mock wailed. “No huge dress for me!”
“I dunno. Never say never? But not a priority right now?”
Laurie thought on it. She sensed it was there for her if she demanded it. She was neither wedding wild nor wedding averse. They’d been together since they were eighteen; they’d never needed a rush in them. Plus, it’d be nice not to have to find fifteen grand down the back of the sofa, there was plenty needing doing in the house. She smiled, shrugged, nodded.
“Yeah, see how it goes.”
Emily always told Dan he was lucky to have such an easygoing, un-nagging girlfriend and Dan would roll his eyes and say: “You should see her in Ikea,” but at that moment Laurie felt Emily’s praise was justified and she thought, looking at his warm that’s my girl smile, so did Dan.
And it was only now, listening to the shower thundering upstairs, that Laurie realized that she’d missed the giant glaring warning sign in what Dan had said.
Yes, staying together out of love, not paperwork, was romantic. But if you flipped it around, he was also saying marrying made it too difficult to leave.
Three days later, Laurie got a packet of seedlings for colorful hollyhocks in a card with a Renoir painting, and her mum’s unusual sloping script inside read: “To new beginnings. Love, Mum.” Laurie cried: this meant her mum had fretted on their conversation, it was her way of making amends. Maybe her mum hadn’t trashed Dan, had been upbeat on purpose—to make it clear this wasn’t history repeating, that Dan wasn’t her father and Laurie wouldn’t go through what she did.
Laurie had no faith anymore. As a lifelong believer in The One, in monogamous fidelity to the person who your heart told you was right for you, s
he was suddenly an atheist. If Dan wasn’t to be trusted, who could be?
In the years ahead, she knew plenty of people would tell her to be open to commitment again, to true love: that fresh starts were possible and it would be different this time. She knew she would smile and nod, and not agree with a word of it.
7
Two months and two weeks later
“Can I come ’round?”
Laurie answered Dan’s call while she was walking to the tram after work, as Manchester’s late-autumn/early-winter temperature felt like it was stripping the skin from her face. She loved her city, but it wasn’t so hospitable in November.
It had not been an easy time. Ten weeks since the split, and Laurie felt almost as distraught as she did the day Dan left. Whenever their paths crossed at work, they had to chat vaguely normally so as not to arouse suspicion, because no one had figured it out yet. And as Laurie couldn’t bear the idea of their relationship being picked apart, she hadn’t done anything about it. It wasn’t a sensible thing to be doing, as grown-ups, not now they were living apart: they needed to face it. They’d also managed to keep it a secret from the rest of their Chorlton friendship group by pleading prior commitments to a few events or, in a couple of cases, attending singularly and lying through their teeth. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—be the one to break the deadlock, as she hoped against hope they’d simply never need to tell everyone about this blip. She hoped the fact Dan didn’t want it known was a sign.
Laurie was no closer to understanding what the hell had happened. What did she do wrong? She couldn’t stop asking that.
Tracing the steps by which Dan fell out of love with her was excruciating and yet she guessed she had to do it, or be fated to repeat it.
Her only conclusion was that a distance must have developed between them, so slowly as to be imperceptible, so small as to be overlooked. And it had gradually lengthened.
Of course, the one person she had told, next to her mum, was Emily, ten days after the fact, who’d unexpectedly burst into tears for her. They’d been sitting in a cheapo basement dim sum bar under harsh strip lighting, a place that was usually quiet midweek. Laurie had asked for a table right at the back so she could heave and whimper without too many curious looks.
After hearing the details of Emily’s most recent work trip, a jaunt to Miami for a tooth-whitening brand with soulless corporate wonks, Laurie steeled herself and cleared her throat.
“Em, I have something to tell you.”
Emily’s gaze snapped up from raking over the noodles section. Her hand immediately shot out and grabbed Laurie’s wrist tightly. Then her eyes moved to Laurie’s wine and her expression was more quizzical.
“Oh God! Not that,” Laurie said. “Nope. I’m safe to drink.”
She took a deep breath. “Dan and I have split up. He’s left me. Not really sure why.”
Emily didn’t react. She almost shrugged, and did a small double take. “You’re kidding? This is a wind-up. Why would you do that?”
“No. One hundred percent true. It’s over. We’re over.”
“What? You’re serious?”
“I’m serious. Over. I am single.”
Laurie was trying that phrase out. It sounded a crazy reach, while being hard fact.
“He’s finished with you?”
“Yes. He has finished with me. We are separated.”
Laurie noticed that someone “finishing” with someone else was such savage language. They canceled you. You are over. Your use has been exhausted.
“Laurie, are you being serious? Not a break? You’ve split up?”
“Yes.”
Laurie was holding it together better than she expected. Then Emily’s eyes filled up and Laurie said, “Oh God, don’t cry,” her voice cracking, as beige lines streaked rivers through Emily’s foundation.
“Sorry, sorry.” Emily gasped. “I—can’t believe it. It can’t be real? He’s having a moment or something.”
That immediate understanding from her closest friend had been the straw to break the stoic camel’s back, and Laurie and Emily had wept together until the waitress slapped two large glasses of wine down on their table, muttering “On the house,” before hastily beating a retreat. Here’s to sisterhood.
“Why? Has he had some sort of stroke?” Emily said, when she got her breath back.
Laurie put both palms up in a fuck knows gesture and felt what a comfort her best friend was. She’d been there from the start, since Laurie and Dan’s freshers’ week meet-cute. She was completely invested; Laurie didn’t have to explain the preceding eight seasons for her to be blown away at the finale. Finale, or midseason hiatus?
“He says he doesn’t feel it, us, anymore. The night we’d been out in the Refuge, afterward he was waiting up for me, and it came out. He’d been thinking about leaving for a while. Which, you know, is fantastic to hear.” She paused. “We’d been talking about coming off the pill.”
Emily winced.
“Ohhhh, so it’s fear of fatherhood? Growing up, responsibility?”
“I asked that, and also said that we could rethink having kids, but no. He’s decided our life makes him feel like he’s on a fast track to death and has to go rediscover himself.”
“Could it be a trial separation? Putting you two on pause, while he twats about off the grid in Goa, like he’s Jason Bourne? God, whenever I forget why I hate men, one of them reminds me.”
Laurie laughed hollowly.
“Nope, I doubt it.” She couldn’t admit to any lingering hope she felt, it was too tragic. Other parties needed to fully accept it, on her behalf. “He’s found a flat. We’re going to work out the money in the next few weeks. Then that’s us done, I guess. He’s offered to trade the car for furniture so there will be no wagon wheel coffee table haggling.” Laurie’s throat seized up again.
“I don’t know what to say, Loz. He loves you to bits, I know he does. He worships the ground you walk on, he always has done. This is madness. This is an episode.”
Laurie nodded. “Yeah. It doesn’t make sense. The Didn’t See It Coming, At All, factor is fucking with my head really badly.” She lapsed into silence to stanch the tears.
“Well, tonight just got even drunker,” Emily said eventually, catching the waitress’s eye to signal another round.
In the end they’d finished the night in an even grottier bar down the street, two bottles of wine down and one heavy tip for the poor waitress who’d had to clear up their snotty tissues. The memory of the morning after still made Laurie wince today. Anyone who moaned about hangovers in their twenties should be forced to suffer a hangover in their late thirties.
The worst of it was, after the fireworks of Dan’s declaration that he was leaving and that first shock of grief, the awful banality of “getting on with it” was its own horror.
“Never mind the fact I’ll be expected to do monkey sex in swings, like they have in Nine Inch Nails songs, who will I text boring couple stuff to, ever again? Like what shall we have for tea, pre-pay day? Who will I ask if they want ‘baked potatoes and picky bits’ on a cheap Monday?” Laurie had demanded of Emily. “Lots of people like baked potatoes!” she had promised.
It was the end of another night of boozy mourning, and as they waited on the corner for their Ubers to appear, Emily had nudged Laurie (probably slightly harder than intended).
“Laurie, you know you’re going to get the Sad Dads sliding into your DMs any day now.”
Laurie barked a laugh. “Doubt it. Don’t assume that how men are with you is how they are with me.”
“Seriously, they’re shameless. Absolutely no idea of respectful pause, straight in there: Hey, I hear you’re back on the market, allow me to place the initial bid. I’ve heard this lament from the girls at work so many times. The men all think they’re catches and they’re often still with their wives. They think you’ll be desperately grateful for any cheer-up cock they can offer.” Emily cupped her hands into a bowl shape: “‘Please,
sir, can I have some more?’”
When they’d finished sniggering, Laurie had said, “I don’t get that sort of attention. The attention you do.”
She felt so wholly unprepared to be back out there. As Emily pointed out, she’d never really been there.
“Because a huge part of getting that sort of attention is signaling you’re up for that sort of attention.”
“Hah. I can’t even think about it. I can’t imagine ever being any good for anyone ever again. I think Dan’s ruined me.”
“OK, but don’t rule out the healing power of a purely physical fling. Sometimes, you don’t need face-holding I Love You intense meaningful sex. What you need is some hench dipshit with superior body strength to pin your wrists above your head and pound you with a virile meanness.”
Laurie groaned while Emily grinned triumphantly.
“Did you briefly forget your pain?”
“Absolutely,” Laurie said, leaning her head on Emily’s tiny shoulder. She had the proportions of a malnourished Hardy heroine on a windswept moor. She was definitely a heroine though, never a victim.
This call from Dan was officially the first time he’d reached out to her to “talk” in ten weeks though. Could it be . . . could he be . . . ? No, squelch that thought.
“Yeah. What, to pick stuff up? You still have your key?” she said to Dan, hedging her bets, though she knew “picking up some stuff” was a text, not a phone call.
“No, I’m coming ’round to see you.”
“What for?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Laurie breathed in and breathed out. Right. She’d known this would happen. Almost from the first moment Dan had said he was going. Yet it coming true so soon still took her aback.
If I Never Met You Page 5
