If I Never Met You

‘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 kitchen 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 with the pencil dobber 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 realised 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 round, he was also saying marrying made it too difficult to leave.

Three days later, Laurie got a packet of seedlings for colourful 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, she 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 (#ulink_3bdb6a4b-47f5-5d60-a636-bfe8208f5ad4)

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 per cent 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 cancelled 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 Fresher’s 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 mid-season hiatus?

‘He says he doesn’t feel it, us, anymore. The night we’d been out in The Refuge, afterwards 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.