If I Never Met You. Mhairi McFarlane

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, 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 –