If I Never Met You. Mhairi McFarlane

know that better than anyone, with your job.’

      ‘Ah well, maybe she’s right and I have missed out. How would I know? That’s what missing out means,’ Laurie said, feeling philosophical in the way you could after five units of alcohol.

      ‘Trust me, you haven’t. I’m taking a rest from dating apps,’ Emily said, tugging at her hemline where it cut into her thighs. ‘Too many mis-sold PPIs. The last guy I met was Jason Statham in his photos, and I turn up for the date and it’s more like Upstart Crow.’

      Laurie roared at this. ‘Are you still Tilda on there? Has anyone figured it out? Do you really never tell them your real name?’

      ‘Yep. I make sure there’s no bills left out if we go to mine. You don’t want Clive, thirty-seven, personal trainer from Loughborough, who’s into creative bum-plug play, tracking you down on LinkedIn.’

      ‘Groooooo.’

      ‘Ignore Suzanne. Everyone here,’ Emily waved her arm at the general bar-dining area, ‘Wants what you have. Everyone.’

      Hah, Laurie thought. She was fairly sure she knew at least one person here who didn’t want what she had, but she appreciated the sentiment.

      ‘You don’t!’ Laurie said.

      Emily’s utilitarian approach to sex bewildered Laurie. Perhaps Emily needed to meet Jamie Carter, and they’d explode on contact.

      ‘I do, though. I’m just realistic it’s probably not out there, so I make do in the meanwhile. It’s not common, what you have, you know. Not every Laurie finds her Dan, and vice versa,’ Emily said. ‘You two were hit by lightning, that night in Bar CaVa.’

      ‘And there I was thinking it was baked bean flavoured tequila shots.’

      As she left, Laurie noticed the now-empty table where Jamie and Eve had sat. No doubt he’d sidled past when she was deep in conversation with Emily, keen for her not to see them leaving together.

      Career talk, arf. Like he’d chance a sacking for telling her about his LPC course in Chester. Like he’d chance a sacking if the prize was anything less than taking her home.

      He must think Laurie was naïve, or stupid. The trouble with liars, Laurie had decided from much research in the professional field, is they always thought everyone else was less smart than them.

       3

      Laurie clambered out of the cab into the heavy smog of late summer air and the nice-postcode-quiet of the street, aware that while her senses were muffled by inebriation, neighbours with families would be lying in their beds cursing the cacophony that was someone exiting a hackney.

      The throbbing engine, sing-song conversation, slamming of a heavy door, the clattering of your big night out heels on the pavement.

      Two weeks back, the sisters next door had managed to have such an involved back and forth for ten minutes about whose puke it was, Laurie had been tempted to march out in her pyjamas and pay the soiling charge herself.

      Ah, middle age beckoned. Hah, who was she kidding, Dan called her ‘Mrs Tiggywinkle’. She was the girl in halls who kept a row of basil plants alive in the shared kitchen.

      Loud-whispering ‘keep the change,’ to the driver, she ducked under the thick canopy of clematis that hung over the tiled porch, grabbing blindly for her keys in the depths of her handbag, and once again thought: we need a light out here.

      She’d been infatuated with this solid bay-fronted Edwardian semi from the first viewing, and knackered their chances of driving a hard bargain by walking around with the estate agent gibbering on about how much she adored it. They bought at the top of what they could afford at the time, and in Laurie’s opinion it was worth every cent.

      Their front room, she liked to point out, was the spit of the one on the sleeve of Oasis’ Definitely Maybe, right down to the stained glass, potted palm and half-drunk red wines usually strewn around.

      There was a honey-yellow glow from under the blinds, so either Dan had left the lamp on for her or he was having another bout of insomnia, passed out on the sofa in front of BBC News 24 with the sound on low, feet twitching.

      Laurie felt a small rush of love for him, and hoped he was up. As much as it was authentic, she knew it was also in some part due to spending a trying evening surrounded by strangers, feeling homesick and out of place. Not belonging.

      As a ‘person of ethnic origin’ who grew up in Hebden Bridge, she didn’t care to revisit that feeling often. Even in a cosmopolitan city she got the OH I LOVE YOUR ACCENT? EE BAH GUM jokes. ‘You don’t often hear a black girl sound that northern, except for that one out of the Spice Girls,’ a forthright client had said to her once.

      She thought Dan might have waited up for her, but the moment she saw him, she knew something was badly off. He was still dressed, sat on the sofa, feet apart, head bowed, hands clasped. The TV screen was a blank and there wasn’t any music on, no detritus of a takeaway.

      ‘Hi,’ he said, in an unnatural voice, as Laurie entered the room.

      Laurie was an empathetic person. When she was small she once told her mum she thought she might be telepathic, and her amused mother had explained that she was just very intuitive about emotions. Laurie was, as her dad said, born aged forty. Better than being born aged nineteen and staying there, she never said in reply.

      The air was thick with a Terrible Unsaid and her antennae picked it up easily enough to feel completely nauseous.

      Laurie clutched the jangle of her keys to her chest, with their silly fob of Bagpuss, and said: ‘Oh God, what? Which of our parents is it? Please say it now. Say it quickly.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I know it’s bad news. Please don’t do any build up whatsoever.’

      Laurie was about six or seven drinks in the hole and yet in an instant, completely, pin-sharp sober with adrenaline.

      Dan looked perturbed. ‘Nothing has happened to anyone?’

      ‘Oh? Oh! Fuck, you scared me.’

      In relief, Laurie flumped down onto the sofa, arms flung out by her sides like a kid.

      She looked at Dan as her heart rate slowed to normal. He was regarding her with a strange expression.

      Not for the first time, she felt appreciation, a bump of pride in ownership, admiring how much early middle age suited him. He’d been a kind of jolly-looking chubby lad in their youth, puppyish cute but not handsome, as her gran had helpfully noted. And with a slight lisp that he hated, but oddly enough, always had women swooning. Laurie always loved it, right from the first moment he had spoken to her. Now he had a few lines and silver threaded in his light brown hair, the bones of his face had sharpened, he’d grown into himself. He was what the girls at work called a Hot Dad. Or, he would be.

      ‘You couldn’t sleep again?’ she asked. His insomnia was a recent thing, due to him being made head of department. Three a.m. night sweat terrors.

      ‘No,’ he said, and she didn’t know if he was saying no, I couldn’t sleep or no, that’s not it.

      Laurie peered at him. ‘You alright?’

      ‘About you coming off the pill next month. I’ve been thinking about it. It’s made me think about a lot of things.’

      ‘Has it …?’ Laurie suppressed a knowing smile. The atmosphere and anxiety now made sense. Here we go, she thought. This was a clichéd moment in the passage to parenthood. It belonged in a scripted drama, shortly after a couple had seen two blue lines on the wee stick.

       Should he trade in the car for something bigger? Would he be a good father? Would they still be the same?