Mhairi McFarlane - If I Never Met You

‘Hello?’ said a male voice at her elbow.

‘Hi,’ Laurie said, starting as the subject of her reverie appeared, as if she’d summoned him. She felt a stab of irrational guilt, having been thinking about Jamie, spying on him.

‘You out for the night?’ Jamie said. He disguised it well, but Laurie could see he was apprehensive. They’d never spoken at work, knew each other by sight only. He had no measure of her and no goodwill to exploit.

They were both lawyers: she could work backwards through his thought process in approaching her. He’d seen her, therefore there was a fair chance she’d seen him, with Eve. Better to brazen it out and act like he was doing nothing wrong than leave Laurie unattended with a tale to tell.

‘Yeah. Tagging along with my mate’s firm. You?’

‘Just a couple after work.’

Heh heh oh really. She toyed with asking ‘who with?’ but was a shade too drunk to judge whether it’d clang as obvious.

‘What’re you having? In case I get served first,’ he said.

Bribery now, was it.

‘Old Fashioned.’

‘That’s it? You’re queuing for one drink? Where are you sitting?’

Laurie pointed into the dining area.

‘There’s table service through there, you know?’

‘I wanted the change of scenery,’ Laurie said. ‘Where are you sitting?’

Yes, she could play mind games too. Knight to your Rook!

‘Same,’ Jamie said. ‘Last time, the waitress took too long. Mind you, this is carnage.’

Hmmm. He’d spotted her, panicked and made an excuse to follow her out here.

Laurie noticed when he spoke that his incisor teeth were tilted slightly inward, like an uncommitted vampire. She suspected this was the true secret of his incredible appeal, the deliberate flaw in the Navajo rug. Otherwise he was a little too wholesomely, straightforwardly good looking. Somehow, the teeth made you think carnal thoughts.

They suspended conversation to stake elbow space on the bar and catch the barman’s eye. Laurie got served first and volunteered to buy Jamie’s, but he wouldn’t let her.

She was less convinced this was chivalry than unwillingness for her to discover his order of a lager and a Prosecco with a raspberry bobbing in it, which made it clear he was on a date. She heard him tell the barman anyway. Her cocktail took long enough to make that they returned to their seats at the same time, having traded awkwardly shouted staccato remarks about how it was heaving in here . As they neared Laurie’s destination he stopped and leaned in to speak to her, over the Motown decibels.

‘Could I ask a favour?’

Laurie got a waft of light male sweat and classy aftershave. She fought to keep her face straight and look like she didn’t know what was coming.

‘What?’

‘Could you not mention – this – at work. Who I’m with?’ he gestured at Eve at their table, who was studying herself in a compact mirror. She had a feline sort of beauty, hair slicked into a long high ponytail. Like a sexy assassin. Laurie squinted and pretended it had dawned who it was.

‘Oh, why not?’ Laurie said, faux innocent.

‘It would be very much frowned upon by Statler and Waldorf.’

Statler and Waldorf was a longstanding nickname for Misters Salter and Rowson. Laurie knew why he was using matey we’re-in-this-together shop floor nicknames.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t think Salter wants his niece socialising with any of us.’

Laurie smiled. If she wasn’t miserable, wanting to further delay returning to Suzanne, and several drinks to the good, she might not wind him up. As it was …

‘By “socialising”, you mean shagging, and by “any of us”, you mean you?’

‘Well,’ Jamie shrugged, slightly taken aback and evidently at a momentary loss. ‘Who knows what goes through the old goat’s mind. You’d have to ask him.’

‘OK,’ Laurie said.

‘Thank you,’ Jamie exhaled.

‘… I’ll ask him!’

She waited for the punchline to land and enjoyed Jamie’s aghast expression when it did.

‘Hahaha!’

‘For fu—’ Jamie performed a mixture of bashful and still edgy. He was being winsome and acting vulnerable because right now she could choose to do him damage, of that she was sure.

‘I’m not a fan of the office gossip,’ Laurie said. ‘I won’t say anything. Don’t muck her around, OK?’

‘It’s not like that, I promise,’ Jamie said. ‘It’s career talk.’

‘Uh huh,’ Laurie said, casting her eyes back to where Eve was tilting her chin, pouting at her own reflection.

Laurie returned with heavy dread to her seat, only to see with joy that Emily was in it, and everyone else had clustered round the other side of the table to screech at something on one of the girl’s phones. Blessed release. Given the volume of the music, at this distance, they might as well have gone to Iran.

‘I am flying a humanitarian mission. Did you get Suzanne-ed?’ Emily said, as Laurie took Suzanne’s former position next to her.

‘Yep.’

‘She’s a complete fucking twat, isn’t she?’

Laurie’s Old Fashioned went down the wrong way as she coughed in delighted surprise and Emily slapped her heartily on the back.

When Laurie had her voice back, she said: ‘She let me know I was an old maid and weird nun for my uneventful romantic history.’

‘What a bleak cow. Last I heard she was hopping on Marcus from KPMG and he has a community dick, so no one’s taking her advice.’

Laurie coughed on her drink again. ‘A what?’

‘You know, used freely by everyone. Open access. A civic resource.’

Laurie managed to stop laughing long enough to add: ‘And she and Carly asked me where I was from.’

Emily did a grit-teeth face.

‘I said Yorkshire and they said …’

Emily put a hand on Laurie’s arm and tilted her head. ‘No, I meant where are you from ?’

Emily had been spectator to this enough times to know how it went. In lairy younger years, it was usually Emily who jumped in with a: ‘First of all, how done you …’ while Laurie shushed her.

Oh Loz, I am sorry. Clients love them, so I’m scunnered. Why do bad people have to be good at their jobs?’

Laurie laughed, and remembered why she so often said yes to Emily. She thought there was a lot of truth in the closest friendships being unconsummated romances. Emily was a high-flying executive, Tinder adventuress and queen of the casual hook up, Laurie was serious and settled and steady, yet their differences only made them endlessly fascinated with the other.

They still had a sense of humour, and a bullshit detector, and priorities in common.

Emily opened a Rizla paper and put it on the table, dainty fingers sprinkling out a slim sausage of tobacco. Emily had smoked roll-ups ever since they met, when she hung out of Laurie’s bedroom window in halls, bottle of Smirnoff Moscow Mule in the other hand.

‘She asked me who did my work,’ Emily said.

‘Work?’ Laurie said.

‘Work,’ Emily took her hands off the cigarette in progress and pulled her cheeks up, while making a pursed-lips trout mouth.

‘What the …? You don’t look like you’ve had anything done!’

This was true, although Emily had always been physically extraordinary to Laurie. She was tiny, golden limbed (which was due to a professional painting) with the face of a Blythe doll, or manga cartoon: eyes floating miles apart, tiny nose, wide full mouth. It all misled you, so you didn’t expect her to have the language of a docker and the appetites of a pirate. Men fell in doomed passions on a near-weekly basis.

‘Mmm, hmm. About a month after she arrived. Was tempted to sack her then and there. Except she’d have gone round the other agencies saying Emily Clarke sacked me for pointing out her cosmetic work and the fact I’d sacked her would seem to prove it and I’m too fucking vain for that sort of mockery.’