Page 90 of If I Never Met You

DETAILS FINALLY REVEALED!!!

It’s at Whitworth Hall!

Dress code: eveningwear please.

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With that rousing speech, Laurie had effectively signed off Dan bringing Megan. And she was going with Jamie, except she wasn’t. While he was falling for someone else.

Laurie had been avoiding admitting something to herself, and blinking at the Clip Art of a dancing elf, she finally faced it: the sham relationship had morphed into a stupid, self-defeating, corrosive mess. Dan might be jealous, but was this her victory, standing around trading jibes with men who thought she’d been taken for a ride by a chancer? Jamie had been much more astute than Laurie: his aim here was defined and clear, he either made partner or he didn’t. Laurie was putting herself through all this for what, a few pained looks from an ex who nevertheless, didn’t want her anymore? Did she honestly think Dan would picture her astride Jamie, and see the error of his ways?

You’re not a liar, which is why you shouldn’t get involved with a big bout of lying.Too late. She’d have to see it through.

31

When Laurie’s phone rang on Sunday morning, she was trying and failing to make shakshuka, ending up instead with vegetable stew topped with a raw egg. Laurie squinted at her handset warily, as if she was in a clanking daytime television drama with a lot of Face Acting. Emily. But Emily didn’t call, Emily messaged. If Emily was going to call, she’d message to say she was going to call. Those were the rules.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi. Can you come round?’

Emily didn’t docan you come rounds, and she didn’t do that tone of voice. Low, beaten.

‘Of course, now?’ Laurie said, gathering ‘on the phone’ wasn’t the way Emily wanted to be asked why.

‘If that’s OK.’

Laurie Uber-ed to Emily’s flat in the Northern Quarter with a queasiness that wasn’t eased by heated seats and Capital FM and the driver singing along with ‘(I Just) Died In Your Arms’ by Cutting Crew. It could be a bereavement, but she didn’t think so. Emily wouldn’t hold that sort of information back.

They’d had so many parties at Emily’s place, or drunken nights out in the city that had carried on at hers. Laurie got her thousandth pang for Dan. The woozy moment she’d look round at Emily with her head on Dan’s shoulder, and think of the two of them as her beloved family.

The split-level apartment had every trapping of ‘young, urban, fast lifestyle, moneyed,’ – the oil-spill dark flooring, red Gaggia machine, the mezzanine with modern staircase up to the huge bed, the fireplace you turned on with a remote control. It would’ve felt too showy, too hectic to Laurie. It wasn’t a place that could do ‘cosy’ if it tried, with its vast windows onto a Manchester cityscape of cranes and concrete. It put you on show. It was purest Emily.

She answered the door in black silk paisley pyjamas, hair fluffy from sleep, looking younger with no make-up. She nodded a greeting and led Laurie near wordlessly to the kitchen, pointing to a scattering of cherry tomatoes on the breakfast bar. Had Laurie been this worried for the sake of a split shopping bag? Was it going to be ‘SOS, we need to go out for brunch’?

But as Laurie drew closer, she realised the fruit was arranged into a pattern. She squinted. It spelt out the word F A K E.

‘Robert. From the tiki bar? He left before I woke up.’

Laurie paused in confusion, and thought confusion was justified. She hoiked her cross-body bag off and dumped it by the kitchen cabinets.

‘I don’t get it. “Fake”? He did this?’

‘Yeah. He stayed last night, left before I woke up. I found it when I got up.’

‘What? Had you argued?’Emily shrugged and ran her fingertips through a matted section of her hair.

‘I dunno, kind of? He called my work superficial, blood-sucking and parasitical and I kept laughing it off and then we had the sort of sex where there’s some pushing and pulling and mild slapping.’

Laurie inwardly shuddered at sharing bodily fluids with someone both so hostile, and largely unknown.

‘What a piece of shit,’ Laurie said, exhaling in shock. ‘And what a PSYCHO. Who does this?!’

The tomatoes emanated a sinister force, as she looked at them again. You’d have to plan it, rifling through the salad in the fridge. Weighing up whether frozen peas would do the job.

‘It scared me and then I realised, I’m supposed to be scared, aren’t I?’ Emily said. ‘He’s with his friends on WhatsApp right now, taking sick pleasure in imagining me finding it, him having the last word.Hahahaha guess what I did to this stuck-up bitch.Photo attached.’

Laurie’s stomach churned.

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