Page 1 of If I Never Met You

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Dan

What time you think you’ll be back tonight? Roughly?

Laurie

Dunno. SOON I HOPE.

Dan

You hope?

Laurie

Everyone has raspberries in Proseccos

Dan

I thought you liked Prosecco. And raspberries

Laurie

I do! I’ve got one.But denotes a certain type of Girls Night Out that’s not very me. They’re calling them ‘cheeky bubbles’

Dan

Your problem is other people like it too? Can’t imagine my criticism of a night out being ‘people ordered the same drink’

Laurie

… Except when you said you hate stag dos that ‘start with getting ten pints of wife beater in at 7am in Gatwick Spoons’.

Dan

You can’t take a moment off being a lawyer, can you?

Laurie

HAH. You misspelt ‘you got me bang to rights, Loz’

Dan is typing

…

Dan is typing

…

Last seen today at 9.18pm

Dan must’ve thought better of his reply. Laurie clicked her phone off and pushed it back into her bag.

Obviously she didn’t really mind the cliché, booze was booze, that wastrying to be wittily acerbicbravado. It was a distress signal. Laurie was at sea and her phone felt like a connection back to shore. Tonight was an unwelcome flashback to the emotions of lunch breaks at secondary school, when you had a single-parent mum and no money and no cool.

So far, the girls had discussed the benefits of eyebrow microblading (‘Ashley from Stag Communications looks like Eddie Munster’) whether or not Marcus Fairbright-Page at KPMG was a bad arsehole who’d break hearts and bed frames (Laurie thought on what she’d gleaned, that was an emphatic yes, but also gathered that a verdict wasn’t desired). And how many burpees you could manage in HIIT class at Virgin Active (no idea there, none).

They were all so glamorous and feminine, so carefully groomed and produced for public display. Laurie felt like a dishwater-feathered pigeon in an enclosure full of chirruping tropical birds.

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