Page 125 of If I Never Met You

‘No, I think you did the right thing. One strike, out. It’s just …’

‘What?’

‘It’s not mutually exclusive, is it? He could have been a person who did those things, and then fallen for you for real, later? I don’t know.’

Laurie shook her head.

‘It’s like you said. This isn’t what I need. Also no one can change anyone’s character. No love of a good woman can fix a bad man. It’s you who told me this!’

Despite saying this, Laurie couldn’t accept Jamie was a bad man, not yet. But that was due to attachment hormones still swirling through the body. She imagined that final realisation would arrive with a jolt, when a tale of his misdeeds got filtered back to her via the usual channels at Salter’s. Like reconciling herself to Dan and his affair: your mind has to start the process, and your heart will follow.

‘I know, I know. It’s a shame but at least you got a sensational rumping out of it. By the way, warning, Nadia may be what I believe she calls “ornery”,’ Emily said, ‘She’s been thrown out of her sister’s book group. Ah, here she is now.’

‘Why?’ Laurie said under her breath.

‘Because Nadia is the epitome of herself,’ Emily raised hervoice. ‘Laurie wants to know why you got banned from the book group?’

Nadia was in her usual cloche hat, today a pleasing salmon shade.

‘Firstly, I rejected the central tenets ofEat, Pray, Love,’ Nadia said, as Emily pushed a glass of wine towards her, and she wriggled her duffle coat off. ‘Then we were required to produce “Gratitude Lists” to discuss what we were thankful for.’

‘Oh really?’ Emily said, swinging aand how did that go lookat Laurie, who tried not to laugh.

‘I said I was not grateful for my life, I had worked for it, and my sister’s friend Amy said I was “too centred” in my own privilege’ and I told her to fuck off and then my sister said I had to go.’

‘We won’t ask you to be grateful for anything this evening, Nads,’ Emily said, handing the menu over. ‘Not even lobster tacos. Can I tell her your latest news?’ she looked to Laurie.

‘Knock yourself out,’ Laurie said.

‘She’s no longer with the hot lad she was pretending to date. It turns out that messing women around and then saying he hadn’t was kind of his thing, he got sacked for it.’ Emily gave Laurie a ‘fair?’ questioning look and Laurie nodded.

‘Ugh,’ Nadia said. ‘I’m sorry. I mean I am sorry for any pain. While not being sorry you gave him his marching orders, if he is a shit.’

‘Thank you,’ Laurie said. ‘I’m not in pain. Well, I’m in some pain over it, but I know that it will pass and I’ll feel happier again, at some point. That will do for now.’

‘Like that poem “to the girl crying in the next toilet stall.”Listen I love you, joy is coming,’ Emily said.

‘Yes. Joy is coming. If maybe not here,’ Laurie said, glancing around. It was the kind of poseur’s bear pit that would’ve scared Laurie, pre-Dan’s bombshell, but not now. Her fling with Jamie had given her that confidence back, at least. Sigh.Who would ever measure up to… STOPPIT.

‘Can I propose a toast,’ Laurie said. ‘To what happiness looks like, to us.’

‘Yes,’ Emily said, picking her glass up so fast she spilled some. ‘To deciding whatourhappiness is, and being happy that way. Rather than having some bunch of bastards tell us what it is.’

They clinked glasses and drank.

‘Are you girls ready to order?’ said a waiter with a goatee, appearing at their side with a touch screen pad. ‘Need me to explain anything?’

‘We’re not girls,’ Nadia said. ‘So you can explain your mode of address.’

‘Hey y’all look pretty young to me,’ he said, chewing gum and grinning in what he thought was a flirtily winning manner.

Emily said: ‘Oh, you dear sweet fool, she will now verbally decapitate you.’

Laurie felt it was a poorly advertised part of kitten owning, that they were absolute sodding hooligans. If her new twelve-week-old black longhair mix breed with white whiskers, Colin Fur, was in the magistrates court, Laurie would be advising the short sharp shock of a custodial sentence for sure.

‘Only language he understands, sadly,’ she’d tell the bench, while removing another shredded pair of Wolford tights from the little beggar’s jaws.

She’d impulsively picked him up from the PDSA at lunchtime, on her way home from work, Christmas Eve of all days, thinking how nice it would be to have a tiny friend around on her solo Christmas Day. She was now realising it would mean spending the whole time extracting said tiny friend from re-enactingTouching The Voidon the curtain rails.

---