Page 128 of If I Never Met You

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hello?’ Jamie said, looking at her curiously.

‘Going home for Christmas?’

‘Er … yeah. And you? Getting a train too?’

‘No, I’ve come to find you.’

‘OK?’

‘To tell you that I’m sorry. I doubted you and I freaked out. I trusted Dan and he let me down and I wasn’t ready to go through that again.’

A silence, where she wondered if she would get the Jamie who’d been so scornful last time they met, or the tender Jamie of the messages to his best friend.

‘I know. I get that. I think it was too big an ask, to be honest.’

‘You do?’

‘Yeah.’ He got his phone out of his pocket. ‘You can have my pass code; I can show you texts from Eve that back up everything I’ve told you. I should’ve offered that before but I was in too big a state, thinking I’d lost my job and you on the same day. I lashed out.’

‘Thank you but I don’t need to see them.’ Laurie paused. ‘I trust you. Hattie shared the email you wrote about me, with me …’

‘Oh,didshe now?’

‘She did. I shouldn’t have needed to hear you’d said those things. I knew them anyway, because it’s how I feel too,’ Laurie drew breath. ‘That’s what’s special about us. It’s funny given I thought we were chalk and cheese but it’s like we have some sort of telepathy. I purposely turned that intuition off, and surrendered to what everyone else thought of you. I didn’t want to rely on my own judgement because it let me down so badly where Dan was concerned.’

Jamie said nothing.

‘So I didn’t think about the person I spent time with in Lincoln, or at barbecues that turned into slasher flicks, or having nervos in skyscrapers with. Because him, I trust, and I am madly in love in with.’ She paused. ‘Why haven’t you been in touch with me?’

‘You haven’t been in touch with me. Checkmate.’ Jamie smiled.

‘I know. I was worried you’d say, after some thought, you were definitely sure it was over.’

‘That’s exactly why I didn’t call you. I thought, let the silence speak for itself and you can avoid those crushing few seconds of certainty.’

The Manchester icy wind howled around them and Laurie pushed her hair out of her face.

‘What I’m saying is, do you want to try again?’ she said.

‘No, not really, what’s done is done,’ Jamie said. ‘And I’ve had a promising inquiry from a member of Little Mix.’

Laurie was stunned for a moment and then Jamie’s frown cracked, and he started laughing. ‘Your face, hahaha.’

‘You bad bollock!’

Jamie stooped and rifled in his bag.

‘Open this. I was going to post it from Lincoln.’

Laurie fumbled it open with cold hands and found a short note, wrapped around a small cardboard box. She opened it. It was the necklace she’d admired on Steep Hill.

‘I’d got my mum to buy it and send it,’ Jamie said.

She opened the note:

Dear Laurie,

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