Page 13 of If I Never Met You

Laurie hesitated, because she didn’t want to issue ultimatums or bluffs, they were pointless. But she still had to say it.

‘One thing, though, Dan. If you think you can do this, and spend three months of living in some flat in Ancoats being lonely, with your “man cave” sofa from Gumtree and your Sky Sports package, and then come back to me saying it was some massive midlife crisis … you know you can’t, right? This damage you’re doing, it’s permanent. If you go, that’s it.’

Dan nodded. ‘Yes. I wouldn’t presume to think I could ever ask that of you.’

Laurie left the room, knowing that she’d lied, and he probably did too.

6

Dad

Hello princess. How’s my beautiful clever daughter? Well guess what, me & Nic tied the knot!!! Just because of tax reasons, Visas, all that jazz. Did it out here in Beefa with a couple of witnesses but we’re going to have a proper tear-up in Manchester in a month or so, I’ll give you the details when I have them. Going to spend a few quid on it, need somewhere fancy, no fleapits. Get yourself a nice dress and send me the bill, you’re one of the bridesmaids, as it were. Love you loads my darling. Austin xxx

Laurie blinked at the WhatsApp through the fug of receding sleep on Sunday morning: you could dissect this in a lab as a perfect study of her relationship with her father. All of him was in there, like a nucleus containing the DNA information.

1. Lavish praise, blandishments.

2. Surprise news, the sort that makes it clear his life is, in fact, nothing much to do with her.

3. Material spoiling, bribes.

4. More protestations of how important she is to him. A bridesmaid ‘as it were’.I want you to feel you’re important without going to the trouble of actually treating you that way.

5. Not, despite the performative paternalism, referring to himself ‘Dad’. On the rare occasions she’d seen him when she was little, she’d loved the novelty of having someone to call Dad, but he always used to correct her: ‘You’re making me sound old.’ She was baffled: thirtywasold, and hewasher dad?

And not forgetting 6. The worst possible timing, as always.

Laurie

Hi, congratulations to you and Nic! Will come to the celebration, just let me know. I have less fun news, Dan and & I have separated. I’m keeping the house on and he’s moving out. His decision, no third parties involved. Ah well. Maybe I’ll meet someone at your tear-up.xx

Two blue ticks, immediately. So he’d read it. No reply. More Classic Austin Watkinson.

And to round it all off – and this part she couldn’t blame her dad for, although it felt as if sheshouldbe able to – he’d now unwittingly made her phone call to her mum breaking the news about her and Dan, even more onerous. Her parents didn’t speak, so it was down to Laurie if she was going to be informed, and she should be, really. Laurie knew if she put it off, she’d end up avoiding it altogether; she wouldn’t keep secrets for her dad. Still, her mum wouldn’t thank her for it, and it’d feel like it was Laurie’s fault.

Laurie and Dan had spent all day Saturday slowly and painfully going through it all again, and now Dan was out on a run and Laurie was actually relieved not to have to face him for a few hours, endlessly wondering if she could have said or done something different to change this outcome.

Having told one person, it had started to become real. She could call her mum and practise doing it vocally – and now, in a Dan-less house, was better than later. She sat on the third step of the stairs, heaving the plastic rotary red and blue phone onto her lap. When she bought it a year ago from a website that did ‘vintage things with a modern twist’, Dan had said, ‘More bourgeoise knick-knacks. Behold our thirty-something pile of affluent middle-class tat!’

Did he hate all this stuff? In this home they’d made? Could she not even look at a sodding retro hipster landline in the same way? His belongings were piled into tragic bin bags in the dining room. She’d heard him, before she got up, quietly calling a local restaurant to cancel their reservation. This afternoon, they had been meant to be eating Sunday lunch at a pretentious new place nearby full of squirrel cage light bulbs and ‘Nordic-inspired small plates’.

‘Look at this,’ Dan had said barely a week ago, in another space-time dimension, waving his phone with the website open: ‘This place isn’t a restaurant, it’s adining space prioritising a thoughtful eating menu with an emphasis on provenance and a curated repertoire of low intervention wines.Fucks saaake.’

‘You wanted to try it!’ Laurie had said, and Dan eye-rolled, shrugged. Back when Dan’s ‘rejection of things he’d nevertheless willingly chosen’ was confined to where they had meals out.

In the cold light of morning, Laurie couldn’t believe he was keeping on with this charade, that he wasn’t going to be standing in some unloved unfurnished two bed that smelled of plug-in air fresheners with a greasy estate agent and think: ‘what the hell am I doing?’

Not that love or happiness was stuff, but Laurie had made them a great home and it still wasn’t enough. Or, she wasn’t. She felt so foolish: the whole time he’d been growing colder, quietly horrified, hemmed in and alienated by it. It was such a shallow thing, but Laurie felt so damnuncoolfor being satisfied by a life that Dan wasn’t.

She listened to the ringing on the other end, replaced the receiver, and tried again. Her mum would be in the garden, and thought the first phone call was merely to alert you to the fact someone was trying to call you. She rarely answered until they’d made a second or even third attempt. It was a quirk that used to drive Laurie mad in her teenage years; they had flaming rows about Laurie always having to answer.

Her mum was ‘out of the normal,’ as a plumber once said, surveying the kitsch art collage of Elvis on their pink bathroom wall in the 1990s.

Her mother had very strict, controlling and conventional parents herself, and was determined to do things differently. Laurie admired this, while sometimes feeling she’d overcorrected to the other extreme.

If you’d wanted a mother who was chill with you being out until all hours and your friends accidentally dropping the F-word, Mrs Peggy Watkinson of Cannock Road was the one. Plus, she looked and dressed like Supremes-era Diana Ross. Both Conventional and Unconventional Dads of the neighbourhood were fans. And she wasn’t Mrs Watkinson, either, because she’d never been wed to Laurie’s dad. Laurie chose it as her surname because at the time, her mum was usingher stage moniker, Peggy Sunshine. And Laurie was no way going to have a wacky surname on top of being the only black girl in her year.

When Laurie’s mum was addressed as Mrs Watkinson by a teenager, she smiled and did her characteristic hand wave. ‘In a past life, maybe.’ And mentioned there was wine open in the kitchen.

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