Page 15 of If I Never Met You

‘I shouldn’t be surprised at your father being a shit by now, and yet somehow I always am.’

‘He says they did it for tax breaks.’

‘Ever the romantic,’ she sniffed.

Of course, had Laurie said he’d done it for love, her mum would’ve scorned that too.

‘Please warn me when he’s having his reception because I do not want any chance of running into him and this woman. Wanda and I were going to come over for an exhibition at the Whitworth.’

‘Mum, I don’t mean to sound mean-spirited …’ Laurie knew she was about to start a fight, even while she intellectually, rationally, wanted a fight with her mum like she wanted a hole in the head. Yet emotionally, it was somehow an inevitability. ‘I tell you my boyfriend of eighteen years dumped me and it was,oh well Dan must have his reasons to follow his lodestarand I’ve told you Dad’s got married, and he left you thirty-seven years ago, and you’re now pissed off and angry. Why can’t I be pissed off and angry at Dan?’

‘You can! When did I say you couldn’t be?’

‘The whole “he must be doing the next part on his ownand listening to his heart” stuff wasn’t exactly saying I had a right to be upset.’

‘Of course you do, but he’s not cheating on you, he’s not lied to you? What do you want me to say, Laurie? Do you want me to criticise him?’

‘No!’ She didn’t. Infuriatingly, she still felt defensive of him. ‘It’d just be nice if …’ she trailed off, as what came next was harsh.

‘What?’

‘… As if you sounded like you cared about my break-up anything like as much as you care about Dad’s rubbish.’

‘That’s a dreadful thing to say, I care much more about you than I do about him!’

Hmmm yeah, not what Laurie was saying, but how did Laurie think it would go, pointing out her mum’s hypocrisy in the sting of her dad’s news?

Her mother and father were opposite perils, Laurie realised: her dad said the right things and didn’t mean them and her mum might feel it, but she never said so.

They finished the call with terse politeness so they could go away and boil resentfully on the things the other had said.

As Laurie replaced the receiver she thought: well that was ironic, wasn’t that the ultimate moment to be bonding over similar experiences? You wouldn’t get this on the bloodyGilmore Girls.

Her mum was still heavily marked by what her dad did almost four decades ago; Laurie felt the tremor his name caused. Was that going to be Laurie’s fate where Dan was concerned, too?

At some point, you have to give up wishing for your parents to be who you wanted them to be and accept them as they are, Dan once said.

Easy for him to say, with his kind, dependable mum and dad who thought he was a prince among men and would drop anything and do anything for him.

As Laurie sat on the stairs, hugging her knees and nursing her bruised emotions, there was muttered cursing in the distance as someone tripped over a step, the scrape of a key in the lock, and Dan came in the door.

‘Hi,’ he said. He was pink from running, and wore the look of apprehensive guilt he always did around Laurie now.

‘Hi. I told my mum.’

‘Ah.’ Dan was obviously at a loss over what to say. ‘I’ve not told mine yet.’

Laurie had guessed that from the lack of call from Dan’s mum, Barbara. They got on very well and Barbara had always, in a benign way, treated Laurie as Dan’s PA and hotline to his psyche, as well as his diary. Yeah, good luck with that from now on.

‘I’ve found a flat,’ he said. ‘Quite central. I can move in next week.’ He gulped and rushed on. ‘I know this sounds really soon and that I’d had it lined up but I honestly didn’t. I was on Rightmove yesterday afternoon and it just came up and when I called the agent they said I could pop round this morning. It’s not great but it’ll do for now.’ He trailed off, his cheeks flushed with the exercise and – hopefully – mortification at being so evidently eager to see the back of her.

‘Oh. Good?’ Laurie said. She didn’t know what note tostrike, in the teeth of total rejection. She’d always had this knack with Dan, she could joke him out of any temper, persuade him when no one else could. ‘He’s proper silly for you,’ a friend of his once said.

Now she felt as if anything she said would be either pathetic or annoying; she could hear it become one or the other to him as soon as it left her mouth. All the usual doors, her ways in, had been bricked up.

‘I’m going to keep paying the mortgage here for time being. Give you a grace period so you can decide … what you want to do.’

‘Thanks,’ Laurie said, flatly, because no way was she going to be more fulsome than that. Dan’s larger salary came with a ton of stress at times, but had its uses. She’d have to remortgage herself up to her eyeballs and eBay everything that wasn’t nailed to the floor. Losing Danandher home felt insurmountable.

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