Page 16 of If I Never Met You

‘I’m going to get fish and chips for dinner tonight, want some?’ Dan added, and Laurie shook her head. The rest of the bottle of red in the kitchen would be more effective on an empty stomach. She noticed Dan’s appetite was fine.

‘When do we tell everyone at work?’ she said. They’d mutually avoided this pressing question yesterday, but Laurie knew her office mate, Bharat, would sniff it out in days.

They’d be a week-long scandal, with the news cycle moving into a different phase day by day. ‘Have you heard?’ on Monday, ‘Was he playing away?’ on Tuesday, ‘Was she playing away?’ on Wednesday, ‘I saw them arguing outside the Arndale last Christmas, the writing was on the wall’ fib dropped in as alump of red meat to keep it going on Thursday. ‘When is it OK to ask either one on a date?’ nailed on by Friday, because Salter & Rowson was an absolute sin bin. There was a lot of adrenaline involved in their work at times, which was dampened by after hours booze. Add a steady influx of people aged twenty to forty joining or interning, and you had a recipe for a lot of flirting and more.

It was a shame this had happened now, just when the Jamie-Eve gossip could have been a useful distraction. But there was no way a furtive bunk-up, even a specifically verboten one, was going to trump the break-up of the firm’s most prominent couple. And Laurie wouldn’t have dobbed Jamie in either. She wasn’t ruthless.

Dan leaned on the wall and sighed. ‘Shall we not? For the time being? I can’t face all the bullshit. I can’t see how they’d find out otherwise. It’s not like I’m going to put it on Facebook and you’re hardly ever on there.’

‘Yeah. OK,’ Laurie said. They both wanted to wait for a time it’d matter less, though right now Laurie couldn’t imagine when that might be.

‘And my Dad’s got married.’

‘No way!’ Dan’s eyes lit up. He officially disapproved of Laurie’s dad in order to stay on the right side of history – and of Laurie and her mum – but she’d always sensed Dan had a soft spot. ‘To, what was her name, Nicola?’

‘Yeah. Some party happening here. I’m a bridesmaid.’

Barely true, but she wanted Dan to picture her in a dress, in a spotlight, in a glamorous context with scallywag dad, whom he sneakingly admired.

‘Ah. Nice.’ Dan looked briefly sad and ashamed as obviously, he’d not be there. ‘Never thought your dad would settle down.’

‘People surprise you,’ Laurie shrugged, and Dan looked awkward and then blank at this, muttering he needed a shower.

As Dan passed her on the stairs and his bathroom-puttering noises started, Laurie leaned her head against the bannisters, too spent to imagine moving for the moment. When they passed thirty, as far as their peer group were concerned, Dan and Laurie tying the knot was a done deal. If they weren’t thinking about it themselves, they weren’t allowed to forget it.

From acquaintances who’d drunkenly exhort, ‘You next! You next!’ at one of the scores of weddings they attended a year, to the open pleas from Dan’s mum to give her an excuse to go to Cardiff for a day of outfit shopping (the best reason for lifetime commitment: a mint lace Phase Eight shift dress and pheasant feather fascinator), to friends who told them, once they’d seen off bottles of wine over dinner, that Dan and Laurie would havethe best wedding ever, come on come ON do it, you selfish sods.

Laurie always deflected with a joke about her not being keen what with being a lawyer, and seeing a lot of divorce paperwork, but eventually that dodge wore thin. Dan referred to Laurie as ‘the missus’ and ‘the wife’, leading newer friends to think they were married.

It had always seemed a case ofwhen, not if. Laurie had vaguely expected a ring box to appear, but it never did: should she have been pushing the issue?

Thewhere’s the wedding??!!!noise hit a peak around thirty-three. Having skirted around it, after news of another friend’sengagement, they discussed it directly over hangover cure fried egg sandwiches of a Saturday morning.

‘Do you not think it’s much more romantic to not be married?’ Dan said. ‘If you’re together when there’s no practical ties, it’s really real.’ He was indistinct through a mouthful of Hovis. ‘Realer than when you’ve locked yourself into a governmental contract. We of all people know that legal stuff means nowt in terms of how much you love each other.’

Laurie made a sceptical face.

‘We have no “ties” … except the joint mortgage, every stick of the furniture, and the car?’

‘I’m saying, married people stay when it’s rough because they made this solemn promise in front of everyone they know, and they don’t want to feel stupid, and divorce is a big deal. A big, expensive, arduous deal. As you say, you end up having the wagon wheel coffee table arguments over stuff for the sake of it, like inWhen Harry Met Sally. There’s the social shame and failure factor. People like us stay together when it’s rough out of pure love. Our commitment doesn’t need no vicar, baby.’

With his scruffy hair, sweet expression and expensive striped T-shirt, Dan looked the very advertiser’s image of the twenty-first century Guy You Settle Down With. Laurie grinned back.

‘So … what you’re saying is, there will be no weddings for you, Dan Price? Or, by extension, me? The Price-Watkinsons will never be. The Pratkinsons.’

He wiped his mouth with a piece of kitchen towel. ‘Ugh we’d never double barrel no matter what, right?’

Laurie mock wailed. ‘No huge dress for me!’

‘I dunno. Never say never? But not a priority right now?’

Laurie thought on it. She sensed it was there for her if she demanded it. She was neither wedding wild nor wedding averse. They’d been together since they were eighteen, they’d never needed a rush in them. Plus, it’d be nice not to have to find fifteen grand down the back of the sofa, there was plenty needing doing in the house. She smiled, shrugged, nodded.

‘Yeah, see how it goes.’

Emily always told Dan he was lucky to have such an easygoing, un-nagging girlfriend and Dan would roll his eyes and say: ‘You should see her with the pencil dobber in IKEA,’ but at that moment Laurie felt Emily’s praise was justified and she thought, looking at his warmthat’s my girlsmile, so did Dan.

And it was only now, listening to the shower thundering upstairs, that Laurie realised that she’d missed the giant glaring warning sign in what Dan had said.

---