Page 6 of If I Never Met You

They still had a sense of humour, and a bullshit detector, and priorities in common.

Emily opened a Rizla paper and put it on the table, dainty fingers sprinkling out a slim sausage of tobacco. Emily had smoked roll-ups ever since they met, when she hung out of Laurie’s bedroom window in halls, bottle of Smirnoff Moscow Mule in the other hand.

‘She asked me who did my work,’ Emily said.

‘Work?’ Laurie said.

‘Work,’ Emily took her hands off the cigarette in progress and pulled her cheeks up, while making a pursed-lips trout mouth.

‘What the …? You don’t look like you’ve had anything done!’

This was true, although Emily had always been physically extraordinary to Laurie. She was tiny, golden limbed (whichwasdue to a professional painting) with the face of a Blythe doll, or manga cartoon: eyes floating miles apart, tiny nose, wide full mouth. It all misled you, so you didn’t expect her to have the language of a docker and the appetites of a pirate. Men fell in doomed passions on a near-weekly basis.

‘Mmm, hmm. About a month after she arrived. Was tempted to sack her then and there. Except she’d have gone round the other agencies saying Emily Clarke sacked me for pointing out her cosmetic work and the fact I’d sacked her would seem to prove it and I’m too fucking vain for that sort of mockery.’

‘What a bitch!’

‘Right? She says “oh no, I mean I thought it was very tasteful, very discreet”. At first I thought it was bad manners but I’m coming to suspect she’s a straight-up sociopath.’

‘They walk among us,’ Laurie nodded, twitching at her phone screen. Dan had never replied. He was the one always telling her to go out more and yet he was doing the antsy ‘when you home’ routine? In long-term couple code that was adon’t be late and smashedhint, without wanting the argument that might ensue from actually saying as much.

‘You know that better than anyone, with your job.’

‘Ah well, maybe she’s right and I have missed out. How would I know? That’s what missing out means,’ Laurie said, feeling philosophical in the way you could after five units of alcohol.

‘Trust me, you haven’t. I’m taking a rest from dating apps,’ Emily said, tugging at her hemline where it cut into her thighs. ‘Too many mis-sold PPIs. The last guy I met was Jason Statham in his photos, and I turn up for the date and it’s more likeUpstart Crow.’

Laurie roared at this. ‘Are you still Tilda on there? Has anyone figured it out? Do you really never tell them your real name?’

‘Yep. I make sure there’s no bills left out if we go to mine. You don’t want Clive, thirty-seven, personal trainer from Loughborough, who’s into creative bum-plug play, tracking you down on LinkedIn.’

‘Groooooo.’

‘Ignore Suzanne. Everyone here,’ Emily waved her arm at the general bar-dining area, ‘Wants what you have.Everyone.’

Hah, Laurie thought. She was fairly sure she knew at least one person here who didn’t want what she had, but she appreciated the sentiment.

‘You don’t!’ Laurie said.

Emily’s utilitarian approach to sex bewildered Laurie. Perhaps Emily needed to meet Jamie Carter, and they’d explode on contact.

‘I do, though. I’m just realistic it’s probably not out there, so I make do in the meanwhile. It’s not common, what youhave, you know. Not every Laurie finds her Dan, and vice versa.’ Emily said. ‘You two were hit by lightning, that night in Bar CaVa.’

‘And there I was thinking it was baked bean flavoured tequila shots.’

As she left, Laurie noticed the now-empty table where Jamie and Eve had sat. No doubt he’d sidled past when she was deep in conversation with Emily, keen for her not to see them leaving together.

Career talk, arf. Like he’d chance a sacking for telling her about his LPC course in Chester. Like he’d chance a sacking if the prize wasanythingless than taking her home.

He must think Laurie was naïve, or stupid. The trouble with liars, Laurie had decided from much research in the professional field, is they always thought everyone else was less smart than them.

3

Laurie clambered out of the cab into the heavy smog of late summer air and the nice-postcode-quiet of the street, aware that while her senses were muffled by inebriation, neighbours with families would be lying in their beds cursing the cacophony that was someone exiting a Hackney.

The throbbing engine, sing-song conversation, slamming of a heavy door, the clattering of your big night out heels on the pavement.

Two weeks back, the sisters next door had managed to have such an involved back and forth for ten minutes about whose puke it was, Laurie had been tempted to march out in her pyjamas and pay the soiling charge herself.

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