If I Never Met You

by Mhairi McFarlane

Laurie shrank from saying: No one is going to think Hermione Granger here is having it off, big style, with Draco Malfoy.

Well...

“I don’t know Dan Price very well, but I do know male psychology,” Jamie said. “Was he ever jealous?”

Laurie was coping, only in ways that made other people feel comfortable. It was a performance, going through the motions. She was as empty and as fragile as an Easter egg.

She’d never grieved for anyone close to her, but she guessed this must be similar: times when the tide went out and she felt almost normal, and times when it came rushing in and she felt like she was drowning.

She was a Stepford Wife, basically, but coated it in lots of twenty-first-century, faux-feminist, socially-acceptable concern trolling. So, instead of “Why aren’t you home to make Dan’s dinner?” it was “It must be hard on you working those hours, do you do Sunday batch cooking? I have a great dhal recipe,” looking only at Laurie. And Laurie had also noticed men got different treatment from Claire. She claimed once as a yummy mummy, she liked polo necks so much as “If you pause while your head is stuck inside it, putting it on, you get a few seconds’ peace!” and Dan had guffawed and said, “Smell of burning martyr!” If Laurie had said that, oof. She’d get some icy response about not understanding the fatigue until you had one. Claire merely simpered and batted Dan’s arm. At Claire and Phil’s, men did the jokes and women talked shop(ping).

A minute after her gut-wrenching bewilderment at how they could be conducting this dissection of her, in front of her, Laurie sussed exactly how it had happened. She’d been included in the original baby shower team, but it had been so long since she replied, they thought they were a trio.

BS, it shows at the top of the screen, especially easy to notice since there are only four names in the group

Right there was the answer why she’d gotten such minimal sympathy: she’d not played the game properly. Laurie turned up at their houses often enough, she’d had them around to hers. But in the digital age equivalent of nattering over the garden fence, she’d never pretended to be interested in Claire’s daughter’s tongue-tie, or Pri’s luxury shed-slash–summer house. Not least because she had a job where she spent hours in courtrooms with her phone on silent. Not being interested in social media made you seem aloof these days, except Laurie wasn’t aloof, just busy and slightly baffled by it.

Dan had a new partner and a baby on the way, he wasn’t a single, spiky anomaly. Two by two onto the Ark, she heard Jamie say. Yep. They’d left her to the floodwaters.

When she was shown her face in an oval hand mirror, she let go a small “ahhh!” This woman looked like her, but had street-sweeper lashes above large, defined sooty eyes with silver sparkles. There were iridescent, light-reflecting angles to her complexion, and a bold crimson mouth. Laurie tried to fit this brash vamp with Real Laurie, cowering inside. She was now projecting a person she didn’t feel. She didn’t entirely mind it, though. It was another mask, like the one she wore at work.

She was trying to bottle lightning, without much of a bottle.

He screwed his face up in a mock sulk which could’ve been nauseating, but his boyish charm carried it clear out of nausea and right into almost cute. Laurie could see why lesser women than herself succumbed so easily.

See I hate that, I hate her saying "lesser women" even if I know that author is setting up the irony to her fall

She winced inside: she’d been snippy with him to an unwarranted degree. She had a low opinion of this man for no real reason other than the boys at work hated him and women pashed on him. “Boys” being the operative word. She’d accepted a secondhand version of Jamie, one largely shaped by spite, and ought to make up her own mind.

Laurie ignored shouts from a car full of lads, dodged around strollers, and urged herself onward, and as she arrived back home, feeling exultant, thought, this is why Dan used it as springboard for leaving her. She felt ready to fight a polar bear.

Laurie hadn’t considered herself as being defined by what any man thought of her and yet there was no denying that her body, unwanted now by her lifelong partner, felt like a body she had to reassess and own for herself again.

How much of her existence had been about trying—with varied success—to fit in? To keep her head down?

“Oh, he’s loathed me from the word go. His big mate Anthony Barratt was off, I got given his caseload, and there was loads of stuff missing. I had to ask for documents from the CPS and get an adjournment. I mean he was sick, there’s no shame that he dropped the odd ball, but what was I supposed to do? Fuck the cases up and get marks against my name, five minutes after I joined, to spare Ant’s dignity?” “It says too much about this place that I think the answer is yes. You are describing what they call a team player.” “Huh. More like a fall guy for their macho bullshit.”

Toxic work environment BS

Subservience, that was the word, that was what they demanded from Laurie, from women, but also from Jamie. Maybe he wasn’t disgracefully cocky; maybe he’d simply not felt the need to tone down his self-assurance in order to be liked. Which was quite likable in itself—to thine own self be true. Laurie combed her memory for any example of Jamie’s arrogance and could only come up with instances of him being hardworking, and unapologetic about the fact. Which irked people, and to Laurie’s chagrin, had irked her too. The culture here depended so much on playing the game, they’d all ceased to notice that they were playing it.

I hate those stupid rules and this stupid culture

“Also, the idea Michael has a right to an opinion here, full stop, makes me fume.”

You and me both!

And when she’d said she craved making Dan jealous, she’d omitted a crucial question, one Emily told her she used with her clients: What would success look and feel like to you? (“Expectation management is crucial, or they shoot the messenger every time,” she said. “That is rule number one. Get them to define it, so the result is provably what they ordered. You’d be amazed how many people aren’t careful what they wish for.”)

But they developed roles, and it was Dan as cossetted and indulged tearaway kid to Laurie’s doting, responsible adult. She never got to be delinquent.

In this moment, she made herself a promise: in the very unlikely event she found herself in love with anyone again, she’d assert herself. She’d say what she wanted, not endlessly accommodate his needs. If that made her a bitch at any point, so be it. There were no rewards to being a walkover.

And she fancied adopting a kitten, sod society’s sexist stereotypes.

Yes!!

“Right, stop. What does barman do?” “. . . Work in a bar?” “Right, works in a bar. There’s nothing wrong with that. But he’s, what, thirty?” “Thirty-two.” “You are four years older than him, Emily, you live here and you are a boss, and you depend on no one. Have you got any idea how threatening that is to the male ego, for women not to need them? Do you think it came from nowhere, Rob the thirty-two-year-old barman’s need to put you down, to break you in some way, to humiliate you?” Laurie thought about her own working week. You were equal with these men so long as you didn’t make them feel unequal, lesser, challenged. If you stayed in your lane. “This is pure misogyny. Those tomatoes are highly relevant to his therapist’s notes, not yours.”

Laurie had thought Dan was the source of the unconditional love in her life, but actually it was Emily:

AWWWWWW LOVE THIS SOOOOO MUCH

scenes and squalid tableaus of her father’s life unfold. Looking at Jamie and his taut expression, she knew it was one of those nights when communication doesn’t flow and drink sits heavy.

Jamie was undeterred. “Don’t let them make you think that their problems are your problems. They are trying to do a head-wrecking number on you, to undermine you, and you have to resist.” “Hah. I told my best friend something very similar the other day.” “Were you right?” “Yes.” “So am I.”

“There was no right or wrong answer. Whatever you did had a cost. There was only survival.”

“Can I make a suggestion? Tell your mum.” “Now? It’d only upset her. She can’t do anything about it.” “You’re upset. You’ve never told her: let her in. Give her a chance to help you. Stop making it your responsibility alone.”

“One of the things those sessions taught me is, you need to speak up, ask for help. If you don’t tell people why you’re suffering, or even that you’re suffering, they can’t help you.”

after a week of seeing little of Jamie due to busy work schedules, but it turned out a sympathetic, knowing smile as you passed in the corridor could do much for a feeling of someone quietly being there for you),

“I was worried you’d be too thin but you look well,” Peggy said, after kissing her on each cheek. This was a compliment; her mum thought women should be “bountiful,” not “hungry.”

I think women spend a lot of time beating themselves up about how they caused or deserved male behavior, and it doesn’t happen anything like the same way in reverse. They get on with doing what they wanna do.”

Damn 👏👏👏

“Dan always seemed such a pleasant and devoted boy.” “Yep. Didn’t he just. That’s the part that destroys me. How will I ever spot the signs?”

feel like we may have spent quite a lot of time putting feelings on each other that belonged with Dad. He kept marking those parcels Not Known at This Address, didn’t he? Sending them back.”

Laurie hadn’t realized that in asking for help, she was also offering it.

“She couldn’t ever be apart from that badger, Wanda. Years and years and it went everywhere with her. Your father would send you those huge teddies and toys. When you did tea parties, Dundee had to have the highest chair at the head of the table and get his tea first, in case he thought you were favoring the new arrivals.” “Haaah. I’d forgotten that!” “You are a loyal person. When someone has your loyalty, it’s for life.”

“What do I do now?” Laurie said. Another question she would only ask her mum, this bluntly. “Have your own adventures.”

Laurie smiled at them. Her mum might not have had settled relationships, but she had rock-solid friendships. Laurie hoped she could say the same.

She’d not done the Wounded Woman tour, made them feel bad about picking his side, made it a female solidarity issue. She’d never be so crass. But Dan’s stupid wounded pathetic male pride, after all he’d done, drove him to call Jamie trivial, a distraction.

But some people never really leave school, and more fool them, given how horrible living by school rules was.

It’s ALL bollocks. Not purely because Jamie was a stuntman, an actor, but she saw it for what it was. When she had Dan, she fit in, she was accepted. He left her, and she was unclean, cast out, othered. Now she sashayed back with another presentable member of the opposite sex, and her status had shot up again. None of it was to do with who Laurie was, anything she had to say for herself. If your value was dependent on these things, you had none.

Jamie looked slightly baffled. “My dad always says if you can help someone, you should help someone.” “I love your dad,” Laurie said, on reflex. “Thank you,” Jamie said. “Can I . . . will you let me write to them, when we go our separate ways? To tell them how much it meant to me, meeting them? I couldn’t bear for them to think I flitted in and flitted out without a backward glance.” “Yes,” Jamie said, looking drawn. “Sorry I’ve put you in that position.” “I would rather be in that position than have not met them. That’s the truth.”

Laurie knew that as much as Michael and Dan were biased as hell in wanting to think the worst of Jamie, she was biased in wanting to believe the best. She’d heard men do the oh her, she’s crazy spiel to discredit women before and she instinctively didn’t like it.

I really appreciate this detail, the self awareness

“I thought you were a new soul but you might be an old soul. As my mother says,” Laurie said. “Being strictly accurate, you thought I was an arsehole,” Jamie said, laughing.

his nerves crackling and swooping in the dead air, like a radio trying to find a signal.

Interesting similie

Laurie thought about how she’d go home alone, but wasn’t really lonely anymore. Or if she was, it was only in passing, not as a constant state. Her powers were returning. She’d met Dan when she was eighteen, when she had the confidence to stride up to a bunch of lads in freshers’ week and tell them she’d sort the problem out. That girl wasn’t created by him, she existed already. Dan had chosen a future without her, and as sad and harrowing and unexpected as that had been, now she got to choose a future for herself. It was exhilarating.

This was a category error that too many people made Laurie thought—thinking untruths that didn’t add up were better than a hard truth.

You said Dan and I were hit by lightning, in Bar CaVa, that it was fate, that it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance and it changed everything forever. I knew it was true, I could feel in my water that it was true, so I couldn’t reconcile it with Dan having gone. Well, I’ve figured it out. I did meet the love of my life that day. Only it wasn’t Dan. You are the love of my life. Are you still there?” “Yes, I’m crying, you soft shite.”

Laurie’s mum had once said to her, keep a close eye on the worst things that happened to you, they could turn out to be a doorway, a route to someplace else entirely, a map you couldn’t yet read.

Laurie’s chest hurt. It was one of those rare times when you can feel something being torn down, the something intangible that exists between you.