If I Never Met You(100)

‘Haha! Hardly. It’s a helluva drug, egg nog.’

When Laurie looked at her phone when she got back, she had a text from Dan.

I’d like to get some photos copied. Is 5pm OK to come round?

Hah, a very late arriving realisation.

Laurie

Yeah, fine.

When he knocked on the door, she was still in her running gear.

‘Not like you?’ he said.

‘All kinds of changes round here,’ Laurie said. ‘I’ve got the boxes of photos out from under the spare room bed, take the ones you want. I trust you to bring them back.’

Dan darted upstairs and reappeared after ten minutes, holding thirty-five or so pictures: holidays, the house in its embryonic stages, friends’ weddings, beer gardens. Christmases in Cardiff.

‘Fucking hell, remember the kitchen? Those Irish builders straight out of Fawlty Towers? Lick o’ paint lick o’ paint.’

Laurie smiled, thinly.

‘Do you want to check which ones I’ve got, so you can count them out and count them back in?’ he added.

They sat on the sofa while Laurie riffled through, and Laurie marvelled at how these months had transformed Dan from the person she knew best in the world to this person, sitting a short distance and yet a whole continent away. A thought occurred: this is a pretext. If he really wanted pictures, he’d have taken them by now. He has something else to say.

She handed them back. Dan’s eyes came to rest on something thrown on the floor, down by the sofa that Laurie was sat on. It was one of Jamie’s shirts, removed sometime on Saturday after they’d tried and failed to go out for dinner and decided they preferred staying in. It hadn’t been the sort of weekend where she did much tidying up.

‘Oh,’ Laurie said, gathering it up, and stuffing the bundle next to her. It had not been done as any sort of taunt and yet it was difficult to think of a way she could’ve made the frenzied state of her relationship, clearer.

‘It’s really on, with him then?’ Dan said, and swallowed hard.

Laurie nodded.

‘I know how this makes me sound, but I convinced myself maybe you were pretending, to rub my face in it. That it was a deal between the two of you, to get him ahead at work and for you to get back at me.’

Laurie sighed. She had no reason to dissemble, now she and Jamie were the truth. ‘Look, being honest, that’s how it started. Then we got involved for real.’

To Laurie’s complete amazement, Dan teared up, then started properly weeping.

‘I want you to know something. I want you to know that I know I’ve fucked up. Every time I see you. When I see you with him. It’s like being turned inside out.’

He wiped his face, nose running. Laurie sat, hands in lap, slightly stunned and mostly aghast.

‘It was an affair, Laurie, you were right. It was a stupid self-indulgent oh God I’m going to turn forty soon affair because she flattered me and came on to me and I started to let myself believe there was this other life I should be having. I was bored and dissatisfied with myself. It was so much easier to tell myself I was bored and dissatisfied with you, that you were holding me back. That someone else was the fix.’

Laurie nodded, staring at her hands, twisting them together.

‘I would’ve tried to come back, asked to come back. It was a fad, a phase and you and I are forever. Or we were. And then she … Not she, we. We got pregnant. So.’

Dan looked hollow. Laurie felt nothing but pity for Megan. To the victor, the spoils.

‘Why didn’t you tell me on the day you broke up with me, that you had feelings for her? Why the lies about needing yoga or to find yourself or whatever?’ Laurie said.

‘I thought it would hurt you less if I left it weeks or months for you to find out about Megan. If I’d said: “Right now I want her more than you,” it would’ve been the most terrible thing.’

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.

‘The thing is, Dan, it would’ve been terrible but I would’ve coped. I could’ve started the process of coping straight away, instead of having to turn into Sherlock Holmes, trying to crack the puzzle. It’s the lies that killed me. Feeling I wasn’t important enough or worth enough after these years to be let inside your head, to be told what was happening.’

He nodded and took a shuddering breath.

‘Do you love him?’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s grown into something neither of us expected.’

Dan made the sort of inhalation when you’re trying to stifle a hiccup.

‘Well, good. I want you to be happy. Seeing you lately has reminded me of who I fell in love with, but ten times over. You are,’ Dan cleared his throat, ‘a force to be reckoned with.’

‘I’m sorry it took this, to remind you of who you fell in love with,’ Laurie said.

‘So am I,’ Dan said, and she had a feeling they were sorry in different ways.

‘Would you have said any of this if you weren’t torn up by me being with a younger stud?’ Laurie said, and Dan said, ‘Yes,’ as reflex response and she almost cynic-laughed as she thought, no.

She gave him a brief tight hug in the hallway, shut the door on him, slid to the floor, cupped her hands over her face and howled.