If I Never Met You(108)

This, despite the fact I was a quivering mess at the sight of her bra strap, or had been trying to hold her hand all the time, like we were fifteen. It didn’t apparently clue her in to the fact I hadn’t been that person since almost the moment we met. She has no ego in that way whatsoever, I don’t think. So that’s something I can definitely bring to our relationship, haha!

We’re so similar, Hats. That’s the wonderful, strange, incredible thing that we would never have found out, if it weren’t for Salter & Rowson solicitors off Deansgate being skinflints in building maintenance. We help each other, in a way that I didn’t know was possible. We’re a little way off the heavier conversations regards marriage and kids but there’s pretty much nothing I wouldn’t feel I could tackle if we did it together. I keep thinking: if I’d never met her, how different things would be. I scoffed at the idea anyone could make you see your life through new eyes and I’m so, so glad to be wrong.

Anyway, sorry for the heated prose. At least you’re spared hearing the sex was amazing eh! (The sex was amazing.) (I know how terrible and juvenile this sounds, but I didn’t know what it could be like with someone you’re actually in love with.)

She’s so gorgeous, I get slightly out of breath thinking about her. I can’t wait to bring Laurie back to Lincoln and for you and Padraig to meet her properly. I want everyone to love her as much as I do, though Mum and Dad are there already I think.

Hey how’s the infection, did it clear up?

‘Wait, discount that last part, that wasn’t directly relevant content,’ Hattie said.

Tears streamed down Laurie’s face as Colin Fur let go a guttural howl from somewhere above her head.

‘Did you … wail?’ Hattie said, hesitantly.

‘No, that was the kitten.’

‘Jamie’s getting the four p.m. train to Lincoln, so he’ll be at Piccadilly in half an hour,’ Hattie said. ‘I’ll just leave that there.’





44


Where was he where was he where was he?

Laurie scoured the concourse for Jamie to no avail, but looking at the Departures board, he had to be here, somewhere.

She’d locked the kitten in the kitchen and dragged on any old things on top of her ‘it’s Christmas Eve, time to let go’ outfit of baggy joggers and sloppy, shapeless wide-neck jumper. The Uber had been painfully slow to arrive but once she was in, they’d flown through the streets, past boozy office workers spilling out of the bars and up the ramp of the station, where Laurie had practically fallen out before the car came to a complete stop.

He must’ve gone through the barrier by now. At a ticket machine, Laurie endured an agonising wait behind the world’s slowest stoner gap year boys, wearing flip flops with socks in December, then bought the cheapest she could find, a single to Stockport, and dashed through to the other side.

When she got to the platform, she looked right, left, right, left. He wasn’t here. Had Hattie got the time wrong?

Her eyes came to rest on a man in a navy coat with short curly dark hair and exceptional cheekbones, standing by the Coke machine, staring at her.

There.

In her haste, Laurie half skipped to him, apprehension at what she had to say briefly cancelled out by the elation of finding him.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hello?’ Jamie said, looking at her curiously.

‘Going home for Christmas?’

‘Er … yeah. And you? Getting a train too?’

‘No, I’ve come to find you.’

‘OK?’

‘To tell you that I’m sorry. I doubted you and I freaked out. I trusted Dan and he let me down and I wasn’t ready to go through that again.’

A silence, where she wondered if she would get the Jamie who’d been so scornful last time they met, or the tender Jamie of the messages to his best friend.

‘I know. I get that. I think it was too big an ask, to be honest.’

‘You do?’

‘Yeah.’ He got his phone out of his pocket. ‘You can have my pass code; I can show you texts from Eve that back up everything I’ve told you. I should’ve offered that before but I was in too big a state, thinking I’d lost my job and you on the same day. I lashed out.’

‘Thank you but I don’t need to see them.’ Laurie paused. ‘I trust you. Hattie shared the email you wrote about me, with me …’

‘Oh, did she now?’

‘She did. I shouldn’t have needed to hear you’d said those things. I knew them anyway, because it’s how I feel too,’ Laurie drew breath. ‘That’s what’s special about us. It’s funny given I thought we were chalk and cheese but it’s like we have some sort of telepathy. I purposely turned that intuition off, and surrendered to what everyone else thought of you. I didn’t want to rely on my own judgement because it let me down so badly where Dan was concerned.’

Jamie said nothing.

‘So I didn’t think about the person I spent time with in Lincoln, or at barbecues that turned into slasher flicks, or having nervos in skyscrapers with. Because him, I trust, and I am madly in love in with.’ She paused. ‘Why haven’t you been in touch with me?’

‘You haven’t been in touch with me. Checkmate.’ Jamie smiled.