If I Never Met You(110)
They walked down the hill, hand in hand.
‘My best friend Emily can give me away.’
‘And Hattie can be my best man.’
‘I like making up our own rules. Let’s keep doing that.’
Minutes later, over engagement champagnes in Refuge, under tiles that declared THE GLAMOUR OF MANCHESTER, Laurie managed to make a phone ring in a province of Indonesia.
‘Emily. You know how we said we had to define what happiness looks like, for ourselves? Without fear of judgement? Now there’s been no egg nog, but. Please remain as calm as possible.’
Acknowledgements
Something I’m learning on my sixth (sixth!) outing is that each book is its own unique beast and the process works differently each time. If I Never Met You was unusual because 1. I somehow managed to never hate it, even when it was giving me serious gyp; and 2. It very much came together in the editing, which is a posh way of saying it needed a fair bit of work. On the latter point, huge thanks must go to my dedicated editor Martha Ashby, who never lets me nap on the job and gives each book her one hundred per cent. I really appreciate it and the end result is so much better for her tireless efforts. There you go, M, read that back to me next time I am howling NOOOOO about a note.
Once again, big up to brilliant copy editor Keshini Naidoo whose thoughtfulness and humour makes her pass through the manuscript a pleasure.
My sincerest thanks to the whole HarperCollins family – the positivity and encouragement I get is truly special, please know you have a grateful author here. (I’d start naming individuals but let’s be honest, that’s an etiquette minefield. But if you think I mean you then I definitely mean you.) On the agenting side, I benefit from not only the capability but the friendship of Doug Kean at Gunn Media – here’s to you, sir!
Particular thanks to poet and novelist, Kim Addonizio, for generous permission to quote a line from her work ‘To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall’.
If I Never Met You required me to describe some aspects of being a solicitor, and my dear friend Serena Mandair helped me plenty, even as she was rushing around actually being a lawyer while I asked dumb questions. Thanks, Serry – any mistakes are mine!
Also, finally, a correction: in my last book, in some sort of Prosecco-clouded fugue state, I forgot to thank Sarah Brown who gave me tons of help when I stole the idea of her cool show ‘Cringe’. So sorry, Sarah, whenever you’re next in the UK, the drinks are definitely on me.
‘What would your twin brother do?’ came from conversations with the relentlessly inspirational Sally Thorne, an author who I was lucky enough to share events with in Toronto – thank you for your company and your wisdom.
Gratitude as always to my first draft readers: Tara, Sean, Ewan, Katie, Kristy Berry – I’d find this SO much harder without you, and that’s the truth.
Thank you to my friends and family who cheer me on, and especially to Alex, who lives the highs and lows of the creative process with the ‘temperamental artist’, heh heh, oh dear.
And thank you to readers who keep buying my books. I don’t want to end on a note that makes it sound like I think I’m Taylor Swift but my God, I feel so lucky: bless you all.
A Q&A with Mhairi McFarlane
1. What inspired If I Never Met You?
I’d been wanting to write the Fake Romance trope for ages. Then, inevitably, a friend said ‘hey Mhairi, you have to see this great new Netflix film To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before!’ and not only did it have the ‘we’re only pretending we’re dating’ plot, there was a scene where they set the rules for it! Argh! Curse my luck! But, I reasoned a high school passion has major thematic differences to two colleagues in their thirties. The social media age is such a rich time to write the wholly performative love affair because there’s so much highlights-reel-showing-off going on already. To counterpoint the high concept romance, I wanted the pain that spurred the protagonist into doing it to feel very real: thus the awful separation and ‘emotional ghosting’ Laurie gets, right on the cusp of starting a family and in sight of middle age. And of course at the heart of it all is that romantic comedy mainstay: two people who imagine they’re chalk and cheese and turn out to be uniquely suited. That twist always thrills me.
2. One thing your readers always say about your novels is how real the characters feel. Did you have any IRL inspiration for Laurie, Jamie, Emily and Dan?
That is an incredible compliment, thank you! The truth of character inspiration is a little prosaic – there’s always parts of people you know, but never all of someone you know. (For some reason, ripping off anyone wholesale tends to fall a little flat on the page, probably because you’re not doing your job of fiction writing.) My longtime university friend Serena is a brilliantly capable lawyer at a large firm so she’s the closest I had to Laurie inspo (and she gave me tips on the legal side of things) but otherwise, her life is not Laurie’s! My super successful PR friend Julia in Manchester was the initial inspiration for Emily, but again, two-thirds of Emily is definitely not Ju. As for Jamie and Dan, damn, I wish I knew Jamie. Both Dan and Jamie started as archetypes – Dan is the ultra-solid guy you’re supposed to seek when you want marriage and kids and stability, and of course turns out not to be that. Laurie’s revelation that they had an outwardly modern relationship but in fact she was tolerating some traditionally unequal crap is very much the Author’s Message of that pairing. (Not that I write to educate! But I think rom coms can explore modern lives in interesting ways.) And obviously, Jamie’s the fly-by-night ambitious heartbreaker who’d leave you for dead if you were going to slow him down. I love mining the potential of appearances being misleading – I think even those of us who pride ourselves on judging on non-superficial traits, are way more suckered in by image and assumption than we’d ever like to admit. Me included.