If I Never Met You. Mhairi McFarlane

Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу If I Never Met You - Mhairi McFarlane страница 2

If I Never Met You - Mhairi  McFarlane

Скачать книгу

36

       Chapter 37

       Chapter 38

       Chapter 39

       Chapter 40

       Chapter 41

       Chapter 42

       Chapter 43

       Chapter 44

      Acknowledgements

      A Q&A with Mhairi McFarlane

      Keep Reading …

      About the Author

      Also by Mhairi McFarlane

       About the Publisher

       1

       Dan

       What time you think you’ll be back tonight? Roughly?

       Laurie

       Dunno. SOON I HOPE.

       Dan

       You hope?

       Laurie

      Everyone has raspberries in Proseccos

       Dan

       I thought you liked Prosecco. And raspberries

       Laurie

      I do! I’ve got one.

But denotes a certain type of Girls Night Out that’s not very me. They’re calling them ‘cheeky bubbles’

       Dan

       Your problem is other people like it too? Can’t imagine my criticism of a night out being ‘people ordered the same drink’

       Laurie

       … Except when you said you hate stag dos that ‘start with getting ten pints of wife beater in at 7am in Gatwick Spoons’.

       Dan

       You can’t take a moment off being a lawyer, can you?

       Laurie

      HAH. You misspelt ‘you got me bang to rights, Loz’

       Dan is typing

      …

       Dan is typing

      …

       Last seen today at 9.18pm

      Dan must’ve thought better of his reply. Laurie clicked her phone off and pushed it back into her bag.

      Obviously she didn’t really mind the cliché, booze was booze, that was trying to be wittily acerbic bravado. It was a distress signal. Laurie was at sea and her phone felt like a connection back to shore. Tonight was an unwelcome flashback to the emotions of lunch breaks at secondary school, when you had a single-parent mum and no money and no cool.

      So far, the girls had discussed the benefits of eyebrow microblading (‘Ashley from Stag Communications looks like Eddie Munster’) whether or not Marcus Fairbright-Page at KPMG was a bad arsehole who’d break hearts and bed frames (Laurie thought on what she’d gleaned, that was an emphatic yes, but also gathered that a verdict wasn’t desired). And how many burpees you could manage in HIIT class at Virgin Active (no idea there, none).

      They were all so glamorous and feminine, so carefully groomed and produced for public display. Laurie felt like a dishwater-feathered pigeon in an enclosure full of chirruping tropical birds.

      Emily really owed her. Tonight was the product of something that happened roughly once every three months – her best friend, and owner of a PR company, begged Laurie to join their team night out and make it ‘less bloody boring, or we’ll spend the whole time discussing the new accounts.’ Emily, as CEO and hostess, was at the head of the table putting everything on the company credit card and handing round the Nocellara olives and salted almonds. Laurie, late arrival, was at the far end.

      ‘Who was that, then?’ said Suzanne, to her right. Suzanne had a beautiful shoulder-length sheet of custard-coloured hair and the gaze of a customs officer.

      Laurie turned and concealed her irritation with a ventriloquist’s dummy smile. ‘Who was what?’

      ‘On your phone! You looked well intense,’ Suzanne rolled her doe eyes upwards and mimed a sort of chimpanzee-like, vacant trance state, her hands moving across an imaginary handset. She whooped with girlish, alcohol-fuelled laughter, the sort that could sound cruel.

      Laurie said: ‘My boyfriend.’

      The word ‘boyfriend’ had started to sound a trifle silly, Laurie supposed, but ‘partner’ was so dry and stiff. She had a feeling her present company already thought she was those things.

      ‘Awww … is it early days?’ Suzanne combed her fairytale princess hair over her ears with her fingers, and put her flute to her lips.

      ‘Haha! Hardly. We’ve been going out since were eighteen. We met at university.’

      ‘Oh my GOD,’ Suzanne said, ‘And you’re how old?’

      Laurie tensed her stomach muscles and said: ‘Thirty-six.’

      ‘Oh my GOD!’ Suzanne squawked again, loudly enough that they had the attention of a few others. ‘And you’ve been together all this time? No flings or breaks? Like, he’s your

Скачать книгу