If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane

Author:Mhairi McFarlane
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

22

“How can you think it’s real when you’re not a toothless crone in the Middle Ages? I’m reading from Wikipedia here: It has no scientific validity or explanatory power,” Bharat said.

“See, they can’t explain it!” Di said.

“No, you div, it means astrology can’t explain anything.”

“Then how do you explain star signs describing people perfectly? My sister is a completely typical Pisces, dreamy and creative. I am a classic Virgo.”

“Credulous?”

They were doing an old favorite, running through a Bharat and Di greatest hit. In its familiarity, Laurie was finding it as relaxing as panpipes in a birthing suite, although perhaps the analogy was unwise and a bout of unmedicated searing pain was also on the way.

The mood on Monday at Salter & Rowson was decidedly different, Laurie noticed. Lots of lines of sight resting upon her, more frantic whispering, conversations that happened to end as she neared. There was a noticeable tension, like the hush of expectation when you walk into a room prior to public speaking.

Jamie was correct: if the Ivy photo had set everyone wondering, the Hawksmoor shot had convinced them. Now the gossip wasn’t if she and Jamie were sleeping together, it was that they were.

As Laurie grabbed some paperwork from the criminal office, Michael intercepted her.

“Can I have a quick word?” he said, briskly leading Laurie to a store cupboard which was known colloquially as Churchill’s War Rooms, given it was solely used for hatching plots, strategic planning, and arguments too vicious or sensitive for the shop floor. And storage. It smelled of cardboard and a newly installed carpet.

After the door clicked shut, Michael turned to her. “You’re hanging out with Jamie Carter, I hear?” putting an emphasis on hanging out that made it sound impossibly obscene.

“Yes . . . ?”

He exhaled in disbelief and disgust at the confirmation, hands on hips, shaking his head. Laurie got the feeling he had to get himself steady before he could speak.

“This is a very poor judgment call, and the last thing I expected from you. I know Dan has hurt you, but this is . . .” Michael trailed off. “Jesus, really? Him?”

Laurie shrugged. “It’s only a casual thing.”

“I would’ve asked you for a drink if I thought you were ready. I’m sure a lot of guys here would’ve. But it was—what, first come first served?”

Laurie’s eyes widened and she took a sharp breath at this insult: the entitlement, the sense of ownership. The idea she had no right to have sex with someone else, when Michael had been on the waiting list longer.

“You what?”

“I’m struggling to see why else you’d choose Carter.”

“Er . . . Because he’s fit?”

“He’s fit? Are you seventeen? And without moral compass? C’mon, Loz! Who body swapped you?”

Laurie snorted.

If Michael was in a pub, if this was a fair fight, she’d give him verbals that would stop short of a knee in the crotch. But this wasn’t quite so easy. Michael was tacitly wielding the only power over Laurie that he had—the threat of becoming an enemy who would do her unspecified harms within Salter & Rowson.

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