If I Never Met You. Mhairi McFarlane

walking down a cobbled street in a European city with a dickhead Rat Pack in tow.

      He said, ‘I don’t mean to push,’ – yes you do, Laurie thought, giving him grit-teeth smile – ‘Could you update me on the Cheetham case?’

      Laurie gave him a brusque run down, off the top of her head.

      ‘You don’t need to check the file?’ he said.

      ‘No, I have this thing called a memory,’ Laurie said. Patronising git, he was how old, twenty-eight?

      ‘Ooooh summarily dismissed! Nicely done!’ Bharat said, after Jamie raised his eyebrows, and departed. ‘He’s a self-sucking cock of a man, isn’t he?’ Di and Laurie chortled evilly.

      This morning for Laurie held an assault on a kindly shop keeper. Laurie really didn’t want to get her client a reduced sentence due to first time offending and the context of peer pressure, and yet she probably would.

      A sheaf of notes had gone missing and Laurie was delayed five minutes, hunting them out. A crucial five minutes, as it turned out.

      Diana came back from the loo and stared directly at Laurie, in an unnerving way.

      ‘When were you going to tell us you and Dan had split up?!’

      ‘What?’ Laurie said, dully.

      ‘What?!’ Bharat shrieked.

      ‘Dan’s talking to Michael and Chris about it. He said that it happened a while back. And he’s having a baby? With someone at Rawlings?’

      Laurie suppressed a full-body shiver of despair, a fresh wave of stunned humiliation.

      ‘Yeah it’s true. All over a while back. I didn’t know how to break it. There it is.’ That bastard. He couldn’t even give her a week to come to terms with it herself. To show her feelings would only inflame the office tattle, so she kept her face impassive and raised and dropped her shoulders. The seconds it took them to say anything lasted an eternity.

      ‘Wait, how long ago was it that you separated, if he’s with someone else? And having a baby?’ Bharat said; it was fruitless to downplay it.

      ‘Months back. Don’t really want to discuss it. I’m due in court.’

      She got up and strode out quickly, looking neither left nor right, trying to keep a poker face. She could still sense the heads snapping up and whispers from receptionist’s viewing gallery as she passed.

      A WhatsApp from Bharat.

       V sorry if that was an insensitive question Loz, I blurted, wasn’t thinking. Are you OK? Xx

       Laurie

       Yep, thanks, don’t worry. As much as is possible, can you reassure people I’m fine? You & I can talk in private sometime. Can’t face Team Kerry’s gang of lookalike raptors in Charlotte Tilbury descending on me Xx

       Bharat

      LOL. Perfect description

Sure Xxx

      Bharat was raucous and silly, but he was good people, and she was deeply grateful for his friendship at that moment. He loved drama, but he was ethical about it: not at the expense of the feelings of those he liked.

      Her phone rang with a call from Dan as she neared the mags court. He was breathless and discomposed, as well he might be.

      ‘Laurie, Laurie, I didn’t decide to tell everyone. Someone at Rawlings saw Louise Hatherley from ours at the cop shop and she came straight back and blabbed it, and I had to face it down as best I could.’

      ‘Megan’s told people at her place?’

      ‘She’s got morning sickness and refused a drink at some do last week and apparently someone guessed.’

      ‘Megan didn’t have to say it was true? Or tell people you were the dad, did she? Fuck, Dan, is this why you only told me this weekend?’

      ‘She said she panicked, it came tumbling out. I was going to talk to you about how we handled it here … fuck.’

      ‘Know something about your mistress, and soon-to-be mother of your child, Dan? She’s a fucking lying bitch,’ Laurie said.

      As she spoke, she felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned. The pasty pale, grinning face of Darren Dooley was in front of her.

      ‘Alright, brief? Want me to sort her out for you?’

      Trudging back to the office from court that afternoon was the longest walk. Darren Dooley pleaded guilty and got off with community service and a suspended sentence. By contrast to Laurie’s gloom, he was cock-a-hoop.

      Coming second in a happiness contest with a boy who’d thumped a newsagent in a row over a resealable pouch of mini Wispas, what even was life? Laurie offered him a wan smile as they parted.

      ‘Don’t rough up any more pensioners, from now on. OK?’

      Laurie had never felt the truth of the idea of work being a comfort before, and many people wouldn’t have found hers a comfort. But she was good at her job, and it always felt like an absorbing, necessary thing to be doing.

      And she had high standing at Salter & Rowson. Laurie was not only talented, she was diligent, and never rested on her laurels. Usually it was the plodders who were hard working and careful, and the naturally gifted who did an Icarus. Not Laurie. She quickly learned that the scariness of standing in front of magistrates was directly proportional to how thoroughly you’d done your homework. She was often up against worse-for-wear posh lads for the prosecution, almost proud of winging it, using cut-glass vowels like a scythe. Well, Laurie thought it was way more rock’n’roll to know your case back to front and wipe the floor with them.