You Had Me at Hello (16 page)

I scowled in incomprehension, drew a question mark underneath it, pushed it back.

‘
We didn't
,' he wrote, underscoring the second word several times to make his meaning plain. ‘
What's the matter?
'

Good question. I read it, shrugged, passed it back. Was I really so uptight I expected my single friends to live by my rules?

Lecture over, we had tutorials in different parts of the building. I was out of my seat, down the steps and by the door in seconds. Ben caught up with me, grabbing my arm before I could stalk off.

‘Look, I was being laddish, you usually find it funny,' he said, under his breath.

I rudely shook my arm free, even though his hold had been gentle.

‘For the record, we didn't do anything and I didn't want to,' he added. ‘I still can't see why it would've been some moral failure.'

‘None of my business,' I said, haughtily, heart suddenly banging against my ribs as if it wanted to make a break for it and scuttle off to the Victorian Essayists ahead of me. My behaviour suggested I'd be a good fit for the era.

‘I'd have had a better time if you'd stayed,' Ben said, nailing the source of my anxiety more accurately than I wanted.

‘Why do you say it like that? Like it's the lowest standard – “I'd have had a better time
even
if Ron had stayed.”'

‘That wasn't what I said.'

No, and that wasn't what I meant.
I don't want you to want to do that, with her. When she's nothing like me.
What was I on?

Ben looked out of the window, back at me, opened his mouth to say something, hesitated.

‘I can cook,' he said, flatly.

‘What? You conned me so I'd do your shopping?'

He glared at me. I glared back.

‘Pleased to see you two were paying such rapt attention and that the academic debate now rages,' our tutor cut between us. ‘And I'm certain those notes you were passing were on the rise of the middle classes in the fourteenth century in relation to
The Canterbury Tales
.'

‘Most definitely,' Ben said, nodding.

‘Sod off to your eleven o'clocks,' the tutor said, and we did.

In all those fashion features about ‘What To Wear To Meet Your In-Laws' or ‘What To Wear On A Country Weekend Away' I'd like them to toughen up and tackle the genuinely thorny issues, such as ‘What To Wear To Meet Your Lost Love's Wife'.

I know I can't attempt this dinner party with anything in my current wardrobe. So slim are the pickings – and not in the sense that anything is small – I decide on a scorched earth policy, bundle most of it up and take it to the nearest charity shop.

The altruistic glow dims in minutes as I stand holding recyclable bin bags in the middle of Age UK. The woman at the counter has grey hair in a bun and glasses round her neck on a string, like a wonderful granny from a Roald Dahl story who'd adopt you if your parents were wiped out in the first chapter in some blackly comic manner.

‘Just here?' I say brightly, hoping for a drop-and-skedaddle.

She makes the internationally recognised – and not entirely gracious – outstretched finger wiggle that means ‘Give That Here'.

I hand it over, thinking, I didn't know giving things away for free has an audition process. She starts pulling the contents of my bags out in front of me, sniffing a cardigan disdainfully and asking: ‘Are you a smoker?'

Before I can answer in the negative, she yelps in distress as if she's found a nobbly dildo the size of a Saharan cactus and says ‘We can do without
these
…' holding a rogue pair of socks at arm's length, between finger and thumb. Hmm, my slipper-socks with paw-like rubber grips on the soles. I'm sure someone would be grateful for them. Admittedly, with second-hand socks, you'd have to be not so much in reduced circumstances as bin rifling. But talk about no good turn going unpunished. I want to say: ‘Who are you, the Duchess of Dry Clean Only?'

Instead I mumble ‘howdidtheygetinthere' and continue my shopping with the socks bulging in my coat pockets, vowing that the aged and their forked-tongued representatives can bloody well help themselves in future.

I need an outfit that says ‘Grown up and yet still youthful' ‘Dressy but laidback' and ‘Not slaggy but not retired from active duty either'.

Unsurprisingly, looking for something in my budget that both a) fits and b) conveys six contradictory statements turns out to be difficult. I thought I was a size 12 and I still cling to this belief despite all evidence pointing north. Or in the case of nipples in very tight material, north-west and south-east.

A trek up and down King Street's fashion stores on a busy Saturday afternoon leaves me frazzled and near-tearful. There's only one thing for it, I decide, and call Mindy. She listens to the problem and writes a brisk prescription.

‘You've lost perspective and are no longer in the good decision zone. Go somewhere upmarket, like Reiss, find a simple black cocktail dress. Buy one size up if that looks better, shelve your pride. Pay whatever it costs. Wear with any heels you know you can walk in. Boom, done.'

‘But I wore black last time I met Ben? And his friend?' I add, hastily.

‘He won't remember what you wore unless it was Bernie Clifton's ostrich costume. Trust me.'

I find her instructions simple and effective. I arrive back home on a short-lived high, until I discover that, while the pop-video lighting in the changing rooms made me look like an ‘Addicted To Love' girl, in the fading daylight it's a bit more ‘Mafia widow who's been hitting the tortellini in her grief'. I could try to improve on this, or I could have a nerve-steadying vodka and Diet Coke while waiting for the taxi. It has a much stronger lure than a frenzy of turd polishing. I recall a Tao of Mindy phrase: ‘You can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter.'

I settle for vodka, and more make-up.

I obsess over what Olivia's going to be like. I know she's blonde, or what I glimpsed of Ben's phone wallpaper suggested so. Ben always went for conspicuous ‘knock outs'; no reason to think the woman he settled down with will be any different. I imagine her as a sort of Eighth Wonder era Patsy Kensit, dressed like Betty Draper in
Mad Men
. With the conversational skills of Dorothy Parker and the … oh sod it.

The worst has happened already. She's not me. On the menu tonight: Rachel's heart is turned into steak haché, served with an egg on top.

Ben and Olivia's house is a Victorian semi with white gables and a glossy royal blue front door, a lollipop bay tree in a square black planter standing sentry. I ring the stiff brass doorbell and wait, listening to the hubbub of lively voices beyond. I get a ripple of anxiety. No Rhys by my side any more. I hadn't appreciated how solitary being single would feel. I wish I'd had two vodkas.

Ben answers, carrying a bottle with a corkscrew wedged in it, cream shirt, slightly mussed hair, looking like something from a Lands' End catalogue. He and Olivia probably go for hearty walks in Aran sweaters and his‘n'hers chocolate moleskin trousers on Sundays, throwing sticks to their rescue puppy, laughing with their heads thrown back.

‘Rachel, hi!' He leans in for a chaste peck on the cheek, and I go rigid. ‘Can I take your coat?'

I do an awkward dance, handing him the wine I've brought, unwrapping myself, swapping the coat for the return of the bottle.

Over his shoulder, as he's hanging my coat up, Ben says: ‘This is Liv. Liv, Rachel.' Blood pounds in my ears.

A petite woman steps forward, smiling, to relieve me of my booze for a second time. I quiver. Perhaps unsurprisingly, after all this angst, she is just an attractive woman. Slight, duckling-blonde short hair, perfect oval face, golden-coloured. I expected some variant on feminine perfection and Olivia looks like she sweats Chanel No. 5, no surprises here.

If I was going to be a cow – and obviously, I'm not, but if I was going to be – physically, she's the tiniest bit safe, as a Ben choice. His university ones were usually dynamic, healthy, strapping, widescreen-smile Carly Simon sorts. That type of mega-wattage vivacious beauty where trying to deny it was like trying to look directly into the sun without squinting.

‘Nice to meet you,' she says.

‘Nice to meet you too. Thanks for inviting me.'

‘Come and say hello to the others and I'll get you a drink.'

As I follow her I see she's wearing a clinging, draped jersey top and tight-but-flared trousers in shades of grey. Not darks-wash-accident grey, of course, the ones called things like moonstone, graphite and slate that hang in sinuous slivers on padded hangers in shops with the ambience of New York nightclubs. The sort I didn't dare enter this afternoon, expecting to be chased out of at the end of a broom. She's so understated and sophisticated, suddenly my try-hard tart frock makes me feel as if I've wandered out of an '80s instant coffee ad.

Olivia leads me into a living room that opens on to a dining room beyond and guides me over to do my hellos with a tall woman with highlighted, vanilla-and-toffee hair. She looks like she'd have been in the Goal Attack tabard in the rival school's netball team and marked you so hard you'd have fallen over in fright. My eyes move to the man next to her, who's shorter, stockier and wearing a salmon-pink shirt that accentuates his tanned flush.

‘Lucy, Matt, this is Rachel. And I think you've met Simon …?'

Simon, inspecting the bookshelf, raises a flute glass in greeting and ambles over. He still looks like he's dressed for the office.

‘Can I offer you a champagne cocktail, Rachel?' Olivia says.

‘You can, and I will accept,' I say, trying to strike the right partyish note and coming off as a cock. ‘Your house is lovely, Olivia. I can't believe you've not been here for years.'

This is a proper grown-ups' dwelling, no doubt about it. The oatmeal carpet underneath our feet is thick and soft, church candles are twinkling in a cavernous original fireplace and there are framed black-and-white photographic prints on the walls of Barcelona or Berlin or wherever they went on romantic breaks while courting, wielding the Nikon.

‘Oh, we're still at sixes and sevens, we've dimmed the lights to cover it up,' Olivia calls, over her shoulder, as she ducks out to the kitchen.

‘Liv is being modest; she trails order in her wake like most people trail devastation,' Ben calls, from somewhere near the oven.

The table beyond is set with coordinated aqua napkins and taper candles, the centrepiece is a moth orchid in a pebble-filled tub. Some ambient-chill-out-dub-whatever drifts out of a Bang & Olufsen stereo. If Ben's still climbing the ranks, Olivia must be quite a high-flier, I decide, taking in the atmosphere of plushy serenity and discreet wealth. I picture my old home in Sale and realise what different circles Ben and I move in. My mind wanders back to the reassurance Rhys would offer at my side but I quickly start to reassess whether it'd be worth it. His hackles would be right up at this advertisers' vision of cliched contentment and I'd be hoping he didn't drink too much and get ‘nowty'.

Olivia returns and puts a champagne flute in my hand, raspberries bobbing in the liquid.

‘Is this everyone now, Liv?' Lucy asks.

‘Yes.'

‘OK, so a – toast. Welcome to Manchester, Liv and Ben.'

‘Cheers,' I mumble, clinking glasses.

‘Cheers Ben!' they call, as he's in the kitchen.

This is everyone? Six of us, two couples, two singles – Simon and I are being set up. It's not merely a rumour: this kind of crashingly unsubtle matchmaking actually happens. Is Simon equally uncomfortable to have me sprung on him? Lucy and Matt are looking at me curiously. I'm going to have to brave this out by pretending it's not happening. My usual modus operandi.

I turn towards Simon in desperation, with a rictus grin.

‘How are you?' I ask.

‘I've spoken to Natalie and she's definitely up for the interview,' he says, and I'm grateful to have a topic in common.

‘Great.'

‘I'll get back to you with a date. OK to do it at her house?'

‘Ideal.'

‘All right if I come along?'

‘If it's OK, I'd rather you didn't.'

‘Thanks.'

‘I'm not being rude—'

‘Oh really? Where does this rank on your scale?'

He deadpans and I laugh despite myself.

‘If you sit in,' I say, ‘she'll be on edge and looking to you for approval all the time and the whole thing will be stilted. I know it's a big story but she's not Barbra Streisand. It'll be fine.'

‘I'll think about it,' Simon says, smiling.

‘Those are my terms,' I say, smiling back, hoping this isn't too much sass. ‘Good luck taking your terms to the nationals.'

Actually the nationals would bite Simon's hand off to the elbow. I feel reasonably sure from what Ben said that Simon's going to keep his sense of humour, and stick with me.

‘What do you do for a living?' Matt interrupts.

‘I'm a court reporter for the local paper. You?'

‘Management consultancy. Mainly blue chip firms.'

I can't think of any follow-up question, so Matt interjects:
‘What's the naughtiest thing anyone in the dock's ever done?'

‘Er. Naughtier than serial killing?'

‘No, bizarre stuff. Funnies.'

‘You lawyers probably see more of them than me?' I say to Lucy.

‘I'm in litigation, like Liv,' Lucy offers. ‘So no. Leylandii and partition walls.'

‘Sit in, everyone,' Olivia says, and we all take our seats, Lucy and Matt making a beeline for the middle, Simon and I left with no choice but to flank them, facing each other. Why didn't Ben warn me? It isn't like him.
You don't know what ‘like him' is any more,
I remind myself.