You Had Me at Hello (35 page)

On arrival, we had aperitifs in a featureless chintzy ante-room and I desperately scanned the black-jacketed crowd for him, without success. I spotted a few stray friends-of-Ben but couldn't trace their origins, location-wise, and the ballroom, laid for dinner, was simply too large to effectively scope.

By the start of the meal, I was convinced he was a no-show. I began to formulate a plan. When no one was paying me much attention, I'd slip out and into a taxi, go back to his house. As time ticked on, it was all I could do not to hurl the prawn cocktail starter with a wet salmon-coloured splat at the nearest wall, turn over the table and charge down Oxford Road in my stilettos.

Then, when the key lime pie was demolished and the music had started and I was working out how best to make my escape, there he was. Right in the middle of the room, as if he'd dropped from the ceiling on cat burglar wires. Ben in a dinner suit. If you trained a camera on him, you'd get lens flare.

He'd obviously only recently arrived because a girl on his table jumped up and wrapped her arms around him – giving me stomach pain – and a male friend passed him a beer. I could see Ben loosening his bow tie, ruffling his hair and making an explanation for his lateness. I was going to look something of a fool, but I'd waited long enough.

I sprang to my feet and wove my way over to his table.

‘Can I talk to you?'

Ben looked up from his friends in surprise, set his drink down. I thought I was about to be chewed out in front of everyone, but bravery paid off. He shrugged a ‘Sure.' I took his hand, led him on to the dance floor. It was going to be him making a declaration of undying feelings at the ball, instead, here I was.

I faced him.

‘Listen, Ben—'

‘I'm trying. You want to talk to me here?'

I thought the dance floor was the only place we could get some privacy, but it had the small drawback of the decibels. Blur's ‘To The End' boomed out of the speakers. We were surrounded by people who'd had enough of the cava to be first on their feet, singing along lustily.

‘There should've been another question …'

‘I'm sorry?' Ben mouthed, turning his head to me.

‘Another question. About my feelings. Last night! When you asked if I was still in love with Rhys …' I put my fingers in my ears to block out Damon Albarn and tune in Ben.

‘What's that?' he said, squinting in confusion.

‘Let's go somewhere quieter!' I bellowed.

‘All right.'

‘I'm sorry,' I mouthed, succinctly. Finally, Ben lip-read one line at least.

‘I want to say something to you too,' he shouted, shaking his head.

A smile. He was
smiling.
For one shining moment, it was going to be OK. I moved closer to grab his hand again and felt his arm loop round my waist. He tucked my hair behind my right ear and swung in to say something, close. I felt the heat of his breath on my neck and I shivered, closed my eyes.

What happened next seemed to go in slow motion, and not in the anticipated, exultant, moving in for a disco-ball light scattered
, reader I married him, roll credits
movie kiss way. I felt Ben pull back. I opened my eyes. He'd seen something over my shoulder and the smile slipped off his face, the arm from my body.

I turned to see Rhys advancing on us, in a tux, beaming from ear to ear. It was Rhys, as an un-Rhys-like, Big Band member imposter. He'd even attempted to tame and flatten his hair into something parted and Rat Pack slick. I looked back to Ben. Rhys reached us.

‘Ta dah!' Rhys said, spreading his hands out at either side, like a magician showing me he had nothing up his sleeves.

Ben folded his arms, looked from me to him. Waited. Waited for words that, had they come, would've been barely audible, but still would've been better than nothing.

‘Alright mate? Not cutting in, am I?!' Rhys hollered, with a
ha-ha-as-if
intonation.

Ben didn't answer, looked to me, jaw clenched.

‘No!' I said, as reflex response, a placeholder while I worked out how the hell to handle this. ‘But, uhm … Ben and I were just … We've just …'
Done it and declared ourselves?

Before I could say anything else, Rhys shouted: ‘C'meeeeere babe!' bundling me into a coercive, bear-hug version of a waltz.

‘Wait, wait!' I felt like I was drowning, gulping for oxygen in a crush of musty black poly-cotton and Issey Miyake for Men and blind panic. ‘Rhys! Stop!'

‘Whazza matter?'

When I disentangled myself, Ben was nowhere to be seen. And he was going to stay that way for ten years.

Two weeks after the St Ann's Square massacre, I receive an invitation from Ben to go for a post-work drink.

‘Dear lord,' Ben says, as I walk up to him outside the Royal Exchange. ‘You're only a minute or two late. Allowing for a margin of inaccuracy with my watch, you might even be on time. Have you got any explanation for this?'

‘My desire for a drink?' I say.

‘I feel like I should fire a confetti cannon.' He gives me a sidelong smile as we set off.

‘I have a lot of ground to make up.'

‘Don't be daft.'

‘You didn't want to go to the film with Olivia and Lucy?'

I'd noticed Ben had felt the need to explain why Olivia couldn't come too. I had my suspicions she might've lined up slightly differently to Ben in the Hurricane Simon vs Wretched Rachel wrestling match.

‘You wouldn't get me to the film they're going to unless you strapped me on a gurney and stuck a syringe in my arm.
He's My Man
, or something.
She's That Girl
.
Where's My Brain
?'

‘There's quite an Oscar buzz around
Where's My Brain
!'

‘Flies buzzing round it, more like.'

We laugh.

‘How about here?' I say on impulse, as we pass a promising doorway, and as soon as we walk inside I know it's a lucky discovery. Battered wooden chairs and tables painted in mismatched colours, guttering tea lights, art college waitresses, framed vintage film posters on the walls – the whole hipster package.

We take a seat underneath
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
and Ben gets the drinks, Belgian beer in brown glass bottles. He shrugs the discreetly showy-offy grey coat on to his chair and I try not to gaze at how the oily face and greasy hair that afflict the entire office-based population by six p.m. only serve to make Ben look kind of James-Bond-after-high-stakes-baccarat-with-arms-dealers-in-Montenegro. Good bone structure, I think, makes dishevelment look raffish. I spent ten frantic minutes with my make-up bag in the work loos, painting eyes in and lips back on, like decorating a hardboiled egg.

I tentatively inquire after Simon, as Ben rolls up his shirtsleeves and I ignore his forearms. When did I become a drooling pervert? (
Too late
, I hear Rhys say.)

He replies, curtly: ‘You're not the first female he's accused of ruining his life and you won't be the last. Don't give it any more thought.'

I take a sharp breath and prepare to tell Ben the whole truth, the one I couldn't risk telling Simon. This is my high stakes gamble. I knew on the way here I was going to do it and that many people would think it's lunacy. I can hear Caroline's ghostly scream to
Shut. The. Hell. Upppppp …
Thing is, I don't want Ben to stick up for me because I've lied to him, too. Ben's decision to defend me doesn't mean anything until he has the facts.

‘Ben,' I say, ‘if I tell you something else about the Natalie Shale affair, will you promise not to go wappy and tell Simon?'

He looks wary.

‘Is this some new lid-blowing fact that's going to change everything? I can do without any more surprises.'

‘It's the full unexpurgated truth about how Zoe got the story.'

His glass hovers in hand, halfway to his lips. He sets it back down.

‘Please tell me you didn't do the splitting the cash thing?'

‘No, I wasn't involved in her selling it, like I said.'

‘What then? Don't tell me something I don't want to be told.'

‘I had absolutely no part in using it as a story or Zoe going to the nationals and if I had known about it, I'd have done everything I could to stop her. Does that help?'

Ben looks undecided.

‘Promise you won't tell Simon?' I say.

‘It helps your cause that I don't want to get him more wound up. Now you've gone this far you better tell me.'

I explain. Then I hold my breath.

Ben studies my face while he absorbs this information. ‘She took it and ran with it behind your back?'

‘Yes. I swear.'

‘Why didn't you do the story?'

‘It wasn't fair. I thought about it. I couldn't be that hard-faced.'

‘Yet you're hard-faced enough to read other people's texts and gossip about the contents?'

‘I know. Tell me I'm scum, I deserve it.'

Ben exhales.

‘Why are you telling me this at all?'

‘You were so kind to me and I don't want to lie to you.'
I want your absolution, above all. I can withstand everything else if I have that
. ‘I couldn't tell Simon because he would've lost me my job over it and I have rent to pay. It's not right but there it is. I'm so sorry for the trouble it's caused you, Ben. I wanted to do a good job. I can't tell you how ashamed I feel. This is my proper apology, from the heart.'

Ben exhales some more and looks longingly toward the door. For a moment I think he's going to say
I'm outta here, lady.

‘Wooh boy …'

‘Will it get irritating if I keep saying sorry?'

‘You shouldn't have gone through her phone or told another journalist about it. Intentional or not, you do appear to have been the Big Bang event for a world of shit.'

‘I know.'

‘However, you could've got a big story out of it. You didn't. Because of the effect it would have on other people's lives, not because it wouldn't benefit yours. True?'

‘True.'

‘Then what we've identified is a scruple. You officially have a scruple.'

I give a wry, grateful laugh, faith in Ben's generosity once more vindicated: ‘Scruple, singular.'

‘It's a start.'

The bar's playing Ella Fitzgerald, we still have near-full drinks. I'm more at peace with the universe than I was before we arrived, that's for sure.

‘You took a risk telling me that,' he says, considering me over his glass. ‘Can I take a risk in return, with the same complete trust that it goes no further?'

I feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. ‘Of course.'

‘This never, ever makes it to your colleagues, on pain of death. This stays between us, in this place, right now, and never leaves. Promise me, Rachel.'

I'm rapt. ‘I promise.'

‘You better keep your word, else I'll call Simon and tell him about the text.'

‘Absolutely. Understood. Rely on my instincts of self-preservation instead of honour.'

‘Safer.' He lowers his voice. ‘I heard that, in pillow talk, Natalie told Jonathan she lied to give her husband an alibi.'

My jaw drops. ‘Why would he need a false alibi?'

‘Why do people usually need false alibis?'

‘Lucas Shale's
guilty
?' I stage-whisper back, incredulous.

‘I don't know. I honestly don't.'

‘But he's going to be cleared on appeal. Everyone thinks he's innocent. I was sure he was innocent.'

Ben shrugs. ‘This can't ever reach the ears of the partners. If it's true, it's major, major stuff that Jonathan let the firm carry on representing Shale. Career ending.'

‘Hasn't the affair shot his career anyway?'

‘No. Only because Natalie wasn't the client. He's had a serious rap on the knuckles and a cosmetic sacking, with the chance of being quietly re-hired in London when it's all blown over.'

‘Shit.'

‘It's better than being struck off.'

‘I guess Natalie and Jonathan aren't still in touch then? If he's going to London?'

Ben shakes his head. ‘Doubt it.' Pause. ‘Still, makes it less likely they're going to confer about that text and figure out your involvement, eh?'

I cringe. ‘That wasn't why I was asking.'

‘I know you weren't, only teasing. You don't worry about your interests enough, in my opinion.'

I'd hoped Ben, with his generosity of spirit, might forgive me. How he's finding things to praise, well – I have no idea why he always sees the best in me. There's a reflective pause that elongates into a comfortable, beer-sipping silence. I look at the lights from the candles throwing patterns on the windows, take in the room. A pretty waitress with hair in an unwinding bun, a pencil jammed horizontally through it, gives me a ‘
Nice couple
' warm look. I return it with a ‘
If only you knew
' smile.

‘It's great we've been able to do this, isn't it?' Ben says, eventually. ‘You and me being friends again, I mean. All these years later.'

‘It's amazing. Just picked up where we left off,' I say, without thinking.

‘Not exactly where we left off,' Ben says, raising an eyebrow.

‘No, not exactly … uh …'

Conversation stalls. Ella is over. Our now-uncomfortable silence filled with a horrendous emo cover of The Pretenders's ‘Brass in Pocket'.

Ben knocks back some of his drink and I expect a brisk subject change. Instead he looks me in the eye.

‘Why did you sleep with me? I mean, I did work out why, but I might as well have it confirmed, after all this time.'

His steady, sardonic expression and slight smile unnerves me. I can see he's thinking I don't know how to gift-wrap an ugly truth. Instead I'm thinking of all the things I could say that I'm not going to say to a married man.