You Had Me at Hello (6 page)

Eventually, after a lot of giggling, whispering and twenty-pence pieces, Rhys strode casually over to my table.

‘A woman of your taste deserves to be bought a drink.'

In a moment of sangfroid I've never since equalled, I found the words: ‘A man of your taste deserves to pay.'

My friends gasped, Rhys laughed, I had a Malibu and lemonade and a welcome for me and mine to join the corner of the pub they'd colonised. I couldn't believe it, but Rhys seemed genuinely interested in me. The dynamic from then on was very much his man of the world to my wide-eyed ingénue. Later I'd ask him why he'd pursued me that night.

‘You were the prettiest girl in the place,' he said. ‘And I had a lot of pocket shrapnel.'

There was a knock at my bedroom door and Caroline was up and over to answer it in a flash.

‘Sorry. Wrong room,' I heard a male voice say.

‘No, right room,' Caroline trilled, throwing the door open wider so Ben could see me, and vice versa.

‘Ah,' Ben said, smiling. ‘I know there were a lot of freshers and cards yesterday but I was sure you weren't blonde.'

Caroline simpered at him, trying to work out if this meant he preferred blondes or not. He looked at me, obviously wondering why I was the colour of a prawn and whether I was going to do introductions.

‘Caroline, Ben, Ben, Caroline,' I said. ‘Shall we get going?'

Ben said ‘Hi' and Caroline twittered ‘Hello!' and I wondered if I wanted The First Person I'd Met In Halls to get it on with The First Person I'd Met On My Course. I had a suspicion I didn't, on the basis it'd be tricky for me if it went badly and lonely for me if it went well.

‘Enjoy your day,' Caroline said, with a hint of sexy languor that seemed at odds with it being breakfast time, trailing out of my door and back to her room.

I grabbed my bag and locked my door. We'd almost cleared the corridor without incident when Caroline called after me.

‘Oh, and Rachel, that thing we were discussing before? Acceptable wasn't the right adjective. If you're studying English, you should know that!'

‘Bye Caroline!' I bellowed, feeling my stomach shoot down to my shoes.

‘What's that about?' Ben asked.

‘Nothing,' I muttered, thinking I didn't need the bloody blusher.

Surveying the Live-Aid-sized crowds milling around for the buses, Ben suggested we walk the mile to the university buildings. We kicked through yellow-brown leaf mulch as traffic rumbled past on Oxford Road, filling in the biographical gaps – where we were from, what A-levels we did, family, hobbies, miscellaneous.

Ben, a south Londoner, grew up with his mum and younger sister, his dad having done a bunk when he was ten years old. By the time we'd passed the building that looks like a giant concrete toast rack, I knew that he broke his leg falling off a wall, aged twelve. He spent so long laid up he'd had enough of daytime telly and read everything in the house, all the Folio Society classics and even his mum's Catherine Cooksons, in desperation, before bribing his sister to go to the library for him. A splintered fibia became the bedrock of his enthusiasm for literature. I didn't tell him that mine came from not being invited out to horse around on walls all that much.

‘You don't sound very northern,' he said, after I'd briefly described my roots.

‘This is a Sheffield accent, what do you expect? I bet you think the north starts at Leicester.'

He laughed. A pause.

‘My boyfriend says I better not come home with a Manc accent,' I added.

‘He's from Sheffield?'

‘Yes.' I couldn't help myself: ‘He's in a band.'

‘Nice one.'

I noticed Ben's respectful sincerity and that he didn't make any cracks about relationships from home lasting as long as fresher flu, and I appreciated it.

‘You're doing the long-distance thing?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Good luck to you. No way could I do that at our age.'

‘No?' I asked.

‘This is the time to play the field and mess about. Don't get me wrong, once I settle down I will be totally settled. But until then …'

‘You'll collect lots of beer mats,' I finished for him, and we grinned.

When we neared the university buildings, Ben got a folded piece of paper with a room plan out of his pocket. I noticed the creases were still sharp, whereas my equivalent was disintegrating like ancient parchment after too many nervous, sweaty-handed unfolding and re-foldings.

‘So, where is registration?' he asked.

We bent our heads over it together, squinting at the fluorescent orange highlighted oblong, trying to orientate ourselves.

Ben rotated it, squinted some more. ‘Any ideas, Ronnie?'

My cheerfulness evaporated and I felt embarrassed. How many women did he meet yesterday?

‘It's Rachel,' I said, stiffly.

‘Always Ronnie to me.'

Our conversation about the stumpy passport photo came back to me and in relief and self-consciousness, I laughed too loudly. He must've seen my moment of uncertainty because there was a touch of relief in his laughter, too.

The best friendships usually steal up on you, you don't remember their start point. But there was a definitive click at that moment that told me we weren't going to politely peel apart as soon as we'd signed in and copied down our timetables.

I referred to the map again and as I leaned in I could smell the citrusy tang of whatever he'd washed with. I pointed confidently at a window.

‘There. Room C 11.'

Needless to say, I was wrong, and we were late.

Hope has leaked out of me, collected in a puddle at my feet and evaporated into the roof of Central Library, joining the collective human misery cloud in the earth's atmosphere. No Ben, only the unavoidable evidence of how much I wanted to see him. On reflection, I'm not even sure Caroline wasn't mistaken. She wears contacts and has started doing that middle-aged thing of not being able to tell the girls from the boys if they're goths.

If Ben
was
here, it was only a flying visit for some obscure research purposes, and now he's back in his well-appointed home, far, far away. Putting his Paul Smith doctor's bag down in a black-and-white tiled hallway, leafing through his mail, calling out a hello to the equally high-powered honey he's come home to. Blissfully unaware that a woman he used to know is such a pathetic mess she's sitting a hundred and eighty miles away constantly re-reading the line: ‘
Excuse me, which way to the Spanish Steps?
' in a bid to appear complicated and alluring.

I get out of my seat for a wander around the room, trying to look deeply cerebrally preoccupied and steeped in learning. The toffee-brown parquet floor is so highly polished it shimmers like a mirage. As I trail my fingers along the spines of books, I start as I see a brown-haired, possibly thirty-something man with his back to me. He's sitting at a table tucked between the bookcases that line the edge of the room, so if you had an aerial view, they would look like the spokes inside a wheel.

It's him. It's him. Oh my God,
it's him
.

My heart's pulsing so hard it's as if someone medically qualified has reached through my sawn ribs to squeeze it in a resuscitation attempt. I wander down past his seat and pretend to find a book of special interest as I draw level with his table. I pull it out and study it. In an unconvincing way, I pivot round absent-mindedly while I'm reading, so I'm facing him. It's so unsubtle I might as well have shot a paper plane over to him and ducked. I risk a glance. The man looks up at me, adjusts rimless glasses.

It's not him. A rucksack with neon flashes is propped near his feet, his trouser hems are circled with bicycle clips. I sag at the realisation that this must be who Caroline's seen, too, and decide to gather my things. I pack up in seconds, no longer bothering to look appealing, on the final gamble that the law of sod will therefore produce him.

I shouldn't have come here. I'm acting out of character and hyper-irrational in the post-traumatic stress of splitting up with Rhys. I don't know what I'd say to Ben or why I'd want to see him. Actually, that's not true. I know why I want to see him but the reasons don't bear examination.

A clutch of people in fleeces and hats, who appear to be being given a guided tour, block my exit from the library. Like an impatient local, I retreat and double back round them
.
Deep in thought, I smack straight into someone coming the other direction.

‘Sorry,' I say.

‘Sorry,' he mutters back, in that reflexive British way where you're apologetic that someone else has had to make an apology.

In order to perform the little tango of manoeuvring past each other, we exchange a distracted glance. There's absolutely no way this man can be Ben. I'd know, I'd sense it if he was this close. I glance at his face anyway. It registers as ‘stranger' then reforms into something familiar, with that oddly dull thud of revelation.

Oh Judas Priest!
There he is.
THERE HE IS! Plucked from my memory and here in the real world, in full colour HD. His hair's slightly longer than the university years' crop but still short enough to be work-smart, and they're unmistakeably his features, the sight of them transporting me back a decade in an instant. And, despite the world's longest ever build-up to a reappearance since Lord Lucan, Caroline's right – he still takes air out of lungs.

He's lost the slightly unformed, baby-fat look we all had back then, sharpening into something even more characterfully handsome. There's a fan of light lines at the corner of each eye, the set of his mouth a little harder. His frame has filled out a little from the youthful lankiness of before.

It's the strangest sensation, looking at someone who I know well and don't know at all, at the same time. He's staring too, although it's the staring Catch-22: he could be staring because I'm staring. For an awful instant, I think either Ben's not going to recognise me or – worse – pretend not to recognise me. But he doesn't take flight. He opens his lips and there's a pause, as if he has to remember how to engage his voice box and soft and hard palates to produce sounds.

‘… Rachel?'

‘Ben?' (Like I haven't given myself an unfair head start in this quiz.)

His brow stays furrowed in disbelief but he smiles, and a wave of relief and joy crashes over me.

‘Oh my God, I don't believe it. How are you?' he says, at a subdued volume, as if our voices are going to carry into the library upstairs.

‘I'm fine,' I squeak. ‘How are you?'

‘I'm fine too. Mildly stunned right now, but otherwise fine.'

We laugh, eyes still wide:
this is crazy.
More than he knows.

‘Surreal,' I agree, feeling my way tentatively back into a familiarity, like stumbling around your bedroom in the pitch dark, trying to remember where everything is. ‘You live in Manchester?' he asks.

‘Yes. Sale. About to move into the centre. You?'

‘Yeah, Didsbury. Moved up from London last month.'

He brandishes a briefcase, like the Chancellor with the Budget.

‘I'm a boring arse lawyer now, would you believe.'

‘Really? You did one of those conversion courses?'

‘No. I blag it. Thought there was a saturation point when I'd seen enough TV dramas, I could go from there. Like
Catch Me If You Can
.'

He's straight faced and I'm so shell-shocked that it takes me a second to process that this is humour.

‘Ah right,' I nod. Then hurriedly: ‘I'm a journalist. Of sorts. Court reporter for the local paper.'

‘I knew you'd be the one to actually use that English degree.'

‘I wouldn't say that. Not much call for opinions on Thomas Hardy when I'm covering the millionth car jacking.'

‘Why are you here?'

I'm startled by this, classic guilty conscience.

‘The library, I mean?' Ben adds.

‘Oh, er, revision for my night class. Learning Italian,' I say, liking how it sounds self-improving even as I cringe at the lie. ‘You?'

‘Exams. Bastard things never end. At least these mean I get paid more.'

The fleecy crowd are pouring round us and I know there's only so long we can conduct this conversation, stood here.

‘Uh. Got time for a coffee?' I blurt, as if it's a mad notion that's popped unbidden into my mind, tense with the fear of seeing him grasp for an excuse.

‘If we've got a decade to cover, we might even need two,' Ben replies, without missing a beat.

I
glow
. Rough-sleepers outside could huddle round me and warm their hands.

We make jittery small talk about revision, both real and fictitious, until we reach the half-empty basement café. He goes to get the coffees, cappuccino for me, filter for him. I sit down at a table, rub my sweaty palms on my dress and watch Ben in the queue.

He digs in his suit trouser pocket for change, under an expensive-looking military-style grey coat. I see he continues to dress as if he's starring in a film about himself. It's completely unnecessary to look like that if you're a solicitor. He should be lounging about in an aftershave advert on a yacht, not navigating ordinary life with the rest of us, showing us all up.

It wasn't so much his looks that always had females falling all over Ben, I realise, though they hardly hindered. He had what I suppose actors call ‘presence'. What Rhys calls
tossing about as if you own the place
. He moves as if the hinges on his joints are looser than everyone else's. Then there's his dry humour: light, quick remarks that are somehow rather unexpected coming from someone so handsome. You're conditioned to expect the beautiful to have less intellect to balance things out.