You Had Me at Hello (7 page)

Yet while I'm gazing at him and feeling my insides liquefy, he's chatting to the middle-aged lady serving the coffees, totally normally and unperturbed. To me, this is a monumental event. To him, I am a historical footnote. This huge disparity spells huge trouble. If this was a fairytale, I'd be staring with unquenchable thirst at a bottle labelled POISON. For now, it's going to taste like milky coffee.

As Ben returns and sets my cup down, he says: ‘No sugar, right?'

I nod, delighted he retains such trivia. Then I spot a new and non-trivial detail about him – a simple silver band on the third finger of his left hand. It was absolutely bound to be the case, I told myself that many times, and yet I still feel as if I've been slapped.

‘You know, Italians only have cappuccinos in the morning. It's a breakfast drink,' I blurt, for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

‘Something you learned on your course?' Ben asks, pleasantly.

‘Er. Yes.' Here's the point where fortune farts in my face and Ben's wife turns out to be half-Italian. He rattles out some lyrical phrases, and I have to pretend I'm only on my first few lessons. Ben's
wife.

‘Have you been in a cryogenic chamber since uni?' Ben continues. ‘You look exactly the bloody same. It's a little freaky.'

I'm relieved I don't look raddled, and try not to blush disproportionately at an implied compliment. ‘No ageing sunlight penetrates courtrooms.'

‘Same apart from your hair, of course,' he adds, gesturing the shorter length with a chopping motion of his hand at his neck. It was longer, at university, then I got a more businesslike on-shoulders 'do after a few occasions in court when I was mistaken for the girlfriend of a defendant.

I tuck a strand behind my ear, self-consciously: ‘Oh, yeah.'

‘Suits you,' he says, lightly.

‘Thank you. You look well, too.' I take a sharp breath. ‘So, tell me all about your life. Married, two point four kids, belter of a pension plan?'

‘Married, yes,' Ben says.

‘Fantastic!' I make sure every last syllable sounds robustly delighted. ‘Congratulations.'

‘Thank you. Olivia and I celebrated our two-year anniversary last month.'

The name gives me a twinge. All the Sloaney-I've-got-a-pony girls on our course were called things like Olivia and Tabitha and Veronica and we used to take arms against them in our non-posh gang of two. And he traitorously married one of them. I momentarily wish I had a Toby to wield in retaliation.

‘Well done,' I waffle on. ‘Did you have the big white production?'

‘Urgh, no,' Ben shudders. ‘Registry office at Marylebone. We hired an old Routemaster and had posh shepherd's pie wedding breakfast in a room above a pub. A nice one, I mean, Liv chose it. All idyllic with kids running round in the garden afterwards, we had great weather.'

I nod and he suddenly looks self-conscious.

‘Bit cliché, trendified Chas'n'Dave, Beefeater London, I guess, but we liked it.'

‘Sounds great.' It does sound great. And cool, and romantic. I don't care what the bride wore or want to see the album though. All right, I do.

‘Yeah, it was. No faceless hotel, DJ with a fake American accent, three million relatives glumly picking at a duff carvery that cost three million quid, none of that rubbish.'

‘That's only a quid per head budget. Quite tight really.'

Ben smiles, distractedly, and I see the wheels turning, him remembering things that have nothing to do with this weak joke, things he's not going to mention.

For a split second, sensing his discomfort, I marvel at my own masochism. Did I really want to sit here listening to how he promised all his remaining days to someone else? Couldn't I have taken that as a given? Did I want to discover a broken man? No. I wanted him to be happy and it was also going to be the thing that hurt the most. That's the reason this was such a bad idea
. One
of the reasons
.

We sip our coffees. I discreetly wipe my mouth in case of chocolate powder moustache.

He continues: ‘Kids, not yet. Pension, yes, really cuts into my having-fun fund.'

‘Still able to spend harder than Valley girls?'

I remember days trailing round clothes shops with Ben, waiting outside changing rooms, enjoying the gender reversal. He even took my advice on what to buy – it was like having my old Ken doll become self-aware. (‘Not that self-aware if he's behaving like a southern poof,' Rhys said.)

‘Oh yes,' Ben says. ‘I have to hide the bags from Liv as principal earner. It's emasculating. What about you? Married?' He picks up his spoon and stirs his coffee, although he didn't add any sugar, and drops his gaze momentarily. ‘To Rhys?'

If we were hooked up to polygraphs, the line would've got squigglier.

‘Engaged for a while. We've just split up actually.'

Ben looks genuinely appalled. Great, we skipped schadenfreude and went straight to abject pity. ‘God, sorry.'

‘Thanks. It's OK.'

‘You should've stopped me going on about weddings.'

‘I asked. It's fine.'

‘Is that why you're moving?'

‘Yeah,' I nod.

‘No kids?'

‘No.'

‘That's funny, I was sure you would have, for some reason,' Ben says, unguardedly. ‘A little girl with her mother's attitude problems, and the same stupid mittens.'

He gives me a small smile and looks into his cup again. The warmth of this – the reference to something obscure that only we'd understand, the fact it reveals he's thought about me – prompts me to emit a small, strangled noise that approximates a giggle. Then, in a moment, it drenches me with sadness. Like my chest cavity is full of rainwater.

We avoid each other's eyes and move on. Ben tells me about the law firm he's joined, how his wife's also a solicitor. She got transferred from her London practice to their Manchester office so she could be up here with him. They met at a Law Society dinner. The crowded room, black tie. The scene plays in my head like a trailer for a Richard Curtis film I most definitely don't want to see.

He concludes, jokily: ‘If I'm a solicitor and you're a court reporter, perhaps we shouldn't be speaking?'

‘Depends. What department are you in?'

‘Family.'

‘Divorce settlements, that kind of thing?'

‘Yeah, access arrangements. Sometimes grim. Other times, if you can get the right outcome, grim satisfaction.'

I understand why he'd want to work in that area, and he knows I know, so I nod. ‘I think there'd be more of a conflict in talking to a reporter if you were in criminal.'

‘Couldn't take the hours. The friend who got me the job up here is in criminal. He's on call all the time, it's punishing. Actually, he was saying he wants to talk to the press about a case. Shall I give him your name?'

‘Of course,' I say, eager to please and forge a connection.

We get to the end of one coffee and, despite my offer to buy the second, Ben checks his watch and says he'd love to but he probably ought to be going.

‘Yeah, me too, now you mention it,' I lie, twisting my watch round and glancing at it without looking at the time.

Ben waits solicitously as I pull my coat on. I hope he's not noticing the stone I've gained since university. (‘Stone,' Rhys used to snort. ‘A stone weighing thirty pounds? Did I miss the latest barmy Brussels directive?')

We walk outside together.

‘It's great to see you, Rachel. I can't believe it's been ten years, it's incredible.'

‘Yeah, unbelievable,' I agree.

‘We should keep in touch. Me and Liv don't know many people up here. You can tell us where's good to go out in Manchester these days.'

‘I'd love to!'
Like I know. ‘I'll get Caroline, Mindy and Ivor out, too.'

‘Wow, you still see them?'

‘Yeah. I see them all the time.'

‘That's really nice,' Ben nods, yet I feel it's another example of my decade-long stasis, as if I sit around in a moth-eaten Miss Havisham graduation ballgown, listening to a crackly recording of Pulp's “Disco 2000”. ‘I'll let you know about that story, too. What's your number?'

Ben keys it in while I try to remember the numbers in the right sequence, awash with adrenaline.

He checks his watch again: ‘Crap, I'm late. What about you? Need walking to your stop?'

‘It's only round the corner, I'll be fine, go.'

‘Sure?'

‘Yes, thanks.'

‘See you soon, Rachel. I'll call you.'

He ducks down and pecks me on the cheek. I hold my breath in the shock of the contact and the brush and warmth of his skin against mine. Then there's a horrifically awkward moment when he unexpectedly goes for the other cheek too in that media London/sophisticated European way. I don't expect it and we nearly bump faces, so I have to put my hand on his shoulder to steady myself and then panic it looks too forward, over-correcting by leaping backwards.

‘See you!' I say, though what I really want to do is re-run the action without me being such a gauche fool, in the manner of a bossy child directing a play in their front room. ‘Right, you stand there, I am here again … Go!'

I walk to my stop in a semi-trance-like state, cartoon stars circling round my head, the two recently kissed places on my face burning. There's the illicit rush at seeing him – and he asked to see me again! – combined with the spirit-flattening confirmation that his life's shiny and joyful and functional and mine isn't.

An hour after I get home, when the fixed grin has faded and I'm watching the old telly in the spare room, I let tears fall. Once the dam has cracked, there's a deluge. Married. Happily. Olivia
. What's even in a posh shepherd's pie?

I feel as if I've woken up after a coma, been jolted back to life by a favourite song. I'm not sure I like the view from my bed. The experience of meeting Ben again is the very definition of the word bittersweet.

Then two very clear questions form in the tears, snot and inner maelstrom: how am I going to feel if he doesn't call? And what good's going to come of it if he does?

I don't ask Rhys to borrow the car so I can move my things because I know he'll want to use the car to be nowhere near the house on the day I leave.

The evening before last, I was coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around my body and another around my head. I was moving quickly because any extra amount of skin on show feels inappropriate, post-separation. Rhys charged up the stairs. I thought he was going to dodge past, or argue about the cavalier use of the hot water, but he stopped in front of me, looked me in the eye. His eyes were unexpectedly moist.

‘Stay,' he said, thickly.

I thought I'd misheard. It sunk in.

‘I can't,' I blurt.

He nodded, not even angry, or resentful. He galloped back down the stairs and left me standing on the landing, shivering. Turns out the consequences of a huge decision don't all tumble down at once like opening an over-full cupboard; they keep hitting you in waves.

When I tell Caroline I'm going to hire a removal van, she asks what I'm taking with me and decides it can be done in a few runs in her car. She turns up early on a Saturday to find me, lightly sweaty, standing in a hallway crammed with everything I own that's portable. It feels strangely like leaving for university, only with bleak despair where all the bright hope used to be.

Rhys went for Mindy's plan about the furniture. I saw the thought scroll across his face – ‘Screw making life easier for her' – then imagining those flat-bed-truck-style trolleys in IKEA, and he grunted his agreement. So it's clothes, books, DVDs, a surprisingly huge haul of bathroom toiletries, and then ‘odds and sods', a category which sounds like it should be the smallest but turns out to be the largest. Photo albums, plants, accessories, pictures … I've been scrupulously fair whenever encountering something the house only has one of – hot water bottle, mop bucket, cafetiere, engagement ring – and left it for Rhys.

Caroline casts an appraising eye over the junk and decides it's two journeys, three at a pinch. We start heaping it into the back of her Audi saloon and, with the back seats folded down and some determined pushing, we make decent in-roads.

‘Definitely two journeys,' Caroline concludes, as I lock the front door, saying what I'm thinking, minus the part about how much I'm dreading coming back for the next and last time.

We set off, me blithely chattering about the flat to distract from the inner turmoil, Caroline casting worried glances at me whenever she can take her line of sight off the road.

‘We don't have to go, you know. If you've changed your mind …' she starts, and I bite my lip hard and furiously shake my head to indicate
please, not now.

Caroline pats my knee and asks about the route. When we arrive at the flat, I'm grateful for all the tasks – paying the car-parking meter, unlocking the flat, running relays with armfuls of clutter – to occupy me. Eventually it's all piled up and time to collect the rest. I deep breathe and blow the air out as if I'm an athlete limbering up for a feat of exertion.

Back at my house, or what used to be my house, the rest of the packing is completed in minutes.

I can't go yet. I can't. I sit down on the front door step and try to gather myself, instead I feel myself unravelling. A bit of a sniffle turns into whole-body sobbing and I feel Caroline's hand on my shaking shoulder.

When I pull my messy face back up from my knees I say, through all the liquid that's leaving my body via my eyes, mouth and nose, ‘I don't have anything to sleep in.'

‘What do you mean?' Caroline asks, crouching down in front of me. ‘Rupa's got a bed, hasn't she?'