The Night That Changed Everything (7 page)

‘Of course it's a big deal,' says Jamie, patting Ben's shoulder then mine. ‘You can have those drinks on the house.'

‘You were going to charge us for these?' asks Ben.

‘Thank goodness for that,' Danielle says to no one in particular. ‘When she texted saying the house hunt was horrendous, I was worried I'd be stuck with her for ever.' Then to me: ‘Nice one, Becs. So will you stay in the flat?'

‘We haven't really discussed it,' I admit, looking at Ben.

‘Yeah,' he agrees. ‘This is pretty much breaking news you walked into. Might make sense until I can save a bit more towards a deposit.'

‘Will Russ and Tom mind?' I ask.

‘Nah, it was just the two of them there before I moved in – they were doing me a favour, to be honest. I can move in as soon as Danielle can get out.'

‘No need to sound so excited about it,' says Danielle, giving Ben a shove. ‘But I can move any time. Next weekend if you want?'

‘That'd be perfect,' I say, then seeing Danielle pout, add: ‘I mean, that'll be really sad.'

‘I want tears!'

‘I'll be crying on the inside,' I promise.

‘Let's do that, then,' says Ben, clapping his hands together. ‘That's just before our anniversary.'

‘He's taking me away on a surprise,' I tell the others, before turning to Ben, who's still grinning. I grin back.

‘Do you have seven hundred pounds to give Danielle for her deposit?' I ask.

‘Yeah.' He lowers his voice. ‘We'll also need a new dining table.'

‘Definitely.' I chuckle. ‘And a new sofa, come to think of it – that's Danielle's too.'

‘And a new bed.' He turns to the others, looking smug. ‘The springs have gone on Rebecca's old one.'

‘Yep, it never really recovered from my student days,' I say, trying not to smile.

Jamie pats Ben's back sympathetically. ‘And on that note, I'll get back to work.'

There's a gaggle of giggling girls waiting for him at the bar. He's still chatting to one of them when Ben and I finish our drinks and Ben gets up to replenish them. ‘Same again?'

‘Please,' I reply.

‘While you're there,' Danielle yells at Ben's retreating back, ‘tell Jamie to stop flirting with Tidy Tania and make my bloody Mojito.'

She moves up into the space Ben has just vacated to sit next to me.

‘Has Tidy Tania still got a boyfriend?' I wonder aloud.

‘Yep.'

‘That's a shame.'

‘It is, but anyway . . . I can't believe you're moving in with a boy.' Her tone is disapproving but her smile tells me she's teasing.

‘We lived with Jamie for years,' I remind her.

‘You know what I mean. A
boy
boy.' I do know what she means. ‘Are you scared?'

‘Nah, I'm excited. It's Ben. It'll be easy.'

‘How do you know Ben's The One?'

It's not a question I was expecting, and I nearly shrug and say
I don't know
, or quip that I'm still deciding whether he is or not. But something about Danielle's tone and the sad way she keeps glancing at her mobile on the table makes me reconsider. She's opening up. We don't do it often – not because we don't trust each other, just because we don't feel the need to. But if she's showing me her vulnerable side, I'll show her mine.

‘And don't be a prick and say,
You just know
,' she adds scornfully when I open my mouth to reply.

‘I wasn't going to say that!' I protest. I was totally going to say that.

So I give it more thought, searching for an answer in the bottom of the empty glass I'm still holding. How do I know Ben's The One?

I don't know how to explain the way I feel when Ben looks at me. Like everything around me just disappears. And it doesn't sound enough to say it's because of how much we laugh together, and how everything turns into an adventure, even if it's a game of Scrabble on a rainy day.

‘Got it,' I say finally, with a decisive finger snap. ‘They find your faults endearing.'

Danielle looks sceptical, so I continue . . .

‘Like, you know how you always moan that I'm a bit messy?'

‘A total slovenly slut.'

‘Whatever. It annoys you I'm not as tidy as you, but Ben doesn't mind. He thinks it's cute.'

‘Cute? Seriously?'

It's true. When I'm at Ben's, he laughs in bemusement at the discovery of my left shoe in the middle of the living room, when he's already picked up the right one from the hall floor. And after breakfast at Dad's last Sunday he walked into the kitchen while I was trying to force the door shut on the overflowing dishwasher. I was groaning in frustration, so he wrapped his arms around me and kissed my creased forehead, telling me I was adorable when I was angry. Then he emptied the clumsily loaded machine, smiling and shaking his head at the same time as he scraped the food off the plates, before systematically reloading it.

‘Seriously. And I know I break his balls about him being such a softie, but it's one of the things I love most about him. Did he tell you about the donkey he's adopted in Ireland, by the way?'

‘Is its name Shane?'

I snort. ‘I wouldn't mind but he's already got an elephant in India, a tiger in Malaya and a child in Africa.'

‘Soppy sod.'

‘Totally. But you know what?' I lower my voice even though Ben is way out of earshot over at the bar. ‘I think I knew he was The One that first night I met him in here.'

A cloud passes over Danielle's face and I mentally kick myself. That was the night that she and Shane broke up.

When she got in the next morning I'd started banging on about Ben and giving Jamie the napkin, but she barely said a word. I'd never seen her like that – it really hit her hard this time.

Danielle sighs and smiles. ‘You guys are dead lucky, Rebecca – you know that?'

‘Not as lucky as whoever you end up with,' I say. ‘And that's not Shane. It'll be someone way more special than Shane.'

‘You think?' she says, picking up her phone and glancing at the screen.

‘Yes,' I insist. ‘He'll have to be pretty special if he's going to find your singing endearing. And you'll only recognize him when he comes along if you get Shane out of your head.'

‘He's not in my head. I'm, like, totally over him.'

‘Then delete his number.'

‘I can't,' she says, like I asked her to poke her own eye out.

‘I can.' I grab her mobile.

‘No!'

‘Why?' I hold it in the air.

‘Because I . . . I might . . . I should . . . Oh, fine! Do it.'

I press some buttons and a few seconds later, Shane is erased.

‘That's fine,' she says. ‘I don't care. Not. A. Bit.'

She drums her long fingernails on the table top in a show of indifference.

‘I've never seen you look so devastated.'

‘That's about not living with you after the weekend. Nothing to do with Shane.'

‘Danielle?' I say, playing with a coaster and feeling my cheeks redden. Why am I so crap at this? I can't even have a sentimental moment with my best friend without feeling like a dick. ‘You know I'll miss you, right? I love living with you. I know I sound excited about living with Ben but I'm really sad too, that we won't be living together any more.'

‘Oh, Rebecca,' she cries, shifting right up next to me so she can wrap her arms around me and squeeze me so hard that I wouldn't be able to get my arms free to reciprocate the hug even if I wanted to.

‘I know you're not enjoying this,' she mumbles into my shoulder. ‘Neither am I. But this is what girls do, so get on board.'

Neither Danielle nor I are touchy-feelers; it's one of the reasons we work.

‘For the love of God, pull yourself together,' I tell her, though I'm smiling.

‘That's OK,' Ben says, appearing with a tray. ‘I've got this. You two just have a cuddle.'

Danielle breaks away to pick up a food menu. She pulls a face. ‘We eating?'

Ben and I pull the same face. If one thing lets this place down, it's the food, but we can feel ourselves settling in for the evening.

‘Or,' I say slowly, ‘when we start to get hungry we could just start ordering cocktails that have fruit on the side.'

‘Yep, that's a better plan,' Danielle agrees, slamming the menu back down. ‘Here comes Jamie.'

‘I meant to ask you guys,' Jamie says, squeezing in my side of the horseshoe booth with a beer while Ben gets in the other end next to Danielle. ‘How'd it go with Padre Giamboni?'

‘Good,' Ben and I say slowly at the same time, our eyes meeting in an unspoken pact not to bring up the slightly wobbly bit of the weekend. It couldn't have gone better otherwise.

‘Rebecca's dad is lovely,' Ben adds.

‘Isn't he?' Danielle says dreamily.

‘Don't do that,' I tell her.

‘I'm just saying, he's a single, eligible man—'

‘No, don't go there,' I warn.

‘And you probably don't realize this because he's your dad but he's really rather—'

‘No, no, no, no, no.' I put my fingers in my ears.

‘And I probably would,' I still hear her say.

‘My dad could do way better than you,' I tell her with a grin, then take a big gulp of whisky. ‘He really liked Ben, though. So did Stefan.'

‘I reckon Stefan fancied me a bit,' says Ben.

‘Stefan fancies Jamie,' I tell him.

Jamie gives a nonchalant shrug. ‘He's only human.'

Sunday, 26 October

‘Happy anniversary, Becs,' I say.

I kiss her as I put down the picnic basket, and together we approach the very edge of the cliff. I was scared of heights when I was little, but I was fine when I went up The Shard with Rebecca, and the London Eye with Russ and Tom, so the queasiness I feel when I peer down at the waves crashing into the foot of the cliff comes as a shock.

‘Shouldn't there be a yellow line or something?' I say. ‘Like at train stations, to stop you getting too close?'

‘Why did you bring me to Beachy Head if you're scared of heights?'

I ignore her mocking eyes and open my arms for her to walk into.

‘I'm not scared of heights,' I tell her. ‘And I brought you here because I've seen the way you look at the painting in your bedroom.'

‘
Our
bedroom,' she corrects, nuzzling herself into me. ‘It looks exactly like the picture, doesn't it? The lighthouse, everything.'

Sensing that she's having a moment, I swallow my nausea and stand with her for several minutes.

‘Come on,' she finally says.

I unfurl a blanket and start unloading the food while a cloud the size of Russia shoves itself in front of the sun.

‘Do you want my coat?' I say, gesturing for her to sit.

‘I'm fine.' She follows my instruction, crossing her legs. ‘Thanks, though.'

‘I know October isn't exactly perfect picnic weather.'

‘Don't worry, I'm warm-blooded,' she says. ‘And this
is
perfect. If it was sunnier we wouldn't have the place to ourselves.'

We make light work of the sandwiches I've prepared – half BLT, half cheese and pickle, the whole lot cut into quarter triangles – and wash them down with black coffee (Becs) and tea (me) from the flasks I bought especially.

‘Had you been looking for someone?' Rebecca says, batting away strands of hair that the wind has swept across her face.

‘What do you mean?'

‘A year ago, before we got together – had you been looking for someone?'

I go to read her expression but it's illegible.

‘I guess I was always looking for some
thing
,' I say.

She places her palms on the turf behind her and leans back in anticipation.

‘I spent my life jumping from obsession to obsession,' I say, ‘trying to work out what the point of everything was.'

She bites her bottom lip at one side, trying not to smirk, a mannerism I've become very familiar with over the past year.

‘That's why I went travelling after uni,' I say, following the slow progress of the meteorological Russia with my eyes. ‘I thought I'd find whatever it was, and I had the best time, but sometimes . . .'

A gust of wind causes me to shiver and now her smirk does come. ‘Do you want
my
coat?' she says, raising her voice to compensate for the breeze.

‘Oh, get stuffed.'

‘Sorry, carry on . . .'

‘I forgot where I was now.'

‘I think you were looking for something.'

‘Ta,' I say sarcastically. ‘So, yeah, sometimes I found myself looking at some ancient ruins or a palace or whatever and it was like I was playing the
part
of an awestruck tourist. It didn't feel much different from looking at the photos on Google.' I laugh. ‘I came back with even less idea what the point of everything was than when I left.'

‘This feels like when you ask someone with limited English a question and they answer a completely different one.'

‘Except instead of just smiling and nodding politely, you're taking the piss.'

Rebecca nods unashamedly.

‘I am answering the question, though,' I say. ‘Because I was still wondering what the point was when I turned up at Jamie's that night.'

Rebecca goes for some more coffee but it's all gone. I reach into my inside coat pocket and produce a hip flask full of her favourite whisky.

She thanks me with a squint.

‘Continue,' she says after taking a swig.

I look out to the sea in an attempt to re-find my muse.

‘That night was like the story of Christopher Columbus,' I say. ‘He was actually on his way to Asia, trying to find a better route from Europe than the arduous journey across land, when he stumbled on an island in the Bahamas. That's how he discovered America.'