You Had Me at Hello (10 page)

Half an hour later, my phone starts flashing with a call. Mum, I think. I prepare myself to be falsely positive for five minutes. I check the caller display: unrecognised number.

‘Hi, Rachel?'

I recognise the warm male voice instantly. I go from someone half asleep at six in the evening to the most awake person in the whole of Manchester.
He called! He doesn't hate me! He didn't lie!
Adrenaline shot with endorphin chaser.

‘Hi!'

‘Are you OK?'

‘I'm fine!'

‘It's Ben.'

‘Hello, Ben!' I say this in a voice that people usually reserve for ‘Hello, Cleveland!'

‘Are you sure you're OK? You sound a bit odd.'

‘I am, I was – I was …' Christ, I don't want to admit I've been asleep this afternoon, like an eighty-two year old ‘… having a lie down.'

‘Ah. Right. I see.' Ben sounds embarrassed and I sense he thinks I mean some sort of afternoon singleton lie down, with company. ‘I'll call back.'

‘No!' I virtually shout. ‘Honestly. I'm fine. How are you? It's weird you called now, I was just thinking about you.'

Mouth, open. Foot: placed inside.

‘All good things I hope,' Ben says, awkwardly.

‘Of course!' I squeal, with the ongoing note of hysteria.

‘Uhm, I wanted to see if you wanted to meet my colleague after work one night next week to discuss this story?'

‘Yes, that'd be great.'

‘Thursday? I'll come along, if that's OK?'

‘Totally fine.' Totally, amazingly, wonderfully fine.

‘He's all right, Simon, but he's a bit full of himself. Don't let him take any liberties if he starts up about the evils of the press.'

‘I'm sure I can give as good as I get.'

‘So am I,' Ben laughs. ‘Right, I'll email a time and a place at the start of the week.'

‘Great.'

‘Have a nice weekend. I'll let you get back to your lie down.'

‘I'm standing up now, think I'll stay that way.'

‘Whatever works best.'

We say a stilted goodbye and ring off, with me on a strange, pain-free, woozy high. Onscreen, the patient's heartbeat has returned.

I should be listening to the details of when, on or about the 26th of August last year, Michael Tallack of Verne Drive, Levenshulme, obtained monies by deception by strapping on his brother's leg iron and claiming spurious disability benefits.

Instead, mentally, I'm far, far away and long, long ago: part of a group watching a fireworks display at Platt Fields Park in the autumn of my first year of university. I ‘oohed' and ‘aahed' as each explosion bloomed and faded into spiders of glittering dust. I turned to Ben to say something and saw he was watching me instead of the night sky. It was an intent look and gave me a sensation similar to when you think a fairground ride has come to a stop and it hasn't, quite.

‘Uh …' I stumbled over the words that were previously on the tip of my tongue, ‘I'm cold.'

‘In those?' Ben asked, sceptically, pointing at my gloves. They were Fair Isle, multi-coloured. Admittedly, the size of hot water bottle covers.

‘They're nice!'

‘If you're seven.'

‘Aren't you cold?' I asked him.

‘Not really,' Ben said. ‘Hadn't noticed.'

His eyes sparkled. In the freezing atmosphere, I felt heat rise to the surface of my skin. I breathed deeply and clapped my mittens together.

A girl joined us, winding her arm through Ben's in familiarity. I angled my body away from them and when I turned back to say something, they'd slipped away. I found myself craning my neck to try to spot them in the crowd. I felt ever so slightly abandoned. Which was ridiculous, and clearly a sign of how much I was missing Rhys.

‘All rise,' barks the court clerk, snapping me back to the here and now.

I wait politely for everyone to file out ahead of me, instead of overtaking to slice the fastest path to the door, in my usual tetchy work mode. My mind's very much on my after-work appointment with Ben. Equal parts terror, anticipation, excitement, guilt, confusion …

I get a cow-shit coffee and go to the press room to drink it in peace. I see Zoe has got there before me. Despite her doubts, she's taken to court reporting brilliantly. The ability to spot a story is one you can't really teach, and she clearly has it. She's also had the confidence to leave a courtroom where nothing much is happening and seek something better. It took me ages to find the guts to do that. I'd be pinioned to the bench listening to a ten-a-penny aggravated twokking, doing side-to-side slotting eye movements, like a portrait in a haunted house when backs turn.

‘Sodding Gretton,' she says, by way of greeting, over her takeaway spud, spearing discs of cucumber with a white plastic fork and placing them in the opened lid.

I sip my coffee. ‘Is he stalking you now? I thought I'd seen less of him.'

‘Yeah. I got this nice story about a have-a-go hero pensioner chasing toerags off his allotments, think I've got it all to myself, and then I turn round and he's breathing down my neck.'

‘Uh oh, there wasn't a joke about hoes, was there?'

‘The deadly or dangerous weapon was a rake, thankfully.'

‘Take it as a compliment. He wouldn't bother if he didn't think you knew what you were doing.'

‘I suppose.'

I reflect that this is truer than I'd like. It's an uncomfortable discovery that Gretton's instantly switched to targeting Zoe. Am I that dispensable? I haven't had anything great lately. This must be how fading movie stars feel when they lose a stalker to a younger rival. Even rodents like him are fleeing sinking HMS
Woodford
. Admittedly, Zoe looks like she's going to go far. I think people once said that about me. This bothers me more than it would have done, now that I've broken off my engagement. Funny how, when one part of your life falls away, the other bits that are left start looking rather feeble. I've always thought I had a good job. Now I'm thinking I've never exactly chased promotion, and here's Zoe, probably going to overtake me in a few weeks flat and then be on to the next thing.

‘I'm getting off on time today. If news desk ask, I was here until the bitter end,' I say. ‘I don't need to file anything until tomorrow and the progress in Court 2 is on the stately side.'

Zoe makes a salute. ‘Understood. Anything fun?'

‘What, in Court 2?'

‘What you're off to.'

That's a good question. ‘A drink with an old friend.'

‘Ooh. A
friend
friend or a friend?'

For some reason the question irritates me. ‘Friend, female,' I snap, then realise my guilty conscience is making me antsy.

Zoe nods, spearing a slice of woolly tomato and then plunging through potato flesh the way gardeners work over soil.

The Tallack trial continues, and my afternoon passes in a similar reverie. This time I'm back in my study period before first year exams. Ben left me a cryptic note in my pigeonhole in the university's arts block with the venue, time and ‘come alone', as if we were secret agents.

I'd never been up to Central Library in St Peter's Square, content to make do with the university library, John Rylands. In acknowledgement of this, and to take the mickey, Ben drew me a map with the whole route described, eventually arriving at what resembled a blue-biro-inked cake, the Tuscan colonnade standing in for candles. He drew a goonish face, captioned ‘Ben', and an arrow to indicate he was inside.

On arrival, as I admired the architecture, I saw Ben waving at me from a desk.

‘Hi. Why are we here?' I hissed, sliding into a chair next to him.

‘I didn't want anyone overhearing us in the uni library,' Ben whispered. ‘And it's an outing. Look at these.'

He pushed a stack of exam papers towards me.

‘Past papers?' I asked.

‘Yep. Going through them, there's a totally obvious pattern. There's only a question about
Beowulf
every
other
year.'

‘Riiight …' I said. ‘So …?'

‘It was on last year's paper and there's no way it's going to come up this year. We don't have to revise it.'

‘A risky strategy.'

‘I'm one hundred per cent sure it'll work.'

‘Really?' I said, sarcastically. ‘One hundred per cent? As sure of the laws of gravity, or the laws of … of …'

‘You don't know any other laws, do you?'

‘Sod?'

‘OK, I'm ninety per cent sure then.'

‘There's an equally failsafe fallback.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Without tutors suspecting a
thing
is happening, we covertly put information into our brains. Then we smuggle it into the exam room behind these faces. No one would ever guess our secret.'

Ben stifles a laugh. ‘Smart arse. I knew you wouldn't appreciate my efforts.'

I pointed up at the inscription on the ceiling.

‘Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom.'

Ben shook his head. ‘Get degree is principal thing, not sermon off Ronnie.'

‘Look. It might work, but you're clever, you don't need to play games.'

‘Ack, I hate Old English.'

‘Would your mum want you to do this?'

Ben wrinkled his nose. ‘Don't drag my mum into this.'

I'd met Ben's mum by chance, the previous week. I called in on his shared flat to drop a textbook off and a slim young woman with short hair and Ben's same neat features was stood chatting in the doorway, jangling car keys.

‘Hello, I'm Ben's mum,' she'd said, as I approached, in that
yes I will speak to your friends if I want to
teasing way.

‘Hello, I'm Rachel. Ben's friend off his course,' I added, in case she thought it was a booty call.

‘Oooh Rachel!' she said. ‘You're the lovely, clever girl with the musician boyfriend.'

‘Er, yes,' I said, flattered I'd been described at all, let alone in such a nice way.

‘Now your boyfriend lives – wait, wait – I know it …' Ben's mum held her hand up to indicate she was thinking.

‘
Mum
,' Ben said, in a low growl, face reddening.

‘Sunderland!' she announced.

‘Sheffield,' I said. ‘You got the “S”, though. And the north. Very near, really.'

‘Honestly, you don't know how healthy it is for my son to have a young woman around who's immune to his charms, so good for you and your Sheffield-or-Sunderland boyfriend.'

‘MUM!' Ben shouted, in a rictus of agony, as I'd giggled.

In the library, I said: ‘I liked your mum.'

‘Yeah, don't remind me. She liked you too.'

‘Plus if you fail the first year, who am I going to sit with in lectures?' I asked Ben.

Someone nearby coughed, pointedly. We opened our books. After ten minutes I looked up and saw Ben deep in concentration. He had this habit of clutching his shoulder with the hand on the opposite side of his body, chin on his chest, as he squinted at the text. I had an unexpected urge to reach across and brush the marble-smoothness of his cheekbone with the back of my hand.

He glanced up. I quickly reassembled my features into exaggerated boredom, faked a yawn.

‘Drink?' he whispered.

‘Triple shot espresso with ProPlus ground up in the coffee beans,' I said, closing my reference book with a thud, half-expecting it to throw up a cloud of talcum-like dust.

Settled in the cafeteria, Ben said: ‘I can't fail the first year, I have to get this degree and earn some money because my waster of a dad isn't going to help my mum or sister any time soon.'

‘Do you see him?'

He shook his head. ‘Not if I can help it, and the feeling's mutual.'

Chin propped on palm, I listened to his account of his dad's abrupt departure from their lives, his mum working two jobs, and felt guilty I'd ever complained about the boring dependability of my home life. I also thought how, with some people, you feel like you'll never ever run out of things to talk about.

When Ben got to the part where he tracked his dad down and his dad told him he didn't want to be found, he was suddenly, to both our surprise, on the verge of tears.

‘I couldn't believe it, you know, I thought all I had to do was tell him we needed him around and he'd be on the next train, or send my mum something.' Ben's eyes had gone shiny, his voice thick. ‘I felt such a dick.'

I sensed he needed a way out of the moment. I wanted to make the grade as a confidante. And I wanted – given at least one important person had fallen short on this score with Ben – to be caring.

I said, with feeling: ‘I know he's your dad and I hope it won't offend you if I say he sounds like an utter bastard. You did absolutely the right thing trying to get him to face up to his responsibilities. If you hadn't tried, you'd always wonder about him and regret it. This way, at least you know it's a hundred per cent on him. You think it was nothing but pain, but it removed all doubt. Consider it what you had to do for peace of mind.'

Ben nodded, grateful, having had the time to get his emotions back under control.

‘Cheers, Ron.'

I realised then that, underneath the clean-cut clothes and breezy air, Ben was as much of a work in progress as the rest of us. He simply wore it better.

‘All rise!' barks the court clerk, for the last time today.

As I scrabble to put away my notebook and float out the door, this semi-dream state is tested to its limits by the appearance of a fulminating Gretton.

‘You can tell that bird-faced bitch that I'm after her, right? Press on press is
not on
,' he splutters.