You Had Me at Hello (22 page)

‘So,' Graeme fixes me with a beady look, ‘Our Lady of the Ruinously Expensive Tastes, what's your rent here?'

‘None of your business,' I say, hopefully sounding sweet.

‘I'm only thinking of you. You're going back into the housing market with a single income, and six months here is a chunk of your deposit gone, I'll bet.'

I look to Caroline to silence him, but she's already stalked off to get a drink.

‘I can't buy yet.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because I've split up with someone I spent half my life with and I don't know what I want or where I want to live.'

‘You'll always need a roof over your head, won't you? You're not going to join a Bedouin tribe?'

‘You can't always do what makes absolute practical sense … I've got a drink, Caro, you're alright.'

She nods, hands Graeme a glass, sips from her own, eyes downcast.

‘Living for the day is all very well in your twenties, you've got to start planning for the future sometime,' Graeme continues. I know what he means is, no one else is going to do it for you now. ‘Things don't fall into place by accident.'

‘Maybe.'

As he launches into another monologue, I interrupt: ‘Graeme. Par-tee. Noun, two syllables, a social gathering for the purpose of pleasure.'

Ben, Olivia and Simon arrive while I'm busy mopping up a spilled drink and Caroline lets them in.

She leads them over to the kitchen, and as I join them Simon's saying to her: ‘… Had cocktails at a bar on Canal Street, or should I say Anal Treat. Ben said it was mixed straight-and-gay, then the only woman in the place had an Adam's apple like a tennis ball. They were all the sort who could select scatter cushions, I'm telling you.'

Never mind Adam's apples, I just hope Simon's tongue is in his cheek most of the time.

‘We brought you a homophobe, and this,' Ben says to me, as Olivia hands over a Peace Lily in a gold lacquered pot, ‘to help warm your flat.'

Ben's wearing washed-out-to-look-old-but-new grey jeans and a black sweater. As ever:
phew
. Olivia's in a delicate grey wrap dress. Between the two of them, they must
love
grey. He leans in and does that double kiss thing again. I'm better prepared for it this time but I still get flustered, glad of the distraction the plant affords.

‘This is amazing,' Ben says to Olivia, looking at the flat, putting an arm around her. ‘Isn't it, Liv?'

‘Your house is even nicer and your house is really yours,' I say to Olivia, with feeling, and she beams.

I'd forgotten that approximately four per cent of parties, like four per cent of nightclubbing experiences, are truly superb, which is why you waste time, money, bandage-like undergarments and hopes on the other ninety-six per cent. And astonishingly, odds-defyingly, my flat warming has fallen into the magical minority. Conversation's buzzing, the drinks flow, the soundtrack works, the décor's admired, circulating happens effortlessly, my domestic-slut choices of snack (square crisps, round crisps, the ones that resemble tiny rashers of bacon) have been received well, or at least, eaten.

Zoe appears to be having a whale of a time, laughing non-stop with the
MEN
crowd, Gretton's advert forgotten.

I feel as if I've been climbing a hill for a very long time and suddenly the sun's broken through and I've found a spot to sit on my cagoule and admire the vista. I've been missing Rhys like a phantom itch in a lost limb but for the first time I don't miss him at all. Time for another drink.

As the night wears on, Mindy takes control of the music, which makes things more raucous. Jake waves to me as he leaves, having explained he has to be up to revise in the morning; Ivor rolls his eyes behind his back. Caroline is deep in conversation with Olivia. I find myself next to the panoramic window, with Ben and Simon.

‘Natalie said the interview went well,' Simon says.

‘Good, I'm glad,' I say, dismissing a stab of discomfort. ‘I thought so.'

‘And when do I get to take you to dinner?'

Ben does a double-take.

‘Whenever you like,' I say.

Ben does what I suppose must be a triple-take.

‘Do you like Italian food?' Simon asks.

‘Sure. Food in general, really.'

‘Rachel's learning Italian,' Ben says.

‘I know some Italian, stayed in Pisa on an exchange trip,' Simon says. ‘
Parli bene?
'

‘Uh …
non
.'

‘
Non?
'

Oh shit. Shit! Subject change, quick.

‘I was reading these tips about icebreakers today,' I blather. ‘Party prep. Can I try one out on you two? OK. Your most embarrassing incidents in the last year. Go.'

‘Last week. My Latvian cleaning lady caught me in the nuddy,' Simon says.

‘Seriously?'

‘I grabbed the nearest thing to hand that was large enough to cover my modesty.'

‘Which was?'

‘My payslip.'

‘Tosser!' I laugh despite myself, which is becoming the form with Simon.

I see Ben looking at both of us with mild concern, no doubt trying to figure out the dating thing. When he comes to a conclusion, I'd be grateful if he could explain it to me.

‘There's one he prepared earlier,' Ben says.

‘Yours?' I ask Ben.

‘Apart from totally forgetting your name when I bumped into you again after ten years? Let me think …'

‘You didn't?' My kneecaps feel as if they're not screwed on right.

‘Of course I didn't, you arse.'

Ben's disbelieving expression reads
how could you fall for that?

Because the idea of you having erased me, clicked and dragged me to the mental trash can icon like a deleted file, is the stuff of anxiety nightmares, right up there with the one where I'm scuttling the streets at dawn, naked, hiding behind milk floats.

‘It was offering an albino girl my seat on the tram. I only saw her from behind, I thought she was 72, not 22.' Ben bites his lip at the memory, Simon laughs, I wince.

‘Lack of pigmentation can be heavy on the legs,' Simon says.

‘Hey, you meant well,' I say.

‘Yeah.
Simon
.' Ben pushes a hand in a pocket as he drinks.

It strikes me that Ben and Simon are competing. What for? My attention? Surely not. Not Ben, anyway. He's married. Am I flirting by having a laugh with them? I imagine Olivia on the way home, saying acidly: ‘She certainly puts the “ho” in hospitality.'

‘More drinks?' Simon asks, and departs to the kitchen.

I rebalance myself on my chafing heels and clear my throat to make some explanation about the Simon date.

‘Oh my God, blast from the past. Teenage Fanclub?' Ben asks, tuning into the music amid the chatter. ‘You would've laughed at mine and Liv's first dance.'

Probably not
laughed
, I think.

‘Why do you say that?'

‘In the first big compromise of married life, I let her have what she wanted.'

He mouths ‘Coldplay' to me and grimaces.

‘Oh, well. I was wedding planning myself not so long ago. Glad you resolved the DJ/live band divide. It was the Gaza Strip for me and Rhys.'

I discover a yearning, of some considerable proportions, to tell Ben what happened. Talk about my real life – not the sort of things you discuss as bullshit icebreakers – with a real friend.

‘The thought of getting married brought everything to a head for us,' I say, and Ben nods. ‘The way they call it the happiest day of your life – well, it cuts both ways. If you're not happy, it's hard not to notice.'

‘Was it a sudden thing? Or had you been unhappy for a while?'

‘Hmm. Well. We muddled through our twenties. We had the pressure valves of his band and my friends. But your thirties – it's decision time, the wedding, kids. I realised we weren't happy enough to make the next stage work. Does that make sense?'

‘Some,' Ben nods again. ‘You seem to be coping really well.'

‘On and off,' I say.

He gives me a sad, sweet smile, and looks at the floor.

‘Which Coldplay song was it?' I ask, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Oh no, hang on, let me guess. Does it go, “Dum dum dum da dum dum …
Sorry, all our operators are busy at the moment. Please keep holding, your call is important to us
.”'

Ben's eyes crinkle up appealingly as he laughs. ‘You've not changed! So
arsey
…'

‘You egged me on, you have to admit.'

‘Egged Rachel on how?' Olivia says, as she and Simon join us.

‘She was cruelly mocking our bedwetter indie choice of music for the first dance,' Ben says.

‘No!
You
said—' I can't repeat the fact that Ben was mocking it first, that's even more incendiary. I know this insult is going to be taken in entirely different spirit by Olivia.
Thanks Ben.
‘I like some Coldplay …' I finish, lamely.

‘Yeah, right!' Ben says, making it worse.

‘What would you have as your first dance?' Olivia asks me, sharply.

Ben glares at her, presumably to communicate that you don't ask someone who recently broken off an engagement what their first dance would have been.

‘Rhys said he wanted “What Have I Done To Deserve This?” by the Pet Shop Boys. So I dodged a bullet there.'

‘But what would you choose?' Olivia persists.

‘Liv …' Ben's dismayed, failing to understand why she's being so insensitive, whereas Olivia and I understand each other perfectly.

‘The way things are going, it'll probably have to be Etta James, “At Last”. And some sort of young volunteer helping me and my bridegroom get out of our seats.' No laugh. ‘We'd chosen “May You Never” by John Martyn for our first dance,' I concede.

Ben nods, impressed: ‘Lovely choice.'

‘Never heard of it,' Olivia snaps.

Ah well, it must be rubbish then
.

‘Slightly, just slightly too fast tempo?' Ben says. ‘I'd go for “Couldn't Love You More”, of his.'

I nod back. Not much to say to that, other than for my pupils to dilate and to continue drinking until my liver resembles a twenty-ounce, pepper-rubbed sirloin.

‘Why didn't you ask for it then?' Olivia says to him, waspishly.

‘I wanted you to have what you wanted,' Ben says.

‘I think you should have something you love as your first dance, not something cool,' Olivia says in my direction, pointedly, not ready to forgive me.

‘No one could accuse you of choosing Coldplay to be cool,' Ben laughs. He's going to be in
so
much trouble when they get in, and he doesn't even know it. Olivia folds her arms and doesn't take her eyes off me. I stare at the ice in my drink.

‘Now, I know this,' Simon says, cocking an ear to the party soundtrack. ‘“Unfinished Symphony”.'

‘“Unfinished Sympathy”,' I correct him.

‘That's what I said.'

‘Which side do you normally sleep?' Caroline asks, once we've put a severely impaired Ivor to bed on the sofa. When taxi time arrived, he was slumped in some sort of cocktail coma and we took a call that it was best to accommodate him. We tucked him up with a towel underneath him, a washing-up bowl at his side and numerous tea towels round his head. He had a deathly pallor and his hands crossed on his chest, like an Egyptian funeral for a pharaoh who owned shit things.

‘There isn't a normally yet. I haven't been here long enough.' What I really mean is, there isn't a side to choose now the bulwark of Rhys's bulk is absent.

‘You in the middle, then,' she says, flicking a corner of the duvet back. ‘I'll go here, Mindy the other side.'

Mindy comes back from brushing her teeth, clad in beautiful scarlet Chinese pyjamas. Next to Caroline's black strappy lace-edged floral slip, I'm rather glad I left the toothpaste-stained Velvets t-shirt behind.

‘Ivor woke up,' Mindy announces. ‘He made a noise like:
BWORK. BWORK. BWOOORK
. Then he ran off to the loo.'

‘Anything on the soft furnishings?'

‘No, I totally got behind him and pushed him faster than the speed of sick.'

‘Good, good.'

We arrange ourselves, then click the bedside lights off.

‘How did Rupa get a mattress this big up those stairs?' I ask.

‘She had it winched in one of the windows, I think,' Mindy says.

I feel my muscles relax against the springs.

‘What's the deal with you and Ben then?' Caroline says.

All the tension returns. And then some.

‘What do you mean?' I try to convey total amazement to Caroline while horizontal and invisible to her, sure she must be able to feel the heat of the guilty sweat I've broken out into.