You Had Me at Hello (28 page)

Adjusting my dress on my return from a loo trip, I noticed Ben was absent from the table. I spotted him outside, back leaning against the window. The drink was flowing at the table. Everyone was still picking at dun-coloured jalfrezis, dhansaks, kormas and anthills of clove-studded, primrose yellow rice. I squeezed unnoticed through the dining room and out the door.

‘What's going on here?'

Ben started at the sound of my voice.

‘I needed some air. What're you doing out here?'

I clutched my rounded belly, under the lace of my dress. ‘I reached a tandoori grill event horizon.'

He smiled.

A car with a pimped-out exhaust hurtled past, dickhead music blasting from its four wound-down windows. We said nothing until the noise faded, shivering slightly in the northern England early evening. The air smelled of wood-smoke and the spicy chicken wings shack doing brisk business next door.

‘Twenty-one, eh, Ron? Knocking on.'

‘Hah. Yeah.'

‘Got a plan? Everything mapped out? Career, marriage, kids, that sort of thing?'

‘Not really.'

‘But you're definitely going back to Sheffield?'

‘Well yes, since the journalism course will have me.'

I was vaguely surprised at the question. Since I'd applied, been accepted, and wittered about it at great length, what else would I do?

‘What about you? You going to end the Great World Tour in Ireland?' I asked.

Ben and his friend Mark had been planning a six-month globetrot since they were about fifteen. Ben's redoubtable work ethic meant he was sitting on some serious savings. They'd recently bought the tickets and Ben had excitedly shown me their route on a map of Asia spread out on a table in the refectory.

His imminent departure was forcing me to face a thought I'd been trying to avoid: how were we going to stay in touch, in the sense of actually being involved in each other's lives, beyond the odd postcard? Would his serious girlfriends be OK with me? Would Rhys start to make jokes about my Other Man that would make us all uncomfortable?

Ben and I had been this exclusive club of two, both tacitly understanding it was one no one else could join. This exclusivity would likely prove our undoing. With all firm good intentions, I couldn't quite see it working across a geographical distance as well as gender divide. If anybody had asked if Ben and I were going to stay mates, I'd have said yes, but if you took me to an interrogation room and shone a lamp in my face and demanded to know
the goddamn truth
, I was pretty sure how the odds were stacked. There'd be no ‘going out for a session and crashing at his' once time had elapsed and suspicious significant others had to sign it all off. Letters and phone calls would entail offers to visit that both of us would find awkward to keep pretending we would make, so contact would gradually dry up. In the face of various practicalities, multiplied by years, friendship would dwindle away and, worst of all, we'd want to forget and let it happen, because it would be easier that way.

‘Do you think I should move to Ireland?' he asked.

‘Pippa seems lovely,' I said, truthfully.

We both glanced into the restaurant to see an animated Rhys twisting a balloon into a comedy shape to entertain a giggly Pippa.

‘That's not an answer.'

‘Only you know if you should, Ben.'

‘This is true. I don't know.'

Say something meaningful
, I thought. Tell him we're going to stay friends and distance doesn't matter.

‘Out of all my friends back home I was the one who never stressed about anything,' Ben said. ‘I thought it would all fall into place. I've changed my mind. Do nothing, and nothing happens. Life is about decisions. You either make them or they're made for you, but you can't avoid them.'

‘You don't have to do anything you don't want to.'

His sadness was almost palpable, like moisture in the air before it rains. Although this was Manchester, it probably was about to rain anyway. With Ben in a low mood, I wished the evening could've been better.

‘Sorry about Rhys, earlier. He goes too far sometimes,' I said.

There was a gap where I expected Ben to demur, and he didn't.

‘Why do you take it?'

My stomach flipped, full as it was. ‘What?'

Ben didn't criticise Rhys. If I ever recounted disagreements we'd had, Ben invariably saw Rhys's side. I feigned annoyance, but it was reassuring, considerate. The same way sensitive friends know not to join in when you're slagging off your family.

‘You don't seem very equal, to me. You can be so confident, but that disappears when you're around him. It doesn't make sense.'

My embarrassment curdled into irritation. What the hell? It's my
birthday
.

‘I give as good as I get – I don't pick fights in public, that's all. Look, you might be feeling down but don't take it out on us.'

The ‘us' was deliberate. We stand united, even when Rhys is making a balloon poodle for another woman. Ben frowned and said nothing, staring determinedly ahead. I'd never seen him like this before. I wondered if I knew him quite as well as I thought I did.

Eventually he said: ‘To be fair, it's pretty weird to have Oscar the Grouch in the garbage can on your crotch. What's the message? “Here's my junk”?'

The tension eased. I took the olive branch.

‘It was Fozzie Bear.'

‘Ah, Fozzie. He makes much more sense when wooing is in mind. I take it all back.'

‘They say “Wocka Wocka Wocka” on the rear.'

‘Hmm. All I can say is, if you were my girlfriend, I'd certainly be desperate for you to take them off,' Ben said, smiling that disarming smile at last, though this uncharacteristically flirtatious remark had already disarmed me.

‘We'd better go back in,' I said, nervily.

As the warm smell of spices and twang of sitars hit us, a ragged chorus of ‘Happy Birthday' started up. Two waiters appeared with a whipped-cream-topped sundae, a smattering of candles sticking out of it. As Ben returned to Pippa's side and everyone started clapping, I blew my candles out, took a small bow and returned to my seat.

Rhys got to his feet, holding his pint of Cobra. ‘If I could say a few words—'

‘Rhys,' I said. ‘What … um?'

‘I know this is a bit formal for a twenty-first, but you all graduate soon so it might be the last time I go out to dinner with you. I wanted to say, not only is Rachel the greatest girlfriend in the world …' He paused here for the obligatory ripple of sighs that went round the female members of the party. Greatest girlfriend? He thought that? ‘… Since I started visiting Rach in Manchester three years ago, you've made me feel that you're my friends too. I want to say how much I've appreciated it. I even hear that Ben went above and beyond once and smacked a bloke who deserved it, on my behalf.'

Pippa yelped with admiration and put an arm round him, a welcome correction to the lingering fear that the incident had worked an opposite effect on a previous girlfriend. Ben only looked startled.

‘You're a great bloke. And there I was, thinking I hated students and southerners and southern students most of all. You should be my Kryptonite.'

Laughter. Rhys tipped his glass towards Ben and Ben raised his in return, still looking slightly stunned and blank.

‘To my girl Rachel. Happy twenty-first and cheers.'

‘Cheers,' I mumbled, and we raised our glasses and clinked, drank.

I felt an adoring-envious hum from the hive mind of the group:
isn't she lucky, isn't he nice, isn't this lovely.
I was lucky. Rhys grinned and winked at me as he sat down, the Fozzie Bear crime expunged from the record. I grinned back, grateful, amazed and a little overcome. If you clicked the shutter on life's great camera at that second, I was on the brink of it all and I had everything I wanted: devoted boy, great friends, future plans, garlic naan.

Yet something wasn't right. Someone who mattered was unhappy. As the discussion over the bill and where to go next began, I looked around the table at the contented faces, committing the tableau to memory. I forced myself to include Ben in the visual sweep. He was frowning, deeply, at the rubble of a near-untouched lamb bhuna.

I thought about the truism that you never know you'll miss things until they're gone. I missed Ben's optimism. Clearly, it had left university before he had.

I check my watch as I scurry into the cinema and find that, thanks to some kind of Greenwich Mean Time prank, the clock has leapt forward by ten minutes somewhere between Sackville Street and here. Another drawback of living in the city centre and walking everywhere is you don't get to blame the traffic.

Caroline taps me on the shoulder, folds her arms.

‘Save it,' she says, as I embark on my excuse. ‘You can pay for my pick'n'mix by way of apology.'

We've taken our Friday night date into town as Graeme's got off the red eye from somewhere this morning and needs to sleep. Caroline said she'd drink too much if we stayed in at mine and she has the in-laws arriving the next day.

She marches across the lobby of the Odeon, towering and lean in indigo denim, and starts trowelling penny dreadfuls into a paper bag. I get a gallon of sugar-free fizzy drink and we troop into the auditorium. It's barely a third full, the screen blank.

‘Why hasn't it started?' I ask, adjusting my fingers on the damp weight of my cardboard bucket of liquid.

‘Because I told you it started half an hour earlier than it does. Let's sit over there.'

I open my mouth to object and realise the end has justified the means. Following Caroline, we settle down into the seats.

‘How did the date with Simon go, last week?' she says, folding a red liquorice bootlace into her mouth.

‘Good. It was a laugh. Dinner, goodnight kiss. Nothing more.'

Caroline chews, with difficulty, given she's eating something more plastic than foodstuff.

‘Great!' she says, gummed up. ‘When are you seeing him again?'

‘Um – not sure.'

‘Is he playing hard to get?'

‘I'm taking things slowly. I don't want to rush into anything.'

‘Rushing into another nice dinner? Woah, nelly.'

‘You know what I mean. I don't know how I feel yet.'

‘But you like him?' she asks.

‘
Yeeeees
. He's entertaining. If frightening and eccentric.'

‘You need an eccentric. You're an eccentric.'

‘No I'm not!'

‘Of course you don't think you're an eccentric. No one does. Like no one thinks they have bad taste.'

‘I have bad taste?'

‘
No
.'

I take a noisy suck on my drink, swish the ice around with the straw.

‘Olivia says Simon's asked Ben about you, seems very keen,' Caroline says.

The fact Caroline's used the very words I overheard from Olivia at the dinner party makes me think it's a direct quote. Olivia must know Caroline will tell me this, so I partially discount it as propaganda. What I'm much more interested in is that Caroline's seen Olivia. I feel an awful gut-spasm of insecurity.

‘You've seen Olivia?'

‘We went late-night shopping. She wanted a fascinator for a wedding so I took her along to Selfridges.'

‘How did you even have her number, or vice versa?'

I know this is a Jealous Person's Question
. Which bus did you catch? Did you have a drink afterwards? Tell me girl, where did you sleep last night?

‘We exchanged numbers at the party at yours. Like I said, I think she's short of friends up here. We should do a girls' lunch with her.'

‘Hmm,' I say, remembering the venom-tipped arrows she fired from her eyes during the wedding music conversation.

Pause.

‘She says Ben's being a bit distant,' Caroline adds.

‘Right.'

There's a pause that turns into a ‘insert explanation here' pause.

‘He's not talking to me about anything, if that's what you think.'

‘You haven't seen him?'

I get the distinct impression Caroline already knows the answer.

‘We went for a lunchtime sandwich. Simon was the main topic of conversation.'

‘Olivia asked me about you two at university, what you were like.'

‘Did she? What did you say?'

I cover my nerves by rummaging in her pick'n'mix bag, coming out with a white mouse filled with radioactive pink goo.

‘That you were friends.'

‘She already knew that.'

‘I know. I wonder what's causing her to question it.'

I slip the mouse into my mouth. ‘Are you telling me she was seriously concerned?'

‘Nooo …' Caroline relents, fishing in the sweet bag. ‘I think she was merely curious about Ben's past, like any partner.'

‘There you are then.'

‘They're seeing things very differently since they moved up here. It was meant to be for good and now they're divided on whether to stay. He's being very unsympathetic about her missing her family and wanting to plan a longer-term future down south, Olivia says.'

‘Why move up, if she's only going to lobby to go back down again?' I say, warily.

‘If they have kids, of course she's going to want to be around her mum.'

‘Doesn't sound like Ben though. He's so easygoing.'

‘Isn't anyone, with someone other than their other half?' Caroline looks distinctly irritable as she throws a handful of cola bottles to the back of her mouth.

‘Hmm,' I say. I sense non-committal noises are my friend here, and having opinions, and expressing them, are not.

‘By the way, when I asked Ivor and Mindy out tonight, they both said the same thing. “Not if you've asked Ivor-slash-Mindy”,' Caroline says. ‘They're still at each other's throats over Katya? I do think Mindy should think before she speaks sometimes.'