You Had Me at Hello (34 page)

‘Don't be crazy, Ben. If I wanted to be with Rhys instead, why am I in bed with you?'

‘Were you going to say anything to me, before we left?'

‘Uhm.'
No. With huge, huge regret: no
. For the first time in my life, I was confronting a character fail, with nowhere to hide. Yes, I was in love with him. No, I wasn't going to risk telling him, what with my presumption of near-certain failure of reciprocation. I was going to pretend to myself I didn't and let him go. I couldn't resolve this contradiction without it saying something about me. That, my friends, is a coward. ‘I didn't plan anything, but …'

‘That's a no.'

‘I didn't know you felt the same way!'

‘How would you know until you ask?'

‘I didn't want to risk losing you as a friend.'

‘I think we both know that tomorrow would've been the end of things as we know it, either way.'

This was true, and I had no answer for Ben. How do you explain to someone so many degrees more brave and cool than you that such strength of feeling and total gutlessness can co-exist?

‘Do you still love Rhys? You must do. It only ended today.'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘You can't press an off switch. Whatever I feel, it doesn't mean I'm
in
love with him and want to be with him.'

Another long pause, where I worked out what to say next. I felt we'd mounted the kerb and some grabbing of the steering wheel was required to get us back on course. My policy of speaking the first words to come into my head hadn't been the charm so far.

‘Fuck!' Ben suddenly exclaimed.

He jumped from the bed as if he'd had a bolt gun to the backside. I experienced a moment's cognitive dissonance of
bad thing happening/good view though
. I realised he was looking for his clothes, pulling his underwear on with a snap of elastic, dragging his jeans up his legs.

‘What's going on? Ben?' I sat up, not so confident in my nakedness now. I grabbed a pillow and held it against myself.

‘I'm sorry but I've got to go,' he said, some words muffled as he momentarily disappeared inside the neck of his t-shirt. ‘I shouldn't have … I couldn't turn you down. Shit—'

‘Don't go! Ben? I don't understand! We'll work this out. I'll come travelling, if that's what you want …'

He stopped, looked at me.

‘It's not about you doing what I want. You've got to decide what
you
want, and not because uni's over and we're drunk and we've slept together and you've had a fight with Rhys. I feel too much for you for that. I have to go.'

‘That's not why this has happened!'

He bent to pull his shoes on and straightened back up.

‘You've done me and you're doing one?' I said, trying as a last ditch to appeal to the international code of the non-bastard.

‘It's not like that. I can't make your mind up for you about what happens next. I know that's what you're used to.'

‘What I want to happen next is for you not to leave.'

‘I can't – it's not your fault – but I can't …' he stopped and cleared his throat. ‘… Be this close with you, thinking it's a one-off.'

He grabbed at his wallet and keys on my desk and I watched in disbelief as he charged towards the bedroom door. I grabbed the sheet from the floor, wrapped it around myself like a short-arsed Greek statue and gave chase. The time it took to pick it up lost me the time needed to catch up with him.

‘Ben, please! Don't go!' I called, barrelling down the stairs.

He did go and I was left on the threshold of the house, calling his name.

I heard movement in Derek's room, and fled back upstairs, hyperventilating, trying to figure out how the hell the best of times became the worst of times.

I try to force my overloaded mind to take in the complexities of the drugs trial, making copious notes in an attempt to tether my wandering imagination to verifiable facts. When it breaks for a mid-afternoon conference between counsel, I head to the press room, only to have my path blocked by a pinker-round-the-edges-than-usual Gretton.

‘Did you see her?'

‘Who?'

‘Clarke! She'd left a Dictaphone in the press room. Said she had to come and get things from her flat so she might as well pick it up. Brass balls, I told you.'

Avoiding me wasn't worth the cost of a Dictaphone. You're a class act, Zoe. I whip round and scan the court. The defendant's friends and family eye me suspiciously in return.

‘She was off to Piccadilly,' Gretton says to me, looking at his watch. ‘I heard her tell someone on the phone that she was on the quarter to train. If you get a move on …'

I look at Gretton. We both know I'm being shamelessly baited, and that I'm going to take the bait. I check my watch.

‘I'll cover anything in your case if it restarts while you're away. Scout's honour.'

Gretton makes the three-fingers-to-forehead gesture. For once, I believe him.

I pelt out the door and through town, weaving through the afternoon crowds, climbing the slope to Piccadilly in a running-late-commuter's half-trot, half-gallop, with small bursts of ungainly sprinting. I get to the station with rasping lungs and a stitch in my side.
Oof.
This is the kind of unfitness you remember from cross-country at school. Scanning the departures board I see a likely candidate for Zoe's train. It looks like it's already in. If she's passed the ticket inspectors, I'm buggered. I check my watch again. She's no doubt ensconced in a first-class carriage, enjoying the fruits of her ill-gotten gains. Ah well. At least I tried. For my own self-respect, such as it is.

I turn back to retrace my steps. With a jolt, I see a head of spirally hair bobbing about, a few yards away by Costa Coffee.
Ah hah!
I don't give myself the time to feel nervous.

‘Zoe!' I say, marching up to her.

She glances at me in surprise, but not shock, or much fear, standing the flowery vinyl trolley case she's been dragging upright.

‘Hi, Rachel.' A tone of polite but terse resignation, as if I'm a battleaxe from three doors down who's always buttonholing her about starting a Neighbourhood Watch scheme.

I take a deep breath.

‘One question – how could you?'

‘Oh, look, I'm sorry, I really am. The
Mail
wasn't going to run it this soon but something else fell through at the last minute and as they had it all ready to go … I did want to warn you.'

‘I can tell that by the way you tried to get in touch so many times on Saturday night. What exactly were you going to say to me? Sorry I've completely fucked you over but the opportunity for me was too good?'

Zoe makes a noise that's either a sigh or huff of exasperation. ‘You weren't going to use it and it's a great story, you said so yourself.'

I hope there aren't any colleagues milling about nearby, or this showdown will be the very definition of a pyrrhic victory.

‘So great it's going to get me sacked.'

‘They're not blaming you, are they?' Zoe says, all innocence. ‘I didn't tell anyone about you reading the text, I swear.'

‘Cheers a bloody ton,' I spit, even though I'm relieved. ‘Don't you even care what you've done to Natalie? Or Jonathan?'

‘The criminal's cheating wife and her leg-over? Not really, no.'

‘Well, I hope your twenty-five grand a year staff job on a national is worth all the people you've trampled over to get to it. Pleasure knowing you.'

‘You were really nice to me, I'm sorry it's all turned out like this.'

‘Yeah, I'm really sorry I was nice to you too.'

I failed to notice until now that Zoe has the dead eyes of a rag doll, tossed on a skip.

‘I know you didn't ask for this but it's not like you haven't played a part.'

‘
Excuse me?
'

‘Why did you look at the text, Rachel? Why did you write the number down? Your instincts were right and you wanted to follow it up but you didn't want the hassle, so you gave it to me.'

‘That's what you've conjured to make yourself feel better about this? I subconsciously wanted you to do this all along?'

Though even as I say it, I wonder.

‘It's a weird thing to do with a story you're not interested in. I can see why you're annoyed, but you're in a little bit of denial.'

I feel my blood pressure soar like a kite. She hasn't even got the decency to behave like a guilty person. Have I swapped roles with Simon?

‘I wasn't tipping you off. I was talking to you because I thought I could trust you.'

A sullen pause, as she wills me to get out of her face. ‘All I've done is use something you didn't want. It was litter picking.'

‘If that's all you've done, why didn't you ask me?'

‘You'd have got stressed out like you are now, worrying about whether it was fair on the people involved. Sorry, I don't give a shit about that. I want to get on. It's not for us to play God and decide what is and isn't news …'

I let out a twisted shriek. ‘This is priceless! What, you're some sort of campaigner for truth and free speech now?'

‘I'm a journalist. This is what we do. Maybe you should go do something different if you disapprove of it so much.'

She may as well have gripped my shoulder and aimed a blow right below my bellybutton. It's one thing to be told I'm a disgrace to my profession by Ken Baggaley. To hear it from someone who was in college about five minutes ago …

‘There's good ones and there's bad ones. From what I can see, you're no different to the Grettons of this world and the way you treat people will come back to haunt you.'

‘You're overreacting.'

‘When my job's hanging by a thread? Most people in my situation would rip your face off and wear it like a mask.'

‘They can't sack you for something I've done!'

‘Of course they can, Zoe, but don't even begin to pretend you weighed up the impact on me or anybody else before you did this. You took what you wanted and left others to pay for it.'

She stays silent.

‘I've got one last question,' I say. ‘Is your mum fat?'

Zoe sounds less confident. ‘What?'

‘It's not difficult – is your mum overweight?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘Thought not. Hard to keep track, I imagine.'

Some sort of shame finally flares in her face and I think, this is as good as I'm going to get. I turn on my heel and leave her there, with her sweetly silly luggage and her endearingly scruffy hair and her heart made of swinging brick, waiting for my own heartbeat to return to normal as I walk down the hill, into the mouth of the city, back to work.

I want to get on.
Not only was my relationship a failure, my performance at my job is by this calculation, too. I allow myself five minutes of feeling like an utter loser, then consider what I've lost. I think the part where I was a bad person was when I read the text, and the part where I was an idiot was when I shared it with her. If her exploitation makes me a crap journalist and her an effective one, well, it's a competition I'd rather lose.

‘What's the damage, then?' Gretton says as I approach court. He's on his fag break, glowing cigarette in hand, looking like the cat that got the cream. And the fishsticks, and a ball with a bell in it. ‘Will she live to fight another day?'

‘She will, but not here.'

‘I did warn you. I told you: you should watch out as well. Remember?'

‘Oh, right.' I squint against the sun. ‘I thought you were having a go at me.'

‘Paranoid.'

‘No, not paranoid enough.'

‘Have top brass cooled off?'

I sigh, smile. ‘Oh right, you want to know if they're going to send some green newbie instead and you'll get a good month of the best stories to yourself?'

‘No,' says Gretton, tapping ash on to the pavement, doing a passable imitation of someone with hurt feelings. ‘Actually, I think we work alright together. We know the rules. I hope you stay.'

‘I'm touched,' I say. ‘I've survived, bloodied but unbowed. Or bloodied and bowed, but in work.'

‘It's not your fault you didn't suss her out,' Gretton says, with huge magnanimity. ‘I've got a few more miles on the clock. I've seen her type before.'

‘I hope I never see her type again.'

‘She's burned her bridges. She won't be coming back to regionals or agencies round here, that's for sure. Baggaley's a man to hold a grudge. Nah, it's London or nothing for her. She better stay at the
Mail
.'

‘Thanks.' I almost laugh. ‘If comfort came any colder, it'd be liquid nitrogen.'

A braver, more dynamic, more sensible person might have got up the morning-after-the-night-before, on the day of their graduation ball, and gone straight round to iron out a disagreement with the newly discovered, newly estranged love of their life.

I chewed my nails, changed my top three times, fretted over facing him in broad daylight and recalling things we'd done in the half-dark. I made cups of tea, procrastinated, perfected speeches in my head and wasted time. Then the girls arrived with bagfuls of foam hair curlers, piles of glitter-flecked make-up and bottles of warm pre-mixed Buck's Fizz. I decided to wait until I had some Dutch courage to hand at the ball that evening. It belatedly struck me, in the middle of creating Caroline's sixties-style beehive with choking-hazard quantities of Elnett, that Ben might not go.

It made me pause, mid-backcombing, so that Caroline said: ‘What's the matter? I look something out of a John Waters film, don't I?'

I was flying on auto-pilot: pretending to care about my outfit, my hair, smiling for the photos. All I could think about was getting to the Palace Hotel.