You Had Me at Hello (5 page)

‘Too long. I went to uni here and did my training in Sheffield, then came to the
Evening News
as a trainee.'

‘Do you like court?'

‘I do, actually, yeah. I was always better at writing the stories than finding them, so this suits me. And the cases are usually interesting.' I pause, worried I sound like the kind of ghoul who goes to inspect the notes on roadside flowers. ‘Obviously it's nasty sometimes.'

‘What's it like here?' Zoe asks. ‘The news editor seems a bit scary.'

‘Oh yeah.' With the flat of my knife, I push away a heap of gluey coleslaw that must've been on the plate when they heated it. ‘Managing Ken is like wrestling a crocodile. We all have the bite marks to show for it. Has he asked you the octuplets question yet?'

Zoe shakes her head.

‘A woman's had octuplets, ninetuplets, whatever. You get the first hospital bedside interview, while she's still whacked up on drugs. What's the one question you don't leave without asking?'

‘Er … did it hurt?'

‘Are you going to have any more? She'll probably try to throw the bowl of grapes at you but that's his point. You're a journalist, always think like one. Look for the line.'

‘Right,' Zoe's brow furrows, ‘I'll remember that.'

I feel that hopeless twinge of wanting to save someone the million cock-ups you made when you were new, and knowing they will make their own originals, and trying to save them anyway.

‘Be confident, don't bullshit and if you do mess up and it's going to come out, own up. Ken might still bawl at you but he'll trust you next time when you say it's not your fault. Lying's his
bête noire
.'

‘Right.'

‘Don't worry,' I assure her. ‘It can be a bit overwhelming at first, then sooner or later, you start to recognise all human experience boils down to half a dozen various types of story, and you know exactly how desk will want them written. Which of course is when you've achieved the necessary cynicism, and should move on.'

‘Why did you want to be a journalist?' Zoe asks.

‘Hah! Lois Lane.'

‘Seriously?'

‘Oh yes. The brunette's brunette. Ballsy, stood up to her boss, had her own rooftop apartment and that floaty blue negligee. And she went out with Superman. My mum used to put the Christopher Reeve films on if I was off sick from school and I'd watch them on a loop. “You've got me, who's got you?” Brilliant.'

‘Isn't it weird how we make big decisions in life based on the strangest, most random things?' Zoe says, sucking the straw in her Coke until it gurgles. ‘Like, maybe if your mum had put
Batman
on we wouldn't be sat here right now.'

‘Hmm,' I murmur indistinctly, and change the subject.

I see Mindy a mile off in her purple coat and red shoes. She looks like a burst of Bollywood sunshine compared to my kitchen-sink-drama drab black and white.

She calls it her Indian magpie tendencies – she can't resist jewel colours and shiny things. The shiniest thing about her is always her hair. For as long as I've known Mindy, she's used this 99p coconut shampoo that leaves her with a corona of light around her liquorice-black bob. I used it once and ended up with an NHS acrylic weave, made of hay.

She spots me and swings a key on a ribbon, like a hypnotist with a fob watch. ‘At last!'

Mindy isn't kidding about it being central. Five minutes later we're there, stood in front of a red-brick Victorian building which has changed from a temple of hard toil to a place of elegant lounging for the moneyed.

‘Fourth floor,' Mindy says, gazing up. ‘Hopefully there's a lift.'

There is, but it's out of order, so we huff up several flights of stairs, heels pounding in time.

‘No parking,' Mindy reminds me. ‘Is Rhys keeping the car?'

‘Oh yes. Given the way negotiations have gone so far, I'm glad we don't have any pets or children.'

My mind flashes back to hours of my life I'd pay good money to have erased. We sat and worked out how to pick apart two totally meshed lives, me effectively saying ‘Have it, have it all!' and Rhys snapping ‘Does it mean so little to you?'

Mindy slots the key in the lock of the anonymous looking Flat 21 and pushes the door open.

‘
Shit the sheets
,' she breathes, reverentially. ‘She said it was nice but I didn't know she meant this nice.'

We walk into the middle of a cavernous room with exposed brickwork walls. A desert of blonde wood flooring stretches out before us. Pools of honeyed light are cast here and there from some vertical paper lamps that look like alien pupae, or as if a member of Spinal Tap might tear their way out of them. The L-shaped sofa in the sitting area is an acre of snowy tundra, scattered with cushions in shades of ivory and beigey-bone. I mentally put a line through any meals involving soy sauce, red wine or flaky chocolate. That's most Friday nights as I know them buggered.

Mindy and I wander around, going ‘woooh' and pointing like zombies when we discover the wet room with glass sink, or the queen-sized bed with silvery silk coverlet, or the ice-cream-pink Smeg fridge. It's like a home that a character in a post-watershed drama might inhabit. The sort of series where everyone is improbably good-looking and has insubstantial-sounding and yet lucrative jobs that leave plenty of time for leisurely brunching and furious rumping.

‘Not sure about that,' I say, indicating the rug in front of the couch. It appears to be the skin of something that should be looking majestic in the Serengeti, not lying prone under a Heal's coffee table. The coarse, hairy liver-coloured patches actually make me feel unwell. ‘It's got a tail and everything. Brrrr.'

‘I'll see if you can put that away,' Mindy nods.

‘Tell her I'm allergic to … bison?' It's fake, I tell myself. Surely.

Standing in the middle of the living room, we do a few more open-mouthed 360-degree revolutions and I know Mindy's planning a party already. In case we were in any doubt about the flat's primary purpose, the word ‘PARTY' has been spelt out in big burnished gold letters fixed to the wall. There's also a Warholian Pop Art style print – an Indian girl with fearsome facial geometry gazes down imperiously in four colourways.

‘Is that her?'

Mindy joins me. ‘Oh yeah. Rupa does have an ego the size of the Arndale. See that nose?'

‘The one in the middle of her face?'

‘Uh-huh. Sweet sixteen present. Before …'

Mindy puts a finger on the bridge of her nose and makes a loop in the air, coming back to rest on her top lip.

‘Really?' I feel a little guilty, discussing a woman's augmentations in her own flat.

‘Yeah. Her dad's, like, one of the top plastic surgeons in the country so she got a discount. So, what do you think to the flat, then?' she says, somewhat redundantly.

‘I think it's like that advert where they passed the vodka bottle across ordinary life and everything was more exciting looking through it.'

‘I remember that ad,' Mindy says. ‘It made you think about people you'd slept with when you had beer goggles on though. Shall I tell her you'll take it? Move in Saturday?'

‘What am I going to do with my things?' I chew my lip, looking around. I was going to spoil the view by sitting down as it was.

‘Do you have a lot?' Mindy asks.

‘Clothes and books. And … kitchen stuff.'

‘And furniture?'

‘Yes. A three-bed houseful.'

‘Do you really love it?'

I think about this. I quite like some of it. I have chosen it, after all. But in the event of a house fire, I couldn't imagine protectively flinging myself on the occasional table nest or the tatty red Ikea couch as the flames licked higher.

‘Why I ask is, you could make a deal with Rhys to leave it. You said he's keeping the house on? It's going to be expensive for him to go and re-buy some of the bigger items, and a hassle. You could get money for them and then get things that suit wherever you end up buying. Or you could sell everything you own and buy one amazing piece, like an Eames lounger or a Conran egg chair!'

The Mindy paradox: sense and nonsense sharing a twin room – or even a bed, like Morecambe and not-so-Wise.

‘I suppose I could. It all depends how badly Rhys wants me out, versus how badly he wants to make life difficult for me. Too close to call.'

‘I can talk to him if you want.'

‘Thanks, but … I'll give it a go first.'

We walk over to the window and the city rooftop panorama spreads out before us, lights winking on as dusk falls.

‘It's so glamorous,' Mindy sighs.

‘Too glamorous for me, maybe.'

‘Don't do that Rachel thing of talking yourself out of something that could be good.'

‘Do I do that?'

‘A bit.' Mindy puts an arm around me. ‘You need a change of scene.'

I put a reciprocal arm around her. ‘Thank you. What a scene.'

We study it in silence for a moment.

I point.

‘Hang on, is that …?'

‘What?' Mindy squints.

‘… Swansea?'

‘Piss off.'

Mindy has to go home to work on reports for a meeting the next day so we say our goodbyes outside the flat. I'm walking to the bus home when I find my feet taking me towards the library. A few days earlier, loitering in Waterstones, it had occurred to me that if I decided to start learning Italian, I could revise at the library. Revise for the night classes I am definitely going to sign up for, soon. And then, if I ran into Ben, it'd be chance. Just fate, giving a tiny helpful shove.

As I approach, my posture gets better and my height increases by inches. I try to look neither left nor right at anyone as I walk in but can't resist, my line of sight darting about like a petty con on a comedown. Central Library has the reverential atmosphere of a cathedral – it's a place so serene and cerebral your IQ goes up by a few points simply by entering the building.

Inside, I unpack the
Buongiorno Italia!
books I happen to have on me, feeling intensely ridiculous. OK, so … wow, for a romantic language, this is harder work than I imagined. After ten minutes of intransitive verbs I'm feeling pretty intransitive myself. Let's try social Italian:
Booking a room … Making introductions
… and my mind's already wandering …

Ben knocked on my door bright and early on the first day of lectures, though not bright and early enough to pre-empt Caroline, who's the one to call the lark a feathered layabout. I was anxiously turning my face a Scottish heather/English sunburn hue with a huge blusher brush, pouting into the tiny mirror nailed over my sink. Caroline stretched her flamingo legs out on my bed, cradling a vast quantity of tea in a Cup-a-Soup mug. It was a relief to discover that the girls in my halls of residence weren't the demented, experienced, highly sexed party animals of my nightmares, but other nervous, homesick, excited teenagers, all dropped off with aid parcels of home comforts.

‘Who's calling for you again?' Caroline asked.

‘Someone on my course. He gave me my ID card.'

‘He? Is he nice?'

‘He seems very nice,' I said, without thinking.

‘
Nice
nice?'

I debated whether to oblige her. We'd only been friends for a week and although she seemed sound, I didn't want to abruptly discover otherwise when she started yodelling ‘
My friend fancies yooooooo!
' across the union.

‘He's quite nice, yeah,' I said, with more take-it-or-leave-it insouciance.

‘How nice?'

‘Acceptable.'

‘I suppose I can't expect you to do thorough reconnaissance,' Caroline says, looking at the photo of me with Rhys on my desk.

It was taken in the pub, both squeezed into the frame while I held the camera above us. Our heads were leant against each other – his tangly black hair merging with my straight brown hair so it was hard to tell where he ended and I began.
Rhys and Rachel
.
Rachel and Rhys
. We alliterated, it was obviously meant to be. I'd daydreamed the two intertwined ‘Rs' we'd have on our trendy wedding stationery invites, and would've put a firearm to my temple if he found out.

I glanced over at it too and felt a small tremor. Things were new and passionate, and unstable, like new and passionate things usually are, and we were forty miles apart. I'd been so elated when he'd said he wanted us to keep seeing each other.

We'd met a few months previously at my local. I used to go with my friends from sixth-form and we'd all sit with pints of snakebite and black and make moony eyes at the cool lads in a local band. They even had cars and jobs, their few extra years in age representing a chasm of worldly experience and maturity. This hero worship had gone on from afar for a long time. They were never short of female company and clearly content to keep a gaggle of schoolgirl groupies at arm's length. Then one night I inadvertently found myself in a two-player game of call-and-reply on the jukebox. Every time I put a song on, Rhys's selection straight after would pick up on the title. If I chose ‘Blue Monday' he'd get up and play ‘True Blue' and so on. (Rhys was in his ironic cheese phase. Shame it was long over by the time we really were planning our wedding.)