If Harry Met Sally Again

by Annie Robertson

  ‘I may need a bit of help,’ I say, spitting away pink sequins.

  Mum draws back the curtain to reveal me with my grey, elastic-shot undies, halfway round my arse, and a shock of pink containing my upper body like a strait-jacket.

  ‘Oh, Nee-naw,’ says Narissa.

  ‘Darling, how do you get yourself into these scrapes?’

  ‘Too many Aeros, not enough aerobics,’ I mutter, as Mum yanks the dress over my head, which comes free with an enormous rip.

  ‘Shit!’

  Mum looks at the torn garment.

  ‘Oh, good grief,’ says Narissa, scarpering before she gets in trouble.

  ‘What do we do?’ I ask Mum, rushing to put my clothes back on.

  ‘There’s nothing for it,’ she whispers. ‘Run!’

  ‘I’m not kidding, we were chased down Oxford Street by a security guard, me doing up my jeans, and Mum following behind holding down her boobs.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ says Astrid, as Aidan arrives with a tray full of drinks to celebrate my script being optioned.

  ‘Here’s to all at Castle Rock,’ he says, raspily, chinking his glass against mine, and putting his arm around Astrid. I sit back in the faux-chesterfield banquette. We’re in the Grove Pub in Balham and it’s all very snug; the sort of place people come to on third dates, intimate but rowdy, not cheap but not too expensive, and plenty of sofas for making moves after supper.

  ‘Castle Rock.’ Astrid raises her glass, brimming with pride. I swear, she screamed so loud when I told her that I thought the bulbs in the bookshop’s lamps were going to shatter. ‘You might get to meet Billy Crystal,’ she had said, clinging on to my forearm, her eyes filling with tears. I raise my glass to her in return. It means so much to me that she’s still so thrilled for me, even a week after I told her my news.

  ‘Thanks, guys. Are we expecting Ed and Verity any time soon?’ I’m surprised they’re not here already, given that their house is just round the corner.

  I can’t pretend to love Ed and Verity. Ed was all right when he lived in the flat with Aidan and Will, but then he became a lawyer and married Verity and morphed into a ‘proper’ grown-up. They’re just a bit too… shiny. They’re the type of people who hold down mega-stressful jobs and still find time to compete in triathlons, grow their own vegetables and have excellent hair.

  ‘Here they are now,’ says Astrid, sitting up a little straighter. Verity doesn’t do slouchy.

  ‘Nina,’ says Verity. She holds onto my upper arms, looking at me with a pained expression. ‘We heard about Will, we’re so, very, very sorry.’

  She looks effortlessly chic with her chestnut hair up in a relaxed chignon, her fine features with just a shimmer of make-up and her tiny body clad in painted-on jeans, brown leather boots and a cream silk blouse. If I wore that top on a Saturday night I’d return home with red wine stains, ketchup and blobs of mayo down it. Verity’s blouse will not suffer the same plight, given that all she will consume tonight is sparkling water.

  ‘Thank you, but I’m fine,’ I say, wondering if she’s going to get static shocks when she lets go of my charity shop jumper.

  The truth is that it feels weird that Will’s not here. Not bad, exactly, just… different. There’s always been six of us in the group. Even before Ed married Verity there was usually a girlfriend of his to even out the numbers: three boys, three girls, that’s how it’s always been.

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ she says, with a slow nod and tight smile that looks as if she’s strained a muscle in her face.

  ‘Nina’s just had her script optioned by Castle Rock,’ says Astrid, trying to divert Verity away from the topic of me and Will because, as much as I’ve moved on, there are times when I’m still a bit sensitive about it all.

  ‘Won-der-ful,’ says Verity, finally letting go – there is no electric shock. ‘That must help take your mind off things.’

  ‘I’m genuinely fine.’

  Verity sips her water and does some more slow nodding.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ says Astrid.

  We eat a lot, or at least everyone does except Verity. I pick at everyone else’s plates while Verity picks at a green salad. The chat is mostly about the boys’ work, Verity’s new living room, various friends – who I know of vaguely from when Will and I went to parties at their house – and of how they’re all settling down and thinking about babies, and trading in their BMW Z4s for Audi Q7s. It’s all super dull but we drink a lot too, which makes it less tedious. Before I know it, I’ve had half a bottle of gin made by some small-scale producer who charges triple, knowing people like Ed feel smug and clever buying expensive ‘artisan’ products. Ed’s voice gets louder with every ‘hand-crafted’ bottle of ale and after the fifth or sixth he bellows at Aidan, over Kirsty MacColl and the Pogues: ‘Carmen’s a top catch. Bright, beautiful, and, by all accounts, brilliant in bed!’

  A hush falls over the table, I hear Aidan swallow a mouthful of beer. Heat rises up my neck and into my face and I know I’m about to have one of my more ‘sensitive’ moments.

  ‘You know Carmen?’ I ask, trying to sound cool but failing miserably; my voice is as tight as Verity’s jeans.

  ‘We went to university together,’ says Verity, answering for her husband, at whom she is shooting daggers. He cringes and mouths ‘sorry’ at his wife.

  It takes me an addled moment to make the connection: Will met Carmen through Ed and Verity, not at work as he told me. Ed knew, maybe Aidan too. Did they talk about it on their boys’ nights out, behind my back?

  ‘Will told me they met at work,’ I whisper.

  Nobody says anything.

  Verity prickles uncomfortably. Aidan fiddles with the label on his beer. Astrid places her hand on my arm. I pull away.

  ‘He didn’t meet her at work?’

  ‘Not unless he’s given up being a journo and taken up law instead,’ laughs Ed. Verity shuts him up with a glare.

  ‘I think I’ll pop to the ladies,’ I slur, fumbling with my bag and getting up, trying to squeeze past Verity without rubbing my arse in her face. As I leave I hear her say to everyone in a ‘told you so’ voice, ‘It was obvious the moment I saw her that she wasn’t over him.’ I wonder how she knew, when I didn’t.

  In the toilets I sit on the loo, my head spinning. Will’s lie about how he met Carmen feels bigger than the lies about the tennis and the promotion, it feels bigger than him sleeping with her. The fact that he didn’t have the balls to tell me, that I had to be humiliated in front of friends, more his friends than mine, makes me livid. I’m trying to figure out if I’m madder at him or me for not realising, when Astrid comes in.

  ‘Nina?’ she calls. I see her shoes passing in front of the stall.

  ‘In here,’ I call back, drunkenly waving at the back of the cubicle door.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘He’s not worth it,’ she says.

  ‘I know.’ I wind the loo roll up to make it tidier. Sitting on the loo a foggy thought comes to me and before I can think not to, I say, accusingly: ‘Did you know they met through Ed? Did Aidan tell you and you kept it from me?’

  ‘No!’ Even in my drunken state I can hear she’s offended.

  I let out a sigh and wipe away a stray tear that jerks out uncontrollably and rolls down my cheek.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, cross with myself.

  ‘Forgiven.’ There is a long pause. A partition door closes, a hand-dryer whirrs; women come and go. ‘Are you planning on coming out of there anytime soon?’

  ‘I think I’ll just go home.’ I pull up my jeans.

  ‘Don’t be miserable on your own because of him. Come be miserable with me. You can’t leave me alone all night with Verity.’

  ‘Fair point,’ I laugh miserably, blowing my nose and throwing the tissue down the loo. Just as I’m about to open the door my phone rings. I check it; it’s a 001 number. Suddenly all agonising over Will evaporates. ‘America!’

  ‘Take it!’

&nbs
p; ‘Hello?’ I answer, trying hard not to sound as if I’ve just drunk half a bottle of gin.

  ‘Nina!’ exclaims a male voice.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mike Steinfeldt – Head of Development, Castle Rock.’

  My heart skips in a way that doesn’t feel entirely healthy.

  ‘Mr Steinfeldt,’ I say, sounding painfully British, my voice wavering.

  ‘Call me Mike.’ He has one of those inoffensive Californian accents. ‘So, I guess you know we love your script.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you!’ I jam a finger in my free ear so as not to be bothered by the two girls outside the cubicle who are bitching about me being on the phone when they need to pee.

  ‘Tell me what the motivation was behind the piece?’

  ‘I just adored Nora Ephron.’ I close my eyes and try to focus, focus, focus on saying something that isn’t slurred gibberish. ‘When she passed away I couldn’t stand the idea of there never being another of her films to watch, and in particular the sequel to When Harry Met Sally, which I couldn’t understand had never been made. I knew I had to try and write it myself.’

  ‘I’m glad, kid. A lot of sequels have been written over the years but this is the first one that’s grabbed our attention, and I’m sure Nora would have loved it.’

  ‘Wow! Thank you.’ Never in my life have I received greater praise.

  ‘But even the greats had to make changes and we need to make some to your script if we’re to stand any chance of getting the original cast behind it so…have you got pen and paper?’

  ‘I do,’ I say. I don’t.

  I rummage around in my bag, finding a hair scrunchy, even though my hair hasn’t been long enough to pull back for several years; a Chapstick so ancient it’s begun to shrivel and crack, and coins of a currency I don’t recognise then finally, an Argos pen right at the very bottom. After all that it turns out I have nothing to write on. I look around: the choice is sanitary bag or loo roll; I choose the loo roll. The pen barely works; I press hard but not too hard as to tear it. It’ll have to do.

  ‘Great,’ he says. ‘Let’s get started!’

  9

  ‘What happened to that chap you were seeing?’ asks Toby, Narissa’s husband, over Christmas dinner in Mum and Dad’s dining room.

  ‘We broke up.’ I’m surprised Narissa hasn’t told him, delighting in my misfortune.

  ‘Oh, sorry to hear that,’ he says, devouring a sloppy spoonful of Mum’s trifle.

  Toby’s the sort of guy you could stand next to every day on the Tube and not recognise. He’s about six foot tall, slim, and has wire-rimmed glasses and conventional hair. He grew up in the Home Counties, went to private school but not one you’d know the name of, received a first in economics from a good university but not a great one, works in the city, plays golf when Narissa lets him, and owns a BMW, but not a sexy one, a family one.

  ‘I was engaged to someone else before Nissy, you know.’ I didn’t. Narissa forcefully dollops another spoonful of trifle into his bowl at the mention of it. ‘But it didn’t work out and then your sister came along and that was that. There’ll be someone else.’

  ‘I’m not that worried about someone else.’ I adjust my paper hat. The blip at the pub knocked me off course for a day but I’m back on track, focused on work, still endeavouring to prove Will wrong.

  ‘Someone in the outfield?’

  ‘I’m concentrating on my career.’

  ‘Good for you. Still plenty time for chaps and babies.’

  ‘I’m not that interested in babies,’ I say, clocking Tilly and Henry, who are enough to put a woman off children for life.

  ‘When you don’t look you find,’ says Mum, who’s drunk pretty much an entire bottle of prosecco and has spent most of the meal humming the Sussex Carol.

  ‘Well, I’m definitely not looking; I’m working on my rewrite instead.’

  ‘How long have you been working on it, over the years?’ asks Narissa, reaching for another glass of red.

  ‘It takes as long as I takes,’ I say, a touch defensively.

  ‘Is Auntie Nina cross?’ asks Henry, who’s sitting on his father’s knee.

  ‘A little,’ replies Narissa.

  ‘Why?’

  Narissa ruffles her son’s hair. ‘Because Mummy asked her something she didn’t like. Just like when I ask you to tidy your toys or to wash your face and blow your nose before supper.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, abated, continuing to zoom Lightning McQueen between the remains of the Christmas crackers.

  ‘Nice to know my life is comparable to snot.’

  ‘Nina,’ she says, patronisingly, as if I were one of her kids.

  ‘How likely it is that they’ll buy it, love?’ asks Dad.

  ‘The head of development said he loved it, it has every chance of selling,’ I say confidently, even though most of me doesn’t believe I’m talented enough, or fortunate enough to be one of the lucky few who makes it.

  ‘If he loves it so much why does he want you to rewrite it?’ asks Narissa.

  ‘Even Nora Ephron had to do rewrites,’ I say, trying to cover up the fact that I’m having a complete crisis of confidence about how to rework all that Mike suggested I change – he gave me a list so long I pretty much ran out of loo roll.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Well, it’s not really your bag, is it?’ I say, unable to rein in my snide tone.

  ‘I wasn’t aware you were suddenly the seasoned professional yourself.’

  ‘I know more about it than you do,’ I say, slugging back my gin.

  ‘Girls,’ says Mum. ‘Let’s not spoil the meal by bickering.’

  ‘Aunty Nina is being naughty,’ Tilly says to Narissa across the table.

  ‘Yes, I am.’ I’m aware just how like my niece I sound, my frontal lobe now seriously impaired by gin.

  ‘Why?’ She looks at me as if I’ve just cut off her new Barbie doll’s hair.

  ‘Because your mother thinks she’s better than me just because she married someone with money, lives in Nappy-bloody-Valley and has two point four friggin’ children!’

  ‘Nina!’ says Mum.

  Tilly bursts into tears, gets off her chair and runs into her mother’s arms.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Nina,’ says Narissa, comforting Tilly. ‘You really need to grow up!’

  Toby looks amused; Henry is too preoccupied with his car to notice, and Dad, never one for an argument, shuffles off to watch the Christmas afternoon movie. Mum gives him the evil eye as he leaves and throws back another mouthful of bubbly.

  ‘Whatever, Niss,’ I hiss, pushing back my chair and storming upstairs.

  In my bedroom, boxes of my childhood possessions are stacked in the corner to make way for Mum’s new hobby, and mattresses for my niece and nephew lie on either side of my bed.

  ‘I just shouted at my sister and made my niece cry. I feel rotten,’ I tell Astrid over the phone.

  ‘They’ll forgive you,’ she says. I hear her dragging on a Christmas spliff.

  ‘I don’t feel bad about that, well, maybe a little,’ I say. ‘I feel bad because it’s Christmas and, I don’t know, mostly being single is fine but at Christmas…I miss having someone.’

  ‘Do you miss Will?’

  ‘No. I miss the idea of him, I think.’ Because for all I’m mad as hell about the lies, for all I know we can’t possibly return to what we had, there is a minuscule piece of me that still hasn’t quite got over him.

  ‘That’s what Sally said about Joe.’

  ‘You’re right, I know.’ I think about the split-screen scene when Harry and Sally lie in their beds watching Casablanca and talk to each other on the phone. ‘It would just be nice to have someone. Mum’s got Dad; Narissa’s got Toby, for all their lack of communication. God, even the kids have each other. It gets me down. Maybe I do miss him, a tiny bit.’

  ‘You spent a lot of years together, it’s okay if you do.’

  ‘Thanks, Astrid. I’m
not wallowing in self-pity?’

  ‘No! You’re doing great, Nina,’ she says, slowly. ‘If it was me I’d be a mess.’

  ‘You don’t know how lucky you are to have Aidan,’ I say, flicking the flap of one of Mum’s packing boxes.

  ‘It’s not always the bed of roses you imagine it to be,’ she says quietly, taking another drag. I can hear An Affair to Remember on in the background.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No. Aidan’s busy with work even over Christmas, that’s all, and he’s still got that cold, which means he goes straight to bed when he gets home.’

  Aidan is known for being a tremendous hypochondriac, in the last year he’s self-diagnosed a throat tumour, irritable bowel syndrome, and a blood clot in his leg, which, respectively turned out to be tonsillitis, a dodgy curry and a bruise from rugby. It supplies Astrid with no end of grief and me with no end of laughs.

  ‘And the kitchen’s been ripped out and the place is a bombsite and, well, you know, married stuff.’

  She tells Aidan it’s me and puts me on speakerphone. They’re spending Christmas alone, just the two of them – a little love-in in Streatham.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Aidan. Thanks so much for my present.’

  ‘Nae bother,’ he calls out, spluttering on Astrid’s joint. I know he hasn’t the foggiest what Astrid bought me. If he knew she’d bought me days of the week underpants, just like Sally’s, he’d avoid me for the next year.

  ‘He’s off to do the dishes,’ says Astrid.

  ‘I wonder what Will is doing.’

  ‘Probably enduring Christmas with his family, like everyone else.’

  ‘I do miss his family.’ Will’s father is warm and intelligent and far more interesting than Dad. And his mother is a psychologist who loves her career but is still a brilliant mother. ‘His family are better than mine.’

  ‘Now you’re wallowing.’

  ‘I’m allowed to wallow. I’m single on Christmas Day. Wallowing is definitely allowed.’

  ‘Just remember: Will is a plonker; you deserve better.’