You Had Me at Hello

by Mhairi McFarlane

  ‘It’s Rachel,’ I said, stiffly.

  ‘Always Ronnie to me.’

  Our conversation about the stumpy passport photo came back to me and in relief and self-consciousness, I laughed too loudly. He must’ve seen my moment of uncertainty because there was a touch of relief in his laughter, too.

  The best friendships usually steal up on you, you don’t remember their start point. But there was a definitive click at that moment that told me we weren’t going to politely peel apart as soon as we’d signed in and copied down our timetables.

  I referred to the map again and as I leaned in I could smell the citrusy tang of whatever he’d washed with. I pointed confidently at a window.

  ‘There. Room C 11.’

  Needless to say, I was wrong, and we were late.

  9

  Hope has leaked out of me, collected in a puddle at my feet and evaporated into the roof of Central Library, joining the collective human misery cloud in the earth’s atmosphere. No Ben, only the unavoidable evidence of how much I wanted to see him. On reflection, I’m not even sure Caroline wasn’t mistaken. She wears contacts and has started doing that middle-aged thing of not being able to tell the girls from the boys if they’re goths.

  If Ben was here, it was only a flying visit for some obscure research purposes, and now he’s back in his well-appointed home, far, far away. Putting his Paul Smith doctor’s bag down in a black-and-white tiled hallway, leafing through his mail, calling out a hello to the equally high-powered honey he’s come home to. Blissfully unaware that a woman he used to know is such a pathetic mess she’s sitting a hundred and eighty miles away constantly re-reading the line: ‘Excuse me, which way to the Spanish Steps?’ in a bid to appear complicated and alluring.

  I get out of my seat for a wander around the room, trying to look deeply cerebrally preoccupied and steeped in learning. The toffee-brown parquet floor is so highly polished it shimmers like a mirage. As I trail my fingers along the spines of books, I start as I see a brown-haired, possibly thirty-something man with his back to me. He’s sitting at a table tucked between the bookcases that line the edge of the room, so if you had an aerial view, they would look like the spokes inside a wheel.

  It’s him. It’s him. Oh my God, it’s him.

  My heart’s pulsing so hard it’s as if someone medically qualified has reached through my sawn ribs to squeeze it in a resuscitation attempt. I wander down past his seat and pretend to find a book of special interest as I draw level with his table. I pull it out and study it. In an unconvincing way, I pivot round absent-mindedly while I’m reading, so I’m facing him. It’s so unsubtle I might as well have shot a paper plane over to him and ducked. I risk a glance. The man looks up at me, adjusts rimless glasses.

  It’s not him. A rucksack with neon flashes is propped near his feet, his trouser hems are circled with bicycle clips. I sag at the realisation that this must be who Caroline’s seen, too, and decide to gather my things. I pack up in seconds, no longer bothering to look appealing, on the final gamble that the law of sod will therefore produce him.

  I shouldn’t have come here. I’m acting out of character and hyper-irrational in the post-traumatic stress of splitting up with Rhys. I don’t know what I’d say to Ben or why I’d want to see him. Actually, that’s not true. I know why I want to see him but the reasons don’t bear examination.

  A clutch of people in fleeces and hats, who appear to be being given a guided tour, block my exit from the library. Like an impatient local, I retreat and double back round them. Deep in thought, I smack straight into someone coming the other direction.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mutters back, in that reflexive British way where you’re apologetic that someone else has had to make an apology.

  In order to perform the little tango of manoeuvring past each other, we exchange a distracted glance. There’s absolutely no way this man can be Ben. I’d know, I’d sense it if he was this close. I glance at his face anyway. It registers as ‘stranger’ then reforms into something familiar, with that oddly dull thud of revelation.

  Oh Judas Priest! There he is. THERE HE IS! Plucked from my memory and here in the real world, in full colour HD. His hair’s slightly longer than the university years’ crop but still short enough to be work-smart, and they’re unmistakeably his features, the sight of them transporting me back a decade in an instant. And, despite the world’s longest ever build-up to a reappearance since Lord Lucan, Caroline’s right – he still takes air out of lungs.

  He’s lost the slightly unformed, baby-fat look we all had back then, sharpening into something even more characterfully handsome. There’s a fan of light lines at the corner of each eye, the set of his mouth a little harder. His frame has filled out a little from the youthful lankiness of before.

  It’s the strangest sensation, looking at someone who I know well and don’t know at all, at the same time. He’s staring too, although it’s the staring Catch-22: he could be staring because I’m staring. For an awful instant, I think either Ben’s not going to recognise me or – worse – pretend not to recognise me. But he doesn’t take flight. He opens his lips and there’s a pause, as if he has to remember how to engage his voice box and soft and hard palates to produce sounds.

  ‘… Rachel?’

  ‘Ben?’ (Like I haven’t given myself an unfair head start in this quiz.)

  His brow stays furrowed in disbelief but he smiles, and a wave of relief and joy crashes over me.

  ‘Oh my God, I don’t believe it. How are you?’ he says, at a subdued volume, as if our voices are going to carry into the library upstairs.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I squeak. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine too. Mildly stunned right now, but otherwise fine.’

  We laugh, eyes still wide: this is crazy. More than he knows.

  ‘Surreal,’ I agree, feeling my way tentatively back into a familiarity, like stumbling around your bedroom in the pitch dark, trying to remember where everything is. ‘You live in Manchester?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes. Sale. About to move into the centre. You?’

  ‘Yeah, Didsbury. Moved up from London last month.’

  He brandishes a briefcase, like the Chancellor with the Budget.

  ‘I’m a boring arse lawyer now, would you believe.’

  ‘Really? You did one of those conversion courses?’

  ‘No. I blag it. Thought there was a saturation point when I’d seen enough TV dramas, I could go from there. Like Catch Me If You Can.’

  He’s straight faced and I’m so shell-shocked that it takes me a second to process that this is humour.

  ‘Ah right,’ I nod. Then hurriedly: ‘I’m a journalist. Of sorts. Court reporter for the local paper.’

  ‘I knew you’d be the one to actually use that English degree.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. Not much call for opinions on Thomas Hardy when I’m covering the millionth car jacking.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  I’m startled by this, classic guilty conscience.

  ‘The library, I mean?’ Ben adds.

  ‘Oh, er, revision for my night class. Learning Italian,’ I say, liking how it sounds self-improving even as I cringe at the lie. ‘You?’

  ‘Exams. Bastard things never end. At least these mean I get paid more.’

  The fleecy crowd are pouring round us and I know there’s only so long we can conduct this conversation, stood here.

  ‘Uh. Got time for a coffee?’ I blurt, as if it’s a mad notion that’s popped unbidden into my mind, tense with the fear of seeing him grasp for an excuse.

  ‘If we’ve got a decade to cover, we might even need two,’ Ben replies, without missing a beat.

  I glow. Rough-sleepers outside could huddle round me and warm their hands.

  10

  We make jittery small talk about revision, both real and fictitious, until we reach the half-empty basement café. He goes to get the coffees, cappuccino for me, filter for h
im. I sit down at a table, rub my sweaty palms on my dress and watch Ben in the queue.

  He digs in his suit trouser pocket for change, under an expensive-looking military-style grey coat. I see he continues to dress as if he’s starring in a film about himself. It’s completely unnecessary to look like that if you’re a solicitor. He should be lounging about in an aftershave advert on a yacht, not navigating ordinary life with the rest of us, showing us all up.

  It wasn’t so much his looks that always had females falling all over Ben, I realise, though they hardly hindered. He had what I suppose actors call ‘presence’. What Rhys calls tossing about as if you own the place. He moves as if the hinges on his joints are looser than everyone else’s. Then there’s his dry humour: light, quick remarks that are somehow rather unexpected coming from someone so handsome. You’re conditioned to expect the beautiful to have less intellect to balance things out.

  Yet while I’m gazing at him and feeling my insides liquefy, he’s chatting to the middle-aged lady serving the coffees, totally normally and unperturbed. To me, this is a monumental event. To him, I am a historical footnote. This huge disparity spells huge trouble. If this was a fairytale, I’d be staring with unquenchable thirst at a bottle labelled POISON. For now, it’s going to taste like milky coffee.

  As Ben returns and sets my cup down, he says: ‘No sugar, right?’

  I nod, delighted he retains such trivia. Then I spot a new and non-trivial detail about him – a simple silver band on the third finger of his left hand. It was absolutely bound to be the case, I told myself that many times, and yet I still feel as if I’ve been slapped.

  ‘You know, Italians only have cappuccinos in the morning. It’s a breakfast drink,’ I blurt, for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

  ‘Something you learned on your course?’ Ben asks, pleasantly.

  ‘Er. Yes.’ Here’s the point where fortune farts in my face and Ben’s wife turns out to be half-Italian. He rattles out some lyrical phrases, and I have to pretend I’m only on my first few lessons. Ben’s wife.

  ‘Have you been in a cryogenic chamber since uni?’ Ben continues. ‘You look exactly the bloody same. It’s a little freaky.’

  I’m relieved I don’t look raddled, and try not to blush disproportionately at an implied compliment. ‘No ageing sunlight penetrates courtrooms.’

  ‘Same apart from your hair, of course,’ he adds, gesturing the shorter length with a chopping motion of his hand at his neck. It was longer, at university, then I got a more businesslike on-shoulders ’do after a few occasions in court when I was mistaken for the girlfriend of a defendant.

  I tuck a strand behind my ear, self-consciously: ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Suits you,’ he says, lightly.

  ‘Thank you. You look well, too.’ I take a sharp breath. ‘So, tell me all about your life. Married, two point four kids, belter of a pension plan?’

  ‘Married, yes,’ Ben says.

  ‘Fantastic!’ I make sure every last syllable sounds robustly delighted. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you. Olivia and I celebrated our two-year anniversary last month.’

  The name gives me a twinge. All the Sloaney-I’ve-got-a-pony girls on our course were called things like Olivia and Tabitha and Veronica and we used to take arms against them in our non-posh gang of two. And he traitorously married one of them. I momentarily wish I had a Toby to wield in retaliation.

  ‘Well done,’ I waffle on. ‘Did you have the big white production?’

  ‘Urgh, no,’ Ben shudders. ‘Registry office at Marylebone. We hired an old Routemaster and had posh shepherd’s pie wedding breakfast in a room above a pub. A nice one, I mean, Liv chose it. All idyllic with kids running round in the garden afterwards, we had great weather.’

  I nod and he suddenly looks self-conscious.

  ‘Bit cliché, trendified Chas’n’Dave, Beefeater London, I guess, but we liked it.’

  ‘Sounds great.’ It does sound great. And cool, and romantic. I don’t care what the bride wore or want to see the album though. All right, I do.

  ‘Yeah, it was. No faceless hotel, DJ with a fake American accent, three million relatives glumly picking at a duff carvery that cost three million quid, none of that rubbish.’

  ‘That’s only a quid per head budget. Quite tight really.’

  Ben smiles, distractedly, and I see the wheels turning, him remembering things that have nothing to do with this weak joke, things he’s not going to mention.

  For a split second, sensing his discomfort, I marvel at my own masochism. Did I really want to sit here listening to how he promised all his remaining days to someone else? Couldn’t I have taken that as a given? Did I want to discover a broken man? No. I wanted him to be happy and it was also going to be the thing that hurt the most. That’s the reason this was such a bad idea. One of the reasons.

  We sip our coffees. I discreetly wipe my mouth in case of chocolate powder moustache.

  He continues: ‘Kids, not yet. Pension, yes, really cuts into my having-fun fund.’

  ‘Still able to spend harder than Valley girls?’

  I remember days trailing round clothes shops with Ben, waiting outside changing rooms, enjoying the gender reversal. He even took my advice on what to buy – it was like having my old Ken doll become self-aware. (‘Not that self-aware if he’s behaving like a southern poof,’ Rhys said.)

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ben says. ‘I have to hide the bags from Liv as principal earner. It’s emasculating. What about you? Married?’ He picks up his spoon and stirs his coffee, although he didn’t add any sugar, and drops his gaze momentarily. ‘To Rhys?’

  If we were hooked up to polygraphs, the line would’ve got squigglier.

  ‘Engaged for a while. We’ve just split up actually.’

  Ben looks genuinely appalled. Great, we skipped schadenfreude and went straight to abject pity. ‘God, sorry.’

  ‘Thanks. It’s OK.’

  ‘You should’ve stopped me going on about weddings.’

  ‘I asked. It’s fine.’

  ‘Is that why you’re moving?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I nod.

  ‘No kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s funny, I was sure you would have, for some reason,’ Ben says, unguardedly. ‘A little girl with her mother’s attitude problems, and the same stupid mittens.’

  He gives me a small smile and looks into his cup again. The warmth of this – the reference to something obscure that only we’d understand, the fact it reveals he’s thought about me – prompts me to emit a small, strangled noise that approximates a giggle. Then, in a moment, it drenches me with sadness. Like my chest cavity is full of rainwater.

  We avoid each other’s eyes and move on. Ben tells me about the law firm he’s joined, how his wife’s also a solicitor. She got transferred from her London practice to their Manchester office so she could be up here with him. They met at a Law Society dinner. The crowded room, black tie. The scene plays in my head like a trailer for a Richard Curtis film I most definitely don’t want to see.

  He concludes, jokily: ‘If I’m a solicitor and you’re a court reporter, perhaps we shouldn’t be speaking?’

  ‘Depends. What department are you in?’

  ‘Family.’

  ‘Divorce settlements, that kind of thing?’

  ‘Yeah, access arrangements. Sometimes grim. Other times, if you can get the right outcome, grim satisfaction.’

  I understand why he’d want to work in that area, and he knows I know, so I nod. ‘I think there’d be more of a conflict in talking to a reporter if you were in criminal.’

  ‘Couldn’t take the hours. The friend who got me the job up here is in criminal. He’s on call all the time, it’s punishing. Actually, he was saying he wants to talk to the press about a case. Shall I give him your name?’

  ‘Of course,’ I say, eager to please and forge a connection.

  We get to the end of one coffee and, despite my offer to buy the second,
Ben checks his watch and says he’d love to but he probably ought to be going.

  ‘Yeah, me too, now you mention it,’ I lie, twisting my watch round and glancing at it without looking at the time.

  Ben waits solicitously as I pull my coat on. I hope he’s not noticing the stone I’ve gained since university. (‘Stone,’ Rhys used to snort. ‘A stone weighing thirty pounds? Did I miss the latest barmy Brussels directive?’)

  We walk outside together.

  ‘It’s great to see you, Rachel. I can’t believe it’s been ten years, it’s incredible.’

  ‘Yeah, unbelievable,’ I agree.

  ‘We should keep in touch. Me and Liv don’t know many people up here. You can tell us where’s good to go out in Manchester these days.’

  ‘I’d love to!’ Like I know. ‘I’ll get Caroline, Mindy and Ivor out, too.’

  ‘Wow, you still see them?’

  ‘Yeah. I see them all the time.’

  ‘That’s really nice,’ Ben nods, yet I feel it’s another example of my decade-long stasis, as if I sit around in a moth-eaten Miss Havisham graduation ballgown, listening to a crackly recording of Pulp’s “Disco 2000”. ‘I’ll let you know about that story, too. What’s your number?’

  Ben keys it in while I try to remember the numbers in the right sequence, awash with adrenaline.

  He checks his watch again: ‘Crap, I’m late. What about you? Need walking to your stop?’

  ‘It’s only round the corner, I’ll be fine, go.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘See you soon, Rachel. I’ll call you.’

  He ducks down and pecks me on the cheek. I hold my breath in the shock of the contact and the brush and warmth of his skin against mine. Then there’s a horrifically awkward moment when he unexpectedly goes for the other cheek too in that media London/sophisticated European way. I don’t expect it and we nearly bump faces, so I have to put my hand on his shoulder to steady myself and then panic it looks too forward, over-correcting by leaping backwards.

  ‘See you!’ I say, though what I really want to do is re-run the action without me being such a gauche fool, in the manner of a bossy child directing a play in their front room. ‘Right, you stand there, I am here again … Go!’