You Had Me at Hello

by Mhairi McFarlane

  ‘Yours?’ I ask Ben.

  ‘Apart from totally forgetting your name when I bumped into you again after ten years? Let me think …’

  ‘You didn’t?’ My kneecaps feel as if they’re not screwed on right.

  ‘Of course I didn’t, you arse.’

  Ben’s disbelieving expression reads how could you fall for that?

  Because the idea of you having erased me, clicked and dragged me to the mental trash can icon like a deleted file, is the stuff of anxiety nightmares, right up there with the one where I’m scuttling the streets at dawn, naked, hiding behind milk floats.

  ‘It was offering an albino girl my seat on the tram. I only saw her from behind, I thought she was 72, not 22.’ Ben bites his lip at the memory, Simon laughs, I wince.

  ‘Lack of pigmentation can be heavy on the legs,’ Simon says.

  ‘Hey, you meant well,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Simon.’ Ben pushes a hand in a pocket as he drinks.

  It strikes me that Ben and Simon are competing. What for? My attention? Surely not. Not Ben, anyway. He’s married. Am I flirting by having a laugh with them? I imagine Olivia on the way home, saying acidly: ‘She certainly puts the “ho” in hospitality.’

  ‘More drinks?’ Simon asks, and departs to the kitchen.

  I rebalance myself on my chafing heels and clear my throat to make some explanation about the Simon date.

  ‘Oh my God, blast from the past. Teenage Fanclub?’ Ben asks, tuning into the music amid the chatter. ‘You would’ve laughed at mine and Liv’s first dance.’

  Probably not laughed, I think.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘In the first big compromise of married life, I let her have what she wanted.’

  He mouths ‘Coldplay’ to me and grimaces.

  ‘Oh, well. I was wedding planning myself not so long ago. Glad you resolved the DJ/live band divide. It was the Gaza Strip for me and Rhys.’

  I discover a yearning, of some considerable proportions, to tell Ben what happened. Talk about my real life – not the sort of things you discuss as bullshit icebreakers – with a real friend.

  ‘The thought of getting married brought everything to a head for us,’ I say, and Ben nods. ‘The way they call it the happiest day of your life – well, it cuts both ways. If you’re not happy, it’s hard not to notice.’

  ‘Was it a sudden thing? Or had you been unhappy for a while?’

  ‘Hmm. Well. We muddled through our twenties. We had the pressure valves of his band and my friends. But your thirties – it’s decision time, the wedding, kids. I realised we weren’t happy enough to make the next stage work. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Some,’ Ben nods again. ‘You seem to be coping really well.’

  ‘On and off,’ I say.

  He gives me a sad, sweet smile, and looks at the floor.

  ‘Which Coldplay song was it?’ I ask, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Oh no, hang on, let me guess. Does it go, “Dum dum dum da dum dum … Sorry, all our operators are busy at the moment. Please keep holding, your call is important to us.”’

  Ben’s eyes crinkle up appealingly as he laughs. ‘You’ve not changed! So arsey …’

  ‘You egged me on, you have to admit.’

  ‘Egged Rachel on how?’ Olivia says, as she and Simon join us.

  ‘She was cruelly mocking our bedwetter indie choice of music for the first dance,’ Ben says.

  ‘No! You said—’ I can’t repeat the fact that Ben was mocking it first, that’s even more incendiary. I know this insult is going to be taken in entirely different spirit by Olivia. Thanks Ben. ‘I like some Coldplay …’ I finish, lamely.

  ‘Yeah, right!’ Ben says, making it worse.

  ‘What would you have as your first dance?’ Olivia asks me, sharply.

  Ben glares at her, presumably to communicate that you don’t ask someone who recently broken off an engagement what their first dance would have been.

  ‘Rhys said he wanted “What Have I Done To Deserve This?” by the Pet Shop Boys. So I dodged a bullet there.’

  ‘But what would you choose?’ Olivia persists.

  ‘Liv …’ Ben’s dismayed, failing to understand why she’s being so insensitive, whereas Olivia and I understand each other perfectly.

  ‘The way things are going, it’ll probably have to be Etta James, “At Last”. And some sort of young volunteer helping me and my bridegroom get out of our seats.’ No laugh. ‘We’d chosen “May You Never” by John Martyn for our first dance,’ I concede.

  Ben nods, impressed: ‘Lovely choice.’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ Olivia snaps.

  Ah well, it must be rubbish then.

  ‘Slightly, just slightly too fast tempo?’ Ben says. ‘I’d go for “Couldn’t Love You More”, of his.’

  I nod back. Not much to say to that, other than for my pupils to dilate and to continue drinking until my liver resembles a twenty-ounce, pepper-rubbed sirloin.

  ‘Why didn’t you ask for it then?’ Olivia says to him, waspishly.

  ‘I wanted you to have what you wanted,’ Ben says.

  ‘I think you should have something you love as your first dance, not something cool,’ Olivia says in my direction, pointedly, not ready to forgive me.

  ‘No one could accuse you of choosing Coldplay to be cool,’ Ben laughs. He’s going to be in so much trouble when they get in, and he doesn’t even know it. Olivia folds her arms and doesn’t take her eyes off me. I stare at the ice in my drink.

  ‘Now, I know this,’ Simon says, cocking an ear to the party soundtrack. ‘“Unfinished Symphony”.’

  ‘“Unfinished Sympathy”,’ I correct him.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  38

  ‘Which side do you normally sleep?’ Caroline asks, once we’ve put a severely impaired Ivor to bed on the sofa. When taxi time arrived, he was slumped in some sort of cocktail coma and we took a call that it was best to accommodate him. We tucked him up with a towel underneath him, a washing-up bowl at his side and numerous tea towels round his head. He had a deathly pallor and his hands crossed on his chest, like an Egyptian funeral for a pharaoh who owned shit things.

  ‘There isn’t a normally yet. I haven’t been here long enough.’ What I really mean is, there isn’t a side to choose now the bulwark of Rhys’s bulk is absent.

  ‘You in the middle, then,’ she says, flicking a corner of the duvet back. ‘I’ll go here, Mindy the other side.’

  Mindy comes back from brushing her teeth, clad in beautiful scarlet Chinese pyjamas. Next to Caroline’s black strappy lace-edged floral slip, I’m rather glad I left the toothpaste-stained Velvets t-shirt behind.

  ‘Ivor woke up,’ Mindy announces. ‘He made a noise like: BWORK. BWORK. BWOOORK. Then he ran off to the loo.’

  ‘Anything on the soft furnishings?’

  ‘No, I totally got behind him and pushed him faster than the speed of sick.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  We arrange ourselves, then click the bedside lights off.

  ‘How did Rupa get a mattress this big up those stairs?’ I ask.

  ‘She had it winched in one of the windows, I think,’ Mindy says.

  I feel my muscles relax against the springs.

  ‘What’s the deal with you and Ben then?’ Caroline says.

  All the tension returns. And then some.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I try to convey total amazement to Caroline while horizontal and invisible to her, sure she must be able to feel the heat of the guilty sweat I’ve broken out into.

  ‘Weeelllll …’ Caroline says. ‘It’s a weird one.’

  ‘What is?’ I am ramrod straight, like an exclamation mark between their brackets. I will Deny Everything. Forever.

  ‘When that light bulb went and you were standing on that chair changing it with Simon holding on to your legs, I saw Ben give you two a real look.’

  ‘That’s because we were driving a coach and horses through he
alth and safety regs.’

  Silence. Feeble jokes are not going to work here.

  ‘It was very intense, very serious. And when Simon helped you down and managed to grope your arse in the process, I swear Ben almost winced.’

  ‘He’s not Simon’s biggest fan. I don’t think he thinks it’s a good idea we’re going on a date,’ I add, hoping I’ve done enough to close the subject.

  ‘Yeah. This is the thing. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said it was simply plain old violent male jealousy,’ Caroline says. ‘Why doesn’t he want you to date Simon, exactly?’

  ‘Lucky you do know better,’ I say. ‘Given Ben’s very happily married.’

  ‘If he’s happily married, he can’t have a thing for you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK. Number one, there is no such thing as a happy marriage—’

  ‘Oh, Caroline!’ Mindy wails. ‘Enough!’

  ‘I haven’t finished.’

  ‘I know you haven’t, because I still have a shred of hope left,’ Mindy says.

  ‘—There is no such thing as a happy marriage if you mean an invulnerable one. Every relationship has its weaknesses and bad patches.’

  ‘You don’t have to be married to know that,’ I say.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Caroline says, trying to soothe me. ‘I’m not running down what you had with Rhys. But he hung around with other blokes in his band all the time. You never had to worry about female friends.’

  ‘I still don’t see what you’re getting at.’

  ‘That if I’m right and Ben’s got a soft spot for you, you need to be wary. You don’t want to cause trouble by unintentionally encouraging it. Weren’t you quite close at uni? Did you ever suspect anything then?’

  ‘No! And Ben would never have an affair.’ At last I’m able to say something with perfect certainty.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know. Honestly, I know it like I know my own name. There’s no way Ben would ever do that. He’s totally honourable. I wouldn’t sleep with a married man either. I hope you don’t think I would do that.’

  ‘Nooooo,’ Caroline says, with no idea what agonies this conversation is causing me. ‘But I think you might find yourself in the middle of something before you know you’ve started. You two were lit up like Christmas trees when you were talking to each other. No one has a crafty fag behind the bike sheds expecting to get lung cancer.’

  ‘I’m not smiling at Olivia, inviting her to parties and moving in on her husband!’

  ‘I’m not saying you’re moving in on him,’ Caroline says.

  ‘Look,’ I continue, with a dry mouth that isn’t all down to booze dehydration, ‘Ben and Olivia are married, Ben’s not interested in me in that way, I’m not out to get him and I’m going on a date with Simon. And that’s that.’

  ‘I’m not so sure everything’s great with Ben and Olivia. I get the impression it’s been a strain moving up here. She’s miles away from all her family and friends and I think she misses her old job,’ Caroline says.

  Pause.

  ‘If you want my advice, Rach, the time you need to worry is if he ever says things at home are complicated,’ Mindy says. ‘It’s never complicated. “It’s complicated” only ever means, “Well yeah there’s someone else but I want to do you too.”’

  ‘What they actually mean is: it’s not as complicated as I’d like it to be,’ Caroline says, laughing.

  I’m not laughing.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to wind you up,’ Caroline says. ‘Most likely if Ben’s feeling anything it’s nostalgia for being twenty-one. I mean, if you’d been right for each other, it would have happened then.’

  ‘True,’ I squeak, grateful for the cover of darkness.

  ‘We all get a bad attack of the what-ifs from time to time.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  We say our goodnights. Caroline and Mindy drift into sleep.

  I’m wide awake, mind racing.

  39

  If you were cool, Friday night meant clubbing somewhere a bit druggy and dancey, or if you preferred beer and guitars, it was 5th Avenue or 42nd Street. If you were a significantly less cool student, you went to a meat market shark pit where they banned jeans and trainers and played music that was in the charts. And if you were truly tragic, you went to the halls disco and drank cider out of plastic receptacles, danced around a room that doubled as a canteen by day and staggered into the takeaways opposite at half two.

  Being skint is a great leveller, however, and by the second year, with the expense of ‘living out’ biting, a lot of people we knew collided at the latter venue. Among the dozen or so that had gathered one particular night were Ivor, back on a weekend from his placement, and Ben and his latest girlfriend, Emily. They’d been together for a few months – good going for Ben.

  She was cool in a way I could never hope to be: hi-top trainers, hacked-off denim mini, two-tone peroxide hair piled atop her head. The look was predatory-sexy and yet conventionally pretty in an ‘I don’t need to labour the point; it’s so obvious, I can work against it’ way. He always went for hues of blonde on the colour wheel, I noted. I hadn’t had much of a chance to get to know her and I was disappointed that they sat at the far end of the table, merely waving their hellos. If I wanted to get to know Ben’s girlfriends, I had to strike while the iron was hot. None of them lasted much beyond a term. Whoever got Ben to settle down one day was going to have her work cut out, I thought.

  When it was Ben’s turn to get a round, it occurred to me it would be an opportunity to chat. I pushed my chair out and went over to give him a hand.

  As I approached the bar, I saw a gaggle of rugger buggers had struck up conversation with him. Ben played football and had an XY chromosome and therefore existed as a human being rather than a heckling target.

  ‘Oh, hello. Do you know what we call you?’ said one of the rugby gang, as I joined them. ‘Ben does. Hey, Ben! Tell Rachel what we call her.’

  Ben looked deeply uncomfortable. I frowned at him.

  ‘Rachel You Would Ford. Ahahahhahaha!’

  Ben muttered: ‘I bloody wouldn’t.’

  Rather like the truth or dare ‘sister’ day, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this denial. Ben and I ran relays between the bar and the table, two or three pints at a time, passing at the midway point.

  I felt the group’s eyes on me as I retreated and briefly wished I hadn’t worn my new black cords that were a little tight on the rear. As I carried the second lot of glasses back to where we were sitting, I felt a hard – frankly, painful – pinch to the arse, and whipped round.

  ‘Oi!’

  ‘It was him.’ They all pointed at each other, arms crossed over, comedy skit style.

  There wasn’t a lot I could do with full hands, so I settled for giving them serious stink-eye. When I went back for more drinks, I made the point that I was refusing to be cowed by casting a deliberately contemptuous look in the direction of my antagonists. Mistake: this only caused another ripple of amusement.

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way but we want to see the back of you,’ said one particularly unpleasant-looking specimen, who was short, squat and acne-covered. I could see he was making up for insecurity about his deficiencies by behaving even more badly than the rest of them.

  ‘Drop dead. Try it again and I’ll smack you.’

  Rachel against ten rugby players was a prospect unlikely to make them skid their pants in fright, but I still felt I had to assert myself.

  ‘I won’t try that again,’ said hobbit rugby boy. ‘Can I check, is this not allowed either?’

  He reached out and squeezed my left breast, as if it was the horn on a vintage car. The rugby boys started braying with laughter.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘You arsehole!’

  ‘Sorry, sorry, that was wrong,’ he said. ‘It was actually this right one that caught my eye.’

  He performed the same indignity on my other breast and I went to slap him, hard.
He caught my wrist before my palm connected with his lumpy cheek. I’d seen this move in bad soap operas and didn’t think anyone had fast enough reactions in real life. He had a horrible, clammy claw-of-a-vice grip. I couldn’t wrest myself free and started to feel panicky.

  ‘Gerroff me!’ I shrieked, to more raucous laughter. I could still feel the imprint of his nastily rough fingers. I’d lost control and felt my lungs constrict.

  I was suddenly aware of a presence at my side. My wrist was abruptly released. I turned in time to see Ben lunging towards the spotty groper, his fist connecting hard with his jaw in a wet-sounding crunch.

  ‘Ow!’ he cried. ‘I—’

  He didn’t get a chance to say anything else as Ben punched him again, quite ferociously, this time knocking him off balance and sending him sprawling to the floor. I momentarily worried that his friends might defend him and square up to Ben. Instead they stepped back and watched him flailing. Nice guys.

  ‘Apologise!’ Ben shouted. Actual real violence had taken place and I felt like I was going to throw up. This was the halls bar, not some terrifying pub in Moss Side.

  ‘Sorry,’ said spotty man, rubbing his cheek and looking wary of getting another right hook.

  ‘Not to me, to her!’

  ‘Sorry,’ he sulked, casting a very quick look up in my direction.

  ‘Idiot,’ Ben said, injecting the word with great feeling. He picked up the last two pints and I followed him back to our table.

  As we walked away, spotty man shouted, at a volume that brought the whole bar to a standstill – or the small part of the bar that wasn’t already watching: ‘Ben, I didn’t know she was your girlfriend!’ Pause. ‘I DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS YOUR GIRLFRIEND!’

  I cringed. I was absolutely certain Ben cringed. When we reached our group, everyone demanded to know what had happened.

  ‘They were being idiots,’ Ben muttered, taking his seat next to Emily again.

  ‘He indecently assaulted me!’ I wailed, covering my self-consciousness with theatrics.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘He grabbed my baps,’ I said, feeling I had to explain that Ben’s reaction was within the range of reasonable response.