You Had Me at Hello

by Mhairi McFarlane

  ‘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.’

  56

  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.

  On arrival, we had aperitifs in a featureless chintzy ante-room and I desperately scanned the black-jacketed crowd for him, without success. I spotted a few stray friends-of-Ben but couldn’t trace their origins, location-wise, and the ballroom, laid for dinner, was simply too large to effectively scope.

  By the start of the meal, I was convinced he was a no-show. I began to formulate a plan. When no one was paying me much attention, I’d slip out and into a taxi, go back to his house. As time ticked on, it was all I could do not to
hurl the prawn cocktail starter with a wet salmon-coloured splat at the nearest wall, turn over the table and charge down Oxford Road in my stilettos.

  Then, when the key lime pie was demolished and the music had started and I was working out how best to make my escape, there he was. Right in the middle of the room, as if he’d dropped from the ceiling on cat burglar wires. Ben in a dinner suit. If you trained a camera on him, you’d get lens flare.

  He’d obviously only recently arrived because a girl on his table jumped up and wrapped her arms around him – giving me stomach pain – and a male friend passed him a beer. I could see Ben loosening his bow tie, ruffling his hair and making an explanation for his lateness. I was going to look something of a fool, but I’d waited long enough.

  I sprang to my feet and wove my way over to his table.

  ‘Can I talk to you?’

  Ben looked up from his friends in surprise, set his drink down. I thought I was about to be chewed out in front of everyone, but bravery paid off. He shrugged a ‘Sure.’ I took his hand, led him on to the dance floor. It was going to be him making a declaration of undying feelings at the ball, instead, here I was.

  I faced him.

  ‘Listen, Ben—’

  ‘I’m trying. You want to talk to me here?’

  I thought the dance floor was the only place we could get some privacy, but it had the small drawback of the decibels. Blur’s ‘To The End’ boomed out of the speakers. We were surrounded by people who’d had enough of the cava to be first on their feet, singing along lustily.

  ‘There should’ve been another question …’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Ben mouthed, turning his head to me.

  ‘Another question. About my feelings. Last night! When you asked if I was still in love with Rhys …’ I put my fingers in my ears to block out Damon Albarn and tune in Ben.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said, squinting in confusion.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere quieter!’ I bellowed.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I mouthed, succinctly. Finally, Ben lip-read one line at least.

  ‘I want to say something to you too,’ he shouted, shaking his head.

  A smile. He was smiling. For one shining moment, it was going to be OK. I moved closer to grab his hand again and felt his arm loop round my waist. He tucked my hair behind my right ear and swung in to say something, close. I felt the heat of his breath on my neck and I shivered, closed my eyes.

  What happened next seemed to go in slow motion, and not in the anticipated, exultant, moving in for a disco-ball light scattered, reader I married him, roll credits movie kiss way. I felt Ben pull back. I opened my eyes. He’d seen something over my shoulder and the smile slipped off his face, the arm from my body.

  I turned to see Rhys advancing on us, in a tux, beaming from ear to ear. It was Rhys, as an un-Rhys-like, Big Band member imposter. He’d even attempted to tame and flatten his hair into something parted and Rat Pack slick. I looked back to Ben. Rhys reached us.

  ‘Ta dah!’ Rhys said, spreading his hands out at either side, like a magician showing me he had nothing up his sleeves.

  Ben folded his arms, looked from me to him. Waited. Waited for words that, had they come, would’ve been barely audible, but still would’ve been better than nothing.

  ‘Alright mate? Not cutting in, am I?!’ Rhys hollered, with a ha-ha-as-if intonation.

  Ben didn’t answer, looked to me, jaw clenched.

  ‘No!’ I said, as reflex response, a placeholder while I worked out how the hell to handle this. ‘But, uhm … Ben and I were just … We’ve just …’ Done it and declared ourselves?

  Before I could say anything else, Rhys shouted: ‘C’meeeeere babe!’ bundling me into a coercive, bear-hug version of a waltz.

  ‘Wait, wait!’ I felt like I was drowning, gulping for oxygen in a crush of musty black poly-cotton and Issey Miyake for Men and blind panic. ‘Rhys! Stop!’

  ‘Whazza matter?’

  When I disentangled myself, Ben was nowhere to be seen. And he was going to stay that way for ten years.

  57

  Two weeks after the St Ann’s Square massacre, I receive an invitation from Ben to go for a post-work drink.

  ‘Dear lord,’ Ben says, as I walk up to him outside the Royal Exchange. ‘You’re only a minute or two late. Allowing for a margin of inaccuracy with my watch, you might even be on time. Have you got any explanation for this?’

  ‘My desire for a drink?’ I say.

  ‘I feel like I should fire a confetti cannon.’ He gives me a sidelong smile as we set off.

  ‘I have a lot of ground to make up.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘You didn’t want to go to the film with Olivia and Lucy?’

  I’d noticed Ben had felt the need to explain why Olivia couldn’t come too. I had my suspicions she might’ve lined up slightly differently to Ben in the Hurricane Simon vs Wretched Rachel wrestling match.

  ‘You wouldn’t get me to the film they’re going to unless you strapped me on a gurney and stuck a syringe in my arm. He’s My Man, or something. She’s That Girl. Where’s My Brain?’

  ‘There’s quite an Oscar buzz around Where’s My Brain!’

  ‘Flies buzzing round it, more like.’

  We laugh.

  ‘How about here?’ I say on impulse, as we pass a promising doorway, and as soon as we walk inside I know it’s a lucky discovery. Battered wooden chairs and tables painted in mismatched colours, guttering tea lights, art college waitresses, framed vintage film posters on the walls – the whole hipster package.

  We take a seat underneath Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Ben gets the drinks, Belgian beer in brown glass bottles. He shrugs the discreetly showy-offy grey coat on to his chair and I try not to gaze at how the oily face and greasy hair that afflict the entire office-based population by six p.m. only serve to make Ben look kind of James-Bond-after-high-stakes-baccarat-with-arms-dealers-in-Montenegro. Good bone structure, I think, makes dishevelment look raffish. I spent ten frantic minutes with my make-up bag in the work loos, painting eyes in and lips back on, like decorating a hardboiled egg.

  I tentatively inquire after Simon, as Ben rolls up his shirtsleeves and I ignore his forearms. When did I become a drooling pervert? (Too late, I hear Rhys say.)

  He replies, curtly: ‘You’re not the first female he’s accused of ruining his life and you won’t be the last. Don’t give it any more thought.’

  I take a sharp breath and prepare to tell Ben the whole truth, the one I couldn’t risk telling Simon. This is my high stakes gamble. I knew on the way here I was going to do it and that many people would think it’s lunacy. I can hear Caroline’s ghostly scream to Shut. The. Hell. Upppppp … Thing is, I don’t want Ben to stick up for me because I’ve lied to him, too. Ben’s decision to defend me doesn’t mean anything until he has the facts.

  ‘Ben,’ I say, ‘if I tell you something else about the Natalie Shale affair, will you promise not to go wappy and tell Simon?’

  He looks wary.

  ‘Is this some new lid-blowing fact that’s going to change everything? I can do without any more surprises.’

  ‘It’s the full unexpurgated truth about how Zoe got the story.’

  His glass hovers in hand, halfway to his lips. He sets it back down.

  ‘Please tell me you didn’t do the splitting the cash thing?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t involved in her selling it, like I said.’

  ‘What then? Don’t tell me something I don’t want to be told.’

  ‘I had absolutely no part in using it as a story or Zoe going to the nationals and if I had known about it, I’d have done everything I could to stop her. Does that help?’

  Ben looks undecided.

  ‘Promise you won’t tell Simon?’ I say.

  ‘It helps your cause that I don’t want to get him more wound up. Now you’ve gone this far you better tell me.’

  I explain. Then I hold my breath.r />
  Ben studies my face while he absorbs this information. ‘She took it and ran with it behind your back?’

  ‘Yes. I swear.’

  ‘Why didn’t you do the story?’

  ‘It wasn’t fair. I thought about it. I couldn’t be that hard-faced.’

  ‘Yet you’re hard-faced enough to read other people’s texts and gossip about the contents?’

  ‘I know. Tell me I’m scum, I deserve it.’

  Ben exhales.

  ‘Why are you telling me this at all?’

  ‘You were so kind to me and I don’t want to lie to you.’ I want your absolution, above all. I can withstand everything else if I have that. ‘I couldn’t tell Simon because he would’ve lost me my job over it and I have rent to pay. It’s not right but there it is. I’m so sorry for the trouble it’s caused you, Ben. I wanted to do a good job. I can’t tell you how ashamed I feel. This is my proper apology, from the heart.’

  Ben exhales some more and looks longingly toward the door. For a moment I think he’s going to say I’m outta here, lady.

  ‘Wooh boy …’

  ‘Will it get irritating if I keep saying sorry?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone through her phone or told another journalist about it. Intentional or not, you do appear to have been the Big Bang event for a world of shit.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘However, you could’ve got a big story out of it. You didn’t. Because of the effect it would have on other people’s lives, not because it wouldn’t benefit yours. True?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Then what we’ve identified is a scruple. You officially have a scruple.’

  I give a wry, grateful laugh, faith in Ben’s generosity once more vindicated: ‘Scruple, singular.’

  ‘It’s a start.’

  The bar’s playing Ella Fitzgerald, we still have near-full drinks. I’m more at peace with the universe than I was before we arrived, that’s for sure.

  ‘You took a risk telling me that,’ he says, considering me over his glass. ‘Can I take a risk in return, with the same complete trust that it goes no further?’

  I feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. ‘Of course.’