You Had Me at Hello

by Mhairi McFarlane

  ‘This never, ever makes it to your colleagues, on pain of death. This stays between us, in this place, right now, and never leaves. Promise me, Rachel.’

  I’m rapt. ‘I promise.’

  ‘You better keep your word, else I’ll call Simon and tell him about the text.’

  ‘Absolutely. Understood. Rely on my instincts of self-preservation instead of honour.’

  ‘Safer.’ He lowers his voice. ‘I heard that, in pillow talk, Natalie told Jonathan she lied to give her husband an alibi.’

  My jaw drops. ‘Why would he need a false alibi?’

  ‘Why do people usually need false alibis?’

  ‘Lucas Shale’s guilty?’ I stage-whisper back, incredulous.

  ‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t.’

  ‘But he’s going to be cleared on appeal. Everyone thinks he’s innocent. I was sure he was innocent.’

  Ben shrugs. ‘This can’t ever reach the ears of the partners. If it’s true, it’s major, major stuff that Jonathan let the firm carry on representing Shale. Career ending.’

  ‘Hasn’t the affair shot his career anyway?’

  ‘No. Only because Natalie wasn’t the client. He’s had a serious rap on the knuckles and a cosmetic sacking, with the chance of being quietly re-hired in London when it’s all blown over.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘It’s better than being struck off.’

  ‘I guess Natalie and Jonathan aren’t still in touch then? If he’s going to London?’

  Ben shakes his head. ‘Doubt it.’ Pause. ‘Still, makes it less likely they’re going to confer about that text and figure out your involvement, eh?’

  I cringe. ‘That wasn’t why I was asking.’

  ‘I know you weren’t, only teasing. You don’t worry about your interests enough, in my opinion.’

  I’d hoped Ben, with his generosity of spirit, might forgive me. How he’s finding things to praise, well – I have no idea why he always sees the best in me. There’s a reflective pause that elongates into a comfortable, beer-sipping silence. I look at the lights from the candles throwing patterns on the windows, take in the room. A pretty waitress with hair in an unwinding bun, a pencil jammed horizontally through it, gives me a ‘Nice couple’ warm look. I return it with a ‘If only you knew’ smile.

  ‘It’s great we’ve been able to do this, isn’t it?’ Ben says, eventually. ‘You and me being friends again, I mean. All these years later.’

  ‘It’s amazing. Just picked up where we left off,’ I say, without thinking.

  ‘Not exactly where we left off,’ Ben says, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘No, not exactly … uh …’

  Conversation stalls. Ella is over. Our now-uncomfortable silence filled with a horrendous emo cover of The Pretenders’s ‘Brass in Pocket’.

  Ben knocks back some of his drink and I expect a brisk subject change. Instead he looks me in the eye.

  ‘Why did you sleep with me? I mean, I did work out why, but I might as well have it confirmed, after all this time.’

  His steady, sardonic expression and slight smile unnerves me. I can see he’s thinking I don’t know how to gift-wrap an ugly truth. Instead I’m thinking of all the things I could say that I’m not going to say to a married man.

  ‘I gave you a reason at the time.’ This is meant to be assertive. My voice sounds plaintive.

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s OK, it was a long time ago. I can take it. You wanted to get back at Rhys and you knew you wouldn’t have to see me again. No harm done.’

  No harm done? Is he kidding?

  ‘That’s absolutely not true. I was …’ my voice nearly cracks ‘… I really cared about you.’

  Ben’s not visibly moved by this declaration.

  ‘Mmm. I think with hindsight, Rhys’s reappearance at the ball was well timed, for all of us.’

  ‘Ben.’ Long, long pent-up emotion swells up like strings in a sentimental film score and I try to curb it. ‘That wasn’t it. You’ve got the wrong impression …’ How do I hint at so much I can’t say? Oh no. Am I going to use those accursed words? It seems I am. ‘… It’s complicated.’

  Now I hear the ghost of Mindy: Shuuuuutt uuuuppppppp …

  ‘Ultimately I got the right impression though, given you stayed with and got engaged to Rhys?’

  Slam. Dunk. I open my mouth and no words come out. To think I thought to be finally asked this would be a release? It’s ten years too late and one of us is too married for it to be anything other than punishment.

  ‘I tried to call. I wrote to you. Didn’t you get my letter?’

  ‘Ah, yeah. In order to get …’ I hear Ben stop, rewind and amend what he was going to say ‘… past it, I had to kind of cut off. Your letter didn’t exactly say anything I didn’t know.’

  ‘I was worried in case Abi opened it. You said once she had form for that. I thought it was best to keep it short. It was meant to make you return a call.’

  Ben stares down into his glass.

  ‘Sorry if I was brutal. You deserved better, what with us being mates and everything. I wasn’t in a good place during that year out. Which was annoying because I was in a lot of good places, literally speaking.’

  He tries too late for lightness and I can’t join in.

  ‘Sorry,’ I offer, inadequately, more inadequately than he can possibly know.

  ‘Oh, God, no need,’ he swirls the liquid in his glass, ‘I don’t mean to sound resentful. I look back now and I’m so embarrassed …’

  I wince.

  ‘… You’d had a big fight with Rhys, you must’ve been all over the place and then I start with all that angst over a one night stand. I mean, whatever your reasons, it was sex, so I could hardly complain, ha. I’m sure you wondered what the hell was going on. It was amazing you humoured me as much as you did. Lot of twenty-one-year-old fuss over nothing, eh? Still, we can look back now and laugh. Well, hoping you don’t laugh that much …’

  This guts me like a sturgeon. ‘It wasn’t nothing.’

  It isn’t nothing. To me.

  Ben shrugs, smiles. ‘I thought Rhys might swing for me, the other day. I wouldn’t have blamed him.’

  ‘I never told anyone about what happened.’

  ‘Too ashamed?’ Ben pulls a comedy face.

  ‘I wanted it to stay between us.’

  ‘I told someone.’

  My heart starts ka-thumping. Oh God, please not Olivia. Please.

  ‘Some Australian bloke I met one night in a bar in Sydney, who had to listen to me crap on for hours. He said I’d meet you again some day and you’d be fifteen stone and screaming at four kids and I’d realise I’d had a lucky escape. He wasn’t what you’d call a new man.’

  ‘He was right, bar four kids. And one stone,’ I joke, lamely, feeling utterly broken.

  ‘He was totally wrong. It’s good to lay it all to rest.’

  What do I say to this? It’s funny he’s saying it’s nice to see each other when for the first time I can ever remember, I don’t want to be with him.

  ‘Ben …’

  My phone starts trilling in my bag. I curse myself for not having put it on silent.

  I locate it and see it’s Caroline.

  ‘Hello? Caro? Is that you? Bad line,’ I mouth.

  Right after I’ve said it I realise that it isn’t a bad line, Caroline’s crying.

  58

  I rap my knuckles on the hollow-sounding wood of Caroline’s door and shift my weight from foot to foot. All I could get out of her on the phone was an assurance no one had died. Ben was understanding as I fled from the bar and leapt into a taxi.

  Caroline opens the door, and the words ‘Are you OK?’ wither on my lips.

  Her face is streaked with the grey of black mascara mixed with tears, the skin around the neckline of her t-shirt is a hot pink, as if she’s been nervously scratching at it.

  I move to hug her but she keeps herself at a distance.

  ‘Cheers for coming,’ sh
e says flatly, sniffing loudly and walking back into the house. Fumbling to close the door behind me, I follow her and watch her take up the position I assume she was in before I arrived – prone on her side on the tissue-strewn expanse of the leather sofa. I drop down in an armchair opposite, taking in the near empty wine bottle and the half full glass next to it on the coffee table.

  ‘Where’s Graeme?’

  ‘Graeme’s been having an affair,’ she says, the last word stretched into an odd shape by the tears that bubble up and burst out as she says it.

  ‘Oh God, Caro.’ I kneel by the sofa, put my hand on her arm as she sobs. It’s awful to see her like this, in contrast with her usual self-possession. It’s as disorientating as hearing your parents at it, or catching your grandparents without their teeth in. I can’t think of any follow-up other than: ‘How did you find out?’

  She wipes under her eyes with her thumbs, speaks on the out-breath: ‘He left his mobile behind this morning. I know he doesn’t like to be separated from it so I took it with me to work, thought I’d drop it off for him at lunchtime. When he’d got the fifteenth missed call in a row from someone coming up as “John” I thought I’d answer and see what “he” wanted.’

  Caroline breaks off to steady her voice. I rub her arm, hoping it’s comforting rather than annoying.

  ‘Then I walked out of work, called him, came back here and waited for him.’ She pauses. ‘He actually tried to claim invasion of privacy about the fact I’d been holding on to his phone. Stupid, stupid wanker.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Don’t know, don’t care. I doubt he’s at hers, because she’s married with kids.’

  ‘He works with her?’

  ‘Yeah. He said it was all a stupid mistake and he’s relieved I found it. Can you believe the gall? He trotted all the classics out earlier. “We didn’t mean it to happen”, “We were drunk and a long way from home”, “I didn’t know how to finish it”. Listening to the lament anyone would think he was forced into taking his trousers off at knife-point.’

  The done thing here would be to say I didn’t expect it of Graeme, of all husbands, yet that wouldn’t be quite true. I settle for: ‘It’s terrible he’s done this to you.’

  ‘He tells me I’ve got to take some of the blame for being “married to my job” and never around when he needed me.’

  ‘What!’ I try not to shout. ‘He’s the same! He’s always been proud of how well you’ve done. He couldn’t be with someone who isn’t like you.’

  ‘Apparently he can, repeatedly, at a variety of locations around the UK and mainland Europe. No wonder he was so concerned with getting that roaming package sorted on his phone. Roaming package, hah.’

  The more I think about the abandonment excuse, the more I grind my teeth.

  ‘How long’s it been going on?’

  Caroline reaches for her glass and knocks the contents back in one. ‘Couple of months. Assuming he was telling the truth. He’s offered proof but I can do without hearing every spit and cough.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘What about you, anyway? Want a drink?’ Caroline stirs herself, looks disconsolately at the wine dregs. ‘There’s more in the fridge.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I say, tugging my coat down my arms. ‘You stay there.’

  ‘I’m calling in sick to work tomorrow so I might as well be sick,’ she calls after me.

  I open their huge double-fronted fridge and choose one of four chilled bottles. Caroline is sufficiently mature to have more alcohol in the house than whatever she’s drinking that evening and it’s serving her well in a crisis. I get a glass out of the cupboard and take it through with the Chablis. Maybe quality will offset quantity.

  ‘What now?’ I ask, once we both have full glasses in hands. ‘Is Graeme going to move out?’

  ‘He can surf friends’ sofas, then it’s spare room Siberia, and a lot of grovelling, in that order.’

  This startles me. ‘You’re definitely staying together?’

  ‘Damn right we are. I’m not losing my home and throwing everything we are away over some pitiful early mid-life crisis being played out across three-star Best Westerns.’

  ‘Oh – right.’

  Her instant conviction that the relationship is worth salvaging surprises me. I wouldn’t be sure of anything right now.

  ‘Did he say sorry? Does he regret it?’

  ‘He regretted being found out.’ She sighs, heavily. ‘He says so. He begged me to have him back.’

  She looks over at the wedding picture on the mantelpiece. ‘I never thought this’d be me, you know. Such a big fat cliché.’

  ‘Hey. Whatever else you are, you’re not fat.’

  Caroline smiles, wanly. I try to think of some profound words to fit the occasion that aren’t I’ve always thought Graeme had a hint of The Shit.

  I admit it was mostly based on his habit of taking the piss out of Caroline’s friends in the guise of ‘big character’ bonhomie.

  ‘What did I do wrong, Rachel? I’ve had my own life and a career and I’ve worked at my marriage, or I thought I had. It hasn’t made any difference.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ I spill some wine on my lap in the force of feeling. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong! Like you said, there’s no such thing as the perfect affair-proof marriage and none of this is your fault. Graeme has to take full responsibility.’

  ‘Hmm. Isn’t the other person a symptom of something wrong, not a cause?’

  ‘That doesn’t mean that the cause is you. If Graeme wanted more attention he shouldn’t have looked for it like this.’

  ‘Agree.’

  We drink. I sense our differences more keenly than I ever have. From Caroline’s perspective, if you put the effort in, the outcome should be better. I see the problem as Graeme’s intrinsic Graeme-ness. When she got together with Graeme I don’t think she thought he was a wonderful human being, exactly, but the right man for her. Almost like a business partner: he’d make the same investment, wanted the same return. It’s not that Caroline’s mercenary, she isn’t. She’s simply practical to her fingerprints. She’d be unable to fall hopelessly in love with a penniless stoner poet. She’s constitutionally incapable of being hopeless.

  ‘Look at us all. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, was it? Weren’t we meant to be all sorted out by thirty?’ Caroline asks.

  I smile. ‘You, maybe. I don’t think me and Mindy ever had a hope.’

  ‘I turned the Hoover on, you know. So next door couldn’t hear me screaming at my husband for having it off with some marketing manager. I didn’t want to do the next street party knowing they’d all talked about it. I was bellowing “She’s a slut and you’re no better!” at him over the roar of the Dyson bagless vac. I feel so old.’

  ‘You’re not old.’

  Caroline rubs her eyes, smooths her hair down. ‘What you been up to this evening, anyway? Hope I didn’t ruin a night out.’

  ‘A drink with Ben,’ I say, only considering the wisdom of this admission as I’m making it.

  ‘Ben?’ Caroline’s face darkens. ‘The two of you?’

  ‘Olivia wanted to see a film instead.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’ Caroline leans forward, frowning.

  ‘Nothing much. Work.’

  Caroline doesn’t react.

  ‘You know, the Simon palaver,’ I add.

  ‘This is exactly what I was warning you not to do.’

  ‘Caro, he’s a friend.’

  ‘Until he and Olivia have been at each other’s throats, he gets a funny, faraway look on his oh-so-gorgeous face, you feel a bit lonely …’

  ‘He’d never do that! Honestly. Not going to happen and I barely see him. Tonight was a total one-off.’

  ‘Can I give you some advice? I appreciate taking relationship guidance from me right now is the ironiest of ironies.’

  I nod, knowing it won’t be anything I want to hear.

  Caroline leans over and pours more wine
into her glass. ‘Make things up with Rhys. You’ve made your point over the wedding, it probably needed doing. Don’t throw the bloke out with the bathwater. You two belong together.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘I know why you’re saying this and thank you, but I wasn’t happy.’

  ‘Were you unhappy, or were you bored, and irritated with him? It comes to all relationships in the end, trust me.’

  What Caroline probably thinks and doesn’t want to say is: it could be Rhys, or nothing.

  ‘It’s not that. It’s the way we affect each other. I wind him up and he brings me down. I don’t think it’s bad habits. It’s like in chemistry when you put two substances together and always get the same reaction. Like that.’

  ‘And you didn’t mind for thirteen years?’

  ‘It’s not that I didn’t mind … I drifted. I avoided asking myself if it was enough and then the wedding meant there was no way of not asking myself.’

  ‘The “happy ever after” lie has a lot to answer for,’ Caroline says, staring into the middle distance. ‘You’re not happy ever after with anyone. You choose the person most worth persevering with, that’s all. I mean, “disappearing off into the sunset together”. Where everything is always bathed in a rosy glow. Am I the only one to notice the sodding problem – the whole point of a sunset is you never reach it? It’s never where you are?’

  ‘Am I allowed to say yes?’

  Caroline smiles. ‘If I ever have a daughter, this will be a fairytale-free household, let me tell you.’

  ‘I don’t expect to be happy ever after. Just happier.’

  ‘But it all comes down to what we call happy. I think we’re the generation that’s spent too much time thinking about what we haven’t got instead of what we do have.’

  This is not the time to tangle with Caroline, I realise. She looks over.

  ‘I was jealous of you at uni, Rach. I still am in some ways.’

  This almost makes me spit my drink.

  ‘Me? Why on earth …’

  ‘You’re fun. Men think you’re fun. I’m not fun. I can’t help it, it’s the way I am. This is why you ended up entertaining Ben in a corner at your party while I talked stamp duty with his wife. Part of me thinks that’s what Graeme was looking for. Not sex. A laugh.’