Ben

by Cody Young

  “Did he, indeed?” said Jonathan, thinking deeply. He swivelled gently in his executive chair. Thinking. “Keep it under your hat for a few days, Fee. Give me some time to do some digging.”

  * * *

  Layla sat in the hairdressers’ shop, breathing in the astringent smell of all the hair products, while the stylist worked on her short choppy locks. She had told them not to cut too much off – it was short enough already – but if they could just tidy it up and make her look less like a London vagabond who’d sold her hair for drugs, that would be good.

  The stylist, a motherly lady with big gold hoops in her ears, said she’d feather the edges a tiny bit, and maybe add some highlights here and there. “Going somewhere nice?”

  “Big event at the Hilton.” Layla’s voice shook.

  “Nervous, are you?”

  “Petrified.”

  She was still in the hair-dresser when Ben came to pick her up. They were putting it in bits of foil and it was taking ages. So the nice lady stylist had let her borrow the phone to call him and tell him to meet her here.

  Layla noticed how all eyes were on him, when he pushed open the glass door and came into the shop. But he acted like he was immune to the admiring glances that followed him as he entered the room.

  “Hello, sir! Can I be of assistance?” the receptionist gushed.

  “No, no. Just waiting, thanks.” He glanced meaningfully at Layla, who had her back to him, but he caught her eye in the mirrored wall beyond.

  The receptionist seemed very anxious about his welfare. “Coffee? Biscuit? Can I find you a magazine? Look, sir, this chair’s nice and squishy.”

  “I’m fine, thanks. I’ll stand.” He went and stood not far from Layla, as if proximity might offer him some protection from predatory women in need of a man.

  “Did you find a dress?” he asked.

  Layla couldn’t move her head to look round at him, because the hairdresser was still working on the foils. But she could see him there in the mirror, standing behind her. “I’ve narrowed it down to two. Or maybe just one and a half.”

  He grinned. “I know I said show off your body, but half a dress might be going too far.”

  “Well. It’s between a long blue one and a black one with silver sparkly bits up the front,” she said.

  He shrugged. “And which one did you like best?”

  “The black one – but it’s in the window of one of them posh boutiques – and I was afraid to go in and ask them how much. Probably too much. It was that kind of place.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Ben said. “I’ll go back and get it.”

  She whitened. Feeling nervous all of a sudden. He was in one of those rash moods that struck him from time to time – the same kind mood that had caused him to save her skin for twenty thousand pounds. Bless him.

  “It’s okay, Layla. It’s only a dress. What size do you need?”

  She was flustered.

  “Lucky girl,” said the hairdresser, putting in the last of the foils.

  “Um…I think I need a ten – no maybe a twelve if it’s tight across the front. Oh, Ben, I don’t know.”

  “Get her a ten if it’s stretchy,” said the hairdresser. “She could get away with it. She’s got a body like a little goddess, this one.”

  “I know, I know.” Ben smiled. “Tell me the name of the shop.”

  She told him, and he wrote it down and went out of the shop to look for the dress.

  “He’s lovely, your husband. Where did you find him? They don’t make them like that anymore.’

  Husband? They’d never even shared the same bed. Not yet. Layla bit her lip and looked down, lost in her worries. The trouble was, the more he did for her, the more it seemed like she owed him. And the harder it got – the decision about when to sleep with him. She did owe him. She owed him her life, almost, and she wouldn’t even give him her body? That didn’t seem fair when he was always so good to her.

  “Sorry, love,” said the hairdresser. “Not quite married to him, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Not yet,” said the motherly hairdresser and gave her a kind smile.

  Not yet? More like not likely.

  * * *

  Ben bought the dress. It had a hefty price tag – but it was exactly right for this evening. Layla had good taste when she had the chance to indulge it. The assistant in the shop told him he could change it if it didn’t fit, but Ben said that he doubted there would be time. She put the dress in a smart paper carrier – white printed with gold lettering - with the designer dress inside it. Ben took and went back to the hairdresser’s shop.

  They were still working on her hair. Still.

  He smiled at Layla in the mirror and pulled the dress out of the bag a few inches so she could see it was the right one, and she gave him the thumbs up. Then he sank back onto the comfortable couch and waited for the marathon hairdressing event to come to an end.

  He was lost in thought when she came over and stood beside him. “Layla!”

  She looked amazing. She always amazed him, but right now, she was smiling in delight, because she knew she looked amazing.

  “Wow,” he said. He stood up to admire her hair properly. Fronds of burnished gold swept down in a seductive fringe over her eyes. The gold was cropped shorter at the sides and the back – showing off pale delicate skin – making him notice her neck, her ears, the lovely angle of her jaw. It was a style that made her lips look extra kissable, somehow, and her big grey eyes were even more beautiful than ever. Especially because those eyes told him she was falling in love with him like he had fallen for her.

  “It’s great,” he said, though the words failed him. “It’s lovely…”

  “It was a bit expensive,” she admitted.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “It was worth it. Come on. Let’s go home so I can see you in the dress.”

  Or out of it, he thought.

  The hairdresser fetched Layla’s coat for her and whispered, loud enough for Ben to hear. “You ain’t got a thing to worry about, love. He's crazy about you. He’ll marry you if you play your cards right.”

  Layla blushed like she could sink into the floor, but Ben didn’t care. He smiled and gave her a wink.

  He had requested leave this morning. If it was approved they’d go to North Fenland this week. So Layla could meet his parents.

  * * *

  Back at the flat in Richmond, standing in front of the bedroom mirror, Layla realized she’d made a terrible mistake.

  She bit her lip. Serves me right for being too afraid to go inside the shop, she thought. The dress – the beautiful slippery designer dress – was a complete disaster.

  “Can I come in yet?” he said, and rattled the handle of the door, which was locked.

  “No!” She was almost afraid he’d find some way of opening it from the other side, unless she begged him not to.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “Um. Yes and no.”

  “Let me come in and see.”

  “No!”

  She looked at her reflection again. The black dress fitted like a glove. That wasn’t the problem. The neckline was wonderful – the silver trim dipped in a low vee - revealing a cleavage that was likely to make him ask for a hand-job in the taxi on the way, if he even let her out of the bedroom door.

  She could cry. She had only seen the dress from the front. That was the problem. But at the Charity dinner there would be lots of people who would see the dress from the back. She could cry. She didn’t know how to tell him.

  “Let me see,” he said, and he sounded like he was smiling. She hated to think what he’d sound like when he knew.

  She told herself not to be a coward. She went to the door and unlocked it. She opened the door and let him see how good the dress looked. From the front.

  “Wow,” he said, with such a lovely, sexy smile on his face that she wanted to die. “It’s great.”

  “There’s a problem. I didn’t realise, you see, th
at it’s backless. This dress.”

  “Backless?” he said. “So what?”

  He tried to look and they did a kind of dance in the doorway – with her turning and backing away so he couldn’t see.

  “I would never have asked you to buy it if I’d realised.”

  “Layla for goodness sake. It looks fantastic. What’s the problem with a backless dress?”

  So she had to tell him. “I’ve got a tattoo.”

  There was a pause. Then he smiled. “Okay. You’ve got a tattoo. Let’s see.”

  “No,” she said. They did a reprise of the dance, but she backed against the bedroom wall and pressed her body hard up against it.

  He gave her a knowing smile. Resistance was hopeless. She was going to have to show him, in the end. “Are you worried about people at the dinner seeing it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you don’t need to worry about me seeing it. And what do other people matter?”

  “I think it might matter,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because of what it says.”

  “As long as it isn’t a swastika or anything – I hardly think it’s a problem.”

  She leaned back against the wall, feeling helpless. To her, it was a huge problem. It was also a fairly huge tattoo.

  He touched her face. “Now, sweetheart, we’re both a bit nervous this dinner. I’m not going to force you to show me what you’ve got on your back if you don’t want to. I’m not that kind of man. You can always wear my dinner jacket over the top, if you like. Though it would be a crime to cover up that dress.”

  He looked so nice. Smart dark hair – combed but still faintly damp from the shower. White formal shirt, black pants, shiny black shoes. He looked like a man from a wedding magazine.

  No. He wouldn’t force her – though some men would. Some men would have prised her shoulders away from the wall and forced her to turn around. Dumped her face down on the bed, maybe. But he seemed to rely on gentle persuasion and he was very good at it, too. She was going to have to show him. Voluntarily.

  “Okay,” she said. And she turned around.

  She heard him take a breath, as he saw it. She could picture what he could see there, written on her pale, soft skin.. The words, in bold red. Outlined in green. ‘Loverboy’s Back’.

  “Well,” he said. “That’s quite a statement.”

  She turned back to face him, hardly knowing how she was going to look up into his eyes. She felt the sting of tears in her own eyes, and when she did look up at him, she knew the tears were just about to fall.

  “I am a little surprised, I must say,” he said, with a kind of shrug.

  There was still that familiar kindness in his eyes, she thought, desperately. The kindness she had come to associate with Ben and only Ben. All the same. He’d seen it now, and he’d be asking himself some questions. And soon he’d be asking her some questions, too.

  “What’s the story, then?” he said.

  She felt the warm tears tumble down her face. He saw them too, and he stopped to kiss them away. And that was the hardest thing. Accepting those soft, tender kisses, when she knew that – yet again – her shadowy past had come back to tease them. She had wronged him again. Unwittingly, unknowingly. But she had failed to prevent the wrong thing from happening. And he was forgiving her. Again.

  So she told him how she got the tattoo. “It was when my dad came out of prison one time. My mum really liked the idea of getting a tat that said ‘Loverboy’s Back’.”

  “Well, why didn’t she get it put on her own back, then?”

  “There wasn’t room. So she got the guy at the tattoo place to put it on mine, instead.”

  “That doesn’t make much sense.”

  “She’s a crack addict, Ben. Nothing she does makes any sense.”

  He smiled. “Maybe it’s a mother thing. I’m often puzzled by my mother, Layla. Maybe she’s doing crack too, on the sly.”

  Layla rolled her eyes, and ran a nervous hand over the front of her new dress. “What are we going to do?”

  “Oh – I don’t know – but that dress is giving me a few ideas.”

  “No. Ben. I mean, about the problem?”

  “What problem?”

  She sighed. “The tattoo.”

  He solved it for her, like he’d solved everything else. They got a taxi – a traditional black cab - and asked it to stop at a twenty-four-hour chemist on the way. The makeup lady advised that concealer wouldn’t really cover it, it would look all sticky and obvious over such a big tattoo, so they bought a large floaty black scarf and Layla wore it around her shoulders like a pashmina. Then they got back into their taxi and went on to the Hilton Hotel. And Ben smiled at her and said he’d never felt happier, as they sat holding hands on the back seat.

  London whizzed past – a whirlwind of people and buses and important buildings. The Royal London Hospital loomed up. “Isn’t that where you used to work −” she began

  But he silenced her with a kiss. “Who cares…” he murmured, between kisses.

  He held her hand more chastely as they crossed the covered forecourt of the big hotel. The black scarf billowed perilously as they headed for the sliding glass doors.

  “Oh, no!” She didn’t want to lose it.

  He laughed and adjusted it for her. “Don’t worry. Our secret’s safe tonight.”

  * * *

  Inside the Hilton’s massive ballroom, there were lots of round tables set with cutlery and glasses, each one graced with a centrepiece of lilies in a big glass bowl. Ben found table number seven, where they had been allocated seats. Ten people would be sitting there tonight. Doctors and their wives, mainly. Layla saw the name cards first. Names that she recognized. Martin Hardy. Rebecca Hardy. Benjamin Stein, and Partner of B. Stein. Terrific. She hoped people didn’t call her that all night. Howdy, partner.

  Ben looked at them too. “Sorry. I should have phoned ahead.”

  They stood there beside the table. None of the others had arrived.

  “I suppose we ought to wait to be seated,” said Layla, desperate not to commit any etiquette crimes.

  “Ben!” shouted an unfamiliar voice across the room.

  Layla looked up and coming towards them – a young man in his twenties – his powerful, muscular body sheathed in a massive tuxedo. He embraced Ben like a brother, although that was something they definitely could not be. The massive-tuxedo-man was blond, and looked like an off-duty Viking. She’d always thought Ben was tall, but this guy – well, he was taller. And broader across the shoulders. Bigger in all directions. And he had a bone crushing hand-shake when Ben introduced her to him.

  “This is Martin, the old friend from North Fenland that I was telling you about.”

  “Hi. I’m Layla. From Bethnal Green.”

  “Very nice to meet you, love,” Martin said. She was surprised to hear that he had quite an ordinary voice – not languid and posh, like Ben’s. “I’m sorry my wife isn’t here. We’ve got a five-year-old, see, and we think he’s got chicken pox.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that…” Layla murmured. She glanced at Ben and saw that he looked both relieved and concerned.

  “Is he very unwell?” Ben asked, going into doctor mode.

  “No, no. Not so bad. We could maybe have left him with a sitter. But you know. A boy needs his mother, doesn’t he?”

  Ben nodded. “She would telephone me, wouldn’t she, if she needed advice – anything at all – about how to look after him?”

  “Of course she would. But he’s alright. And you’ve got plenty of patients of your own, haven’t you? How’s that new job you’ve got in central London?”

  And off they went into a discussion of Ben’s work at the medical centre. While Layla stood there and pretended to look at the lilies. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t glad that Becky had stayed home to look after her child. She didn’t know if she could bear to see Ben stealing glances at another woman all night. But then, the way Be
n turned and looked at her now, she wasn’t sure that she would have had to…

  “Do you want to sit down?” Ben said at last, and pulled out the chair for her.

  She hesitated. Not sure if she ought to be the first in the room to sit down.

  Martin smiled, and went to pull out his chair on the other side of her. “Well I’m taking the weight off, even if no one else is. I’m looking forward to a slap-up dinner and plenty of free booze. Only thing that makes these Cancer dinners bearable, if you ask me.”

  She smiled and sat down. He was nice. The man who’d married Becky.

  Then Ben sat down and put a protective arm along the back of her chair. As if to say, this one’s mine.

  “No chardonnay, remember,” she said to Ben, as she felt his hand touch the curve of her shoulder.

  “Okay. I’ll stick to red wine and spirits.”

  Layla opened her mouth to protest. But Ben kissed her, to shut her up. And then he whispered, “Just kidding. I won’t break the rules. Not even tonight. No giving in to temptation.”

  But Layla wasn’t at all sure she could make the same promise. Not with him so sweet and attentive and looking like a movie-star in his evening jacket.

  Martin smiled. And when Ben got up to greet a posse of doctors he had known at med school, Martin leaned over and said, “I’m glad he’s met you, love. It’ll be such a relief to come to this next year and not have him making sheep’s eyes at my wife.”

  “I heard about that,” Layla admitted.

  “Oh, God, he didn’t confess it all, did he? What an idiot.”

  “He said they were childhood sweethearts.”

  “Mainly in his head,” Martin said, with a grin. “But maybe now he’s got you to wake up with, he’ll finally be able to move on.”

  “Fingers crossed,” said Layla, and smiled back as if bedding Ben Stein was all in a day’s work. When actually it was a matter of blushing embarrassment. Did no one understand what it was like to be only just eighteen and standing on the brink of one of the most difficult decisions of her life?