After Hello Read online

  ‘Mindy,’ Caroline intones, sternly, ‘we’ll do an easyJet flight to somewhere city breaky. I know you’re being innovative but it seems there’s a fine line between innovative and sounding crazy as a shithouse rat, here.’

  I know Caroline’s sticking up for me and I appreciate it, but I can see Mindy looks stricken and I can’t think of anything to follow this, so an uncomfortable silence descends.

  ‘These Mindy mini dramas have stolen my thunder over announcing my choice of song for our first dance,’ Ivor says, breaking it. ‘Will there be any politics with getting Macclesfield Elvis to sing “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe”?’

  ‘Macclesfield Elvis! Booking him was the trigger for the collapse of my wedding plans,’ I say, before considering this might be a downer.

  There’s a slightly laden pause.

  ‘Shit, sorry, Rach, I wasn’t thinking,’ Ivor says.

  ‘Oh don’t worry, it doesn’t bother me,’ I say.

  Which is almost true.

  3

  ‘Hi, honey, I’m home,’ I call when I get in, slightly lustily given the gin cocktails with the meal.

  ‘I’m in here. Ronnie Barker’s been sick again,’ Ben says, from the kitchen. Six months ago, celebrating being proud new homeowners, Ben and I got rescue kittens.

  We’d actually only gone for one but the woman in charge did a nifty bit of upselling. ‘You can’t separate brothers. They’re devoted to each other,’ she said, as we watched a tabby kitten gnawing a lump out of the hindquarters of a fluffy black kitten, while it quacked angrily.

  ‘Upselling?’ Ben said, on the drive home with a cat box full of squeaking fur, ‘More like passing off. They’re not even brothers. They’re like Schwarzenegger and DeVito in Twins. This was a blatant BOGOF offer.’

  After three Rekorderligs, watching them kebab the curtains, it seemed funny to call them The Two Ronnies, in honour of Ben’s university nickname for me. (We met when he laminated my halls of residence ID card, and my failure to crank the photo booth stool up sufficiently caused Ben to compare me to a famously short-arsed comedian.)

  In the cold light of day, we have to call them Barker and Corbett to distinguish them. Barker, the tabby, has an appetite like a bucket attached to the front of a rocket. Corbett, midnight black with one white paw, sleeps all day and has the face of a vampire monkey.

  Ben is crouched down, mopping up feline stomach fluids. He’s in a grey hooded top that I once called his ‘Prince Harry’s gap year’ style and he nearly swung for me. He’s still as sharp of jawline and quietly showily-offily handsome as the first day we met. I still don’t comb my hair properly so we’re equal.

  ‘It’s one of his foamy ones full of plant matter,’ he says. ‘He can’t accept the vegetarian lifestyle doesn’t suit him. How was dinner?’

  ‘Was good,’ I say. ‘Sorry I’m really late.’

  I told Ben I’d be back by ‘nine-ish’ and it’s nearly eleven.

  ‘You’re hardly really late. Having fun? How’s the wedding planning coming along? Cup of tea and tell me about it?’

  And I relax, without having been conscious I’d tensed.

  It’s been surprisingly hard to shake the lingering ghost of the rows I’d have had with Rhys. The reflexes are so ingrained, I continually have to remind myself that Ben doesn’t pick fights and the simmering air of permanent irritation has gone.

  In two years, Ben and I have never had a serious argument. (If you discount ones in Ikea, which I think we all should.) I used to hear couples say they rarely fought and wonder how that was possible. Now I know.

  Ben follows me through to the front room. After too many months of him crashing at my rented flat in the Northern Quarter while his rent went to waste, we found this Victorian semi in Chorlton and couldn’t believe our luck – it was on at a very low price considering the leafy street, period fixtures, glam décor and general appearance of structural solidity.

  ‘It must be haunted or something,’ Ben had said.

  ‘At this price we have spare money for an exorcist,’ I replied.

  It turned out it was a young couple from Twickenham who’d been burgled twice in the first month and never got over it. They wanted rid, fast.

  ‘Rach is a reporter at Crown Court, you can’t shock her,’ Ben explained as their polite smiles said: TAKE IT FOOLS, TAKE IT NOW. They left us a security system so tight it’d be called excessively pessimistic by No.10 Downing Street.

  Ben flicks the kettle on and we listen to it boil while slumped against each other on the sofa.

  ‘Blee, you smell like Mindy’s vape stick,’ Ben says, burying his face in the collar of the coat of I’ve not yet taken off.

  Mindy never smoked cigarettes but for reasons incomprehensible to the rest of us, has lately taken up vapeing. ‘The vanilla one sounded nice.’

  I fill Ben in on the eagle and am rewarded with him shaking with laughter.

  ‘Oooooh Mindy, never change. Imagine if it crop-sprayed crap on the guests as it flew over their heads.’ We laugh and then he brings me up short: ‘Oh, by the way, I saw Rhys today. He gave me a message for you.’

  I sit up straight. ‘What?’

  Ben nods. ‘Bumped into him near the Arndale.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It went like this, he says, “Oh, it’s you, is it.”’ Ben sits up and shoves balled fists into the front of his top, and angles his chin down, in an impression of Rhys’s Gallagher swagger that’s good enough to make me laugh, despite my apprehension.

  ‘He blocked my path, jabbed his finger at me and said, “You’re a massive twat for what you did but I hope you’re looking after her.”’

  I wince. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault. Also I would think of me as massive twat if I were him, nicking his girl while he wasn’t looking, to be fair. Anyway, I said I hoped I was looking after you. All I could think was there’s no way I’m taking this guy in a fight but at least I’m a lawyer and know this area is well covered by CCTV.’

  I laugh, nervously.

  Rhys and I fell apart in our own time, for our own reasons, but after the fact, Rhys worked out that I’d been secretly hopelessly in love with Ben for much of our time together, and obviously that didn’t help. With hindsight, the university friendship with Ben that Rhys tolerated as platonic was in fact a lurking threat. I don’t blame Rhys for feeling betrayed either, even if he was no angel himself.

  ‘Then it got a bit weird …’

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘Well, he says, “Tell Rach me and Claire are getting married in September. It might be weird but I’d love her to be there. If that means you being there too then so be it, I suppose.”’

  I absorb this. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, “Thanks, I’ll let her know,” and we went on our way.’ Ben pulls his sweatshirt hood back down and gets up to make the tea.

  ‘Wow,’ I say.

  This makes me feel peculiar, both the wedding and our invite. ‘Should we go?’ I ask him, as Ben comes back in and hands me a cup.

  ‘Seriously? I’m not going. I’d hardly call my invite effusive. I translate that wording as “She can come but you should stay away if you have a shred of decency.” He’d probably give me a Tony Soprano hug once he’s pissed. The threat-hug that says I’ve ordered your whacking.’

  ‘So should I not go?’

  Ben squints. ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then why would you?’

  ‘Because he wants me to.’

  ‘Rach. Part of being grown up is realising that “I don’t want to” is a good enough reason.’

  ‘I know, I’m touched he wants me there, that’s all.’

  Ben rubs his hair. ‘Or, he’s trying to prove something. “Look how happy I am!” “You didn’t win!”’

  ‘No,’ I say, emphatically. ‘Rhys is a giant grouse but he’s not spiteful. He wouldn’t think like that.’

  ‘If you say so. You know him best. Se
ems pretty odd to me.’

  I sense Ben expected a HAHAHAHA AS IF to this gesture from Rhys and is slightly perturbed I’d even consider it.

  ‘Anyway, it would set a precedent he has to come to our wedding,’ I say, to break the mood and bring it back to us, tongue poked through lips. I expect Ben to laugh but he grimaces and eye rolls.

  ‘Huh. Doubt either of us fancy going through that rigmarole again.’

  A silence settles. Now I’m perturbed.

  Ben catches himself as he sees my expression, and adds: ‘… Anytime soon.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What, do you want to?’

  ‘… Guess not.’

  ‘Uh oh, here comes Crockett and Tubbs,’ Ben says, as cats waddle in together and yowl at us. Is it just me or is he the tiniest bit relieved that the cats allowed him to change the subject? ‘Yes yes, we know you want your Cat Smarties,’ Ben says, unwinding from me and standing up.

  I smile, on auto pilot, and feel oddly churned up. Later, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to Ben’s breathing deepen as he slips off to sleep, I wonder if Rhys proposed to Claire in a completely different way to the way he did with me, which was naught more than a drunken whim based on a prosaic sense of ah not getting any younger, best get on with it. I hope for her sake he did. Did they resolve the wedding band versus DJ issue?

  And Ben says he’s got no desire for that ‘rigmarole’ again. Fair enough, he was married, I only have a broken engagement behind me. And I didn’t think I was much bothered either, but I assumed we would, at some point. I thought he might want to. Now Ben’s saying he doesn’t have any interest, I feel oddly bereft.

  That’s not fair, I tell myself. A proposal isn’t a measure of his affection, you hardly put it in the T&Cs. And last time, I didn’t get as far as the altar: Ben really has been through it all before. Given we’ve agreed we’ll think about trying for kids in the next few years, looks like that is that, then. Do I really need a piece of paper to make it official too?

  I’ll have to get in touch with Rhys and say it’s lovely he wants me there but it wouldn’t be appropriate and wish them all the best. Another thought occurs to me: has his fiancée signed off on this? I wouldn’t want the long-term ex sitting there like a Bad Fairy, if I was her. Still, I am moved that, after everything, Rhys feels enough for me to risk it being awkward, and even tolerating Ben.

  As a journalist, I’m used to trying to break a story down to its most salient, newsworthy fact. I turn the information over and over and work out what it is. However ridiculous, precious and trivial it sounds – tonight, for the first time in history, Rhys was more romantic towards me than Ben.

  Downstairs, I hear a cat vomiting.

  4

  It’s a truth universally acknowledged of thirtysomething life that one of the best messages you can get from your partner is the unexpected one, in the middle of a weekday afternoon, that reads:

  Can’t be arsed to cook tonight, can you? Fancy going out?

  Somehow the surprise nature of the meal out makes it as exciting as Christmas when you were a child. Or like when the heating broke at school in the winter and you were told to go home. A planned dinner, a scheduled inset day: they’re nowhere near as good.

  Anyway, I text back emphatic agreement and am grinning when grubby freelancer Pete Gretton barrels back into the press room, smoothing down his wiry carrot-coloured bouff and bringing with him a whiff of Lambert & Butler.

  As ever, he has his mobile clamped to his ear. ‘… Let me tell YOU something, this is a ten-course turd-tasting menu you’re serving me, and every course is made of shit.’ Pause. ‘… And the wine flight is PISS.’

  Owen and I exchange a massive grin. Gretton’s tic of entering the room while barking a rhetorical flourish into the receiver has become a source of delight between myself and my Manchester Evening News colleague. Owen’s convinced there’s no one on the other end. ‘I’m waiting for the day it rings while he’s talking.’

  Owen O’Reilly came from Belfast to the MEN six months ago, and opted for the not-much-coveted role of being my permanent sidekick at crown court.

  I didn’t covet his arrival much, either. Since the dramatic exit of treacherous snake Zoe, who took a story of mine with personal consequences and sold me out, I’ve had a procession of junior reporters who I’ve kept at arms’ length. And Owen’s a senior.

  ‘Why does he want to be trapped in here with me?’ I asked news desk.

  ‘Maybe he saw your picture,’ Gretton leered, in the background. Urgh, Gretton. One of the saving graces from moving from copytakers to the internet era is not having to listen to him dictate lurid stories in lasciviously excited tones.

  I got my answer to my question about Owen on the first day when he said, lovably scruffy-haired, with his gentle Norn Ireland brogue: ‘I’ve got to be honest, I’m news to my bones but I’m too old’ – the bastard is twenty-eight – ‘to be knocking doors any more. Ringside seat for solid stories here suits me fine.’

  And bugger my shoes if he isn’t brilliant at his job, too. He’s my dream colleague: competent, funny and principled and not particularly ambitious, beyond the aim of hitting the pub at six sharp. Oh, and always gets the caffeine in the next day.

  Gretton, a man for whom the acronym ‘PC’ still refers to a police constable, does ‘Gerry Adams’ voices around Owen, pretending to mutter down an imaginary telephone handset: ‘You’ve got TURTY minutes to get out of da building.’

  ‘Hahaha I’m Irish, so I bomb people, Pete,’ Owen says. ‘Don’t let that joke’s insensitivity, crass stereotyping and twenty years out of date nature bother you.’

  To which Pete typically pretends to clutch a handbag, calling: ‘Will you noe have a cup of tea?’ in a Mrs Doyle voice from Father Ted.

  ‘So Esther Cowley at Salter & Rowson is a right piece of work,’ Owen says, conversationally, offering me a Hula Hoop which I decline. The press room is for gossiping, bitching and moaning. And snacks.

  ‘Oh, you know that’s my boyfriend’s firm?’ I say, absently.

  ‘Yes. And lovely Esther is a fan of your fella,’ Owen says, digging in his crisp bag. ‘I mentioned him. In happier times, when Esther wasn’t asking for my skinned pelt to be hung outside the building.’

  ‘A fan?’ I say, wondering if Ben’s work is good enough to create fandom. I mean, not that I doubt he’s great, but I didn’t think he was the rock star of diligent regional solicitors.

  ‘Yeah, think she said Ben Morgan was “a rising star and very easy on the eye” and did some maiden-like blushing. Confessed to a crush. I said, “You know he has a girlfriend?” And she said: “Nobody’s perfect.”’ Owen tosses a Hula Hoop into the air and catches it in his mouth.

  ‘Huh,’ I say, simultaneously gratified and slightly needled, and now properly paying attention. He IS the rock star of diligent regional solicitors. ‘Why does she want you skinned?’

  ‘Remember Twin-Sister-Gate? That was her client.’

  ‘Ah. Whoops.’

  Sometimes we have to identify a defendant in a case to a photographer outside the building. This unscientific process involves hissing ‘THERE THEY ARE!’ ‘WHERE?’ ‘THE ONE IN THE NAVY JACKET.’ The photographer dashes forward to stick their Nikon in the face of someone who either tries to hide or tells them to get fucked, or both.

  In his first month, Owen made the cock-up we all dread, he managed to identify the wrong person. He pointed at a twin sister, which might sound like it would get him off the hook, except she was non identical.

  It cost the paper a fair bit in damages, but Owen fronted the error with the kind of courage and decency I should show more of. After going to newsdesk and confessing, he rang everyone else he could to say sorry, but Esther Cowley – representing the actual perp – went crazy. Although I haven’t met her, I suspect she’s young and inexperienced and hasn’t yet learned to separate the shit that happens from the shit that’s intended.

  ‘So what’s
riled her this time?’

  ‘You know the university prowler case? She’s his brief. I tried to get some details about her defendant after the adjournment and she iced me. I called her afterwards and she said she’s instructed everyone in the criminal department to refuse to speak to me in court, as blanket policy. I realise she was upset about the photo, but mistakes get made. Bygones be bygones. Libel be libel, we paid it.’

  ‘Huh. Well that seems an overreaction. Good job solicitors have never made mistakes in their whole lives,’ I say, bullishly. When any of us have had a monstering, we stick up for each other.

  ‘Right? So I said, well you’re making errors more likely if you won’t help us. Then she started on about why should she help and what a disgusting job I do and I thought, Owen, this should be handled with cool head and calm manner.’

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought that, and then I said, oh really, I’m not the one being paid for putting some rapey pervert back out on the streets to hang round teenagers in halls of residences, am I? That dialled it all down.’

  I laugh and wince. Journos and lawyers, little love lost. Except between myself and Ben. Luckily he works in the family department, so our paths never cross. I mentally file this away as a talking point over dinner. Maybe Ben could even have a tactful word, help smooth this over. Sounds like he’d have influence if this Esther gets knee-wobbles just at his name.

  ‘These bloody lawyers,’ Gretton says from the other side of the room. ‘They all think they’re Atticus Finch. Atticus Shit, more like.’

  ‘This,’ Owen says and smiles at me.

  Owen and I are saying our farewells outside court later as I see Ben approach, some yards away down the street.

  ‘Ah, here’s my ride,’ I blurt, and then blush, because I somehow didn’t intend to make a risqué joke to Owen, after the ‘easy on the eye’ conversation.

  He smiles, faintly awkwardly.

  ‘Oh, is that him? Very … what’s the word my mum would use? Dishy. Very dishy.’

  ‘Don’t tell him, his head’s big enough,’ I say.

  ‘Good to be warned, I was about to say, “Hi mate, you’re fit”,’ Owen says, pulling a face. Owen’s accent renders everything he says several degrees warmer and funnier.