You Had Me at Hello Read online

  There’s a swell in my heart and alcohol in my small bowel. ‘I think you might be the nicest person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Honestly?’ Ben says, grinning and lifting two glasses. ‘Christ. I suppose you do spend all day with murderers and rapists.’

  63

  The tables have been given names on the theme of New York landmarks, which is where Tom proposed. The top table is Grand Central, followed by Empire State, Queens and Rockefeller. I notice that Ben, Olivia and Simon are on Chrysler. Shiny, slender and glamorous. Spiky. With some sense of satire, the collection I’ve been grouped with is titled Staten Island.

  ‘Might as well call it Rikers Island,’ I say, pointing at the italicised place-card to Albrikt from Stockholm, who works with Tom and speaks very little English.

  He nods politely and says: ‘Absolute.’ He has said that in response to my last three remarks. I felt for his bemusement during the best man’s lengthy, PowerPoint-aided speech. Not sure how much ‘children wearing colanders as hats in the 1980s’ photos mean without the Metal Mickey anecdote.

  To my left is a dour cousin called Ellen with allergies who I come to think of as Allergen. She scowls at the bread rolls like they’re grenades giving off deadly wheat-gas and complains about every aspect of the arrangements until I decide practising the level of Swedish I learned from the chefs on The Muppets is preferable.

  After the speeches and during the dancing, I go to talk to my parents on Central Park (‘Because we’re all out to pasture’ – my dad) and stay there when the table is deserted for the dessert trolley queue. I’m alone with the post-prandial carnage of pink tablecloth stains, ice buckets full of water and rumpled napkins. This is far enough from the dance floor that no one will think I’m hoping to be asked, and near enough I don’t look churlish. I concentrate on my phone and think: the mobile is a godsend to the self-conscious single. A text arrives from Mindy.

  Caroline here, making me watch shitty film with Kevin Spacy [sic] Not any of the good ones where he’s a syco [sic] something boaring [sic] with boats. The Boat Spotter. How is wedding? Does everyone love your dress?

  I’m interrupted as I’m sending my reply (‘Not everyone … guess what …’) by Ben, both hands on the back of a gold banqueting hire chair. His jacket’s off, tie loosened.

  ‘May I have this dance?’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m alright …’

  ‘Ah, on your feet. I’m not being blown out by someone sitting there texting like a sulky teenager.’

  I bristle. ‘Sorry I’m not being sociable enough for you. It doesn’t mean I need your pity.’

  Ben screws his face up, affronted. Too late I see that he wasn’t trying to ridicule me and has no idea how crappy I feel.

  ‘What does that mean? Why would it be pity?’

  I can’t answer this without looking even more foolish.

  ‘C’mon,’ he says, wheedling.

  I smile, grudgingly, and he grins broadly as I get to my feet. The forty-something singer in the wedding band is like a gone-to-seed Robert Palmer with a grey-blonde, pomaded pompadour. He’s belting his way confidently and tunefully through The Beatles’ back catalogue as a multi-coloured lighting rig casts twisting shafts of purple, green and blue on the chequered flooring, a pin-prick starlight canopy twinkling above our heads. Nope, Rhys would not have signed this off.

  ‘Do we have to do that?’ I say, gesturing to the floor full of waltzing couples, in the one-hand-on-waist, one-arm-round-shoulder hold to ‘Something’.

  ‘Either that or clear a spot in the middle and announce the intention to breakdance, your choice. You be Run DMC and I’ll be Jason Nevins.’

  ‘Isn’t this something your wife’s contractually obliged to do?’

  ‘Simon’s claimed her.’ Ben rolls his eyes and nods his head towards the two of them, mercifully at the far side of the floor.

  ‘Wait, sweaty hands,’ I say, rubbing them on my dress, when Ben puts his hand out to take mine.

  ‘The angel of the north.’

  What I’m really doing is clowning to take the tension out of the impending physical proximity. On the dance floor, I put my right hand on his left shoulder and hold his right hand and he puts his other hand lightly on the small of my back. I keep the rest of my body just clear of his with the muscle control of a prima ballerina.

  ‘Why did you go off on one, just then?’ Ben says, distinctly, into my ear.

  In the half-light, we can have a conversation without anyone even being sure we’re speaking, like spies talking behind newspapers on park benches.

  ‘Today isn’t the easiest day for me. For the parents it was going to be a two-part thing, this was the prelude to my wedding.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Sorry. I was worried it might be Simon.’

  ‘It’s not helping, but no.’

  We do a few turns before Ben adds: ‘When you look sad it makes me sad, and when I get affected by something is when it officially starts mattering. The girl I knew at uni was laughing all the time.’

  ‘That’s because she was ten to thirteen years younger.’

  ‘Oh, don’t start with the age shit. When you’re not texting you’re as much the life and soul as you always were.’

  I mumble more thanks.

  ‘Sorry for being sweaty too,’ he adds, briefly breaking hands to pull the front of his damp, and enticingly semi-transparent, shirt away from his chest.

  It’s actually quite hard to tolerate, but not in the way he thinks. It’s all far too much of an assault on the senses, the not-unpleasant masculine body odour and the contact and the whispering in ears and the kindness and the gratitude and use of the word lover on stage. Given I need to take my mind off it, and given Ben’s being frank, I decide to act relaxed too.

  ‘Hey. Sorry for the tit fiddle shame. Before.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, hah. Not your fault if they get attention. You can hardly leave them at home.’

  I laugh.

  Ben draws back, so I can see his poker expression: ‘I mean your parents.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I laugh some more. And then, because I’m a bit ‘drunkst’ and needy, I say: ‘We nondescript ladies have to try to get attention somehow.’

  Again Ben draws back, this time to check my expression, that I’m definitely quoting him. I look down at our feet.

  He rearranges his hand in mine, flexing his fingers as he clasps it more firmly.

  ‘Do you know the updated OED definition of “nondescript”?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It means a complete avoidance of giving any details about an attractive woman when it’s your wife requesting them. Literally. No. Description.’

  ‘Ah.’ I smile, bite my lip.

  ‘So you know.’

  ‘That’s useful, having the lingo.’

  The song ends. The singer announces: ‘Thang you very mush guys thizziz a liddle numbah you may know called Toadall Eclipse of the Hard.’

  ‘Aw I love Toadall Eclipse of the Hard,’ Ben says, and I can feel him shaking as we lean against each other, laughing. Across the floor, Olivia and Simon are talking, serious. How can you not find this song funny?

  ‘You know, we’re never going to win this dancing competition with my wife and Simon if we don’t put some flair into it,’ Ben says, holding his hand in mine out above me and pointing to the left, to indicate a twirl to the refrain ‘turn around …’

  I oblige with a twirl left, and then right, and then when the song breaks into its full rawk, Ben tips me a short distance and pulls me up.

  ‘I nearly fell out of my dress,’ I gasp, as we resume the waltz-hold, in something more like an embrace because I had to put my arm round him to get my balance.

  ‘Then we’d definitely win,’ Ben says, in a half-whisper.

  I glance at him in surprise and he gives me a guilty, yet slightly lascivious smile. Pissed as I am, I blush. I rest my head on his shoulder so we don’t have to look at each other. This is too much. I have to cut the mood
dead, the same way I did when we were feeding the ducks. In minutes, he’ll be back with his wife, and I’ll return to my chair on Central Park, and I have to be OK with that. I can’t be this close with you, thinking it’s a one-off.

  I glance over at Simon and Olivia and he’s looking directly at us, over her bronzed shoulder blade. He has a look of malevolent and completely disconcerting satisfaction.

  Ben’s eagerly claimed by a posh bridesmaid with a dishevelled chignon, sprigs of wilted freesia poking out at random angles, as if she’s been pulled through a florist’s backwards. I excuse myself to the ladies and head across the grass in the dark to the toilets. My exposed flesh goose bumps in the cold, ears ringing with disco tinnitus, heels sinking into the mud like golf tees. The Portaloos are the Porsche of Portaloos: twin stalls, piped-in music, pink dimpled Andrex and wedding flowers between the sinks. As I make my way back down the small step ladder, I see Olivia stood at the bottom, arms folded, tiara making her look like a tiny platinum Statue of Liberty.

  ‘Hello!’ I say. ‘Don’t worry, there’s still loo roll left.’

  ‘Can I talk to you?’ Olivia says, which seems redundant given that’s precisely what we’re doing.

  ‘Sure,’ I say, drawing level, getting the Jangly Fear.

  ‘Have you slept with my husband?’

  ‘Sorry?’ I feel as giddy and sick as if I’ve done that dance floor drop ten times over, after shot-gunning a whole bottle of Laurent Perrier.

  ‘At university. Did you sleep with Ben?’

  ‘We were friends.’

  ‘Right. Ben tells me you have slept together. Is he lying?’

  Oh God, oh God. Why did he make her this mad and set her free to hunt me? Why would they be having this conversation on a wedding dance floor, with Hall and Oates on harmonies? My mind races. Simon’s face … did he know she’d been told what had happened? Why did Ben seem so casual? Why did he not warn me?

  ‘Are you telling me my husband’s lying?’ Olivia repeats. ‘Either way something’s going on, isn’t it – why would he lie?’

  ‘No! Ben’s not lying. It was only the once, it was nothing.’

  A deadly silence. The throb of chatter and music from the marquee seems a long, long way in the distance. Somewhere in the surrounding blanket darkness, right on cue, an owl hoots.

  ‘If it was nothing, I wonder why it was kept from me.’ Olivia’s voice sounds as jagged and dangerous as a shard of glass.

  ‘Ben probably didn’t want to upset you with something so trivial, from so long ago.’

  Olivia’s eyes flash like a Disney witch casting a bad spell.

  ‘It’s trivial? You think this is trivial?’

  I shake my head. ‘No, not to you, of course not.’

  ‘Or are you saying it wasn’t any good?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was. It. Any. Good?’

  I may not be a lawyer, but I’m a journalist, and I know this is an attempt to extract a quote that will sound, out of context, like either gloating or mocking.

  ‘It … I …’ Mindy’s TripAdvisor idea comes back to me, hardly helpful. Great facilities, attentive service, ten out of ten, will be back! ‘We were drunk, I can’t remember much.’

  ‘I don’t want you to come anywhere near me or my husband or my home ever again. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A pause where I hope I can decently get away from her, belt back into the Big Top, grab my things and run.

  ‘Simon said I shouldn’t trust you. He said you spent your date talking about Ben.’

  I feel my first flash of anger. That bastard. Sod you and the pig you rode in on.

  ‘Simon’s lying,’ I say.

  ‘That’s funny, he said you were the liar.’

  ‘Well, that’s a lie.’ This conversation’s heading towards the farcical. ‘Simon also thinks I went on a date with him to investigate a kiss-and-tell story I knew nothing about at the time.’

  ‘You’re going to run my friend down?’

  ‘I don’t know how else to defend myself when he’s making things up.’

  I’m clammy, hands curled into fists, nails digging into my palms. My dress is digging in to me too, the balls of my feet aching. I’m suddenly very sober, long past midnight on any Cinderella moment. I know Olivia’s made up her mind about me. I should still have one last try.

  ‘I’m sorry you didn’t know about this. I didn’t know if Ben had told you. I didn’t think it was my business to ask. But as for Simon, he’s already told me I’m a piece of shit because of the Shale story. Whatever he’s told you is designed to make you angrier at me. He was the one asking about Ben on our date.’

  ‘Guess what, Rachel. Simon said you weren’t being honest about only being friends with Ben. He said to get you on your own and tell you my husband had sold you out. Instant result. Whoops. So stand here and tell me some more about how he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

  Don’t worry Simon, you will be made partner. You twat.

  ‘If you’re going to take Simon’s word over mine, there’s nothing I can say. There’s nothing inappropriate going on.’

  ‘Like hell. What a surprise to see you with Ben on the dance floor, the second I was with Simon.’

  ‘He asked me.’

  ‘Hah, sure, he’s after you.’

  ‘That’s not what I was …’

  ‘Know what else Simon said about you? He said you’re exactly the type of woman who starts chasing other women’s husbands when she realises no one wants to marry her. You’re a strictly “bed don’t wed”.’

  The nastiness of this winds me. Bed don’t wed? The 1950s called, they want their attitudes back. When slinging me on the fallen females reject pile, they forget the part where I chose not to get married.

  ‘Right, OK. What a nice guy he is to say something like that. If Slime-On won’t put a ring on it then I may as well end it now. I’ll start putting my paperwork in order and find my father’s pearl-handled revolver.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right, you’re so funny, aren’t you,’ Olivia says, with whiplash-spite that turns my stomach right over. ‘You’re still miles out of your league, anywhere near my husband or Simon.’

  As I move to walk off, Olivia adds, bitterly: ‘I don’t know what Ben saw in you.’

  I stop, think, turn. ‘… Himself?’

  I brace myself for Olivia to slip her L.K. Bennett mule off and give me a good shoeing.

  At that second, a traumatised middle-aged lady appears silhouetted in the doorway of the Portaloos, a vision in lavender sent from heaven to bestow peace.

  ‘Have you ever seen such lovely soap! In a Portaloo! Soap!’

  64

  I don’t have to knock on Mindy’s front door in Whalley Range as she’s heard the taxi’s engine and is already waiting, arms folded, as if I’ve overshot my curfew. She’s also obviously on high alert due to my text insisting I was on my way to hers and not under any circumstances to go to bed, however much the Shipping News encouraged it. As I reach her, I see Caroline’s head bobbing over her shoulder, both of them wearing forehead-crumpling expressions of concern.

  ‘What’s up?’ Mindy demands.

  They stand back as I sweep into the kitchen and throw my bag down on Mindy’s kitchen table. I must look a state: up-do unravelling, smoky eyes gone full polecat-smudgy, problems with normal respiration.

  ‘Olivia tricked me into admitting me and Ben slept together at university and went supernova and said I could never come near either of them ever again.’

  Mindy and Caroline stare at me with dull stupefaction, as if I’ve blown in from another world using an alien language, which this Saturday night, I sort of have.

  ‘Wait, wait.’ Mindy holds a hand up. ‘You slept with him?’

  ‘Once. Right before we left university. Remember Rhys and I called it off around graduation?’

  ‘You wily lady!’ Mindy squeals. ‘Why’d you never tell us? When? Where?’

  �
��Mindy!’ Caroline barks. ‘What the fuck does it matter where it was?’

  ‘I’m just trying to get the facts established!’

  ‘At our student house. You and Caro were home the night before the grad ball? Then.’

  ‘Why did you never tell us?’ Caroline echoes Mindy, with a different intonation.

  I slump down into a chair, stifling a wince at how my heat, food and booze-swollen body strains against the seams of the dress as I do so.

  ‘It was totally unexpected. I was in love with him and I messed it up and somehow let him think I wasn’t that keen and it was over before it began. Rhys walked back into the ball, Ben legged it and never took a phone call from me again, went off travelling, that was that. I’ve never been able to bear talking about it. It was as if, if I pretended it hadn’t happened, it couldn’t hurt as much.’

  ‘Ooh God,’ says Mindy, under her breath.

  ‘And what happened with Olivia?’ Caroline asks.

  She looks, if not stern, then wary. This is all too much what she predicted. I outline Olivia’s specific objections to me, and Simon’s more general ones.

  ‘Get tae fuck!’ Mindy shouts. ‘Who’s he to say that? And what a bitch!’

  Caroline says nothing. I put my head in my hands.

  ‘Come on, come to the sofa,’ Mindy says, guiding me. ‘Those chairs aren’t really for sitting, I got them because they look great with that table.’

  Once I’m deposited on softer seating I feel myself under intense scrutiny.

  ‘It was one night? Ben liked you too?’ Mindy asks.

  ‘At the time he said he loved me. He was about to go travelling, I had my post-grad course. The timing was all wrong.’

  Caroline still says nothing.

  ‘You don’t have to say it, you were right,’ I tell her. ‘I should never have risked being Ben’s friend again.’

  ‘I don’t get what you did wrong. Are you supposed to say sorry for something that happened years before he met his wife?’ Mindy asks.

  I chew my lip.

  ‘Let me get this straight, have you been trying to lure Ben away?’ Mindy asks.