You Had Me at Hello Read online

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘Then I don’t blame either of you for not making a thing out of it. If you’d dated before and kept it quiet now, OK, that’s deception. Anything less is sparing people’s feelings. No one hands over a full disclosure list at the signing of the register. It’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”’

  I laugh weakly, despite myself. ‘Like gays in the US military?’

  ‘Yeah!’

  I glance at Caroline. I look back at Mindy. Am I going to say it? I’ve barely admitted it to myself. I am. I’m going to have to say it.

  ‘It’s a bad idea for me to be his friend because …’

  Two pairs of eyes widen in expectation.

  ‘… Seeing him again has made me realise the ridiculous truth. I’m still in love with him.’

  Caroline and Mindy look at each other and then at me again.

  ‘Really?’ Mindy breathes.

  ‘It’s demented and tragic, I know,’ I say.

  ‘It’s crazily romantic.’

  ‘He’s married, Mindy,’ Caroline says, flatly.

  ‘Yep, he’s married, so it’s nothing but sad and wrong,’ I say, horribly aware that Caroline must feel as if she’s being asked to sympathise with the kind of woman who fooled around with Graeme. ‘I was stood there with Olivia insulting me thinking, I deserve this.’

  ‘You don’t deserve it!’ Mindy says, but her eyes flicker towards Caroline in uncertainty.

  Pause.

  ‘Look,’ Caroline addresses us both, ‘you’ve been great about Graeme behaving like an utter dick but I feel as if you expect me to take some hard line or want to treat me with kid gloves and I’m the same person. My views are still my views and, Rachel, yes, I said I thought you should be careful of the spark between you and Ben before this, and before I became a scorned woman myself. But as for this evening, I think the row with Olivia is Ben’s fault.’

  Even in my relief at being excused I feel a pang of protectiveness.

  ‘Olivia deserved to know the full history and he was the one who had a duty to tell her, not you.’

  ‘Yeah. What were you supposed to say?’ Mindy says. ‘Hi, nice to meet you, by the way, I’ve had your husband?’’

  ‘And you broke off your engagement not so long ago. You’re bound to be vulnerable and he’s the married one. He should’ve known better to let things get to this point,’ Caroline concludes.

  Long pause. Amid all the mess of cans and worms, I feel better for having told them.

  ‘Is she going to give me evils if I ask more questions?’ Mindy points at Caroline.

  ‘Oh, do what you like, Mindy,’ Caroline says, with a shrug, though I can see she’s amused. She asked for business as usual, she’s got it.

  ‘One night, ten years on, you still love him. It must’ve been quite a night?’

  ‘Er … yes.’

  ‘I mean. He was amazing? An amazing boff?’

  ‘I got what you meant, Mind. Yes. He was.’

  Mindy pulls her legs underneath her on the sofa, trying not to look like she’s enjoying herself. Mindy loves a drama, and that goes treble for a drama that involves someone who’s amazing at boffing. ‘When did it change? I mean, when you were at uni and with Rhys, when did your feelings towards Ben change?’

  ‘I don’t know, exactly. It happened by degrees without me ever noticing and by the time I did, it was sort of overwhelming. I’d ignored it, and then – WHAM – he says I love you …’

  ‘He loved Wham?’ Mindy asks.

  ‘No, “WHAM”, like a cartoon explosion sound effect. He loved me …’

  ‘Sorry, sorry! Of course. Carry on.’

  ‘And there it was, he said it and I knew I loved him too. I thought he was so far out of my league, I hadn’t even dared think it, let alone say it.’

  ‘If he ran off, he could’ve had second thoughts, though?’ Caroline asks, and I know she’s not being unkind, just trying to take the edge off my regret.

  ‘I’m not sure. He brought it up, when we went for a drink the other night. It was clear he thought I’d got back with Rhys at the ball and that I didn’t feel the same way.’

  ‘What did you say?!’ Mindy wails, as if I keep issuing cliffhangers from The Young and The Restless.

  ‘I had to more or less go along with it. Not as if I could say, no, it was all a huge misunderstanding, I miss you every damn moment.’

  ‘You don’t know that it was a mistake,’ Caroline says. ‘Maybe you and Ben would’ve imploded in three months flat after a huge fight in a tuk tuk.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘OK. I’m going to make cups of tea and put whisky in them,’ Mindy says.

  Caroline and I sit in silence for a short while, listening to Mindy pottering around in the next room.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say I told you so?’ I say to Caroline. ‘I deserve it and then some.’

  ‘You didn’t say that to me about Graeme.’

  ‘You weren’t remotely to blame!’

  ‘You and Graeme have never exactly been close, I know you don’t have much time for him …’ I open my mouth and Caroline shakes her head to stop me politely demurring ‘… but you’ve never said a word against him and you didn’t pull him to pieces over this latest … transgression or give me grief for taking him back and I appreciated it. None of us are perfect. I warned you about Ben. I thought you were going to unintentionally hurt other people. I didn’t realise you were mainly hell bent on hurting yourself.’

  ‘I knew it was doomed, Caro, I just wanted to see him again so much,’ I say, mournfully.

  ‘I know, I know. It was me opening my big mouth about seeing him at the library anyway,’ Caroline says, leaning over and giving me a shoulder pat. ‘He’s unfinished business. It’s bound to have stirred you up, him coming back when he did. Don’t be too sure it’s love.’

  Good old Caro. She will always ‘see it, say it’.

  Mindy comes back in with mugs of tea. Caroline sniffs hers and wrinkles her nose. ‘Jeez, what’s this, eighteen per cent proof builder’s?’

  ‘My dad gave me some Glenfiddich for Christmas, I’ve been looking for a use for it.’

  ‘You tipped a Scottish single malt in tea? This is a terrorist act.’

  I sip mine. Hot, sweet, laced – ideal for a shock. All I need now is the marathon runner’s foil cape.

  ‘Try to remember this,’ Caroline says, getting back to the topic. ‘A proper relationship with Ben would’ve involved arguing over his crap DIY, the stage where he thinks he can do the squeeze-and-splash into the toilet when you’re in the shower, and visits to Dunelm Mill.’

  ‘Where’s Dunelm Mill?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s an outlet shop. My point is, the life with him you feel like you lost out on, it’s perfect because it’s a fantasy and it’s a fantasy because it’s perfect.’

  Mindy places a consoling hand on my arm. ‘And look at this way. What you and Ben had, one night, it was this ideal thing, like in Casablanca when they say we’ll always have Paris.’

  ‘We’ll always have the Wilbraham Road boffing?’

  ‘Yeah. With how things have turned out, you don’t have to spoil it. You don’t have to slowly go off each other, see the other one get senile and die.’

  I sweep my sweaty fringe out of my eyes.

  ‘The problem is, after all these years, I can’t think of anyone I’d more like to slowly go off, see get senile and die than Ben.’

  65

  At least the maxim about newspaper people – ‘short tempers, short memories’ – has some truth: no one’s entirely forgotten what happened with Natalie, but with each passing day, I see that if it’s not quite old news yet, it’s getting older every day. I can survive it.

  Zoe gets her name in the Mail regularly. It turns out one of the ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ is being a shocking piece of work. I’m sure she’ll end up with her own column by age thirty. She’ll use it to berate venal politicians and hypocritical celebritie
s for lying to us, with one of those byline photos where she looks like she’s staring down someone taking a dump in her garden.

  Speaking of ordure and questionable hacks, Gretton’s taken to bringing me a dung-coffee in the press room every morning. It’s nice of him and yet it makes me mildly uncomfortable. Have I been brought so low that even Gretton feels sorry for me?

  ‘You’re more stream of piss than Jesus’s sunbeam!’ is a typical gee-me-up greeting.

  He’s also started sharing story tips, with predictably horrifying results.

  ‘The begging and indecent exposure in 4 should be a laugh. A bag lady’s been flashing people with her scary mary,’ he says, this particular day. ‘Arresting officer said it looked like she was giving birth to Ken Dodd.’

  ‘You know what, Pete, I might let you apply your singular talents to that one.’

  I have to get back to the flat on time as Caroline and I have concocted a plan that relies on everyone sticking to their schedules. I get home for six, Caroline’s with me by quarter past, and Mindy’s with us by quarter to seven, for a DVD-and-takeaway night with a twist she doesn’t know about. At seven, the doorbell goes again.

  ‘Evening!’ Ivor says, as he steps inside. ‘Have you really bought an Xbox?’ And then: ‘Oh, what?’ as he spies Mindy.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ Mindy barks, standing up.

  I insert myself between door and Ivor, herding him further into the room while I do so.

  ‘OK. I’ve recently made a massive balls-up of my life, and Caroline, through no fault of her own, is experiencing some disruption also,’ I say. ‘We could both do with you two making friends and restoring harmony. That’s not going to happen if you never speak. So, speak. Say anything you like, but you have to start speaking.’

  ‘I’m leaving. How’s that for some speaking?’ Ivor says, turning.

  ‘And if he wasn’t leaving, I would be.’ Mindy says with hands on hips.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, the two of you,’ Caroline says.

  ‘I have nothing to say to him,’ Mindy says.

  ‘Likewise. Can I go now?’ Ivor says to me.

  ‘What, you’re going to throw away years of friendship because you had a bust-up over Katya?’ I say, looking from one to the other. ‘Is she worth it?’

  ‘Ask Ivor what she’s worth,’ Mindy says. ‘Four hundred and twenty pounds a month? TV licence and bunga bunga included?’

  ‘See?’ Ivor says. ‘This is pointless.’

  ‘Stop this!’ I say, suddenly a little hysterical. ‘I know right now you think you can spat all you want and it’ll be OK and you don’t really mean it. Ivor could be hit by a bus on his way home. You never know when it could be a last chance. Talk!’

  ‘She practically called me a sex attacker!’ Ivor bellows back. ‘It’s nice you want to do some helping out here, but unless you can get a full, grovelling retraction from her, not gonna happen. Whether I go under a Stagecoach or not.’

  ‘Grovelling? Kiss my arse,’ Mindy says.

  ‘Alright, alright.’ Caroline gets to her feet, yanking her top over her concave stomach. ‘Enough of this! Mindy, sit down.’ She puts a firm hand on Mindy’s shoulder and pushes her, then points a finger at Ivor, and an armchair. ‘Ivor, you sit there. Now.’

  Ivor sulkily obeys, coat still on.

  She positions herself equidistant between them, standing. Caroline in full Paxman mode is an intimidating experience. I hover nearby, as if I’m studio security.

  ‘Mindy,’ Caroline says, ‘Ivor did not give Katya any concession on the rent in return for kinky favours. You know that. Stop saying he did. It simply happened and he has the right to sleep with anyone he wants. He’s a grown, single man. If we all passed judgement on each other’s choice of bonks down the years, I think we know there’d have been a lot of ructions.’

  Caroline moves her gaze.

  ‘Ivor, Mindy gets a very hard time for her choice of boyfriends from you. You’re never exactly welcoming to them. Maybe next time you see Jake, you could correct that.’

  ‘Jake and I aren’t seeing each other any more,’ Mindy says.

  ‘Whoever the next one is, then,’ Caroline says.

  ‘It’s not a revolving door!’ Mindy says, and Ivor looks slightly brighter.

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ I say, to Mindy. ‘About Jake, not the door.’

  ‘OK. Jake or no Jake, if Mindy has overreacted to one indiscretion, there have been years of provocation,’ Caroline says.

  ‘I hardly think a few wind-ups are the same as branding me an abuser, do you?’

  ‘I think you both need to say sorry and you both need to hear it. You can say it at the same time, if no one wants to go first. I’ll count you in.’

  ‘This isn’t a crèche,’ Ivor says to Caroline. ‘What if we don’t agree, no Stickle Bricks and milk?’

  ‘I’m not going to change my opinion because of what you force him to say,’ Mindy says. ‘This is pointless.’

  ‘At least you agree on something!’ I say, optimistically.

  I look in desperation towards Caroline.

  ‘OK, you force me to do this. I’m breaking the glass and grabbing the hammer,’ Caroline says, sitting down and crossing her legs.

  Mindy and I frown in confusion at each other.

  ‘I’ve got a theory, if anyone cares to hear it. Here’s what I think is actually going on. Ivor has been in love with Mindy for years but won’t do anything about it because of her ludicrous insistence on only considering men who look a certain way. Hence the ridicule about her dates.’

  I look at Ivor, who’s wearing the face of a man who’s raced to the airport in time for the final boarding call and found he doesn’t have his passport.

  ‘And I think Mindy’s starting to realise she has similar feelings for Ivor. That’s why she hates what he did with Katya so much.’ Caroline turns to Mindy. ‘You’re not disapproving, you’re jealous.’

  ‘What?’ Mindy says, who’s the palest I’ve ever seen anyone with dark skin. ‘I am not!’

  ‘I’m making sense, aren’t I? If we all think about this, we know it’s true.’ Caroline surveys the room, taking in three faces with open mouths. ‘You’re mad, because you’re mad about each other. Isn’t that right, Rachel?’

  ‘Uh. I couldn’t say. You make a convincing case …?’

  ‘You’re a bunch of …’ Ivor is on his feet, wild-eyed, spluttering for words. ‘Just fuck off! All of you!’

  He charges out of the door.

  ‘That stopped short of a denial,’ Caroline says, looking to Mindy.

  She rounds on Caroline. ‘What the HELL was that?!’

  ‘If neither of you were going to broach it, I thought I’d give it a helping hand. None of us are getting any younger here.’

  ‘You’re totally, completely out of order.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes!’ Mindy screams, snatching up her coat.

  ‘You’ve never thought of Ivor that way?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘And you don’t think Ivor likes you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Well done for making a very bad situation a thousand times worse! When the fuck do you think we’ll ever want to be in the same room now?’

  ‘Don’t go,’ I say, weakly, as Mindy slams out the door. I hear her footsteps pounding on the steps beyond.

  ‘That went well, I think,’ I say, joining a beleaguered Caroline on the couch. ‘Are you sure about what you said?’

  Caroline bites her lip. ‘I was. Maybe I was wrong. I overstepped the mark, didn’t I?’

  ‘If it wasn’t true, it will be obscenely embarrassing to sort out.’

  ‘And if it was true, it will be even worse?’ Caroline says.

  ‘Oh no, a diabolical third option. What if this is true of one of them and not the other? What then?’

  Caroline puts a hand over her mouth. I groan and bury my head in the sofa, slap the cushions rhythmically. I re
-emerge. ‘I’m going after Mindy. This is my fault, I had the herd and trap idea.’

  ‘I’d let her cool off, if I were you, but if you think it’ll help …’

  I gallop down the stairs and burst into the street. Thanks to Mindy’s love of vivid colour, I spot her easily, an aubergine flag against red bricks some yards away. She’s stopped still and I worry she’s crying. Shit. I’m the one who owes a grovelling apology.

  As I advance, I’m surprised to see Ivor’s on the other side of her. This is good, surely? Unless they’re saying dreadful, eviscerating, final sort of things to each other. Something in the position of their bodies tells me this isn’t the case – it looks more like an intense tête-à-tête than the distance between two people squaring up. I watch them for a minute, unable to catch any drift or tone of their conversation. Mindy puts her arms up round Ivor’s neck for a conciliatory hug and I nearly cheer.

  They don’t break apart.

  I stare and stare in delighted disbelief until I realise I’m being a shameless voyeur and might ruin it if I’m spotted. Flying back through the flat door, I run into Caroline, who’s pulling her jacket on.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I ask, breathlessly.

  ‘You’re right, best say sorry to them. That was unnecessarily sadistic. I’ll say I’m unbalanced and mention Graeme and they’ll feel bad enough to forgive me.’

  ‘All right,’ I say, enjoying the moment very much. ‘If you can prise them apart downstairs, tell them you called it wrong.’

  ‘They’re fighting?’ Caroline asks, aghast.

  66

  I thought it wouldn’t be like Ben not to say goodbye the second time around, but I also knew it might not be up to him. Then a call comes during work on a Friday. It’s pay day for much of the city, and we’re experiencing a snap of sunshine. By half past five, the pens outside the pubs that pass as al fresco seating areas will be heaving.

  ‘I was hoping we could meet for a quick chat,’ Ben says, brusque in his awkwardness. ‘I don’t want to take up too much of your Friday night. Meet at the town hall steps, after work?’

  I get it, neutral territory – nothing that could look like socialising. When I arrive, I see there’s a French market on in Albert Square and it’s a cluster of yellow-and-white striped awnings, shadowing wheels of brie, floury-looking saucisson and wooden tubs of garlic and onions. And there’s a not-very-Gallic, opportunistic ice-cream van, thronged with customers.