You Had Me at Hello Read online

  The unexpected resurrection of my nickname sends silent tears rolling down my face. It’ll all end in tears, Caroline said, or if she didn’t use those exact words, that’s what she meant.

  ‘What were you going to say to me?’ I wipe my cheeks with the heel of my hand, ‘Graduation ball, on the dance floor?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Oh.’ Hard gulp.

  ‘Look, I do. But. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does to me. Please, Ben.’

  He looks doubtful about obliging me, and with good reason, as I’m apparently on the verge of nervous collapse. He looks around to ascertain we’re still alone, apart from the barefoot guy with his tie wrapped round his forehead, doing tai chi underneath the statue.

  ‘I was going to tell you,’ he says, softly, ‘I’d given my tickets away for the travelling so we could rebook the whole thing when you could come too. I didn’t change the date I left. I bought new tickets and went on my own.’

  I stare at him through swimming eyes. This is pretty much unbearable. He looks upset and steps forward as if he’s going to touch my arm, but his hand drops to his side.

  ‘Something I want in return,’ Ben says, voice still low.

  ‘Yes. Anything.’

  ‘Please don’t come looking for me again.’

  And in a few purposeful strides, he’s gone. I bet he had to discipline himself not to run. What a finale.

  I walk round and round the park, trying to get my face under control before I go back out in public. The broken heart I can’t do anything about. I test my eyesight by reading the inscription on the cross. In this tranquil space, it calmly notes: ‘Around lie the remains of more than twenty-two thousand people’.

  How apt. The blossoming idyll is in fact a well-fertilised graveyard.

  67

  ‘He’s going to go back down south and live in this giant gilded cage bought by his in-laws and be miserable,’ I say, entering the forty-eighth minute of pointless rehashing with Caroline as abused, patient audience of one. She’s already listened to it all the way to Tatton Park, her reward for driving me here.

  I’m shouldering a wicker picnic basket, she’s carrying the gingham oilskin blanket and cool bag full of clinking bottles. It was Caroline’s birthday last week and she nominated a classical concert and fireworks here as her celebration, making us book tickets what feels like a lifetime ago. It confirms the greatness of Caroline’s mind: the day’s dawned, she has Mindy and Ivor AWOL, status unknown, and Rachel, status, wreck. Visa card debits and a sense of duty are all that’s knitting us together.

  She and Mindy have already heard the tale, of course. I called them individually. I had to concede it didn’t have much of a twist. They both listened with the kind of mounting apprehension you get in the horror genre when the teenagers announce ‘It’s nothing but superstition’ and go down to the old boat house holding tiki torches.

  ‘Mmm,’ Caroline says, throwing the blanket out, testing the ground underneath for lumps with the toe of her shoe. ‘You don’t know that he’s going to be miserable.’

  I put the basket down, plop in an ungainly heap onto the rug.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘No. A house, though. No one should force their partner to do something that makes them feel that compromised, surely?’

  ‘Rachel. It doesn’t matter if she’s mixing him Paraquat Martinis. He’s told you he loves her and he doesn’t love you. You have to let this go. I say that as someone who definitely loves you.’

  Caroline pulls a bottle of Prosecco out of the bag and hands me a couple of plastic goblets, the sort with screw-in bases. I wish alcohol helped. It tastes like paraffin and sizzles in my gut like it’s cauterising an open wound. In general, I feel as if my very essence has been through a document shredder.

  ‘This was never going to have a happy ending,’ Caroline says, gently, uncorking the bottle with a snap of the wrist and tipping it to one of the glasses. ‘You need to start a new story. Accept Mindy’s help with the online dating thing.’

  ‘Do you think they’re coming, by the way?’

  We agreed we owed Mindy and Ivor some distance and respect. We didn’t tell them what I’d seen or ask them any more about Caroline’s allegations. Caroline texted them both to check they were still coming today and they both confirmed. A sign, we agreed, that positive things might’ve happened, but it’s very hard to say.

  At that moment, Mindy, clad in floral-patterned tights and fuschia waterproof, appears. Caroline waves with her free hand. When Mindy reaches us we say our hellos but she’s inscrutable which is very unnerving when it’s the most scrutable woman in the world.

  ‘Shall I say my sorrys when Ivor’s here too?’ Caroline asks, as I hand her glass over.

  ‘I suppose,’ Mindy says, casually, sipping the froth before it spills. ‘Did he say he’d be here?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Caroline says, faintly perturbed.

  She and I exchange a look. Who knows what I saw outside the flat. There’s five minutes of stilted small talk about Mindy’s latest business proposal before Ivor lollops through the crowd, identifiable from the air by the so-very-Ivor thin sports jacket with tangerine chevrons he’s in.

  ‘Wotcher,’ I say, shading puffy eyes against the sun.

  ‘Afternoon.’

  We assemble a drink for him.

  ‘Let’s get this done,’ Caroline says, once Ivor is cross-legged with beverage. ‘I am completely, utterly, abjectly sorry for what I said. I was wrong and it was wrong. Please, please accept my apology.’ Caroline looks from Mindy to Ivor. ‘And not that I want to emotionally blackmail you but it’s my birthday week, and tomorrow I start sessions at Relate with my faithless husband so, you know, cut me some slack.’

  Ivor looks blank. Mindy pulls up clumps of grass and sprinkles the blades back down in heaps, gazing off towards the stage.

  ‘We’ve talked and we think what you did was pretty awful but we think you should be embarrassed about it, not us,’ Ivor says. ‘What you two didn’t know and Mindy and I did know, is … I’ve been fighting this for a while. It’s time I said something. I’m gay.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I blurt. ‘You’re gay?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s why Mindy was angry with me about Katya. She said it was time I owned who I am. Caroline accusing me of fancying another woman – not helpful in the whole coming out process.’

  ‘Oh good God, Ivor, I’m so sorry. Not sorry that you’re gay, I mean. Sorry again for what I did. How long have you known?’ Caroline says, one hand to her chest.

  Ivor shakes his head. ‘Long enough that it’s time I stopped hiding from it.’

  ‘And I’m sorry, it was my idea to ambush you two,’ I say. ‘Ivor, I only wish you’d told us before. It doesn’t make any difference.’

  He nods.

  ‘Have you … got a boyfriend?’ I sound like a sixty-something at the Women’s Institute trying to make sense of this new craze called dogging that doesn’t involve dogs, or that BDSM isn’t a driving school. The homosexuality announcement is so utterly unexpected that I can’t sync sense and mouth.

  ‘Nah. Not that far along with it. Just … you know, lots of meaningless cock I trawl for at Manto’s.’

  I definitely don’t have a Post-It note in the relevant section of Debrett’s to hand on this so I turn to Mindy and reiterate my apology. She’s throwing back her Prosecco, merely wiping her mouth and nodding curt acknowledgement.

  ‘Well, I say cock, cock and arse, I haven’t decided which side of the bargain I prefer being on yet,’ Ivor continues.

  Caroline and I nod, sip our drinks for something to do. There’s a disconnect between the genteel surroundings and the frank nature of our conversation. You shouldn’t be thinking about whether your friend prefers being a bottom or a top with rough trade while watching three generations of a family sharing Earl Grey from a Thermos.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ivor says. ‘I’ve been going to a support group and once the walls of communication co
me down, they really come crashing down, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Did you not want to tell us before?’ Caroline asks. ‘Not that I’m complaining. I wish we could’ve been there for you.’

  ‘I nearly told you both, once. We were watching a film with Matt Damon and he was scaling a building—’

  ‘The Bourne Identity,’ Mindy says.

  ‘Thanks Mindy, yes, The Bourne Identity, and I nearly said what a fierce BUM. I’d scuttle that rotten! It nearly popped out. Then I remembered myself.’

  ‘And it’s a film about someone forgetting who they are,’ Mindy says.

  ‘I had never considered that irony,’ Ivor says. ‘Perhaps that was the subconscious influence. What’s in the picnic basket then? Any Scotch eggs?’

  Caroline appears grateful for the distraction and starts rustling through it, pulling out Lakeland Tupperware.

  ‘Oh, too many salads. I’m not that gay,’ Ivor says.

  Mindy squeezes his arm.

  There’s something niggling me and with the arm squeeze, I identify what it is.

  ‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘Hang on. Mindy knew. Mindy? How on earth did you get her to keep a secret?’

  A pregnant pause. Ivor is freeze-framed with a breadstick halfway to gob.

  ‘Aha! Got you! Surprise! We’re totally dating!’ Mindy squeals.

  Caroline and I look at each other and then back at Ivor, who’s broken into the broad grin of the evil swine.

  ‘Ivor!’ I shriek. ‘A fake coming out, then going back in? Bit tasteless!’

  Ivor collapses in on himself with laughter. ‘Your faces, woo hoo …’ he chokes. ‘Fierce bum, haha.’

  Caroline puts fingers to temples. ‘Ivor, you’re not gay? And you and Mindy are seeing each other?’

  ‘No I’m not … and yes we are,’ Ivor says, glancing at Mindy.

  Our eyes move to Mindy. She’s wearing a shy smile. She never looks shy. This is amazing.

  ‘I knew I was right!’ Caroline cries.

  ‘And contrition for humiliating us lasted, what, four minutes?’ Ivor says. ‘You absolutely deserved this retaliation.’

  Caroline hands me her glass, then stretches across and kisses him on the cheek, doing the same with Mindy. ‘I am so, so pleased for you two.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re going back in the closet,’ I say to Ivor.

  ‘There’s no closet, Woodford, OK? I am a hundred per cent lady lover. Got a qualification in hetero from Peterborough Academy of Smooth and everything.’

  ‘We haven’t done it yet though,’ Mindy says. ‘That’s gonna be weird.’

  Ivor knocks a palm against his forehead.

  ‘Mindy! We were winning this embarrassment contest until you said that!’

  ‘Sorry. It’s what I’d be thinking about though, if I was them.’

  They laugh, with a touch of self-consciousness. They sound different.

  ‘This is fantastic news, apart from the fact you’re not allowed to say you’ll never see each other again if you break up. Are we agreed?’ I ask.

  ‘We have talked about that. We think it might’ve been one of the reasons we took so long to get around to this,’ Mindy says, with another shy look. It occurs to me she’s experiencing the novel sensation of going out with someone she actually loves. That’s what was missing.

  ‘We’d have to work out a timeshare where you both retained your stake and we scheduled around it,’ Caroline says. ‘But it might never happen. Me and Rach might be aunties to gorgeous cocoa-skinned gaudily dressed children.’ She sticks her tongue in her cheek.

  ‘May I pour you a nice warm cup of shut the fuck up?’ Ivor says.

  I propose a toast. ‘To Ivor and Mindy. With names and taste in clothes like yours, you were always destined to be a couple.’

  We clink plastic glasses.

  ‘And to Caroline’s fifty-third,’ Ivor says, looking around us at a sea of silver hair.

  68

  I pack away my textbook and mumble my goodbyes to my class mates before heading out into the mucky weather. I started taking an Italian night class at the university. There’s about a half a dozen international students and me, mumbling our way through pidgin Italian with a very bright, fair and entirely English tutor, nothing like the undulating Gina Lollobrigida character of my imagination.

  Clouds that were soft, smoky pencil smudges this afternoon have dissolved into spattering rain. Despite the persistent drizzle and my next engagement requiring me not to look bedraggled, I decide to walk. I pass Central Library, the dome illuminated in a Close Encounters way, as if it might start whirring, chiming and spin off into the night sky. I stand and gaze at it for a few moments, shivering, clutching the collars of my coat together. I hurry down the streets as the rain gathers pace, speckling my face and making me blink. In the twinkly sanctuary of the café-bar I find a table in the far corner, by the window and below The Wizard Of Oz poster.

  ‘We’ve got mulled wine on the go, if you fancy it?’ says the art college waitress, pulling the pencil from her floppy ponytail as she takes my order. ‘It’s so nasty out there we thought we needed it.’

  ‘Ooh, go on then,’ I say, as if it’s contraband, like the naughty old granny dipso I’m surely fated to become.

  It arrives in a glass on a saucer, a paper napkin folded underneath to catch the drips. I got here just in time: the rain’s being picked up by the wind and hurled sideways, cascading down in waves as if we’re inside a car wash.

  These last weeks have been fairly awful. Tonight I don’t feel so bad. I’m empty but energised. The sort of light-headedness I imagine you get on a fast at an ashram, when you tell yourself it’s the toxins leaving your body as opposed to it starting to digest itself.

  I’m back to factory settings. Clean slate, start again, only way is up, as the great philosopher Yazz said.

  Rhys called me last night to tell me he’d met someone else, Claire. She’s started working at his company. She might be moving in, and did I mind it being so soon? I surprised myself by not only saying I didn’t mind, but meaning it. He sounded like he wanted to gush, and that’s not the Rhys I know – she’s already having an effect I didn’t. Rhys doesn’t need my blessing or permission, he explained, but I still have a key and some things in the loft. I knew it was more than that. He was excited and wanted to share it with me. And although he said we had nothing to show for thirteen years, I think that’s something.

  Caroline’s gone down to a four-day week at work, spending the other one volunteering at worthy inner-city projects. She loves it. God knows what all those public-sector poverty tsars are going to do for an income when she solves poverty and moves on to the next task though. Our old Friday foursome nights have become Saturdays. Friday is her and Graeme’s night together, as their counsellor says they must ‘set aside time to value their bond and reconnect’. Mindy and I agreed we’ve got to redouble our efforts with Graeme for her sake. It helps that he’s suitably chastened enough not to take the mickey out of us as much as before.

  Meanwhile, Katya’s in Colombia, Ivor doesn’t have lost weekends in Vice City and Mindy doesn’t spend any time worrying about Detroit techno. They’ve never revealed precisely what went on that day Caroline dropped the truth bomb on them, which is mind-bending restraint in Mindy’s case. I did get one thing out of her. She tells me she caught up with him, they looked at each other, and: ‘We just knew. We knew it was true without either of us saying a word.’ Those two, not saying a word to each other. Incredible in itself.

  Mindy still refuses to completely revise her theory of attraction. She’s altered the terms: now it’s based on whether you’ve seen someone in their pants, claiming if she’d known Ivor had good muscle definition she’d have said she was up for it sooner. No one believes her. They are ridiculously, sickeningly happy, though they are considerate enough not to show it, if they can help it. I’d miss their bickering too much.

  I let Mindy sign me up to My Single Friend. She insisted after she
said my forays online ‘were like Gerald Ratner with a sherry decanter’. (‘Have you spellchecked it?’ Ivor asked me. ‘One of Mindy’s own ads said she was a fan of jizz instead of jazz. Mind you, big response.’)

  ‘Rachel?’

  A tall, dark-haired man with a lot of water on his face stands in front of me.

  ‘Yes! Hi! Gregor?’

  He sits, slapping down a wrinkled newspaper that I gather has been on his head in lieu of an umbrella.

  ‘What would you like to drink?’ I say.

  ‘Have they got a menu?’

  He plucks a printed slip of paper from a wooden block on the table and studies it. I try very very hard not to study his hair, and fail. What. The. Blazes …? It’s a pronounced, obsidian-black widow’s peak. What’s most distracting, however, is it isn’t apparently made of hair. It’s like … Velcro, or some scalp-based equivalent of astro-turf. It looks sewn on.

  While we make introductory chat and Gregor asks for a lager, I feel irritation bubbling up, and then feel guilty for feeling irritated in case his hair fell out due to a trauma and he was misled by his follicular regeneration specialist and his wife left him over it. Seriously, though: why not put the plugs deal upfront? All his photos were artily-lit to conceal it. Surely it’d be wiser to filter the Hammer Horror enthusiasts, avoiding disappointment for everyone? I mean. There was well-meant Mindy bullshit about beauty in my resume, but my properly-lit pictures were there as a visual corrective aid.

  Stop being so superficial, I tell myself, personality is what counts. Personality is what you’re here to enjoy.

  ‘What’s the concert you’re going on to?’ I ask.

  ‘Michael Ball. A collection of show tunes. “Aspects of Love”, and so on. Do you get down to the West End much?’

  ‘Erm. No. I always mean to—’

  ‘Oh, you should, you should. It’s a fantastic night out, you know? Great entertainment.’

  The waitress brings Gregor his pint and I notice he doesn’t say thank you, or even acknowledge her. How early are you allowed to say: this is never gonna work?