You Had Me at Hello Page 34

  ‘Why’s a nice girl like you single, then?’

  ‘Can nice girls not be single?’

  ‘It was a compliment, if you’re going to throw it back in my face …’

  ‘Uhm, OK, thanks. That’s a big question …’

  His line of sight flickers to my chest while I’m talking and suddenly I’m sixteen years old, out with a boy who thinks he can look at chests and not be noticed doing it. Maybe it’s a nervous tic and he’s not doing that at all. I’m only wearing a dark sweater dress, after all, it’s not as if it’s revealing.

  ‘… Why are you single?’ I ask.

  Gregor blows his cheeks out. ‘Working long hours. International travel.’

  ‘Right. For the bank.’

  ‘I can pull down twenty, thirty K in bonuses in a good year. They want their pound of flesh, har har.’

  At the word ‘flesh’ his eyes slither south again. He is! He’s copping a goggle! Unbelievable.

  Half an hour later, I am giving sincere thanks to the work ethic of Andrew Lloyd Webber that Gregor’s gig starts early.

  ‘This has been fun. Feel free to call me,’ he says, tucking his chair back under the table. ‘If I’m Stateside it might go to vee-mail but I’ll pick it up.’

  ‘Mmm, hmm,’ I say, making the emphatic closed-mouth smile with vigorous nod that means yuh-huh, on a nippy day in hell.

  I could concede defeat and go home. That seems too much like setting a precedent that being out alone isn’t fun, and being alone isn’t good. I order another drink and make a note to self to bring a book next time.

  Here’s what I’ve decided. I will always miss Ben. I will always wonder what might have been if I’d said: ‘Thanks for coming, Rhys, good effort, nice touch with the Brilliantine, but please excuse me while I pursue the man I’m really in love with.’ But despite how dreadful that day in St John’s was, I can’t regret what I said to Ben. At least I tried. Rachel’s maxim: fail again, fail differently.

  Some people end up with their soul mates, like Mindy and Ivor. Some people end up with partners they can work at being happy with, like Caroline and Graeme. Some get second chances at getting it right, like Rhys and Claire. Some people get who they deserve, like Lucy and Matt. Some people will forever be a mystery, like Lucas and Natalie. He got cleared, they’re back together, no further statements will be made. Other people, of which I might be one, end up on their own. And that’s fine. I’ll be all right.

  I make a decision: I will book a trip to Rome for my wedding-day-that-wasn’t. And I will speak Italian. Some.

  69

  I’m prodding at the slice of orange and cinnamon stick floating on top of my wine with my teaspoon when the chair opposite me scrapes across the floor.

  ‘Is this seat taken?’

  I look up. The spoon clatters into the saucer.

  ‘The weather is end-of-the-world Blade Runner out there, isn’t it? I’d forgotten the north-west’s capacity to chuck it on you.’

  I continue to stare blankly at Ben as he drapes his coat over the back of the chair. He doesn’t look very soggy. He looks as per, as if he saved the world in time to make the appointment with his tailor.

  ‘Saw you outside the library and followed you,’ he says. ‘You took the most roundabout route here, you know that? Then I sat over there in the corner and watched you in a creepy manner.’ Ben peers into my glass. ‘Any booze in that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good-oh.’

  ‘Are you here to serve me some kind of cease-and-desist special lawyer papers?’

  ‘No, I’m going to get another drink. Ah, fantastic – same as her? Yeah, cheers.’

  He confirms his order through standard café-bar semaphore with the waitress.

  ‘Who was that with you, then?’ he asks.

  As I understand precisely nothing about what’s happening, I’ll answer the questions I’m given.

  ‘Gregor.’

  ‘New fella?’

  ‘Uh. No. He likes musical theatre and looked at my tits every twelve minutes.’

  Ben wrinkles his nose. ‘Amateur hour. Everyone knows you pick up what you can on the periphery of your vision and assemble the 3D with imagination.’

  I shake my head as the urge to laugh battles with my extreme bafflement.

  ‘But you’re dating again?’

  ‘Badly, but yes.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  Ben says thank you for his wine, picks up his glass, takes a sip. It’s then I spot the small but telling detail about his left hand. He sees that I see. He sets the cup back down.

  ‘Liv and I are getting a divorce. I went down to London and we talked for a long time about what had gone wrong and decided it couldn’t be fixed. It had nothing to do with any aggro at the wedding, I should say. That was more the death throes. It had been staring us in the face since before Manchester. We were playing for time, moving north, really.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ben.’

  I discover I am sorry. Very, very sorry, and sad for him. I wish I could say for sure I’d have felt that way before all self-interest was gone, I don’t know that’s true. What I do know, confirmed to me with Rhys’s latest news, is that when you love someone, you want their happiness even when it’s not going to involve you. Even when it depends on your lack of involvement.

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘You must be devastated.’

  ‘In a way, it was worse when I knew it might happen, or it should happen, and we hadn’t said it. I’m very sad, but resigned. This is better than tearing lumps out of one another until there’s nothing left. You must know what I mean?’

  I think about Rhys. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Mulled wine,’ Ben takes another sip. ‘Quite nice, if wildly unseasonal.’

  ‘Are you staying in Manchester?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Ben,’ I say, cautiously. ‘If you’re here to say it’s OK to be friends now you’re separated … I’m not sure I can be. We’ve had two goes at it and neither of them has ended well. I mean, friends can do things like write My Single Friend pitches for each other, like Mindy did for me. If I had to write yours, I’d be saying you’re the most sexist man I’ve ever met. And reeks. Wear a hazmat suit for copulation.’

  Ben pretends to sniff his armpit and deadpans: ‘Now you tell me?’

  ‘You know what I mean. I can’t be your dating buddy, or meet your new girlfriends. It’s not going to work.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Ben fishes the cinnamon stick out of his drink between finger and thumb and puts it on the edge of the saucer. ‘That belongs in pot pourri only.’

  I can’t tell how my words have been taken. It was hard to say, and hard-won wisdom.

  ‘About being friends. I happen to agree it wouldn’t work. I was angry when I last saw you. Only at myself, when I thought about it. You ought to know that I left that night of the ball because I was so sure – so scared – you’d pick Rhys over me, I didn’t risk sticking around to see it happen. I dodged your calls for the same reason. I thought it was just confirming the bad news. I told myself that if it had been me you’d have torn after me at the Palace. But you’d told me how you felt and I had no business playing games, getting you to prove it. I never saw it from your point of view. You weren’t indecisive, I was insecure. Then later when I heard for sure you were back with Rhys, I told myself there, that’s the proof, I was right to doubt you. Until we were sat in that park, I’d never faced the fact I might’ve brought the situation about. I realised what a total idiot I’d been.’

  He takes a sip of his drink. I’m not sure I can withstand going over this again. It’s like rewinding a traffic camera clip of an accident.

  ‘Then when I was honest with myself about the past, I could be honest with myself about the present. I started out with the wrong intentions, wanting to prove things to you in my stupid wounded pride.’

  ‘What can you have needed to prove to me?’

  ‘That I didn’t mind what had happ
ened. That I didn’t ever think about you or wish things had turned out differently. Pretty soon the plan started to go wrong and we were sat in here with me trying not to wail do you know you broke my heart, bitch.’

  Ben smiles to make it clear this is an ironic bitch, not an actual bitch.

  ‘And I wanted to save you from Simon’s oily grasp … a bit too much. The thing is, seeing you again, it’s all been based on a misunderstanding. I was sure it was safe to be friends. I thought I couldn’t possibly fall in love with you again, and I was right.’

  He takes a breath.

  ‘Please,’ I interrupt, desperately. ‘If you want to tell me you’ve come to realise you care for me as a second sister, that’s nice but I don’t want to hear it. Put it in a card with some bull-rushes on it and post it. With Deepest Sympathy For Your Loss Of Sex Appeal.’

  ‘I was right I couldn’t fall in love with you. Because I never fell out of love with you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s true,’ Ben says, cheerfully. ‘Seems once was enough to infect me. From then on you’ve been lying dormant, like a virus. Or an incurable chronic condition that flares up from time to time.’

  A long pause, where life transforms from black-and-white to colour.

  ‘I’m eczema?’

  Ben beams. ‘Eczema of the heart. That’s it. Psoriasis of the soul.’

  The whole world is one table by a window in a café-bar in Manchester and the person sitting opposite me. If joy could be seen by the Hubble, tonight scientists would record a peculiar iridescence on an island north of the equator.

  ‘In view of this, I wanted to ask you on a date. Are you free tonight?’

  ‘Uh,’ my mind’s so overloaded I can only make simpleton sounds, ‘yes.’

  ‘Great! God, you’re on your second man of the night while I’m out of practice at this. Do I have to pretend to love cats, old movies and getting caught in the rain? Wait, no – Rachel Fact, she doesn’t like it when people say they like “old films”. There’s good ones and bad ones. If someone said they liked ‘new films’ you’d think they were stupid.’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘First year of university.’

  ‘I can’t believe you remember that.’

  ‘When it comes to you, I’m blessed with total recall. So no need for this.’ Ben pretends to rub his neck and steal a glance below my neckline. I start gurgling with laughter. He taps the side of his head: ‘All up here. Don’t you worry.’

  He puts his hand over mine. This is real.

  ‘I should have so much to say, and I can’t think of anything to say,’ I burble.

  I see the waitress with the pencil in her hair giving us that nice couple smile again. If only you knew.

  ‘You can answer the unspoken question hanging over us about what we do next,’ Ben says.

  ‘Is there one?’

  ‘Yeah. Do you want to get some dinner?’

  As we leave the café, I ask: ‘Is it OK for us to be out together?’

  ‘How d’ya mean? Have you got an electronic tag?’

  ‘As a …’ I’m going to say couple and then I think it sounds a bit presumptuous after 175mls of lukewarm rioja ‘… as a – you know. The two of us.’

  He stops. ‘As a couple? We’ve waited a very long time for a first date. I don’t see how anything we do can be considered rushing. I hope from what we said in there that you’re … my girlfriend. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes!’ Girlfriend. Boyfriend. A couple! ‘If you honestly want a woman who is currently described on an internet dating site as “a proper lol”.’

  ‘It’s pathetic, I knew I did from that first moment we met. It was … not love at first sight exactly, but – familiarity. Like: oh, hello, it’s you. It’s going to be you. Game over.’

  I feel as if I’m going to burst. ‘I can’t believe I get to be with you at last.’

  He leans down and kisses me, one hand on the back of my head, fingers woven into my hair, our mouths warm and red wine blackcurrant-flavoured while the air around us is rinsed-clean cold. Like old times, it has a whole body effect on me but the reunion isn’t like a recovered memory. It feels brand new. I put my arms around him, underneath his unbuttoned coat, and hold him, reassuring myself he’s solid.

  We walk on, hand-in-hand. Passers-by don’t know this is an everyday miracle. I want to stop them and say something.

  ‘If anyone asks how we got together, it’ll be the most difficult tale to tell ever,’ I babble. ‘Most people can say “We met at the office Christmas party. We both liked spelunking and hip-hop. We have two kids.”’

  ‘Well, tell them we met at university.’

  ‘It doesn’t do it justice. You have to chart the whole thing. I might write it down in a diary, in case there’s ever any grandkids.’

  ‘The story would start in Freshers’ Week and come up to date and finish, when, tonight?’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘This has been the most important evening of all, really.’

  ‘What would the last line say?’

  ‘Oh dear. I don’t know. Something corny about the wait being worth it and “Then I went for Chinatown dim sum with him and to top it all off, he’s fairly competent with chopsticks”?’

  ‘Nah, unless that’s code it’s a total anti-climax. We’re English graduates, for God’s sake, we can do better. Think about the legacy, the weight of history. It’s got to inspire. How about: “And then he did it to her and she loved it”?’

  I glance sideways to catch the look on his face. I keep mine straight.

  ‘Yeah, that could work …’

  So that’s it. Rachel and Ben’s story has been told.

  But if you love what you’ve read, turn the page for some more brilliant writing from Mhairi. She’s a journalist too y’know, and if you’ve got any smarts at all you’ll follow her on Twitter @MhairiMcF or visit www.mhairimcfarlane.com.

  Mhairi’s next book will hit the shelves in December 2013.

  THE ULTIMATE CELEBRITY INTERVIEW!

  I am so sick of reading this interview. You read it all the time, constantly, year in, year out, in every glossy magazine and Sunday supplement. It’s founded on the twin principles that a) people who act are the most fascinating beings on the planet, and b) that we, the readers, are totally credulous, awed plebians. The dumbstruck interviewer acts only as a conduit to divinity, drinking in their shuddering magnificence and recording their sub-adolescent witterings as if it’s brainy gold. We’re now at the stage where an actor or actress would have to take a shit on the reporter’s notebook to get a less-than-howlingly-sycophantic write-up. (Or maybe not. HE’S WHERE IT’S SCAT!) I’m convinced by now there’s a template. It goes like this.

  Beauty, brains and Braun

  An actress bounds into the East London photographic studio, slightly out of breath, fizzing with the energy of Silvio Berlusconi on Horny Goat Weed at an 18-year-old’s swim party. ‘I just gave a homeless man outside a twenty pound note, and now I’m worrying he’d have rather had it in two tens,’ she says, huge eyes widening in a luminously fresh face, as she puts down her vintage handbag and leather-bound copy of Anna Karenina (‘I’m obsessed with Tolstoy; it’s a weakness, I need to widen my contemporary reading’) in a flurry of activity that lights up the room and makes all heads turn. ‘Oh, no. I hope he’s OK,’ she says, fretting extravagantly over this act of incredibly charming philanthropic spontaneity I’m choosing to include here for colour but that she obviously had no idea could end up in the article.

  The issue of the Handily Timed Tramp is resolved when a menial is despatched to offer him change and to pick up her favourite snack, Minstrels. An actress who eats?! I ask, incredulous, as she unselfconsciously shovels in great handfuls while having her hair and make-up done. ‘Oh, I eat like a pig, I love cooking for my boyfriend,’ she says, adjusting her navy wool crepe Jil Sander dress over her tiny size six frame, which she maintains by consuming shitloads of food and walking to appointments. �
��I’m really boring; I don’t like all those red carpet events. I love staying in and putting on pyjamas and making a massive casserole for my friends. I’m such a down-to-earth, homely, generous goof! This is so embarrassing to admit.’

  So, I say, once she’s finished showing pictures of her dogs on her phone to everyone because she’s completely unstarry and prepared to talk about herself to unimportant people, was it a difficult decision to choose to play Eva Braun, as she’s a controversial figure? She suddenly looks serious. ‘Obviously people have their views on what she did but really I just approached her as a character, as a story. You know, before anything else she was just a woman, in love with a man, trying to make a life for herself in Nazi Germany.’ Did she do much research? ‘I avoided reading anything about her because I didn’t want my performance to be affected by other peoples’ opinions. You know, I wanted to get to the emotional truth. That’s your job, as an actor.’

  While I’m being admitted to her intellectual salon and everything I thought I knew is being turned on its head, I have to ask, because the answer will help all of us, would she consider herself a feminist? ‘Uhm,’ she says, with the pause of someone who chooses their words very carefully, her perfect brow creasing. ‘I’m not … part of a cause or a movement or anything. I’m just a person. So I’d say I’m definitely female. But I’m not a “feminist” as such because I’m too independent-minded to be part of something. You know?’

  She finishes all her ideas with ‘you know?’ The phrase contains a note of yearning, to find and make connections, and it strikes me that she’s desperate to be understood, but she has learned to wear the struggle lightly. Yet she effortlessly metamorphoses from Thinker to Model once she’s dressed in a retro ironic bikini and ironic heels for the ’50s-themed photoshoot that sends up the notion of a ‘pin-up’, pulling faces where she pretends to double take at the sight of her own tits while talking on a Bakelite telephone. Yet even in vintage costume she’s absolutely modern, in control of her image, of how she wants to be seen – when she vetoes some iced bun props on the basis that ‘It’s a bit slutty Calendar Girls’ everyone on set who doesn’t want to be fired instantly agrees that she is right.