You Had Me at Hello Page 6

  I walk to my stop in a semi-trance-like state, cartoon stars circling round my head, the two recently kissed places on my face burning. There’s the illicit rush at seeing him – and he asked to see me again! – combined with the spirit-flattening confirmation that his life’s shiny and joyful and functional and mine isn’t.

  An hour after I get home, when the fixed grin has faded and I’m watching the old telly in the spare room, I let tears fall. Once the dam has cracked, there’s a deluge. Married. Happily. Olivia. What’s even in a posh shepherd’s pie?

  I feel as if I’ve woken up after a coma, been jolted back to life by a favourite song. I’m not sure I like the view from my bed. The experience of meeting Ben again is the very definition of the word bittersweet.

  Then two very clear questions form in the tears, snot and inner maelstrom: how am I going to feel if he doesn’t call? And what good’s going to come of it if he does?

  11

  I don’t ask Rhys to borrow the car so I can move my things because I know he’ll want to use the car to be nowhere near the house on the day I leave.

  The evening before last, I was coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around my body and another around my head. I was moving quickly because any extra amount of skin on show feels inappropriate, post-separation. Rhys charged up the stairs. I thought he was going to dodge past, or argue about the cavalier use of the hot water, but he stopped in front of me, looked me in the eye. His eyes were unexpectedly moist.

  ‘Stay,’ he said, thickly.

  I thought I’d misheard. It sunk in.

  ‘I can’t,’ I blurt.

  He nodded, not even angry, or resentful. He galloped back down the stairs and left me standing on the landing, shivering. Turns out the consequences of a huge decision don’t all tumble down at once like opening an over-full cupboard; they keep hitting you in waves.

  When I tell Caroline I’m going to hire a removal van, she asks what I’m taking with me and decides it can be done in a few runs in her car. She turns up early on a Saturday to find me, lightly sweaty, standing in a hallway crammed with everything I own that’s portable. It feels strangely like leaving for university, only with bleak despair where all the bright hope used to be.

  Rhys went for Mindy’s plan about the furniture. I saw the thought scroll across his face – ‘Screw making life easier for her’ – then imagining those flat-bed-truck-style trolleys in IKEA, and he grunted his agreement. So it’s clothes, books, DVDs, a surprisingly huge haul of bathroom toiletries, and then ‘odds and sods’, a category which sounds like it should be the smallest but turns out to be the largest. Photo albums, plants, accessories, pictures … I’ve been scrupulously fair whenever encountering something the house only has one of – hot water bottle, mop bucket, cafetiere, engagement ring – and left it for Rhys.

  Caroline casts an appraising eye over the junk and decides it’s two journeys, three at a pinch. We start heaping it into the back of her Audi saloon and, with the back seats folded down and some determined pushing, we make decent in-roads.

  ‘Definitely two journeys,’ Caroline concludes, as I lock the front door, saying what I’m thinking, minus the part about how much I’m dreading coming back for the next and last time.

  We set off, me blithely chattering about the flat to distract from the inner turmoil, Caroline casting worried glances at me whenever she can take her line of sight off the road.

  ‘We don’t have to go, you know. If you’ve changed your mind …’ she starts, and I bite my lip hard and furiously shake my head to indicate please, not now.

  Caroline pats my knee and asks about the route. When we arrive at the flat, I’m grateful for all the tasks – paying the car-parking meter, unlocking the flat, running relays with armfuls of clutter – to occupy me. Eventually it’s all piled up and time to collect the rest. I deep breathe and blow the air out as if I’m an athlete limbering up for a feat of exertion.

  Back at my house, or what used to be my house, the rest of the packing is completed in minutes.

  I can’t go yet. I can’t. I sit down on the front door step and try to gather myself, instead I feel myself unravelling. A bit of a sniffle turns into whole-body sobbing and I feel Caroline’s hand on my shaking shoulder.

  When I pull my messy face back up from my knees I say, through all the liquid that’s leaving my body via my eyes, mouth and nose, ‘I don’t have anything to sleep in.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Caroline asks, crouching down in front of me. ‘Rupa’s got a bed, hasn’t she?’

  ‘No,’ I gesture downwards. ‘To sleep in. I always wore one of Rhys’s t-shirts. A Velvet Underground one. I’ve left it behind.’ I wipe my eyes. ‘Is it mine? Or is it his? I don’t even know.’

  I recommence sobbing while Caroline rubs my back.

  ‘You’ve been together such a long time and this has all happened so quickly. You’ve got to expect it to hurt, Rach.’

  There’s something about Caroline’s kindly no-nonsense that really sorts you out when you’re in a spiral. She’s sympathetic without being indulgent. The difference between seeing the school nurse instead of your mum when you’ve grazed your knee.

  ‘I’m going to miss him,’ I say.

  ‘I know you are.’ She rubs harder, as if I might be able to cough the hurt up and get it out that way.

  ‘I can’t tell him that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m leaving him!’ I bawl, and break down again.

  She moves in beside me on the step, I shift across, both of us ignoring the kids kicking a ball across the street who are looking at us curiously.

  ‘Look,’ she lowers her voice slightly, ‘I don’t want to sound too much like a therapist but I think you’re bound to feel guilty, and you’re going to feel sad. You have to simply feel it. Don’t hate yourself. It is what it is. God, that sounds so trite …’

  ‘No it doesn’t. It actually makes sense.’

  ‘Really? Well, good.’

  We sit in silence for half a minute.

  ‘We don’t have to do all this now if you want to stay another night,’ she adds.

  This surprises me. Caroline is usually of the ‘have at it’ school. I have a feeling she’d like to see a rethink, and a reunion.

  ‘No, no, I’m OK,’ I insist. ‘I want to get it done now.’

  Or maybe it’s some damn smart reverse psychology.

  Caroline stands up, brushes her knees off and holds out her hand to help me up.

  ‘I’ll get Mindy to choose some pyjamas for you. You know how she loves a shopping project.’

  I smile, weakly, take her hand and haul myself to my feet.

  ‘Sure you want to leave so much behind?’ Caroline says, as she checks she’s squeezed the boot shut fully. ‘I know Mindy thinks it’s a good idea, but Mindy thought her last three boyfriends were good ideas.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll have the money to buy it all again. I’m not leaving that much.’

  I look up at the house and it stares down at me blankly, in agreement. I think about the envelope I left next to the telephone, containing the ring I’m no longer wearing.

  Caroline says nothing more, pats me on the shoulder and gets into the driver’s seat. I take a deep rattling breath and walk round to the passenger side.

  This is it. I’m leaving. And there was nothing to mark it. Not so much as a significant look passed between Rhys and I. Maybe this is how it always is. It feels like something more formal should be required: an official handshake, a splitting up ceremony, a certificate. As Rhys said, is this all it’s worth, after thirteen years?

  12

  Caroline eventually breaks the waterlogged silence in the front of the Audi.

  ‘I was wrong about buying straight away. Maybe Mindy is right and this … interlude is exactly what you need.’

  ‘Thanks. I thought you were saying Mindy’s judgement is dubious?’

  ‘Not always.’

  I know they’ll have disc
ussed me, worried about me, and there’s a question that I can’t put off asking any longer.

  ‘Do you all think I’m making a massive mistake?’

  There’s a tense pause.

  ‘There isn’t an “all”…’

  ‘Oh, God.’ I put a hand over my face. ‘Three different types of disapproval.’

  ‘It’s not disapproval, you’re thirty-one. It’s not for us or anyone else to say what’s right for you. I suppose I was surprised you didn’t mention any problems before, that’s all.’

  ‘I didn’t want to talk behind Rhys’s back. I wasn’t sure how I felt, truth be told. I was being carried along by the wedding planning and then he was being a shit about it and it came tumbling out and there it was.’

  ‘It wasn’t worth giving him a shape-up-or-ship-out? You never put your foot down enough, in my opinion, and it might’ve led to … laziness.’

  ‘I did try suggesting a counsellor or whatever. He wasn’t interested.’

  ‘I doubt he wanted to lose you. He’s stubborn …’

  ‘You can’t ask someone not to be who they are. That’s where we were.’

  ‘Couldn’t you … if you’d …’

  ‘Caro, please. I can’t do this now. I will do soon, over wine, for hours. We can thrash the whole thing out until you’re sick of hearing about it. But not now.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine. Let’s talk about something else.’

  Hmm. Not sure when this ‘soon’ will arrive. I possibly want to wait until 2064 when she can put a data stick in her ear and download the information straight into her frontal cortex.

  Then on reckless impulse I add: ‘Oh, I saw Ben.’

  ‘Ben? Ben from uni? Where? I thought you weren’t going to look him up? How was he?’

  I’m grateful that Caroline can only fix her eyes on me momentarily before she has to return them to the road.

  ‘Uh, the library. I decided I wanted to learn Italian as part of the New Me, and there he was. We had a coffee. Seems well. Married.’

  Caroline snorts. ‘Hah! Well he was bound to be. Anyone as attractive and house-trainable as that gets snapped up mid-twenties, latest.’

  ‘Anyone decent’s married by now?’

  Caroline realises what she’s said and grimaces. ‘No! I mean, men like him are. There are more good women than men, so supply and demand dictates his sort are long gone off the market.’

  ‘Doesn’t bode well for my prospects in finding someone then.’

  Caroline is crunching the gears, and looks like an Egyptian terracotta head I once saw in the British Museum. ‘I didn’t mean … oh, you know …’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, ‘I agree with you. Ben was always going to be married, and maybe choices post-thirty aren’t great. The divorces are going to start soon, I’ll pick someone up on their second lap.’

  Caroline gives me a laugh that’s more grateful than amused. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  ‘Mindy and Ivor are still single, and they’re normal and nice. Well, fairly normal.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  I’m not feeling half as casual as I’m trying to sound, for both our sakes. Starting again. From the beginning. With someone who doesn’t know the million important and incidental things about me, who isn’t fluent in the long-term couple language that I’ve taken for granted for so long with Rhys. How will anyone ever know as much about me again, and vice versa? Will I find anyone who wants to learn it? I imagine a York Notes revision style aid on Rachel Woodford. Or a Wikipedia page, lots of claims from Rhys followed by [citation needed].

  And is this a brutal truth, everyone good has gone? As if soul mates are one big early-bird-gets-the-worm January sale. Buy the wrong thing, have to return it, and you’re left with the stuff no one else wanted. This is the kind of thinking I’d scoff at from my mum, yet I was always scoffing from the security of a relationship. I feel a lot less sure of my ‘Don’t be so Stepford’ stance now I’ve got to test the truth of the hypothesis.

  A few circuits of the apartment building to find a parking space demonstrates why it’s as well Rhys has kept our car.

  ‘I’ll stay here so I don’t get a clamping,’ Caroline says. ‘If I see a warden I’ll go round the block, so don’t panic I’ve legged it with your towels.’

  I discover how unfit I am as I run from car to flat door, and Caroline manages not to get ticketed the whole time.

  When I take the last of it, she says: ‘So I’d stay but I’d have thought you want to show your mum round, now she’s here?’

  ‘Uh? My mum’s not here.’

  ‘She’s there.’

  Caroline gestures over my shoulder. My mum is counting out coins from her big snap-clasp purse into the upturned hat of a man with a dog on a string, her black Windsmoor shawl coat billowing like Professor Snape’s cape. She’s always immaculately turned out and a ringer for Anne Bancroft, circa The Graduate. I think she wonders how she gave birth to someone inches shorter, and many degrees swearier and scabbier in her habits, though she might want to look to my dad for at least part of the answer.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell …’

  Caroline smiles and climbs back into the car, waving farewell to my mum.

  ‘Hello darling! Was that Caroline? Delightful girl. Still has the metabolism of a greyhound, I see. Some have all the luck, eh?’

  ‘Hi Mum. Uhm. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m off to Samantha’s make-up rehearsal thingy at John Lewis, with Barbara. You can come if you like?’

  ‘Come to the wedding make-over of a family friend I haven’t seen for fifteen years, while thinking about how I’m not getting married and making it completely awkward for them?’

  ‘Oh, nonsense. They’d love to see you.’

  ‘I’d have been useless enough company when I was getting married. And I seem to remember Sam’s a “squee!” type girl.’

  ‘“Squee” girl?’

  ‘Squee wee! Fun-a-roonie dot com! Let’s go get scrummy cupcakes and have proper giggles.’

  My mum leans in to give me a kiss on the cheek. ‘Come on, no one likes a bitter lemon. Show me your new digs.’

  We take the stairs instead of the lift, me walking with the heavy tread of someone on their way to the electric chair, not the kind of lifestyle flat that has a pink fridge. I pull the key out of my pocket and let us in. It smells strange in here, as in, not like home. I stare balefully at the mini-mountain of my crap that’s blotting the manicured landscape.

  ‘Goodness me, very gaudy, isn’t it. Like the 1960s have been sick.’

  ‘Thanks Mum! I like it actually.’

  ‘Hmm, well as long as you do, that’s the main thing. I can see that it’s different.’

  Different is usually an innocuous word, but it’s one of my mum’s most damning verdicts.

  She unhooks her handbag from her shoulder and sits down next to me. I know exactly what’s coming. She clears her throat. Here it comes …

  ‘Now. You and Rhys. I understand you’re going through a crisis—’

  ‘Mum! I’m not going through it, like a squall of bad weather on the road to still getting married. We’ve broken up.’

  ‘If you’d allow me to speak, as someone who’s been married forty years …’

  I pick sullenly at a seam on the sofa.

  ‘… Marriage is difficult. You do get on each other’s nerves. It’s relentless. It’s very, very tough and quite honestly, even in the good times, you do wish they’d go boil their head, most days.’

  ‘I’m not too bothered about missing out on it then!’

  ‘What I’m saying is, what you’re feeling – it’s perfectly normal.’

  ‘If relationships are only ever what we had, I’d rather be on my own.’

  Pause.

  ‘You could be throwing away your only chance to have children, have you thought of that?’

  My mum: not a loss to the world of motivational speaking.

  ‘Amazingly enough I
had factored it in, but, thanks …’

  ‘I simply want you to be very sure you’re making the right decision, that’s all. You and Rhys have been together an awfully long time.’

  ‘That’s why I’m sure.’ Pause. ‘It’d mean a lot to me if you took me seriously and accepted I know my own mind about who I do and don’t want to marry, Mum. This is hard enough as it is.’

  ‘Well. If you’re absolutely sure.’

  ‘I am.’ And of course as I say it, I realise I’m not absolutely sure. I’m as sure as I assume you need to be, given I’ve never broken off an engagement before and have nothing to compare this to.

  My mum stands up.

  ‘Your dad and I will be round soon. Let us know if we need to bring any odds and sods you’re short of.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’ Suddenly my throat has furred up and I give her a tight squeeze, inhaling her familiar scent of YSL Rive Gauche in place of Rupa’s flat’s olfactory newness.

  With my mum’s departure, relief though it is, I feel almost as bereft as I did when waving my parents off from the halls of residence car park. I need a massive cup of tea, one that requires two handles on the mug in order to lift it. With a tot of Maker’s Mark in it.

  I stare out of the huge window and suddenly the vastness doesn’t seem glamorous, but precarious. I imagine how tiny I’d look from the other side of the glass. A little scared sad insignificant figure peering down over the Manchester rooftops.

  For a lurching moment, I’m so homesick I almost shout out loud: I want to go home. But home and Rhys are indivisible.

  13

  In late afternoon, when I’ve filled dead air with impersonal radio, a weird additional sound echoes round the room and I realise it’s the doorbell. I unlatch the chain and swing the door open to see an explosion of pink and white flowers and a pair of legging-clad legs beneath them.

  ‘Happy Moving-In Day!’ Mindy shouts.

  ‘Hello, wow, lilies. That talk. That’s lovely of you.’