You Had Me At Hello. Mhairi McFarlane
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at a bottle labelled POISON. For now, it’s going to taste like milky coffee.
As Ben returns and sets my cup down, he says: ‘No sugar, right?’
I nod, delighted he retains such trivia. Then I spot a new and non-trivial detail about him – a simple silver band on the third finger of his left hand. It was absolutely bound to be the case, I told myself that many times, and yet I still feel as if I’ve been slapped.
‘You know, Italians only have cappuccinos in the morning. It’s a breakfast drink,’ I blurt, for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
‘Something you learned on your course?’ Ben asks, pleasantly.
‘Er. Yes.’ Here’s the point where fortune farts in my face and Ben’s wife turns out to be half-Italian. He rattles out some lyrical phrases, and I have to pretend I’m only on my first few lessons. Ben’s wife.
‘Have you been in a cryogenic chamber since uni?’ Ben continues. ‘You look exactly the bloody same. It’s a little freaky.’
I’m relieved I don’t look raddled, and try not to blush disproportionately at an implied compliment. ‘No ageing sunlight penetrates courtrooms.’
‘Same apart from your hair, of course,’ he adds, gesturing the shorter length with a chopping motion of his hand at his neck. It was longer, at university, then I got a more businesslike on-shoulders ’do after a few occasions in court when I was mistaken for the girlfriend of a defendant.
I tuck a strand behind my ear, self-consciously: ‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Suits you,’ he says, lightly.
‘Thank you. You look well, too.’ I take a sharp breath. ‘So, tell me all about your life. Married, two point four kids, belter of a pension plan?’
‘Married, yes,’ Ben says.
‘Fantastic!’ I make sure every last syllable sounds robustly delighted. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you. Olivia and I celebrated our two-year anniversary last month.’
The name gives me a twinge. All the Sloaney-I’ve-got-a-pony girls on our course were called things like Olivia and Tabitha and Veronica and we used to take arms against them in our non-posh gang of two. And he traitorously married one of them. I momentarily wish I had a Toby to wield in retaliation.
‘Well done,’ I waffle on. ‘Did you have the big white production?’
‘Urgh, no,’ Ben shudders. ‘Registry office at Marylebone. We hired an old Routemaster and had posh shepherd’s pie wedding breakfast in a room above a pub. A nice one, I mean, Liv chose it. All idyllic with kids running round in the garden afterwards, we had great weather.’
I nod and he suddenly looks self-conscious.
‘Bit cliché, trendified Chas’n’Dave, Beefeater London, I guess, but we liked it.’
‘Sounds great.’ It does sound great. And cool, and romantic. I don’t care what the bride wore or want to see the album though. All right, I do.
‘Yeah, it was. No faceless hotel, DJ with a fake American accent, three million relatives glumly picking at a duff carvery that cost three million quid, none of that rubbish.’
‘That’s only a quid per head budget. Quite tight really.’
Ben smiles, distractedly, and I see the wheels turning, him remembering things that have nothing to do with this weak joke, things he’s not going to mention.
For a split second, sensing his discomfort, I marvel at my own masochism. Did I really want to sit here listening to how he promised all his remaining days to someone else? Couldn’t I have taken that as a given? Did I want to discover a broken man? No. I wanted him to be happy and it was also going to be the thing that hurt the most. That’s the reason this was such a bad idea. One of the reasons.
We sip our coffees. I discreetly wipe my mouth in case of chocolate powder moustache.
He continues: ‘Kids, not yet. Pension, yes, really cuts into my having-fun fund.’
‘Still able to spend harder than Valley girls?’
I remember days trailing round clothes shops with Ben, waiting outside changing rooms, enjoying the gender reversal. He even took my advice on what to buy – it was like having my old Ken doll become self-aware. (‘Not that self-aware if he’s behaving like a southern poof,’ Rhys said.)
‘Oh yes,’ Ben says. ‘I have to hide the bags from Liv as principal earner. It’s emasculating. What about you? Married?’ He picks up his spoon and stirs his coffee, although he didn’t add any sugar, and drops his gaze momentarily. ‘To Rhys?’
If we were hooked up to polygraphs, the line would’ve got squigglier.
‘Engaged for a while. We’ve just split up actually.’
Ben looks genuinely appalled. Great, we skipped schadenfreude and went straight to abject pity. ‘God, sorry.’
‘Thanks. It’s OK.’
‘You should’ve stopped me going on about weddings.’
‘I asked. It’s fine.’
‘Is that why you’re moving?’
‘Yeah,’ I nod.
‘No kids?’
‘No.’
‘That’s funny, I was sure you would have, for some reason,’ Ben says, unguardedly. ‘A little girl with her mother’s attitude problems, and the same stupid mittens.’
He gives me a small smile and looks into his cup again. The warmth of this – the reference to something obscure that only we’d understand, the fact it reveals he’s thought about me – prompts me to emit a small, strangled noise that approximates a giggle. Then, in a moment, it drenches me with sadness. Like my chest cavity is full of rainwater.
We avoid each other’s eyes and move on. Ben tells me about the law firm he’s joined, how his wife’s also a solicitor. She got transferred from her London practice to their Manchester office so she could be up here with him. They met at a Law Society dinner. The crowded room, black tie. The scene plays in my head like a trailer for a Richard Curtis film I most definitely don’t want to see.
He concludes, jokily: ‘If I’m a solicitor and you’re a court reporter, perhaps we shouldn’t be speaking?’
‘Depends. What department are you in?’
‘Family.’
‘Divorce settlements, that kind of thing?’
‘Yeah, access arrangements. Sometimes grim. Other times, if you can get the right outcome, grim satisfaction.’
I understand why he’d want to work in that area, and he knows I know, so I nod. ‘I think there’d be more of a conflict in talking to a reporter if you were in criminal.’
‘Couldn’t take the hours. The friend who got me the job up here is in criminal. He’s on call all the time, it’s punishing. Actually, he was saying he wants to talk to the press about a case. Shall I give him your name?’
‘Of course,’ I say, eager to please and forge a connection.
We get to the end of one coffee and, despite my offer to buy the second, Ben checks his watch and says he’d love to but he probably ought to be going.
‘Yeah, me too, now you mention it,’ I lie, twisting my watch round and glancing at it without looking at the time.
Ben waits solicitously as I pull my coat on. I hope he’s not noticing the stone I’ve gained since university. (‘Stone,’ Rhys used to snort. ‘A stone weighing thirty pounds? Did I miss the latest barmy Brussels directive?’)
We walk outside together.