You Had Me At Hello Part 23

Because the idea of you having erased me, clicked and dragged me to the mental trash can icon like a deleted file, is the stuff of anxiety nightmares, right up there with the one where I'm scuttling the streets at dawn, naked, hiding behind milk floats.

'It was offering an albino girl my seat on the tram. I only saw her from behind, I thought she was 72, not 22.' Ben bites his lip at the memory, Simon laughs, I wince.

'Lack of pigmentation can be heavy on the legs,' Simon says.

'Hey, you meant well,' I say.

'Yeah. Simon.' Ben pushes a hand in a pocket as he drinks.

It strikes me that Ben and Simon are competing. What for? My attention? Surely not. Not Ben, anyway. He's married. Am I flirting by having a laugh with them? I imagine Olivia on the way home, saying acidly: 'She certainly puts the "ho" in hospitality.'

'More drinks?' Simon asks, and departs to the kitchen.

I rebalance myself on my chafing heels and clear my throat to make some explanation about the Simon date.

'Oh my G.o.d, blast from the past. Teenage Fanclub?' Ben asks, tuning into the music amid the chatter. 'You would've laughed at mine and Liv's first dance.'

Probably not laughed, I think.

'Why do you say that?'

'In the first big compromise of married life, I let her have what she wanted.'

He mouths 'Coldplay' to me and grimaces.

'Oh, well. I was wedding planning myself not so long ago. Glad you resolved the DJ/live band divide. It was the Gaza Strip for me and Rhys.'

I discover a yearning, of some considerable proportions, to tell Ben what happened. Talk about my real life not the sort of things you discuss as bulls.h.i.+t icebreakers with a real friend.

'The thought of getting married brought everything to a head for us,' I say, and Ben nods. 'The way they call it the happiest day of your life well, it cuts both ways. If you're not happy, it's hard not to notice.'

'Was it a sudden thing? Or had you been unhappy for a while?'

'Hmm. Well. We muddled through our twenties. We had the pressure valves of his band and my friends. But your thirties it's decision time, the wedding, kids. I realised we weren't happy enough to make the next stage work. Does that make sense?'

'Some,' Ben nods again. 'You seem to be coping really well.'

'On and off,' I say.

He gives me a sad, sweet smile, and looks at the floor.

'Which Coldplay song was it?' I ask, trying to lighten the mood. 'Oh no, hang on, let me guess. Does it go, "Dum dum dum da dum dum ... Sorry, all our operators are busy at the moment. Please keep holding, your call is important to us."'

Ben's eyes crinkle up appealingly as he laughs. 'You've not changed! So a.r.s.ey ...'

'You egged me on, you have to admit.'

'Egged Rachel on how?' Olivia says, as she and Simon join us.

'She was cruelly mocking our bedwetter indie choice of music for the first dance,' Ben says.

'No! You said-' I can't repeat the fact that Ben was mocking it first, that's even more incendiary. I know this insult is going to be taken in entirely different spirit by Olivia. Thanks Ben. 'I like some Coldplay ...' I finish, lamely.

'Yeah, right!' Ben says, making it worse.

'What would you have as your first dance?' Olivia asks me, sharply.

Ben glares at her, presumably to communicate that you don't ask someone who recently broken off an engagement what their first dance would have been.

'Rhys said he wanted "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" by the Pet Shop Boys. So I dodged a bullet there.'

'But what would you choose?' Olivia persists.

'Liv ...' Ben's dismayed, failing to understand why she's being so insensitive, whereas Olivia and I understand each other perfectly.

'The way things are going, it'll probably have to be Etta James, "At Last". And some sort of young volunteer helping me and my bridegroom get out of our seats.' No laugh. 'We'd chosen "May You Never" by John Martyn for our first dance,' I concede.

Ben nods, impressed: 'Lovely choice.'

'Never heard of it,' Olivia snaps.

Ah well, it must be rubbish then.

'Slightly, just slightly too fast tempo?' Ben says. 'I'd go for "Couldn't Love You More", of his.'

I nod back. Not much to say to that, other than for my pupils to dilate and to continue drinking until my liver resembles a twenty-ounce, pepper-rubbed sirloin.

'Why didn't you ask for it then?' Olivia says to him, waspishly.

'I wanted you to have what you wanted,' Ben says.

'I think you should have something you love as your first dance, not something cool,' Olivia says in my direction, pointedly, not ready to forgive me.

'No one could accuse you of choosing Coldplay to be cool,' Ben laughs. He's going to be in so much trouble when they get in, and he doesn't even know it. Olivia folds her arms and doesn't take her eyes off me. I stare at the ice in my drink.

'Now, I know this,' Simon says, c.o.c.king an ear to the party soundtrack. '"Unfinished Symphony".'

'"Unfinished Sympathy",' I correct him.

'That's what I said.'

38.

'Which side do you normally sleep?' Caroline asks, once we've put a severely impaired Ivor to bed on the sofa. When taxi time arrived, he was slumped in some sort of c.o.c.ktail coma and we took a call that it was best to accommodate him. We tucked him up with a towel underneath him, a was.h.i.+ng-up bowl at his side and numerous tea towels round his head. He had a deathly pallor and his hands crossed on his chest, like an Egyptian funeral for a pharaoh who owned s.h.i.+t things.

'There isn't a normally yet. I haven't been here long enough.' What I really mean is, there isn't a side to choose now the bulwark of Rhys's bulk is absent.

'You in the middle, then,' she says, flicking a corner of the duvet back. 'I'll go here, Mindy the other side.'

Mindy comes back from brus.h.i.+ng her teeth, clad in beautiful scarlet Chinese pyjamas. Next to Caroline's black strappy lace-edged floral slip, I'm rather glad I left the toothpaste-stained Velvets t-s.h.i.+rt behind.

'Ivor woke up,' Mindy announces. 'He made a noise like: BWORK. BWORK. BWOOORK. Then he ran off to the loo.'

'Anything on the soft furnis.h.i.+ngs?'

'No, I totally got behind him and pushed him faster than the speed of sick.'

'Good, good.'

We arrange ourselves, then click the bedside lights off.

'How did Rupa get a mattress this big up those stairs?' I ask.

'She had it winched in one of the windows, I think,' Mindy says.

I feel my muscles relax against the springs.

'What's the deal with you and Ben then?' Caroline says.

All the tension returns. And then some.

'What do you mean?' I try to convey total amazement to Caroline while horizontal and invisible to her, sure she must be able to feel the heat of the guilty sweat I've broken out into.

'Weeelllll ...' Caroline says. 'It's a weird one.'

'What is?' I am ramrod straight, like an exclamation mark between their brackets. I will Deny Everything. Forever.

'When that light bulb went and you were standing on that chair changing it with Simon holding on to your legs, I saw Ben give you two a real look.'

'That's because we were driving a coach and horses through health and safety regs.'

Silence. Feeble jokes are not going to work here.

'It was very intense, very serious. And when Simon helped you down and managed to grope your a.r.s.e in the process, I swear Ben almost winced.'

'He's not Simon's biggest fan. I don't think he thinks it's a good idea we're going on a date,' I add, hoping I've done enough to close the subject.

'Yeah. This is the thing. If I didn't know better, I'd have said it was simply plain old violent male jealousy,' Caroline says. 'Why doesn't he want you to date Simon, exactly?'

'Lucky you do know better,' I say. 'Given Ben's very happily married.'

'If he's happily married, he can't have a thing for you?'

'No.'

'OK. Number one, there is no such thing as a happy marriage-'

'Oh, Caroline!' Mindy wails. 'Enough!'

'I haven't finished.'

'I know you haven't, because I still have a shred of hope left,' Mindy says.

'-There is no such thing as a happy marriage if you mean an invulnerable one. Every relations.h.i.+p has its weaknesses and bad patches.'

'You don't have to be married to know that,' I say.

'I know, I know,' Caroline says, trying to soothe me. 'I'm not running down what you had with Rhys. But he hung around with other blokes in his band all the time. You never had to worry about female friends.'

'I still don't see what you're getting at.'

'That if I'm right and Ben's got a soft spot for you, you need to be wary. You don't want to cause trouble by unintentionally encouraging it. Weren't you quite close at uni? Did you ever suspect anything then?'

'No! And Ben would never have an affair.' At last I'm able to say something with perfect certainty.

'How do you know?'

'I know. Honestly, I know it like I know my own name. There's no way Ben would ever do that. He's totally honourable. I wouldn't sleep with a married man either. I hope you don't think I would do that.'

'Nooooo,' Caroline says, with no idea what agonies this conversation is causing me. 'But I think you might find yourself in the middle of something before you know you've started. You two were lit up like Christmas trees when you were talking to each other. No one has a crafty f.a.g behind the bike sheds expecting to get lung cancer.'

'I'm not smiling at Olivia, inviting her to parties and moving in on her husband!'

'I'm not saying you're moving in on him,' Caroline says.

'Look,' I continue, with a dry mouth that isn't all down to booze dehydration, 'Ben and Olivia are married, Ben's not interested in me in that way, I'm not out to get him and I'm going on a date with Simon. And that's that.'

'I'm not so sure everything's great with Ben and Olivia. I get the impression it's been a strain moving up here. She's miles away from all her family and friends and I think she misses her old job,' Caroline says.

Pause.

'If you want my advice, Rach, the time you need to worry is if he ever says things at home are complicated,' Mindy says. 'It's never complicated. "It's complicated" only ever means, "Well yeah there's someone else but I want to do you too."'

'What they actually mean is: it's not as complicated as I'd like it to be,' Caroline says, laughing.

I'm not laughing.

'Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to wind you up,' Caroline says. 'Most likely if Ben's feeling anything it's nostalgia for being twenty-one. I mean, if you'd been right for each other, it would have happened then.'

'True,' I squeak, grateful for the cover of darkness.