You Had Me At Hello Part 3

'Woodford ... W ...' He started riffling through boxes of cards. 'Gotcha.'

He produced a rectangle of cardboard with the name of our halls and a pa.s.sport photo affixed to it. I'd forgotten I'd sent a handful from a not very flattering session in a shopping centre photo booth. Really bad day, Meadowhall, pre-menstrual. Face like I'd woken up at my own autopsy. Might've known they'd come back to haunt me.

'Don't laugh at the picture,' I said, hastily, and potentially counter-productively.

Ben peered at it. 'I've seen worse today.'

He clamped my card in the machine, took the plasticated version out and inspected it again.

'I know it's grim,' I said, holding out my hand. 'I look like I'm trying to pa.s.s a dragon fruit.'

'I don't know what a dragon fruit is. I mean, other than a fruit, I'm guessing.'

'It's spiky.'

'Ah OK. Yeah. I 'spose that'd sting a bit.'

Well. That had gone beautifully. Seduction 101: make the attractive boy imagine you straining on the toilet.

This was straight from my greatest hits back catalogue, by the way. Quintessential Rachel, The Cream of Rachel, Simply Rachel. When put on the spot, the linguistic function of my brain offers the same potluck as a one-armed bandit. Crank the handle and ratchet the tension, it rings up any old combination of words.

Ben gave me a smile that turned into laughter. I grinned back.

He kept the card out of my reach.

'You're on English?'

'Yes.'

'Me too. I haven't got a clue where I'm meant to be for registration tomorrow. Have you?'

We made an arrangement for him to stop by my room the next morning so we could navigate the arts block together. He found a pen. I scribbled my room number down for him on the nearest thing to hand, a spongy beer mat. I wished I hadn't spent last night painting every one of my fingernails a different colour, which looked pretty silly in the light of day. I printed 'Rachel' in un-joined up letters neatly below, as if I was writing out a label for my coat peg at primary school.

'About the picture,' he said, as he took it. 'You look fine, but you might want to jack the seat up next time. It's a bit Ronnie Corbett.'

I slid it out again to check. There was an acre of white s.p.a.ce above my dishevelled head.

I blushed, started laughing.

'Spin it,' Ben mouthed, rotating an imaginary photo booth stool.

I went redder, laughed harder.

'I'm Ben. See you tomorrow.'

In the style of a policeman in traffic, Ben waved me away with one hand and the next person forward with his other, mock imperiously.

As I dodged round the rest of the queue, I wondered if the well-spoken girl in the room next door to me was too upper middle cla.s.s to go for a restorative greasy spoon breakfast. On impulse as I left, I glanced back towards Ben, and he was watching me go.

4.

In some workplaces, everyone has cl.u.s.ters of framed family portraits on their desk, a tumbler of those novelty gonk pens with tufts of fluff at the end and a mug with their name on. From time to time they cry in the loos and confide in each other and any personal news is round the office in the morning before the kettle's gone on for a second time. Words like 'fibroids' or 'Tramadol' or 'caught him trying on one of my dresses' are pa.s.sed about in the spirit of full disclosure.

Mine isn't one of those workplaces. Manchester Crown Court is full of people moving briskly and efficiently about the place, swis.h.i.+ng robes and trading critical information in low voices. The mood is decidedly masculine it doesn't encourage confidences that are nothing to do with the business in hand. Therefore I've masked physical evidence of my emotional turmoil with an extra layer of make-up, and am squaring my shoulders and heading into battle, congratulating myself on my varnish-thin sheen of competent poise.

I'm getting myself one of the Crown Court vending machine's famous dung-flavoured instant coffees, served in a plastic cup so thin the liquid burns your fingertips, when I hear: 'Big weekend was it, Woodford? You look cream crackered!'

Ahhhh, Gretton. Might've known he'd burst my bubble.

Pete Gretton is a freelancer, a 'stringer' for the agencies as they're known, with no loyalties. He scours the lists looking for the most unpleasant or ridiculous cases and sells the lowest common denominator to the highest bidder, often following me around and ruining any hope of an exclusive. Misdeed and misery are his bread and b.u.t.ter. To be fair, that's true of every salaried person in the building, but most of us have the decency not to revel in it. Gretton, however, has never met a grisly multiple homicide he didn't like.

I turn and give him an appropriately weary look.

'Good morning to you too, Pete,' I say, tersely.

He's very blinky, as if daylight is a shock to him, somehow always reminding me of a ghostly, pink-gilled fish my dad once found lurking in the black sludge at the bottom of the garden pond. Gretton's evolved to fit the environment of court buildings, subsisting purely on coffee, f.a.gs and cellophane-wrapped pasties, with no need for suns.h.i.+ne's Vitamin D.

'Only joking, sweetheart. You're still the most beautiful woman in the building.'

After a conversation with Gretton you invariably want to scrub yourself with a stiff bristled brush under scalding water.

'What was it?' he continues. 'Too much of the old vino collapso? That fella of yours tiring you out?' He adds a stomach-turning wink.

I take a gulp of coffee with the fresh roasted aroma of farming and agriculture.

'I split up with my fiance last month.'

His beady, rheumy little eyes lock on mine, waiting for a punchline. When none is forthcoming, he offers: 'Oh dear ... sorry to hear it.'

'Thanks.'

I don't know if Gretton has a private life in any conventional sense, or if he sprouts a tail and corkscrews into an open manhole in a cloud of bright green special effects at five thirty p.m. This topic of conversation is certainly uncharted territory between us. The extent of our personal knowledge about each other is a) I have a fiance, now past tense, and b) he's originally from Carlisle. And that's the way we both like it.

He shuffles his feet.

'Heard anything about the airport heroin smuggling in 9 that kicks off today? Word is they hid it in colostomy bags.'

I shake my head.

'For once they really could claim it was the good s.h.i.+t!'

He honks at this, broken engagement already forgotten.

'I was going to stick with the honour killing in 1,' I say, unsmiling. 'Tell you what, you do the drugs, I'll do the murder and we'll compare notes at half time.'

Pete eyes me suspiciously, wondering what devious tactic this 'mutually beneficial diplomacy' might be.

'Yeah, alright.'

Although I can get ground down by the bleak subject matter, I enjoy my job. I like being somewhere with clearly defined rules and roles. Whatever the grey areas in the evidence, the process is black and white. I've learned to read the language of the courtroom, predict the lulls and the flurries of action, interpret the Masonic whispers between counsel. I've built up a rapport with certain barristers, got expert at reading the faces of juries and quick at slipping out before any angry members of the public gallery can follow me and tell me they don't want a story putting in the b.l.o.o.d.y paper.

As I swill the remains of the foul coffee, bin the cup and head towards Court 1, I hear a timid female voice behind me.

'Excuse me? Are you Rachel Woodford?'

I turn to see a small girl with a halo of straw-coloured, frizzy hair, a slightly beaky nose and an anxious expression. In school uniform she could pa.s.s for twelve.

'I'm the new reporter who's shadowing you today,' she says.

'Ah, right.' I rack my brains for her name, recall a conversation about her with news desk which now seems a geological era ago.

'Zoe Clarke,' she supplies.

'Zoe, of course, sorry, I'm a bit brain-fugged this morning. I'm doing the murder trial today, want to join?'

'Yes, thanks!' She smiles as sunnily as if I had offered her a walking weekend in the Lakes.

'Let's go and watch people in wigs argue with each other then,' I say. I point at the retreating Gretton. 'And beware the sweaty man who comes in friends.h.i.+p and leaves with your story.'

Zoe laughs. She'll learn.

5.

At lunchtime, I open my laptop in the press room a fancy t.i.tle for a nicotine-stained windowless cell in the bowels of Crown Court, decorated with a wood veneer desk, a few chairs and a dented filing cabinet and check my email. A message arrives from Mindy.

'Can you talk?'

I type 'Yes' and hit send.

Mindy doesn't like to email when she can talk, because she loves to talk, and she's a phonetic speller. She used to put 'Vwalah!' in messages to myself and Caroline, which we a.s.sumed was a Hindu word, until under questioning it became clear she meant 'Voila'.

My phone starts buzzing.

'Hi, Mind,' I say, getting up and walking outside the press room door.

'Do you have a flat yet?'

'No,' I sigh. 'Keep looking on Rightmove and hoping the prices will magically plummet in a sudden property crash.'

'You want city centre, right? Don't mind renting?'

Rhys is buying me out of the house. I decided to use the money for a flat. Originally a city centre flat from which to enjoy single-woman cosmopolitan living, but the prices were a wake-up call. Mindy thinks I should rent for six months, get my bearings. Caroline thinks renting is dead money. Ivor says I can have his spare room and then he has a reason to finally kick out his flaky, noisy lodger Katya. As Mindy says, he could do that anyway if he 'found his cojones'.

'Yeees ...?' I say, warily. Mindy has a way of taking a sensible premise and expanding it into something entirely mental.

'Call off the search. A buyer I work with is stinking rich and she's off to Bombay for six months. She's got a place in the Northern Quarter. I think it's a converted cotton mill or something, and apparently it's uh-may-zing. She wants a reliable flat-sitter and I said you were the most reliable person in the world and she said in that case she'll do you a deal.'

'Erm ...'

Mindy quotes a monthly figure which is a fair amount of money. It's not an unfeasible amount, and certainly not a lot for the kind of place I think she's talking about. But: Mindy's encroaching madness. It'll probably come with an incontinent Maltipoo called Colonel Gad-Faffy who will only eat sus.h.i.+-grade bluefin and has to be walked four times a day.

'Do you want to come and see it with me, after work?' Mindy continues. 'She flies on Friday and a cousin of hers is interested. She says he's a bit of a chang monster and she doesn't trust him. So you're front runner but you're going to have to be quick.'

'Chang monster?'

'You know. c.o.ke. d.i.c.khead's dust.'

'Right.'

I think it through. I was really looking for something longer term than a fixed six months. Six months with option of renewal, I'd thought. But this might be a way to live the dream while I look for something more realistic.

'Yeah, sure.'

'Great! Meet you by Afflecks at half five?'

'See you there.'

As I walk back into the press room, I realise why I've dragged my feet in moving out of the house, however uncomfortable it is. My decision to leave Rhys is about to turn from words into action, become real. Splitting equity, dividing up our worldly goods, coming-home-at-night-to-empty-rooms-and-a-big-yawning-maw-of-an-empty-future real. Part of me, a shrill, cowardly part, wants to scream: 'Wait! Stop! I didn't mean it! I want to get off!' Motion sickness kicking in.

Yet I remember the text I got from Rhys a few days ago, saying, in what sounded as much like sorrow as anger: 'I hope you're looking for places because the end of living together like this can't come fast enough for me.'

I flip my notebook open and wonder if I want another cow-s.h.i.+t coffee.

Zoe enters and hovers, giving off a static buzz of nerves.

'Feel free to go and get something to eat. You can leave your things here if you like,' I say.

'Thanks.' She puts her coat and bag down, and places her notebook on the table carefully.

'Unless you fancy going to the pub for lunch?' I continue, not sure where this magnanimity is coming from. Trying to atone for what I've done to Rhys, possibly. There will never be enough entries in the good deeds column of the Great Ledger of Life to offset that one.

'That would be great!'