You Had Me At Hello Part 38

Before I could say anything else, Rhys shouted: 'C'meeeeere babe!' bundling me into a coercive, bear-hug version of a waltz.

'Wait, wait!' I felt like I was drowning, gulping for oxygen in a crush of musty black poly-cotton and Issey Miyake for Men and blind panic. 'Rhys! Stop!'

'Whazza matter?'

When I disentangled myself, Ben was nowhere to be seen. And he was going to stay that way for ten years.

57.

Two weeks after the St Ann's Square ma.s.sacre, I receive an invitation from Ben to go for a post-work drink.

'Dear lord,' Ben says, as I walk up to him outside the Royal Exchange. 'You're only a minute or two late. Allowing for a margin of inaccuracy with my watch, you might even be on time. Have you got any explanation for this?'

'My desire for a drink?' I say.

'I feel like I should fire a confetti cannon.' He gives me a sidelong smile as we set off.

'I have a lot of ground to make up.'

'Don't be daft.'

'You didn't want to go to the film with Olivia and Lucy?'

I'd noticed Ben had felt the need to explain why Olivia couldn't come too. I had my suspicions she might've lined up slightly differently to Ben in the Hurricane Simon vs Wretched Rachel wrestling match.

'You wouldn't get me to the film they're going to unless you strapped me on a gurney and stuck a syringe in my arm. He's My Man, or something. She's That Girl. Where's My Brain?'

'There's quite an Oscar buzz around Where's My Brain!'

'Flies buzzing round it, more like.'

We laugh.

'How about here?' I say on impulse, as we pa.s.s a promising doorway, and as soon as we walk inside I know it's a lucky discovery. Battered wooden chairs and tables painted in mismatched colours, guttering tea lights, art college waitresses, framed vintage film posters on the walls the whole hipster package.

We take a seat underneath Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Ben gets the drinks, Belgian beer in brown gla.s.s bottles. He shrugs the discreetly showy-offy grey coat on to his chair and I try not to gaze at how the oily face and greasy hair that afflict the entire office-based population by six p.m. only serve to make Ben look kind of James-Bond-after-high-stakes-baccarat-with-arms-dealers-in-Montenegro. Good bone structure, I think, makes dishevelment look raffish. I spent ten frantic minutes with my make-up bag in the work loos, painting eyes in and lips back on, like decorating a hardboiled egg.

I tentatively inquire after Simon, as Ben rolls up his s.h.i.+rtsleeves and I ignore his forearms. When did I become a drooling pervert? (Too late, I hear Rhys say.) He replies, curtly: 'You're not the first female he's accused of ruining his life and you won't be the last. Don't give it any more thought.'

I take a sharp breath and prepare to tell Ben the whole truth, the one I couldn't risk telling Simon. This is my high stakes gamble. I knew on the way here I was going to do it and that many people would think it's lunacy. I can hear Caroline's ghostly scream to Shut. The. h.e.l.l. Upppppp ... Thing is, I don't want Ben to stick up for me because I've lied to him, too. Ben's decision to defend me doesn't mean anything until he has the facts.

'Ben,' I say, 'if I tell you something else about the Natalie Shale affair, will you promise not to go wappy and tell Simon?'

He looks wary.

'Is this some new lid-blowing fact that's going to change everything? I can do without any more surprises.'

'It's the full unexpurgated truth about how Zoe got the story.'

His gla.s.s hovers in hand, halfway to his lips. He sets it back down.

'Please tell me you didn't do the splitting the cash thing?'

'No, I wasn't involved in her selling it, like I said.'

'What then? Don't tell me something I don't want to be told.'

'I had absolutely no part in using it as a story or Zoe going to the nationals and if I had known about it, I'd have done everything I could to stop her. Does that help?'

Ben looks undecided.

'Promise you won't tell Simon?' I say.

'It helps your cause that I don't want to get him more wound up. Now you've gone this far you better tell me.'

I explain. Then I hold my breath.

Ben studies my face while he absorbs this information. 'She took it and ran with it behind your back?'

'Yes. I swear.'

'Why didn't you do the story?'

'It wasn't fair. I thought about it. I couldn't be that hard-faced.'

'Yet you're hard-faced enough to read other people's texts and gossip about the contents?'

'I know. Tell me I'm sc.u.m, I deserve it.'

Ben exhales.

'Why are you telling me this at all?'

'You were so kind to me and I don't want to lie to you.' I want your absolution, above all. I can withstand everything else if I have that. 'I couldn't tell Simon because he would've lost me my job over it and I have rent to pay. It's not right but there it is. I'm so sorry for the trouble it's caused you, Ben. I wanted to do a good job. I can't tell you how ashamed I feel. This is my proper apology, from the heart.'

Ben exhales some more and looks longingly toward the door. For a moment I think he's going to say I'm outta here, lady.

'Wooh boy ...'

'Will it get irritating if I keep saying sorry?'

'You shouldn't have gone through her phone or told another journalist about it. Intentional or not, you do appear to have been the Big Bang event for a world of s.h.i.+t.'

'I know.'

'However, you could've got a big story out of it. You didn't. Because of the effect it would have on other people's lives, not because it wouldn't benefit yours. True?'

'True.'

'Then what we've identified is a scruple. You officially have a scruple.'

I give a wry, grateful laugh, faith in Ben's generosity once more vindicated: 'Scruple, singular.'

'It's a start.'

The bar's playing Ella Fitzgerald, we still have near-full drinks. I'm more at peace with the universe than I was before we arrived, that's for sure.

'You took a risk telling me that,' he says, considering me over his gla.s.s. 'Can I take a risk in return, with the same complete trust that it goes no further?'

I feel the hairs on the back of my neck p.r.i.c.kle. 'Of course.'

'This never, ever makes it to your colleagues, on pain of death. This stays between us, in this place, right now, and never leaves. Promise me, Rachel.'

I'm rapt. 'I promise.'

'You better keep your word, else I'll call Simon and tell him about the text.'

'Absolutely. Understood. Rely on my instincts of self-preservation instead of honour.'

'Safer.' He lowers his voice. 'I heard that, in pillow talk, Natalie told Jonathan she lied to give her husband an alibi.'

My jaw drops. 'Why would he need a false alibi?'

'Why do people usually need false alibis?'

'Lucas Shale's guilty?' I stage-whisper back, incredulous.

'I don't know. I honestly don't.'

'But he's going to be cleared on appeal. Everyone thinks he's innocent. I was sure he was innocent.'

Ben shrugs. 'This can't ever reach the ears of the partners. If it's true, it's major, major stuff that Jonathan let the firm carry on representing Shale. Career ending.'

'Hasn't the affair shot his career anyway?'

'No. Only because Natalie wasn't the client. He's had a serious rap on the knuckles and a cosmetic sacking, with the chance of being quietly re-hired in London when it's all blown over.'

's.h.i.+t.'

'It's better than being struck off.'

'I guess Natalie and Jonathan aren't still in touch then? If he's going to London?'

Ben shakes his head. 'Doubt it.' Pause. 'Still, makes it less likely they're going to confer about that text and figure out your involvement, eh?'

I cringe. 'That wasn't why I was asking.'

'I know you weren't, only teasing. You don't worry about your interests enough, in my opinion.'

I'd hoped Ben, with his generosity of spirit, might forgive me. How he's finding things to praise, well I have no idea why he always sees the best in me. There's a reflective pause that elongates into a comfortable, beer-sipping silence. I look at the lights from the candles throwing patterns on the windows, take in the room. A pretty waitress with hair in an unwinding bun, a pencil jammed horizontally through it, gives me a 'Nice couple' warm look. I return it with a 'If only you knew' smile.

'It's great we've been able to do this, isn't it?' Ben says, eventually. 'You and me being friends again, I mean. All these years later.'

'It's amazing. Just picked up where we left off,' I say, without thinking.

'Not exactly where we left off,' Ben says, raising an eyebrow.

'No, not exactly ... uh ...'

Conversation stalls. Ella is over. Our now-uncomfortable silence filled with a horrendous emo cover of The Pretenders's 'Bra.s.s in Pocket'.

Ben knocks back some of his drink and I expect a brisk subject change. Instead he looks me in the eye.

'Why did you sleep with me? I mean, I did work out why, but I might as well have it confirmed, after all this time.'

His steady, sardonic expression and slight smile unnerves me. I can see he's thinking I don't know how to gift-wrap an ugly truth. Instead I'm thinking of all the things I could say that I'm not going to say to a married man.

'I gave you a reason at the time.' This is meant to be a.s.sertive. My voice sounds plaintive.

He shakes his head. 'It's OK, it was a long time ago. I can take it. You wanted to get back at Rhys and you knew you wouldn't have to see me again. No harm done.'

No harm done? Is he kidding?

'That's absolutely not true. I was ...' my voice nearly cracks '... I really cared about you.'

Ben's not visibly moved by this declaration.

'Mmm. I think with hindsight, Rhys's reappearance at the ball was well timed, for all of us.'

'Ben.' Long, long pent-up emotion swells up like strings in a sentimental film score and I try to curb it. 'That wasn't it. You've got the wrong impression ...' How do I hint at so much I can't say? Oh no. Am I going to use those accursed words? It seems I am. '... It's complicated.'

Now I hear the ghost of Mindy: Shuuuuutt uuuuppppppp ...

'Ultimately I got the right impression though, given you stayed with and got engaged to Rhys?'

Slam. Dunk. I open my mouth and no words come out. To think I thought to be finally asked this would be a release? It's ten years too late and one of us is too married for it to be anything other than punishment.

'I tried to call. I wrote to you. Didn't you get my letter?'

'Ah, yeah. In order to get ...' I hear Ben stop, rewind and amend what he was going to say '... past it, I had to kind of cut off. Your letter didn't exactly say anything I didn't know.'