You Had Me At Hello Part 49

'And I wanted to save you from Simon's oily grasp ... a bit too much. The thing is, seeing you again, it's all been based on a misunderstanding. I was sure it was safe to be friends. I thought I couldn't possibly fall in love with you again, and I was right.'

He takes a breath.

'Please,' I interrupt, desperately. 'If you want to tell me you've come to realise you care for me as a second sister, that's nice but I don't want to hear it. Put it in a card with some bull-rushes on it and post it. With Deepest Sympathy For Your Loss Of s.e.x Appeal.'

'I was right I couldn't fall in love with you. Because I never fell out of love with you.'

'What?'

'It's true,' Ben says, cheerfully. 'Seems once was enough to infect me. From then on you've been lying dormant, like a virus. Or an incurable chronic condition that flares up from time to time.'

A long pause, where life transforms from black-and-white to colour.

'I'm eczema?'

Ben beams. 'Eczema of the heart. That's it. Psoriasis of the soul.'

The whole world is one table by a window in a cafe-bar in Manchester and the person sitting opposite me. If joy could be seen by the Hubble, tonight scientists would record a peculiar iridescence on an island north of the equator.

'In view of this, I wanted to ask you on a date. Are you free tonight?'

'Uh,' my mind's so overloaded I can only make simpleton sounds, 'yes.'

'Great! G.o.d, you're on your second man of the night while I'm out of practice at this. Do I have to pretend to love cats, old movies and getting caught in the rain? Wait, no Rachel Fact, she doesn't like it when people say they like "old films". There's good ones and bad ones. If someone said they liked 'new films' you'd think they were stupid.'

'Did I say that?'

'First year of university.'

'I can't believe you remember that.'

'When it comes to you, I'm blessed with total recall. So no need for this.' Ben pretends to rub his neck and steal a glance below my neckline. I start gurgling with laughter. He taps the side of his head: 'All up here. Don't you worry.'

He puts his hand over mine. This is real.

'I should have so much to say, and I can't think of anything to say,' I burble.

I see the waitress with the pencil in her hair giving us that nice couple smile again. If only you knew.

'You can answer the unspoken question hanging over us about what we do next,' Ben says.

'Is there one?'

'Yeah. Do you want to get some dinner?'

As we leave the cafe, I ask: 'Is it OK for us to be out together?'

'How d'ya mean? Have you got an electronic tag?'

'As a ...' I'm going to say couple and then I think it sounds a bit presumptuous after 175mls of lukewarm rioja '... as a you know. The two of us.'

He stops. 'As a couple? We've waited a very long time for a first date. I don't see how anything we do can be considered rus.h.i.+ng. I hope from what we said in there that you're ... my girlfriend. Aren't you?'

'Yes!' Girlfriend. Boyfriend. A couple! 'If you honestly want a woman who is currently described on an internet dating site as "a proper lol".'

'It's pathetic, I knew I did from that first moment we met. It was ... not love at first sight exactly, but familiarity. Like: oh, h.e.l.lo, it's you. It's going to be you. Game over.'

I feel as if I'm going to burst. 'I can't believe I get to be with you at last.'

He leans down and kisses me, one hand on the back of my head, fingers woven into my hair, our mouths warm and red wine blackcurrant-flavoured while the air around us is rinsed-clean cold. Like old times, it has a whole body effect on me but the reunion isn't like a recovered memory. It feels brand new. I put my arms around him, underneath his unb.u.t.toned coat, and hold him, rea.s.suring myself he's solid.

We walk on, hand-in-hand. Pa.s.sers-by don't know this is an everyday miracle. I want to stop them and say something.

'If anyone asks how we got together, it'll be the most difficult tale to tell ever,' I babble. 'Most people can say "We met at the office Christmas party. We both liked spelunking and hip-hop. We have two kids."'

'Well, tell them we met at university.'

'It doesn't do it justice. You have to chart the whole thing. I might write it down in a diary, in case there's ever any grandkids.'

'The story would start in Freshers' Week and come up to date and finish, when, tonight?'

'Of course,' I say. 'This has been the most important evening of all, really.'

'What would the last line say?'

'Oh dear. I don't know. Something corny about the wait being worth it and "Then I went for Chinatown dim sum with him and to top it all off, he's fairly competent with chopsticks"?'

'Nah, unless that's code it's a total anti-climax. We're English graduates, for G.o.d's sake, we can do better. Think about the legacy, the weight of history. It's got to inspire. How about: "And then he did it to her and she loved it"?'

I glance sideways to catch the look on his face. I keep mine straight.

'Yeah, that could work ...'

So that's it. Rachel and Ben's story has been told.

But if you love what you've read, turn the page for some more brilliant writing from Mhairi. She's a journalist too y'know, and if you've got any smarts at all you'll follow her on Twitter @MhairiMcF or visit www.mhairimcfarlane.com.

Mhairi's next book will hit the shelves in December 2013.

THE ULTIMATE CELEBRITY INTERVIEW!.

I am so sick of reading this interview. You read it all the time, constantly, year in, year out, in every glossy magazine and Sunday supplement. It's founded on the twin principles that a) people who act are the most fascinating beings on the planet, and b) that we, the readers, are totally credulous, awed plebians. The dumbstruck interviewer acts only as a conduit to divinity, drinking in their shuddering magnificence and recording their sub-adolescent witterings as if it's brainy gold. We're now at the stage where an actor or actress would have to take a s.h.i.+t on the reporter's notebook to get a less-than-howlingly-sycophantic write-up. (Or maybe not. HE'S WHERE IT'S SCAT!) I'm convinced by now there's a template. It goes like this.

Beauty, brains and Braun An actress bounds into the East London photographic studio, slightly out of breath, fizzing with the energy of Silvio Berlusconi on h.o.r.n.y Goat Weed at an 18-year-old's swim party. 'I just gave a homeless man outside a twenty pound note, and now I'm worrying he'd have rather had it in two tens,' she says, huge eyes widening in a luminously fresh face, as she puts down her vintage handbag and leather-bound copy of Anna Karenina ('I'm obsessed with Tolstoy; it's a weakness, I need to widen my contemporary reading') in a flurry of activity that lights up the room and makes all heads turn. 'Oh, no. I hope he's OK,' she says, fretting extravagantly over this act of incredibly charming philanthropic spontaneity I'm choosing to include here for colour but that she obviously had no idea could end up in the article.

The issue of the Handily Timed Tramp is resolved when a menial is despatched to offer him change and to pick up her favourite snack, Minstrels. An actress who eats?! I ask, incredulous, as she unselfconsciously shovels in great handfuls while having her hair and make-up done. 'Oh, I eat like a pig, I love cooking for my boyfriend,' she says, adjusting her navy wool crepe Jil Sander dress over her tiny size six frame, which she maintains by consuming s.h.i.+tloads of food and walking to appointments. 'I'm really boring; I don't like all those red carpet events. I love staying in and putting on pyjamas and making a ma.s.sive ca.s.serole for my friends. I'm such a down-to-earth, homely, generous goof! This is so embarra.s.sing to admit.'

So, I say, once she's finished showing pictures of her dogs on her phone to everyone because she's completely unstarry and prepared to talk about herself to unimportant people, was it a difficult decision to choose to play Eva Braun, as she's a controversial figure? She suddenly looks serious. 'Obviously people have their views on what she did but really I just approached her as a character, as a story. You know, before anything else she was just a woman, in love with a man, trying to make a life for herself in n.a.z.i Germany.' Did she do much research? 'I avoided reading anything about her because I didn't want my performance to be affected by other peoples' opinions. You know, I wanted to get to the emotional truth. That's your job, as an actor.'

While I'm being admitted to her intellectual salon and everything I thought I knew is being turned on its head, I have to ask, because the answer will help all of us, would she consider herself a feminist? 'Uhm,' she says, with the pause of someone who chooses their words very carefully, her perfect brow creasing. 'I'm not ... part of a cause or a movement or anything. I'm just a person. So I'd say I'm definitely female. But I'm not a "feminist" as such because I'm too independent-minded to be part of something. You know?'

She finishes all her ideas with 'you know?' The phrase contains a note of yearning, to find and make connections, and it strikes me that she's desperate to be understood, but she has learned to wear the struggle lightly. Yet she effortlessly metamorphoses from Thinker to Model once she's dressed in a retro ironic bikini and ironic heels for the '50s-themed photoshoot that sends up the notion of a 'pin-up', pulling faces where she pretends to double take at the sight of her own t.i.ts while talking on a Bakelite telephone. Yet even in vintage costume she's absolutely modern, in control of her image, of how she wants to be seen when she vetoes some iced bun props on the basis that 'It's a bit s.l.u.tty Calendar Girls' everyone on set who doesn't want to be fired instantly agrees that she is right.

As she stands patiently while wardrobe people fuss with the ironic see-through baby doll negligee for the next slyly subversive picture, she explains how she hopes her role as Braun will see her considered for more serious parts. 'Casting agents, they do tend to think, she looks a certain way, that's all she can do. But things are changing. Look at Judi Dench. I'd like a career like hers. Old women are so inspiring.'

Now Hollywood is calling, it says here in the publicity material I was given. Can she see herself in blockbusters? 'G.o.d, that'd be so weird!' she laughs, revealing perfect teeth. 'I'm not sure I'd want to be, you know, Meryl Streep famous because then your life's not your own. I'm going back next week for the endless slog of auditions but I don't want it that much. They judge you on how you look and how well you can act, it's very pressuring. When you get rejected a lot you start to realise it's a very fake existence. And I'd miss my dogs!'

And with that, she's gone, in a gust of her signature scent. ('You like it?' her eyes light up. 'It's bespoke! They mix it for you at this amazing atelier in the Loire Valley. I'll send you their details.' True to form her PA mails me a day later, and I discover it costs more than the moon. Only someone unmaterialistic could a.s.sume a journalist's salary could cover it. I get a glimpse of what it's like to live like her, whimsically, in the moment, seeing so few limitations).

But what IS her life? It's simple, crazy and complicated, veering from ca.s.seroles to film premieres and Tolstoy and a pair of Ba.s.set Hounds called Pearl and Dean, and yet she takes all the madness in her faux-python Stella McCartney slingback-shod stride. It's only after she's left, in a moment of aching symbolism that poignantly encapsulates this entire encounter, that I notice she's left me most of her bag of Minstrels. A gesture of such heartbreaking kindness that I might die w.a.n.king.

THE GRACIOUS HACIENDA DRINKING GAME.

A recent letter from Tom Cruise's lawyer, advising a publication that he had a 'gracious and loving family home' recalled the text of many a wonderfully sycophantic magazine article, or scenes in an MTV Cribs tour round a chintzy celebrity cack pile.

'Gracious' is a Beano comic imaginary word: always written, never spoken. 'How's your house?' 'OK, pretty gracious. Come round sometime. It's also loving.'

It occurs to me that there are so many key features that crop up time and again, you could play a kind of Obscenely Blingy Horror Shack Interiors drinking game and get nicely p.i.s.sed.

You'd think that having the kind of wealth that allows you to j.i.z.z funds around Harrods like Formula One champagne would mean an incredible diversity of result. However, it seems there's an aesthetic ubiquity in the upper price bracket to rival that of IKEA's Miserly Landlord range.

Yes, YES I know MTV Cribs has been around awhile. But if, like me, you enjoy drinking booze, watching reruns, and leafing through nouveau riche Casa 'Shoulda Gone To Specsavers' mansion photo-shoots, this tick list is always gold. Like a rapper's keeping-it-ghetto bath tub.

KOI.

There must be a pond and it must feature Koi Carp, the landed gentry's 'roided goldfish. A beginner's spotter badge, award self one shot of Dooley's.

'This Is Where the Magic Happens'

Mandatory phrase when being shown the recording studio in Cribs. If one's tour guide is a member of Maroon 5, or in Fred Durstian oversized shorts, it's not so much magic, as necromancy.

Servant Sighting 'Our lives wouldn't run without her, she's part of the family' or similar, if being narrated to interviewer by willowy patrician blonde at her 'Barbados hideaway'. Except presumably, most family members aren't tasked with refilling the loo roll pyramid and required to give four weeks' notice if they wish to leave. In Cribs, this is a bashful-looking middle-aged Hispanic woman who our ebullient host grabs, hugs and shouts: 'I call her Mama!' Well, unlike 'The Person Who Cif Lemon Mousses the Thunder Box for Money' it has the benefit of brevity.

Showcase For Workless Wife's Startlingly Appalling Taste Ushered into a lounge that features beige box pelmets, Regency stripe swags, ta.s.selled tie-backs, a Warholian triptych of the Queen, a suspended flat screen TV and a kidney-shaped gla.s.s coffee table with lions' feet, we're told 'My wife did all of this' in an admiring tone that implies this isn't a highly defamatory statement.

'We've gone for a kinda country house, rustic, Ye Olde English feel ...' she says, clad in Juicy Couture trackie, in the blistering suns.h.i.+ne of the Hollywood Hills in a terracotta-washed Mexican style bungalow surrounded by palm trees. And the aim is to transport us, in this one room, to the Cotswolds?

Breaking news: you've dropped two mill to pull off the same standard of illusion as Duty Free lagged Brits rofling through airport terminals in sombreros.

There was a particularly splendid example of the 'misguided pride in own DIY' genre when Joan Collins welcomed h.e.l.lo! into her Manhattan penthouse master suite, an aggressive whole-room pattern-matched vexatious tw.a.n.ging of the optic nerve; Jackson Pollock meets Heathrow Sheraton Cla.s.sic Double circa 1988.

She announced, imperiously: 'I have an eye.' That you keep in a drawer, like a marble? USE TWO.

Turkey Bacon: So Many Questions Casually introduced in fridge contents inventory, as if it's not a paradoxical mindbender and affront to gustatory dignity.

What in the name of all that is holy is 'turkey bacon'? Why can't Americans see a thing, without trying to transpose it into turkey? Why have so much cash you could hire the White House lawn for a barbecue, and then eat not-actual bacon? Why consume a meat-hybrid that, if made flesh ('Behold G.o.d's abomination: Wattle Pig!') you would run from screaming, not chasing with a mandolin slicer?

Is this the dream? You become an NBA superstar, platinum seller or American Idol judge in a sprawling estate the size of Wigan. Beautiful partner, brace of kids, at the very pinnacle the thin air summit of success where you then get so light headed that you ask your private chef to toss a skin graft flap of reformed smoked poultry to shrink in a skillet?

Turkey is not for winners. Turkey is for people who find chicken too exciting. To try to make bacon out of it is f.u.c.king demented.

Artefact That Reminds Them Of Where It All Began Must be in a gla.s.s case. Extra shot awarded if it's in a Temple To Thine Ego room full of trophies, awards, skateboards nailed to walls, framed photos of owner doing finger guns with wheelchair-bound confused Bob Hope, etc.

My Friends, Who I Have For Money A loose affiliation of Entourage-style hangers on must be cluttering up the overstuffed sofa playing video games, or hanging around the island unit in the kitchen, waiting to do on-camera high fives. They have, of course, been 'there from the beginning.' The beginning of your being loaded.

This 'hired homies' technique was later adopted by makers of Jamie Oliver programmes. Little known fact: he calls everyone onscreen 'tiger' because he doesn't know their names. Even his nan. That's a Central Casting stunt nan if ever I saw one. Let's just see if she turns up as Aaron Craze's, too.

Specially Commissioned 'Art'

Because no one would embark on painting something that s.h.i.+t without being paid up front.

Once on Cribs, a tour guide showed us his haunting oil painting of Tupac Shakur being baptised by Martin Luther King. 'It came from an idea I had,' he mused, 'That Tupac Shakur could've been baptised by Martin Luther King.' Rendering Ali G instantly satirically obsolete, he then put on a wolf fur coat and started howling.

It was the finest ten minutes of telly ever.

Untouched Kitchen That Cost 40 Grand 'I love to cook!' says our WWF wrestler host, holding a spatula upside down and waving it vaguely in the direction of a range that still has a fine coating of brick dust from the kitchen fitter's work.

'Yeah, I do egg white omelettes, and other stuff. Wolfgang Puck gave me a private lesson, it was wild. I can do sauces. All the sauces.'

Ah yes, Puck's saucing mastercla.s.s: the red one, the brown one, and the white one. The cla.s.sic French jus trio for feasts of TURKEY BACON.

There must also be a double-door fridge large enough to store a dead body, holding only neatly stacked cans of Gatorade.

'Original Stone Tiles From Milan Are The Weapon Of Choice In The Luxe Bathroom'