You Had Me at Hello (14 page)

I don't feel any degrees more sexually energised once I'm gingerly fiddling with turquoise lace balcony cups. I'm wondering if anyone will ever want to see me naked again, or more to the point, see me naked the first time and then want to see me naked regularly, on a rolling basis, going forward, as Ken would say.

Part of the pact of long-term relationships is that they're sometimes as much about the things they take out of your life as put in. If it's no longer a rollercoaster, more of a monorail, that means you avoid the lows as well as the highs. If your loved one barges into the bathroom and catches you bending over with a gut like an apron made of Babybel cheese, they don't go off you, or expect you to slink about in deep plunge this and Tanga that, waxed into the middle of next Wednesday. They've taken you on, bought the product. Singledom, a new relationship: you have to repackage your contents and sell them all over again, body and soul.

These not very inspiring thoughts are rolling round my mind as I twang a violet triangle of something that appears to be made out of fishing net and an elastic band. My phone goes.
Ben.
Now his number has his name. There's that shiver.

‘Hi, Rachel! How are you? I wanted to say thanks for helping Simon out with that story.'

I'm blushing. I'm actually standing here, looking at tiny pants, with a burning face because they're juxtaposed with Ben's voice.
Sex and the City
this ain't.

‘Good thanks. And no, thank you for introducing us. That's a great story and it's not done me any harm at work. I owe you.'

‘No worries, it solved a problem for Simon. He didn't know how to go about contacting your paper. He thinks journalists are feral creatures. He was scared stiff.'

Crazily confident Simon?

‘I'm struggling to imagine Simon being scared stiff.'

‘Imagine him being scared flaccid then.'

‘Nooo, my eyes are bleeding!' I giggle, aware of the firework of happiness that starts fizzing in my chest at the slightest return of our old rapport.

Ben laughs. ‘He was quite complimentary about you. He said you had “sass”.'

‘He means I was rude.'

‘I told you, he needs a bit of fight. He likes it. Anyway, I have something else to ask of you.'

‘You do?'

‘Yeah, I was wondering if you were free to come to ours on Saturday night. Liv wants to do a “meeting people in Manchester” dinner party. We're bourgeois bastards nowadays, y'know. Liv particularly wants to meet you.'

‘Right,' I say, feeling the fear. Why would Olivia particularly want to meet me, unless it was to do a risk assessment? He could tell her she absolutely doesn't need to worry. MI5 Threat Level: Brew Up, Kick Back. Oh God, oh God – what does she know? Reason tells me she has the official history, and this invite is proof of that. Emotions are telling me to use this thong as a slingshot to fire my mobile into the bargain briefs bin and run for the Peaks.

‘You will come?' Ben says, into my silence.

‘Sure.'

‘I don't want to kill your cool single Saturday night stone dead. I know we're old boring marrieds.'

‘Are you kidding? I'd love to come.'

‘Honestly? That's great.'

Although I meant
love
with a substantial dollop of
bloody shitting self
, Ben sounds so pleased that it almost becomes true.

‘I'm a fan of eating. And I'm in awe of anyone who's prepared to make food for visitors,' I say.

‘You're a good cook, aren't you?'

‘Nah. I gave up when I moved in with Rhys. He was the cook.'

‘Ah.' Awkward pause. ‘And Liv asked, do you want to bring anyone? A date?'

This is the moment where I'm supposed to have a wacky idea about hiring an escort for appearances' sake. I consider it for the maddest of moments, then firmly dismiss it. One of Mindy's chiselled internet Romeos, it transpired, used to work as an escort. Worse, he wore the ‘Canadian tuxedo/Texas two-piece' of double denim. With cowboy boots. And awful shirts. Ivor nickname: Bri-Nylon Adams.

‘Er. No.'

After I ring off, I guesstimate my sizes and buy a handful of stuff in safe black. It's a beginning.

I returned for the second year with a light tan that I was trying to prolong with Nivea tinted body lotion. It was from a fortnight in Paxos, a gift from Rhys.

While my friends from home had boyfriends the same age who were pot-washing and berry-picking, I had a grown-up one with an actual real proper full-time income who whisked me away for impromptu package holidays. My parents were less delighted: Rhys turned up at our local with a bag packed for me, losing me a week's pay in hand and a job for walking out mid-shift. He'd forgotten I needed my passport though, so we still had to run the gauntlet of my mum and dad's disapproval at the devil-may-care attitude to temporary employment and foreign travel.

I excitedly outlined the whole drama to Ben at the launderette's, as I loaded the drum with my clothes. Normally, the start of the second year and ‘living out' would herald having a washing machine. Ours was broken, and the lack of turnaround time between holiday and back-to-uni had left me with a dirty laundry backlog. Ben had volunteered to sit with me during the spin cycle and then go get a coffee. He was house sharing with the lads from the flats, and although he'd filtered out the worst of them, the best of them still wasn't exactly panning for gold. (For example, even he'd admitted it wasn't advisable for me to use their Zanussi unless I wanted to return from the coffee to find them all wearing my smalls on their heads.)

‘How did he have a bag packed for you without telling your folks?' Ben asked, as I boasted about sapphire seas and cultural sightseeing.

‘Oh, it wasn't my stuff. He went to Boots and bought me a toothbrush and got me a bikini. And some other things.'

Actually, it was a comically stripped down, in more than one sense, male fantasy idea of what a woman might need on a surprise sunshine getaway. The detour to my family home had the benefit I could get the things I needed without hurting his feelings.

‘Right.' Ben glanced down at what was in my hand and with some horror I realised it was a school-girlish broderie anglaise bra that was a good few shades away from Daz bright. I hastily bundled it into the machine, slammed the door and fed it with coins.

We sat down together on the slatted wooden bench.

‘The look on the warlock of a landlord's face when I left,' I crowed. ‘It was great.'

‘Sounds it. Greece with Rhys,' Ben said.

‘It was amazing!'

‘Sure. Lots of sun and … swimming and stuff?' Ben rubbed his chin.

‘Yeah.' I sighed. I knew I was being insufferable. I was in that vile realm of ‘all broadcast, no reception' smug coupledom where I couldn't stop.

The bell on the launderette door jingled and a girl entered. A girl in the same way an Aston Martin Vanquish is a car: it was Georgina Race. This was a name that any male of the undergraduate population was incapable of uttering without the accompanying exhalation. She was instantly identifiable by her sheet of incredible shiny copper hair, a colour so intense it was as if she walked the planet with a Royal Albert Hall follow-spot on her. It was impossible for your eyes to slide past her – and once they were on her, there wasn't much to quibble with, as my dad would've said. She had a porcelain, doll-like face that looked as if it had been sketched for the cover of a Mills & Boon paperback. You could absolutely imagine her in a ragged blouse, wilting in the bulky arms of the arrogant Prince Xaviero.

Georgina was on my course. She had perfected the art of the lecture hall entrance, standing at the front of the room and scanning the half-empty rows for a spare seat, knowing every male in the place was trying to will her near. Ben would usually nudge me, clasping his hands in a ‘prayer' gesture under the desk, to which I'd make a hand-shaking ‘wanker' gesture in return. They were all shit out of luck, though: rumour had it she was dating some soap actor in London.

This crisp September morning, Georgina was looking equally crisp: she had an apple-green scarf knotted at her white swan throat and a short swingy patterned dress that served to highlight her long long legs that didn't appear to get any wider as they went up. Over the top she was wearing a navy frock coat that clung to her waist and flared out in folds around her violin-shaped hips. All in all, she looked like she should be striding down Carnaby Street a few decades ago with men who looked like a young Michael Caine lowering their spectacles and wolf-whistling.

She was clearly a bitch. I just had to find hard evidence.

‘Hey Ben!' she trilled, spotting him and breezing over. ‘What're you doing here?'

She knows Ben?
And what the hell do you think he's doing here, I thought. Ordering a frittata, getting a slippy gearbox checked out, waiting for the results of a splenic biopsy?

‘Waiting with Ron here. Her washing machine's knackered.'

Georgina's eyes moved reluctantly to me, only for a moment. ‘Ahhh. Nightmare, right?'

I nodded. Annoyingly, I felt a little of that beautiful person dazzle, as if a celebrity had acknowledged me, and couldn't speak.

‘What're you doing here?' he asked. ‘Getting clothes washed, I guess?'

‘Dropping some stuff for the dry-cleaning service,' she said, unlatching some probably-incredibly-expensive slinky things in monogrammed garment bags from her shoulder, by way of demonstration. ‘Cashmere, etcetera.'

I couldn't help but notice she had slender arms like carved willow and tiny, fluttery-butterfly, delicate hands, screws of translucent tissue paper. In the genetic lottery, she'd won a triple rollover.

‘Listen, we should totally do that thing we talked about? The dinner?' she said.

‘Sure. Let me know when?'

‘Certainly will,' she said, with a little feline moue, and a flirtily-eyelinered wink. ‘See you around, yeah?'

She left her dry cleaning, breezed out and did a tips-of-the-fingers coy wave to Ben as she went. I said, trying very hard not to sound like a bitter nosy nag and failing: ‘Uhm. What thing you talked about?'

I fully expected Ben to dissemble about some vague plan to hit up the Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat buffet for a gorge-til-you-gag.

‘A date.'

‘
A date?
' I repeated, as if he'd said ‘bumming otters, hanging on to their whiskers like they're handlebars'.

‘Yeah. Is it that amazing?'

‘I didn't think she went out with students, that's all. Thought it was strictly cool successful older guys in other cities.'

‘Like you, you mean?' Ben smirked.
Touché.
And before I could retort, Ben continued: ‘Everyone was second guessing so I thought I'd ask her. He who dares wins.'

This got worse. He'd asked her? I couldn't deny that in some ways, it was a match ordained by heaven: the prom king and queen of English Literature & Language.

‘
Cashmere, etcetera
,' I mimicked.

Ben didn't rise to it. I had a sense that karmically, I'd pushed hard on a swing door.

Pete Gretton and I share the press bench in the later half of the week for the opening of a medical negligence trial. It concerns the very untimely death of a twenty-nine-year-old woman in a liposuction procedure, and two NHS doctors and a nurse at a private practice being prosecuted for negligence and manslaughter. There are several stringers from the agencies – a more geographically mobile, less seedy strain of freelancer than Gretton. He's here because we've heard there'll be some fairly gory details of operative complications and dislodged fat particles. Gretton is a rogue collection of cells himself, travelling around the arteries of the building and causing dangerously high blood pressure whenever he comes to a halt.

‘They can't all be to blame,' he mutters, before the court's in session. ‘How many people does it take to stick a drip in an arm? CPS are simply chucking a handful of mud and hoping something sticks. Chewit?'

I shake my head at the proffered packet. ‘No thanks.'

‘On a diet?'

‘Get lost.'

Gretton bares yellow incisors. ‘Not to worry, most men like some meat on the bones. Hey, mind you, sounds like this 'un was taking it too far. Pushing twenty stone, I heard. Spherical.'

He chews noisily, giving me a view of his half-masticated sweet.

‘Shut up,' I hiss, glancing at the heavy-set family in the public gallery, and twist my body as far away from him as possible. I need an
I'm Not With Stupid
t-shirt.

Solicitors are in hushed conference with barristers, papers are shuffled, people in the public gallery cough and shift in their seats.

A couple of the wigged-and-gowned fraternity are having a quiet chuckle about something that's probably hilarious if you're familiar with the intricacies of malpractice, and I see the family peering at them in irritated disbelief. I sympathise. It's hard to believe that your earth-shattering calamity is merely another day at the office for people who do this kind of thing for a living.

Most of the time, journalists are rubber-necking tourists who can grasp the basic concepts involved. Dog bites man, man bites dog, man bites man because his dog looked at him funny, and so on. With a case like this, you have to become a short-term expert in a specific area of a highly skilled profession. Whenever a judge tetchily instructs a barrister or witness to simplify the terminology for the sake of the jury, the press bench heaves a near-audible sigh of relief.

As I leave the courtroom at lunchtime, I see Zoe in conversation with a woman I recognise from the public gallery.

Gretton's seconds behind me, as ever.

‘What the fuck is she up to?'

‘Talking,' I say.