You Had Me at Hello

by Mhairi McFarlane

  We do the obligatory amount of ‘getting to know you’ chat, and after establishing Caroline’s an accountant, Simon goes off on a tangent with her.

  ‘How’s Abigail?’ I ask Ben.

  Abigail, Ben’s bug-eyed, skinny little sister, was around thirteen or fourteen when we were students. Ben doted on her in the way much older brothers usually do. Ben warned me before I met her that she had Asperger Syndrome, which meant she said whatever was in her head, with no checks, balances or social graces. Sounds no different to most of my family and my boyfriend, I joked, though privately I was apprehensive. What if she asked why I had sideburns? When I met her, I found she was one of those rare people who have few unkind impulses or nasty thoughts so it didn’t matter as much as it might have. She admired a knitted hat I had bought at the student market, with: ‘Can I have it, please?’ Ben was appalled.

  Afterwards, I sent her one similar. Ben said she was so pleased she was ‘practically in tears, the gimp’, even though it was so large for her it made her ‘look like one of the aliens from Mars Attacks’. He reported this in a letter, having taken the unusual step of writing to me during the holiday break.

  ‘Abi is,’ Ben smiles, ‘really well, actually. She has a part-time job in a travel agent’s. My aunt works there so she looks out for her. And she still lives with my mum, so it’s good knowing neither of them are on their own.’

  I remember how much he used to worry. ‘That’s great.’

  I recall the way Abigail once attached herself to me, and say: ‘I bet she loves having a sister-in-law.’

  Ben grimaces. ‘Hmm, she did at first.’

  I make a questioning face.

  ‘Abi assumed she was going to be a bridesmaid at our wedding. Liv had already asked her two friends. She said she wasn’t going to sack one of them because Abi jumped the gun. And Liv said if she had Abi, she’d have to have her demonic nieces and she wanted to avoid that at all costs. I tried to explain Abi’s not manipulative, she doesn’t understand. Well, you know how she is.’

  I find it touching he presumes I understand Abi, despite all these years.

  ‘You couldn’t have intervened, somehow?’ I ask. ‘I know how tricky these things get.’ Do I ever.

  ‘I wanted to. I tried. Ultimately I couldn’t tell Liv who to have as bridesmaid.’

  ‘Ah. Sure.’

  ‘Abi dug her heels in, got into a “bridesmaid or nothing” mindset. It was so political between my mum, Abi and Liv. I stayed out of it. Anyway, upshot is that things have been a bit strained between all of them since. Or they are between my mum and Liv. Abi’s forgotten about it. I’m sure they’ll sort it out eventually.’

  I think of Ben’s mum’s easy laughter when she met me, and for a split second imagine a parallel universe where I’m her daughter-in-law and Abi was my bridesmaid, and how well we’d all get on. More of my fantasy fiction: I should throw in a few elves as ring-bearers.

  ‘Will you give Abi my regards, if you speak to her?’

  ‘Course,’ Ben says. ‘She used to ask after you a lot.’

  We both pause, at the ‘used’. How did he explain our terminated friendship, I wonder? How did he think of me? If he thought of me at all …

  This is the first conversational pothole of many on the road that lies before us, if we’re going to be friends. It’s possible Ben doesn’t see the start of anything here, only a favour to another friend. A trip down memory lane, a swift three-point turn and back out again, foot firmly on accelerator.

  Ben’s obviously thinking this way too, because he says: ‘This is mad, isn’t it?’ gesturing at me, him, our being together. ‘Where does the time go?’

  I’m sure it went faster for you, I think, nodding. Caroline and Simon’s tandem conversation about high finance shows no signs of stopping. Ben therefore obviously deems it safe to ask: ‘What happened with you and Rhys? If you want to talk about it? Totally fine if you don’t …’

  ‘It was everything and nothing in particular. We reached the end of the line. Cockfosters.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The end of the line. The Underground? Never mind.’

  ‘Ah.’ Ben smiles politely, bemused.

  At university, I’m sure that would’ve made him laugh. I don’t know him any more. He’s changed. Or maybe I should try again with a better joke.

  Half of me wants to throw myself on Ben and tell him every last thing, gesturing to the barman to bring us the rest of the bottle and telling Caroline and Simon they’re good to leave us. The other half of me knows not only is this the wrong person to seek sympathy from, I can’t bear to see a grain – the smallest speck – of relief in his eyes. Relief that he got away from me.

  ‘Anyway. What made you want to move back up here?’ I continue, slightly desperately.

  ‘Apart from the fact that Simon said his firm had a job going? Dunno, really – I was fed up with London, couldn’t face the commuter belt, I couldn’t live somewhere too small, and this is the other big city I know and like.’

  ‘Was your wife keen to move too?’

  ‘Not exactly. We reached the decision through a process of mature debate. And, er, compromise and … concession.’

  Simon overhears this and interrupts: ‘What he means is, they’re here, but Olivia gets her way now until either of them dies.’

  He adds: ‘And while we’re on the subject of pushy women, Caroline thinks Ben should get some more drinks.’

  ‘I didn’t say that!’ Caroline protests, enjoying Simon’s teasing. She’s always liked cocky blokes.

  Ben shakes his head in mock disapproval. ‘Come on, Caroline. We’re not doing slammers in the union bar any more. She was monstrous at university …’

  ‘Really?’ Simon says, contemplating Caroline, obviously hoping ‘monstrous’ is code for ‘open to suggestion’.

  ‘What was Rachel like?’ Simon asks Ben.

  Ben mutters ‘Worse’ and gets up swiftly.

  19

  ‘Are you going to tell Rachel about this story, then?’ Ben asks Simon, on his return. I’d have liked to sustain the illusion that this isn’t about business for a little longer.

  Yet I add: ‘Yeah, what is it? I’m curious.’

  ‘Can I trust you? Is this off the record?’ Simon says, warily, pushing forward on his seat, eyes darting round the bar as if my plainclothes associate might be loitering by the fag machine.

  ‘I don’t come to wine bars wired for sound.’

  Simon glowers at me.

  I make a cross on my chest with a fingertip. ‘Promise this goes no further. On my life. You are safe to speak.’

  Simon leans further forward. ‘I’ve got an important client who’s ready for an interview. With the right paper.’

  ‘We can’t pay big money,’ I say.

  ‘I said the right paper, not the one that can pay the most.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  Simon leans back again, scrutinises my face as if it’s a map that contains the key to my trustworthiness. ‘She. Natalie Shale. So wife-of-client, strictly speaking.’

  My pulse quickens, before natural pessimism returns it to normal.

  ‘She doesn’t do interviews.’

  ‘She didn’t, I’m advising her differently.’

  ‘To who?’

  ‘Her husband’s last solicitor,’ Simon says, mouth twitching slightly, possibly in irritation at being doubted. ‘I’ve taken over from a colleague who’s snowed under.’

  ‘You must be doing well to get given it …?’

  ‘Simon’s in line to be made a partner,’ Ben supplies.

  ‘So, you up for it or what?’ Simon asks me.

  ‘Natalie would do a face-to-face piece, photos, everything? An exclusive?’

  It’s been a while since I got truly excited by a story, but I can feel the proper journalist in me stirring after a long, deep, Rip Van Winkle length sleep. My news editor will do somersaults.

  ‘Yes. But no spoilers on the fresh evidence for t
he appeal, and I’d want your assurance that it wouldn’t be a dredge of hubby’s murky past. She’s very sensitive about it, as you can imagine. She doesn’t want to do anything that’s going to dim the glory when he’s freed.’

  ‘What if he isn’t?’ asks Caroline.

  ‘He will be,’ Ben says.

  I make a noise of agreement.

  ‘Why?’ she persists.

  ‘Because he’s innocent … and because he’s got a great legal team,’ Ben says, tipping his bottle to clink it against Simon’s. Ever the optimist.

  Caroline glances at me and I know she’s thinking, since when was that a guarantee? Ever the pragmatist.

  ‘He needs great barristers,’ Simon says, evenly. ‘And as a miscarriage of justice he needs attention, so Johnny Judge accepts you don’t get that many people holding placards outside the Court of Appeal and tooting vuvuzelas unless there’s a bloody good reason. We need to keep it in the public eye. Natalie’s interview could help with that.’

  Simon pronounces bloody as ‘bladdy’ and I wonder if he went somewhere properly flashy like Eton or Harrow.

  ‘And Natalie’s very media friendly,’ he concludes. ‘If you get this right, it’s made of win.’

  ‘I thought you said she doesn’t do interviews?’ Caroline asks.

  ‘He means she’s attractive,’ I say.

  ‘Correct,’ Simon says. He reclines, so laidback he’s practically horizontal, figuratively as well as literally.

  20

  Having university friends studying accountancy, business management and cognitive science meant one thing, for sure (apart from them all ending up considerably better paid than me in later life): I had many, many more hours wafting around on ‘free study periods’.

  Naturally, Ben and I finished our end of first year exams about a week before everyone else. For reasons lost to history, we did our celebrating in a hideous Scottish-themed pub called MacDougal’s in Fallowfield. If it honoured the ancient MacDougal clan, I never much wanted to meet them. It had tartan curtains, upholstery the colour of a livid wound and smelt of carpet cleaning agent and Silk Cut. Ben summed it up: ‘Och Aye The No.’

  Despite Ben and I spending almost every day together, and finding each other so effortlessly entertaining that we would’ve been able to wring laughs out of a night in the cells, I was perfectly clear in my mind there was no risk of me falling for him. Not only was he not my type, it was so easy. Attraction, I’d decided, required friction. It was based on conflict, mystery and distance. Rhys could be decidedly remote at times, in more than one way. He’d even asked me to stop coming to his gigs as it ‘put him off’. I was treated mean and, never one to defy a cliché, I was keen.

  ‘I am really really good at drinking shots,’ I announced to Ben, two vodka and Cokes down.

  ‘Really?’ he asked, dubiously.

  ‘Oh yeah. I can drink vodka to a band playing,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve only had two.’

  ‘I’ll drink you under the table!’ I cried, with the gung-ho spirit of someone who’d had a couple of large measures on an empty stomach and was talking total shit.

  Ben sniggered into his glass.

  ‘You choose,’ I added, slapping the table for emphasis. ‘You choose the drink and I’ll match you, then carry you home.’

  Ben cocked his head to one side. ‘Ever done flaming Drambuies?’

  ‘Nooooo. Bring it on.’

  He darted off to the bar and returned with a cheap match-book and glasses holding an inch of copper liquid. Under Ben’s creative direction, we lit them and made tiny lakes of fire, then clapped our palms over the rims to form the seal. We tried to whirl them over our heads before drinking, with predictably messy results.

  ‘You’re not like other girls I’ve met,’ Ben said, lightly, wiping his mouth, after round two was aflame in stomachs instead.

  ‘More sweary?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I mean … you’re, you know. Like my best friends back home. Not a girly girl. You’re sharp.’

  He mumbled the last word so I had to strain to hear it, while he busied himself with the cocktail list.

  ‘What, you’ve never met an intelligent female before?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I’ve never had a laugh with a female friend like you.’

  I could imagine Ben hadn’t had many platonic friendships with women, and I wasn’t about to inflate his ego by speculating on why this might be.

  ‘You’re not like other boys I’ve met,’ I said, with the loose lips of someone half-cut, without considering it wasn’t a train of thought I especially wanted to pursue to its destination either.

  ‘How?’ Ben said.

  ‘You look like you could be in a boy band,’ I offered, with a drunken giggle.

  Ben’s face twisted into something that looked like genuine offence. ‘Oh, wow, ta.’

  ‘What? That’s nice!’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  I continued to insist it was praise and Ben muttered something about needing to have had his sense of shame taken out along with his appendix to have gone that route. I regretted I was so bad at being sincere.

  As time started to expand and contract in the warm boozy haze, Ben’s mates from his flats joined us, and I found myself the only female in a whooping gang of seven lads. Not only that, they greeted us with ‘Oi oi!’ and a ‘Here with the wife again, eh?’

  This didn’t bother me, especially in my relaxed state, but when I glanced at Ben he was glowering.

  Amazingly enough, I was soon surpassed in the shot-downing stakes: one of them returned to the table with a full bottle of tequila, complete with plastic sombrero lid, a jumbo chip-shop-sized tub of Saxa and a pile of rather withered looking lemon wedges.

  ‘Truth or dare!’ the ring-leader, Andy, announced. ‘You game?’ He was addressing me directly.

  ‘She’s not playing,’ Ben said, abruptly.

  I turned to him. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Ron, you’re the only female here. All the dares will involve flashing them.’

  I opened my mouth to object.

  ‘Trust me, they have bigger tolerances than you and much lower standards,’ he added.

  ‘Why do you call her Ron?’ one of the boys, Patrick, asked.

  ‘Long story,’ Ben said.

  ‘They have a secret society of two,’ Andy told him.

  ‘Any interesting rituals for membership?’ Patrick asked, pulling a leer.

  ‘Why do you have to be so infantile?’ Ben said.

  ‘Being oversensitive where this lady is concerned is certainly one of them,’ Andy said to Patrick.

  I felt Ben’s pain increasing by degrees and didn’t know how to help. I didn’t want to be the meek little woman in a slew of nudge-nudge-wink-wink but I sensed anything I said would be used against us, so I stayed silent for Ben’s sake.

  ‘You in, then, or is your keeper calling the shots?’ Patrick said to me, in his Captain of the Debating Society voice. I realised I disliked Patrick quite a lot.

  Andy shouted: ‘Yeah. Let her play! It’s feminism, innit!’

  ‘I’m not being a knuckle-dragger, I’m looking out for you. What would Rhys want you to do, faced with this shower?’ Ben said to me, quietly.

  Invoking my boyfriend had the intended effect. Rhys would be cracking his knuckles and offering them outside.

  ‘I’ve had a head start on you, I’m going to sit this one out,’ I smiled, and they all booed.

  The game rolled round the group, with confessions of kinky fantasies about double-teaming crusty tutors, downing pints in one, and Andy rushing over to a window and mooning passers-by. The barmaid merely grimaced and kept flicking through the magazine she was reading at the bar, content that, despite the arses, we were more than doubling MacDougal’s take on a slow weekday evening.

  ‘Ben Ben BEN BENNY!’ Andy howled. ‘Your turn. Truth or dare?’

  Andy’s eyes flickered maliciously in my direction. I had an irrational fear the ‘t
ruth’ might involve me somehow. But what truth was there to fear, exactly?

  ‘Uh. Dare,’ Ben said.

  Andy leaned over to Patrick and they conferred in whispers, punctuated by evil snickering. I gripped the sides of my chair.

  ‘Ben’s dare is decided! Kiss her,’ Andy said, gesturing towards me.

  ‘No way, she’s not playing,’ Ben said, with a dismissive laugh.

  ‘So? Were the people on the street outside who were treated to my sweet cheeks playing?’

  Ben took on a very steely look. ‘No. Bloody. Way. Truth, or – I’m out.’

  ‘You don’t get to choose,’ Andy shook his head. ‘Get busy.’ He waggled his tongue at me.

  ‘Urgh. I’m not going to say no again,’ Ben said

  It was irrational and ridiculous but with the emphatic urgh noise I felt wounded. Ben’s determination was understandable and respectful and yet so vehement I couldn’t help but wonder if the idea genuinely repulsed him. OK, he thought I was ‘sharp’… that didn’t equate to not thinking I was a hag, did it? We all admired the work of Charles Dickens in tutorials but it didn’t mean we wanted a ride on his moustache.

  ‘OK. Ben’s a wuss. Truth! Truth.’ Andy waved his hands around in a solemn bar-room call for quiet please and attention. ‘Right.’

  Andy and Patrick went into their snickering huddle again, soon emerging.

  ‘Given you seem something of a swordsman, your truth is – who have you had since you got here? Names. Details.’

  ‘Ahhh, yeah, well, a gentleman doesn’t tell,’ Ben said, but the table banging had already begun.

  ‘No way. Truth, or dare!’ Andy shouted. ‘Truth-truth-truth-truth …’

  Ben chewed his lip. I was seized by a powerful desire to not hear his score sheet. I wasn’t bothered, as such, but his lady killing was something very separate from our friendship. I suspected he’d politely failed to notice Caroline’s crush because she was too close to me for comfort. If they were all itemised, these encounters, with a bunch of names, I’d be strangely compelled to go round putting faces and sketchy biographical detail to them, like a repentant hit man revisiting the stories of his victims.