You Had Me at Hello

by Mhairi McFarlane

  ‘You are,’ my voice thickens, ‘an absolutely great laugh. Not right now, right now you’re a half-pissed weepy mess. But usually.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she says, through our weak giggling. Then: ‘Will you think about what I said, about Rhys?’

  I nod. ‘I don’t think things are ever as simple on the inside as they look on the outside.’

  ‘I know. But Rhys loves you. Really loves you, and wants a future together. I know he thinks you’re the only one for him and he’d do anything for you. From where I’m sitting, that doesn’t come along all that often.’

  Once in a lifetime at most, I know. I’ve had my quota. It’s my turn to reach for the bottle.

  59

  Rhys came round to call at my parents’ house, unannounced, three weeks after I’d arrived back home from university. I was still clambering over boxes full of rolled-up posters, lever arch files and pots and pans, managing my mild depression at the anti-climax that was the end of a degree and the start of the rest of my life.

  My dad let him in and their voices floated up the stairwell, Rhys having a beyond-the-strictest-call-of-duty length of conversation about the vagaries of re-tiling the downstairs bathroom. He always made an effort with them, I thought, in delayed gratitude.

  ‘Hello,’ Rhys said, when he finally appeared in the chaos of my unpacking. ‘How’re you doing?’

  ‘All right, thanks,’ I said. I was surprised and pleased to see him. I thought we’d made things clear – not acrimonious, just clear – the night of the ball.

  I’d sat him down, by the side of the light-speckled dance floor, and explained that while I hugely appreciated his coming, it didn’t fundamentally change anything. I left out the part where I’d fallen in love with someone else and shagged him, judging it gratuitous cruelty. Not to mention indecent haste. He took this fairly well, though he meekly pointed out he’d had a pint on his way to the Palace, fancied another and would be over the limit, so would I mind him crashing on my floor? I had a feeling that time was of the essence in finding Ben, but I ignored my overwhelming instinct to cut and run after him in favour of doing things properly. There would be a tomorrow. I said yes.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked, as Rhys loitered with intent.

  ‘Yeah, good.’

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea? Once I’ve done this shelf?’ I was halfway through re-loading my books. ‘Mind you, my mum will probably make one any second.’

  Rhys came all the way in, pushing the door shut with a click.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about some of the things you said, about me taking you for granted. I suppose I have been.’

  I nodded, unsure how to reply.

  ‘What are your plans now?’ Rhys asked, finding a box that was sufficiently solidly filled to perch on.

  ‘I’m going to do this journalism course, then I’m going to move back to Manchester. Get a job on the paper there.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Looks like a few of my friends are staying on.’

  ‘If you want to give things with us a second chance, I’ll come with you.’

  ‘What? What about the band?’

  Rhys shuffled his feet. ‘Ed’s saying he’s going to move to London. Even if he doesn’t, I reckon the writing’s on the wall. And not as if I can’t come back for rehearsals.’

  ‘You’d do that for me? I didn’t even think you liked Manchester much.’

  ‘Ah, it’s grown on me. So, what do you say? Fresh start. Equal partners. Flat share strictly if you say you’re keen on the idea. My macaroni cheese some nights for dinner, if you’re very good.’

  Rhys grinned. He undeniably looked appealing, with his tarry mop of hair and black Levi denim jacket and newfound eagerness for my approval. He was a welcome trophy of my grown-up years, amid the detritus of my floral-sprigged, pine four-poster childhood bedroom.

  I thought about it. I thought about another person who, I had discovered the day before, had left the country without a goodbye. The night before the graduation ball had taken on a dreamlike, did-that-really-happen quality. Maybe it was what Ben said after all: a moment of madness, as politicians have it, high emotion and high hopes but not real life. Perhaps he realised his passion for me was just fear of change, grabbing the nearest familiar thing to hand to steady himself. Grabbing it quite literally.

  And Ben definitely wasn’t sitting here, offering to shape his life round mine. His life was continuing on the other side of the world, very definitely without me. I had to face it. Whatever was felt and whatever had been said, the fact was, he was gone for good.

  My mum shouted up from the bottom of the stairs that she’d put the kettle on, with the aim of discouraging any untoward activity. It was going to be difficult at home until I found my own place, and lonely when I did.

  There was an easy path before me, and an infinitely tougher alternative. I ignored the instinct that told me which was the right one. I said yes.

  60

  Rhys arranges to meet me at the Ruby Lounge, the venue in the Northern Quarter where his band is playing in the mid-week local showcase slot. We can have a drink, he explains, while he’s waiting for the rest of the group to arrive for the sound check. It could seem as if he’s fitting me in as afterthought but I appreciate what he’s thinking. We both want to meet when the meeting will have a conclusion that isn’t last orders, which could be fraught with risk: either loving or fighting.

  Rhys is waiting for me outside, head leaning back, one leg bent and the sole of a shoe against the wall. For a moment I don’t recognise him because of his hair – he’s grown the dark dye out and it’s back to his natural brown. I’ve only ever seen that colour on his childhood photos. He hates it because it has coppery lights in it that he deems ginger. It was a month into dating before I discovered his Byronic locks came from a bottle. (‘There are no cool ginger rock stars,’ he used to say when I’d encourage him to go au naturel. ‘Mick Hucknall?’ I used to ask. ‘I said rock, and cool,’ he’d reply.)

  The Ruby Lounge is a wood-floored, low ceilinged basement that looks great when lit violet by night, your ears filled with noise and senses clouded by alcohol. It’s starkly odd and flat by day, like seeing a Folies Bergère showgirl with her hairnet and moisturiser on. The stage area is cluttered by a drum kit, guitars, snaking leads and a microphone stand.

  I imagine staying to watch them. Seeing Rhys with his head bowed and guitar strap across his shoulder would body swap me with my teenage self, watching adoringly from the crowd, suffused with pride, almost worshipful. Maybe it all started to go wrong when he banned me from his gigs.

  ‘Drink?’ Rhys says, ducking behind the bar. ‘Sit anywhere you like.’

  ‘Coke, thanks,’ I say, as he produces a couple of glasses and squirts from a gurgling soda siphon.

  I slip my bag from my shoulder, find a table and get that peculiar sense of formality with someone so familiar. Rhys pulls out a stool and sits down. I see he’s got some stubble, has lost weight. He looks well. Very well. I’m not proud to discover that while I’m glad he’s coping, it dents my ego the tiniest bit. It’s one thing to tell someone they’re better off without you, it’s another to be presented with the hale and hearty proof.

  ‘You look great,’ I say.

  ‘Ta,’ he says, stiffly.

  ‘Your hair really suits you like that.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ he says. ‘Can’t pretend the Clairol is yours any more, can I?’

  This begs a question about who’s looking in his bathroom cabinets. I only repeat: ‘I like it.’

  Rhys launches into house valuations and we both find refuge in talking about tedious practicalities. I get the distinct feeling we’re here so he can say something he hasn’t worked up to yet.

  ‘What was happening the other day then? When I called?’ he asks.

  ‘Oh …’ I still don’t want to relive it. ‘I feel as if I’m starring in the pilot of a show called Everybody Hates Rachel, hoping it doesn’t get picked up for a series
. You haven’t acquired the powers of an omnipotent deity since we broke up, have you?’

  ‘If I had, the Blades would have won the FA Cup and those two lipstick lesbians on our street would be asking me round for fondue.’

  I laugh. ‘Could happen.’

  ‘Nah. The flat back four has been useless this season.’

  We both laugh. In the wreckage of our relationship I can see the things we once liked about each other, the foundations we built the structure on. It was so long ago we’re not history, we’re archaeology.

  Rhys glances sideways, hands clasping his elbows as he rests them on the table. He retreats from friendliness, a little.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about us and I want to get something out in the open,’ he says.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘When things went wrong with us … I’m not talking about the wedding, although I don’t think the hassle of planning it helped.’ He makes an I-haven’t-finished-face as I open my mouth to object. ‘It was before that. Long before that. Around the time you finished university. And with me, for a bit.’

  My muscles tense. I wonder where this is going. I also resist the urge to point out this means he’s admitting things haven’t been right, which is a definite change in his position.

  ‘I think I know why,’ Rhys continues.

  I try not to look very apprehensive.

  ‘I don’t know if you knew or what, but – I was seeing someone else for a while.’

  Whoosh. Right out of leftfield. ‘What?! Who?’

  ‘Marie. At The Ship.’

  ‘The big blowsy punk fan-girl who always flirted with everyone? The barmaid?’

  ‘She was voluptuous.’

  I ignore the ill-judged gag. ‘When?’

  ‘Last few months, before you came back from university. And a little while after. It was completely over by the time we moved to Manchester.’

  ‘Why?’ Might as well get the full set of the Ws – Who, When, Where, Whatthefuck?

  ‘She came on to me. I thought we were going to settle down after you graduated. I wasn’t seeing much of you and I suppose it felt like my last chance to muck about. Which sounds shit, but there it is.’

  I let this sink in. ‘Did you love her?’

  Rhys snorts. ‘No. I’m not just saying that. Absolutely not.’

  ‘Did you ever consider leaving me for her?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It wasn’t anything. We had a future. Or so I always thought.’

  ‘Is this why you didn’t like me coming to your gigs? I cramped your style with groupies?’

  ‘No, you really did put me off. One of the reasons I never told you about Marie before is I knew you’d start suspecting me of everything. I’ve got no motive to lie here, have I? There’s nothing else.’

  And there I was, arrogantly thinking I knew the nature of the beast better than Caroline.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘It was about time, that’s all. I thought you should know. Sorry I didn’t tell you before, but, you know …’

  ‘No, I don’t. We’ve split up and you think now’s the time to put this in my head?’

  ‘I thought you might go ballistic and leave me. You’ve got that covered.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, well if it’s only about you and the effect on you then sure, throw it all in.’

  So much for polite formality. I’d like to hurl one of the stools at him. He looks an odd combination of three-parts-mortified to one-part-gratified. As if he wanted proof I cared. It makes me even angrier.

  I re-run history in my head. ‘Were you going to see her the night of my grad ball? It wasn’t a gig, was it?’

  Rhys squirms. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘OK, maybe.’ He takes a sip of his Coke. ‘That was bad. I came through in the end, though.’

  ‘Sorry, am I supposed to be thankful you came back to me?’

  ‘I never left you!’

  ‘No, that’s why it’s called cheating, Rhys. You were giving me shit about coming home to you and all the time you had her on the side? It’s so … scummy and low. And cheap …’

  He ruffles his hair and nods, stares into his glass. I test my feelings. Upset. Very upset. How much of that upset is over the simple fact of Rhys’s infidelity and how much is because it magnifies my mistake that night, I can’t yet tell.

  ‘All your friends knew? David … and Ed …?’

  ‘Some of them had an idea, yeah.’

  ‘They must’ve been laughing at me. Even more than usual.’

  ‘No! They said I was an idiot … I half thought you might meet someone at uni. I was proving something to myself, because she was there, and I could.’

  ‘Future-proofing against any blows I dealt to your ego?’

  ‘Yes, that. You’re better with words than me.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do with this information, other than churn on it and want to rip your gingery hair out?’

  ‘I want to tell the truth. Clean slate. I always thought you’d guessed, or someone had said something,’ Rhys continues. ‘We had that barney over your party. Then you were different after uni. More distant. More into making the rules. And I think everything changed between us from then on. It was never quite the same again.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘No. You wanted to move back to Manchester. Get away from the Sheffield circle.’

  ‘Do you think I’m so unassertive I’d never have said anything if I’d suspected?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking half the time, Rachel. “Let’s have a DJ for the wedding. No, actually, let’s break up” being a case in point.’

  ‘I never knew,’ I say. In retrospect, my only clue was Marie being slow to serve me at the bar, and that didn’t distinguish me much from the other customers.

  ‘I didn’t tell you to hurt you, Rach, honestly. I didn’t even know if it would, after all this time and with all that’s happened. I want to be completely honest and hold my hands up and say, I’ve been crap. Cards on table. I know you don’t think I can do that and so I’m saying, totally, I could’ve done a lot better. And you’ve been better than me.’

  Now I wrestle with my conscience. Rhys might have been unfaithful, but there’s not as much to choose between us as I’d like. Does it make it better or worse that he felt less for the other person? One thing’s for sure, I don’t owe him blissful ignorance any more.

  ‘I slept with Ben at the end of uni,’ I say, baldly.

  Under the designer stubble, Rhys changes colour. ‘Ben?’

  ‘On my course. You know. We saw him the other day.’

  ‘What – that bloke in town?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When we were split up. The night before the graduation ball.’

  I see Rhys add a few things up and come to the swift conclusion that he can’t push the table over and call me a faithless slag-bag.

  ‘Ben,’ he spits, as if it’s in inverted commas, as if he might’ve lied about his name. ‘Two-faced wanker. Nutless chimp.’

  He plays with a square beer mat, knocking each of its sides against the table in turn. ‘The once?’

  I nod.

  ‘That’s not like you.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I feel the discomfort of Rhys’s incredulous stare. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’

  ‘Do you want me to draw you a diagram?’

  I flinch.

  ‘Can’t have been much of a shag if you came straight back to me,’ Rhys says. ‘You did it to prove something?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Why, then? I know you. You’re not the one-night-stand sort.’

  ‘Is a one-off worse than months?’

  ‘I took it because it was on a plate. You would’ve had a reason.’

  ‘I liked him.’

  ‘That was why you finished with me? The first time?’

  I shake my hea
d. He tries for a laugh that comes out leaden.

  ‘Really? Bit of a coincidence. Bye bye Rhys, hello Ben, bye bye clothes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Here I was thinking we had problems because I was playing away and it was because you were.’

  ‘I didn’t play away as such. We’d split up.’

  ‘Ah, come on. I’m not for a second saying what I did was OK but we’re both in our thirties so how about we act like it, eh? You sleeping with someone else within hours of ending it isn’t exactly total devastation. You’d obviously worked up to it while you were with me.’

  He has a point.

  ‘You’ve been in touch with him again?’ Rhys asks, frowning.

  When I decided to come clean about this, I hadn’t thought any steps ahead.

  ‘Kind of. Bumped into him, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re not seeing him again?’

  ‘No. He’s married.’

  Heavy pause.

  ‘Yet you’re trying to get back into his Dior Homme trunks, are you?’

  I bristle with shame. ‘Of course not. I thought you didn’t remember Ben.’

  ‘Something about finding out he fumbled with my girl has brought it all flooding back. Sneaky southern twat.’

  I notice the lack of ‘ex’ prefixing ‘girl’. Possibly Rhys does too.

  ‘Alright,’ he says, getting himself under control. ‘Alright. I might mind the thought of you two together like I’d mind a brain haemorrhage but I didn’t ask you here to kick off.’

  ‘Why did you ask me here?’

  ‘To ask you for the last time. Let’s stop this and stay together. If I was slick I’d have cued up Al Green. But I’m not, and I don’t know how to work the set up in the DJ booth.’

  And if I’d really thought about it, I would’ve known this was what it was about. Rhys wouldn’t suggest an occasion like this to make either of us feel better. Not because he’s nasty but because he’s not one for gestures. What you see is what you get. Except when you don’t see him for a while and a woman with peroxide hair, cobweb crochet and oxblood Doc Martens gets him instead. Do I want to go back? I have to ask myself all over again.