soft and hard palates to produce sounds.
‘… Rachel?’
‘Ben?’ (Like I haven’t given myself an unfair head start in this quiz.)
His brow stays furrowed in disbelief but he smiles, and a wave of relief and joy crashes over me.
‘Oh my God, I don’t believe it. How are you?’ he says, at a subdued volume, as if our voices are going to carry into the library upstairs.
‘I’m fine,’ I squeak. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine too. Mildly stunned right now, but otherwise fine.’
We laugh, eyes still wide: this is crazy. More than he knows.
‘Surreal,’ I agree, feeling my way tentatively back into a familiarity, like stumbling around your bedroom in the pitch dark, trying to remember where everything is. ‘You live in Manchester?’ he asks.
‘Yes. Sale. About to move into the centre. You?’
‘Yeah, Didsbury. Moved up from London last month.’
He brandishes a briefcase, like the Chancellor with the Budget.
‘I’m a boring arse lawyer now, would you believe.’
‘Really? You did one of those conversion courses?’
‘No. I blag it. Thought there was a saturation point when I’d seen enough TV dramas, I could go from there. Like Catch Me If You Can.’
He’s straight faced and I’m so shell-shocked that it takes me a second to process that this is humour.
‘Ah right,’ I nod. Then hurriedly: ‘I’m a journalist. Of sorts. Court reporter for the local paper.’
‘I knew you’d be the one to actually use that English degree.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. Not much call for opinions on Thomas Hardy when I’m covering the millionth car jacking.’
‘Why are you here?’
I’m startled by this, classic guilty conscience.
‘The library, I mean?’ Ben adds.
‘Oh, er, revision for my night class. Learning Italian,’ I say, liking how it sounds self-improving even as I cringe at the lie. ‘You?’
‘Exams. Bastard things never end. At least these mean I get paid more.’
The fleecy crowd are pouring round us and I know there’s only so long we can conduct this conversation, stood here.
‘Uh. Got time for a coffee?’ I blurt, as if it’s a mad notion that’s popped unbidden into my mind, tense with the fear of seeing him grasp for an excuse.
‘If we’ve got a decade to cover, we might even need two,’ Ben replies, without missing a beat.
I glow. Rough-sleepers outside could huddle round me and warm their hands.
10
We make jittery small talk about revision, both real and fictitious, until we reach the half-empty basement café. He goes to get the coffees, cappuccino for me, filter for him. I sit down at a table, rub my sweaty palms on my dress and watch Ben in the queue.
He digs in his suit trouser pocket for change, under an expensive-looking military-style grey coat. I see he continues to dress as if he’s starring in a film about himself. It’s completely unnecessary to look like that if you’re a solicitor. He should be lounging about in an aftershave advert on a yacht, not navigating ordinary life with the rest of us, showing us all up.
It wasn’t so much his looks that always had females falling all over Ben, I realise, though they hardly hindered. He had what I suppose actors call ‘presence’. What Rhys calls tossing about as if you own the place. He moves as if the hinges on his joints are looser than everyone else’s. Then there’s his dry humour: light, quick remarks that are somehow rather unexpected coming from someone so handsome. You’re conditioned to expect the beautiful to have less intellect to balance things out.
Yet while I’m gazing at him and feeling my insides liquefy, he’s chatting to the middle-aged lady serving the coffees, totally normally and unperturbed. To me, this is a monumental event. To him, I am a historical footnote. This huge disparity spells huge trouble. If this was a fairytale, I’d be staring with unquenchable thirst at a bottle labelled POISON. For now, it’s going to taste like milky coffee.
As Ben returns and sets my cup down, he says: ‘No sugar, right?’
I nod, delighted he retains such trivia. Then I spot a new and non-trivial detail about him – a simple silver band on the third finger of his left hand. It was absolutely bound to be the case, I told myself that many times, and yet I still feel as if I’ve been slapped.
‘You know, Italians only have cappuccinos in the morning. It’s a breakfast drink,’ I blurt, for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
‘Something you learned on your course?’ Ben asks, pleasantly.
‘Er. Yes.’ Here’s the point where fortune farts in my face and Ben’s wife turns out to be half-Italian. He rattles out some lyrical phrases, and I have to pretend I’m only on my first few lessons. Ben’s wife.
‘Have you been in a cryogenic chamber since uni?’ Ben continues. ‘You look exactly the bloody same. It’s a little freaky.’
I’m relieved I don’t look raddled, and try not to blush disproportionately at an implied compliment. ‘No ageing sunlight penetrates courtrooms.’
‘Same apart from your hair, of course,’ he adds, gesturing the shorter length with a chopping motion of his hand at his neck. It was longer, at university, then I got a more businesslike on-shoulders ’do after a few occasions in court when I was mistaken for the girlfriend of a defendant.
I tuck a strand behind my ear, self-consciously: ‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Suits you,’ he says, lightly.
‘Thank you. You look well, too.’ I take a sharp breath. ‘So, tell me all about your life. Married, two point four kids, belter of a pension plan?’
‘Married, yes,’ Ben says.
‘Fantastic!’ I make sure every last syllable sounds robustly delighted. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you. Olivia and I celebrated our two-year anniversary last month.’
The name gives me a twinge. All the Sloaney-I’ve-got-a-pony girls on our course were called things like Olivia and Tabitha and Veronica and we used to take arms against them in our non-posh gang of two. And he traitorously married one of them. I momentarily wish I had a Toby to wield in retaliation.
‘Well done,’ I waffle on. ‘Did you have the big white production?’
‘Urgh,
