Ben says.
‘I think I know what you’re referring to. If you mean his past that is. He mentioned it.’
‘Oh. What did he say?’
‘That he’d had a thing for a married woman and she’d gone back to her husband.’
Ben nods. ‘He told me that too. He knows my views. Even if he had a grand passion for her, he shouldn’t have had a go.’
See, Caroline, I think. This is Ben. He might’ve enjoyed success in the arena, but he does not condone, or emulate, skirt stoats.
‘But he’s your mate?’
Ben shrugs. ‘He’s known Liv since uni and he’s been good to me at work. I don’t want to date him.’ He frowns. ‘I feel bad if I’ve put you off. Keep your wits about you, and you never know. You could be the making of him. I don’t quite see what’s in it for you, that’s all.’
‘Not dying old and alone?’
Ben laughs. ‘As if. Can I ask your opinion about something in return?’
‘Sure.’
‘Liv wants to move back to London in a year’s time.’
‘Oh.’ I’m not going to offer unbiased advice. This is a horse kick to the heart.
‘If I agree to it, our money won’t stretch to a house like the one we have here, down there. She wants me to let her parents buy us a giant place, near them. They’ve offered to get their little girl back down south, I think. I’ve refused. Am I being unreasonable?’
‘Your reasons are …?’
‘Aside from the fact they’re set on God-awful-ming in Surrey, it’s too much. I don’t want to be in hock to my in-laws for a fortune. Don’t get me wrong, they’re nice people. But I don’t want to be owned. I knew they were pretty formidable before we got married. This piece of incredibly well-timed generosity makes me think I underestimated them.’
‘The money isn’t available to you to buy up here?’
‘Oh no,’ Ben smiles, grimly. ‘Not that I’d take it, but no. That’s not the deal.’
‘And Olivia’s thoughts?’
‘She thinks I’m selfish. I’m endangering the happiness of my wife and security of our future children on an abstract whim. She says it’s money she’ll inherit eventually anyway. She’d be off tomorrow. She says she’s tried the north for me and doesn’t like it, experiment over, obligation fulfilled. Whereas this is the best I’ve felt in ages.’
Pathetic, given I am irrelevant, but: this last remark makes me want to hug him.
‘Difficult.’
I’m conscious that whatever I say may be repeated to Olivia, and this is none of my business. Only a few minutes ago, I was hearing how my judgement is better than Caroline’s, and yet this feels uncannily like the very thing Caroline warned me about. Ben has no one else to talk to up here, I reassure myself. This is fine. This is two old friends, chatting. Despite ‘friends’ not quite covering it.
‘I can see why you feel the way you do. There could be a compromise, where you pay them back in a certain number of years?’
‘We’re talking the kind of sum I could never fully pay back, Rachel. Repayment’s not the plan. Once we’re in there, it’ll be about filling the rooms …’
He breaks off. The kids issue. I’m definitely not asking about that.
‘I think you’re right to want to keep your autonomy,’ I say. ‘As for security, it’s not as if Didsbury’s a Soweto shanty town, is it?’
Ben shakes his head. ‘No.’
‘Olivia will come round, once Manchester improves on her,’ I add.
Ben raises his eyebrows and looks off into the middle distance, makes an equivocal ‘Hmm’ noise.
I sense there’s much more he could say but that he already feels disloyal.
There’s a heavy pause.
‘What’re Simon’s family like?’ I ask, my turn to find something to say.
‘You don’t know about that?’
‘No?’
‘His parents died in a car accident when he was about seven or eight. His aunt and uncle were made his guardians but they weren’t exactly the nurturing types and packed him off to boarding school. I think it was paid for by the life insurance.’
‘Oh, no. That’s terrible.’ I’m terrible. I cringe at the memory of myself mouthing off about ‘Mummy’. ‘I’ve said things about him being a toff …’
Ben shrugs.
‘You weren’t to know.’
The sun’s gone behind a cloud. I stare over the flat, tarmac-like expanse of water, whipped into shallow ripples by the wind. ‘That’s why I shouldn’t have said it.’
The mood has dipped. I tear a bit of leftover bread off.
‘Can I share this with the ducks?’
‘Be my guest.’
There’s a flurry of bottle-green, cream, black and yellow as the birds descend on fragments of soggy ciabatta.
‘What about the weedy one who keeps getting missed out?’ Ben asks.
‘Where?’
‘There! At the back. Poor beggar.’
I hand Ben a large lump of ciabatta and he smiles at me – not any old smile, a slightly poignant, Sunday afternoon matinee, yellow-filter-on-the-lens would you look at the pair of us soppy-inducing smile. He starts lobbing bread chunks with more over-arm throw vigour than me.
‘Got him! There you are, mate. Life isn’t as unfair as you thought.’
‘Hoo hoo, yeah it is,’ I say.
Ben gives me a sideways glance. I feel ‘A Moment’ developing.
‘Course what we’re actually doing is killing fish,’ I say. ‘Apparently the leftover bread rots and then there’s too much nitrogen in the water, or somesuch.’
‘Oh, Captain Bringdown,’ Ben says. ‘And there I was, thinking this was nice.’
44
As I hang on a ceiling strap on the bus, I’m lost in thought about orphan Simon, newly worthy of tenderness and sympathy, despite the shenanigans with the married woman. Although I trust Ben implicitly, I can’t help
