the Cobras, Caroline wanted to know what he’d bought me for my birthday.
‘Typical girl things. Perfume, underwear. The grundies are for me, though.’
‘You’re a cross-dresser?’ Caroline asked, heaping a sliver of poppadom with pink onion.
‘I’ll appreciate her in it. You should see the stuff she usually wears … like a St Trinian.’
‘Shut up,’ I barked, covering my mouth to avoid spraying the table with shards of deep-fried appetiser.
‘Some men like that,’ Caroline said.
‘Not sturdy stuff, like you’re doing PE.’
‘Rhys!’
‘Ooh, I think you’ll find they do,’ Caroline said, drizzling with a zig-zag of mint sauce from a teaspoon.
‘One of my boyfriends made me do role play where I had to call him the Maharaja,’ Mindy offered, and we all politely ignored her.
‘She’s even got pants with pictures of cartoon characters on them,’ Rhys continued. ‘What’s that woolly thing from Sesame Street with a hat called?’
Face on fire, without the help of a vindaloo, I kicked Rhys hard under the table.
‘Ow, fuck! That hurt!’
I glanced at Ben to check if he’d heard any of this. He pretended to be engrossed in the menu for my sake, which made me even more embarrassed.
‘Oscar the Grouch,’ Caroline offered.
‘Grouchy? She’s chipped bone,’ Rhys said.
‘No – the cartoon creature.’
Adjusting my dress on my return from a loo trip, I noticed Ben was absent from the table. I spotted him outside, back leaning against the window. The drink was flowing at the table. Everyone was still picking at dun-coloured jalfrezis, dhansaks, kormas and anthills of clove-studded, primrose yellow rice. I squeezed unnoticed through the dining room and out the door.
‘What’s going on here?’
Ben started at the sound of my voice.
‘I needed some air. What’re you doing out here?’
I clutched my rounded belly, under the lace of my dress. ‘I reached a tandoori grill event horizon.’
He smiled.
A car with a pimped-out exhaust hurtled past, dickhead music blasting from its four wound-down windows. We said nothing until the noise faded, shivering slightly in the northern England early evening. The air smelled of wood-smoke and the spicy chicken wings shack doing brisk business next door.
‘Twenty-one, eh, Ron? Knocking on.’
‘Hah. Yeah.’
‘Got a plan? Everything mapped out? Career, marriage, kids, that sort of thing?’
‘Not really.’
‘But you’re definitely going back to Sheffield?’
‘Well yes, since the journalism course will have me.’
I was vaguely surprised at the question. Since I’d applied, been accepted, and wittered about it at great length, what else would I do?
‘What about you? You going to end the Great World Tour in Ireland?’ I asked.
Ben and his friend Mark had been planning a six-month globetrot since they were about fifteen. Ben’s redoubtable work ethic meant he was sitting on some serious savings. They’d recently bought the tickets and Ben had excitedly shown me their route on a map of Asia spread out on a table in the refectory.
His imminent departure was forcing me to face a thought I’d been trying to avoid: how were we going to stay in touch, in the sense of actually being involved in each other’s lives, beyond the odd postcard? Would his serious girlfriends be OK with me? Would Rhys start to make jokes about my Other Man that would make us all uncomfortable?
Ben and I had been this exclusive club of two, both tacitly understanding it was one no one else could join. This exclusivity would likely prove our undoing. With all firm good intentions, I couldn’t quite see it working across a geographical distance as well as gender divide. If anybody had asked if Ben and I were going to stay mates, I’d have said yes, but if you took me to an interrogation room and shone a lamp in my face and demanded to know the goddamn truth, I was pretty sure how the odds were stacked. There’d be no ‘going out for a session and crashing at his’ once time had elapsed and suspicious significant others had to sign it all off. Letters and phone calls would entail offers to visit that both of us would find awkward to keep pretending we would make, so contact would gradually dry up. In the face of various practicalities, multiplied by years, friendship would dwindle away and, worst of all, we’d want to forget and let it happen, because it would be easier that way.
‘Do you think I should move to Ireland?’ he asked.
‘Pippa seems lovely,’ I said, truthfully.
We both glanced into the restaurant to see an animated Rhys twisting a balloon into a comedy shape to entertain a giggly Pippa.
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘Only you know if you should, Ben.’
‘This is true. I don’t know.’
Say something meaningful, I thought. Tell him we’re going to stay friends and distance doesn’t matter.
‘Out of all my friends back home I was the one who never stressed about anything,’ Ben said. ‘I thought it would all fall into place. I’ve changed my mind. Do nothing, and nothing happens. Life is about decisions. You either make them or they’re made for you, but you can’t avoid them.’
‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.’
His sadness was almost palpable, like moisture in the air before it rains. Although this was Manchester, it probably was about to rain anyway. With Ben in a low mood, I wished the evening could’ve been better.
‘Sorry about Rhys, earlier. He goes too far sometimes,’ I said.
There was a gap where I expected Ben to demur, and he didn’t.
‘Why do you take it?’
My stomach flipped, full as it was. ‘What?’
Ben didn’t criticise Rhys. If I ever recounted disagreements we’d had, Ben invariably saw Rhys’s side. I feigned annoyance, but it was reassuring, considerate. The same way sensitive friends know not to join in when you’re slagging off your family.
‘You don’t seem very equal, to me. You can be so confident, but that disappears when you’re around him. It doesn’t make sense.’
My
