that’s all. Look, you might be feeling down but don’t take it out on us.’
The ‘us’ was deliberate. We stand united, even when Rhys is making a balloon poodle for another woman. Ben frowned and said nothing, staring determinedly ahead. I’d never seen him like this before. I wondered if I knew him quite as well as I thought I did.
Eventually he said: ‘To be fair, it’s pretty weird to have Oscar the Grouch in the garbage can on your crotch. What’s the message? “Here’s my junk”?’
The tension eased. I took the olive branch.
‘It was Fozzie Bear.’
‘Ah, Fozzie. He makes much more sense when wooing is in mind. I take it all back.’
‘They say “Wocka Wocka Wocka” on the rear.’
‘Hmm. All I can say is, if you were my girlfriend, I’d certainly be desperate for you to take them off,’ Ben said, smiling that disarming smile at last, though this uncharacteristically flirtatious remark had already disarmed me.
‘We’d better go back in,’ I said, nervily.
As the warm smell of spices and twang of sitars hit us, a ragged chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ started up. Two waiters appeared with a whipped-cream-topped sundae, a smattering of candles sticking out of it. As Ben returned to Pippa’s side and everyone started clapping, I blew my candles out, took a small bow and returned to my seat.
Rhys got to his feet, holding his pint of Cobra. ‘If I could say a few words—’
‘Rhys,’ I said. ‘What … um?’
‘I know this is a bit formal for a twenty-first, but you all graduate soon so it might be the last time I go out to dinner with you. I wanted to say, not only is Rachel the greatest girlfriend in the world …’ He paused here for the obligatory ripple of sighs that went round the female members of the party. Greatest girlfriend? He thought that? ‘… Since I started visiting Rach in Manchester three years ago, you’ve made me feel that you’re my friends too. I want to say how much I’ve appreciated it. I even hear that Ben went above and beyond once and smacked a bloke who deserved it, on my behalf.’
Pippa yelped with admiration and put an arm round him, a welcome correction to the lingering fear that the incident had worked an opposite effect on a previous girlfriend. Ben only looked startled.
‘You’re a great bloke. And there I was, thinking I hated students and southerners and southern students most of all. You should be my Kryptonite.’
Laughter. Rhys tipped his glass towards Ben and Ben raised his in return, still looking slightly stunned and blank.
‘To my girl Rachel. Happy twenty-first and cheers.’
‘Cheers,’ I mumbled, and we raised our glasses and clinked, drank.
I felt an adoring-envious hum from the hive mind of the group: isn’t she lucky, isn’t he nice, isn’t this lovely. I was lucky. Rhys grinned and winked at me as he sat down, the Fozzie Bear crime expunged from the record. I grinned back, grateful, amazed and a little overcome. If you clicked the shutter on life’s great camera at that second, I was on the brink of it all and I had everything I wanted: devoted boy, great friends, future plans, garlic naan.
Yet something wasn’t right. Someone who mattered was unhappy. As the discussion over the bill and where to go next began, I looked around the table at the contented faces, committing the tableau to memory. I forced myself to include Ben in the visual sweep. He was frowning, deeply, at the rubble of a near-untouched lamb bhuna.
I thought about the truism that you never know you’ll miss things until they’re gone. I missed Ben’s optimism. Clearly, it had left university before he had.
47
I check my watch as I scurry into the cinema and find that, thanks to some kind of Greenwich Mean Time prank, the clock has leapt forward by ten minutes somewhere between Sackville Street and here. Another drawback of living in the city centre and walking everywhere is you don’t get to blame the traffic.
Caroline taps me on the shoulder, folds her arms.
‘Save it,’ she says, as I embark on my excuse. ‘You can pay for my pick’n’mix by way of apology.’
We’ve taken our Friday night date into town as Graeme’s got off the red eye from somewhere this morning and needs to sleep. Caroline said she’d drink too much if we stayed in at mine and she has the in-laws arriving the next day.
She marches across the lobby of the Odeon, towering and lean in indigo denim, and starts trowelling penny dreadfuls into a paper bag. I get a gallon of sugar-free fizzy drink and we troop into the auditorium. It’s barely a third full, the screen blank.
‘Why hasn’t it started?’ I ask, adjusting my fingers on the damp weight of my cardboard bucket of liquid.
‘Because I told you it started half an hour earlier than it does. Let’s sit over there.’
I open my mouth to object and realise the end has justified the means. Following Caroline, we settle down into the seats.
‘How did the date with Simon go, last week?’ she says, folding a red liquorice bootlace into her mouth.
‘Good. It was a laugh. Dinner, goodnight kiss. Nothing more.’
Caroline chews, with difficulty, given she’s eating something more plastic than foodstuff.
‘Great!’ she says, gummed up. ‘When are you seeing him again?’
‘Um – not sure.’
‘Is he playing hard to get?’
‘I’m taking things slowly. I don’t want to rush into anything.’
‘Rushing into another nice dinner? Woah, nelly.’
‘You know what I mean. I don’t know how I feel yet.’
‘But you like him?’ she asks.
‘Yeeeees. He’s entertaining. If frightening and eccentric.’
‘You need an eccentric. You’re an eccentric.’
‘No I’m not!’
‘Of course you don’t think you’re an eccentric. No one does. Like no one thinks they have bad taste.’
‘I have bad taste?’
‘No.’
I take a noisy suck on my drink, swish the ice around with the straw.
‘Olivia says Simon’s asked Ben about you, seems very keen,’ Caroline says.
The fact Caroline’s used the very words I overheard from Olivia at the dinner party makes me think it’s a direct quote. Olivia must know Caroline will tell me this, so I partially discount it as propaganda.
