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, no,’ Ben shudders. ‘Registry office at Marylebone. We hired an old Routemaster and had posh shepherd’s pie wedding breakfast in a room above a pub. A nice one, I mean, Liv chose it. All idyllic with kids running round in the garden afterwards, we had great weather.’
I nod and he suddenly looks self-conscious.
‘Bit cliché, trendified Chas’n’Dave, Beefeater London, I guess, but we liked it.’
‘Sounds great.’ It does sound great. And cool, and romantic. I don’t care what the bride wore or want to see the album though. All right, I do.
‘Yeah, it was. No faceless hotel, DJ with a fake American accent, three million relatives glumly picking at a duff carvery that cost three million quid, none of that rubbish.’
‘That’s only a quid per head budget. Quite tight really.’
Ben smiles, distractedly, and I see the wheels turning, him remembering things that have nothing to do with this weak joke, things he’s not going to mention.
For a split second, sensing his discomfort, I marvel at my own masochism. Did I really want to sit here listening to how he promised all his remaining days to someone else? Couldn’t I have taken that as a given? Did I want to discover a broken man? No. I wanted him to be happy and it was also going to be the thing that hurt the most. That’s the reason this was such a bad idea. One of the reasons.
We sip our coffees. I discreetly wipe my mouth in case of chocolate powder moustache.
He continues: ‘Kids, not yet. Pension, yes, really cuts into my having-fun fund.’
‘Still able to spend harder than Valley girls?’
I remember days trailing round clothes shops with Ben, waiting outside changing rooms, enjoying the gender reversal. He even took my advice on what to buy – it was like having my old Ken doll become self-aware. (‘Not that self-aware if he’s behaving like a southern poof,’ Rhys said.)
‘Oh yes,’ Ben says. ‘I have
