Ben said:
‘Hello.’
‘Hello.’
A beat while we remembered what we were here for. ‘Name?’ Ben said.
‘Rachel Woodford.’
‘Woodford … W …’ He started riffling through boxes of cards. ‘Gotcha.’
He produced a rectangle of cardboard with the name of our halls and a passport photo affixed to it. I’d forgotten I’d sent a handful from a not very flattering session in a shopping centre photo booth. Really bad day, Meadowhall, pre-menstrual. Face like I’d woken up at my own autopsy. Might’ve known they’d come back to haunt me.
‘Don’t laugh at the picture,’ I said, hastily, and potentially counter-productively.
Ben peered at it. ‘I’ve seen worse today.’
He clamped my card in the machine, took the plasticated version out and inspected it again.
‘I know it’s grim,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘I look like I’m trying to pass a dragon fruit.’
‘I don’t know what a dragon fruit is. I mean, other than a fruit, I’m guessing.’
‘It’s spiky.’
‘Ah OK. Yeah. I ’spose that’d sting a bit.’
Well. That had gone beautifully. Seduction 101: make the attractive boy imagine you straining on the toilet.
This was straight from my greatest hits back catalogue, by the way. Quintessential Rachel, The Cream of Rachel, Simply Rachel. When put on the spot, the linguistic function of my brain offers the same potluck as a one-armed bandit. Crank the handle and ratchet the tension, it rings up any old combination of words.
Ben gave me a smile that turned into laughter. I grinned back.
He kept the card out of my reach.
‘You’re on English?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me too. I haven’t got a clue where I’m meant to be for registration tomorrow. Have you?’
We made an arrangement for him to stop by my room the next morning so we could navigate the arts block together. He found a pen. I scribbled my room number down for him on the nearest thing to hand, a spongy beer mat. I wished I hadn’t spent last night painting every one of my fingernails a different colour, which looked pretty silly in the light of day. I printed ‘Rachel’ in un-joined up letters neatly below, as if I was writing out a label for my coat peg at primary school.
‘About the picture,’ he said, as he took it. ‘You look fine, but you might want to jack the seat up next time. It’s a bit Ronnie Corbett.’
I slid it out again to check. There was an acre of white space above my dishevelled head.
I blushed, started laughing.
‘Spin it,’ Ben mouthed, rotating an imaginary photo booth stool.
I went redder, laughed harder.
‘I’m Ben. See you tomorrow.’
In the style of a policeman in traffic, Ben waved me away with one hand and the next person forward with his other, mock imperiously.
As I dodged round the rest of the queue, I wondered if the well-spoken girl in the room next door to me was too upper middle class to go for a restorative greasy spoon breakfast. On impulse as I left, I glanced back towards Ben, and he was watching me go.
4
In some workplaces, everyone has clusters of framed family portraits on their desk, a tumbler of those novelty gonk pens with tufts of fluff at the end and a mug with their name on. From time to time they cry in the loos and confide in each other and any personal news is round the office in the morning before the kettle’s gone on for a second time. Words like ‘fibroids’ or ‘Tramadol’ or ‘caught him trying on one of my dresses’ are passed about in the spirit of full disclosure.
Mine isn’t one of those workplaces. Manchester Crown Court is full of people moving briskly and efficiently about the place, swishing robes and trading critical information in low voices. The mood is decidedly masculine – it doesn’t encourage confidences that are nothing to do with the business in hand. Therefore I’ve masked physical evidence of my emotional turmoil with an extra layer of make-up, and am squaring my shoulders and heading into battle, congratulating myself on my varnish-thin sheen of competent poise.
I’m getting myself one of the Crown Court vending machine’s famous dung-flavoured instant coffees, served in a plastic cup so thin the liquid burns your fingertips, when I hear: ‘Big weekend was it, Woodford? You look cream crackered!’
Ahhhh, Gretton. Might’ve known he’d burst my bubble.
Pete Gretton is a freelancer, a ‘stringer’ for the agencies as they’re known, with no loyalties. He scours the lists looking for the most unpleasant or ridiculous cases and sells the lowest common denominator to the highest bidder, often following me around and ruining any hope of an exclusive. Misdeed and misery are his bread and butter. To be fair, that’s true of every salaried person in the building, but most of us have the decency not to revel in it. Gretton, however, has never met a grisly multiple homicide he didn’t like.
I turn and give him an appropriately weary look.
‘Good morning to you too, Pete,’ I say, tersely.
He’s very blinky, as if daylight is a shock to him, somehow always reminding me of a ghostly, pink-gilled fish my dad once found lurking in the black sludge at the bottom of the garden pond. Gretton’s evolved to fit the environment of court buildings, subsisting purely on coffee, fags and cellophane-wrapped pasties, with no need for sunshine’s Vitamin D.
‘Only joking, sweetheart. You’re still the most beautiful woman in the building.’
After a conversation with Gretton you invariably want to scrub yourself with a stiff bristled brush under scalding water.
‘What was it?’ he continues. ‘Too much of the old vino collapso? That fella of yours tiring you out?’ He adds a stomach-turning wink.
I take a gulp of coffee with the fresh roasted aroma of farming and agriculture.
‘I split up with my fiancé last month.’
His beady, rheumy little eyes lock on mine, waiting for a punchline. When none is forthcoming, he offers:
‘Oh dear … sorry to hear it.’
‘Thanks.’
I don’t know if Gretton has a private life in any conventional sense, or if he sprouts a tail and corkscrews into an open manhole in a cloud of bright green special effects at five thirty p.m. This topic of conversation is certainly uncharted territory between us. The extent of our personal knowledge about each other is a) I have a fiancé, now past tense, and b) he’s originally from Carlisle. And that’s the way we both like it.
He shuffles his feet.
‘Heard anything about the airport heroin smuggling in 9 that kicks off today? Word is they hid it in colostomy bags.’