I get out of my seat for a wander around the room, trying to look deeply cerebrally preoccupied and steeped in learning. The toffee-brown parquet floor is so highly polished it shimmers like a mirage. As I trail my fingers along the spines of books, I start as I see a brown-haired, possibly thirty-something man with his back to me. He’s sitting at a table tucked between the bookcases that line the edge of the room, so if you had an aerial view, they would look like the spokes inside a wheel.
It’s him. It’s him. Oh my God, it’s him.
My heart’s pulsing so hard it’s as if someone medically qualified has reached through my sawn ribs to squeeze it in a resuscitation attempt. I wander down past his seat and pretend to find a book of special interest as I draw level with his table. I pull it out and study it. In an unconvincing way, I pivot round absent-mindedly while I’m reading, so I’m facing him. It’s so unsubtle I might as well have shot a paper plane over to him and ducked. I risk a glance. The man looks up at me, adjusts rimless glasses.
It’s not him. A rucksack with neon flashes is propped near his feet, his trouser hems are circled with bicycle clips. I sag at the realisation that this must be who Caroline’s seen, too, and decide to gather my things. I pack up in seconds, no longer bothering to look appealing, on the final gamble that the law of sod will therefore produce him.
I shouldn’t have come here. I’m acting out of character and hyper-irrational in the post-traumatic stress of splitting up with Rhys. I don’t know what I’d say to Ben or why I’d want to see him. Actually, that’s not true. I know why I want to see him but the reasons don’t bear examination.
A clutch of people in fleeces and hats, who appear to be being given a guided tour, block my exit from the library. Like an impatient local, I retreat and double back round them. Deep in thought, I smack straight into someone coming the other direction.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘Sorry,’ he mutters back, in that reflexive British way where you’re apologetic that someone else has had to make an apology.
In order to perform the little tango of manoeuvring past each other, we exchange a distracted glance. There’s absolutely no way this man can be Ben. I’d know, I’d sense it if he was this close. I glance at his face anyway. It registers as ‘stranger’ then reforms into something familiar, with that oddly dull thud of revelation.
Oh Judas Priest! There he is. THERE HE IS! Plucked from my memory and here in the real world, in full colour HD. His hair’s slightly longer than the university years’ crop but still short enough to be work-smart, and they’re unmistakeably his features, the sight of them transporting me back a decade in an instant. And, despite the world’s longest ever build-up to a reappearance since Lord Lucan, Caroline’s right – he still takes air out of lungs.
He’s lost the slightly unformed, baby-fat look we all had back then, sharpening into something even more characterfully handsome. There’s a fan of light lines at the corner of each eye, the set of his mouth a little harder. His frame has filled out a little from the youthful lankiness of before.
It’s the strangest sensation, looking at someone who I know well and don’t know at all, at the same time. He’s staring too, although it’s the staring Catch-22: he could be staring because I’m staring. For an awful instant, I think either Ben’s not going to recognise me or – worse – pretend not to recognise me. But he doesn’t take flight. He opens his lips and there’s a pause, as if he has to remember how to engage his voice box and soft and hard palates to produce sounds.
‘… Rachel?’
‘Ben?’ (Like I haven’t given myself an unfair head start in this quiz.)
His brow stays furrowed in disbelief but he smiles, and a wave of relief and joy crashes over me.
‘Oh my God, I don’t believe it. How are you?’ he says, at a subdued volume, as if our voices are going to carry into the library upstairs.
‘I’m fine,’ I squeak. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine too. Mildly stunned right now, but otherwise fine.’
We laugh, eyes still wide: this is crazy. More than he knows.
‘Surreal,’ I agree, feeling my way tentatively back into a familiarity, like stumbling around your bedroom in the pitch dark, trying to remember where everything is. ‘You live in Manchester?’ he asks.
‘Yes. Sale. About to move into the centre. You?’
‘Yeah, Didsbury. Moved up from London last month.’
He brandishes a briefcase, like the Chancellor with the Budget.
‘I’m a boring arse lawyer now, would you believe.’
‘Really? You did one of those conversion courses?’
‘No. I blag it. Thought there was a saturation point when I’d seen enough TV dramas, I could go from there. Like Catch Me If You Can.’
He’s straight faced and I’m so shell-shocked that it takes me a second to process that this is humour.
‘Ah right,’ I nod. Then hurriedly: ‘I’m a journalist. Of sorts. Court reporter for the local paper.’
‘I knew you’d be the one to actually use that English degree.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. Not much call 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