‘I remember that ad,’ Mindy says. ‘It made you think about people you’d slept with when you had beer goggles on though. Shall I tell her you’ll take it? Move in Saturday?’
‘What am I going to do with my things?’ I chew my lip, looking around. I was going to spoil the view by sitting down as it was.
‘Do you have a lot?’ Mindy asks.
‘Clothes and books. And … kitchen stuff.’
‘And furniture?’
‘Yes. A three-bed houseful.’
‘Do you really love it?’
I think about this. I quite like some of it. I have chosen it, after all. But in the event of a house fire, I couldn’t imagine protectively flinging myself on the occasional table nest or the tatty red Ikea couch as the flames licked higher.
‘Why I ask is, you could make a deal with Rhys to leave it. You said he’s keeping the house on? It’s going to be expensive for him to go and re-buy some of the bigger items, and a hassle. You could get money for them and then get things that suit wherever you end up buying. Or you could sell everything you own and buy one amazing piece, like an Eames lounger or a Conran egg chair!’
The Mindy paradox: sense and nonsense sharing a twin room – or even a bed, like Morecambe and not-so-Wise.
‘I suppose I could. It all depends how badly Rhys wants me out, versus how badly he wants to make life difficult for me. Too close to call.’
‘I can talk to him if you want.’
‘Thanks, but … I’ll give it a go first.’
We walk over to the window and the city rooftop panorama spreads out before us, lights winking on as dusk falls.
‘It’s so glamorous,’ Mindy sighs.
‘Too glamorous for me, maybe.’
‘Don’t do that Rachel thing of talking yourself out of something that could be good.’
‘Do I do that?’
‘A bit.’ Mindy puts an arm around me. ‘You need a change of scene.’
I put a reciprocal arm around her. ‘Thank you. What a scene.’
We study it in silence for a moment.
I point.
‘Hang on, is that …?’
‘What?’ Mindy squints.
‘… Swansea?’
‘Piss off.’
8
Mindy has to go home to work on reports for a meeting the next day so we say our goodbyes outside the flat. I’m walking to the bus home when I find my feet taking me towards the library. A few days earlier, loitering in Waterstones, it had occurred to me that if I decided to start learning Italian, I could revise at the library. Revise for the night classes I am definitely going to sign up for, soon. And then, if I ran into Ben, it’d be chance. Just fate, giving a tiny helpful shove.
As I approach, my posture gets better and my height increases by inches. I try to look neither left nor right at anyone as I walk in but can’t resist, my line of sight darting about like a petty con on a comedown. Central Library has the reverential atmosphere of a cathedral – it’s a place so serene and cerebral your IQ goes up by a few points simply by entering the building.
Inside, I unpack the Buongiorno Italia! books I happen to have on me, feeling intensely ridiculous. OK, so … wow, for a romantic language, this is harder work than I imagined. After ten minutes of intransitive verbs I’m feeling pretty intransitive myself. Let’s try social Italian: Booking a room … Making introductions … and my mind’s already wandering …
Ben knocked on my door bright and early on the first day of lectures, though not bright and early enough to pre-empt Caroline, who’s the one to call the lark a feathered layabout. I was anxiously turning my face a Scottish heather/English sunburn hue with a huge blusher brush, pouting into the tiny mirror nailed over my sink. Caroline stretched her flamingo legs out on my bed, cradling a vast quantity of tea in a Cup-a-Soup mug. It was a relief to discover that the girls in my halls of residence weren’t the demented, experienced, highly sexed party animals of my nightmares, but other nervous, homesick, excited teenagers, all dropped off with aid parcels of home comforts.
‘Who’s calling for you again?’ Caroline asked.
‘Someone on my course. He gave me my ID card.’
‘He? Is he nice?’
‘He seems very nice,’ I said, without thinking.
‘Nice nice?’
I debated whether to oblige her. We’d only been friends for a week and although she seemed sound, I didn’t want to abruptly discover otherwise when she started yodelling ‘My friend fancies yooooooo!’ across the union.
‘He’s quite nice, yeah,’ I said, with more take-it-or-leave-it insouciance.
‘How nice?’
‘Acceptable.’
‘I suppose I can’t expect you to do thorough reconnaissance,’ Caroline says, looking at the photo of me with Rhys on my desk.
It was taken in the pub, both squeezed into the frame while I held the camera above us. Our heads were leant against each other – his tangly black hair merging with my straight brown hair so it was hard to tell where he ended and I began. Rhys and Rachel. Rachel and Rhys. We alliterated, it was obviously meant to be. I’d daydreamed the two intertwined ‘Rs’ we’d have on our trendy wedding stationery invites, and would’ve put a firearm to my temple if he found out.
I glanced over at it too and felt a small tremor. Things were new and passionate, and unstable, like new and passionate things usually are, and we were forty miles apart. I’d been so elated when he’d said he wanted us to keep seeing each other.
We’d met a few months previously at my local. I used to go with my friends from sixth-form and we’d all sit with pints of snakebite and black and make moony eyes at the cool lads in a local band. They even had cars and jobs, their few extra years in age representing a chasm of worldly experience and maturity. This hero worship had gone on from afar for a long time. They were never short of female company and clearly content to keep a gaggle of schoolgirl groupies at arm’s length. Then one night I inadvertently found myself in a two-player game of call-and-reply on the jukebox. Every time I put a song on, Rhys’s selection straight after would pick up on the title. If I chose ‘Blue Monday’ he’d get up and play ‘True Blue’ and so on. (Rhys was in his ironic cheese phase. Shame it was long over by the time we really were planning our wedding.)
Eventually, after a lot of giggling, whispering and twenty-pence pieces, Rhys strode casually over to my table.
‘A woman of your taste deserves to be bought a drink.’
In a moment of sangfroid I’ve never since equalled, I found the words: ‘A man of your taste deserves to pay.’
My friends gasped, Rhys laughed, I had a Malibu and lemonade and a welcome for me and mine to join the corner of the pub they’d colonised. I couldn’t believe it, but Rhys seemed genuinely interested in me. The dynamic from then on was very much his man of the world to my wide-eyed ingénue. Later I’d ask him why he’d pursued me that night.
‘You were the prettiest girl in the place,’ he said. ‘And