‘No, right room,’ Caroline trilled, throwing the door open wider so Ben could see me, and vice versa.
‘Ah,’ Ben said, smiling. ‘I know there were a lot of freshers and cards yesterday but I was sure you weren’t blonde.’
Caroline simpered at him, trying to work out if this meant he preferred blondes or not. He looked at me, obviously wondering why I was the colour of a prawn and whether I was going to do introductions.
‘Caroline, Ben, Ben, Caroline,’ I said. ‘Shall we get going?’
Ben said ‘Hi’ and Caroline twittered ‘Hello!’ and I wondered if I wanted The First Person I’d Met In Halls to get it on with The First Person I’d Met On My Course. I had a suspicion I didn’t, on the basis it’d be tricky for me if it went badly and lonely for me if it went well.
‘Enjoy your day,’ Caroline said, with a hint of sexy languor that seemed at odds with it being breakfast time, trailing out of my door and back to her room.
I grabbed my bag and locked my door. We’d almost cleared the corridor without incident when Caroline called after me.
‘Oh, and Rachel, that thing we were discussing before? Acceptable wasn’t the right adjective. If you’re studying English, you should know that!’
‘Bye Caroline!’ I bellowed, feeling my stomach shoot down to my shoes.
‘What’s that about?’ Ben asked.
‘Nothing,’ I muttered, thinking I didn’t need the bloody blusher.
Surveying the Live-Aid-sized crowds milling around for the buses, Ben suggested we walk the mile to the university buildings. We kicked through yellow-brown leaf mulch as traffic rumbled past on Oxford Road, filling in the biographical gaps – where we were from, what A-levels we did, family, hobbies, miscellaneous.
Ben, a south Londoner, grew up with his mum and younger sister, his dad having done a bunk when he was ten years old. By the time we’d passed the building that looks like a giant concrete toast rack, I knew that he broke his leg falling off a wall, aged twelve. He spent so long laid up he’d had enough of daytime telly and read everything in the house, all the Folio Society classics and even his mum’s Catherine Cooksons, in desperation, before bribing his sister to go to the library for him. A splintered fibia became the bedrock of his enthusiasm for literature. I didn’t tell him that mine came from not being invited out to horse around on walls all that much.
‘You don’t sound very northern,’ he said, after I’d briefly described my roots.
‘This is a Sheffield accent, what do you expect? I bet you think the north starts at Leicester.’
He laughed. A pause.
‘My boyfriend says I better not come home with a Manc accent,’ I added.
‘He’s from Sheffield?’
‘Yes.’ I couldn’t help myself: ‘He’s in a band.’
‘Nice one.’
I noticed Ben’s respectful sincerity and that he didn’t make any cracks about relationships from home lasting as long as fresher flu, and I appreciated it.
‘You’re doing the long-distance thing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good luck to you. No way could I do that at our age.’
‘No?’ I asked.
‘This is the time to play the field and mess about. Don’t get me wrong, once I settle down I will be totally settled. But until then …’
‘You’ll collect lots of beer mats,’ I finished for him, and we grinned.
When we neared the university buildings, Ben got a folded piece of paper with a room plan out of his pocket. I noticed the creases were still sharp, whereas my equivalent was disintegrating like ancient parchment after too many nervous, sweaty-handed unfolding and re-foldings.
‘So, where is registration?’ he asked.
We bent our heads over it together, squinting at the fluorescent orange highlighted oblong, trying to orientate ourselves.
Ben rotated it, squinted some more. ‘Any ideas, Ronnie?’
My cheerfulness evaporated and I felt embarrassed. How many women did he meet yesterday?
‘It’s Rachel,’ I said, stiffly.
‘Always Ronnie to me.’
Our conversation about the stumpy passport photo came back to me and in relief and self-consciousness, I laughed too loudly. He must’ve seen my moment of uncertainty because there was a touch of relief in his laughter, too.
The best friendships usually steal up on you, you don’t remember their start point. But there was a definitive click at that moment that told me we weren’t going to politely peel apart as soon as we’d signed in and copied down our timetables.
I referred to the map again and as I leaned in I could smell the citrusy tang of whatever he’d washed with. I pointed confidently at a window.
‘There. Room C 11.’
Needless to say, I was wrong, and we were late.
9
Hope has leaked out of me, collected in a puddle at my feet and evaporated into the roof of Central Library, joining the collective human misery cloud in the earth’s atmosphere. No Ben, only the unavoidable evidence of how much I wanted to see him. On reflection, I’m not even sure Caroline wasn’t mistaken. She wears contacts and has started doing that middle-aged thing of not being able to tell the girls from the boys if they’re goths.
If Ben was here, it was only a flying visit for some obscure research purposes, and now he’s back in his well-appointed home, far, far away. Putting his Paul Smith doctor’s bag down in a black-and-white tiled hallway, leafing through his mail, calling out a hello to the equally high-powered honey he’s come home to. Blissfully unaware that a woman he used to know is such a pathetic mess she’s sitting a hundred and eighty miles away constantly re-reading the line: ‘Excuse me, which way to the Spanish Steps?’ in a bid to appear complicated and alluring.
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