‘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 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,