Читать книгу Mhairi McFarlane 3-Book Collection: You Had Me at Hello, Here’s Looking at You and It’s Not Me, It’s You - Mhairi McFarlane, Mhairi McFarlane - Страница 48

‘Which side do you normally sleep?’ Caroline asks, once we’ve put a severely impaired Ivor to bed on the sofa. When taxi time arrived, he was slumped in some sort of cocktail coma and we took a call that it was best to accommodate him. We tucked him up with a towel underneath him, a washing-up bowl at his side and numerous tea towels round his head. He had a deathly pallor and his hands crossed on his chest, like an Egyptian funeral for a pharaoh who owned shit things.

‘There isn’t a normally yet. I haven’t been here long enough.’ What I really mean is, there isn’t a side to choose now the bulwark of Rhys’s bulk is absent.

‘You in the middle, then,’ she says, flicking a corner of the duvet back. ‘I’ll go here, Mindy the other side.’

Mindy comes back from brushing her teeth, clad in beautiful scarlet Chinese pyjamas. Next to Caroline’s black strappy lace-edged floral slip, I’m rather glad I left the toothpaste-stained Velvets t-shirt behind.

‘Ivor woke up,’ Mindy announces. ‘He made a noise like: BWORK. BWORK. BWOOORK. Then he ran off to the loo.’

‘Anything on the soft furnishings?’

‘No, I totally got behind him and pushed him faster than the speed of sick.’

‘Good, good.’

We arrange ourselves, then click the bedside lights off.

‘How did Rupa get a mattress this big up those stairs?’ I ask.

‘She had it winched in one of the windows, I think,’ Mindy says.

I feel my muscles relax against the springs.

‘What’s the deal with you and Ben then?’ Caroline says.

All the tension returns. And then some.

‘What do you mean?’ I try to convey total amazement to Caroline while horizontal and invisible to her, sure she must be able to feel the heat of the guilty sweat I’ve broken out into.

‘Weeelllll …’ Caroline says. ‘It’s a weird one.’

‘What is?’ I am ramrod straight, like an exclamation mark between their brackets. I will Deny Everything. Forever.

‘When that light bulb went and you were standing on that chair changing it with Simon holding on to your legs, I saw Ben give you two a real look.’

‘That’s because we were driving a coach and horses through health and safety regs.’

Silence. Feeble jokes are not going to work here.

‘It was very intense, very serious. And when Simon helped you down and managed to grope your arse in the process, I swear Ben almost winced.’

‘He’s not Simon’s biggest fan. I don’t think he thinks it’s a good idea we’re going on a date,’ I add, hoping I’ve done enough to close the subject.

‘Yeah. This is the thing. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said it was simply plain old violent male jealousy,’ Caroline says. ‘Why doesn’t he want you to date Simon, exactly?’

‘Lucky you do know better,’ I say. ‘Given Ben’s very happily married.’

‘If he’s happily married, he can’t have a thing for you?’

‘No.’

‘OK. Number one, there is no such thing as a happy marriage—’

‘Oh, Caroline!’ Mindy wails. ‘Enough!’

‘I haven’t finished.’

‘I know you haven’t, because I still have a shred of hope left,’ Mindy says.

‘—There is no such thing as a happy marriage if you mean an invulnerable one. Every relationship has its weaknesses and bad patches.’

‘You don’t have to be married to know that,’ I say.

‘I know, I know,’ Caroline says, trying to soothe me. ‘I’m not running down what you had with Rhys. But he hung around with other blokes in his band all the time. You never had to worry about female friends.’

‘I still don’t see what you’re getting at.’

‘That if I’m right and Ben’s got a soft spot for you, you need to be wary. You don’t want to cause trouble by unintentionally encouraging it. Weren’t you quite close at uni? Did you ever suspect anything then?’

‘No! And Ben would never have an affair.’ At last I’m able to say something with perfect certainty.

‘How do you know?’

‘I know. Honestly, I know it like I know my own name. There’s no way Ben would ever do that. He’s totally honourable. I wouldn’t sleep with a married man either. I hope you don’t think I would do that.’

‘Nooooo,’ Caroline says, with no idea what agonies this conversation is causing me. ‘But I think you might find yourself in the middle of something before you know you’ve started. You two were lit up like Christmas trees when you were talking to each other. No one has a crafty fag behind the bike sheds expecting to get lung cancer.’

‘I’m not smiling at Olivia, inviting her to parties and moving in on her husband!’

‘I’m not saying you’re moving in on him,’ Caroline says.

‘Look,’ I continue, with a dry mouth that isn’t all down to booze dehydration, ‘Ben and Olivia are married, Ben’s not interested in me in that way, I’m not out to get him and I’m going on a date with Simon. And that’s that.’

‘I’m not so sure everything’s great with Ben and Olivia. I get the impression it’s been a strain moving up here. She’s miles away from all her family and friends and I think she misses her old job,’ Caroline says.

Pause.

‘If you want my advice, Rach, the time you need to worry is if he ever says things at home are complicated,’ Mindy says. ‘It’s never complicated. “It’s complicated” only ever means, “Well yeah there’s someone else but I want to do you too.”’

‘What they actually mean is: it’s not as complicated as I’d like it to be,’ Caroline says, laughing.

I’m not laughing.

‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to wind you up,’ Caroline says. ‘Most likely if Ben’s feeling anything it’s nostalgia for being twenty-one. I mean, if you’d been right for each other, it would have happened then.’

‘True,’ I squeak, grateful for the cover of darkness.

‘We all get a bad attack of the what-ifs from time to time.’

‘Yeah.’

We say our goodnights. Caroline and Mindy drift into sleep.

I’m wide awake, mind racing.