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 62

We weren’t yet graduates, but the small matter of the graduation ball loomed. The Chem Soc one in the faded grandeur of the Palace Hotel had emerged as the front-runner and we’d bought tickets en masse. Taking a date, if you had one, seemed more important than usual and, after his effusive words at my twenty-first, I’d asked Rhys to come.

His hired penguin suit was hanging on my wardrobe door in its polythene dry cleaner’s shroud, next to my bell-skirted prom dress. I’d reminded him constantly as the ball drew nearer. Nevertheless, the call I’d somehow expected came the day before. I was in splendid isolation, Caroline and Mindy each having gone home to drop off the first wave of their possessions, Ivor back in halls for his third year, Derek thankfully apparently attending to sociopathic business elsewhere.

‘Rach. That thing, the party—’

‘My graduation ball?’

‘Yeah. I can’t go. We’ve got a gig and I’ve got to do it.’

‘Rhys!’ I cried. ‘When was that booked?’

‘Sorry, babe. It’s a last-minute thing. I can’t duck out, Drugs Ed would have my bollocks.’

I’d lost a competition with Drugs Ed. Unless it was a competition to see who could take the most drugs, this was a poor state of affairs.

‘This is really important to me. You promised!’

‘Ah come on, there’ll be other parties.’

His insistence on dismissing it as a ‘party’ riled me. This was a landmark, the last hurrah of studenthood, when I said goodbye to Manchester and the life and friends I’d made here.

In truth, things had already been slipping, slightly. Ben’s words at my twenty-first had played on my mind too. Doubt had crept in and been allowed to stay. Rhys’s eagerness to run my life started to feel less like support, more like control. His superior knowledge on every subject had become less impressive and more supercilious. His avowed loathing of ‘student nob heads’ increasingly kept him at home at weekends, though I’d pointed out he was coming to Manchester for my company, not the entire undergraduate population’s.

When I went to Sheffield instead, I landed among his band mates in the same old pub, wondering why I’d not noticed before that they never took an interest in anything I had to say. And as wonderful as the twenty-first speech was, something about it had niggled me. I’d eventually identified it as the ‘greatest girlfriend’ terminology. He liked to tell me his make of shoes and guitar were the greatest in the world too. I was a treasured Rhys possession, evidence of his taste, with about as much of a valued opinion as the Chucks and the Les Paul. Rhys had assumed, without me ever recollecting making a decision, we were moving in together after I left university. Life is about decisions, I thought. Mine were being made for me.

I’d known Rhys would pull out of the ball because the only reason to do it was to please me. There was no stake in it now: I was coming home, coming back to him. It was a time of endings and new beginnings. I’d started to think treacherous, revolutionary thoughts.

‘Do you know how much trouble I’ve gone to? I spent a bomb at Moss Bros.’

‘I’ll pay you back.’

‘It’s not about the money, is it?’

‘What is it about then?’

‘I want you there.’

‘Yeah, well. I want doesn’t always get, Princess Rachel.’

‘Great, thanks. This should come before the band. There’ll be other gigs, I only get one grad ball.’

‘Oh, come on. There’s more to life than your little world, you know. It’s not as if you’d notice whether I was there or not, after the first half hour of Nasty Spew-mantes.’

‘Why do you always make anything that matters to me sound stupid?’

‘I might’ve known I couldn’t get out of this without a huge barney.’

‘Get out of this?’

Rhys sighed. ‘Anyway. When you’re back I’ve got a flat for us to go and see in Crookes.’

‘I never said I wanted to get a flat together.’

‘Eh? Didn’t you?’

‘You never asked. You take me for granted. I feel like I’m a junior partner, or an apprentice. Not an equal.’

‘Well, act more mature and then I’ll treat you that way, babe.’

I seethed. I boiled. I said: ‘Do you know what, Rhys? I think it’s best if we say we’ve run our course.’

A bewildered silence.

‘You’re binning me because I won’t come to this party?’

‘It’s not a bloody party, it’s my graduation ball. I’m “binning” you because I’m not a teenager any more and I’m not going to be steamrollered.’

‘You really want to finish?’

‘Yes.’

Rhys had been playing it cool in this confrontation and clearly didn’t see any reason to change tack. ‘Seems an overreaction.’

‘It’s how I feel.’

‘Right then. That’s that then.’

Another silence.

‘Bye, Rhys!’ I slapped the receiver down.

After a moment’s hesitation I dialled another number on the landlord’s payphone, listening to the heavy chink as my 50p fell into the pirate’s booty pile of silver inside. We tried to chisel it open one night when we were drunk, with no success.

‘Ben, what’s happening? Want to go and get hammered?’

‘I’ve said I’ll play pool with the house-mates. Wanna come?’

‘I’d be crap company tonight.’

‘Thanks for asking me out, then!’

I started laughing. ‘I meant, I was thinking of a quiet one-to-one.’

‘Sod pool then, quiet sounds good.’

‘I don’t want to ruin a house night out.’

‘Nah, we’re going to the ball tomorrow. We’ll see plenty of each other there.’

‘OK then. The Woodstock? For old times’ sake?’

‘Can you have old times at twenty-one?’ Ben asked, sounding pleased.

I got to The Woodstock first, bought a round and found a picnic table in the beer garden. I started drinking too quickly in the muggy heat, enjoying the feel of the grass tickling my bare legs in my summer dress and sandals. I knew the worst way to deal with breaking up with Rhys was by waking up to the reality of it tomorrow with a blinding hangover, but that absolutely wasn’t going to stop me for a second.

I wondered what Ben was going to say. I didn’t want him to declare open season, to say I told you so, to reveal he’d thought it needed doing for the last three years. Mind you, I didn’t want him to exclaim you idiot either. In fact, I didn’t know what I wanted him to say. He appeared on the other side of the lawn, holding another two drinks, grinning broadly when he saw we’d doubled up. I smiled back. In Ben’s company, I was going to feel fine. This wasn’t what you were supposed to do when you’d dumped your long-term boyfriend, was it? Where was the chocolate binge, the recriminations, Gloria Gaynor? It was as if without the echo chamber of my female friends around, I was free to invent new protocol.

‘Shall we park the finals talk? Is that what’s making you anti-social?’ Ben asked, after the greeting. ‘If so, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You’re the essay queen.’

Princess Rachel crowned as essay queen. I wasn’t sure I liked the way the men in my life saw me.

‘Mmm …’ I lifted and dropped my shoulders to indicate maybe, not yet able to get the words out.

Ben rubbed the condensation off his pint glass with his index finger. I fiddled with the stem of my wine glass, enjoying the feeling of the first half glass-full hitting home.

‘How’s Pippa?’

‘Not sure. We split up.’

I was taken aback. I thought Pippa was going to be the game changer.

‘Oh, God. Sorry to hear that. How come?’

‘When I really thought about it, I knew I wasn’t going to be flying back and forth to Ireland when I got back from my trip. Seemed fairer to finish it.’

‘How did she take it?’

Ben shook his head. ‘Not brilliantly. Still. Better done now rather than later.’

‘I’m sorry. You two were good together.’

Wow. He’d not taken the option on Pippa. She was the kind of uni-pull most boys parade around their home town like the Champion’s League Cup. For a second, my imagination spooled forward to the Cleopatra-esque, peerless goddess who’d see Ben finally commit.

‘Still – now you’re clear to hit on Polly-Annas from Richmond-upon-Thames,’ I added.

‘Who?’

‘Rich girl “gappers” at Thailand’s Full Moon parties, discovering a world beyond materialism while spending daddy’s dollars.’

‘Ah. Them.’ Ben shrugged and put a hand on the back of his head.

‘So we’re both enjoying the single life,’ I said.

‘I wouldn’t say enjoying, especially.’

I paused to let the penny drop.

‘Did you say “we”?’

‘Yep. I finished with Rhys.’

Ben looked as if he was waiting for me to say Aha, not really, had you fooled. He stared in astonishment, mouth open. ‘You did? When?’

‘On the phone, earlier. He piked out of the graduation ball for no good reason. We’ve been arguing a lot lately. I lost it and told him it was over. In a shouty sort of way.’

I knew why I exaggerated. I wanted to make the point I could stick up for myself.

‘For good?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said, eyes downcast.

‘No worries,’ I said.

I dodged further questions by swerving into superficial chatter. I looked and sounded like myself. Inside I was wondering who I was now I wasn’t Rhys’s Rachel. Rhys and Rachel, Rachel and Rhys. Ben looked like his mind was ticking over too, his view of me undergoing some adjustment. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining we held each other’s gaze for longer, in the gaps between speech, or if it was the potent combination of dehydration, nostalgia and pub quality Pinot Grigio.

‘If I’m single I’ll have more time to visit friends at the other end of the country,’ I said, halfway through the evening, once the sun had gone down and the lamps had gone on.

‘Yeah, that once-a-year get together’s going to be a blast,’ Ben said, with a sour edge.

‘Ow. We might manage more than one,’ I said, nudging him.

‘Two?’

‘Why so negative?’

‘Not the same as this though, is it?’

‘Nothing will be. University’s like this little world, a bubble of time separate from everything before and everything after.’