You Had Me at Hello by Mhairi McFarlane Read Free Book Online Page B

wrong, once I settle down I will be totally settled. But until then …’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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?
    â€˜It’s Rachel,’ I said, stiffly.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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