hard that my retinas detach). If I get even the slightest suspicion that a girl might be interested in me, my brain tends to immediately draw up a laundry list of reasons why she actually definitely isn’t.
But with Alice, that list has been getting harder and harder to compile. Over the past ten weeks – ten weeks of private jokes and late-night chats and shared microwave meals – she’s made it pretty clear that she likes me. And I like her too, I guess. She’s funny and pretty and we get on really well, and I suppose I always thought that tonight – the night of the play, the last night before the Christmas holidays – there’d be enough booze and drama and emotion to give us the push we needed.
But then that Daphne girl showed up backstage and sort of knocked everything off track.
It sounds stupid when people say they just ‘clicked’ with somebody, but I can’t think of another word for it. How else do you explain an hour of silly, funny, effortless conversation with a total stranger? Or that weird, tingly electricity in my chest every time I made her laugh?
So, maybe it won’t happen for me and Alice tonight after all. Or maybe it will.
It definitely feels like something will happen tonight.
There’s a flurry of whispers from somewhere nearby – two people bumping into each other in the darkness, forming a momentary alliance in their search for me. And then there’s that whooping seal bark of a laugh that immediately identifies one of them as Harv.
I shuffle further back into the hedge, but somehow I’m sure he won’t clock me. Call it intuition, or a sixth sense, or just being a bit drunk and horny, but I know that either Daphne or Alice will find me before anyone else does.
When we spilled out of the bar after Marek shouted, ‘Let’s play Sardines!’ I looked around to see both of them smirking at me. ‘I think Ben should hide,’ Alice said, and Daphne nodded her agreement: ‘Yep. Ben seems like a natural hider.’ I filed that statement away for further examination when I was less pissed, and then tore straight off into the maze.
Right now, just the idea of sitting here, hidden, with either one of them seems outrageously – ridiculously – exciting.
In fact, as I try to keep perfectly still, my heart going like the absolute clappers, I can’t decide who I’d rather found me first.
London, 24 December 2020
‘So … are you coming, or not?’
‘I mean, obviously I can come. If you want me to?’
Daphne breathes out heavily, but still resolutely refuses to make eye contact. ‘Do you want to come?’ she asks her reflection in the mirror.
I loiter by the bare Christmas tree, picking at stray needles. ‘Well, if you reckon I should, then maybe. I guess.’
She snaps the brush back into her mascara bottle with impressive force. ‘Ben, seriously. I’m starting to feel like Jeremy Paxman here. Can you just give me a yes or no?’
‘Well, I don’t know. Will they be expecting me? I came last year.’
‘Yes, and what a great success that was,’ she says to the ceiling, and there’s a pause where we both remember what a great success that was.
‘Listen …’ she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘It’s Christmas Eve drinks at my boss’s. I don’t even particularly want to go, so there’s no reason why I should drag you along too.’
‘Well, like I say, I’m happy to come if you want me to.’ She ignores this completely, so I add: ‘But you clearly fucking don’t.’
Finally she spins round to look at me. ‘I want you to come if you’re going to actually talk to people and try to have a good time. I don’t want you to come if you’re going to stand in the corner like a grumpy arsehole. OK?’
She snatches up her bag and walks out into the hallway.
Daff is of the opinion that fights are A Good Thing in a relationship. A Healthy Thing. Or at least she used to be of that opinion, back when our fights weren’t really fights, but silly little flare-ups over nothing. I’d get sulky at her for taking too long to get ready, or she’d shout at me for farting or imperfectly folding a bedsheet. And then after a volley of yells, we’d break off, hugging and giggling at the idea that we’d caught ourselves bickering like a sad old couple.
But at some point during the last couple of years, something changed. That fun phoney-war play-fighting turned into this awful tight-lipped trench combat; each of us working doggedly to gain an inch of ground over the other, occasionally lobbing a passive-aggressive grenade into no man’s land.
How did we get here? I wonder. From calmly discussing our evening plans to bitter, seething resentment in – what was it – a minute and a half? That’s got to be some kind of spontaneous marital-spat world record. Because the truth is, everything seems to lead to a fight nowadays. Every nod or murmur or question feels loaded and potentially explosive, like it has to be patted down carefully for hidden meaning. I’m pretty sure this is my fault – in fact, I know it is. It’s all tangled up with everything that’s happened over the past couple of years, and my general sense of self-worth dribbling slowly down the plughole. I can see the problems clear as day, I just can’t figure out how to fix them. Maybe they can’t be fixed.
I follow Daff out into the hallway, where she’s now yanking her long, curly black hair into a bun and fastening it with one of those Venus flytrappy things. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I just always feel like such a spare part at these things. I can feel them all looking straight through me when I’m speaking.’
‘Ben, that’s not true,’ she snaps. ‘And if it is true’ – which means she knows it is – ‘then maybe it’s because you make literally no effort with anyone.’
‘I do make an effort,’ I protest, but we both know this is bollocks. I stopped making an effort a long time ago. Not just with small talk – with everything.
She grabs her coat off the banister, and sighs. ‘Look, don’t worry, honestly,’ she says. ‘You know what these things are like. It’ll just be boring work chat. If I go now, I can be back by ten.’
‘OK, fine,’ I say, and the look of relief that flashes across her face confirms something I’ve suspected for a while: that I’ve become a weight on her at these events. Or worse than a weight: an embarrassment.
Daff is a literary agent. She works for a big, important company and her clients are all big, important authors and screenwriters. Attending one of her work dos is like lowering yourself into a boiling cauldron of success – you’re never more than six feet from a BAFTA winner or a Booker Prize judge. So I suppose I can’t blame her for cringing slightly when I’m mumbling to these people about how I knock out the odd press release for a living. It doesn’t make me feel great either. The truth is, I’ve spent a lot of time lately wondering what Daphne is still doing with me, and at this thing tonight, I know everyone else will be wondering it too.
‘Is you-know-who going to be there?’ I ask, as she shrugs her coat on. ‘The Big Man?’
I’m hoping this might make her laugh, just to prove I can still do that, at least. Even a sarcastic hollow chuckle would suit me fine. But instead she just rolls her eyes.
‘Yes, Rich will be there. Is that honestly why you don’t want to come?’
‘No, of course not. I was only—’
‘Because you don’t have to talk to him, you know. You could try and talk to some new people.’
‘No, I know. Well, he pretty much ignores me anyway, so …’
‘Maybe if you actually tried