‘It was touch-and-go, though, for a moment, wasn’t it?’ Ben says, seeing right through me.
As we’re being honest, I go with it. ‘Yeah. It was. I didn’t know what you were going to be like. I didn’t know what mood you were going to be in. I didn’t know whether you were coming to sling arrows at me or to be nice. I just didn’t know.’
‘Sling arrows?’ he half laughs. ‘You think I’m aggressive?’
‘No,’ I say, moving instinctively towards him. And then I remember myself, the situation we’re in, and I stop. ‘Never aggressive. But … complicated.’
He nods, taking that for what it is.
I go to the hot tap by the sink to splash boiling water into a mug with a peppermint teabag for me. For Ben, I flick on the super-duper coffee machine with far too many moving parts.
‘I can’t work out how to froth milk yet, so are you OK if I pour milk in at the end?’
He smiles. ‘Sure.’
I can feel Ben watching me while I work, and then his eyes drift around the wide open-plan space. I hear him whistle through his teeth. ‘This place isbig.’
‘Mmm,’ I say distractedly, because I think I might be ableto get the milk to froth if I concentrate on which combination of buttons to push. No, I can’t do it. I give up and hand Ben his coffee and guide him towards the seating area. The huge white modern squared-off sofas aren’t the comfiest and he shuffles a bit on one of them when he sits down next to me.
I hold my cup of tea as if it’s a shield. Outside, the London skyline is murky and grey.
Ben exhales long and deep. ‘I don’t know what to say, now I’m here.’
‘Why did you come?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. I knew Ollie had come. I knew he’d seen you.’
‘He told you?’
‘Was it supposed to be a secret?’
‘No, of course not,’ I say. ‘He’s my friend. He’s a good listener.’
‘He is. I don’t know what I’d have done without him there. He saved me. Picked me up off the floor, literally and figuratively. He’s always been there when I need him, you know?’
I think of Ollie telling me what I needed to hear the night before I walked out, holding me, saying that whatever happened he’d be there for me. ‘Yeah. He is. He’s a good friend.’
‘He’s my best friend,’ Ben says, without hesitating. ‘I don’t have that many.’
‘What? Of course you do.’
‘I gather people,’ Ben says. ‘I collect people. But no one sticks around. They all leave in the end.’
Is he referring to me? ‘Oh,’ I say.
‘I’m starting counselling.’
My mouth drops. ‘Are you?’
‘There’s a lot to dig through. I think my parents have something to do with it.’
‘You think?’ It slips out of my mouth before I can stop myself.
He gives me a sideways smile. ‘Yeah, yeah, I know. Or, rather, I do now. But isn’t it always the parents?’
I think of my mum – strong, always there to point me in the right direction when I get it wrong. No. It’s not always the parents. But, for Ben, it might have been in some way.
‘But I’m an adult now and I need to look after myself and not rely on other people all the time. I relied on our foursome at uni because I couldn’t really rely on my parents. I created a family in place of one that was there in name only. Me and my family, welookedlike a family. But it wasn’t that real. Whereas our foursome, we were real.’
