Harriet Evans - Love Always

‘That’s how she wanted it. Like she wanted people to remember her as soon as she’d gone. It’s weird, when she was alive she didn’t seem to care about al that, her reputation as a painter. Almost like, I’m dead now, you can start looking at me in the way I want.’ I shake my head. ‘That’s what my uncle said, too.’

‘Who’s on the committee?’

‘Louisa, Octavia’s mum. She and Mum aren’t exactly close.’ I pause and check my phone. Ben watches. ‘Me. And Guy.’

‘Guy?’

‘He’s the Bowler Hat’s brother.’ He looks blank. ‘Louisa’s brother-in-law. He’s a nice guy.’ I snort at this unintentional pun; Ben shakes his head. ‘And that’s it.’ I stop and raise my hands, to buy some time. Two girls behind us at the bar shriek with laughter, and I look over at them; they’re both in vintage pin-tucked shirts, jeans and boots, and one, who has her hair in a loose bun and wears an apple-green cardigan, has a beautiful gold necklace hung with about five different antique charms: a bird, a heart, a little apple. I take a mental picture of her.

Ben puts his drink down. ‘So, what about your mum? What are you going to say to her?’

I push the pieces of the beer mat away and turn to him, admiring again – as I do each time I look at him – the new, hair-free Ben. ‘Wel , perhaps it’s the funeral, perhaps it’s everything with Oli, and trying to keep the business together, but I’ve sort of realised I can’t be that person in her life any longer. I just can’t do it.’ I raise my shoulders and drop them again. ‘She makes me . . . Agh. Never mind.’

‘Makes you feel what?’ Ben’s voice is soft and kind. I find myself struggling not to cry.

‘She makes me feel not very good about myself sometimes,’ I say in a soft whisper. ‘But that’s – that’s family, I suppose.’

‘No, Nat,’ Ben says gently. ‘It’s not. Not in that way.’

As I’m speaking, the iPhone buzzes and a text appears in a box, lighting up the screen. We both look down, force of habit.

Ben the beardy guy who fancies u?! Bel you laters. Ox

I snatch the phone up and shove it in my bag, but I know it’s too late, that Ben has seen it already. I gabble, to say anything, anything.

‘Anyway, I suppose, yeah. You start to realise you have to distance yourself sometimes, and that’s just the way it is, I guess.’

‘Yes,’ Ben says. ‘I think you do.’

I raise my head, look at him. Ben finishes his drink in one long gulp. ‘Ah, I’m going to get another drink,’ he says, standing up. A wave of embarrassment crashes over me. It’s real y hot in here, crowded with a yeasty, hot, old-man smel , and suddenly I wish we hadn’t gone for a drink, that I was at home in my bedsocks on this cold night and didn’t have to wait for Oli to turn up, whenever that might be.

But when Ben comes back, carrying a pint this time, he looks thoughtful. He puts my drink and some crisps down on the table. ‘Hope you like bacon. Tania loathed bacon crisps, I haven’t had them for ages.’

‘That’s my favourite,’ I say, ripping into the bag. ‘Thanks. So . . .’ I eat a few more crisps, trying to sound casual, and I change the subject.

‘When we met in the coffee house that day a couple of weeks back, when Oli and I were . . . I didn’t know Tania wasn’t working with you any more.

Why’s that?’

Ben looks blank. ‘We’re stil working together.’

‘She said she wasn’t. I introduced her to Oli and said you were her boyfriend and you worked together and she said, Not any more.’

‘Oh,’ said Ben. ‘Bit of a misunderstanding then. She meant we’re not going out any more. We’re stil working together, yeah.’

He says it as though it’s not a big deal. I gape at him. ‘You guys – you split up? I didn’t know that.’

‘Wel , yes.’ He scratches his shoulder, reaching behind with his arm and real y concentrating, as if it’s important to scratch it properly.

‘But – you never said. How – when? When was it?’

‘A month ago,’ Ben says. ‘Yeah.’ He looks down into his pint. ‘It’s pretty sad.’

‘Was it – was it a bad break-up?’

He looks up and around the crowded pub but doesn’t meet my eye. ‘It wasn’t good.’

He won’t look at me. Even though Ben is pretty chil ed, he’s stil a bloke. There’s a lot of stuff you just don’t get out of them.

‘How long –’ I begin, but he says quickly, ‘Yeah, two years. It was painful. But we get on, that’s why we’re stil working together. It’s weird sometimes, but . . . it’s for the best, I suppose.’

‘Can I ask what happened?’ I push the mess I’ve made with the new mat out of the way, embarrassed.

‘Nothing real y.’ He looks at me now. ‘Just that . . .’ He pauses. ‘We were together for two years and . . . Yep.’

‘“Yep”?’

Ben smiles. ‘Wel . . . I’ve come to realise – we both did – that it’s better to be alone than be in a relationship that’s not right.’

I nod emphatical y. ‘Sure.’

‘And if you know you don’t want to be with that person, that you don’t love them any more, it’s best to do something about it sooner rather than later.’

‘You don’t sound like most boys I know,’ I say. ‘Most of them stick with it but they behave so craply the girl eventual y has to dump them.’

Ben looks cross. ‘I hate the way people just assume al men are going to be like that.’ He mimics a busybody with a quavering voice, ‘“Oh, he’s such a useless man !” Real y pisses me off. Girls do it, mainly. Girls shouldn’t do it. They shouldn’t assign gender roles. They know what it’s like.’ He frowns, so deeply that I laugh.

‘Hel o, second-wave feminist!’ I hold up my hand. ‘You go, girl!’

‘Everyone should be a feminist,’ Ben says. ‘I don’t understand people who say, “I’m not sure I’m a feminist.” It’s like saying, “I think I might be racist.” You get my mum on the subject. Wow.’

Ben’s mum is a professor of history at Queen Mary and Westfield Col ege. She is amazing – what my friend Maura who lives round the corner cal s a Necklace Lady – one of those cool fifty-plus women with big frizzy hair who wear draped jersey and huge, bold, signature necklaces.

‘My mum doesn’t believe in al that,’ I say. ‘Which is so weird, when you think about it. She acts like a young ingénue in a Jane Austen novel when any man speaks to her, al batting eyelashes and trembling voice. And she’s tough. She raised me on my own, hardly any money, without a dad.’

‘Do you ever wonder who he was? Your dad?’ Ben asks. ‘You never talk about it.’

‘A bit more lately, what with everything,’ I admit. ‘It’s made me think about al that stuff more. Where you come from, who your family is.

Etcetera.’

‘Just “Etcetera”?’ He smiles, and I think how nice it is to talk about this with someone, I never do.

‘Have you ever thought it might be someone you know?’

‘No, not real y,’ I say. ‘I think it real y is just some guy she never saw again.’

‘I know, but—’ Ben puts his pint down and wipes his forehead. The noise in the pub seems to go up a notch, al of a sudden. ‘Your mum – I mean, you don’t necessarily believe what she says al the time, do you?’

‘I don’t, sadly. Why?’

‘Wel , it must be something you think about. Half your family tree is missing. Where you come from, isn’t it interesting?’

‘I suppose so,’ I say. ‘Like your grandfather – you’ve always been interested in his family, the Muslim side.’

‘He’s not Muslim, he’s Hindu.’

‘But I thought he was from Lahore, from Pakistan?’