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reminded me that of
course he’d already got it, it was on my business card, and he said he’d call me
again soon.
    He called me the next morning, and we went out for dinner again that night.
    Living the high life

Hyatt Regency Hotel

Birmingham

13th December, 1999

Late at night
    I fell on my feet with this hotel. I’m not quite sure how it happened, because
I’ve never been very good at the fluttering-eyelashes, damsel-in-distress look. But
when I turned up here yesterday afternoon, looking pretty downtrodden I suspect,
with just a few clothes and things crammed into a holdall (I’ve left the rest of my
stuff at Dad’s, for now) the man behind the desk was one of the junior managers
and he did me a
big
favour. He told me that all of the executive suites were free at
the moment and I could have one of those if I wanted. And I can tell you, dear
sister, it’s been wonderful. After four miserable days in the Amish-style establishment that Dad maintains these days, I’ve at last been able to
relax
and enjoy
myself. I’ve spent half the time in the bath and half of it raiding the minibar. It
will all have to be paid for, of course, but this is going to be my last little fling
before I settle down to the serious business of sorting my life out. Meanwhile the
lights of Birmingham are twinkling away beneath my feet and all at once the
world seems full of possibilities.
    Now: I’m just going to tell you about this evening, and then I shall leave you
in peace.
    So, just a few hours ago, I decide that I might as well do the decent thing and
go to hear Benjamin’s band after all. The pub where they’re playing, The Glass
and Bottle, is only about five minutes’ walk along the canal from here. Phil and
Patrick will be there, and so will Emily: it’s high time that I caught up with her.
And there’s no danger of running into Doug Anderton, because he’ll be in London
saying “Goodbye To All That” at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (a marginally more
prestigious venue than The Glass and Bottle, I can’t help thinking to myself, but
there you go). So I have no excuse, really, for not putting in an appearance.
    On my way there, all the same, I find myself wondering why it is that I feel so
reluctant to be part of the audience tonight. It has nothing to do with musical
taste, or my suspicion that I’m in for an evening of slightly morbid nostalgia. I’m
trying to be entirely honest with myself, and I know it must be—partly at least—
because I had a tiny crush on Benjamin when we were at school, and even now, so
many years later, running into him again on Friday at the bookshop felt weird.
Not just because of the woman he’d been with, and how obvious they made it that I
was interrupting rather more than a meeting between two friends. No, there was
something else: I can hardly believe this, because I have hardly given Benjamin a
thought (truthfully) in the last decade or more, but it was still there—a stubborn
little residue of what I used to feel for him. How annoying—how
depressing
—is
that? It’s the very thing I don’t need to know at the moment. I feel that it’s now
absolutely necessary, to my health, to my mental wellbeing, to my
survival,
that I
flush Stefano out of my system as soon as possible: but what if you can never do
that? What if those feelings
never go away
? Am I unique in that respect—
uniquely hopeless—or does everyone have the same problem, deep down?
    I push open the door to the pub and exchange the black frostiness of the canalside for a blast of light and warm air and loud, competing voices.
    Patrick sees me at once, comes over, gives me a big kiss. Phil is talking to
Emily. We fall into each other’s arms. Hi, Emily, great to see you, how long has
it been, et cetera, et cetera. She hasn’t changed. No grey hairs (or at least, she’s
got a good hairdresser), still with a nice