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“Are you talking about yearseven?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.” She gave him a serious look even though she was laughing. The agony of her eleven-year-old self felt like a long time ago, thankfully. “What of it?”
He shrugged, spreading his hands. “What can I say? I was eleven, Rachel, and not a pillar of maturity.”
“No, I suppose not. But after that…” She paused. “I mean,never. You never talked to me once all through school, over fiveyears.”
He cocked his head, frowning a little. “And you never talked to me once.”
She shook her head, frustration warring with amusement, as well as a flicker of that old hurt. Maybe she wasn’t as far removed from her eleven-year-old self as she’d thought. As she wished she could be. “Don’t put this on me. This wasn’t a case of simple misunderstanding, just like you said my leaving wasn’t. Youignoredme, Ben. You know you did.”
He was silent for a moment, staring at her, and then he picked up his menu and began to peruse it; it was big enough to obscure his entire head. “Why are we talking about this now?” he asked, and Rachel detected a slight edge to his voice that surprised her. She hadn’t meant to start an argument, but she had a feeling she had.
And yet, she realised, she wasn’t quite willing to drop it.
“Is there a reason we shouldn’t be?” she asked, doing her best to keep her voice light.
Ben lowered the menu. His expression was, unfortunately, inscrutable. “It’s just old history,” he replied, his tone as fathomless as his face. “Very old history. What’s the point?”
Whatwasthe point, Rachel wondered as she stared at him, unable to get a read on what he was feeling at all. She supposed the point was that, for her, it was all interconnected; Ben ignoring her had led to her swamping sense of insecurity, which had led, at least in a way, to her leaving Mathering. Although, to be fair, whether he could have made her stay if he had asked after all was a question she had no sure answer for, but she knew it would have been close.
But did she really want to go into all that now? Confess how insecure she’d felt, how dazzled by and desperate for him she’d been? No, not really, not when that eleven-year-old self was still hiding somewhere inside her.
“I don’t know what the point is,” she answered at last. “I didn’t mean to be mithering you about it, to use a Yorkshire word.” He smiled faintly, and she was heartened. With determined deliberation, she picked up her menu again. “What do you fancy? Dopiaza? Vindaloo? Or are you going to be boring and go for a tikka masala?”
Ben was silent, and when she looked up again, she saw he was gazing at her with a mingled look of affection and regret. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get all het up about it. It’s just like what you said this morning—you didn’t want to look to the past or the future. I’m sure I was a reyt old wazzock back then.” He smiled wryly. “I know I was. Immature and stupid. Whatever happened back then…we can be different now. Both of us.”
“Yes, of course we can.” She eyed him thoughtfully, because he hadn’t done anythingthatbad, as far as she could remember. Blanking someone wasn’t the same as bullying or even teasing them, and Ben had absolutely never done either of those things. “I certainly hope we can,” she told him with a smile. “Because I definitely hope I’m not the same as I was in secondary school.”
“You were brilliant in secondary school,” Ben told her, so sincerely, that Rachel laughed aloud.
“What? No. I was—well, a geek is putting it nicely.”
Ben frowned and shook his head. “Rachel, you weren’t. I mean—you were smart, yes. Brilliant, even. I think everyone was intimidated by you.”
“Intimidated. Right.” She shook her head, genuinely amused by his version of events, but Ben was serious. He reached over to put his hand on top of hers.
“Youwere. That first day on the bus? Yes, I’ll talk about it now. You were so confident, swinging down the aisle. When you looked at me, I felt about two inches tall.”
“What?” Now she just felt confused. “Ben, you were the one who wouldn’t sit with me. And who laughed when some boy asked if I was your girlfriend.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Ben asked. “I was mortified.”
“You? Mortified?”
He smiled faintly. “Do you know what eleven-year-old boys are like?”
“I suppose,” she said slowly, “but I thought you would have talked to me later, at least.”
“You never seemed as if you wanted me to. And, I suppose, I was a bit ashamed. I knew I’d acted stupidly, but you just seemed so above it all, Rachel, and you did all through school—like you were the queen above all us yobby peasants.”
She found herself flushing. “You make me sound like areytcow.”
“No,” he assured her, squeezing her hand, “like a gorgeous warrior queen, Boudicca or whoever. I can’t remember my history, but I was always impressed with you, and I know I wasn’t the only one.”
Rachel let out an unsteady laugh. Once again, she was being forced to revisit her version of the past; her memories were like a kaleidoscope, one twist of the dial and all the shapes reconfigured into a wholly new and unfamiliar picture.
Of course, she knew Ben’s version might not be accurate. In fact, it probably wasn’t. She definitely remembered tables of girls giggling behind their hands as she’d walked past in the cafeteria, friendless. Her memories weren’t that skewed, certainly.
