Cover Story - 11

‘Connor,’ Shilpa tapped his arm, ‘back me up on this. Do you follow any of your exes?’

Bel squirmed. She didn’t want this man to know her middle name, let alone her personal life dramas. Why oh why didn’t she leave them at Platzki’s! Damn her nice manners.

‘Uhm …’ Connor paused. ‘Yeah, I think so? I’ve been with my girlfriend five years and I’m trying to remember who qualifies as an ex that I’m in touch with.’

‘Awww, how romantic. No one matters now, before her? What’s she called?’ Shilpa said, not faltering receiving the Has A Girlfriend information.

‘Jennifer. To be honest, it’s more that I’m casting back to my mid-twenties and I had nothing very settled before Jen. Yeah …’ Bel was glad not to be in Connor’s mind’s eye as his brow furrowed with the effort of recollection, ‘One or two, I think?’

Was Bel imagining that Connor was being far nicer, and gentler of voice, to Shilpa than he’d ever been to her?

‘There you go,’ Shilpa said, turning to Bel. ‘It’s the etiquette now. But there’s an aggravating factor … Ooh ,thank you.’

The barman presented her with her Troublemaker, from the tray he’d set down. Had she eaten, Bel wondered?

Connor sipped his Clover Club, said thank you to Bel and returned to pretending he had things to inspect on his iPhone.

‘I know her. I know Rufus’s date! Nicky! She worked with him, she was the . . .’ Shilpa made air quotes ‘ “Funny colleague frenemy”. Beware the Funny Colleague Frenemy, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Oh she sends me memes and calls me a wanker. Nothing to see here. It made me wonder …’ Shilpa paused, as Bel was weighing up how hard to tell her off, later. ‘Think you also know Tim’s date? Because that takes the absolute piss, if so. That’s sending a declaration of war that shall not go unanswered.’

‘Who can say?’ Bel said, knocking back a stiffening quantity of a Woo Woo.

‘You, of course!’ Shilpa said, fumbling her phone out and pausing, ‘Unless you don’t want to see?’

Bel gave a performative sigh. If she snapped: ‘Can we save this until later’ then she was admitting it was embarrassing and / or emotive. Somehow, in front of the coolly supercilious Connor Adams, that was unbearable. She wanted to maintain tough, bulletproof journo Bel.

‘Show me, then we can change the subject?’

Shilpa presented her screen to Bel and a double date squeezing into the frame. The phone was angled to capture a restaurant table with four wines on it, everyone with that look of a ‘kid on a camping trip’ excitement to be included. There were two familiar faces, the men’s … wait, scratch that: three.

‘Fuck, that’s Rhiannon!’ Bel blurted, despite herself.

‘I knew it!’ Shilpa said, equal parts outraged and delighted at vindication. ‘Who’s Rhiannon?’

Bel gulped. ‘Childhood friend of his. Really lovely. We’ve been on holiday with her several times. We’re still in touch, actually … or, we were. Shit!’

The hard liquor was hitting as the hard intel was hitting – it was a heady mix. She was calling up her memories of Rhiannon, of Tim’s responses to her and vice versa, and reclassifying it all as slow-burn attraction. As something stifled by circumstance. Bel had spent so much time around them as longstanding platonic acquaintances, and all the while …? Bel didn’t want Tim back, but Shilpa was right, you could care without having feelings.

‘The bare treachery! They’ve both acquired people we know, to get at us! And dropped this in a selfie bomb! If it’s even real . The question is, do we respond with proportionate force? Also, Belly, I’m just going to say it because you never will, she’s nowhere near as hot as you.’

Bel muttered indistinctly as a new level of self-consciousness was unlocked, and Shilpa continued: ‘Connor, what do you think?’ turning her phone to him.

Oh, GOD. ‘SHILPA,’ Bel hissed, properly furious-embarrassed now.

‘What would I do if my ex was posting being with someone new, who I happened to know?’ Connor said smoothly, and Bel was both utterly mortified and powerfully relieved at him deftly sidestepping the question.

‘Yes. And she’s your ex-wife. Recent ex-wife,’ Shilpa said, laying it on thick. Bel might remind Shilpa she’d said she and Rufus were as ‘as likely to reconcile as Johnny and Amber’ by the end.

‘Are the other women here your friends?’ Connor said, inclining his head at her phone.

‘No, their friends,’ Bel said, intervening before Shilpa could craft any more theatre.

‘Then if I thought the ex was doing it to get my attention, I wouldn’t give them any.’

‘Thank you , ’ Bel said, finally having a use for Connor’s chilliness.

‘I’m going to avenge it thricefold. You can’t let men go around freely doing psychological abuses on your apps,’ Shilpa said, and Connor smiled at her, amused.

Bel wasn’t imagining it, the mind-games-playing, shapeshifter Adams was leagues nicer with Shilpa, and to prove it, stayed for another round that he insisted on buying.

Aaron rejoined them and regaled them with tales of Manchester’s stupidest criminals. As an anecdotalist, he was a five-star performer and the laconic accent made it even funnier.

Despite the rocky start, Shilpa’s pleasure in being there knitted them all together briefly as if they were a quartet of old friends; she brought relaxed warmth where Bel was wary inhibition.

As they arrived back at her flat – because, of course, Shilpa had left ‘a few overnight things last time, just in case’ – pleasantly but not excessively inebriated, Bel remembered why Shilpa always got away with her transgressions: she made everything fun.