'You were using him?'

'Not intentionally.'

'That's going to be on your headstone. Here Lies Rachel Woodford. Not Intentionally.' He smiles. 'Mind you, it's about time Simon was on the receiving end.'

His voice is steadier but his eyes keep darting towards me, as if I'm a mesmerising, gruesome museum exhibit: a mummified body with burnt-paper skin and eye-sockets like the wizened scoops left by peach stones.

'If you hadn't told me Olivia had left, I'd have never said any of this. I'd have let you go.'

He ruffles his hair, tiredly. 'Yeah, I know. It's never a good idea to be mates with someone you want more from. Take it from a man with bitter experience.'

We sit in silence.

'I wish I had a time machine,' I say, in a tone of voice that's meant to sound wry and comes out plain defeated.

'So do I,' Ben says, then waits for the right beat to add. 'I'd go to Leeds University.'

My laughter mechanism is broken. Also: too true.

'I'd better be going,' he says, getting up. I nod miserably, getting up as well, fighting an urge to grab him by the lapels and beg.

'Goodbye.' I try to sound brave, and fail.

'Come on.' Ben turns back. 'You'll be OK.'

'I'll miss you.' I hear the crack in my voice, the desperation, why don't you care the way I care, even though he's told me he doesn't, I can't accept it.

'Oh, Ron ...' Ben finally looks sad.

The unexpected resurrection of my nickname sends silent tears rolling down my face. It'll all end in tears, Caroline said, or if she didn't use those exact words, that's what she meant.

'What were you going to say to me?' I wipe my cheeks with the heel of my hand, 'Graduation ball, on the dance floor?'

'I don't remember.'

'Oh.' Hard gulp.

'Look, I do. But. It doesn't matter.'

'It does to me. Please, Ben.'

He looks doubtful about obliging me, and with good reason, as I'm apparently on the verge of nervous collapse. He looks around to ascertain we're still alone, apart from the barefoot guy with his tie wrapped round his forehead, doing tai chi underneath the statue.

'I was going to tell you,' he says, softly, 'I'd given my tickets away for the travelling so we could rebook the whole thing when you could come too. I didn't change the date I left. I bought new tickets and went on my own.'

I stare at him through swimming eyes. This is pretty much unbearable. He looks upset and steps forward as if he's going to touch my arm, but his hand drops to his side.

'Something I want in return,' Ben says, voice still low.

'Yes. Anything.'

'Please don't come looking for me again.'

And in a few purposeful strides, he's gone. I bet he had to discipline himself not to run. What a finale.

I walk round and round the park, trying to get my face under control before I go back out in public. The broken heart I can't do anything about. I test my eyesight by reading the inscription on the cross. In this tranquil s.p.a.ce, it calmly notes: 'Around lie the remains of more than twenty-two thousand people'.

How apt. The blossoming idyll is in fact a well-fertilised graveyard.

67.

'He's going to go back down south and live in this giant gilded cage bought by his in-laws and be miserable,' I say, entering the forty-eighth minute of pointless rehashing with Caroline as abused, patient audience of one. She's already listened to it all the way to Tatton Park, her reward for driving me here.

I'm shouldering a wicker picnic basket, she's carrying the gingham oilskin blanket and cool bag full of clinking bottles. It was Caroline's birthday last week and she nominated a cla.s.sical concert and fireworks here as her celebration, making us book tickets what feels like a lifetime ago. It confirms the greatness of Caroline's mind: the day's dawned, she has Mindy and Ivor AWOL, status unknown, and Rachel, status, wreck. Visa card debits and a sense of duty are all that's knitting us together.

She and Mindy have already heard the tale, of course. I called them individually. I had to concede it didn't have much of a twist. They both listened with the kind of mounting apprehension you get in the horror genre when the teenagers announce 'It's nothing but superst.i.tion' and go down to the old boat house holding tiki torches.

'Mmm,' Caroline says, throwing the blanket out, testing the ground underneath for lumps with the toe of her shoe. 'You don't know that he's going to be miserable.'

I put the basket down, plop in an ungainly heap onto the rug.

'No,' I say. 'No. A house, though. No one should force their partner to do something that makes them feel that compromised, surely?'

'Rachel. It doesn't matter if she's mixing him Paraquat Martinis. He's told you he loves her and he doesn't love you. You have to let this go. I say that as someone who definitely loves you.'

Caroline pulls a bottle of Prosecco out of the bag and hands me a couple of plastic goblets, the sort with screw-in bases. I wish alcohol helped. It tastes like paraffin and sizzles in my gut like it's cauterising an open wound. In general, I feel as if my very essence has been through a doc.u.ment shredder.

'This was never going to have a happy ending,' Caroline says, gently, uncorking the bottle with a snap of the wrist and tipping it to one of the gla.s.ses. 'You need to start a new story. Accept Mindy's help with the online dating thing.'

'Do you think they're coming, by the way?'

We agreed we owed Mindy and Ivor some distance and respect. We didn't tell them what I'd seen or ask them any more about Caroline's allegations. Caroline texted them both to check they were still coming today and they both confirmed. A sign, we agreed, that positive things might've happened, but it's very hard to say.

At that moment, Mindy, clad in floral-patterned tights and fuschia waterproof, appears. Caroline waves with her free hand. When Mindy reaches us we say our h.e.l.los but she's inscrutable which is very unnerving when it's the most scrutable woman in the world.

'Shall I say my sorrys when Ivor's here too?' Caroline asks, as I hand her gla.s.s over.

'I suppose,' Mindy says, casually, sipping the froth before it spills. 'Did he say he'd be here?'

'Well, yes,' Caroline says, faintly perturbed.

She and I exchange a look. Who knows what I saw outside the flat. There's five minutes of stilted small talk about Mindy's latest business proposal before Ivor lollops through the crowd, identifiable from the air by the so-very-Ivor thin sports jacket with tangerine chevrons he's in.

'Wotcher,' I say, shading puffy eyes against the sun.

'Afternoon.'

We a.s.semble a drink for him.

'Let's get this done,' Caroline says, once Ivor is cross-legged with beverage. 'I am completely, utterly, abjectly sorry for what I said. I was wrong and it was wrong. Please, please accept my apology.' Caroline looks from Mindy to Ivor. 'And not that I want to emotionally blackmail you but it's my birthday week, and tomorrow I start sessions at Relate with my faithless husband so, you know, cut me some slack.'

Ivor looks blank. Mindy pulls up clumps of gra.s.s and sprinkles the blades back down in heaps, gazing off towards the stage.

'We've talked and we think what you did was pretty awful but we think you should be embarra.s.sed about it, not us,' Ivor says. 'What you two didn't know and Mindy and I did know, is ... I've been fighting this for a while. It's time I said something. I'm gay.'

'Seriously?' I blurt. 'You're gay?'

'Yeah. That's why Mindy was angry with me about Katya. She said it was time I owned who I am. Caroline accusing me of fancying another woman not helpful in the whole coming out process.'

'Oh good G.o.d, Ivor, I'm so sorry. Not sorry that you're gay, I mean. Sorry again for what I did. How long have you known?' Caroline says, one hand to her chest.

Ivor shakes his head. 'Long enough that it's time I stopped hiding from it.'

'And I'm sorry, it was my idea to ambush you two,' I say. 'Ivor, I only wish you'd told us before. It doesn't make any difference.'

He nods.

'Have you ... got a boyfriend?' I sound like a sixty-something at the Women's Inst.i.tute trying to make sense of this new craze called d.o.g.g.i.ng that doesn't involve dogs, or that BDSM isn't a driving school. The h.o.m.os.e.xuality announcement is so utterly unexpected that I can't sync sense and mouth.

'Nah. Not that far along with it. Just ... you know, lots of meaningless c.o.c.k I trawl for at Manto's.'

I definitely don't have a Post-It note in the relevant section of Debrett's to hand on this so I turn to Mindy and reiterate my apology. She's throwing back her Prosecco, merely wiping her mouth and nodding curt acknowledgement.

'Well, I say c.o.c.k, c.o.c.k and a.r.s.e, I haven't decided which side of the bargain I prefer being on yet,' Ivor continues.

Caroline and I nod, sip our drinks for something to do. There's a disconnect between the genteel surroundings and the frank nature of our conversation. You shouldn't be thinking about whether your friend prefers being a bottom or a top with rough trade while watching three generations of a family sharing Earl Grey from a Thermos.

'Sorry,' Ivor says. 'I've been going to a support group and once the walls of communication come down, they really come crashing down, if you know what I mean.'

'Did you not want to tell us before?' Caroline asks. 'Not that I'm complaining. I wish we could've been there for you.'

'I nearly told you both, once. We were watching a film with Matt Damon and he was scaling a building-'

'The Bourne Ident.i.ty,' Mindy says.

'Thanks Mindy, yes, The Bourne Ident.i.ty, and I nearly said what a fierce b.u.m. I'd scuttle that rotten! It nearly popped out. Then I remembered myself.'

'And it's a film about someone forgetting who they are,' Mindy says.

'I had never considered that irony,' Ivor says. 'Perhaps that was the subconscious influence. What's in the picnic basket then? Any Scotch eggs?'

Caroline appears grateful for the distraction and starts rustling through it, pulling out Lakeland Tupperware.

'Oh, too many salads. I'm not that gay,' Ivor says.

Mindy squeezes his arm.

There's something niggling me and with the arm squeeze, I identify what it is.

'Hang on,' I say. 'Hang on. Mindy knew. Mindy? How on earth did you get her to keep a secret?'

A pregnant pause. Ivor is freeze-framed with a breadstick halfway to gob.

'Aha! Got you! Surprise! We're totally dating!' Mindy squeals.

Caroline and I look at each other and then back at Ivor, who's broken into the broad grin of the evil swine.

'Ivor!' I shriek. 'A fake coming out, then going back in? Bit tasteless!'

Ivor collapses in on himself with laughter. 'Your faces, woo hoo ...' he chokes. 'Fierce b.u.m, haha.'

Caroline puts fingers to temples. 'Ivor, you're not gay? And you and Mindy are seeing each other?'

'No I'm not ... and yes we are,' Ivor says, glancing at Mindy.

Our eyes move to Mindy. She's wearing a shy smile. She never looks shy. This is amazing.

'I knew I was right!' Caroline cries.

'And contrition for humiliating us lasted, what, four minutes?' Ivor says. 'You absolutely deserved this retaliation.'

Caroline hands me her gla.s.s, then stretches across and kisses him on the cheek, doing the same with Mindy. 'I am so, so pleased for you two.'

'I can't believe you're going back in the closet,' I say to Ivor.

'There's no closet, Woodford, OK? I am a hundred per cent lady lover. Got a qualification in hetero from Peterborough Academy of Smooth and everything.'

'We haven't done it yet though,' Mindy says. 'That's gonna be weird.'

Ivor knocks a palm against his forehead.

'Mindy! We were winning this embarra.s.sment contest until you said that!'

'Sorry. It's what I'd be thinking about though, if I was them.'

They laugh, with a touch of self-consciousness. They sound different.

'This is fantastic news, apart from the fact you're not allowed to say you'll never see each other again if you break up. Are we agreed?' I ask.

'We have talked about that. We think it might've been one of the reasons we took so long to get around to this,' Mindy says, with another shy look. It occurs to me she's experiencing the novel sensation of going out with someone she actually loves. That's what was missing.