chapter015
Edie went downstairs the next morning to find Declan gone. They’d bonded so brilliantly in AE. What a development. Even though Edie hadn’t done the exposing thing, she felt almost as embarrassed as he did.
Her phone had received his farewell.
MORNING. WELL THEN. Oh fuck. Infinity oh fuck. So, Edie, I thought I’d make myself scarce this morning, because holy fucking SHIT. Right now it’s 8 a.m. and I don’t know whether to open a bottle or a vein, tbh. You take care of me, let me stay at your house, and that was your reward. I am dying here. I can’t apologise enough. I keep thinking what you and your sister must’ve thought I was up to, and dying all over again. D
Edie sent a lengthy, supportive, and carefully worded reply, insisting he had absolutely nothing to apologise for and she only hoped he was all right. She knew that however emphatic her words: 1. Declan would probably need months if not years to get over the horror, and 2. Their next greeting would redefine uncomfortable.
She was inordinately grateful for the mini-break to take her mind off it.
January was the most dreich of months, and with Nick and Hannah, Edie made a plan to cheer it up with a long weekend in the countryside: renting a cottage with a woodburning stove, doing long walks, reading books in nooks, cooking hearty things that required oven-braising while the chefs got gradually less coherent imbibing red wine.
‘Also, let’s not be those people who get partners and start doing everything in pairs,’ Hannah had said on their WhatsApp group, Muffin Wallopers.
‘You weren’t really like that when you were with Pete, to be fair,’ Edie said, once they were en route, with Hannah at the wheel. ‘You were just in Edinburgh.’
Hannah had spent a long time with dependable, solid, nice Pete, before realising she was utterly miserable, having a one-night stand with Chloe, her now-girlfriend, and leaving him. Practically and logistically, the upheaval was over. Edie could tell that emotionally and psychologically, it was a work in progress. Hannah was dry as a bone and sharp as a scalpel; it would be possible to miss that she felt things deeply and was waterlogged with guilt.
‘I was like that with Alice,’ said Nick, of his malign ex-wife. ‘I think Hannah means now we are all actually happy.’
She told them of Declan’s nude walkabout: she felt unkind, using him for material, and did so without mockery or sensationalism.
Both Nick and Hannah shrieked and groaned and hissed through their teeth and agreed it was a mentally scarring experience for everyone, but principally for Declan.
‘Fair play to the bloke if he turns up at work next week. I think I’d ask the Home Office for a new identity,’ Nick said. ‘Unless I had the body of a Greek God and boasted one like a pipe of Pringles with a bull’s heart atop it. Did he?’
‘Can neither confirm nor deny,’ Edie said, squirming a little. She wasn’t blind: that was a reasonably spectacular body, if you liked that sort of thing. Her interests were engaged elsewhere, and any dwelling upon it made her a voyeur.
‘Oh my God!’ Nick said. ‘He DOES! Are we sure he isn’t a pyjama-shunning braggart? Oh, you caught me, with my tremendous hosepipe accidentally on show, what a devastating misfortune.’
‘That means either he does, or he doesn’t!’
‘It means he does,’ Nick said. ‘Everyone knows neither confirm nor deny means yes. Hannah, back me up.’
Hannah waited until she’d completed a right-hand turn and said: ‘It’s a coded yes usually, but I’m sure Edie only meant it as a no comment.’
‘Why not simply say yes, the man’s packing serious Nelly-the-elephant trunk, if he is? It’s hardly shameful,’ Nick said.
‘Because he didn’t choose to put it on display for discussion, no matter its impressive nature! Or … not,’ Edie finished, awkwardly.
‘Aha, you fell right into my trap. Confirmed colossal.’
Nick mimed holding something proudly with two hands, as if posing for a prize-winning marrow photo, and Edie gave in and collapsed into mirth.
‘Nick, if you want Declan’s number, just ask for it,’ Hannah said.
After they arrived at the Airbnb in Hannah’s Volvo e-car, Nick said: ‘Cottagecore, I love it!’ taking in the view of the valley.
‘It’s an actual cottage,’ Edie said, heaving her luggage case over shingle with some difficulty. ‘What do you do to earn the core?’
‘It’s an aesthetic. We are the aesthetic. We must bake bread and raise backyard chickens.’ Nick threw his arms wide at the hillside, TheSound of Music style. It was nice to see him happier.
His controlling ex-wife Alice had made contact with his young son, Max, fraught. Nick seeing the delightful if direct and unconventional Ros was a healthy step forward.
‘You can raise them from the bags on the doorstep, anyway,’ Hannah said, checking the time on her phone. ‘Ocado’s due in an hour.’
They passed a very pleasant wintery day, allocating the bedrooms, walking two miles to explore the nearest village and cooking coq au vin.
After dinner, Hannah was diving through the fridge. They’d broadly agreed the online order and left Nick to hammer out the details and press send. Belatedly, Edie was remembering that when it came to food, Hannah and Nick represented the high and the low, respectively.
‘Nick, where is the cheeseboard cheese?’
‘There!’
‘This?’ Hannah said in disgust. ‘It’s a massive lump of Cathedral City Extra Mature. The posh stuff?’
‘There,’ Nick said. ‘Fruity one.’
‘Oh my God, is this Wensleydale with apricots?! Literally everyone in civilised society knows cheeseboard cheese means nice piece of stichelton. Or, if we’re slumming it, camembert in a wooden box.’
‘Don’t worry, my dear, there’s a sausage of smoked rubbery deliciousness and a wheel of Dairylea triangles.’ Nick made a chef’s kiss gesture.
Hannah stopped rifling. ‘Oh my Christ, I’m raging. What are we scooping it up with? Let me guess … Quavers?!’
‘Oh, I suppose you’d want radicchio leaves and those incinerated looking things made of fire grate ash. I got Ritz crackers and red grapes.’
‘Edith, Nick’s waged class warfare on our cheeseboard,’ Hannah said. ‘He’s gone fucking Arthur Seaton on my aged gouda.’
‘I do not pretend to understand the negroni quaffing elite,’ Nick said. ‘You tofu wokerati. Cheese is cheese.’
They unpacked Nick’s provocative offerings onto chopping boards, refilled glasses.
‘When are you seeing the prince?’ Hannah asked Edie, once seated back at the cottage’s table.
‘Not until next month. Meeting him in London for a Friday night date, and we’re coming back to Nottingham for the rest of the weekend. I’ll let you know if we’re around for a pint?’
‘For sure,’ Hannah said. ‘I didn’t expect to find Elliot so easy to talk to. He’s so … approachable and un-precious, isn’t he? And so clearly smitten with you. God, it’s a real-life fairy tale!’
‘Mmm,’ Edie said uneasily. ‘Isn’t it. Which … don’t exist.’
‘Do I, with my highly sensitive antennae, detect some pessimism?’ Hannah said, hacking a piece of Cathedral City.
Edie adjusted herself in her seat. ‘Thing is, it’s so … ambitious and unlikely, isn’t it? I worry everyone thinks I can’t see that, but I do. He’s who he is – fuckin’ wow – and I’m who I am – lol – and we somehow make the mismatch work? I know they’re together by the end of Notting Hill, but Hugh Grant was at least posh and lived in London.’
‘And it was a film,’ Nick said.
‘And it was a film. I think …’ Edie was aware of the two glasses of wine powering her on to dare voice this: ‘I might be a phase he has to work through. The earthy girl from home phase. To accept that this is the type of life he’s left behind. I’m not a destination; I’m a stop on the way. I’m not Manchester; I’m Stalybridge.’
She paused. ‘If that’s the case, then he’ll emerge from the experiment still this amazing prospect, and I might be a forty-something who’s fit for no one else after being spun around and set down by Hurricane Elliot.’
A short silence ensued while everyone absorbed the plausibility of what she’d said.
‘The trouble is I’m not sure there are any safe prospects when you fall in love,’ Hannah said. ‘Look at me and Pete – solid as concrete until we weren’t, and my leaving, and now being with a woman after lifelong straightness, properly did a number on him. We’ve had long conversations about whether I was “pretending” when I was with him. Which I wasn’t, but he can’t get his head round it. From his perspective, my next choice of partner invalidated our entire relationship.’ Hannah broke a Ritz cracker contemplatively. ‘But no one would’ve told him not to ask the quiet, serious med student out, would they?’ Hannah concluded.
‘Yeah. Mine and Alice’s first encounter was so romantic you’d have wept. Like that Before Sunrise film, we spent a whole night walking around Prague. In the end, I did think about it and cry. If my flight hadn’t been overbooked, I’d never have met her. I’d not have had Max if I hadn’t though, so. Your beginnings are not the defining thing.’
‘Good point,’ Edie said.
‘For what it’s worth, Edie, at Christmas I thought how incredibly well suited you are,’ Hannah said. ‘There’s no mismatch when you’re in a room together, more like eerie similarity – right down to the way you joke. You are so at ease with each other.’
Edie glowed.
‘This is true,’ Nick said. ‘You’re very same vibey. No one who knows both of you thinks it’s unlikely at all, Thompson.’
Edie leaned across the table and gripped Nick’s hand, because this was kind of both of them, so old friends, and much needed.
‘Elliot’s chosen a big life.’ Hannah gestured at the dark garden beyond the casement window. ‘He couldn’t un-choose it for you now, even if he wanted to. He was famous before you met him. You’re a private person who never shouts about herself. He’s the story, and you’re the ghost-writer. The tug of war between these two things is inevitable. If you want it to work, you’ll need to build a life together that’s the right size for both of you and defend it above all else. I have confidence you will, because there is a total sincerity of intention with you two.’
Edie knew Hannah was astute. Yet here she was casually offering some absolutely shining wisdom, while carving a Dairylea triangle onto a cracker like a plasterer with a palette knife.