chapter021
Edie
Declan, can I get you a Caffe Nero and breakfast on the way in today? Please be quite bold: I intend to run a workspace that prioritises ongoing open dialogue, easy reach solutions and a front-footed treats policy. E x
Declan
Thanks, I will have a large Americano, pain au raisin, and a scrubbing of my temporal lobe of all memories of end of last week. D x
Edie
Coming right up. I will organise a Toyota Avensis drive-by: a second concussion should do it. x
Declan
AAAAAAAARGH X
Auto-kisses with a male colleague off the bat wasn’t the way Edie would usually do business, but these were special circumstances. If the man wasn’t going to shrivel in ignominy and request a humanitarian transfer back to London within a month, they needed to be comrades. Before the streaking, they were well on their way. They’d have to treat trauma as glue.
Edie marched in with line manager authority at just gone nine a.m. and was glad of fussing with setting down his drink, pulling the pastry out of her pocket, risking a quick glance and a chirpy ‘Morning!’
Declan looked up at her with haunted eyes as she set her own coffee down on her desk. Edie wanted to break the ominous gap where casual chatter should be but couldn’t think of a thing to say.
‘Sorry, Edie,’ Declan said. ‘I keep having Vietnam flashbacks, and as soon as I do, I think how much worse it must have been for you and your sister … It was such an untoward thing to put you through.’
He looked not sheepish but actually quite broken.
‘Hey!’ Edie said. ‘Stop this. You have nothing to apologise for. May I remind you that the person here who’s made an absolutely horrendous arse of herself in front of ALL her co-workers isn’t you? You’re blameless.’
Declan grimaced and nodded in a silent gratitude, and it occurred to her that he was more upset than she had realised. Perhaps unfairly, she’d thought some fallback of laddish bravado might have helped, but no.
‘You know, every minute since I’ve managed to think about something else, BAM, it rears back up at me,’ Declan said. ‘A fresh wave of self-hatred. Like, how long was I there for? I don’t even know.’
‘Hardly any time at all,’ Edie said, though as she said it, she thought Nude Seconds were an hour in clothed world. ‘Not to be insensitive, but this is a dynamite pub story at some point, you know. It will alchemise. My worst embarrassments are my best anecdotes.’
‘Comedy is tragedy plus time,’ Declan said. ‘Sorry for forcing you to witness the tragic sight of me on its way to becoming comical.’
‘You weren’t a tragic sight,’ Edie blurted, and then almost imploded with self-reproach. There it was – top fuckin’ marks, Edith, she thought: the one thing you knew you shouldn’t say, so you made sure to say it.
She and Declan met each other’s eyes in a second of wordless, blank tension.
‘If it distracts, I had quite the shit explosion on my holiday,’ she gabbled. ‘A tabloid decided Elliot going for dinner with his co-star was proof of boning, and I had to read about their being a “new couple”. I felt like I’d been forced into public polyamory.’
‘Ah, really?’
Declan was not a natural liar, and Edie interpreted from his tone that this was not news to him. He didn’t seem like he’d read gossipy tittle tattle about hot actors …?
Oh.
‘… Wait. Jessica’s been crowing with delight that I’ve been cuckolded, hasn’t she?’
Declan mumbled indistinctly, and Edie said: ‘It’s all right – don’t feel put in the middle. None of it was true, and Elliot and I are still together. I know you’re going to be treated as conduit to That Slag Edie.’
She was going to seal the deal and incautiously brag and Elliot came to Derbyshire then thought, you want that pumped into the bloodstream? Declan – Jessica – Daily Mail? Not only that – mercy-dashing over to see her would be taken as confirmation of the story.
‘I’m pleased for you,’ Declan said. ‘I don’t know why Jess and co can’t let it go. Well, I do. They’re jealous.’
‘Is that it? Edie did a shit thing so she shouldn’t have good things happen to her?’
‘Yeah, I think so. That and they all fancy your bloke.’
‘Not them, too. He has too many people fancying him. It’s not good for a man. I made a point of not fancying him when I met him, as a political decision. Look how that’s going.’
Declan laughed. ‘You remind me of this girl back home, at sixth form. She won a place at Cambridge and completely aced every exam, and people got really chippy about who does she think she is, and she’d not done anything. I worked out that what pissed them off is that she didn’t show off or lord it over them, so they had nothing to criticise. Getting a lot of that energy from their disapproval of you. Your crime is being happy with a guy and never showing off about it.’
‘Apart from one-off drunk Instagrams. Thank you,’ Edie said. ‘You’re welcome to pass on to Team Jessica that we’re still together. If they’re going to ignobly glory in my romance going down in flames, it can at least be when it actually has.’
‘Understood. By the way, I don’t know if’ – Declan cleared his throat – ‘you told anyone at work about what happened on Friday? No worries if you did. I’m just girding my loins for the blowback. The gifs of Michael Fassbender in Shame. Or something less flattering.’
‘Of course not!’ Edie said, startled he’d even suspect it. ‘And I won’t – you have my word. You don’t deserve them being divs about it. Decent citizens don’t stir things like that up for each other – I should know that better than anyone.’
‘If this isn’t too much for the first day we’re working together, can I tell you something, Edie Thompson?’ Declan said, in his charming brogue. ‘I think you’re a really lovely person.’
‘Thank you!’ Edie said. ‘The feeling’s mutual.’
A moment passed.
‘Do you know what, if you’d told me last year in the worst of it that I’d ever be sat with someone from Ad Hoc telling me I was a lovely person, I’d have called it science fiction,’ she said.
Declan paused eating his pain au raisin to chortle at this. ‘Life has a way of surprising you,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I’d like it to surprise me a bit less. I’m sure you’d like my life to have surprised you a bit less, too.’
Edie laughed, and they shared a look, the ‘Smooth Passage’ ferry look, when you acknowledge you’ve made a connection.