Chapter 17
17
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first thing I do when I get home is check the box is still there.
Do you want this to turn ugly? Do you want me to lawyer up? Because trust me, I will.
Finlay Hart isn’t just dislikable, he’s frightening.
I hammer up the stairs, drag the box from under my bed, lift the lid, and check everything’s still there. Perhaps I should move it from here? It’s a very standard hiding place and I feel like Finlay Hart is capable of breaking and entering. In a balaclava and bright white sneakers, clambering out of a window as he hears my key scraping in the lock, Roger mewing his confusion. These are febrile imaginings, but I’m not able to be rational about this or anything to do with Susie.
This second poke through the contents of the box is when I notice it. As I rearrange the bundles of letters, I see a hole has been ripped in one of the envelopes by the way Susie’s torn it open.
It reveals feminine handwriting that’s not Susie’s and, quite clearly, the words:
around Eve, she might
I stare and stare and drop it, dully, putting the lid back on. My heart is racing, my face suddenly warm. Me. There’s a letter that talks about me.
Around me, “she’s not.” I’m not, what?
The desire to read it is considerable, to the point of overwhelming. I’d been so firm and genuine in my conviction not to snoop, but this level of temptation is unexpected.
The angel on my shoulder says: Your initial instinct was correct. Eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves. This is still a letter marked only to Susie, and as far as you know, she’d never discussed its contents with you. Do you really want to see something that might be jarring or upsetting, the day before her funeral?
The devil says: You didn’t ask to see this and now you have, it’ll scratch at you until you know what it is. It’s almost certainly nothing. And look at the date! It’s from ten years ago. You were in your early twenties. It’ll be trivia. Can you remember anything you might’ve written down about Susie a decade ago that would have great significance now? Well then!
I hypothesize outcomes. If it’s mindless bitching, meanness, disloyalty, suggesting Susie’s been misspeaking me to a third party, how will I feel? It will hurt, yes.
However, Susie and I were close enough that we were able to snap and complain to each other and about each other, and it meant nothing. The air between us was always clear. It was part of what made us such formidably good mates, there wasn’t that residual build-up of unspoken gripe that seemed to end up clogging the pipes of lots of other female friendships.
(This, for example, describes Hester’s. She has an array of moral objections, jaded observations, and historic grudges about everyone she’s supposed to count as close. If you meet a Hester pal and say something like “Verity’s good company, isn’t she, lots of anecdotes,” immediately she’ll fire back, “She’s SO exhausting, and FYI, none of that stuff about that tabloid editor she dated was true. She’s very colorful , if you know what I mean.” No wonder she was short of bridesmaid ideas.)
Then I think, Eve, what the hell—what could possibly be anywhere near as bad as what you’ve already been through? What could touch THAT?
Open it, read some shit that was merely replying to Susie fretting that she didn’t know how to tell you that you didn’t suit a dress (that you can’t even remember owning, and she’s not here to jog your memory, and that will hurt just as much), and move on. Laugh, and get a stiff gin and tonic. Then commence internet searching whether Finlay Hart can legally compel you to hand these effects over.
I open the box again and pull the letter out from under the elastic band. I knew as soon as I saw my name I was going to read it.
I unfurl the paper, shaking out the pages and turning them first to check it’s to Susie— Dear Suz!! —and then to check who it’s from.
Becky. Hmmm. Becky was Susie’s closest friend at university, from her accountancy degree. I never liked her, which could sound like it was a consequence of simple rivalry, but it really wasn’t. Susie and I were so fixed as best-friends-who-also-had-other-friends, I never feared Becky taking my place. In fact, it was the other way around. I think Becky very much wanted me out of the picture, which is where some of our wariness of each other came from. She and Susie went traveling together in Europe after university and it was documented in a way that subtly yet clearly laid claim to her “gorgeous number one super bff” in every caption. I found Becky a bit tiresome, fakey, and super girly. She probably found me misanthropic, sweary, and super not interesting.
These days Becky and her husband have a grand pile in Cheltenham and Becky’s husband is something important in a picture agency for news wires. When we’ve met on her Susie visits to Nottingham, she’s never wasted an opportunity to say, “Declan could get you an interview, you know, just say,” in regards to journalism, as if it isn’t rude to offer professional help to someone who never said they needed it.
She messaged me her lavish apologies that they can’t come to the funeral due to a family holiday in Marbella: “It’s a luxury villa we booked through Mr. and Mrs. Smith, has a heated pool and use of a speedboat, we’d literally lose thousands,” Becky told me, amid her tearstained odes to her love for Susie. I said yes, absolutely, don’t worry. Your gorgeous number one bff would’ve understood. And the thing is, Susie would have. She’d have said nonrefundable deposits and whirlpool tubs trumped sentimentality any day.
I start scanning it from the beginning.
Sorry for taking ages to write back, work’s been mad. Wow, so—you fair blew my mind with your news—you and Ed! Not so much a slow burn as a no burn? And then a blaze. Hahaha. WOW. You sly dog! Dog(s) plural. I had no idea you two had the horn for each other and sounds like you didn’t either.
What. What? What? No. I feel my gorge rise. I reread this passage seven times before I’m able to read on. The back of my neck is cold and I can’t feel my feet.
So to answer your concerns, I can see why you’re worried. The thing is, if you and Ed don’t tell anyone what happened then no one’s going to know, simple as that. Ed’s not going to confess to his L/T girlfriend, he’s not stupid, is he? Why would he?! As for your issues around Eve, she might be besotted but she’s not his girlfriend. She has no right to get upset with you, but yeah if she feels as strongly as you say about him, *don’t* tell her. I don’t see why you need that aggro. Are you absolutely sure there’s nothing more between you & Ed though? It sounded torrid. Gonna need the full debrief over margs and Doritos next time you’re down
My life is SO boring by comparison, remember that promotion I told you about that my...
My hands now glistening wet with sweat, I speed-read through the rest of the letter and ascertain there’s nothing else about the Susie and Ed tryst in it, or about me. I sit down on the bed heavily and read it again and again, hoping for the words or meaning to change.
Ed and Susie. Susie and Ed. Could Becky mean some other Ed? Perhaps it’s too indicative of my psychological state that I spend almost a minute trying to stand that theory up, though it requires Susie not only to know another Ed, but for him to have a long-term girlfriend and an Eve who’s “besotted.” She knew. My most closely guarded, painful secret, and even fucking Becky Speedboat Villa Holiday knew.
When people say, “My whole life has been a lie,” it sounds like purple scriptwriting, like something they’d shout in the Old Vic on Christmas EastEnders.
Yet I can’t think of any more accurate way to describe how I’m feeling, as I sit stunned on my bed, tears rolling down my face. All my cherished ideas of what Ed and I felt for each other, separated by cruel circumstance, our Tesco Express version of a Shakespeare tragedy—a lie. Who I thought Ed Cooper was —a lie. (Fuck, is it possible he DID get my letter, back in the day, but Hester was just too big a temptation?)
My best friend, who I thought kept nothing from me, who I thought I knew the very bones of—nope. Her greatest secret imaginable, and Becky was someone worthy to share it with, not me.
Our friendship group, which I set so much store in, people I’d go to war for—the whole time had this subset within it, people who’d shagged and hidden it, specifically from me. Did Justin know? How big a fool have I been made, here? I’m woozy.
And finally, my firm belief that no one knew how I felt for Ed, except perhaps, obviously, Ed. This revelation might be harder to accept than the sex. Susie knew all along. Why did she never say? Because she wanted Ed for herself? The closest person to me was busy outmaneuvering me, over the thing that mattered to me the most? How did she know? I thought I’d given nothing away. Did Ed tell her? Pillow talk?
There’s no one I can talk to about this. I love Justin and vice versa, but he’s still Ed’s best friend. The only person I could tell—my best friend—is firstly, the person who’s most hurt me and, secondly, dead.
To take first place on the podium ahead of Ed Cooper in the most-hurting-me Olympics is an absolutely awesome achievement, here. The only latitude available was Susie not knowing how I felt, and evidently, she did know.
I lie on my bed, stare at the ceiling, and ask myself why I set a bomb off by reading that letter. I have shattered everything.
Ten years ago, Ed and Susie, two people I thought had never so much as shared an intimate glance, slept together. My best friend and the man who I thought was my secret soulmate, destroying my image of, and trust in, both of them, in one fell swoop.
And the worst part of it is, the very worst part: Susie knew I was in love with Ed, and she did it anyway.
No. That’s not true. The worst part is, I never get to ask her why.