Chapter 36
36
Edinburgh’s awkward timings mean I return to work on a Wednesday, like no one, ever, and have to act like that was the plan, without discussing what “the plan” might be.
“I thought you weren’t back until next week!” Lucy says, innocently and inconveniently. Fortunately, my mumbling “We got the hotel deal on Wowcher, so we couldn’t pick the dates” seems to do the trick.
“Which hotel?” says Lucy.
“... The Waldorf.”
“Fuck my boots, The Waldorf ’s on budget deals?” says Phil.
Phil’s beadily meerkatting at me over his monitor, which is edged with tinsel, and, from oversize trouser belt up, he’s in a joke shop costume as an elf. As soon as the calendar hits December, Phil—in strange defiance of his otherwise ultra-curmudgeon persona—embraces every piece of comedy seasonal rubbish available and insists on a drum of Quality Street candy on the go at all times.
“Airbnb must’ve really impacted the industry,” I say, with a faux wise professor nod.
“Go with a boyfriend?” Phil says.
“No, a friend.”
“Not sure I’d waste The Waldorf at Christmas on a girlfriend,” Lucy says. “Could be just as pissed sleeping in a Travelodge, and spend the money on shoes.”
“It wasn’t a girlfriend, Lucy,” Seth says, throwing me a grin. “He’s just not a boyfriend, am I right?”
“Oh, well deduced,” Phil says, looking from one of us to the other. “Don’t take us for fools, Harris!”
“Phil, you’re wearing a striped hat with a bell on the end, a large pair of pointed rubber ears, and a top that reads I’m SHINNY UPPATREE.”
I open today’s screen.
TEQUILA! It makes you happy. Or it makes you very sick. No in between with tequila, is there?
New margarita-making classes with the “Marg Masters”
My God, it’s stultifying. So much so that I Google creative writing courses in my lunch break and try to pretend I’m still on holiday at night, ordering Indian takeaway and fighting a losing battle to keep Roger’s nose out of foil trays of curried chickpeas.
I vacillate about messaging Fin about how his dad is, but everything I draft feels awkward, contrived, and not much of my business.
It’s strange: it’s as if the trip up north blew fresh air into my life, and I have heightened awareness of how stuffy its rooms are, now. Finlay Hart may have all kinds of faults, but failure to move forward isn’t one of them. Even my home feels like it has lower ceilings. Maybe that’s the inevitable effect of The Waldorf.
At Friday’s end, I walk down the hill from the office to the train station, dragging my suitcase and laboring with a bulging shopping bag, thanks to a midafternoon WhatsApp from Justin, regards the birthday cottage logistics:
EEEEEEV! Can’t wait to see you later. If possible can you bring a large corn-fed chicken, long matches, slimline tonic (guess who’s been put on a wedding diet? Clue: not the bride) and two pints of double cream? LOVE YOU ETCETERA. xxx
I have to get a rush-hour train to Derby and then stand shivering waiting for a taxi to take me to the cottage in the middle of nowhere. I’m bad at judging distance and I didn’t think to Uber, so the local minicab costs me a ton of cash and takes forty-five minutes.
By the time we pull up in a squelch of mud outside a horse fence gate, I’m starving, and silently cursing Justin for not going to Pizza Express for his birthday like a normal person. I could be pleasantly mullered on the house white and full of doughballs right now. Justin had warned me they’d probably eat before I got there, due to due to the relative lateness of my arrival, which was just as well, given I was catastrophically late in the end.
The cottage is four hundred years old according to Justin, and accessed down a perilous slope after you’ve unlatched the gate and relatched the gate—and why the hell is there no outside light?!
“Fucking knackers!” I shout, as I trip over and mud-slide down to the door, sledging on my arse.
“Hark! I know the sound of a Cheltenham Ladies’ College alumna when I hear one...” A burst of light has appeared in the pitch black beyond (I always forget how proper dark the countryside is) and Justin is framed within it, wearing a bobble hat and holding a large glass of red. “It’s a bit Withnail and I , innit? Welcome to Crow Crag! Calm down, Leonard, it’s only Eve!” he says, at an as yet unseen but audibly excitable canine.
“You best be pouring me one of those, right the fuck now,” I say.
I struggle in the door, kick off my filthy shoes, peel away my coat, and hand the heavy shopping bag to Justin.
“Oh, you darling. Charles and Diana are through there, you’ll see wine bottle and glass in the kitchen on your way. Follow the handbag-size dog.”
I lean down to pet the bouncing Leonard. The beams of the cottage are so low I have to duck to pass through doorways. In the front room Ed and Hester look up at me, resembling a Boden picture, side by side, in their chunky jumpers and crackling firelight glow.
“Evening, Eve!” they singsong, as Leonard resumes his place on a chair nearby. I toast them with my glass. I’m relieved the fight at the wake is long enough ago we can simply pretend it never happened. Ed flashes me a slightly discomfited look, and I smile to assure him things are normal. As normal as they can be.
Justin brings me a plate of stew and mash, and I’m asked for a summary of Edinburgh between mouthfuls.
I keep it brief and positive.
“How was the brother, did he keep up the Nosferatu levels of affability?” Ed says.
“More of a Yes-feratu for me,” Justin says.
I hadn’t considered how to handle this very obvious line of inquiry. My mind has been on larger matters. Like recalling the way Finlay Hart looked down at me in a darkened hotel room.
“He was... fine, actually. I ended up quite liking him. I think he was on the defensive when we met him, because he knew we’d have a low opinion of him.”
“We had a low opinion of him because Susie told us he was a total turboshit. Checkmate.”
“Who do you think you’re checkmating, me?” I say to Ed.
“Him, mainly.”
“Well, I know him better.”
“What, on the basis of a few days of going up Arthur’s Seat, you’re saying you know him better than his own sister did?” Ed scoffs.
“Maybe, in a way, yes, I do,” I say, watching Ed’s scowl of incredulity deepen.
“What?!” he spits.
“Do you know him better in the sense Susie never slept with him?” Justin says to me, pressing his hands together in prayer. “Did you, in fact, ‘go up Arthur’s Seat’? Please say you did, and bring me news from the wild erotic frontier. My love life is up on bricks, here.”
“Sorry to disappoint, but no,” I say, and avoid looking at Ed, and thus gauging his response or relief. This is a shift. I don’t care if Ed cares? Ed caring has been my lode star for a long time. I test my feelings on this matter again... he’s jealous, don’t you care? Nope, nothing.
“Hahaha, she wouldn’t tell us if she had, Justin,” Hester says.
I look over at Hester and she’s twirling a piece of golden hair by her ear, shapely legs crossed in black skinny jeans, her vivid mouth painted with her favorite Mac Lady Danger lipstick. Hester is so damn decorative.
In the sarcastic twitch of her crimson mouth, I can perfectly easily see that Hester hasn’t forgiven me for the spat at Susie’s wake, and instead a different level of enmity has been unlocked. Challenge accepted . In female fights, never trust the wishful interpretations of men.
Ed is frowning, knocking back wine.
“I would tell you. Why wouldn’t I?” I say.
“Because everyone thinks he’s awful.” Hester shrugs a cable-knitted shoulder, unwinds, and sloshes some more wine into her glass.
“If I wanted to sleep with him I wouldn’t care if you thought he was awful,” I say, and as I speak, I can hear that the mood has plummeted from carefree chatter to loaded subtext, flying in every direction.
“If you say so,” Hester mutters, plumping the sofa cushions with one hand before rearranging herself against them.
“Yes, I do say so,” I say. “Given I know my decision-making process better than you do.”
“You got that right,” Hester mumbles, under her breath.
Justin looks disconcerted at this immediate descent into warfare.
Ed’s still staring furiously ahead at the fire, chinning his wine down. I don’t think he thinks I slept with Finlay, which must mean he’s this mad at me merely approving of him. How much control of me does he think he’s owed?
“Susie despised him,” Ed says.
“You asked me for my opinion of him, not hers,” I say, tone sharp as a dagger.
“Why would you think she’d got him wrong?”
“She wasn’t right about everything,” I say, staring levelly at Ed, and he senses danger, and says nothing in reply.
“Didn’t she say he used to model?” Justin says, hastily, desperately.
“I thought he was a psychiatrist?” Hester says.
“He was a what ?!” Ed says, delighted at being given a new line of attack, eyes dancing with a Satanic pleasure. “He’s a model-slash-shrink. Tell me about your relationship with your...” Ed turns his head away, then snaps back with an exaggerated pout. “... father .”
“He’s a psychologist, and to be fair, seems like he’s done brilliantly at it. He’s not short of a few quid,” I say, relinquishing my empty plate to Justin. “He treats some really famous people, so famous he couldn’t tell me who they are.”
“ Convenient . Rich kids always prosper.”
“By that logic, Susie was a rich kid.”
“She was, but I don’t think she denied it,” Ed says.
“How has Finlay denied it?”
“He’s going to be richer still when Dad goes. Ever find out whether there were shenanigans going on with changing his will?” Justin asks me.
“No,” I say. I’m agnostic on that. I can’t imagine Fin standing over dotty Mr. Hart, encouraging him to write his name on a dotted line, but equally a lot of things that have happened are things I couldn’t have imagined.
“God, that poor old man,” Ed says. “Lost his wife and daughter and his marbles, and the decision whether to switch off his machines one day will be made by that bloke.”
“Dessert, Eve?” Justin says, in a let’s lighten the mood shall we perky housewife voice. “It’s spotted dick with pink custard.”
“Are you kidding?” I say.
Leonard jumps down from his chair and starts barking.
“I’m not joking and nor is my greedy son.”
E D AND H ESTER turn in first, to the master bedroom with the en suite at the front of the cottage, enough of a distance we don’t fear disturbing them by staying up.
Justin has carried a storm lantern to a picnic table outside in the freezing dark, where he can have a cigarette. He encouraged me to bundle in a coat and refilled my glass. “Ten minutes, max. It’s my birthday weekend .”
“This welcome is as warm as the one I got from Ed and Hester,” I whisper, teeth chattering, petting Leonard, who makes plaintive noises and then goes back indoors.
“There’s a bit of an atmosphere between those two,” Justin says, voice quiet, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth. “Last night was all ‘ can you pass the salt, PLEASE .’ I get the feeling that planning a wedding in a few months flat is taking it out of them. I don’t see why it has to be so fast? Hester’s drinking plenty, so it’s not that .”
“Do you know about my fight with Hester at the wake?” Justin shakes his head. “Brace yourself...” I fill Justin in on it all, from the letter when we left for university that got lost with water damage, so long ago, to my seeing the Susie letter in the box of secrets the day before the funeral, about the Rock City shagging. “I know you knew, but I didn’t know all of it,” I say. I don’t find this disclosure difficult, possibly due to practice with Finlay. For the first time, I truly and fully comprehend that I should’ve told Susie, and Justin, and even Ed how I felt, back when it mattered more. This information’s eternal power source was in part in its unsaidness.
Hang on. Again, I test my feelings: imagining Ed and Susie wound around each other in a toilet stall, her long legs gripping him, his carnal grunting. Nope... nothing? An anthropological kind of curiosity, but no pain. Yes, I feel foolish for being protected from the truth, like some Mrs. Rochester fragile hysteric. But I don’t feel that sensation of my stomach being scooped out by a doctor with cold hands. Maybe it’s having had this much red wine.
“You didn’t know about that? I thought we all knew but were never going to mention it again. The most macabre coupling since Steve Coogan and Courtney Love. Brrrr.”
“No. Susie never told me as she thought I was in love with Ed.”
“Were you?” Justin asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Are you?” he says.
“... I don’t know.”
“Eesh, let me get an ashtray for this,” Justin says, now a late-night deep-and-meaningful is getting going. “Why did I choose a no-smoking cottage? I prioritized WiFi. Ain’t nobody needs that ‘tranquil and peaceful haven, completely cut off from the world’ shit.”
“Surely they’re all no smoking these days. Also didn’t you just quit?”
“I took it back up the day Susie died.”
Justin returns with a coffee mug receptacle and taps his cigarette into it.
“Let’s dig into this Big Undiscussed. I thought it was mutual, and so did Susie,” Justin says. “Susie and I used to say, Why doesn’t Ed tell her? Why doesn’t he ”—Justin points upward—“ see which side his bread is buttered? ”
“Really?” This patches up my ego somewhat. “Why did you think we were in love? Was I that much of a transparent dickhead?”
“Hahaha.” Justin takes a deep drag. “No, no one thing. The way you looked at each other, the sexual tension. Ed was absolutely obsessed with you in sixth form. Partly why I was so shook by him cuffing himself in our first year, I took it to be a rebound from missing out on you. And then... well. The rest is history. The rest is Hestery .”
“Why didn’t Susie say anything to me about it, ever?”
“I’m guessing because she thought it would’ve embarrassed you? And once she’d drunkenly diddled Ed, far too politically hairy. I mean, if I’ve done anything I’m ashamed of, I just avoid it like the plague, job done. Denial is a very underrated coping mechanism.”
“I suppose so. Why do you think it happened? Ed and Susie, I mean.”
“’Cause twenty-four-year-olds are horny? I dunno. I thought it was nailed on that Ed would end up with one or other of you at some point, from the day we met you. We all loved each other, and love can get messy and squirty.”
I laugh. I wish I’d spoken to Justin about this sooner.
“Suze liked to know she could have anyone she wished, and Ed’s not someone to reject female attention.”
“Even though it hurt me?” I say, more of a statement than a question. “I know I had no rights over him. It’s not upset or anger anymore; it’s only not understanding why.”
“Hmmm yeah, but Suze had a ruthless streak,” Justin says. I look at his bloodshot eyes by candlelight. “I do too. We recognized it in each other. I want to remember her how she really was, and how she really was had its less beautiful parts.”
I nod, and think about Finlay’s idea that Susie was trespassing, in order to investigate. That our key differential was my being permanently hopelessly in love, and Susie not knowing what being in love felt like.
I thought losing Susie, and then finding this secret out, meant I’d never have an answer for why she slept with Ed. In my gut, I feel I have a fuller answer in Finlay’s insight than I would have ever had from Susie.
I look at the ink-black of the hills around us, relieved only by the odd tile of yellow illumination in neighboring houses. I surprise myself with a distinct pang of missing Finlay Hart. Gazing at that forbiddingly handsome, closed face and wondering what he was going to say next. What was going on behind his eyes. Missing Finlay Hart, how strange is that?
I hear Susie say: pervert.
“I wanted to ask you if you approve of something,” Justin says. “I’m going to get back in touch with Francis.”
“Your ex, Francis?”
“Yeah. I’ve had a revelation. He was great, and I treated him like shit.”
“OK.”
“I wasn’t ready to be someone’s boyfriend. I am now. But I don’t know if crawling back a year later and saying I’m older, wiser, and bereaved isn’t the most monumental piss-take of someone who was capable of being a fully rounded human being by age thirty. Who had to listen to me say I simply hadn’t slept with enough people to be settling down.”
“Only one way to find out. Don’t let your pride matter more than a shot at love,” I say.
“It isn’t an outrageous approach to make? The very premise isn’t offensive?”
“Not to me, but that’s for Francis to decide.”
Justin nods.
We both startle at the door opening behind us and Ed in a dressing gown, putting his head around the door. I assume we’re going to get a telling-off for making too much noise.
“Aren’t you two freezing?”
“We’re coming back in now, my nicotine urge sated,” Justin says. “Did we wake you?”
“No, couldn’t sleep,” he says.
I carry the storm lantern back to the kitchen table and Justin pours out whiskies.
“I’ll finish my wine, thanks,” I say, holding a palm up. I didn’t get to age thirty-four without knowing the law of group holidays and all hen dos—everyone completely canes it on the first night and is at reduced capacity for the rest of the trip.
“You two burning the midnight oil, then?” Ed says.
“Lots of sorrows to drown, one way or another,” Justin says. He raises his glass. “To Suze. Who’d have joined me for a cigarette and right now be trying to make a snowball.”
We clink glasses and I get the concrete-heavy emptiness in my stomach, because I’d passed another tiny milestone of grief—I’d forgotten to notice Susie isn’t here. I’d taken her absence for granted. We’re quieter without her, and the energy doesn’t crackle in the same way.
We chat about this and that, but this thought has sobered me right up. Also, the atmosphere is “off,” somehow.
Ed darts looks at me constantly. I get a peculiar sense that he’s nervy around me, trying to get my attention, or approval.
“I’m going to leave you lads to it,” I say, stroking Leonard’s ears.
Ed looks crestfallen. “Not like you to fold first?”
“Pacing myself,” I say.
In bed, a duvet pulled up to my chin that smells of “strange place,” I hear Justin and Ed creak up to bed on the hollow wooden staircase.
I know why Ed’s being weird. He thinks he has to strive to win what he once took for granted. He might be right.