Chapter 28
Violet has sent me a reply to the email I sent her at the airport, a single sniggering emoji. ‘Genuinely, what the fuck did you do that for?’ I demand from her. ‘Fuck you,’ she writes back. ‘You have made it perfectly clear we are not friends.’
Instinctively, I know what’s coming next.
I open Facebook to look for the Tedettes’ group and realize that I am now on the outside, chucked over the wall of the now private, closed group.
They’re all gone: Juliet, Maxi and Molly.
I search for profile after profile, but they have all blocked me.
This is like secondary school. Yet in the next moment, a calmness washes over me.
I no longer need them. I now have the sort of connection to Ted that they could never even conceive of.
For all they know, the next time they see me it could be in the media, as Ted Levy’s actual girlfriend.
One half of a cool celebrity power couple.
Wouldn’t that be a resounding two fingers to the lot of them?
‘Hey hey!’ I message Elliott on Facebook. ‘So sorry I’ve only seen this now. I was deep in writing mode, which means hibernating for a bit. Would love to meet for a drink and some lessons in urban beekeeping if you’re about?’
The young shop assistant doesn’t look as though she’s in the mood to help anyone, but I corral her regardless. ‘I need to buy something sort of cool, but smart,’ I tell her. ‘And a bit sexy.’
‘There’s a lot of cool, smart, sexy stuff everywhere,’ she says pointedly.
Walking down Alice’s street, I become even more sure that I made the right decision to leave the airport and try to find Ted. I cram in every detail I can find into my buzzing brain, every cafe and shopfront, imagining Alice and Ted here, living their everyday lives. He feels closer than ever.
Arriving at Alice’s blue shutters and seeing them in real life and knowing what lies behind them makes me a bit nauseous.
But oh, the gladness in my giddy little heart.
What if Naomi has said something about me to Ted, or even to Alice?
What if Violet has contacted them too? I check all of Alice’s social media platforms – there appears to be no link to Violet.
I knock on Alice’s front door and, when it’s left unanswered, I move around to the back door, hoping to see an open window. I’m pondering my next step when an upstairs window opens and a freshly showered Alice pokes her head out, wrapping a towel around her as steam escapes the room.
‘Esther,’ she says, almost to herself. ‘Hi. Why … How are you …’
‘Oh, Naomi gave me the address,’ I say breezily, although this information doesn’t appease her. ‘I was just in the neighbourhood, seeing a friend.’
‘Look, I’m in the middle of … stuff here,’ Alice starts, apologetically, tightening the towel.
‘I know it’s not a good time but whenever it is, I’d like to help with Ted,’ I say. ‘Naomi told me a little about what’s going on with you guys.’
Alice processes this information, not entirely pleased. ‘Right,’ she mutters. ‘Give me five minutes.’ Naomi must have kept her word in the end, about not saying anything.
Eleven minutes later, Alice is on her own doorstep, barefaced with wet, stringy hair.
She’s somehow even more beautiful than usual.
We walk into her cosy sitting room with its bookcase-lined walls, velveteen sofa and vintage drinks trolley.
Her non-pedigree dog – of course she has a mutt – sits back on the sofa.
‘That’s Oscar.’ She points out at him, mid-stride. He regards me, all haughty and suspicious, as I give him my best ‘be my friend, dude’ look.
She disappears into the kitchen and returns with a cerulean-coloured glass of water. I will not be getting tea or coffee today. This is a glass of water visit. Still, I make a mental note to ask her later where the glass came from.
‘What exactly did Naomi tell you about …?’ Alice asks.
Yikes. I make sure not to fall on specifics. ‘Not much. Just that, well, you guys have been having kind of a hard time.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t call it that. I’m not the one having a hard time at all. I’m exactly where I need to be, where I want to be. Your friend’s step-brother is the problem.’ A boil has been lanced.
This is confusing. I am caught between defending Ted and needing to find out more.
‘Why did Naomi think you would … I mean, do you have a drinker in the family too?’ she says.
I’m shocked at this revelation about Ted, but I give her a knowing, conspiratorial nod.
This seems to loosen her up a bit. ‘I mean, I like to party too. I can rip it the fuck up.’ She smiles sadly. ‘But this is … different, I guess. He has this temper. There’s no handbrake.’
My eyes widen involuntarily, causing her to take some sort of mental step back.
‘I mean, he doesn’t do anything as such, just …
shouting and stuff. But I don’t like it, you know what I’m saying?
It’s not the relationship I’ve ever seen for myself.
But look, there’s still a lot of love there.
I’m not ready to give up on it …’ I can see it in her eyes.
She has said too much, a betrayal of the other person.
Her words pass through me like a buzzsaw.
They’re the kind of thing my mum would say, crying into a cold cup of coffee in our kitchen, the dust from my father’s five-alarm-fire fury, or of Patrick’s, falling all over our shoulders.
But Ted isn’t and cannot be like them. Ted Levy is a victim himself, a man of integrity who has the courage of his convictions, who is willing to swim against the tide as an artist. He’s a good person.
Another thought soon takes form, although I’m not entirely sure I like the sound of it; if Alice doesn’t want him, so much the better. That works out more than OK for me.
‘Look, trust me when I say I know how to handle this,’ I say decisively. ‘Do you want me to have a talk with him?’ All I need is some time with him, alone. I can take it from there.
‘Oh God, no,’ she replies. ‘I don’t want him to know about any of this. He’d go crazy.’ Is this why Naomi was so hesitant to introduce me to Ted? It makes all kinds of sense now.
‘It’s tough. Trust me, I do know. I’ve been there with my own father,’ I tell her.
That beautiful Ted Levy could be anything like my father feels like a whack with an old roll of carpet.
The sound of the front door opening makes the room spin, because I know what’s coming next. Finally.
With Ted here, the room becomes a nightclub, a paradise, the backdrop of a thrilling origin story. I have a hard time seeming casual, because I am seeing fireworks right behind my eyelids.
As he goes to embrace Alice, he nods an amiable ‘hey’ in my direction, looking into my eyes for a split second.
I study him without looking directly at him.
That would probably make me fall in a heap to the floor.
I keep him in my peripheral vision, snatching quick glances at his ears, his belt, his shoes, his hands.
I look away each time, savouring the snapshot, turning the details over and over in my mind’s eye.
Alice has stiffened, because the dust of her confession is still all around us, floating in the air.
‘I’m just going to do something with my hair,’ she says, gesturing to its dampness. She doesn’t introduce us, I notice, as she leaves the room.
‘You wanna get takeout later?’ Ted shouts up the stairs after her, angling his body a little bit away from me. ‘What about the place from Saturday night?’
It takes genuine effort not to wilt in the face of this brief, intimate look at what they have.
Instead, I try to appear the picture of serenity.
I tell myself that were Alice and Ted in fact to break up, it would be no bad thing for either of them.
They are not compatible, not fundamentally.
I could handle whatever baggage he has in a way that she clearly can’t.
Besides, she could find another brilliant, besotted guy in the morning.
Look at her. It would take all of three minutes.
‘We met the other night, at that party thing,’ I tell Ted, my voice feeling strangled with the huge effort of trying to sound normal. Heat creeps down my neck. Don’t you remember me from that other time in London? I want to ask him. When our eyes met on the street?
‘Oh, right on. You were at that?’
‘Yes, I was there with Naomi.’ He doesn’t react. Yep, she must have stayed true to her word when she said she’d never mention me to Ted. The kinks around all of this can be ironed out later.
‘There were a lot of cool people there,’ I tell him.
Ted’s phone rings, and I want not only to bust the handset to smithereens but to travel into whatever fibre-optic cable was responsible for the connection, come face to face with the person making the phone call, and go at their skull with a knitting needle.
‘Scuse,’ Ted says, peering at the phone while I manage my calmest face.
A few minutes later, he shouts up the stairs.
‘Babe, I gotta go, it’s Jeremy,’ he calls.
May Jeremy’s arse grow at the four corners and fester.
Ted walks out of the door without saying goodbye or even looking in my direction.
Maybe he’s playing it cool here, out of respect for Alice.
I’m certain that if we were on more neutral ground, things might just be different.
She arrives down the stairs, frowning into her phone, clearly flummoxed.
‘Goddammit,’ she says to herself. She realizes that Ted has left, and I’m still here, and she doesn’t look all that pleased about it.
‘He said something about Jeremy needing him,’ I offer, trying to sound as though I belong neatly in the inside circle along with them.
Alice still exhales like a person nearing the end of her reason. ‘My dog-sitter is moving back to Brazil,’ she says, absorbing the news with no small amount of unease. ‘Goddammit!’
The opportunity nearly winds me on the spot.
‘Do you have a friend who could do it?’ I hear myself saying. ‘Or even a neighbour’s kid?’
Alice is deep in thought mode. I instruct myself to hold fire, to wait ten seconds before I say the next thing. I make it as far as three.
‘I mean, if you’re really stuck and can’t think of anyone, I suppose I could do it,’ I tell her. ‘He’s such a cutie: I’d be happy to.’
She eyeballs me uncertainly.
‘Look, this might sound crazy, I know. But my writer hours are pretty flexible, and I’d be happy to help if you can’t find a professional,’ I add. ‘If you’re stuck, like.’
It seems to take Alice almost four hours to reply. Four torturous, everlasting hours.
‘I mean, that would be really cool of you, Esther.’
I smile my most winning, trustworthy, dog-sittery smile.
‘Maybe … you wanna do a trial?’
‘Absolutely! Say when and where.’
Something seems to cloud over Alice’s face, but she bats whatever it is away instantly.
‘We won’t be around but if I gave you a key and some written instructions, could you let yourself in around eight a.m. on Monday and bring him to the park across the street? Just for a run around. Twenty minutes, tops.’
Jesus, I’d let myself in through the sewage pipes if you asked me to, I think to myself.
‘No worries. Consider it done. Oscar and I will have a lovely time together!’