Chapter Thirty-One #2
I think about the years of knowing Edward, and not really knowing him, and what these last few months have meant to me.
How finding him in the chaos and ashes of my previous life has been like a miracle.
I think about all those moments I’ve thought about him in private; in the quiet moments at night before I fell asleep.
How much I thought about our conversations, about his messy eating.
I think about how I can’t use shampoo or wash my ears anymore, without thinking of him.
How – whenever Sam asks what takeaway we should get – I think of our lunch in KFC, talking about the stupidity of English words.
I think about alot. I think about how I’ve restarted watching Grand Designs in recent weeks – but only old episodes where all the projects have definitely long since finished.
The milliseconds pass and the doors open. Jools is standing there, waiting with her surely-cold-now hot chocolate perched haphazardly in a cardboard tray. She looks annoyed and I feel bad for hogging the lift. She blinks at the pair of us, standing stock still, too close. We probably look very sus.
‘Sorry,’ I try to speak, my tongue feeling swollen and unfamiliar; my lips buzzing. ‘We were just—’
‘Ugh, why are you talking to him?’ she says making a face. She sticks her tongue out at Edward, then adds, ‘Traitor.’
‘What?’ I say, completely non-plussed. Why is she… what the hell does that mean? I repeat myself, ‘What?’
‘Just so you know, Liv.’ She’s glowering. ‘I’ve not once given him a good base – not once. Viewers keep saying how sallow he looks and how orange his eyebrows are, but out of loyalty to you, I’ve ignored the feedback.’
I shake my head. ‘What base? What are you talking about? Who are you talking about?’
‘Edward the therapist,’ she says, waving her free hand at him.
‘Right…?’ I say and glance up at him. He is frozen, staring at Jools with something like panic on his face.
‘You know,’ she continues. ‘He’s… y’know!
’ I shake my head, still uncomprehending, and she continues, ‘He’s stolen your job, hasn’t he?
He’s the arse that the other arse, Spencer, brought in to cover for your suspension.
And now they’ve offered him the job. He’s stolen it out from under you.
And I will continue to give him orange eyebrows; my professional reputation be damned.
’ She frowns. ‘Sweetheart, you know this, don’t you?
You were talking about it upstairs earlier with Sam? Why do you look so confused?’
I stare at her. I can feel Edward’s eyes boring into the side of my skull.
‘How would I know this?’ I say, my voice trembling, my legs like jelly.
‘I’ve not seen a single episode of Morning Tea since I left.
I couldn’t watch it, it was too real; too horrible.
I didn’t want to see who they had covering me on the sofa but I never thought… ’
She shakes her head. ‘But I’ve talked to you about the guy they brought in to cover for you. I told you the viewers don’t like him.’
A vague memory of a conversation returns.
I remember Jools saying something about this, something about the therapist they’d got covering my job on the sofa, but I wasn’t listening, not properly.
And I had no idea it was… Edward. No, she must’ve got it wrong, it can’t be, he wouldn’t do this to me.
He would’ve said, he would’ve told them no, he wouldn’t…
I look down at my hands. They’re shaking.
‘But you obviously know each other.’ Jools is looking between us now, confusion lighting her features. ‘How then, if not from the show?’ Her voice suddenly seems a million miles away.
‘Look, Liv—’ Edward’s saying, and he sounds a long way away too.
This can’t be real, can it? But there’s no way Jools could have it wrong.
She’s literally there, on the set of Morning Tea every single morning, five days a week.
She’s there more than almost anyone else.
Even the producers swap in and out, but Jools refuses to let anyone else run the make-up room without her.
Not even Andi. She says it’s a Generation X thing.
So… it’s true? Edward has been doing my job all this time and now he’s stolen it from me, full-time?
He’s been doing it behind my back, while giving me therapy?
While reassuring me and encouraging me and getting me to open up, he was spending his mornings at the studios.
Was he laughing at me behind my back? Making me think he was a good guy?
Telling me to start being honest and real, while the whole time he was… no fucking way.
‘You?’ I turn to face him again and I’m silently begging him to tell me she’s wrong.
I want him to deny it and laugh it off and gaslight me and tell me absolutely anything, just so I can pretend for five minutes that this isn’t true.
But the expression on his face tells me everything I need to know.
‘I was trying to tell you,’ he starts to say. ‘I tried to tell you right away. I’ve been trying to tell you since the very first day, but you point blank refused to talk about the show and I—’
I involuntarily take a step back, still staring at him.
Still trying to make sense of this. I told him how I felt, we kissed, and then I find out he’s not who I thought.
Looking at him in the hideous fluorescence of the lift lights, suddenly he’s someone I don’t recognise.
Someone malevolent and manipulative and cruel.
He’s no longer my kind, sweet, benevolent Edward, he’s something else entirely.
He’s a man who would trick me, who would lie to me.
Who used me to get a gig on TV. Did he say yes to the counselling sessions, just so he could steal it out from under me?
I step out of the lift, apologising to Jools in a mutter under my breath.
I vaguely hear her call my name, and her look of concern is the last thing I see as I take off running down the hallway, tears blurring my vision.
I make it out of the building and almost to the train station, before I really start crying.
I need to put as much distance between me and that stranger as I can.