Chapter 38
38
“You’re having, or have had, an affair, am I right?” she says, arms crossed.
She’s vibrating in that way that someone does when on the incredible high of unleashing something destructive they’ve been holding back.
Ed, the color of a beef tomato, says: “No!”
“Definitely no,” I say, clearing my throat.
It feels as if the whole world has hit mute on background noise while this moment plays out in cinematic Dolby surround sound.
“Oh, like I’d believe a word you say,” Hester says to me, looking at me now. “With your big sad eyes and your oh-so-witty asides, trying to position yourself as the sad perma-single cat lady, a Pound Shop Velma. You’re a fucking menace in polka dots, sister.”
Justin, halfway through unwrapping champagne bottle foil, has bulging eyes like the time he took too many psychotropics at Glastonbury. We’re collectively experiencing a sensation like we’re plunging down a lift shaft.
“Woah, don’t talk to Eve like that!” Justin says. “Have your barney with Ed, but don’t drag us into it.”
“You missed the part where she dragged her-fucking-self into it!” Hester screams at Justin, and we shrink back.
“What were you arguing about, at the wake?” she continues, looking from me to Ed. “I walked up to you, something intense was going on. Ed was looking defensive. When I reached you, you both stopped and pretended nothing was up. Then Eve was so wound up she tore a strip off me, for no reason.”
I take half a second to admire how she’s making sure that’s not forgotten.
“It had been a long day. We were both exhausted. I can’t even remember, I think it was some admin thing...,” Ed blusters.
“ Admin thing . That couldn’t be shared with me? Do I seem as if I’m going to be palmed off that easily, Ed? Do you think I’m stupid? It was a wake for one of your best friends. You’d done a reading, that she wrote.” She looks at me, as if that in itself is suspicious. “I can’t see reason for you to have had words, at a moment like that, unless it was something major.”
My skin is prickling and my palms are wet. I want to try to cover, but I don’t know if I should and I can’t think how to.
“Are you going to tell me?” she says to me. “Or can you not ‘remember what the admin thing was about’ either?” She does air quote fingers. “Was the admin thing the times you met up at, oh I don’t know, wild guess—The Mercure behind my back? Or did you go to her drab spinster’s nest?”
I open my mouth and nothing comes out.
“It was about the fact I’d had sex with Susie,” Ed says, and time stands still for a second. “Once, ten years ago.”
“What?” Hester says, stunned, eyes flicking between us, trying to work out if this is some gambit. Blame the woman who can’t deny it. “Then why would Eve be angry?”
“Because we’d hidden it from her. She found out from a letter among Susie’s personal things. Eve was furious on your behalf and insisted I should tell you before we got married.”
I’m awed by the speed by which Ed has invented this to protect me. Hester’s clearly struggling to catch up with having the right crime, infidelity—but the wrong perp, and the wrong timeline. That I might not be involved seems inconceivable to her. That’s not actually unreasonable, I think. It did to me too.
“Once, ten years ago?” she repeats.
“Yes. When you were working in Switzerland.”
“I think we should give you two some space to discuss this,” Justin says.
“We’ll go outside,” Ed says to Hester, and although I don’t think she’s keen to take instruction from him, she’s too poleaxed to argue. They disappear off to the kitchen and the door to the garden shuts after them.
Justin sits down on the sofa next to me, and we both make a lot of air-escaping-mouth noises and shake our heads at each other.
“Is it too soon for me to say ‘You’re a fucking menace in polka dots, sister’ was an absolutely incredible line?” Justin whispers.
“Drab spinster’s nest! Can I get that on one of those varnished slices of wood to hang outside next to my front door?” I say, and Justin cracks up.
The sound of the door opening again tells us that Ed and Hester are finished debating sooner than we expected. We instinctively stand up and troop into the dining room.
“I might have been wrong about the affair, but fuck both of you, frankly,” Hester says, hair tousled and eyes glittering. “You were never my friends and you’ve done nothing but undermine me and Ed.”
We stand and take it, blankly. She pulls her engagement ring from her finger, throws it on the table, and runs up the stairs, her feet thundering like someone’s banging drums, Ed in close pursuit.
“I deserved that, how did you deserve that?” I say to Justin. I look over at Leonard on the chaise lounge, who’s sleeping through.
“Hester! Hester?” Ed chases her across the landing. Justin and I listen with gritted teeth to his progress following her, trying to talk her down throughout her packing. Five minutes later, Hester exits the cottage like a blonde hurricane.
“You had pints at lunch, are you even safe to drive?!” Ed shouts, offstage.
We hear the roar of a car engine, the wheels spinning in mud and noise of an ex-fiancée, accelerating away.
Ed returns, eyes wide with shock, still bristling with the rush of the confrontation and the speed with which his engagement broke.
“Have you made up?” Justin says.
“Ha ha,” Ed says. He picks the ring up off the table and pockets it.
“Speaking of which, I appreciate this is a lesser issue, but Hester was our ride home,” Justin says.
“Could ask if she’ll come back and pick us up tomorrow?” I say.
“I’m glad you two find this so bloody funny,” Ed says, affronted, but without enough moral high ground to go for anger.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Pardon us, we know you’ve had a time of it. But Eve and I got an absolute volley of verbals and I’ve had my birthday weekend annihilated, so I don’t think we’re without rights to find some laughter in this darkness?” Justin says, with both self-control and an edge.
“Yeah,” Ed says, limply, rubbing his closed eyes. “Sorry. We’ve split up, anyway. As you may have gathered.”
“She’s definitely finished with you, you don’t think you can mend it?” I say.
“No,” Ed says, raising his embattled gaze to meet both of ours. “I ended it. It was about time.”
Neither of us know how to respond to that.
“Justin. Can I talk to Eve, alone?”
Justin says, “Well, merry birthday, Justin!” before adding, “Yes, yes, I fancied a ciggy out on that bench anyway.”
He puts on his coat and bobble hat and picks up the discarded Mo?t.
“I shall swig from the bottle, in the manner of a tramp who’s won the lottery.”
“I’m sorry,” Ed says once Justin has left. “That was one hundred percent my mess and you got dragged by the hair into it. Sorry for the vicious things Hester said, she wasn’t herself.”
“Ed,” I say, in a polite tone. “I think you can afford to be honest about her not liking me, at this point. I think the cat’s out of the bag. She was herself. Also, I’ll admit to never liking her in return. There. Sorted.”
He gives a rueful smile.
“I don’t blame her,” I say. “I think she’s justified in not liking me. I haven’t ever been her friend, that’s true. I was a menace to her relationship.”
“That outburst wasn’t your fault. It’s been building for a while.”
“Oh?”
Ed thrusts his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know if we should sit down. Feels stupid though, doesn’t it? Like I’m chairing a meeting.”
“Standing’s fine.”
His voice is low and thick and I feel a huge foreboding. I want a glass of champagne and to salvage what’s left of this weekend. Ed wants a watershed.
“At first I thought Hester and I didn’t feel right after we got engaged as I’d not had much of a choice, time to think about it. I didn’t feel in control. But as things got worse, the penny dropped—it wasn’t the engagement that had changed us. It was Susie dying.
“Losing someone the way we’ve lost Suze, the brutality of it. It brings everything into sharp focus. I had a status quo that I maintained, which didn’t really, truly make me happy. It felt like my job to maintain it all the same. I didn’t think I had the right to be happy, not the way I wanted.” His eyes meet mine. “As it would hurt people to get there. Better to stay where I was, make the best of it.”
I say nothing, arms tightly folded.
“My feelings for you, Eve, they’ve always been there. I put them to one side. I figured I’d missed my chance, and that was that. You were my best friend, and that would have to be enough.”
I still say nothing.
“... But seeing Susie’s life end at thirty-four. The unfairness of it. It strips you down to your factory parts and asks you if you’re spending this brief time we have the way you want. I wasn’t. Hester felt I was pulling away. It was coming to a head, and then when you arrived...”
He pauses.
“This is not the way or the moment I imagined saying these words,” Ed says. “But then I’m not sure how I ever did imagine it. I love you, Eve. I’ve always loved you. It’s been a constant for me since we were teenagers.”
A pause. I nod, as some sort of response seems essential. A silence develops that I gather I have to fill.
“What am I supposed to say?” I ask.
Ed shakes his head. “Whatever you want. Nothing. I’d reached the point I had to tell you, that’s all. There’s no expectation in it.”
I think on this. Once upon a time, a very recent time, this would feel like everything I’d secretly hoped for, falling into my lap. Yet it doesn’t feel the way I thought it would. Not least because Ed didn’t choose this moment, he’s using this moment.
“There is an expectation though, isn’t there?” I say. “The idea is I’ll think on this and want to be with you too, at last. That’s why you acted as my savior and fell on your sword over the Susie secret. It wasn’t for Hester’s sake. It was preparing to make this appeal to me.”
Ed shakes his head. “I was protecting you from Hester’s furies. I caused them, I should take them.”
“But not only just now. You’ve always kept me at clutch biting point. I’m your Plan B. And here we are, your Plan A is halfway through the Peaks right now, and the time to tell me you love me has finally come. It’s Hester who forced this decision, not you.”
“Plan B? You’re making me sound like some mustache-twirling, conniving rotter.” Ed gives a small laugh of disbelief. “My life’s fallen apart in front of you, like a fucking clown car with the doors dropping off. I’ve not planned any of this. As or Bs. Hester sensed I was in love with you and there was nothing I could do to fix that, because I am.”
Fin’s observation about Ed thinking he’s only ever been a victim comes hurtling back to me.
“When you got engaged, in the pub,” I say. “I didn’t go home from The Gladstone afterward. I went on to a bar and nearly had a hook-up with a lad who works there.”
“Right...?”
“I was doing it like self-harm, so I didn’t have to think about you marrying Hester. I was doing it to cheat on you, on us, our great unspoken passion. I was going to mention it, or let Susie mention it, down the line. To see if you reacted. I wanted you to be jealous. I wanted you to know I’d done it, and to feel something in return. I was prepared to have sex I didn’t want to have, for the two-second vindication of the look in your eyes, before you changed the subject. Which is quite something, when I spell it out.”
Ed frowns.
“I thought we were deeply in love, in the same way,” I continue. “The grand delusion of it for all these years depended on me believing that. But you know why we definitely weren’t? I’ve figured it out. This has never given you any pain. From the letter going missing onward, what happened hurt so much, for me. But until now, until Hester lost her patience with this ménage à trois bullshit, it’s never damaged life for you at all. Quite the opposite, you liked it. The secret drama, the girl in your back pocket. The little romantic comedy playing out. Giving me the ‘c’mere you!’ consolation hug that lasted seconds too long. You loved the way I looked at you. You say you care about me, but you never cared what it did to me. You’re a sensitive, perceptive person. I don’t think you would’ve had no idea there were nights I went home and wept, not if you thought about it. But you were careful never to think about it.”
I have sweat on my top lip as I pause for breath, but I don’t regret a single thing I’ve said.
“OK, my God,” Ed says. “That’s quite the onslaught of things to think about. And I will think about it all, obviously.”
His Nicest Guy in the Room act—in the face of me naming what’s been happening, turning the lights on—is so inadequate. It’s a way of him not thinking about it, again.
“... I didn’t consider our friendship as keeping you hanging on, Eve.”
“I know you didn’t. That’s what allowed you to do it.”
“You’re making this sound like something I perpetrated. Neither of us spoke up. Neither of us said, what if we were together?”
“True, and I could have, but you were committed to Hester. I thought it was up to you to change your mind, because I was always available. Which is how it suited you, me tragically yearning. What did Hester call it? Perma-single. I don’t think it was a total coincidence you slept with Susie right after I met Mark.”
“Oh come on, why would it not be...?”
“For some of the same reasons I tried to hook up with that barman the night you got engaged.”
“I was a coward when it came to you, Eve. That’s the truth.” Ed rubs his temples. “The letter going astray ruined everything between us, didn’t it?”
I shake my head.
“Hah, no, I used to think that. I was desperate to think that, it was the... what’s the film phrase? MacGuffin of our origins myth. We were each other’s soulmate, separated by circumstance. The truth is, you didn’t choose me. That’s it.” I shrug. “That’s the whole story of Ed Cooper and Evelyn Harris. You didn’t want me enough, when choosing me became harder. You didn’t even risk a phone call, or wait a term, to check why I didn’t write back. Do you know what? That’s fine. I understand, and we were kids. I own my part in victimizing myself over this, you can own yours. But let’s stop blaming bad luck or misunderstandings.”
“People aren’t always brave. They make mistakes. You’ve still been my best friend.”
“No, Susie was my best friend. We’re close friends, with this added manipulation. Friends with drawbacks . You pulled the ‘best’ thing out of the bag once I found out you’d slept with her, and I needed to be thrown fresh hope of my specialness. Because you knew that men who sleep with your best mate aren’t anyone’s romantic hero. And that’s what you wanted to be, whatever cost it had for me.”
Ed looks staggered. I’ve kept my temper, but I’m finding this far too powerfully cleansing to pull any punches.
“I’m blown away that you’d think I’d deliberately—”
“It’s not deliberate, in the sense you plot,” I interrupt. “It’s instinct. The trouble with your lies, Ed, is you tell them so fast and so easily, you don’t see yourself constructing them. You believe them yourself. Look at the way you altered the story of our fight to Hester just now, to gain an advantage from it.”
Ed doesn’t speak for a moment.
“You make me sound a proper monster.”
“You’re not a monster. You’re someone who naturally takes on responsibility, you’re always the responsible adult and the map reader, but won’t take responsibility for himself with women.”
“Today’s turning out to be a helluva day for self-discovery,” Ed says, after a short pause. “I’m sincerely sorry for having hurt you. I didn’t intend any of it.”
I never thought of the story between Ed and me being a circle. I thought it was open-ended, it would run forever. Yet here we are—him finally declaring himself again, and me closing it. I’m glad. My life’s been short of moments of closure.
“Apology accepted. I’m sure you can see why I think I’m worth more than someone who spent sixteen years making up his mind about whether I was worth the hassle.”
Ed looks fairly stunned and yet is without comeback.
A heavy silence ensues. The door handle cranks and Justin appears, rubbing his hands, Leonard skittering ahead of him.
“Apologies, on the one hand you two seem to be still full Jerry Springer . On the other, I have shotgunned half a bottle of champagne, my battery is on twelve percent, and my dick is an icicle.”
“It’s fine,” I say, looking at Ed. “We were finished.”