Chapter Eleven
‘… and then Stevie slipped away. Didn’t even expect thanks.’
‘Jesus,’ said Kim, listening to Edward repeat their friend’s words verbatim.
‘Impressive. As my dad would say, quiet gumption. And Stevie’s never been quiet.
’ It was one in the morning. He was at Kim’s flat.
The lights were low. A candle flickered on the coffee table between them.
He often came over on Friday and stayed for the weekend.
‘Poor Stevie. And her wedding in a week!’
‘Lucky none of the customers died. There were kids in there.’
‘So lucky.’ She was handing him a second glass of red wine, and Edward thought the last two words might have been for him, served with the wine, as in: Lucky you, having me, punching. Or was that just his insecure self, the cat’s paw that kept clawing at the curtain of his confidence?
They were silent for a minute, thinking about the fire. Kim said, ‘Glad you’ve got your voice back.’
Edward smiled, put the wine to his lips, paused before sipping and looked around the room. ‘Hmm.’
‘What does “hmm” mean? You don’t like my new paint and wallpaper? You take to your sickbed, and I spend the whole time in my wedding dress.’ She fetched it and held it up.
‘Jesus, what have you done? It looks like … something out of Eurovision.’
‘I just wanted to wreck it, I guess.’ The satin was smeared and flecked with orange, green, dark red, and a mass of thick blue. ‘Eggshell front and back.’
‘Why would you do that?’ he asked.
‘Painting over bad memories.’
He stared at the dress. ‘A week ago I was all geared up. I was going to ask you if you wanted to come live with me. You remember you had your flat tyre and I wanted to ask you something important?’
‘Look at the dress, Edward.’
‘I’m looking.’
‘What does it say to you, darling?’
‘I wasn’t proposing marriage.’ He felt genuinely hurt. ‘So do you have an answer to the question I never asked?’
‘I do.’ She sat opposite him, looking at him intently, knowing her eyes would glint in the light of the candle.
‘Watch out saying “I do” like that, you might be misunderstood.’
‘Misunderstand that dress if you can.’ She pointed, though she hardly needed to.
She turned back to him, face dark with the pain of memory.
‘To get this straight. I’ve only just got out of a horrible marriage, and yes I love you, Edward, I completely fucking adore you, and I want you wrapped around me every night like a great big bear, but I’ve set myself up here.
I’m just trying to simplify my life first. Understand? ’
Now it was his turn. ‘I do.’
‘Ha!’ she laughed. ‘If we’ve both said “I do”, maybe we are married.’
‘It wasn’t marriage I was after.’ He thought of Tara, his first wife, with her new children and husband, leaving him a million miles behind. ‘I knew I shouldn’t ask when you told me you were spending the week decorating your—’
‘My divorce shack.’
‘—your post-marital living quarters.’
‘“Quarters” is the right word. Quarters are what I feel my life has been cut into. I need to put the parts back together. I need some stability.’
‘I was trying to offer that!’
‘In your house on the edge of a cliff?’
‘Fair point. I would like to point out that the estate agent who sold me the house has yet to face justice.’
She smiled.
He said, ‘I just love you so much.’
‘Sweet boy. Reciprocated. What’s that?’
He was pulling the letter from his jacket. ‘I forgot this. Handed in at the radio station.’ He ripped the envelope open. Inside was a single sheet of lined paper torn from a spiral notepad.
‘Well?’
‘Makes no sense’ He held it up, the words facing Kim.
‘What on earth—?’
‘“Temmis, we are warning you, stop with your questions”,’ he recited, seeing the words back-to-front through the paper.
‘All in capitals, black marker pen.’
‘Someone’s angry.’
She said, ‘Bit difficult to stop asking questions in your job.’
‘This is what we had before social media. Letters slid under doors. So much better.’ Edward wanted to make light of it. He changed the subject. ‘Are you looking forward to being back at work on Monday?’
‘I’ve almost been back at work this week,’ she said ruefully. ‘In the sense that the office kept ringing me about a couple who wanted to buy a flat and I don’t want to sell it to them.’
‘You haven’t quite got the hang of this estate agent thing, have you?’
‘You know you can get a sense that something is off? A tall Asian lady in heels and this wobbling weeble of a guy, slicked back, red shoes and tubby in the waist. Wanting to pay cash for the beautiful penthouse on Thirdfield Terrace which I’ve lusted after. And it didn’t smell right.’
‘Red shoes and high heels?’
She stared at him. ‘I’m not making it up.’
He scratched his head. Stared at the carpet, trying to remember something that suddenly seemed important. ‘When I was trying to find your spare tyre, I looked everywhere and I ended up underneath it.’
‘Lovely man,’ she whispered.
‘And when I was underneath it, searching for a tyre that didn’t exist because Porsches are worse than Morris Minors, two people started talking right next to me. Man and woman. I saw their feet. That was your Asian lady, and that was your man. Red brogues.’
‘They returned to the scene? What were they saying?’
‘She sounded angry with him.’
‘She actually struck him, almost in front of me, can you believe that? Slapped him! When we were in the flat!’
‘I remember exactly what she said. “Did Vinnie say the parachute was through?” God knows what that meant. Parachute? Were they going paragliding or something? There’s quite a bit of that in Sidmouth.’
‘Did Vinnie … say … the parachute … was through.’ Kim turned the phrase over as she repeated it slowly. ‘Through what? What does a parachute go through?’
‘A letterbox?’
She roared with laughter, surprising him.
‘Can you refuse to sell it to them?’
‘We can just be useless,’ she said, her attention snapping back to the present.
‘We’re quite good at that.’ The business was Kim’s, and she occasionally complained about two of the youngest staff members.
‘I’ll pass them onto our Gen Z secretariat, tell them to do it quickly, and they’ll still be waiting for the Acceptance of Offer letter in December. ’
‘Rude.’
‘About Gen Z? I don’t mean to be. They have to clean up the planet, after all.’
‘Poor bastards,’ he said.
When he awoke on Saturday morning, Kim was rolling her body across his.
‘This is not amorous,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to stop your phone going. Twice now.’
Bleary-eyed, he grabbed it and cancelled the alert. Then he saw it was from a name he knew.
Wendy Wrigley had typed:
I’m outside your house.
And then, ten minutes later:
I’ll stay in case you’ve overslept.
And finally, as if in frustration:
The forest!