‘Not the time? You’re the one talking about bridesmaids fittings for her replacement.’
‘Hang on, it’s fine for you guys to crack jokes, but the moment I talk about something else, I’m in bad taste? Is that it?’
‘What I mind is you using Susie’s imaginary wishes as your excuse. She’d not care less about whether your wedding went ahead. Leave her out of it.’
‘Wow, “excuse”?’ Hester says, face twisting. ‘Alright. Thanks. I don’t see why you’ve attacked me. So you think out of respect we should cancel, and lose two grand …’
‘I don’t care,’ I say, with sufficient force she looks genuinely startled. ‘No one gives a shit about your wedding tonight, Hester. Sorry to be the bearer. In terms of hitting the right tone, you might as well walk round playing a tuba.’
I find I’m not scared of her. I feel like Bette Davis, gene-spliced with a cobra.
Hester’s unused to being called on her behaviour and it shows. Like an unfit person suddenly asked to run a mile, she’s out of shape when it comes to taking negative feedback, huffing and puffing. Whereas I feel like I’ve been in training for this moment for years.
‘Talking about my wedding – our wedding –’ she shoots a look at Ed, who she suddenly realises should be backing her up – ‘is about “life goes on”. You agreed we should still go ahead with it, I don’t hear you agreeing now though?’ She looks at Ed again.
There’s a painful pause.
‘I did agree. But you didn’t need to bring it up now. Eve’s right,’ Ed says, and I swear I feel Hester lift two inches off the ground in fury. ‘Leave it.’
‘You’re taking her side, after the way she’s spoken to me?’ Hester says, pointing at me, to identify the culprit for the jury.
Ed doesn’t answer.
Her eyes narrow. ‘I am so, fucking, sick, of the way you lot are with each other, your cliquey little gang and your … superiority. Don’t twist my words and take this out on me, because you’re sad and bitter,’ she says to me.
She wipes at her suddenly streaming eyes and stalks off back into the hotel. She might as well have said ‘Heel!’ to Ed, for the obviousness of the expectation that he follows.
I don’t feel regret, or triumph, or worry at the repercussions from that spat. I don’t feel anything. I’m numb.
‘Sorry,’ Ed says, turning to me, looking like a man who’s aged a year in minutes.
‘What for?’ I say. Usually that is a response to an apology that exculpates someone, but here it’s accusatory.
‘Hah,’ he rubs his temple. ‘I’ll call you,’ he says, in a low voice, and heads indoors to find Hester.
As my eyes follow him I see Finlay Hart, leaning against the wall in the shadows, a glowing ember of a fag in one of his hands. I near-physically twitch at recognising him in the gloom, plenty near enough to have caught every word of the altercation.
How long has he been there?
He smiles at me, drops his cigarette butt and grinds it under his heel. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him smile. Might’ve known he only enjoys malign triumph. And Marlboro Gold.
‘Can I help you?’ I say.
‘Take the positive from that,’ he says.
Ugh.
‘… Which is?’
‘Doesn’t sound like you’ll have to be a bridesmaid any more.’
21
Three weeks later
Hot Yoga!
Get Bendy with Wendy (yes really, that’s what it’s called) in Loughborough
There’s shock and then there’s grief, and there’s the simple tiring unending chore of life afterwards. These are all different things, I’ve learned.
It’s the forgetful twitch that’s the worst. Oh I’ll text Susie if … Oh I wonder if Susie wants tickets to … What did Susie say about that, again? I’ll just …
Each time, the whiplash of remembering, like the spike of nausea you get coming to a very sudden halt aboard a moving object. Then the abyss of ‘no Susie ever again’ opens up beyond it. It doesn’t change, this being gone. Who knew that the most obvious thing about it is the hardest part?
It’s boring, too – the relentless grind of it, getting on with things without the person who punctuated life’s work and obligations. The person who made sense of me.
I’m grateful for the distraction of going into the office but equally I can’t pretend the job itself is some sort of nourishment. Life is a pantomime. Once again, I am the back end of a puking camel.
I put on an outfit this morning that Susie recently said ‘is the epitome of you. You have become the epitome of yourself’: a long polka-dot dress with puffed sleeves, and Grenson boots. ‘It’s your personality in textile form. Sweet and appealing with a hard punchline.’
I should’ve asked Susie if I delivered the punchline or if I was the punchline.
Phil sets a coffee down for me this morning and says:
‘Your friend. It was a cremation?’
I nod. There’s been no discussion among my friends of who collects the urn. Ed might’ve quietly gone and done it. Bloody Ed.
‘Johnny Depp paid for his mate’s ashes to be put in a rocket. Cost him three million, the silly sausage.’
Lucy and Seth look up and hold their breath, to see if I react badly to this. Classic Phil.
‘Did he?’ I say, conversationally. ‘We didn’t stretch to that.’
Lucy and Seth visibly relax.
‘Seems odd to me, firing remains over a field,’ Phil says.
‘I suppose people scatter ashes in all sorts of scenic places. Arguably just a more dramatic delivery system?’
‘Good point.’
I find Phil’s brash manner strangely soothing. Not for him the eggshell-walking that most others give the newly bereaved. He had that subdued first week – possibly influenced by the fact he was the one to find me after the news, and saw its effect on me – but, funeral past, had judged it to be business as usual. Which I guess it is. Phil is what my mum calls ‘a wind-up’.
He’s squinting at Wikipedia on his monitor now.
‘Oh, my mistake, it was a cannon. Rich people, eh? They’re a different country.’
Ed’s peppered my phone with attempts to contact me since our showdown. I’ve managed to hold him off – without too much suspicion from Justin that something specific is afoot – by saying I want time to myself to come to terms with the new world order, and the pub quiz cannot be contemplated for the time being. Hester no doubt thinks I’m sulking. Oh, and Ed had to go on a week-long school trip, so that helped – he lost a week to shepherding truculent pre teens round Chichester.
But I know that clock’s going to run out soon, and my avoidance of them all will be classed as worrying, rather than self-care.
Once Ed’s back from the trip he calls, he texts asking if we can chat, he calls again, he WhatsApps, asking if I’m going to ignore him indefinitely.
Halfway through the morning, my WhatsApp blips with Ed again. I open the message and scroll through a large amount of text.
Alright, this is a long one for WhatsApp and I only have seven minutes before the next lesson starts, but – I get why you are very, very angry and very, very shaken, Eve. But part of that might come from not knowing much about what happened, beyond the stark main fact. If you don’t want to give me the chance to explain because you don’t think I deserve the chance, I get that. I think you might feel better having heard me out though, and you get to give me a no holds barred response too. I’m not pretending this is selfless, there’s plenty of self-interest in here too. I hate that you think this badly of me, and I hate not having my best mate around at the worst time in my life. Which is what you are. Not Hester, not Justin. Not Susie. You’re my best friend and if that still means anything, then let’s at least discuss this. That’s probably shameful emotional blackmail, I’m too ragged to judge at this point. It’s also the truth. Ed. X