I feel a twinge of complicated affection, and a distinct sensation of regret.
‘Can I ask something, personal?’ I say quietly. ‘Tell me none of my business, usual rules apply.’
‘Yes,’ Fin says, eyes still on the road.
‘Why did your mum not tell you she was dying?’
There’s a dreadful pause where I worry this is a terrible thing to have asked.
‘… Because I was the last person she wanted to see with the time she had left, I guess,’ Fin says. ‘Quite literally, as I was only informed when she’d been moved to the hospice. I was so angry and hurt, I waited a week before I flew over. And then she’d gone. My aunt was right. What Susie said was true. I only came over for the funeral.’
I risk a quick glance at him and, for a split second, his eyes shimmer with what I think could be tears, but in one blink, they’re gone.
‘Sorry,’ I say quietly, and insufficiently. I want to ask but why didn’t she care about you? but that is too great a question to level, if an explanation’s not being offered.
I now know why there was such an emptiness to Mr Hart turning up – he was the point of our mission, yet he ended up feeling like an interruption. I was unravelling something, and the process came to an abrupt halt. I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what was behind the screens with Finlay.
Count yourself lucky then.
For the first time, I’m irritated by the interjection of imaginary Susie. I want to challenge her – I can’t fit her Fin together with this Fin. There’s something missing in this story, and I’m going to commit to an opinion: I don’t think it’s his heart.
‘This you?’ Fin says, as the car rolls along my street, towards my house.
‘Yeah, this is me,’ I say, in resignation. He pulls up, turns the engine off and for a second I think he’s going to say something, but he’s snapping his belt out of the lock so he can get out of the car, handing me my bag from the boot of the car.
‘Thanks for your help,’ Fin says, after he slams the lid shut again.
‘I didn’t, did I? Sorry about that.’
‘You really did.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Take care of yourself, Eve. And if you’re ever in Brooklyn and need a place to stay …’
‘Ditto, Carrington,’ I say, motioning towards my house, and we both laugh.
‘Careful, might take you up on that,’ Fin says, and I hope my expression stays steady and neutral as he looks at me from under his brow.
I put my hand out for him to shake, as much to find a moment to end on as anything. Fin looks at it, takes it, uses it to draw me into a quick, hard hug. I can’t put my other arm round him due to my luggage, so I submit by pressing my face into his shirt. He smells indecently fragrant for someone who’s been driving for five hours, I think. Why is he grateful to me? Ostensibly it’s good manners, but I know in my guts and bones that it’s more than that. Is it because getting along with Susie’s best friend is the closest he’ll come to reconciling with his sister?
He leaves without another word, or a look back, and I’ll never know the answer.
36
Edinburgh’s awkward timings mean I return to work on a Wednesday, like no one, ever, and have to act like that was the plan, without discussing what ‘the plan’ might be.
‘I thought you weren’t back until next week!’ Lucy says, innocently and inconveniently. Fortunately, my mumbling: ‘We got the hotel deal on Wowcher, so we couldn’t pick the dates,’ seems to do the trick.
‘Which hotel?’ says Lucy.
‘… The Waldorf.’
‘Fuck my boots, The Waldorf’s on budget deals?’ says Phil.
Phil’s beadily meerkatting at me over his monitor, which is edged with tinsel, and, from oversized trouser belt up, he’s in a joke shop costume as an elf. As soon as the calendar hits December, Phil – in strange defiance of his otherwise ultra-curmudgeon persona – embraces every piece of comedy seasonal tat available, and insists on a drum of Quality Street on the go at all times.
‘Airbnb must’ve really impacted the industry,’ I say, with a faux wise professor nod.
‘Go with a boyfriend?’ Phil says.
‘No, a friend.’
‘Not sure I’d waste The Waldorf at Christmas on a girlfriend,’ Lucy says. ‘Could be just as pissed sleeping in a Travelodge, and spend the money on shoes.’
‘It wasn’t a girl friend, Lucy,’ Seth says, throwing me a grin. ‘He’s just not a boyfriend, am I right?’
‘Oh, well deduced,’ Phil says, looking from one of us to the other. ‘Don’t take us for fools, Harris!’
‘Phil, you’re wearing a striped hat with a bell on the end, a large pair of pointed rubber ears and a top that reads I’M SHINNY UPPATREE.’
I open today’s screen.
TEQUILA! It makes you happy. Or it makes you very sick. No in between with tequila, is there?
New margarita-making classes with The ‘Marg Masters’
My God, it’s stultifying. So much so that I Google creative writing courses in my lunch break and try to pretend I’m still on holiday at night, ordering Indian takeaway and fighting a losing battle to keep Roger’s nose out of foil trays of curried chickpeas.
I vacillate about messaging Fin about how his dad is, but everything I draft feels awkward, contrived, and not much of my business.
It’s strange: it’s as if the trip up north blew fresh air into my life, and I have heightened awareness of how stuffy its rooms are, now. Finlay Hart may have all kinds of faults, but failure to move forward isn’t one of them. Even my home feels like it has lower ceilings. Maybe that’s the inevitable effect of The Waldorf.
At Friday’s end, I walk down the hill from the office to the train station, dragging my trolley case and labouring with a bulging shopping bag, thanks to a mid-afternoon WhatsApp from Justin, regards the birthday cottage logistics:
EEEEEEV! Can’t wait to see you later. If possible can you bring a large corn fed chicken, long matches, slimline tonic (guess who’s been put on a wedding diet? Clue: not the bride) and two pints of double cream? LOVE YOU ETCETERA. xxx
I have to get a rush-hour train to Derby and then stand shivering waiting for a taxi to take me to the cottage in the middle of nowhere. I’m bad at judging distance and I didn’t think to Uber, so the local minicab costs me a ton of cash and takes forty-five minutes.
By the time we pull up in a squelch of mud outside a horse fence gate, I’m starving, and silently cursing Justin for not going to Pizza Express for his birthday like a normal person. I could be pleasantly mullered on the house white and full of doughballs right now. Justin had warned me they’d probably eat before I got there, due to my lateness, which was just as well, given my – in the end – catastrophic lateness.
The cottage is four hundred years old according to Justin, and accessed down a perilous slope after you’ve unlatched the gate and re-latched the gate – and why the hell is there no outside light?!
‘Fucking knackers!’ I shout, as I trip over and mud-slide down to the door, sledging on my arse.
‘Hark! I know the sound of a Cheltenham Ladies’ College alumna when I hear one …’ A burst of light has appeared in the pitch black beyond (I always forget how proper dark the countryside is) and Justin is framed within it, wearing a bobble hat and holding a large glass of red. ‘It’s a bit Withnail and I, innit? Welcome to Crow Crag! Calm down, Leonard, it’s only Eve!’ he says, at an as yet unseen but audibly excitable canine.