‘Do you know about my fight with Hester at the wake?’ Justin shakes his head. ‘Brace yourself …’ I fill Justin in on it all, from the letter when we left for university that got lost with water damage, so long ago, to my seeing the Susie letter in the box of secrets the day before the funeral, about the Rock City shagging.
‘I know you knew, but I didn’t know all of it,’ I say. I don’t find this disclosure difficult, possibly due to practice with Finlay. For the first time, I truly and fully comprehend that I should’ve told Susie, and Justin, and even Ed how I felt, back when it mattered more. This information’s eternal power source was in part, in its unsaidness.
Again, I test my feelings: imagining Ed and Susie wound around each other in a toilet stall, her long legs gripping him, his carnal grunting. Nope … nothing? An anthropological kind of curiosity, but no pain. Yes, I feel foolish for being protected from the truth, like some Mrs Rochester fragile hysteric. But I don’t feel that sensation of my stomach being scooped out by a doctor with cold hands. Maybe it’s having had this much red wine.
‘You didn’t know about that? I thought we all knew but were never going to mention it again. The most macabre coupling since Steve Coogan and Courtney Love. Brrrr.’
‘No. Susie never told me as she thought I was in love with Ed.’
‘Were you?’ Justin asks.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Are you?’ he says.
‘… I don’t know.’
‘Eesh, let me get an ashtray for this,’ Justin says, now a late-night deep-and-meaningful is getting going. ‘Why did I choose a no-smoking cottage? I prioritised WiFi. Ain’t nobody needs that “tranquil and peaceful haven, completely cut off from the world” shit.’
‘Surely they’re all no smoking these days. Also didn’t you just quit?’
‘I took it back up the day Susie died.’
Justin returns with a coffee mug receptacle and taps his fag into it.
‘Let’s dig into this Big Undiscussed. I thought it was mutual, and so did Susie,’ Justin says. ‘Susie and I used to say – why doesn’t Ed tell her? Why doesn’t he …’ Justin points upwards, ‘see which side his bread is buttered?’
‘Really?’ This patches up my ego somewhat. ‘Why did you think we were in love? Was I that much of a transparent dickhead?’
‘Hahaha,’ Justin takes a deep drag. ‘No, no one thing. The way you looked at each other, the sexual tension. Ed was absolutely obsessed with you in sixth form. Partly why I was so shook by him cuffing himself in our first year, I took it to be a rebound from missing out on you. And then … well. The rest is history. The rest is Hestery.’
‘Why didn’t Susie say anything to me about it, ever?’
‘I’m guessing because she thought it would’ve embarrassed you? And once she’d drunkenly diddled Ed, far too politically hairy. I mean, if I’ve done anything I’m ashamed of, I just avoid it like the plague, job done. Denial is a very underrated coping mechanism.’
‘I suppose so. Why do you think it happened? Ed and Susie, I mean.’
‘’Cos twenty-four-year-olds are horny? I dunno. I thought it was nailed on that Ed would end up with one or other of you at some point, from the day we met you. We all loved each other, and love can get messy and squirty.’
I laugh. I wish I’d spoken to Justin about this sooner.
‘Suze liked to know she could have anyone she wished, and Ed’s not someone to reject female attention.’
‘Even though it hurt me?’ I say, more of a statement than a question. ‘I know I had no rights over him. It’s not upset or anger any more, it’s only not understanding why.’
‘Hmmm yeah, but. Suze had a ruthless streak,’ Justin says. I look at his bloodshot eyes by candlelight. ‘I do too. We recognised it in each other. I want to remember her how she really was, and how she really was had its less beautiful parts.’
I nod, and think about Finlay’s idea that Susie was trespassing, in order to investigate. That our key differential was my being permanently hopelessly in love, and Susie not knowing what being in love felt like.
I thought losing Susie, and then finding this secret out, meant I’d never have an answer for why she slept with Ed. In my gut, I feel I have a fuller answer in Finlay’s insight than I would have ever had from Susie.
I look at the ink-black of the hills around us, relieved only by the odd tile of yellow illumination in neighbouring houses. I surprise myself with a distinct pang of missing Finlay Hart. Gazing at that forbiddingly handsome, closed face and wondering what he was going to say next. What was going on behind his eyes. Missing Finlay Hart, how strange is that?
I hear Susie say: pervert.
‘I wanted to ask you if you approve of something,’ Justin says. ‘I’m going to get back in touch with Francis.’
‘Your ex, Francis?’
‘Yeah. I’ve had a revelation. He was great, and I treated him like shit.’
‘OK.’
‘I wasn’t ready to be someone’s boyfriend. I am now. But I don’t know if crawling back a year later and saying I’m older, wiser and bereaved isn’t the most monumental piss-take of someone who was capable of being a fully rounded human being by age thirty. Who had to listen to me say I simply hadn’t slept with enough people to be settling down.’
‘Only one way to find out. Don’t let your pride matter more than a shot at love,’ I say.
‘It isn’t an outrageous approach to make? The very premise isn’t offensive?’
‘Not to me, but that’s for Francis to decide.’
Justin nods.
We both startle at the door opening behind us and Ed in a dressing gown, putting his head round the door. I assume we’re going to get a telling-off for making too much noise.
‘Aren’t you two freezing?’
‘We’re coming back in now, my nicotine urge sated,’ Justin says. ‘Did we wake you?’
‘No, couldn’t sleep,’ he says.
I carry the storm lantern back to the kitchen table and Justin pours out whiskies.
‘I’ll finish my wine, thanks,’ I say, holding a palm up. I didn’t get to age thirty-four without knowing the law of group holidays and all hen dos – everyone completely canes it on the first night and is at reduced capacity for the rest of the trip.
‘You two burning the midnight oil, then?’ Ed says.
‘Lots of sorrows to drown, one way or another,’ Justin says. He raises his glass. ‘To Suze. Who’d have joined me for a fag and right now be trying to make a snowball.’
We clink glasses and I get the concrete-heavy emptiness in my stomach, because I’d passed another tiny milestone of grief – I’d forgotten to notice Susie isn’t here. I’d taken her absence for granted. We’re quieter without her, and the energy doesn’t crackle in the same way.
We chat about this and that, but this thought has sobered me right up. Also, the atmosphere is ‘off’, somehow.
Ed darts looks at me constantly. I get a peculiar sense that he’s nervy around me, trying to get my attention, or approval.