‘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 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 which 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 saviour 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 moustache-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 afterwards. 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 onwards, 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 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 victimising myself over this, you can own yours. But let’s stop blaming bad luck or misunderstandings.’