‘People aren’t always brave. They make mistakes. You’ve still been my best friend.’
‘No, Susie was my best friend. We’re close friends, with this added manipulation. Friends with drawbacks. You pulled the “best” thing out of the bag once I found out you’d slept with her, and I needed to be thrown fresh hope of my specialness. Because you knew that men who sleep with your best mate aren’t anyone’s romantic hero. And that’s what you wanted to be, whatever cost it had for me.’
Ed looks staggered. I’ve kept my temper, but I’m finding this far too powerfully cleansing to pull any punches.
‘I’m blown away that you’d think I’d deliberately—’
‘It’s not deliberate, in the sense you plot,’ I interrupt. ‘It’s instinct. The trouble with your lies, Ed, is you tell them so fast and so easily, you don’t see yourself constructing them. You believe them yourself. Look at the way you altered the story of our fight to Hester just now, to gain an advantage from it.’
Ed doesn’t speak for a moment.
‘You make me sound a proper monster.’
‘You’re not a monster. You’re someone who naturally takes on responsibility, you’re always the responsible adult and the map reader, but won’t take responsibility for himself with women.’
‘Today’s turning out to be a helluva day for self-discovery,’ Ed says, after a short pause. ‘I’m sincerely sorry for having hurt you. I didn’t intend any of it.’
I never thought of the story between Ed and me being a circle. I thought it was open-ended, it would run forever. Yet here we are – him finally declaring himself again, and me closing it. I’m glad. My life’s been short of moments of closure.
‘Apology accepted. I’m sure you can see why I think I’m worth more than someone who spent sixteen years making up his mind about whether I was worth the hassle.’
Ed looks fairly stunned and yet is without comeback.
A heavy silence ensues. The door handle cranks and Justin appears, rubbing his hands, Leonard skittering ahead of him.
‘Apologies, on the one hand you two seem to be still full Jerry Springer. On the other, I have shotgunned half a bottle of champagne, my battery is on twelve per cent and my dick is an icicle.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say, looking at Ed. ‘We were finished.’
39
‘Think he’s alright?’ Justin says. ‘Are my onion pieces small enough?’
I crane over to see Justin’s chopping board. We’re making a Sunday roast while Ed is off on a ‘head clearing’ hike.
‘I think so and definitely. They’re only going under the chicken.’
‘Ah, so they can soak up the chicken’s weltschmerz.’
‘Do you mean schmaltz?’
‘Oh. Yes. What’s weltschmerz?’
Justin rubs his hands on a tea towel and picks up his phone. ‘A German word for a feeling of melancholy or world weariness. I wish these onions could soak that up for us.’
I laugh and return to peeling the potatoes.
Last night was pretty dour. We watched a film – All the President’s Men – and pretended to discuss Watergate when everyone’s minds were on Hestergate. Ed was understandably stilted around me, keeping his distance, while I tried to be as normal as possible to make it clear I didn’t want any rift.
Today, Ed’s spent a lot of time on the phone at the end of the garden, brow furrowed, and has now gone on a solo excursion, no doubt in a state of weltschmerz.
‘I think it’s safe to say I was fully off my chanks to book a cottage break comprising the warring couple, and his secret amour, in the first wave of grief after losing a dear friend,’ Justin says. ‘A decent set-up for a horror film.’
‘I’ve enjoyed it. So has Leonard,’ I say, waving my peeler at Leonard, sitting in the kitchen’s window seat.
‘I take it last night’s drama between you and Ed was him declaring himself your prince and offering you his hand in marriage instead? And you saying no thank you, you would rather marry Prince Andrew?’
‘Yes, pretty much.’
‘He could’ve given you the ring right then and there too,’ Justin says.
‘I would recommend throwing that ring into the fires of Mordor.’
‘Fuck, I hope he doesn’t get back with her.’
‘You think he will?’ I privately and ignobly glory in the fact I can ask this, without it affecting me in slightest. Such heady freedom.
‘I dunno, but immediately propositioning you doesn’t speak well of his willingness to try being single, and there’s been an awful lot of talking to her today.’
‘They own a house and a car and had booked much of a wedding. There’s a lot of disentangling.’
‘I don’t think they’re debating calling the caterer, do you?’ Justin says, starting on the carrots.
‘You think they could come back from the Susie sex? If I was Hester I don’t think I could.’
‘Hester would want to kill her,’ Justin raises his knife. ‘But our wily girl Susie clearly anticipated this.’
‘Justin!’ I gasp and he guffaws.
‘She’s cackling in heaven every time I drop one of these. It’s my way of keeping her with us.’
He pauses. ‘I don’t think Suze will be the sticking point now. I think she’d want him to get rid of us. Or at least you.’
‘After the things I said to him last night, I wouldn’t blame him if he decided he’s best off choosing his relationship.’
‘I’m not so big-hearted. If he gets back with her and bins you, he can bin me off while he’s at it.’
I do want to stay friends with Ed, I think. But not at any cost. A very simple sounding idea, and yet I think it’s taken me my whole adult life to work that out. I have weathered the unimaginable loss of Susie, so far, and that has given me strength, and perspective.
‘How’s it going? Something smells amazing,’ Ed says, having to practically fold himself double to get through the doorway to the kitchen.
‘That’s my peach cobbler,’ Justin says.
‘Eve, can I have a quick word? It will be quick,’ Ed says, and Justin turns his back fast, before he says something caustic.
I wipe my hands on my apron and follow him outside, closing the door after myself. My God, it’s cold. Am I really going to get an official dismissal?
‘I want you to know I’ve thought about everything you said. You were right. I did, without fully meaning to, manipulate you. I loved thinking you were in love with me, I encouraged it, and I never asked myself if it hurt you. I purposely blurred the lines between friendship and fancying and us being in love, because it felt good, and so I thought it was benign.’
He takes a deep breath and I see he’s teeth-rattlingly nervous.
‘Then with me and Hester falling apart, and the thought of you off with that good-looking bastard last week, it started to torture me. It dawned on me,’ Ed points into the middle distance ‘– halfway across that field, right now, while I was humping the stile, trying to haul myself over – my feeling like a complete nervous wreck when you were in Scotland, losing my appetite, the whole nine yards. That’s what I’ve been putting you through all this time.’