Exciting Times(30)

Mam started asking a lot of questions. She did that when she could tell I was holding something back. But there was nothing worth telling her about Edith. If I said I’d been getting coffee with a woman, Mam would just wonder what I was really hiding.





23

Later in April, Edith and I went to an art exhibition in Sheung Wan. She greeted me with a hug. I was afraid I’d get something on her clothes – a piece of fluff or a stray hair.

‘Nice dress,’ she said. ‘You look like Audrey Hepburn.’

‘It’s old,’ I said.

‘It’s lovely.’

She seemed to think I couldn’t take compliments. I preferred to believe I disliked profuse displays of emotion, and would accept any amount of praise if people tempered themselves in how they expressed it.

On the walk over, I wondered if Edith was pretty or if I just found her so. I was aware, with my college head on me, that beauty was subjective – but I wanted to know if we were aesthetically matched. I nearly asked if she knew Holly Golightly was bisexual. Having formulated the remark and decided how I’d orchestrate my body language while making it, I blushed nearly as much as I would if I’d actually said it.

Lumpish children ran through the gallery. The paintings were of tulips and cherry blossoms. Edith claimed it was the kind of thing her grandma liked. I thought she’d said that to make fun of the exhibition, but then she went to buy prints for the very same grandma. It was at moments like this I remembered there was a category of people who called her Mei Ling and whom I’d never meet.

As we left, I told Edith I’d go home and make dinner. She asked if I had flatmates. I’d been wondering when she’d raise that.

‘One,’ I said, ‘but he’s away. Julian.’

‘Julian,’ she said – vigilantly, I thought. ‘Maybe we could cook together.’

I’d never brought guests to the apartment and was relieved there was no tiresome process of registering them at the lobby. The rule was that you should, but it turned out to be one the doormen did not apply to white people. In the lift a woman held a panting German shepherd on a lead. Edith said something gao something, and the woman laughed and said something something gao.

‘You’re sure Julian doesn’t mind?’ Edith said.

I felt I had told her something personal by giving his name and wondered, stupidly, if it was too late to take it back.

Inside the door, I put my ballet flats on the bottom shelf, then moved them to the top unnecessarily, which struck me as the behaviour of a nervous person. While Edith cooked, I lit the candles for the first time ever. I wondered if Julian would notice the globs of wax when he returned.

Edith took Julian’s wingback chair after it became clear I’d forgotten I was meant to invite her to. She used the armrests. Julian rarely did when he sat there. He’d crossed his arms narrowly, like he was in the middle seat on a plane and the people on either side had boarded first.

We ate. I asked why Edith didn’t move out. It would have been a stupid question for most Hongkongese twentysomethings, but I knew she made plenty of money.

‘You can’t just move out,’ she said. ‘You need a husband, or at least a mortgage.’

‘Do you think you’ll get married?’

‘No, I don’t suppose I will.’

‘We should just get a house together.’

Edith smiled and said: maybe.

I gave her the remote and she chose a channel showing Inglourious Basterds. She said the title was spelled that way because Tarantino had misspelled it in a leaked screenplay and then insisted he’d done it on purpose. We agreed this was extremely male.

I touched my mouth a lot when we talked. It was a childish habit and made me look gormless. I made myself stop, then found I was playing with my hair.

During a shootout, Edith asked what Julian was like. It did not seem strictly necessary for her to keep using his name.

‘He’s in London right now,’ I said. ‘He’s in banking.’

I considered alternative phrasings: he does banking, he works in a bank, he works for a bank. Edith probably thought they were all the same, but maybe she didn’t and I’d used the wrong one. I sometimes thought things might have gone better with Julian if I’d known you went ‘up’ to Oxford. I hated the British class system. That was definitely a front for whatever the hell I was actually feeling in the context of Edith, but it was also a real emotion – just not the main one. By my standards, I was being self-aware. I knew Julian still wouldn’t be my boyfriend if I’d said ‘up’, but on some level I earnestly believed that my key uncertainty with Edith was whether she experienced attraction towards people who misused the subjunctive.

‘Do your parents find it weird?’ Edith said. ‘That you’re living with a man.’

‘I haven’t told them. They wouldn’t get it.’

Which was true.

‘Does he bring girls back?’ she said. She was typing on her phone while she said it. I knew she really did have emails to answer, but I also wondered if it wasn’t a touch convenient that she always saw to them when she was saying something potentially awkward.

I wished I’d said at the start that Julian and I were fucking. It was too late now. Edith would stop telling me things and would be newly suspicious of anything I told her.