Exciting Times(43)

‘I miss you,’ I said. ‘I need to go now.’

‘Yeah, sure. Keep me posted on Edith.’

*

Sometimes the children had questions about my life. The younger ones wanted to know if I slept in the school, and if Ireland was the same as England. (Julian’s banker friends had often seemed just as confused on this point.) The older ones asked if I had children of my own. I found this question horrifying, but knew that around 10 per cent of my salary was for projecting a nurturing aura, so I just smiled and said no. When they asked about men, I remembered that many of their parents would not want me teaching them if they knew about Edith. Probably some of them were old enough that they themselves would not want me as a teacher. I wouldn’t want me as a teacher either, but not because I had a girlfriend.





33

Edith turned twenty-three on 5 July. I used Julian’s card to buy her a pair of quilted leather gloves. I wrote claiming they were for me and asked whether I should get them in black or cognac. He replied: ‘I can’t believe you think I’d have an opinion on this.’ Then, five minutes later: ‘Cognac.’

That night Edith took me along to a group dinner on Connaught Road. Her friends were all our age and mostly women. Cyril Kwok and Tony Ng arrived together and gave Edith a joint present. She’d mentioned before that some Hong Kong parents were more liberal than hers.

I wondered if anyone there knew that she and I were dating.

The restaurant had exposed red brickwork and clipboarded menus that called every item ‘artisan’, ‘percolated’ or ‘deconstructed’. They’d got the head count wrong. Edith arranged for another table to be gerrymandered over to the end of ours, then through brisk intimation showed each of us where to sit. She was a spry conversationalist and used tailored strategies for drawing everyone out. Whatever I said, I felt people were only listening because I was responding to a question Edith had asked. She poured everyone water.

‘You got a man first,’ I told Tony. Edith had put me beside him.

‘Men are easy,’ he said. ‘Women are hard.’

I thought I saw him smile.

The food came on slates, with condiments in clay espresso cups. Many of the faces were familiar from Edith’s Instagram – which I could tell her later, but still, obviously, had to hide from the people themselves. They were all Hongkongers. Most had been at boarding school with Edith and had stayed in the UK for university, while others had gone to the US or returned home. They had the kind of brisk English accents that made my mother nervous.

Tony and I got talking to Clara, who taught yoga at a studio near the International Financial Centre. It was a good location. The bankers paid a premium for convenience and if anyone was understocked on the zen front, it was Hong Kong financiers.

‘Ava,’ Tony said, ‘does it weird you out doing the neocolonial TEFL thing?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But no one else will hire me.’

‘I’ll find you something,’ he said.

I shared Edith’s assessment of Tony’s proficiency at pretending not to be rich.

‘There’s nothing for me here,’ I said. ‘I’m a pointless white person.’

‘You’re all pointless,’ Tony said amicably. ‘But I like you.’

I excused myself after dessert when they ordered more drinks. I worried it might hurt Edith, but decided it would embarrass her more if I stayed and didn’t contribute to discussions which all seemed to come back to people everyone else knew and I didn’t.

I’d just gone to bed when she called saying she needed me to come and pay the bill.

‘What?’ I said. ‘At the restaurant?’

‘No, TST. We went drinking. I left my cards at home because I thought if I took out five hundred, I’d only spend five hundred.’

‘How much is it?’

‘I told you, I went drinking. And Holly can only pay half.’

‘Edith,’ I said, ‘where are you? How much is it?’

‘This bar in LKF.’

‘You said you were in TST.’

‘LKF.’

‘Which bar?’

‘I’ll fucking, I’ll show you on Maps.’

‘That won’t work, Edith, because I’m not there beside you.’

‘I’ll send a screenshot.’

The bar was at the top of D’Aguilar Street. I took Julian’s card, grateful he hadn’t specified whose folly it was meant to cover. When I reached Edith, the friend had bailed too, having left enough money to pay half the bill. I felt she probably could have covered the whole thing and hoped someone would make her leave her bed unnecessarily in the near future. Edith’s curls were flat. One of her dress straps had slipped. It was the drunkest I’d seen her in four months of knowing her. On the walls, neon lights spelled out soundbites in upper-case: THE CHILD IS THE FATHER OF MAN; SILENCE IS MORE MUSICAL THAN ANY SONG.

Edith saw the name on the AmEx and told me to tell Julian she said thanks.

‘He doesn’t need to know,’ I said. ‘I’ll say I was out with a male friend and he thought it meant something it didn’t, so I paid for the drinks to clear it up.’

‘Or you can just tell him.’

‘No need.’