Exciting Times(49)

‘You’re into weird.’

‘Thanks for that, Ava, but I’m not sure this is the best time to tell me what I’m into.’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘it’s between me and him.’

‘Exactly,’ Edith said.

She went out to the bathroom. I started to ask why she didn’t just use the en suite, but she was already gone. I only knew the pictures on the wall meant London because he’d told me. The middle one was Tudor-fronted with carceral grids for windows. Tall English buildings looked like tall English prisons, and when you said that to an English person they thought you meant their prisons were lovely, too.

Edith came back. She stood in the doorway and held up a T-shirt she’d loaned me. I was about to say something, then saw she expected me to and couldn’t.

Very quietly, she said: ‘Why was this in his room?’

‘What?’ I said.

‘My T-shirt. It was on his bed.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘My question precisely.’

‘I can’t believe you went into his room.’

‘Same.’

‘Edith.’

‘Why the fuck were you in there?’

‘He’s in London,’ I said. ‘I was watching movies in his bed.’

‘Why were you watching movies in his bed? And Ava, please note that I’m a very intelligent person.’

She held herself perfectly as I told her everything, meeting my eye as though it was too late to keep me honest, but she could at least remind me I wasn’t. All was still, her jaw, her hands. Whenever I paused, she nodded. I felt she controlled the taps and I would speak as long as she wanted and stop at a twist.

Finally she signalled she’d heard enough by coming and sitting at the edge of the bed. She folded the T-shirt in half, then quarters, then handed me it once she’d got it down to the smallest possible dimensions.

‘You haven’t told me how you feel about him,’ she said.

‘I thought I loved him,’ I said. ‘Then I met you.’

‘It’s twisted as fuck that you’re an actual kept woman,’ Edith said, ‘and I do wish to give that its proper billing as the thing that would bother me if something else weren’t bothering me more. But something else is bothering me more.’

I wanted her to say it all. I wanted there to be nothing left and to have my deficiencies out where I could see them.

‘I can’t tell what you feel for him,’ she said. ‘Clearly, he feels something, and I think you’re desperate enough for his validation that you’ll go back to him. I have many opinions about the nexus between monogamy and patriarchy, opinions which are available on request should they interest you, but also, I feel like his views are probably quite conventional. So then we can’t be together. If that happens.’

While I was demonstrably not the world’s leading Edith-whisperer, I sensed now was not the best time to tell her Julian already knew and had claimed to be fine with it.

‘Look, Edith,’ I said, ‘I’m not the sort of person he’d have feelings for.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He’s got money and he’s smarter than me. And taller.’

‘My understanding is that straight men like women to be smaller than them. Also, he doesn’t want anything serious – and that’s not me speculating, you’ve said it yourself. Then you come along and he just has to give you a room he wasn’t using. I know the type. You meet them in law firms. He doesn’t want a woman in his “league”.’

I said it was comforting to know he was only with me because I was short, boring and plain.

‘I thought you said he wasn’t with you,’ said Edith.

I told her she was right and that I’d only said that for oratorical effect.

‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know till now how much I love you, but apparently it’s enough to listen to your bullshit about oratorical effect and he’s taller than me so how can he fancy me, and of course it’s normal to have sex with two people in the same bed and not tell either of them.’

‘It was always his bed,’ I said. I wanted to take her hand but didn’t dare. ‘Mine was just you.’

This logistical clarification assuaged her more than I’d thought it would.

‘So will you keep fucking him when he gets back?’ Edith said.

‘No,’ I said. I realised when I heard it that it was a decision.

‘You’ll move out,’ she said.

‘Yeah. But is it okay if I stay for a few weeks? Just until I find a place.’

She looked like she had something cold in her mouth that was hurting her teeth.

‘Also,’ I said, ‘you’re wrong about Julian not being nice. He’s nice.’

‘It says a lot about you that you think that proves you don’t love him.’

I couldn’t look at her. It was too accurate.

‘That’s such a misogynist trope,’ I said. ‘Women not liking nice guys.’

‘Some people,’ Edith said, ‘fit a great many misogynist tropes into their personal lives.’





      PART III