Just Last Night(5)

“I’m sure of it. Moving on has to happen here and here,” Ed says, pointing at head and chest. He looks at me levelly and I blink at him and a tiny, near-imperceptible moment passes between us, and I mentally put it in one of my specimen jars.

“. . . I bet he browses photos of you and Roger and thinks, hell, I miss that walking essay crisis with the Cleopatra eyes.”

“Crisis!” But I glow, a bit.

“Hey—that’s good. ‘Walking essay crisis with the Cleopatra eyes,’ that’s like a Lloyd Cole lyric or something.”

“It’s funny we use social media to spy on each other really, given everyone’s telling some degree of lie on there,” Justin says. “There was a photo of a hotel on Trivago doing the rounds because they’d cropped out the nuclear power station behind it. But don’t we all, in a sense, crop out our nuclear power stations?”

I laugh.

“Yeah, everyone presents their life like it’s a holiday destination,” I say. “I mean, where Mark’s living is a holiday destination.”

“I always think when an ex is super happy with someone else they should be thanking you for ending things,” Susie says. “Clearly you were right to split up. Why is it all ‘yeah suck it, in your face, I’m thriving!’ No shit, John, that is why I suggested we were both better off apart while you screamed at me that it was the end of your world. Perhaps in fact an apology is in order. Why do they think they’ve proved their point, not yours?”

I laugh, partly at how quintessential Susie Hart this is.

“Technically Mark dumped me, so he only has himself to congratulate,” I say.

“Yes, but only because you chose to stay here.”

“Who would leave all this?” I say, toasting the room, and then Leonard. And we laugh, but I know, as we hit our mid-thirties, it’s feeling just a trifle hollow.

We can feel ourselves, if not having already made irreversible mistakes, right on the verge of making them. Hester recently observed that we are mutually “idling in neutral gear.” And “having each other stops all of you lot looking for more. Co-dependency. You are each other’s other halves, so you don’t bother with relationships as well.”

Apart from Ed and herself, of course. God, she’s a joy.

The thing with Hester is, there’s a big whistling gap where her niceness is meant to be, but she’s absolutely everything else. Good-looking, energetic, high-earning, organized, confident, effortful, sociable, homemaking, birthday-remembering, smart. So I can see how it happened. You’d need to be paying attention.

And Ed’s very loyal. Sometimes naturally loyal people fail to spot when they shouldn’t be loyal.

“Speaking of disappearing acts. Why are we missing Hester?” Ed says, at her empty seat, and Justin mumbles, “We’re not,” just quietly enough that Susie and I hear but Ed doesn’t.

Conversation is interrupted by a shrieking metallic noise, feedback from misfiring audio equipment, which makes everyone’s shoulders involuntarily hunch, and our mouths twist.

“Whoops! Let me fiddle with this. There we are. Hello! Before the quiz starts again, this young lady wants to use my kit for a moment. As it were, haha! Therefore I am handing over . . . to Esther? Hester, sorry.”

Our heads snap around and we frown in confusion to see Hester standing on the other side of the bar, wielding the microphone with a look of beatific anticipation, as if she’s about to belt out a karaoke “Total Eclipse of the Heart” or announce Sweden’s scores on Eurovision, as soon as the producer in her earpiece says, “Go.”

“Hi everyone,” she says, as the saloon bar falls silent. “I’d been wondering for a while about when best to do this, and I had a divine fit of inspiration. It’s his favorite place, there’s a mike.” She waggles it at her mouth like a lollipop she’s about to lick and I sense a few males in the room paying keen attention. Hester’s presence often has that effect. It’s like when you’re interested in a lot on eBay and it tells you that Four Other People Are Watching This.

“So . . . that man over there . . .”—she gestures at Ed, who’s looking embarrassed, vaguely gratified, but mostly perturbed—“is the love of my life.”

She pauses for the awwwww to ripple around the room and closes her eyes for a second and nods. My stomach flexes.

“I know, right. Even in that shirt!” Laughter. Hester’s giving it the full Gwyneth with her Oscar, in terms of regally commanding the room.

“Yep. We’ve been together for . . .” She pretends to remember, counting it off on her fingers. “. . . sixteen years! We are right about to age out of the ‘youth’ demographic, my dear. Thirty-four is the cut-off. I know this because I work in advertising.”

Another laugh. You work for a marketing agency. I’ve heard you tartly correct people calling it advertising.

“The autumn I met Ed, we’d only been going out a few months . . . he did something amazing.”

God, I am way too British not to find this excruciating. I can’t imagine Ed feels any different.

“. . . My sister was going through a serious illness and I wasn’t sure she’d pull through, for a while. Ed and I were very new. Most guys would’ve run a mile from the commitment I needed. Not Ed.” She looks at him, eyes shining, and the room holds its breath. “He came and stayed with my family that Christmas, he cooked the lunch for us, he took care of my parents, and promised me he’d always be there . . .”