Just Last Night(51)



I have absolutely no interest in filling the dead air that follows with chatter, though I’m aware that if it continues, Hester may fully realize she’s interrupted something. I sense Ed is grasping for something to say but that options are limited in the circumstances.

“Hey, so—while I’ve got you,” Hester says to me. “I wanted to let you know, as a bridesmaid. After thought and discussion, Ed and I are going to press ahead with the wedding on schedule.”

I reply: “Oh?”

“It can be something for us to look forward to, amid all this grimness.”

“Right.”

Like me getting thinner, the wedding is rebalancing the scales. It’s one thing to know someone’s insensitive, and another to have them demonstrate just how insensitive they can be when you’re at your most sensitive.

Ed is staring at the ground.

“I’m going to see if Verity will take Susie’s place as bridesmaid. Don’t mention to her that Susie was the first choice at any of the fittings, will you?! I don’t want her to get huffy at being on the reserves bench. I mean, just you watch, she’s going to fight me every inch of the way on the dress design. She’s gorgeous but there is no one vainer, haha.”

I nod and drink some drink and Ed is avoiding my gaze, in new depths of torment, I’m sure.

Well, you got engaged to her.

Silence.

“The show must go on. It’s what Susie would want,” Hester says, catching herself, I think.

As a coup de grace, her eyes well up with Disney tears. I can imagine a man rushing to put his jacket around her as she trembles. Ed remains frozen still.

Hester has found my breaking point. I’ve never said a word of challenge to her in all the years I’ve known her. But a dam has burst.

“What she’d want? What she’d want is to not be a pile of fireplace sweepings in an industrial furnace in Wilford right now.”

“Sshhhh, Christ, Eve.” Hester looks around, eyes like saucers at my tastelessness. “It’s not the time for your . . . unique turn of phrase.”

“Not the time? You’re the one talking about bridesmaid fittings for her replacement.”

“Hang on, it’s fine for you guys to crack jokes, but the moment I talk about something else, I’m in bad taste? Is that it?”

“What I mind is you using Susie’s imaginary wishes as your excuse. She’d not care less about whether your wedding went ahead. Leave her out of it.”

“Wow, ‘excuse’?” Hester says, face twisting. “Alright. Thanks. I don’t see why you’ve attacked me. So you think out of respect we should cancel, and lose two grand . . .”

“I don’t care,” I say, with sufficient force she looks genuinely startled. “No one gives a shit about your wedding tonight, Hester. Sorry to be the bearer. In terms of hitting the right tone, you might as well walk around playing a tuba.”

I find I’m not scared of her. I feel like Bette Davis gene-spliced with a cobra.

Hester’s unused to being called on her behavior and it shows. Like an unfit person suddenly asked to run a mile, she’s out of shape when it comes to taking negative feedback, huffing and puffing. Whereas I feel like I’ve been in training for this moment for years.

“Talking about my wedding—our wedding”—she shoots a look at Ed, who she suddenly realizes should be backing her up—“is about ‘life goes on.’ You agreed we should still go ahead with it. I don’t hear you agreeing now though?” She looks at Ed again.

There’s a painful pause.

“I did agree. But you didn’t need to bring it up now. Eve’s right,” Ed says, and I swear I feel Hester lift two inches off the ground in fury. “Leave it.”

“You’re taking her side, after the way she’s spoken to me?” Hester says, pointing at me, to identify the culprit for the jury.

Ed doesn’t answer.

Her eyes narrow. “I am so, fucking, sick, of the way you lot are with each other, your cliquey little gang and your . . . superiority. Don’t twist my words and take this out on me, because you’re sad and bitter,” she says to me.

She wipes at her suddenly streaming eyes and stalks off back into the hotel. She might as well have said “Heel!” to Ed, for the obviousness of the expectation that he follow.

I don’t feel regret, or triumph, or worry at the repercussions from that spat. I don’t feel anything. I’m numb.

“Sorry,” Ed says, turning to me, looking like a man who’s aged a year in minutes.

“What for?” I say. Usually that is a response to an apology that exculpates someone, but here it’s accusatory.

“Hah.” He rubs his temple. “I’ll call you,” he says, in a low voice, and heads indoors to find Hester.

As my eyes follow him, I see Finlay Hart, leaning against the wall in the shadows, a glowing ember of a cigarette in one of his hands. I near-physically twitch at recognizing him in the gloom, plenty near enough to have caught every word of the altercation.

How long has he been there?

He smiles at me, drops his cigarette butt, and grinds it under his heel. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him smile. Might’ve known he only enjoys malign triumph. And Marlboro Gold.

“Can I help you?” I say.

Mhairi McFarlane's Books