Just Last Night(78)

“Sorry, meant to reply to my friend Ed about something,” I say.

“Is Ed the fair-haired guy at the funeral, who did the reading?”

“Yes!”

“He’s your ex, right?”

“Ed? No, no, no, not my ex. Nope.”

“Ah.”

“Is this what we call . . . fishing?” I say, and Fin smiles back.

“No, it’s making conversation, when you politely ask a question and the person is free to respond, ‘None of your business,’” Finlay says, the quote marks clear in the intonation.

He sips his drink and I cast my eyes upward.

“Oh, very clever. You’re asking as you overheard our argument at the wake?”

“It was quite heated but I’m not sure I followed what had gone on. You read a letter? A letter from the box of personal items you weren’t going to look at, but, hey, that’s not important right now . . .”

Fin does a comic look into the middle distance while tilting the glass to his lips pose and I guffaw, my stomach clenching with guilt. I’m still slightly stunned he has such levity in his repertoire: like your mate sitting down at a street piano and bashing out a fluent Moonlight Sonata.

“Apart from that one moment of weakness,” I say, hastily. “Which, as you clearly bore witness, fully, karmically repaid me, so you don’t need to bother shaming me.”

“Right. So if he’s not your ex, why is it an issue he slept with my sister? Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”

I hard swallow both at the amount he knows, and his asking a question I’ve levelled in great embarrassment at myself.

“It’s complicated . . .”

“We’re in one of those intense situations where we see each other every day for a few days and then never again in our lives, so what would usually be indiscreet, isn’t, right?” Finlay says.

“Yes! This is like a holiday romance with no holiday and no romance,” I say, with the boldness of a woman who’s half a centimeter deep in orange-flavored paraffin.

I describe the letter to Ed at university going astray, Hester, the engagement, the sense of understanding between us, and my discovery regarding Susie, in context. I summarize everything Ed said when he came around and gave Rog chew sticks. It feels good to purge it by telling someone, so much so it outweighs any hesitation and my self-consciousness.

Fin listens to it and says at the end: “I see why you were upset.”

I breathe out. “Thank you.”

“Want my take?”

“Yes,” I say, and brace, as Finlay is sufficiently clever that even if he gets it wrong, he’s going to sound right.

“Your boy Edward has had his cake and eaten all of it.”

My eyebrows rise.

“He’s had exactly what he wanted from each of you, hasn’t he? Adoration from you, steady commitment from his fiancée, casual sex with Susie. It’s hurt all of you in different ways. Susie only in terms of her memory, as far as we know. But who knows? Must’ve torn her up, keeping it from you.”

“Yeah, I guess so?”

“He chose to start things with you, he chose to let them drop, he chose to start dating someone else and let you find out the way you did. And he chose to cheat. Yet he doesn’t own those as choices, but as pieces of bad luck? Beware the Nicest Guy in the Room, who doesn’t think his failures are the same as everyone else’s.”

I suppress a smile at Fin having definitely not put himself at risk of being accused of “Nicest Guy in the Room–ing.”

“Hmmm. I mean, I’m sure he didn’t set out intending it . . . with me, with Susie. Even with Hester, given he thought I’d not written back . . .”

God, I can hear myself. Let it go, Eve.

“That’s not a particularly useful measure of your enemies, motive. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that harm done with explicit conscious intention of doing another person harm accounts for about two percent of all harm inflicted. That descriptor pretty much only applies to dictators in banana republics, serial killers, and PE teachers.”

Finlay pauses, to the relief of my whirring brain. I’m not sure I’ve ever been given this much in one go to think about since history A-level cramming.

“These are good, aren’t they? Strong but good.” He takes another sip of old-fashioned. “You had no idea whatsoever about the thing with my sister?” he says.

“No. What breaks me is that I can never ask why she did it, given she knew what I felt. She’d say she was pissed, I guess? What else could she say? It doesn’t feel like the whole answer. She could’ve pulled anyone. She went for him.”

“I think I know why she did it.”

“Why?”

“Jealousy.”

“Really? But she never fancied Ed in the slightest.”

“Jealousy of you, not of him. Jealousy of the feelings between you. Jealousy and envy manifest in many ways. Plus, if there was action of any sort around, my sister wanted a slice.” Fin smiles. “Take it from one who shared a toy box with her.”

I feel my disloyalty, using Fin as a sounding board, and being dissected like this; it’s too efficiently on point to be comfortable.

I can’t believe you’re listening to my wanker of a brother trash-talk me! UGH . . . please tell me you don’t fancy him?! That’s it, I’m gonna barf.