Just Last Night(90)
“Which hotel?” says Lucy.
“. . . The Waldorf.”
“Fuck my boots, The Waldorf’s on budget deals?” says Phil.
Phil’s beadily meerkatting at me over his monitor, which is edged with tinsel, and, from oversize trouser belt up, he’s in a joke shop costume as an elf. As soon as the calendar hits December, Phil—in strange defiance of his otherwise ultra-curmudgeon persona—embraces every piece of comedy seasonal rubbish available and insists on a drum of Quality Street candy on the go at all times.
“Airbnb must’ve really impacted the industry,” I say, with a faux wise professor nod.
“Go with a boyfriend?” Phil says.
“No, a friend.”
“Not sure I’d waste The Waldorf at Christmas on a girlfriend,” Lucy says. “Could be just as pissed sleeping in a Travelodge, and spend the money on shoes.”
“It wasn’t a girlfriend, Lucy,” Seth says, throwing me a grin. “He’s just not a boyfriend, am I right?”
“Oh, well deduced,” Phil says, looking from one of us to the other. “Don’t take us for fools, Harris!”
“Phil, you’re wearing a striped hat with a bell on the end, a large pair of pointed rubber ears, and a top that reads I’m SHINNY UPPATREE.”
I open today’s screen.
TEQUILA! It makes you happy. Or it makes you very sick. No in between with tequila, is there?
New margarita-making classes with the “Marg Masters”
My God, it’s stultifying. So much so that I Google creative writing courses in my lunch break and try to pretend I’m still on holiday at night, ordering Indian takeaway and fighting a losing battle to keep Roger’s nose out of foil trays of curried chickpeas.
I vacillate about messaging Fin about how his dad is, but everything I draft feels awkward, contrived, and not much of my business.
It’s strange: it’s as if the trip up north blew fresh air into my life, and I have heightened awareness of how stuffy its rooms are, now. Finlay Hart may have all kinds of faults, but failure to move forward isn’t one of them. Even my home feels like it has lower ceilings. Maybe that’s the inevitable effect of The Waldorf.
At Friday’s end, I walk down the hill from the office to the train station, dragging my suitcase and laboring with a bulging shopping bag, thanks to a midafternoon WhatsApp from Justin, regards the birthday cottage logistics:
EEEEEEV! Can’t wait to see you later. If possible can you bring a large corn-fed chicken, long matches, slimline tonic (guess who’s been put on a wedding diet? Clue: not the bride) and two pints of double cream? LOVE YOU ETCETERA. xxx
I have to get a rush-hour train to Derby and then stand shivering waiting for a taxi to take me to the cottage in the middle of nowhere. I’m bad at judging distance and I didn’t think to Uber, so the local minicab costs me a ton of cash and takes forty-five minutes.
By the time we pull up in a squelch of mud outside a horse fence gate, I’m starving, and silently cursing Justin for not going to Pizza Express for his birthday like a normal person. I could be pleasantly mullered on the house white and full of doughballs right now. Justin had warned me they’d probably eat before I got there, due to due to the relative lateness of my arrival, which was just as well, given I was catastrophically late in the end.
The cottage is four hundred years old according to Justin, and accessed down a perilous slope after you’ve unlatched the gate and relatched the gate—and why the hell is there no outside light?!
“Fucking knackers!” I shout, as I trip over and mud-slide down to the door, sledging on my arse.
“Hark! I know the sound of a Cheltenham Ladies’ College alumna when I hear one . . .” A burst of light has appeared in the pitch black beyond (I always forget how proper dark the countryside is) and Justin is framed within it, wearing a bobble hat and holding a large glass of red. “It’s a bit Withnail and I, innit? Welcome to Crow Crag! Calm down, Leonard, it’s only Eve!” he says, at an as yet unseen but audibly excitable canine.
“You best be pouring me one of those, right the fuck now,” I say.
I struggle in the door, kick off my filthy shoes, peel away my coat, and hand the heavy shopping bag to Justin.
“Oh, you darling. Charles and Diana are through there, you’ll see wine bottle and glass in the kitchen on your way. Follow the handbag-size dog.”
I lean down to pet the bouncing Leonard. The beams of the cottage are so low I have to duck to pass through doorways. In the front room Ed and Hester look up at me, resembling a Boden picture, side by side, in their chunky jumpers and crackling firelight glow.
“Evening, Eve!” they singsong, as Leonard resumes his place on a chair nearby. I toast them with my glass. I’m relieved the fight at the wake is long enough ago we can simply pretend it never happened. Ed flashes me a slightly discomfited look, and I smile to assure him things are normal. As normal as they can be.
Justin brings me a plate of stew and mash, and I’m asked for a summary of Edinburgh between mouthfuls.
I keep it brief and positive.
“How was the brother, did he keep up the Nosferatu levels of affability?” Ed says.
“More of a Yes-feratu for me,” Justin says.
I hadn’t considered how to handle this very obvious line of inquiry. My mind has been on larger matters. Like recalling the way Finlay Hart looked down at me in a darkened hotel room.