Just Last Night(96)

“She’s definitely finished with you, you don’t think you can mend it?” I say.

“No,” Ed says, raising his embattled gaze to meet both of ours. “I ended it. It was about time.”

Neither of us know how to respond to that.

“Justin. Can I talk to Eve, alone?”

Justin says, “Well, merry birthday, Justin!” before adding, “Yes, yes, I fancied a ciggy out on that bench anyway.”

He puts on his coat and bobble hat and picks up the discarded Mo?t.

“I shall swig from the bottle, in the manner of a tramp who’s won the lottery.”

“I’m sorry,” Ed says once Justin has left. “That was one hundred percent my mess and you got dragged by the hair into it. Sorry for the vicious things Hester said, she wasn’t herself.”

“Ed,” I say, in a polite tone. “I think you can afford to be honest about her not liking me, at this point. I think the cat’s out of the bag. She was herself. Also, I’ll admit to never liking her in return. There. Sorted.”

He gives a rueful smile.

“I don’t blame her,” I say. “I think she’s justified in not liking me. I haven’t ever been her friend, that’s true. I was a menace to her relationship.”

“That outburst wasn’t your fault. It’s been building for a while.”

“Oh?”

Ed thrusts his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know if we should sit down. Feels stupid though, doesn’t it? Like I’m chairing a meeting.”

“Standing’s fine.”

His voice is low and thick and I feel a huge foreboding. I want a glass of champagne and to salvage what’s left of this weekend. Ed wants a watershed.

“At first I thought Hester and I didn’t feel right after we got engaged as I’d not had much of a choice, time to think about it. I didn’t feel in control. But as things got worse, the penny dropped—it wasn’t the engagement that had changed us. It was Susie dying.

“Losing someone the way we’ve lost Suze, the brutality of it. It brings everything into sharp focus. I had a status quo that I maintained, which didn’t really, truly make me happy. It felt like my job to maintain it all the same. I didn’t think I had the right to be happy, not the way I wanted.” His eyes meet mine. “As it would hurt people to get there. Better to stay where I was, make the best of it.”

I say nothing, arms tightly folded.

“My feelings for you, Eve, they’ve always been there. I put them to one side. I figured I’d missed my chance, and that was that. You were my best friend, and that would have to be enough.”

I still say nothing.

“. . . But seeing Susie’s life end at thirty-four. The unfairness of it. It strips you down to your factory parts and asks you if you’re spending this brief time we have the way you want. I wasn’t. Hester felt I was pulling away. It was coming to a head, and then when you arrived . . .”

He pauses.

“This is not the way or the moment I imagined saying these words,” Ed says. “But then I’m not sure how I ever did imagine it. I love you, Eve. I’ve always loved you. It’s been a constant for me since we were teenagers.”

A pause. I nod, as some sort of response seems essential. A silence develops that I gather I have to fill.

“What am I supposed to say?” I ask.

Ed shakes his head. “Whatever you want. Nothing. I’d reached the point I had to tell you, that’s all. There’s no expectation in it.”

I think on this. Once upon a time, a very recent time, this would feel like everything I’d secretly hoped for, falling into my lap. Yet it doesn’t feel the way I thought it would. Not least because Ed didn’t choose this moment, he’s using this moment.

“There is an expectation though, isn’t there?” I say. “The idea is I’ll think on this and want to be with you too, at last. That’s why you acted as my savior and fell on your sword over the Susie secret. It wasn’t for Hester’s sake. It was preparing to make this appeal to me.”

Ed shakes his head. “I was protecting you from Hester’s furies. I caused them, I should take them.”

“But not only just now. You’ve always kept me at clutch biting point. I’m your Plan B. And here we are, your Plan A is halfway through the Peaks right now, and the time to tell me you love me has finally come. It’s Hester who forced this decision, not you.”

“Plan B? You’re making me sound like some mustache-twirling, conniving rotter.” Ed gives a small laugh of disbelief. “My life’s fallen apart in front of you, like a fucking clown car with the doors dropping off. I’ve not planned any of this. As or Bs. Hester sensed I was in love with you and there was nothing I could do to fix that, because I am.”

Fin’s observation about Ed thinking he’s only ever been a victim comes hurtling back to me.

“When you got engaged, in the pub,” I say. “I didn’t go home from The Gladstone afterward. I went on to a bar and nearly had a hook-up with a lad who works there.”

“Right . . . ?”

“I was doing it like self-harm, so I didn’t have to think about you marrying Hester. I was doing it to cheat on you, on us, our great unspoken passion. I was going to mention it, or let Susie mention it, down the line. To see if you reacted. I wanted you to be jealous. I wanted you to know I’d done it, and to feel something in return. I was prepared to have sex I didn’t want to have, for the two-second vindication of the look in your eyes, before you changed the subject. Which is quite something, when I spell it out.”