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3
While she washed her hands, Edie pondered the mounting conviction that she shouldn’t have accepted her invite today. She’d rehearsed all the reasons for and against, and ignored the most important one: that she would hate it.
When the ‘Save the Date’ dropped into her email, the struggle had begun. It would be easy enough to have a holiday. She needed to say so quickly, though – a break booked immediately after she’d received it could look suspicious.
Though like anyone up to their necks in something they shouldn’t be, she found it very hard to judge how much she was giving away. Perhaps her absence would barely register, or perhaps there’d metaphorically be a huge flashing game show arrow over her seat saying HMMMM NO EDIE EH, I WONDER WHY.
So she uhmmed and ahhhed, until Charlotte said: ‘Edie, you’re coming, aren’t you? To the wedding? I haven’t had your RSVP?’ while they were standing at the lukewarm-water in-crackly-cup dispenser. In the background, Jack’s head snapped up.
Edie smiled tightly and said: ‘OhyesofcourseI’mreallylookingforwardtoitthanks.’
Once her fate was sealed by her stupid mouth, she promised herself that attending wouldn’t just be politically astute, it’d be good for her. As if approaching social occasions like they were a Tough Mudder corporate team package had ever been a good idea.
As the happy couple exchanged vows, and rings, Edie predicted she’d not feel a thing. Her feelings would float away like a balloon and it’d draw a line under the whole sorry confusion. Hah. Right. And if her auntie had a dick she’d be her uncle.
Instead she felt numb, tense, and out of place. And then as the alcohol flowed, it was as if there was a weight of misery sitting on her chest, compressing it.
Edie removed her hands from underneath the wind turbine of a hot-air drier. One of her false eyelashes had come unstuck and she pressed it back down, between finger and thumb.
If she was honest, the reason she was here was her pride. Avoiding it would’ve been one giant I Can’t Cope red flag. To herself, as well as others.
There was something about seeing herself in a bathroom mirror – the ‘Amaro’ magic cloud gone, make-up melting, eyeballs raspberry-rippled by booze – that made Edie feel very contemptuous of herself. What was wrong with her? How did she get here? No one sensible would feel like this.
She took a deep breath as she yanked the toilet door open and told herself, only a few hours until bedtime. With any luck, Lucie would have stopped singing.
As she headed back through the bar, instead of braving the restaurant, she was drawn to the sounds from the garden, and the still-warm fresh air.
Edie could do with some solitude, but was conscious that drifting around the gardens, appearing melancholy, wasn’t the look she was aiming for.
Aha, the mobile as useful decoy – on the pretext of taking a panoramic of the hotel, Edie could wander the grounds. No one noticed that someone was on their own, if they were fiddling with their phone.
She picked her way delicately across the grass in her violent footwear. Lucie’s jihadist mission appeared to be over, Sade’s ‘By Your Side’ was floating from the open doors to the restaurant-disco.
A few of the Murder Mystery pensioners were having a sneaky fag on the benches. It was quite a lovely scene, and she wished she could enjoy it. She wished other peoples’ happiness today wasn’t like a scouring pad on her soul. This is the beginning of getting better, she told herself.
Edie was far enough away from the hotel to feel apart from it all now, watching the wedding as a spectator. The distance helped calm her. She turned her phone on its side and held it up in both hands, to capture the hotel at dusk. As she played with the flash and studied the results, cursing her shaky hands and trying for another shot, she saw a figure moving purposefully across the grass. She lowered the phone.
It was Jack. She should’ve spotted it was him sooner. Was the groom really tasked with herding everyone inside to watch the first dance? Edie had hoped to whoops-a-daisy accidentally miss that treat.
Reaching her, Jack thrust his hands inside his suit pockets.
‘Hello, Edie.’
‘… Hello?’
‘What are you doing over here? There are toilets inside if you need to go.’
Edie nearly laughed and stopped herself.
‘Just taking a photo of the hotel. It looks so pretty, lit up.’
Jack glanced over his shoulder, as if checking the truth of what she said.
‘I came to say hi and couldn’t find you anywhere. I wondered if you’d disappeared off with someone.’
‘Who?’
‘I didn’t know. Instead you’re skulking around on your own, being weird.’
He smiled, in that way that always felt so adoring. Edie had thought ‘made you feel like the only person in the room’ was a figure of speech, until she met Jack.
‘I’m not being weird!’ Edie said, sharply. She felt her blood heat at this.
‘We need to discuss the elephant,’ Jack said, and Edie’s heart caught in her throat.
‘What …?’
‘The Pearl Harbor-sized atrocity that was committed back there.’
Edie relaxed from her spike of shock, and in relief, laughed despite herself. He had her.
‘You left before she got the bridesmaids jazz scatting. Oh God, it was the worst thing to ever happen in the whole world, Edie. And I once walked in on my dad with a copy of Knave.’
Edie gurgled some more. ‘What did Charlotte think of it?’
‘Amazingly, she’s more worried her Uncle Morris upset Lucie with the comments about her singing. Apparently he’s got “reduced inhibitions” due to early stage dementia. That didn’t make anything he said inaccurate, to be fair. Maybe he’s not the one with dementia.’
‘Oh no. Poor Uncle Morris. And poor Charlotte.’
‘Don’t waste too much sympathy on her. Uncle Morris is tolerated because he’s absolutely nosebleed rich and everyone’s hanging in there for a slice of the pie when he dies.’
Edie said, ‘Ah,’ and thought, not for the first time, that she was not among her people. She had thought there was at least one of ‘her people’ here, and yet apparently, he was one of their people. Forever, now.
‘It’s bizarre, this whole thing,’ Jack said, waving back at the hubbub from the yellow glow of the hotel. ‘Married. Me.’
Edie felt irritated at being expected to join in with rueful, wistful reflection on this score. Jack had stopped copying her into his decision-making processes a long time ago. In fact, she was never in them.
‘That’s what you turned up for today, Jack. Were you expecting a hog roast? A cat’s birthday? Circumcision?’
‘Haha. You will never lose your ability to shock, E.T.’
This annoyed Edie, too. Unwed Jack never found her ‘shocking’. He found her interesting and funny. Now she was some filthy-mouthed unmarriageable outrageous oddball. Who nobody chose.
‘Anyway,’ Edie said, sweetly but briskly. ‘Time we went back inside. You can’t miss the most expensive party you’ll ever throw.’
‘Oh, Edie. C’mon.’
‘What?’
Edie was tense again, wondering why they were stood in the gloaming here together, wondering what this was about. She folded her arms.
‘I’m so glad you came, today. You don’t know how much. I’m happier to see you than pretty much anyone else.’
Apart from your bride? Edie thought, though she didn’t say it.
‘… Thank you.’
What else could she say?
‘Please don’t act as if we can’t be good mates now. Nothing’s changed.’
Edie had no idea what he meant. If they were always just good mates, then obviously marriage changed nothing. It struck her that she’d never understood Jack, and this was a problem.
While she hesitated over her response, Jack said: ‘I get it, you know. You think I’m a coward.’
‘What?
‘I go along with things that aren’t entirely me.’
‘… How do you mean?’
Edie knew this wasn’t the right thing to ask. This conversation was disloyal. Everything about this was grim. Jack had married someone else. He shouldn’t be saying treacherous things to a woman he worked with, by some shrubbery. There was nothing, and no one, here of value to be salvaged. She’d known for some time now he was a bad person, or at least a very weak one, and this behaviour only proved it.
But Jack was dangling the temptation of talking about things she’d wanted to talk about for so long.
‘Sometimes you don’t know what to do. You know?’ Jack shook his head and exhaled and scuffed the toe of a Paul Smith brogue on the grass.
‘Not really. Marrying is a pretty straightforward yes or no. They put it in the vows.’
‘I didn’t mean … that, exactly. Charlie’s great, obviously. I mean. All of this. Fuss. Oh, I don’t know.’
Edie sensed he was several degrees drunker than she’d first realised.
‘What do you want me to say?’ Edie said, with as little emotion as possible.
‘Edie. Stop being like this. I’m trying to tell you that you matter to me. I don’t think you know that.’
Edie had no reply to this and in the space where her answer should be, Jack murmured, ‘Oh, God,’ stepped forward, leaned down, and kissed her.
4
She almost reeled with the surprise, feeling the soft brush of his freshly shaven jaw against hers and the pressure of his warm, beer-wet lips on hers. The ‘Jack kissing her’ information was so huge, it didn’t get through to her central cortex in one go. Full comprehension had to be delivered in stages.
1 1. Jack is kissing you. On his wedding day. This does not seem possible?! Yet early reports are it is DEFINITELY HAPPENING.
2 2. Is this going to last longer than a peck? Was it a mistake? Was he aiming for your cheek and missed?
3 3. OK no, this is definitely a KISS-kiss, what the hell? What the hell is he doing?
4 4. What the hell are YOU doing? You now appear to be responding. Is this definitely something you want to do? Please advise.
5 5. ADVISE. Urgent.
Seconds lasted an age. They’d kissed. Edie finally had a grasp of the magnitude of the situation, and her part in it, and pulled back.
There was movement to her right and she saw Charlotte behind them, her white dress glowing like exposed bone in the encroaching darkness. Jack turned, and saw her too. They made a bizarre tableau, for a split second, looking at each other. Like seeing the lightning crack and only hearing the thunder roll a second later.
‘Charlotte …’ Jack said. He was interrupted by screaming or, more accurately, a kind of low howling, emanating from the new Mrs Marshall. ‘Oh, Charlotte, we’re not …’
‘You fucking bastard! You utter fucking bastard!’ Charlotte screamed at Jack. ‘How could you do this to me? How could you fucking do this to me?! I hate you! You fuck—’ Charlotte sprang at him and began hitting and slapping him, while Jack tried to grab her wrists and stop her.
Edie watched blankly with a sudden, intense desire to vomit.
Earlier in the day, Louis had described his abhorrence at brides involved in procedural admin of any kind on their big day. They should float on stardust, and anything like work was earthbound and tawdry. ‘You shouldn’t see the ballet dancer sweat.’ Edie had thought he sounded like he’d swallowed a copy of The Lady.
However, there was something particularly aberrant about seeing someone in such glamorous, feminine attire having a full-tilt barney. There was Charlotte, hair in French roll, shimmering collarbones, princess skirt rustling like tissue, lamping her new husband with manicured hands, one of them bearing the giant sparkling engagement ring and fresh white-gold wedding band.
‘It wasn’t what it looked like!’ Edie said, hearing her voice say those words, as if listening to a stranger. It looked like what it was.
Charlotte paused momentarily in her grappling with Jack and snarled, her subtly made-up, lovely face contorted with rage: ‘Go to fucking hell you fucking bitch.’ There was no comma or exclamation mark in that statement, only certainty.
Edie wasn’t sure she’d heard Charlotte swear before. Edie realised she’d not moved from her position because of a strange conviction it’d make her ‘look guilty’ and she should stay and explain.
Having realised the lunacy of this idea, Edie finally moved. As she charged back towards the hotel, the first few people were looking over in curiosity and confusion as the voices drifted across the lawn.
OK, first things first, Edie was definitely going to be sick. Not in the general toilets; too conspicuous. She’d have to get to her room.
Edie dug the hotel key with the metal fob out of her bag with shaking hands as she did a quick swerve towards the main entrance. Fewer people to pass, that way.
Her only object right now was making sure she boaked the chicken dinner that was on its way back into the world into an appropriate receptacle. She knew after that a horrible, terrible, bleak immediate future would open up. One thing at a time.
As she bolted up flights of stairs, and along the quiet hotel corridors, it seemed impossible to Edie that time was still stubbornly linear, and that this alternative universe was in fact implacable reality. That there was no breaking a magic stopwatch open, twirling the hands and stopping this whole lurid saga from unfolding.
That Edie couldn’t un-decide her choice to walk out into the gardens. She couldn’t scroll back, like rewinding old video tape, and say something different to Jack, stalking away as soon as he started uttering gnomic, meaningful things. Or simply have stood somewhere that she could see Charlotte walking toward them, wedding gown draped over one arm, wondering why Jack was gossiping with Edie, wanting to tell him it was time to cut the cake.
No. Edie was the woman who kissed the groom on his wedding day, and there was no way of changing history. Right at that moment, if she had a Tardis, there was no way that Hitler was getting assassinated as a first item of business.
She burst into her deserted hotel room, its disarray reminding her it was so recently the scene of innocuous hair-straightening and full-length-mirror-checking and tea-with-UHT-milk-making. She locked the door and pulled at the handle, rattling it to make sure she was safe, kicking off her shoes.
Edie made it to the loo, held her hair out of the way and retched, once, twice, three times, and sat back up, wiping her mouth. When she came face to face with her reflection, arms braced on the sink, and could barely stand looking at herself.
The bargaining began.
Charlotte knew Jack had followed her, though? That he’d kissed her? But she couldn’t make that case. It was up to Jack to explain.
Edie thought about what was going to be said. She had to leave. Now. She made herself steady and check her watch: 9.14 p.m. Too late to get a train? Could she get a taxi? To London? At no notice? That would be insane money. Still, she’d pay it. Only she considered she’d have to pass through reception with her luggage when it arrived, a walk of shame if ever there was one.
There was only one option left: going to ground. Staying barricaded in here.
The size of what had occurred kept roaring up, fresh waves breaking against her. The disco reverberated below, the tinny squeals and squelches of Madonna’s ‘Hung Up’ mocking her predicament. Time goes by, so slowly.
This was now a horror film, where the arterial splatters and screams are ironically juxtaposed with the sitcom laughter track of whatever show the unwitting victim had been watching.
Edie wrung her hands and ground her teeth and paced the room and vacillated about going back down and facing people down, shouting, ‘It was him!’ while knowing nothing could dissolve the Dark Mark now upon her.
When she risked peeping out of the window, the gardens were spookily empty.
It was impossible not to look online, as much as she didn’t want to, with every fibre of her being. On her four-poster bed, she sat staring grimly at the moon glow of her phone. Every time she clicked, she thought she might be sick again. So far, nothing.
The calm before the storm. Tagged photos of the aisle walk, or smiling, signing the register, a status from Charlotte saying, ‘Champagne for my nerves!’ with scores of Likes. What would people say? What was happening downstairs?
‘Edie? Edie!’ a sudden hammering of a fist at the door had her fear-pulsing heart stretching right out of her chest, like a Looney Tunes cartoon.
‘Edie, it’s Louis. You better let me in.’
It was only then that Edie realised the music had stopped.
5
Louis’s unusually twitchy demeanour did nothing to make Edie less panicked. She hoped against hope he’d sail in and say, It’s blown over, what are you doing up here?
She let him pass, walking on weak, pipe cleaner legs and re-locked the door behind him, as if there really was a murderer loose in The Swan. Louis surveyed her as if suddenly in the presence of a notorious individual. He put his hands on his hips, under his suit jacket.
‘Er. So. What the HELL happened?’
‘Oh God, what’s everyone saying happened?!’ Edie wailed.
‘Jack and Charlotte,’ Louis paused, unable to keep himself from the stagey pause, as if he was announcing the winner on a talent show, ‘they’ve split up.’
Edie gasped and sat back down on the edge of the bed, to steady herself. She was trembling, almost juddering. She knew she’d ruined their wedding day. But to cause them to separate, during it? It didn’t seem feasible. It wasn’t a thing that could happen.
‘This can’t be real,’ she mumbled.
‘Charlotte’s gone back to her parents’ house,’ Louis said, enjoying himself now. ‘And Jack’s somewhere here I think, holed up with a bottle of whisky and his stag-do lads. There was a screaming match, total hysteria. It was chaos. Charlotte threw her wedding ring at him.’
Edie closed her eyes and held on to a bed post with a clammy palm, as the room swam and shifted. ‘What are they saying about me?’
‘That Charlotte caught you together. That you’ve been having an affair.’
‘We haven’t been having an affair!’
‘What happened then?’ Louis said.
It was the first time Edie had recounted it out loud and she hesitated.
‘I went into the garden and … he kissed me. Just for a moment.’
‘Wait, are you saying you weren’t shagging?’
Edie’s jaw fell open. ‘Shagging? No?! Of course not! How could we have been … Are you winding me up?’
‘Some people are saying you were, you know. At it. Or on the way to being at it.’
Edie knew Louis was prone to exaggeration and amping up drama but she had no way of telling if this was what he was doing. She could well imagine the Chinese whispers were out of control. As if the truth wasn’t terrible enough.
‘We were only a few yards from the hotel!’
‘Yeah, I did think that’s more the sort of encounter that happens on a car bonnet, after midnight. And usually, y’know. Not with the groom. So he kissed you?’
Edie nodded.
‘But you are having an affair, yeah?’
‘No!’
Oh God, this was agony. Everyone thinking the last thing she’d want them to think, ever. If she could be granted the option of being forced to streak, instead of this kind of exposure, she might just take it.
‘Erm, OK, darl. So out of the blue, Jack was like, “Are you enjoying my wedding day oh and also my tongue”?’
‘He started saying I meant a lot as a friend, he was very pissed I think, and the next minute he’s kissing me.’
‘And you didn’t kiss him back?’
‘No! Hardly. I mean, I was shocked.’
‘Mmm. Kind of odd you were hanging around out there alone? How did he find you? Sure you hadn’t texted him?’
‘I’d gone to take a photo. I can show you the photo!’ Edie waved her phone at him. ‘Also, no texts on here!’ As if there’d be a court case, and she could put her phone in a Ziploc evidence bag. It was the court of public opinion. She’d do much better from the former kind of trial.
‘Louis, think about it,’ Edie pleaded. ‘Why today, of all days, would I try to get off with him?’
‘Why would he try something like this, out of nowhere? You’re leaving something out, Edie. You must be.’
‘We messaged at work. Chatted. That was all. We were friends. Nothing more.’
‘You flirted?’
‘A bit. I suppose.’
She couldn’t give Louis nothing and get his vote, she knew that. He chewed his bottom lip, weighing things up.
‘… I believe you. I think you’re going to have a problem getting anyone else to believe you, though. The rumours are halfway around Harrogate and the truth doesn’t have its boots on. Also …’
Louis’s pause made Edie’s eyes bulge. ‘What?!’
He lowered his voice.
‘There’s only two people who are going to be blamed here: you and Jack. He’s the kind of guy who falls into a pit of shit and comes out wearing a gold watch. Not to sound cold, but you need a PR strategy. You have to let people know it was him who did this, not you.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ Louis said, magnanimously. ‘You should think about that though. We work in advertising. Do crisis management for your brand.’
Edie nodded. She had to put aside everything she knew about Louis and trust him. A friend in need was a friend you couldn’t afford to doubt.
‘Do you think Jack and Charlotte are over, really over?’ Edie said, voice wavering.
Louis lifted his shoulders and let them drop.
‘Not sure I’d forgive a wedding day like this. The shame of it. Could you?’
Edie shook her head, miserably. She hadn’t thought of that until now. She’d focused on her own survival. Look at what Charlotte would have to face, the fact everyone would know about this carnage.
There was a clomp-clomp and a banging at the door, a thud as if a slavering wild animal had suddenly thrown itself at it. Both she and Louis jumped out of their skins.
‘EVIE THOMPSON! This is Lucie Maguire! I am the chief bridesmaid! Open the door THIS INSTANT!’
Edie and Louis boggled at each other.
‘EVIE! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, YOU LITTLE COW. FACE THE MUSIC.’
‘Tell her it’s your room!’ Edie hissed to Louis.
‘What? What if she goes off to my room instead?’
‘You’re not in that room.’
‘I will be later.’
‘Then tell her that’s your room, too.’
‘Then she’ll know I lied about this room.’
‘Louis!’ Edie said, near-feral in desperation. ‘Tell her.’
He grimaced and said, loudly: ‘Hi, Lucie, this is Louis. Not Edie.’
‘Where’s Evie? This is her room! The man on reception told me! Do not toy with me, I am in a VERY AGGRESSIVE STATE.’
Louis made a middle-finger gesture with both hands at the door and sing-songed: ‘No, my room. Little Louis in here.’
‘… Let me in. You know this girl? You can tell me where to find her.’
‘I’d rather not. I’m naked.’
‘Put some clothes on, then.’
‘I’m naked, with someone else who is also naked. Get it?’
‘Is it her?’
‘No, it’s a man, man. Now if you don’t mind, we’d like to get on.’
A pause.
‘Do you know where this slut is?’
‘No, I thought we’d established I’m otherwise engaged.’
‘Well if you do see her, tell her I’m going to be wearing her tits like they’re ear muffs.’
‘Will do!’
Edie winced.
Pause. ‘Also, can I just say I think it’s very bad taste to be having sex while a woman’s life is in ruins? We’re trying to help. And meanwhile you’re up here, naked.’
‘That’s me. Always naked in a crisis. It’s when I do my best work.’
There was tutting and Lucie’s fearsome clomping stride retreated. In the depths of the despair, Louis and Edie couldn’t help small, stifled laughter.
‘How am I going to get out of here in one piece?’
‘Mmm. There may be scenes of a harridan nature. I’d check out early.’
Edie had already formed this plan. The reception was staffed 24 hours, she could escape at dawn. She reasoned that even the very angriest were unlikely to be prowling around, fired up by fury, at half five. Although with Lucie, who knew.
‘Look on the bright side. No music Lucie can get you to face can be worse than the music she already made you face.’
Edie laughed weakly and thought how that experience, where someone else was the centre of attention for the wrong reasons, seemed an era ago.
‘I think it’s safe for me to leave, now,’ Louis said.
At the prospect of being alone again, Edie felt desolate.
‘Louis,’ Edie said, in a quiet, broken voice, ‘I know what I did was wrong but I’d never want any of this. I feel terrible. Everyone will hate me.’
‘They won’t hate you,’ Louis said, unconvincingly, ‘Just let them know Jack jumped you, not vice versa.’
They both knew that a) it wouldn’t be possible to let everyone know this and b) no one was going to be inclined to absolve Edie and thus lose a key player in such compelling You’ll Never Guess What gossip. The narrative needed a vixen.
‘We’re still friends, aren’t we? I feel like I’ll have no friends.’
‘Babe,’ Louis squeezed her in a quick, hard, brusque hug, ‘Course we are.’
After re-locking the door after him, Edie sank back down on the bed. Every bump or scuffle in the hotel startled her. She imagined a procession of people queuing up, Lucie Maguire having rejoined at the back, waiting to scream and rant at her and do horrible things to her tits.
When she could bear it, she looked online. Again, nothing but a chilly calm. She couldn’t see any comments alluding to what had gone on, she hadn’t been unfriended on Facebook (though that was coming, obviously).
And yet … as time ticked by, suddenly, an ugly, worrying notion gripped a panicky Edie. She wrestled with it. She was being paranoid. She didn’t need to check. Of course she was wrong.
OK, Edie had to look. Just to reassure herself she was being paranoid. She fumbled with hot fingers on the touch screen. Oh, God. No. She blinked back tears and hit refresh and refresh again and willed herself to have made a mistake. But she hadn’t.
Louis had deleted the picture of them together.
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