that couldn’t stand each other. Edie wasn’t able to face a sullen car journey and the four walls of her bedroom yet.
‘Dad, you keep the peace and take Meg home. I’ve texted a friend and I’m going to meet them round the corner, so I’ll be back home in an hour or two,’ she lied smoothly, as smooth as when she was fourteen and sneaking off to meet boys.
Her dad nodded, as Edie tapped her pin number into the card reader and handed it back.
‘Tonight was a nice idea, you know,’ he said, and leaned over and gave her shoulder a squeeze, with the unspoken addendum, just terrible execution.
A friend called a big-ass glass of wine.
At the arts cinema café bar up the road, Edie got herself a thumping beaker of red and found a relatively quiet corner. She sat alone, back half-turned to the room, free to play with her phone unfettered and do some discreet weeping. She was overdue some self-pity. Edie indulged in leaking-eyes-and-holding-fingers-horizontally-underneath-to-catch-the-water crying. Everyone around her was far too lively-drunk to notice the dark-haired woman dissolving in the corner.
Everything was so fucked in so many ways. Her life wasn’t great. She wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, living her hashtag ‘Best Life’. But it was hers and it worked, sort of. Now what?
She’d talk to her dad tomorrow and say she’d move out to a flat for the next few months. He’d object vehemently. She’d have to insist that she and Meg under the same roof was a recipe for disaster. Her sister hated her, she didn’t know why, and that was that. It just wasn’t tolerable when the world at large hated her too.
Edie had a sudden and overwhelming urge to speak to someone who loved her, and understood her, and confess all. Little chance of Hannah answering at this time on a Saturday night, mind you …
‘Edith!’
‘Hello! You’re there?!’
‘Of course I’m here, this is my phone.’
‘I know, but it’s a Saturday night.’
Edie put a finger in her spare ear to block out multiple other conversations and Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’.
‘I was just thinking I should call you.’
‘Noel Edmonds’ cosmic ordering,’ Edie said, feeling her chest swell and trying not to wail HELP ME, OBI WAN KENOBE, YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE.
‘You sound funny, where are you?’
‘I am funny. I’m crying a bit and I’m in a bar. In Nottingham, actually.’
‘Really?! That’s a coincidence. Why are you crying?’
Edie steeled herself. She should’ve done this sooner.
‘Ready for a dreadful story and a big pile of I Told You So? Hang on, why is it a coincidence?’
‘I’m here too. At my parents’. Where are you?’
‘Urrr … Broadwalk? No, wait, Broadway. The cinema.’
‘Can you hang on ten minutes? I can cab it to you.’
Could she hang on ten minutes? Edie wanted to do a lap of the café-bar, face daubed with woad, whooping war cries of joy.
Quarter of an hour later, Hannah appeared in the doorway of the bar, fists bunched in the pockets of her jacket, ponytail whipping from side to side as she scanned for Edie. Hannah wore big eighties-ish secretary spectacles with coloured frames that somehow made her look even more attractive. Edie would’ve looked like a serial killer’s wife.
She waved and did a two-finger point at the two glasses of red in front of her. Hannah was as tall, lithe and handsome of face as she’d ever been – she’d skipped the puppy fat and spots of adolescence entirely. She was born aged thirty-five, in more than one way. The only sign of the years passing was that her delicate Welsh skin had acquired a network of fine lines you could only see up close, like varnish crackling on pottery.
They hugged across the table and Edie said, not completely able to staunch the waterworks: ‘Oh, it is so good to see you. Why are you here? Home, I mean?’
‘Tell you in a minute. You alright? Is your dad OK? Your sister?’
‘They’re fine. It’s me. I’ve been an idiot.’
Edie relayed the wedding carnage. Hannah was quiet, sipping her red wine, brow furrowed. ‘I never liked the sound of this Jack. That’s certainly not changed. To be honest, I thought you were going to tell me his girlfriend caught you showering together or something.’
Edie’s jaw dropped.
‘You don’t think I’m the most despicable woman who ever lived?’ Edie said.
‘I think you fucked up in the heat of a moment but you’d hardly be the first person to do that. Also, he jumped you, right?’
‘Yes but, I kissed him back though,’ Edie said, morose. ‘I kissed someone’s husband, Hannah, on their wedding day. They’d only said vows about forsaking all others a few hours before.’
Hannah sipped her wine and put her head on one side.
‘Hmm. What would not kissing him back have looked like in that situation? I mean, even if you’d stood there, it’d have looked bad. Sounds like he lunged and you were buggered, really. I can’t judge you. My dad always says, only beat yourself up about the harm you did that you meant to do. That’s on you. The harm you did by accident, feel bad but let it go, ultimately it’s not on you. Only way I got through junior med school, was with that in mind.’
Calling Hannah tonight was the best idea Edie had had in a long time.
‘Yes!’ Edie said, feeling a rush, a flood, of gratitude and relief. ‘Who would possibly expect it? If I’d had any time to think it’d have been a “no”.’
‘Toxic arsehole. Please tell me he’s out of your system?’
‘God, yes,’ Edie said, nodding vigorously. ‘I was already well on my way to over him by the wedding.’
She said this, not knowing if it was wholly true. Would she have replied to that first post-honeymoon G-chat? Probably, yes. In a guarded way. She was an addict. Addicts weren’t to be trusted. Addicts lied to everyone, and themselves in particular.
‘If you’re looking for my reputation, however, it’s in the toilet. I had to come off Facebook, I was getting a barrage of abuse,’ Edie said.
‘Well, you know my views on that merry shitshow.’
Hannah was an avowed loather of social media.
‘I’ve got news, too, as it happens,’ Hannah said.
‘Yeah?’
