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.
Edie never wanted to be this woman. The Other Woman. Who would? Who in their right mind wanted the heartache, the unsympathetic misery of playing that part? No one was the villain of their own story in their own mind, wasn’t that screenwriting law?
Edie had a feeling for some time that her life had wandered badly off course, and she had to face facts now: it might never come back.
It wasn’t always like this. After a romantically chaotic youth gadding about the capital in the post-university years, she’d settled down by her mid-twenties with her picture perfect soulmate: a difficult, intense, complicated
