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