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?’
‘Pete and I have split up.’
Edie paused, glass of wine halfway to her mouth.‘What?’ she said dumbly. ‘That sounded like you said you and Pete …?’
‘… have split up.’
‘No?’ Edie said. It was as much a statement as a question. Hannah and Pete couldn’t simply ‘split up’ any more than the Queen and Prince Philip. Together since university, inseparable, finished each other’s sentences, each other’s equal and opposite reaction. This was unthinkable. This was like your parents divorcing.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ Hannah said, and Edie heard the unusual tremor in her voice. ‘We’d been not happy for so long we’d forgotten what happy felt like, so we were numb to it all. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, I kept losing my nerve. I lay in bed at night thinking, “I’ll do it tomorrow” and then the next day was never the right day to do it. I went away on this training course and shagged someone else so that I’d done something definitive I couldn’t take back.’
‘You had an affair?’ Edie said. This was un-possible.
‘Not sure if it’s an affair if it’s a one-off? I fell off the fidelity wagon with a thud, yes. I knew Pete and I were over and had to push myself to make it real. I haven’t told him. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. It was as if I had to prove to myself we were over, as well as him. I came home two weeks ago and finished it.’ Hannah paused. ‘I was going to call you before now but I needed to get it straight in my head and we had to tell the parents and everything … With Mum having the MS flare up, I wanted to pick my moment …’
Edie nodded. She owed it to Hannah to be as supportively hard-to-shock as she’d been for her.
‘I had no idea. You seemed so steady.’
‘We had no idea. Or we had some idea, but it was like carrying a weight. Sooner or later you forget you’re carrying it and think you always walked with a stoop. Fuck, Edith, I can hardly bring myself to admit this to you, but I found myself thinking: we can’t split up because we’ve just had the floors sanded. We were seriously staying together because of sofas and tiles and stripped floors. Like the beautiful house had become this tomb we were interred in together.’
Edie had forgotten how smart Hannah was. It was intimidating she was so good with words when Edie did words for a living. You’d hardly let Edie tinker with your urine- filtration system.
‘We didn’t want a wedding or kids and so it was possible to drift, you know? And the whole constant mantra about how long-term relationships are hard work and everything has its ups and downs and you’re going to be annoyed by their toenails and stick with it and the grass only looks greener and so on. It’s actually very hard to tell when you should split up with someone. All I knew was I was waking up every morning thinking this can’t be it, until death. When your relationship is making you feel life’s too long, something’s gone awry.’
Hannah’s voice had become thick, and she sipped her wine. Edie felt bad that Hannah had obviously churned on this a lot, with her friend so many hundreds of miles away, not able to help.
‘You should’ve said …’
‘I didn’t want to say it out loud until I was sure. You know that’s me.’
Edie nodded. She’d done the same over HarrogateGate, after all. Waited until she could face saying it.
‘… I’m moving back to Nottingham,’ Hannah continued. ‘I was here for a job interview at the Queen’s Med yesterday and they’ve offered it to me. I don’t want to hang around in Edinburgh and bump into Pete all the time. I can’t stand the whole access arrangements to mutual friends thing, I want a clean break. My mum’s not getting any better. I start in two weeks.’
‘Oh my God! Both of us back at the same time, what are the chances?’
‘You’re not staying, though?’
‘No,’ Edie said, with a small shudder, although why she thought London was the safe haven was unclear. ‘I technically have my job to go back to.’ As if that made it more appealing.
‘How lucky are we, to at least end up here at the same time in our hour of need,’ Edie said, as Hannah returned from the bar with more massive glasses of red that were going to wreak flamboyant revenge in the morning.
‘Well, qualified lucky,’ Hannah said, into her glass, and smiled.
‘OK, we know our lives are a shitty mess. To the outside world, I am a celebrity biographer and you are a superb renal surgeon and we have most of a bottle of Shiraz to neck.’
They clinked glasses.
‘To being together in our time of need,’ Hannah said. ‘Shall we look Nick up? Have you heard from him lately?’
Edie shook her head, guiltily. She’d not seen Nick for eighteen months, bar trading the odd ‘did you see this’ funny email. Nick was a friend they’d made in sixth form.