Letter or not, he still didn’t love me enough, those months later, to end it with Hester. She was a sensational catch, I could see that. The year’s convalescence for her sister seemed something Ed should stick around for, and then that was that, they were a done deal.
Every so often, Ed will let his guard drop and I will get a clue that some of his feelings for me are still there, somewhere. Often enough that I can never lose faith.
Holding my eyes seconds too long, after laughing together. Fretting my internet dates might be Ted Bundy. The way his eyes avert if I wear anything lower or tighter than usual, in a way it never seems to around any other female. Or the way he sits it out, silent, if Justin or Susie make ripe jokes regarding my love life. His general scepticism about, and small but noticeable distance he kept from, my ex, Mark. Calling me to talk about family or work problems, and I know, without a doubt, he’s using me as a more reliable sounding board than the volatile Hester. You give such great advice, he says.
The way he makes it clear that if I needed him, he’d drop everything. And anyone. Almost anyone.
Sometimes my friendship with Ed feels amazing and beneficial, because it’s good to know I can feel that way with someone, and to see him glow with adoration in return. Other times it’s like endlessly over-performing in an interview for a job where the position’s already been filled.
I know what someone sensible would say about Ed Cooper if I confided in them (though I never have).
If he really was right for you, if he felt what he needed to feel – he’d have left her.
Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s weakness of character. Perhaps he feels more for Hester than he ever could for me, and after all, there’s no nice way to express that?
But believing that if he didn’t want me enough, then he can’t be good enough to have made me happy – isn’t that a fancy version of sour grapes? A way we rationalise that our disappointments don’t really exist? ‘What’s for you won’t pass you.’ Everyone knows that’s a fantasy to give us consolation and that things that could be for us, pass us all the time.
Oh, and the imaginary confidante also tells me that, had shoddy plumbing not done for my letter, and Ed and I had slightly inept, fumbling but thrilling intimate encounters throughout the first term, it would’ve probably burned itself out by age twenty, what with youthful love affairs tending not to last.
Maybe, maybe not. Or, we’d be the ones engaged right now? Hester lasted. He can do monogamy, and commitment.
My conclusion is this: there’s no rule that says the unavailable person you waste your life being in love with has to be the greatest human you ever met.
It doesn’t make the loss of him any less painful.
8
The sound of the digital alarm pierces my cranium and hurts physically, as if someone’s stabbing a chopstick in my ear.
I have that horrendous split second of not knowing why I feel so abysmal, and then blearily recalling everything I drank and what time I went to bed and knowing every last second of today’s agony is my own stupid fault.
I could call in sick, but my job is not super secure, and given it’s only eight hours until the weekend, I should soldier through, powered by Diet Coke, Frazzles and spicy shame.
I work for a website that covers what we loosely term the entertainment scene, called City Nights – long since imaginatively christened Shitty Nights or City Shites by the workforce.
As a user, for a subscription fee, you log in, type in a date and it tells you what’s on around the country and has tickets left, or a table for four free, that kind of thing. ‘Like Last Minute Dot Com for your social life!’ is the ad line. We cover the East Midlands but it’s a national service.
There’s two members of staff who we could politely call reporters who are, more accurately, twenty-something raw data harvest monkeys, Lucy and Seth, and then two more staff, of whom I am one and Phil is the other, who we could politely call sub-editors or, more accurately, an over-thirty and an over-fifty ex-journo, who have no other way to use a near-redundant skillset.
I check the copy for legal risks and basic English then slap it online with photos