not able to be rational about this, or anything to do with Susie.
This second poke through the contents of the box is when I notice it. As I rearrange the bundles of letters, I see a hole has been ripped in one of the envelopes by the way Susie’s torn it open.
It reveals feminine handwriting that’s not Susie’s, and quite clearly, the words:
around Eve, she might
I stare and stare and drop it, dully, putting the lid back on. My heart is racing, my face suddenly warm. Me. There’s a letter that talks about me.
Around me, ‘she’s not’. I’m not, what?
The desire to read it is considerable, to the point of overwhelming. I’d been so firm and genuine in my conviction not to snoop, but this level of temptation is unexpected.
The angel on my shoulder says: your initial instinct was correct. Eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves. This is still a letter marked only to Susie, and as far as you know, she’d never discussed its contents with you. Do you really want to see something that might be jarring or upsetting, the day before her funeral?
The devil says: you didn’t ask to see this and now you have, it’ll scratch at you until you know what it is. It’s almost certainly nothing. And look at the date! It’s from ten years ago. You were in your early twenties. It’ll be trivia. Can you remember anything you might’ve written down about Susie a decade ago that would have great significance now? Well then!
I hypothesise outcomes. If it’s mindless bitching, meanness, disloyalty, suggesting Susie’s been misspeaking me to a third party, how will I feel? It will hurt, yes.
However, Susie and I were close enough that we were able to snap and complain to each other and about each other, and it meant nothing. The air between was always clear. It was part of what made us such formidably good mates, there wasn’t that residual build-up of unspoken gripe that seemed to end up clogging the pipes of lots of other female friendships.
(This, for example, describes Hester’s. She has an array of moral objections, jaded observations and historic grudges about everyone she’s supposed to count as close. If you meet a Hester pal, and say something like: ‘Verity’s good company, isn’t she, lots of anecdotes’ immediately she’ll fire back: ‘She’s SO exhausting, and FYI, none of that stuff about that tabloid editor she dated was true. She’s very colourful, if you know what I mean.’ No wonder she was short of bridesmaid ideas.)
Then I think, Eve, what the hell – what could possibly be anywhere near as bad as what you’ve already been through? What could touch THAT?
Open it, read some shit that was merely replying to Susie fretting that she didn’t know how to tell you that you didn’t suit a dress (that you can’t even remember owning, and she’s not here to jog your memory, and that will hurt just as much) and move on. Laugh, and get a stiff gin and tonic. Then commence internet searching whether Finlay Hart can legally compel you to hand these effects over.
I open the box again and pull the letter out from under the elastic band. I knew as soon as I saw my name I was going to read it.
I unfurl the paper, shaking out the pages and turning them first to check it’s to Susie – Dear Suz!! – and then to check who it’s from.
Becky. Hmmm. Becky was Susie’s closest friend at university, from her accountancy degree. I never liked her, which could sound like it was a consequence of simple rivalry, but it really wasn’t. Susie and I were so fixed as best-friends-who-also-had-other-friends, I never feared Becky taking my place. In fact, it was the other way round. I think Becky very much wanted me out of the picture, which is where some of our wariness of each other came from. She and Susie went travelling together in Europe after university and it was documented in a way that subtly yet clearly laid claim to her ‘gorgeous number one super bff’ in every caption. I found Becky a bit tiresome, fakey and super girly. She probably found me misanthropic, sweary and super not interesting.
These days Becky and her husband have a grand pile in Cheltenham and Becky’s husband is something important in a picture agency for news wires. When we’ve met on her Susie visits to Nottingham, she’s never wasted an opportunity to say: ‘Declan could get you an