I got old overnight. I know how indulgent that sounds when Susie only got thirty-four years. All I have is pain and regret and a shit job where I type stupid things into boxes.’
‘It won’t always be this way, Eve,’ Fin says, quietly. ‘Life has harder parts.’
‘What’s going to change for me?’
Fin smiles, sadly. ‘That’s largely up to you.’
‘Yeah. I don’t have much faith in Future Me. Past Me is a twat.’ I pause for a strangled breath. ‘I miss Susie so much,’ I say. ‘I miss her so much, and I’ve spent this time being uselessly angry at her … and you were right, she was snooping with Ed, like I snooped on her reading that letter. Oh God … I just want her to be here to say sorry, so I can tell her I’m sorry. For everything. And that I love her so, so much and nothing matters except that fact. I can’t, I won’t speak to her ever again, Finlay. Game over.’
I sob openly, and Finlay puts his arms round me.
I make a decision, in the embrace, to lean into it. I’m not going to staunch my tears out of embarrassment. I’m not going to stop and choke this back into something feminine, and picturesque. I ugly heave-sob into his t-shirt until it’s wet enough to stick to his skin. He feels hard-bodied and lean under the fabric, a stark contrast to the squish of my chest. I’ve never been this physically close to an athletic type before. My partners, however narrow they looked when dressed, were always softly British-pudgy from beer and curries. Like me.
‘I miss her too,’ he says, into my hair.
‘Really?’ I look up at him. I blink and focus enough to see he has tears in his eyes. ‘I wasn’t sure if you did.’
‘Yes,’ he says, voice very low. ‘Very much. Not in the same way you do, I can’t miss a relationship I didn’t have. I’d been missing her for a long time. But it’s like I’ve lost a part of myself, my past. So many things only Susie shared with me. I already was pretty isolated, but now I realise, I wasn’t. Not like I am now. And like you, there are things between us that will always be unfinished. After the police called, I sat in silence, before the tears. I wasn’t ready. This wasn’t how it was going to end. I know you only saw the anger. I think there was still some love, underneath. Or a bond at least, whatever you’d call it. I know there was on my side. I found out I’d always been clinging hard to a notion of a point in the future when we could reconcile. The way things were between us wasn’t ever going to be forever, you know? And it turned out, it was.
I’ve never heard Finlay, or indeed anyone, sound this raw.
‘I’m sorry for being like this,’ I say, in the deep silence that follows.
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t mean to suggest my loss is greater.’
‘I know you didn’t. Come and sit down,’ Finlay says, and guides me to the edge of the bed. ‘How about a cup of milky tea with a large sugar in it? It’s what my mum would suggest.’
‘Sounds perfect,’ I say, smiling. It actually does. I watch as Fin goes to fill the kettle in the bathroom, rustles around in the stash of sachets and plastic pots of UHT milk, clanks the china cups.
‘Why have you got the television on, on mute?’ he says, noticing the dancing picture in the gloom.
‘I turned it on and I didn’t know how to turn it off.’
‘Silent rugby at Twickenham is oddly hypnotic.’
Fin hands a cup to me, demonstrating good manners in twisting it so the handle is nearest. From his bearing, you’d think he went to a posh school, not my school. He is a bit of a Gatsby.
‘Thank you.’
‘Want to be alone, or shall I stay for a while?’ Fin says.
‘Stay! If that’s OK.’
‘Of course.’
Fin pours hot water onto a tea bag, dunks it and casts it aside, and walks to the bed. It’s so huge that he can lie on it and channel surf without it feeling as if we’re in bed together.
As I drink, I realise that as well as being emotionally unsettled, I was half drunk and dehydrated. Halfway down the cup, I feel significantly steadier.
Finlay holds the remote aloft and clicks through channels rapidly. For a few seconds, a male model with goatee and top