by Amy Bratley
I propped myself up on my elbows and sighed. I was drowning in gut-wrenching regret for telling Ethan about Benji. Now, I felt frozen with cold fear, fretting about what Ethan would do and what he’d be feeling. His life had just been changed forever, just because of one ‘mistake’ that, in his words, had lasted less than five minutes. If I were in his shoes, I’d be incredibly angry that Daisy had never told me. And what about Daisy? Benji was her son. She would hate me for telling Ethan about something that was her business. I didn’t know if she’d ever speak to me again. Oh God. Despite what had happened between her and Ethan, I hated the thought of that more than anything. What would Dad say? What would our mum have thought? I heard Dad’s voice in my head: It’s us against the world now. I buried my head in the pink mohair blanket on Isabel’s bed for a moment and let out a muffled scream. It was all such a mess.
‘What about these?’ Isabel said, trying to distract me, holding up a pair of Hawaiian-print hot pants. ‘Dubai or Oxfam?’
I looked up, my hair prickling with static electricity and my cheeks hot.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Help me. Eve, come on. Focus.’
‘Oxfam,’ I said. ‘Unless Robert would like to wear them to work.’
Isabel laughed and I managed a hopeless smile. She moved over to the almost empty wardrobe – a huge old oak thing – that was about the only piece of furniture in her bedroom that remained standing. The rest had been dismantled and packed up, ready to be stored while she rented out her flat. I hated seeing Isabel’s home like this. In the years I’d known her, this flat had become a second home to me. When we weren’t out drinking or dancing, much to Robert’s chagrin, we’d spent countless evenings on the sofa, tucking into a plate of freshly baked cake, plotting our escape from normal life into being our own cafe bosses. I sighed. We’d almost got there. Almost. I wondered fleetingly if that would be etched on my gravestone. Almost got it right, but ballsed it up in the end.
‘You never know,’ she said. ‘Despite the fact he likes to think he’s James Bond, he’s got quite a feminine side. Can you remember that time he put a dishwasher tablet in the bath because he thought it was one of my Lush bath bombs? That was funny.’
I smiled at Isabel, remembering Robert’s red face when she told our group of friends about his itchy rash, while we were in the pub one lazy Sunday afternoon. It was about the only time I’d ever seen him blush.
‘Come on,’ she said, pausing to sit down on the bed for a moment. ‘I know you’re worried, but Ethan did need to know about Benji. It’s stupid to think otherwise. Maybe it didn’t happen in the best way, but it’s out there. Just got to let the shit hit the fan now.’
‘Thanks,’ I said to Isabel. ‘Thanks for always cheering me up. You’re always so level-headed. I’m going to miss you so much. Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay and bankrupt yourself working in the cafe with me? What if I beg? London won’t be London without you in it. It’ll be quieter, uglier and ten times more boring.’
Isabel stood and closed the wardrobe door, picked up a rolled-up pair of socks from the floor and threw them at my head.
‘I can’t hang around here forever,’ she said. ‘Dubai needs me.’
‘I seriously hope they weren’t Robert’s socks,’ I said, throwing them back at her. ‘Please, Isabel, please stay? I don’t know if I can cope without you.’
She didn’t do sentimental, it just wasn’t her thing, but her eyes flashed with moisture.
‘Don’t say anything else,’ she said, glancing at me with wide eyes, in a mocking threat.
‘Sorry,’ I said with a sad smile. ‘It’s just with everything going on I wish you were going to be around. I feel like everything I touch at the moment is turning to shit and you’re the one sane person I know. I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel like I’m stumbling from one disaster to the next.’
‘You know what I think?’ she said, perching on the end of the mattress again, resting her hands on her lap. ‘I think you should go and see Joe and sort things out with him. You’re missing him. I think you need to leave Daisy and Ethan to sort out the mess they’ve made and make a life for yourself with Joe. Commit to him, Eve. He’s waiting for you. I know he is, but he probably won’t wait forever. How would you feel if he got another girlfriend? You’d hate it. You can trust him. You’re the oldest friends. Before Ethan turned up again, you were really happy with him, you were just beginning to thaw.’
Isabel gave me an apologetic look.
‘By that I mean you were just beginning to relax into your relationship,’ she said. ‘Not that you’re an ice queen.’
‘I know,’ I said, exhaling suddenly, frowning at the horrible thought of Joe having another girlfriend. ‘I was happy and I do love Joe. The thought of him with someone else is awful, but I can’t deny that there’s still something there with Ethan, even now, even after everything that’s happened. When he was in Rome, I told myself that he was a bad person and that Joe is a good person, but I realize that just isn’t true—’
‘Not true?’ said Isabel. ‘Of course it’s true. Look at what Ethan has done.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But Ethan isn’t a bad person at all. Yes, he’d done something unthinking and stupid, but if he’s a bad person, that makes me a fool to have fallen for him and to have missed him all this time. I don’t believe that I was a fool; I think what I felt was genuine love. Whatever he’s done, I still love the essence of Ethan. Sometimes we do mad things, don’t we? Say things we don’t mean? Give the wrong idea to people? And I’ve never stopped thinking about him. At night, when I was in bed with Joe, as I drifted off to sleep, I would often visit Ethan in my head, in an imaginary room that he was sleeping in, so I could check him. I still held him in my head and heart, in a secret place. That’s not normal, is it?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Isabel said, jumping up from the bed, her face suddenly stony. ‘You’re a sentimental lunatic. Look at the facts. Ethan slept with your sister and he has a child with her. Sorry to be harsh, but a child with your sister after a one-night stand is serious baggage. He might profess to still loving you, but he’s a nightmare on legs. You should run for the hills. Joe, on the other hand, has been the constant in your life. He’s gorgeous and interesting and sweet and loving. You two have always been dead close. So your sex life might not catch the world on fire, but that’s not everything, is it? He’ll support you in whatever you want to do, rather than distract your attention by being so dominating, like Ethan. When you’ve got a bloke like Joe, you can feel much more free because of the stability he offers you. You can get on with your cafe, have a social life and be loved, without having to worry.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. ‘Ethan apart, I worry a lot about Joe because he wants so much more than I’m giving. Sometimes I feel like our relationship is not at all equal. He is the adoring one. I am the one with the power that I don’t even want or like. I want us to be equal. It wasn’t like that with Ethan.’
‘Maybe you should stop comparing them,’ she said. ‘Be wise. I think with Ethan you’re chasing a dream. You’re putting your first love on a pedestal like everyone does. Christ, when I think back to my first love, Aidan Jones he was called, I can remember how fabulously dizzy I felt when he turned up to collect me from my parents’ house in his dad’s old jag, smelling of Eau Savage, with an armful of roses and roaming eighteen-year-old hands. Wonderful. If I compare that to endless nights sharing takeaway curries with Robert, him farting and burping in between each course, sucking every morsel off the chicken bones like Henry VIII, there’s no competition.’
‘Robert wins every time?’ I said, raising my eyebrows.
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘But seriously, what I’m trying to say, not at all clearly, is that love isn’t always heart-stoppingly exciting, is it? Real love is not just about lust. Anyway, you know this, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘I’m not just talking about sex, I’m talking about a connection
. I want to talk to him. I want to tell him everything. I want to know everything he’s thinking and discuss the world with him. Oh God, I know it’s a disaster area, but I do believe that the kind of love I had with Ethan comes once in a lifetime. I guess I’m just sad to give up on that.’
‘So does death come just once in a lifetime,’ she quipped. ‘And on the whole that’s not much to write home about, is it?’
That night I stayed in Isabel’s spare bedroom. Curled up in her duvet, I waited for sleep to come, but it would not. I tossed and turned, thinking about the day as if it were a film I was watching, picturing each person now left alone with their version of events. I imagined Andrew with his baby girls, cradling them to sleep, wondering what life held for them both, hoping they would do it all better than we had done. I thought about Ethan and Daisy and what they would have said to each other. I wondered if he, true to character, would take his time to look for the best in Daisy’s decision not to tell him. While some people looked for people’s flaws and found their weak point, Ethan found the best in everyone. Perhaps he would see in Daisy a brave person who had looked after his son quietly and proudly, without disrupting too many lives. Perhaps he would try to love her for the sake of Benji? They were, after all, once friends and had been before I ever came along. The more night-time, lonely hours, that passed, the more I convinced myself that was what was happening – Ethan and Daisy were going to get together, for Benji’s sake. I fidgeted in Isabel’s spare bed, casting my eyes over the boxes of her belongings, labelled ‘Books’ and ‘Kitchen’ and ‘College stuff’ waiting to go into storage. Soon she would be gone from my life, too. I thought about what she’d said about how much Joe loved me and I felt suddenly humbled and embarrassed that I had talked of Ethan in such glowing terms, when he was just too complicated for words. Remembering my life with Joe, just two weeks ago, felt like another time entirely. Though it felt, just a little bit, that I was sacrificing something by being with Joe, I knew I would be gaining a whole lot more. I suddenly missed the way he could never decide what to wear. He was worse than a girl. I smiled in the darkness, remembering him standing at his wardrobe, in his pants, staring helplessly at his clothes. I missed the sound of his voice and the feel of his hand on the small of my back as we walked together. In the half-light of morning, though I hadn’t slept at all, the confusion I’d been feeling started to lift. I had to be rational. I made a decision. Ethan may have come back and turned my life upside down, but his own life was a mess. I didn’t want to be involved. I couldn’t be involved. Not now. I wanted to get on with my own life, not be a part of Daisy and Ethan’s complicated affair. I decided I would tell Joe I needed him, as soon as I could. In the morning. Yes. Wasn’t this what he wanted, all along? I glanced at my watch. It was four-thirty a.m. and finally I felt sleep coming. My eyelids grew heavy. I felt relieved about my decision to get my relationship with Joe back on track. Daisy would get what she wanted. If I didn’t see Ethan again, I could try to convince myself to forget about him almost completely, in time. You could do anything if you put your mind to it. Finally, I closed my eyes. I forced myself to relax into my decision to let Ethan go. I loved Joe. I needed Joe. Joe’s love was simple. Our relationship would be easy. I would go to his flat tomorrow and tell him I loved him. And then, just as sleep was about to snatch me from my musing, I remembered something Dominique had said to me on the phone when she reminded me that the first instalment of the Supper Club would be in the paper tomorrow. I’m not sure you’re going to like the photos much. I remembered the hug and kiss with Ethan, at my dinner party, the smile on Paul’s face as he lowered his camera and checked the image on the back. I sat bolt upright and blinked in the half-light of dawn.
‘Fuck,’ I said, swinging my legs out of bed and pulling on my clothes as quickly as I could. ‘I bet they’ve stitched me up.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘Can I talk to you?’ I said to Joe, nervously, when he answered the door to his ground-floor flat. ‘I was awake all night thinking about you. There’s something I’ve got to explain, something horrible, before anyone else does.’
We stood on the doorstep of his flat in Kentish Town in the pale early morning sunlight. The air was warm and the streets already buzzing. From somewhere nearby came the smell of bacon frying. I’d left Isabel’s place ridiculously early to pick up the newspapers from the newsagent, then, after reading, sat in a coffee shop working out how to explain it away. Joe, in dark blue jeans and an old green T-shirt I hadn’t seen him wear in years, bare feet, with his hands pushed deep into his jeans pockets, looked pale and dishevelled, like he, too, hadn’t slept. I felt sick with shame. His misery was about to get a whole lot worse. The article was just as I’d feared it would be – a complete misrepresentation of what had actually happened. With a headline of ‘Proof Is In The Pudding’ under a lead image of Ethan hugging me close to his chest, kissing my forehead, a plate of meringue in my hands with Maggie and Andrew raising glasses as if in toast, the picture caption read: ‘Cafe owner Eve Thompson, 28, from south London, knows that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach . . .’
If it had been any other man hugging me like that, it wouldn’t have mattered. But whichever way I looked at the feature, I seemed guilty as hell. When Joe saw it, he would have every reason to hate me.
‘Come on, then,’ he said flatly, pushing open the black-painted door and angling his head down the hallway towards the kitchen. ‘I’m just charcoaling some toast. Ever the chef.’
I followed Joe, letting the door slam heavily behind me, stepping over a pile of post he’d left untouched on the doormat, aware of the magazine lying like a grenade in the dark of my bag. My eyes flicked around Joe’s small kitchen. There were dirty plates stacked up by the sink, a few half-empty bottles of booze on the kitchen table and a bowl of prawn crackers and a large greasy brown-paper bag on the oven, left over from a takeout. By the sink there was a carton of milk, a packet of Wagon Wheels and a pile of this morning’s newspapers that he’d clearly just been out to buy. I started to sweat when I saw the London Daily at the bottom of the pile. Had he already seen it?
‘Home sweet home,’ he said, with a lift of his eyebrows. ‘I haven’t exactly been whizzing around in my Marigolds and apron this last week. I’ve been working nights on the Guardian news desk and days at Time Out. The editor there, Martin, says they need a news editor and I’m going to go for it. I really want it, they’re a good bunch to work with.’
‘Wow,’ I said, approaching Joe and holding out my hand to touch his arm, then, when he backed away slightly, letting it drop. ‘That would be fantastic.’
‘Or there’s a job going at the London Daily,’ he said. ‘Senior, but I reckon I stand a good chance.’
There was the sound of the toilet flushing and taps running in the bathroom at the back of the flat. Joe looked anxiously at the kitchen door then closed it quietly. I assumed that Jimmy, Joe’s brother, was home.
‘Dad’s staying here,’ he said, suddenly looking exhausted. ‘Turned up three nights ago, totally wrecked. I reluctantly said he could sleep on the couch until he sorted himself out. Mum’s thrown him out again. She told him not to come here, but of course that’s where he came, and I can hardly turn him away.’
I searched Joe’s face. He had an awful relationship with his dad. He tried hard not to dislike him, but the years of irrational rages and drunkenness had taken their toll. I knew having his dad to stay would be putting Joe under incredible strain.
‘Jesus,’ I said, full of concern. ‘Are you coping? I’m sorry, Joe, I didn’t realize. You should have told me. How’s he been?’
Joe shrugged, his eyes downcast.
‘Oh, you know,’ he said. ‘Same. Doesn’t know the difference between night and day right now. It’s all just one big drinking binge. He’s full of remorse one minute, crying about how much he loves us. Then telling us we’re useless and worthless the next. He likes to tell me I’m a crap journalist. You know how he is
. Jimmy’s sharing the shit, though.’
He sighed deeply, collected himself and gave me a small smile.
‘He just looks for ways to undermine you both,’ I said. ‘He’s jealous that he let his career slip, his whole life slip. He must look at his sons and feel constant guilt. You’re a fantastic journalist!’
Joe rubbed his arm, clearing his throat.
‘Anyway,’ he said, flicking his eyes up to meet mine. ‘So, how are you? How’s the cafe? And how did your Supper Club thing go? Did you win? I was thinking it must be in the paper today, but I haven’t had a look yet.’
Joe was being falsely casual, so I felt I had to match him. He didn’t want to talk about his dad at any length – he never did. His dad had always been there, in the background, causing havoc. That was just the way it was. I waved my hand in the air dismissively at the same time as catching sight of Joe’s open wallet on the kitchen table. Tucked on the inside was a photo-booth snapshot of us kissing, wearing antler headbands, taken at London Bridge station one drunken Christmas. I longed to be back there, perched on Joe’s knee, my arms around his neck, carefree.
‘Oh, I don’t know who won yet, and I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I wish I’d never taken part. It’s um . . . um . . . um . . .’
I couldn’t find the words. Joe looked at me quizzically and turned to the toaster, pinging out a wafer-thin slice of toast, burnt black, lifting it up and then immediately dropping it onto the breadboard.
‘Shit!’ he said, shaking his scalded fingers in the air. He smiled at me.
‘I don’t do very well on the culinary front without you,’ he said. ‘In fact, my diet of Wagon Wheels and Pret a Manger sandwiches is getting very boring.’