by Naoise Dolan
Next evening the flowers were gone and there were new ones I didn’t recognise. The tag said: ‘Tango Leucospermum, Kangaroo Paws, Scabiosa Pods, Eucalyptus, and in-season assortment’. I typed a message to Edith asking what the point was of being a banker’s moll if a year into it I was this unfamiliar with bouquets, then remembered sending it would be – probably – the worst idea ever.
I was a horrible person. I was living in one person’s flat, fucking someone else without telling them, and regretted my behaviour primarily on the grounds that it meant I couldn’t mock the first person with the second. But I had a mythologically beautiful girlfriend and a nice apartment to share with her. It seemed ungrateful to say anything that might reverse my luck.
‘I’m not keeping you in van der Blooms forever,’ Edith said. I’d complained the new flowers were dying, too.
‘Come on, big spender,’ I said.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Take the AmEx.’
Like cross-pollination, our clothes went back and forth, her dresses in my wardrobe and my jumpers in hers. I saw her loafers in the hall and thought that if Julian saw them, the gig would be up. Then I remembered he’d think they were mine.
Really it all could be. Anything on his credit card might be something I was buying for myself. If his friends saw us together, it would be harder to persuade them we were fucking than we weren’t. I almost wished I were still in contact with Victoria so I could say: I have found a novel solution to the administrative challenges of cheating. But I hadn’t seen her in over two months now, and Julian had been gone nearly six.
On the last day of July, I was in bed, willing myself to sleep, not sleeping, refreshing things on my phone, when a message came.
Just to let you know, work sending me back now. Flight next week. Logistics to sort so might be hard to reach. Let me know if anything you need. Thanks for minding flat. J.
I thought: someone needs to teach this man how to have a feeling, and how to write a message, and they also need to tell me what the fuck I do now.
37
August
August was too hot to walk outside. The day after I got Julian’s message, I went alone to Pacific Place and walked a circuit past luxury outlets and American coffee shops. Outside Celine I mussed my hair to look like a dishevelled rich girl, then went in and tried on a white blazer. The shoulderpads held themselves up as though my own dimensions were immaterial. The salesgirl seemed to feel that this also held for the rest of me. If I bought everything in the shop then she would have to accept that I was important – and really, I could spend my whole life proving that. I could probably get Julian to marry me if I said it was to satirise men who had wives, and then it would only be a matter of not taking too much money at once. He would certainly let me have enough for everyone to think I mattered.
Eight days till he returned.
My savings account had more than enough for a deposit now. I could move tomorrow if I wanted. I had nothing to fear from Julian coming back. At worst, he’d kick me out and I’d return to a life where one room cost me half my paycheque. That was how most people lived. It was fine.
On the ground floor I caught sight of myself in a big Zara window. How can you be that pale, I thought, and not be sick. It was all ridiculous. I ordered a flat white at a marble-tiled café, sat down, and drank it. The caffeine went through the appropriate channels. I thought: faster, please.
At first it seemed unlikely I could harm Edith or Julian. They were rich and smart, and I dented fricatives for a living, badly. But the trouble was that the more I followed this logic, the less I could see why they’d ever got involved with me. If they were mistaken enough about our relative status to let that happen, then it stood to reason that they might also, erroneously, be hurt that I’d been seeing someone else.
My thoughts over coffee were always quite interesting.
That evening I had pot noodles and wine for dinner. I watched a zombie film on Netflix, liked a post of Edith’s on Instagram, and read one of Miles’s PDFs. Finally I opened Julian’s latest message.
We should have R&V for dinner when I’m back. Or take them out. Latter prob best. Been in touch with V & she says you’ve been ignoring her messages. All well? Not like you to not reply. Not like you to enjoy V’s company either, but you need friends. Ask when they’re free. Maybe a present for them. Just sth from M&S and I’ll say I got it in London. & get Miles sth too. Don’t write notes – I’ll do that. Talk soon. J.
I decided to write one of my therapeutic drafts. I typed:
i’m fucking edith. i’ve told you who she is in previous fake messages, so i’m not sure if it’s more consistent to pretend i’m sending this to the julian who’s read them or if you’re a new one now. it’s all fake anyway. so: my girlfriend edith and i are in love. she doesn’t know about you. also, it would not be ideal for me if you kicked me out of your apartment over this, so i don’t know why i’m telling you. you say you don’t have feelings, but if you do, i’m sorry.
I deleted it, went to the kitchen and drank more wine. The tap dripped. I’d meant to get it fixed, asked Julian who to call, remembered him sending me the landlord’s number, but later couldn’t find his message and didn’t want to ask again for fear of seeming scatty.
When I came back, I reopened my laptop and saw that rather than ‘delete’ I’d pressed ‘send’. I laughed.
He didn’t reply. At work I took toilet breaks to check my inbox and weathered Joan’s dirty looks. On the MTR my data wavered, which forced me to go longer periods without refreshing. This made me think he surely would have messaged by the time it was my stop, but I’d climb up, get the signal back, and see he still hadn’t. My throat felt tight and fraudulent. In that split preliterate second when I saw a new bolded message, my pulse jumped from me, then ‘TST tn? who’s keen’ in the teachers’ group chat and it settled. I’d think: I am not keen on TST tonight, or ever, and I could reply to that effect in all of two seconds, but I won’t because that would take effort and I am currently funnelling all available resources – physical, mental, human – into not publicly screaming at how fucked I am.
Edith asked what was wrong. ‘You’re like me lately,’ she said. ‘Checking and checking.’ I said if she did it then surely I could, too. ‘You can do anything,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know why you’d want to be like me.’ I did want to be like her, but that also wasn’t why I kept looking at my phone.
I could have told her about Julian at that point, but then there would be consequences, whereas if I put it off then I would not have to deal with them yet. This reasoning seemed sensible to me, and I wondered why anyone ever volunteered information.
Four days later, Julian responded.
A – bit of a strange message but I assume sent under the influence. It’s fine. Not as if we’re a thing, so do what you want. See you next week. J.
My abbreviation felt pointed. ‘A’ implied both that he wasn’t bothered typing two additional characters and that the indefinite article was quite enough for me. I wanted to reply: i agree that i am the least definite of any article.
38
That weekend I rang Tom. As we spoke, I stood on the balcony and watched children outrunning parents and put-upon cynophiles being walked by their Great Danes. We talked about Tom first. Things had gone downhill with his latest paramour. This gave him an appetite to hear about my love life, I suspected because it made him grateful not to have one.
‘I can’t believe you thought I hadn’t guessed about Edith,’ he said.
‘Was it obvious?’
‘So what did you think would happen?’
‘You mean, what did I think would happen if I didn’t tell her?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, broadly this,’ I said.
Tom said: ‘I struggle to think of you as the older one sometimes.’
‘I should tell her
,’ I said.
Tom said he wasn’t going to tell me what to do, but that I should think about who I’d choose. I mightn’t have to, but if one of them said that, I needed to know what I’d say.
I told Tom I didn’t know. I didn’t want to weigh them up against each other.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘don’t compare them. But how do you feel when you’re with them? Or, I mean, how do you act around them?’
That question was less daunting.
‘I’m not nice to Julian,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t love me and I feel like that means there’s something wrong with me, so then I want to believe the problem is actually him. We laugh a lot, but I’m a horrible person when I’m with him. I want to make him feel as bad as I do.’
It surprised me to learn that about myself, but there it was, out in the spitting air, echoed back to me thanks to the dodgy connection.
‘That’s not good,’ said Tom. ‘For either of you.’
‘It’s not. He’s not over his ex. I shouldn’t hold that against him.’
‘And what about Edith? What are you like around her?’
‘Kinder. More forgiving. And the sex is better.’
‘I didn’t need to know that.’
‘Just giving you the facts.’
‘Cool. Well, like I said, I can’t tell you what to do. How long until he’s back?’
‘Two days now.’
‘So one day to tell her.’
‘I probably won’t,’ I said.
‘That literally doesn’t surprise me.’
‘I know. But it was good talking it through. Thanks, Tom.’ I didn’t tell him that often. ‘I know it’s not easy being straight with me.’
‘It’s not. You punish people for it.’
‘I’d better go.’
‘Sure.’
‘Tom?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Thanks again. And thank Mam for me, too.’
‘You sound like you’re off to the trenches.’
I said: ‘You’re not wrong.’
* * *
Later that Sunday, Edith came over to the flat. We finally burned my Jo Malone candle. She had a red indent across her back where her bra dug in. I traced over the ridge and said I wondered what would happen if you wore a bra for a hundred consecutive hours, as in, would you get a scar. It was my last day left to tell her about Julian before he got back, and I was asking her about skincare. My behaviour was fascinating.
‘Have you heard bras cause cancer?’ she said. ‘It’s probably quackery, but I worry. There’s a lower breast cancer rate in countries where fewer women wear bras. But it’s hard to establish the cause because not wearing a bra correlates with not doing stuff like eating junk food.’
I said: ‘Junk food causes cancer?’
‘We don’t know what causes cancer,’ she said. ‘Beyond drinking and smoking. But you already know they’re bad.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do.’ Then: ‘By the way, Julian’s back next week.’
I was an idiot. I had no idea why I’d just said that. Probably it was that I’d told Tom I’d keep putting it off. Once I told someone I’d do something, I always did the opposite.
Her hair was a thick black brush on my pillow. It occurred to me that most beds did not come with a particular Edith, that actually most people had no Edith at all, and that those people had to sleep in those beds or other relevant furniture and pretend to be happy.
‘Is he,’ she said.
I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
‘I’m just after finding out,’ I said.
‘And this thing,’ Edith said, pausing, not to decide what ‘this thing’ meant but so the break would be long enough that she didn’t have to put words on it, ‘this thing between you, it’ll continue?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You living with him.’
‘He’s my flatmate, so.’
‘You don’t pay rent,’ she said, in a just-observing voice like Julian’s.
‘It’s complicated,’ I said.
‘It’s weird,’ – still seemingly just observing.
‘You’re into weird.’
‘Thanks for that, Ava, but I’m not sure this is the best time to tell me what I’m into.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘it’s between me and him.’
‘Exactly,’ Edith said.
She went out to the bathroom. I started to ask why she didn’t just use the en suite, but she was already gone. I only knew the pictures on the wall meant London because he’d told me. The middle one was Tudor-fronted with carceral grids for windows. Tall English buildings looked like tall English prisons, and when you said that to an English person they thought you meant their prisons were lovely, too.
Edith came back. She stood in the doorway and held up a T-shirt she’d loaned me. I was about to say something, then saw she expected me to and couldn’t.
Very quietly, she said: ‘Why was this in his room?’
‘What?’ I said.
‘My T-shirt. It was on his bed.’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘My question precisely.’
‘I can’t believe you went into his room.’
‘Same.’
‘Edith.’
‘Why the fuck were you in there?’
‘He’s in London,’ I said. ‘I was watching movies in his bed.’
‘Why were you watching movies in his bed? And Ava, please note that I’m a very intelligent person.’
She held herself perfectly as I told her everything, meeting my eye as though it was too late to keep me honest, but she could at least remind me I wasn’t. All was still, her jaw, her hands. Whenever I paused, she nodded. I felt she controlled the taps and I would speak as long as she wanted and stop at a twist.
Finally she signalled she’d heard enough by coming and sitting at the edge of the bed. She folded the T-shirt in half, then quarters, then handed me it once she’d got it down to the smallest possible dimensions.
‘You haven’t told me how you feel about him,’ she said.
‘I thought I loved him,’ I said. ‘Then I met you.’
‘It’s twisted as fuck that you’re an actual kept woman,’ Edith said, ‘and I do wish to give that its proper billing as the thing that would bother me if something else weren’t bothering me more. But something else is bothering me more.’
I wanted her to say it all. I wanted there to be nothing left and to have my deficiencies out where I could see them.
‘I can’t tell what you feel for him,’ she said. ‘Clearly, he feels something, and I think you’re desperate enough for his validation that you’ll go back to him. I have many opinions about the nexus between monogamy and patriarchy, opinions which are available on request should they interest you, but also, I feel like his views are probably quite conventional. So then we can’t be together. If that happens.’
While I was demonstrably not the world’s leading Edith-whisperer, I sensed now was not the best time to tell her Julian already knew and had claimed to be fine with it.
‘Look, Edith,’ I said, ‘I’m not the sort of person he’d have feelings for.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He’s got money and he’s smarter than me. And taller.’
‘My understanding is that straight men like women to be smaller than them. Also, he doesn’t want anything serious – and that’s not me speculating, you’ve said it yourself. Then you come along and he just has to give you a room he wasn’t using. I know the type. You meet them in law firms. He doesn’t want a woman in his “league”.’
I said it was comforting to know he was only with me because I was short, boring and plain.
‘I thought you said he wasn’t with you,’ said Edith.
I told her
she was right and that I’d only said that for oratorical effect.
‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know till now how much I love you, but apparently it’s enough to listen to your bullshit about oratorical effect and he’s taller than me so how can he fancy me, and of course it’s normal to have sex with two people in the same bed and not tell either of them.’
‘It was always his bed,’ I said. I wanted to take her hand but didn’t dare. ‘Mine was just you.’
This logistical clarification assuaged her more than I’d thought it would.
‘So will you keep fucking him when he gets back?’ Edith said.
‘No,’ I said. I realised when I heard it that it was a decision.
‘You’ll move out,’ she said.
‘Yeah. But is it okay if I stay for a few weeks? Just until I find a place.’
She looked like she had something cold in her mouth that was hurting her teeth.
‘Also,’ I said, ‘you’re wrong about Julian not being nice. He’s nice.’
‘It says a lot about you that you think that proves you don’t love him.’
I couldn’t look at her. It was too accurate.
‘That’s such a misogynist trope,’ I said. ‘Women not liking nice guys.’
‘Some people,’ Edith said, ‘fit a great many misogynist tropes into their personal lives.’
PART III
Edith and Julian
39
September
We took the ferry to Lamma Island. Edith wore a straw hat with a black band. Julian brought his laptop and tapped at emails. I sat in between and watched the foam curdling against the boat as it churned through the water.
‘She must be out of her mind,’ Julian had said when I’d told him Edith wanted the three of us to do something together.
‘You guys would get along.’
‘She can’t really want to meet me.’
One of the stranger things about Julian, though, was that he’d say no to something, then come back later and say: no problem. I couldn’t force an about-face, but could reasonably expect it if I made sure not to mention the issue in the interim. ‘Do you still think we should hang out with Edith?’ he’d said in the kitchen a few days later. At least I was still good at something.
