After Hello

by Mhairi McFarlane

  ‘What’s a lavender liaison?’ Louis said.

  ‘A marriage of convenience, to conceal one’s true nature. When one’s interests lie elsewhere.’

  ‘Oh, I see. We’re having one of those,’ he grinned, clasping Edie to him.

  ‘Forgive me if I don’t scrabble for my inhaler in shock,’ he said, looking at Louis’s quiffed hair. ‘I had you down as someone who likes to smell the flowers.’

  Edie had heard more inventive euphemisms for ‘homosexual’ than she expected today.

  ‘Think you’ll ever bother with marriage?’ Louis said, under his breath.

  ‘I think it’s more whether marriage will ever bother with me,’ Edie said.

  ‘Babe. Loads of people would marry you. You’re so “wife”. I look at you and think “WIFE ME”.’

  Edie laughed, hollowly. ‘Surprised they’re not making this known to me then.’

  ‘You’re an enigma, you know …’ Louis said, prodding the bottom of his glass with the plastic stirrer. Edie’s stomach tensed, because meandering, whimsical trains of thought with Louis were always headed to the station of I Can’t Believe You Said That.

  ‘Hah. Not really.’

  ‘I mean, you’re never short of fans. You’re the life and soul. But you’re always on your own.’

  ‘I think that’s because being a fan doesn’t necessarily equal wanting a relationship,’ Edie said neutrally, casting her eyes over the hubbub in the room and hoping they’d snag on something else they could talk about.

  ‘Do you think you’re the commitmentphobe? Or are they?’ Louis said, moving the stirrer to one side as he drank.

  ‘Oh, I repel them with a kind of centrifugal force, I think,’ Edie said. ‘Or is it centripetal?’

  ‘Seriously?’ Louis said. ‘I’m being serious here.’

  Edie sighed. ‘I’ve liked people and people have liked me. I’ve never liked someone who’s liked me as much as I like them, at the same time. It’s that simple.’

  ‘Maybe they don’t know you’re interested? You’re quite hard to read.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Edie said, thinking agreeing would end this subject sooner.

  ‘So no one’s ever promised you a lifetime of happiness? You haven’t broken hearts?’

  ‘Hah. Nope.’

  ‘Then you’re a paradox, gorgeous Edie Thompson. The girl who everyone wanted … and nobody chose.’

  Edie spluttered, and Louis had the reaction he’d been angling for.

  ‘“Nobody chose”! Bloody hell, Louis! Thanks.’

  ‘Babe, no! I’m no different, no wedding for loveless Louis any time soon. I’m thirty-four, that’s dead in gay years.’

  This was nonsense, of course. Louis no more wanted a wedding than an invasive cancer. He spent all his time hunting for meaningless hook-ups on Grindr, the latest with a wealthy, hirsute man he called Chewbacca to his ‘Princess Louis’. It was just a way of claiming the latitude to take the mickey out of Edie.

  ‘I did say gorgeous, you diva,’ Louis pouted, as if Edie had been the aggressor. You had to admire the choreography of Louis’s cruelty – a series of carefully worked out, highly nimble steps, executed flawlessly.

  ‘Ladies and gentleman, sorry about the delay …’ said the groom into the microphone at last.

  Jack’s slightly anaemic speech ticked off the things it was supposed to do, according to the internet cheat sheets. He said how beautiful the bridesmaids looked and thanked everyone for being there. He read out cards from absent relatives. He thanked the hotel for the hospitality and both sets of parents for their support.

  When he finished with the pledge: ‘I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Charlotte. I will spend the rest of my life trying to make sure you don’t regret your decision today,’ Edie almost knocked back the flute of toasting champagne in one go.

  The best man Craig’s speech was amusing in as much as it was horribly misjudged, with gag after gag about the varying successes of Jack’s sexploits at university. He seemed to think these tales were suitable because ‘We were all at it!’ and they were, ‘A bloody good bunch of chaps.’ (Jack went to Durham.) At the mention of a rugby game called ‘Pig Gamble,’ Jack snapped, ‘Perhaps leave that one out, eh?’ and Craig cut straight to, ‘Jack and Charlotte, everyone!’

  The bride had a nervous fixed grin and her mum had a face like an arse operation.

  Charlotte’s chief bridesmaid, Lucie, was passed the microphone.

  Edie had heard much of the legend of Lucie Maguire, from Charlotte’s awed anecdotes in the office. She was a ruthlessly successful estate agent (‘She could sell you an outdoor toilet!’), mother of challenging twins who were expelled from pre-school (‘they’re extremely spirited’) and a Quidditch champion. (‘A game from a kid’s book,’ Jack had said to Edie. ‘What next, pro Pooh Sticks?’)

  She ‘spoke as she found’ (trans: rude); ‘didn’t suffer fools gladly’ (rude to peoples’ faces) and ‘didn’t stand for nonsense’ (very rude to people’s faces).

  Edie thought Lucie was someone you wouldn’t choose as your best friend unless there’d been a global pandemic extinction event, and probably not even then.

  ‘Hello, everyone,’ she said, in her confident, cut-glass tones, one hand on her salmon silk draped hip: ‘I’m Lucie. I’m the chief bridesmaid and Charlotte’s best friend since our St Andrews days.’

  Edie half expected her to finish this sentence: ‘BSc Hons, accredited by the NAEA.’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a cheeky little surprise for the happy couple now.’

  Edie sat up straighter and thought really? A wedding day surprise with no power of veto? Oof …

  ‘I wanted to do something really special for my best friend today and decided on this. Congratulations, Jack and Charlotte. This is for you. Oh, and to make the song scan, I’ve had to Brangelina you as “Charlack”, hope that’s OK, guys.’

  Song? Every pair of buttocks in the room clenched.

  ‘So, on one, two, THREE …’

  The other two – blushing, literally – bridesmaids simultaneously produced handbells and started shaking them in sync. They wore the expressions of people who had come to terms with their fate a while ago, yet the moment was no less powerfully awful for it.

  Lucie began singing. She had a good enough voice for a cappella, but it was still the shock of a cappella that was sending the whole room into a straight-backed, pop-eyed rictus of English embarrassment. To the tune of Julie Andrews’ ‘My Favourite Things’, she belted out:

  Basset hounds and daffodils and red Hunter wellies

  Clarins and Clooney films on big HD tellies

  Land Rover Explorers all covered in mud

  These are a few of Charlack’s totes fave things!

  Edie found it hard to comprehend that someone thought this fell into the category of a good idea. That there’d been no shred of doubt during the conceptual process. Also, ‘Charlack’ sounded like a Doctor Who baddie. A squirty one.

  Cotswolds and cream teas and scrummy brunches

  Meribel and Formula One and long liquid lunches

  These are a few of Charlack’s totes fave things!

  Fresh paint and dim sum and brow dyes and lashes

  Rugger and Wimbledon and also The Ashes

  These are a few of Charlack’s totes fave things!

  Edie couldn’t risk her composure by glancing at Louis, who she knew would be almost combusting with delight. The top table simply stared.

  … When the work bites!

  When the phone rings!

  When they’re feeling totes emosh

  They can simply remember these totes fave things

  and then they won’t feel so grooosssssss

  Edie held her expression steady as Lucie fog-horned the last word, arm extended, and hoped very hard this horror was over. But, no – Lucie was counting herself into the next verse.

  In the brief lull, the hearing-aid man could be heard speaking to his wife.

  ‘Wh
at IS this dreadful folly? Who told this woman she could sing? My God, what an abysmal din.’

  Lucie carried on with the next verse but now the room was transfixed by the entirely audible commentary offered by hearing-aid man. He apparently didn’t realise that he was shouting. Desperate shushing from the wife could also be heard, to no avail.

  ‘Good grief, whatever next. I came to a wedding, not an amateur night revue show. I feel like Prince Philip when he’s forced to look at a native display of bare behinds. Oh nonsense, Deirdre, it’s bad taste, is what it is.’

  The spittle-flecked shhhhhhhh! of the spousal shushing reached a constrained hysteria, while laughter rippled nervously around the room.

  Edie could feel that Louis had corpsed, his whole body convulsing and shaking next to her.

  Ad land and glad hand and smashing your goals

  Jet planes and chow mein with crispy spring rolls

  Tiffany boxes all tied up with ribbon

  These are a few of Charlack’s totes fave thiiiinggssssss

  ‘… Will this ordeal ever end? No wonder this country’s in such a mess if this sort of vulgar display of your shortcomings is considered suitable entertainment. What? Well I doubt anyone can hear me over the iron lung yodellings of Kiri Te Canary. This is the sort of story which ends with the words, “Before Turning The Gun On Himself.”’

  Edie didn’t know where to look. Having the heckler on her table made her feel implicated, as if she might be throwing her voice or feeding him lines.

  Edie’s eyes were inexorably drawn to Jack, who was staring right back at her, palm clamped over mouth. His eyes were dancing with: what’s happening, this is insane?!

  She might’ve known – he not only found this funny, he singled Edie out to be his co-conspirator. Edie almost smiled in reflex, then caught herself and quickly looked away. Oh no you don’t. Not today, of all days.

  Just nipping to the loo, Edie muttered, and fled the scene.

  3

  While she washed her hands, Edie pondered the mounting conviction that she shouldn’t have accepted her invite today. She’d rehearsed all the reasons for and against, and ignored the most important one: that she would hate it.

  When the ‘Save the Date’ dropped into her email, the struggle had begun. It would be easy enough to have a holiday. She needed to say so quickly, though – a break booked immediately after she’d received it could look suspicious.

  Though like anyone up to their necks in something they shouldn’t be, she found it very hard to judge how much she was giving away. Perhaps her absence would barely register, or perhaps there’d metaphorically be a huge flashing game show arrow over her seat saying HMMMM NO EDIE EH, I WONDER WHY.

  So she uhmmed and ahhhed, until Charlotte said: ‘Edie, you’re coming, aren’t you? To the wedding? I haven’t had your RSVP?’ while they were standing at the lukewarm-water in-crackly-cup dispenser. In the background, Jack’s head snapped up.

  Edie smiled tightly and said: ‘OhyesofcourseI’mreallylook-ingforward‌toitthanks.’

  Once her fate was sealed by her stupid mouth, she promised herself that attending wouldn’t just be politically astute, it’d be good for her. As if approaching social occasions like they were a Tough Mudder corporate team package had ever been a good idea.

  As the happy couple exchanged vows, and rings, Edie predicted she’d not feel a thing. Her feelings would float away like a balloon and it’d draw a line under the whole sorry confusion. Hah. Right. And if her auntie had a dick she’d be her uncle.

  Instead she felt numb, tense, and out of place. And then as the alcohol flowed, it was as if there was a weight of misery sitting on her chest, compressing it.

  Edie removed her hands from underneath the wind turbine of a hot-air drier. One of her false eyelashes had come unstuck and she pressed it back down, between finger and thumb.

  If she was honest, the reason she was here was her pride. Avoiding it would’ve been one giant I Can’t Cope red flag. To herself, as well as others.

  There was something about seeing herself in a bathroom mirror – the ‘Amaro’ magic cloud gone, make-up melting, eyeballs raspberry-rippled by booze – that made Edie feel very contemptuous of herself. What was wrong with her? How did she get here? No one sensible would feel like this.

  She took a deep breath as she yanked the toilet door open and told herself, only a few hours until bedtime. With any luck, Lucie would have stopped singing.

  As she headed back through the bar, instead of braving the restaurant, she was drawn to the sounds from the garden, and the still-warm fresh air.

  Edie could do with some solitude, but was conscious that drifting around the gardens, appearing melancholy, wasn’t the look she was aiming for.

  Aha, the mobile as useful decoy – on the pretext of taking a panoramic of the hotel, Edie could wander the grounds. No one noticed that someone was on their own, if they were fiddling with their phone.

  She picked her way delicately across the grass in her violent footwear. Lucie’s jihadist mission appeared to be over, Sade’s ‘By Your Side’ was floating from the open doors to the restaurant-disco.

  A few of the Murder Mystery pensioners were having a sneaky fag on the benches. It was quite a lovely scene, and she wished she could enjoy it. She wished other peoples’ happiness today wasn’t like a scouring pad on her soul. This is the beginning of getting better, she told herself.

  Edie was far enough away from the hotel to feel apart from it all now, watching the wedding as a spectator. The distance helped calm her. She turned her phone on its side and held it up in both hands, to capture the hotel at dusk. As she played with the flash and studied the results, cursing her shaky hands and trying for another shot, she saw a figure moving purposefully across the grass. She lowered the phone.

  It was Jack. She should’ve spotted it was him sooner. Was the groom really tasked with herding everyone inside to watch the first dance? Edie had hoped to whoops-a-daisy accidentally miss that treat.

  Reaching her, Jack thrust his hands inside his suit pockets.

  ‘Hello, Edie.’

  ‘… Hello?’

  ‘What are you doing over here? There are toilets inside if you need to go.’

  Edie nearly laughed and stopped herself.

  ‘Just taking a photo of the hotel. It looks so pretty, lit up.’

  Jack glanced over his shoulder, as if checking the truth of what she said.

  ‘I came to say hi and couldn’t find you anywhere. I wondered if you’d disappeared off with someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I didn’t know. Instead you’re skulking around on your own, being weird.’

  He smiled, in that way that always felt so adoring. Edie had thought ‘made you feel like the only person in the room’ was a figure of speech, until she met Jack.

  ‘I’m not being weird!’ Edie said, sharply. She felt her blood heat at this.

  ‘We need to discuss the elephant,’ Jack said, and Edie’s heart caught in her throat.

  ‘What …?’

  ‘The Pearl Harbor-sized atrocity that was committed back there.’

  Edie relaxed from her spike of shock, and in relief, laughed despite herself. He had her.

  ‘You left before she got the bridesmaids jazz scatting. Oh God, it was the worst thing to ever happen in the whole world, Edie. And I once walked in on my dad with a copy of Knave.’

  Edie gurgled some more. ‘What did Charlotte think of it?’

  ‘Amazingly, she’s more worried her Uncle Morris upset Lucie with the comments about her singing. Apparently he’s got “reduced inhibitions” due to early stage dementia. That didn’t make anything he said inaccurate, to be fair. Maybe he’s not the one with dementia.’

  ‘Oh no. Poor Uncle Morris. And poor Charlotte.’

  ‘Don’t waste too much sympathy on her. Uncle Morris is tolerated because he’s absolutely nosebleed rich and everyone’s hanging in there for a slice of the pie when he dies.’


  Edie said, ‘Ah,’ and thought, not for the first time, that she was not among her people. She had thought there was at least one of ‘her people’ here, and yet apparently, he was one of their people. Forever, now.

  ‘It’s bizarre, this whole thing,’ Jack said, waving back at the hubbub from the yellow glow of the hotel. ‘Married. Me.’

  Edie felt irritated at being expected to join in with rueful, wistful reflection on this score. Jack had stopped copying her into his decision-making processes a long time ago. In fact, she was never in them.

  ‘That’s what you turned up for today, Jack. Were you expecting a hog roast? A cat’s birthday? Circumcision?’

  ‘Haha. You will never lose your ability to shock, E.T.’

  This annoyed Edie, too. Unwed Jack never found her ‘shocking’. He found her interesting and funny. Now she was some filthy-mouthed unmarriageable outrageous oddball. Who nobody chose.

  ‘Anyway,’ Edie said, sweetly but briskly. ‘Time we went back inside. You can’t miss the most expensive party you’ll ever throw.’

  ‘Oh, Edie. C’mon.’

  ‘What?’

  Edie was tense again, wondering why they were stood in the gloaming here together, wondering what this was about. She folded her arms.

  ‘I’m so glad you came, today. You don’t know how much. I’m happier to see you than pretty much anyone else.’

  Apart from your bride? Edie thought, though she didn’t say it.

  ‘… Thank you.’

  What else could she say?

  ‘Please don’t act as if we can’t be good mates now. Nothing’s changed.’

  Edie had no idea what he meant. If they were always just good mates, then obviously marriage changed nothing. It struck her that she’d never understood Jack, and this was a problem.

  While she hesitated over her response, Jack said: ‘I get it, you know. You think I’m a coward.’

  ‘What?

  ‘I go along with things that aren’t entirely me.’

  ‘… How do you mean?’

  Edie knew this wasn’t the right thing to ask. This conversation was disloyal. Everything about this was grim. Jack had married someone else. He shouldn’t be saying treacherous things to a woman he worked with, by some shrubbery. There was nothing, and no one, here of value to be salvaged. She’d known for some time now he was a bad person, or at least a very weak one, and this behaviour only proved it.