Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

This edition published by Harper360 2016

Copyright © Mhairi McFarlane 2016

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Jacket illustration © CSA-Images/iStock

Cover design © Jessica Lacy Anderson

Mhairi McFarlane asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007525003

Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008184803

Version: 2016-07-05

Dedication

For Natalie, Paula & Serena

My favourite mix tape

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Mhairi McFarlane

Keep Reading

About the Publisher

1

Life through a phone is a lie. Edie imagined the process like a diagram from physics lessons, the one on that Pink Floyd album cover – a beam of white light refracted in a prism, splintering and fanning out as a rainbow.

I mean, how much artifice, she wondered, was crammed into this one appealing photograph? She gazed at its seductive fictions in the slightly greasy, warm slab of screen in her palm as she queued at the hotel bar.

Activity in the room whirled around her, messy unkempt sweaty reality, soundtracked by The Supremes ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’ In this still life, everything was forever image managed and perfect.

Untruth number one: she and Louis looked like they adored each other’s company. In order to squeeze into the frame, Edie had rested her head against his shoulder. She was coquettish, wearing a mysterious smile. He was doing the self-satisfied, slightly 007 quirk of the lip that conveyed hey life is great, no big deal. It really wasn’t a big deal.

They’d spent five hours as platonic plus ones – the wedding planner had demanded pairs, like Noah’s Ark – and now they were grating on each other, in heat and booze and wedding clothes with waistbands that had got tighter and tighter, as if inflating a blood pressure cuff.

Edie’s heels had, like those high enough for special occasions, moved from ‘wobbly and pinchy, but borderline tolerable’ to stabbing at her viciously like some mythic pain where she’d given up her mermaid tail for size 4s and the love of a prince.

Falsehood number two, the composition. Twinkling-happy party girl Edie, looking up through roadsweeper-brush-sized false lashes. You could glimpse the top half of her red dress, with nicely hoisted pale bosom, stomach carefully held in. Louis’s cheekbones were even more ‘killer in a Bret Easton Ellis’ sharp than usual, chin angled downwards.

This was because they’d held the lens at arm’s length above their heads and discarded five less flattering images, bartering over who liked which one. Edie had eye bags, Louis objected he looked gaunt, the expressions were slightly too studied, the shadows had not fallen in their favour. OK, another, another! Pose, click, flash. Half a dozen was the charm: they both looked good, but not too much like they’d tried to look good.

(‘Why does everyone do that expression now, like you’re sucking on a sour plum?’ Edie’s dad asked, last time she was home. ‘To make yourself look thin and pouty, I suppose. But you don’t look like that face you pull, in real life. How strange.’)

Louis, an Instagram professional and very sour plum, fiddled with the brightness and contrast settings. ‘Now to filter ourselves to fuck.’

He selected ‘Amaro’, bathing them in a fairytale cloud of lemonade fog. Complexions were perfected. The mood was filmic and dreamy, you’d think it captured a perfect moment. You had to (not) be there.

And then there was the caption. The biggest deception of all. Louis tapped it out and hit ‘post.’ ‘Congratulations Jack & Charlotte! Amazing day! So happy for you guys <3 #perfectcouple living their #bestlife.’

This was mostly for the benefit of the rest of the Ad Hoc agency, who’d all found elegant excuses not to travel from London to Harrogate. Nothing tested popularity like several hundred miles of motorway.

Like after admiring Like rolled in. ‘Sigh. You two are another #perfectcouple!’ ‘Shame I’m a bender!’ Louis replied. That’d be the least of our problems, Edie thought. They’d all done the arithmetic with Louis, that if he slagged off everyone else to you, he slagged you off, too.

And of course, Louis had not stopped grousing under his breath about the ‘amazing’ wedding. Edie thought criticising someone’s big day was like making fun of the way they ate, or the size of their ankles. Good people instinctively understood it was not fair game.

I really thought Charlotte would go for something more clean, minimal. Like Carolyn Bessette marrying JFK Jnr. The crystal beading on that gown’s a bit Pronuptia, isn’t it? Even women with taste seems to lose the plot and go Disney disaster in a bridal salon. I am so over those rose bouquets with pearl studs and white ribbon round the stems, like a bandaged stump! Once a WAG has done something, it is DONE. And sorry, but I find a tanned bride vulgar. Ugh, two sips of that Buck’s Fizz and it was into a plant pot. I can’t bear orange juice used to hide cheap champagne. Look at the DJ, he’s about fifty in a blouson leather jacket, where did he get that from, 1983? He looks like he should be on Top Gear. It’ll be rocking out to Kings Of Leon’s ‘Sex On Fire’ and Toni Braxton for the erection section. Why can’t weddings be more MODERN?

The Old Swan in Harrogate was not, as the name suggested, modern. It had the exciting association of being the place Agatha Christie disappeared to during her ‘missing days’ in the 1920s, even though there was probably nothing exciting about being in a confused fugue state.

Edie loved it here. She wouldn’t mind absconding from her life into one of its rooms with four-poster canopied beds. Everything about The Swan was comforting. The ivy-clad frontage, the solid square portico entrance, the way it smelled like cooked breakfasts and plushy comfort.

It had been a blistering high summer day – Haven’t they been lucky with the weather becoming the go-to banal conversation opener – and the French doors in the bar opened on to the honey-lit rolling gardens. Children in shiny waistcoats were zooming around playing aeroplanes, high on Coca Cola and the novelty of being up this late.

Nevertheless, this was, for none of the reasons Louis described, the worst wedding Edie had ever been to.

Giving her order at the bar, she found herself next to a group of women in their seventies and possibly eighties, dressed as flappers. Edie guessed they were here for a Murder Mystery weekend; she’d seen a coach from Scarborough pull up earlier.

There was a ‘suspect’ with no legs, sitting in a wheelchair. She was wearing a feather headband, long knotted beads and draped in a white feather boa. She was sipping a mini bottle of Prosecco through a straw. Edie wanted to give her a cuddle, and/or cheer.

‘Don’t you look lovely,’ one of the group said to Edie, and Edie smiled and said, ‘Thank you! You do too.’

‘You remind me of someone. Norma! Who does this lovely young lady look like?’

Edie did the fixed embarrassed smile of someone who was being closely inspected by a gaggle of tipsy senior citizens.

‘Clara Bow!’ one exclaimed.

‘That’s it!’ they chorused. ‘Ahh. Clara Bow.’

It wasn’t the first time Edie had been given a compliment like this. Her dad said she had ‘an old-fashioned face.’ ‘You look like you should be in a cloche hat and gloves at a train station, in a talkie film,’ he always said. ‘Which is appropriate.’

(Edie didn’t think she talked that much, it was more that her father and sister were quieter.)

She had shoulder-length, inky hair and thick dark brows. Their geometry had to be aggressively maintained with threading, so they stayed something more starlet than beetling. They sat above large soulful eyes, in a heart-shaped face with small mouth.

A cruel yet articulate boy at a house party told her she looked like ‘A Victorian doll reanimated by the occult.’ She told herself it was because she was going through her teenage Goth phase but she knew it was still applicable now, if she hadn’t had enough sleep and caught herself glowering.

Louis once said, as if he wasn’t talking about her when they both knew he was: ‘Baby faces don’t age well, which is why it’s a tragedy it was Lennon shot instead of McCartney.’

‘Are you here with your husband?’ another woman asked, as Edie picked up her white wine and V&T.

‘No, no husband. Single,’ Edie said, to lots more staring and curious delighted ooohs.

‘Plenty of time for that. Having your fun first, eh?’ said another of the flappers, and Edie smiled and nearly said, ‘I’m thirty-five and having very little fun,’ and thought better of it and said ‘Yes, haha!’ instead.

‘Are you from Yorkshire?’ another asked.

‘No. I live in London. The bride’s family are from—’

Louis emerged from the restaurant, gesturing for her to join him with an urgent circling motion of the hand, hissing:

‘Edie!’

‘Edie! What a beautiful name!’ the women chorused, looking upon her with renewed adoration. Edie was touched and slightly baffled by her sudden celebrity status. That was Prosecco drunk through a straw for you.

‘Are you this young lady’s gentleman?’ they asked Louis, as he joined them.

‘No, darlings, I like cock,’ he said, taking his drink from Edie while she cringed.

‘He likes who?’ said one of the women. ‘Who’s “Cock”?’

‘No. Cock.’ Louis made a flexing bicep gesture that Edie didn’t think made it much clearer.

‘Oh, he likes men, Norma. He’s a Jolly Roger,’ said one, casually.

Attention shifted to Louis, the not-that-jolly Roger.

‘I prefer a game of Bananagrams and a hot bath, these days,’ another offered. ‘Barbara still likes a bit of cock, well enough.’

‘Which one of you did it, then?’ Louis said, eyeing their costumes. ‘Who’s the prime suspect?’

‘There’s not been a crime yet,’ one said. ‘Rumour has it there’s going to be a body found on the third floor.’

‘Well you can probably rule her out then,’ Louis said, tapping his nose, gesturing at the woman in the wheelchair.

‘Louis!’ Edie gasped.

Fortunately, it caused a cackle eruption.

‘Sheila used to dig her corns out with safety pins. You don’t mess with Sheila.’

‘Looks like she overdid it.’

Edie gasped again and the old ladies fell about, howling. She couldn’t believe it: Louis had found his audience.

‘Great meeting you, girls,’ Louis said, and they almost applauded him. Edie was forgotten; chopped liver.

‘Come back to the table. It’s all kicking off big style in the main tent,’ Louis said to her. ‘The speeches are starting.’

With a heavy heart, Edie excused herself. The moment she dreaded.

An Audience With The Hashtag Perfect Couple, Living Their Hashtag Best Life.

2

‘Was that free?’ barked the sixty-something man with the hearing aid, dressed as a posh country squire, eyes fixed on the glass in Edie’s hand. Edie and Louis had been put on the odds and sods, ‘hard work, nothing in common’ table. The others had immediately abandoned the hard work and scattered, in the longueur between meal and disco. This sod remained, with his timid-looking, equally tweedy wife.

‘Er, no? I can get you something if you like?’

‘No, don’t bother. You come to these bloody interminable things and they fleece you like sheep. As if the gift list wasn’t brass neck enough. Four hundred pounds for some bloody ugly blue cake whisk, the silly clots. Oh hush, Deirdre, you know I’m right.’

Edie plopped down in her banqueting chair and tried not to laugh, because she thought the KitchenAid was a rinse, too.

She swigged the acidic white wine and thanked the Lord for the gift of alcohol to get through this. The top table passed the microphone down the line to the groom, Jack. He tapped his glass with a fork and coughed into a curled fist. His sleeve was tugged by his new mother-in-law. He put a palm up to indicate, ‘Sorry, in a second, folks.’

‘What’s this crackpot notion of wearing brown shoes with a blue suit and a pink tie, nowadays?’ said hearing aid man, of the groom’s attire. ‘Anyone would think this was a lavender liaison.’

Edie thought Jack’s tall, narrow frame in head-to-toe spring-summer Paul Smith looked pretty great but she wasn’t about to defend him.

‘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.

‘What 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’mreallyloo‌kingforwar‌dtoitthanks.’

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.

But Jack was dangling the temptation of talking about things she’d wanted to talk about for so long.

‘Sometimes you don’t know what to do. You know?’ Jack shook his head and exhaled and scuffed the toe of a Paul Smith brogue on the grass.

‘Not really. Marrying is a pretty straightforward yes or no. They put it in the vows.’

‘I didn’t mean … that, exactly. Charlie’s great, obviously. I mean. All of this. Fuss. Oh, I don’t know.’

Edie sensed he was several degrees drunker than she’d first realised.

‘What do you want me to say?’ Edie said, with as little emotion as possible.

‘Edie. Stop being like this. I’m trying to tell you that you matter to me. I don’t think you know that.’

Edie had no reply to this and in the space where her answer should be, Jack murmured, ‘Oh, God,’ stepped forward, leaned down, and kissed her.

4

She almost reeled with the surprise, feeling the soft brush of his freshly shaven jaw against hers and the pressure of his warm, beer-wet lips on hers. The ‘Jack kissing her’ information was so huge, it didn’t get through to her central cortex in one go. Full comprehension had to be delivered in stages.

1 1. Jack is kissing you. On his wedding day. This does not seem possible?! Yet early reports are it is DEFINITELY HAPPENING.

2 2. Is this going to last longer than a peck? Was it a mistake? Was he aiming for your cheek and missed?

3 3. OK no, this is definitely a KISS-kiss, what the hell? What the hell is he doing?

4 4. What the hell are YOU doing? You now appear to be responding. Is this definitely something you want to do? Please advise.

5 5. ADVISE. Urgent.

Seconds lasted an age. They’d kissed. Edie finally had a grasp of the magnitude of the situation, and her part in it, and pulled back.

There was movement to her right and she saw Charlotte behind them, her white dress glowing like exposed bone in the encroaching darkness. Jack turned, and saw her too. They made a bizarre tableau, for a split second, looking at each other. Like seeing the lightning crack and only hearing the thunder roll a second later.

‘Charlotte …’ Jack said. He was interrupted by screaming or, more accurately, a kind of low howling, emanating from the new Mrs Marshall. ‘Oh, Charlotte, we’re not …’

‘You fucking bastard! You utter fucking bastard!’ Charlotte screamed at Jack. ‘How could you do this to me? How could you fucking do this to me?! I hate you! You fuck—’ Charlotte sprang at him and began hitting and slapping him, while Jack tried to grab her wrists and stop her.

Edie watched blankly with a sudden, intense desire to vomit.

Earlier in the day, Louis had described his abhorrence at brides involved in procedural admin of any kind on their big day. They should float on stardust, and anything like work was earthbound and tawdry. ‘You shouldn’t see the ballet dancer sweat.’ Edie had thought he sounded like he’d swallowed a copy of The Lady.

However, there was something particularly aberrant about seeing someone in such glamorous, feminine attire having a full-tilt barney. There was Charlotte, hair in French roll, shimmering collarbones, princess skirt rustling like tissue, lamping her new husband with manicured hands, one of them bearing the giant sparkling engagement ring and fresh white-gold wedding band.

‘It wasn’t what it looked like!’ Edie said, hearing her voice say those words, as if listening to a stranger. It looked like what it was.

Charlotte paused momentarily in her grappling with Jack and snarled, her subtly made-up, lovely face contorted with rage: ‘Go to fucking hell you fucking bitch.’ There was no comma or exclamation mark in that statement, only certainty.

Edie wasn’t sure she’d heard Charlotte swear before. Edie realised she’d not moved from her position because of a strange conviction it’d make her ‘look guilty’ and she should stay and explain.

Having realised the lunacy of this idea, Edie finally moved. As she charged back towards the hotel, the first few people were looking over in curiosity and confusion as the voices drifted across the lawn.

OK, first things first, Edie was definitely going to be sick. Not in the general toilets; too conspicuous. She’d have to get to her room.

Edie dug the hotel key with the metal fob out of her bag with shaking hands as she did a quick swerve towards the main entrance. Fewer people to pass, that way.

Her only object right now was making sure she boaked the chicken dinner that was on its way back into the world into an appropriate receptacle. She knew after that a horrible, terrible, bleak immediate future would open up. One thing at a time.

As she bolted up flights of stairs, and along the quiet hotel corridors, it seemed impossible to Edie that time was still stubbornly linear, and that this alternative universe was in fact implacable reality. That there was no breaking a magic stopwatch open, twirling the hands and stopping this whole lurid saga from unfolding.

That Edie couldn’t un-decide her choice to walk out into the gardens. She couldn’t scroll back, like rewinding old video tape, and say something different to Jack, stalking away as soon as he started uttering gnomic, meaningful things. Or simply have stood somewhere that she could see Charlotte walking toward them, wedding gown draped over one arm, wondering why Jack was gossiping with Edie, wanting to tell him it was time to cut the cake.

No. Edie was the woman who kissed the groom on his wedding day, and there was no way of changing history. Right at that moment, if she had a Tardis, there was no way that Hitler was getting assassinated as a first item of business.

She burst into her deserted hotel room, its disarray reminding her it was so recently the scene of innocuous hair-straightening and full-length-mirror-checking and tea-with-UHT-milk-making. She locked the door and pulled at the handle, rattling it to make sure she was safe, kicking off her shoes.

Edie made it to the loo, held her hair out of the way and retched, once, twice, three times, and sat back up, wiping her mouth. When she came face to face with her reflection, arms braced on the sink, and could barely stand looking at herself.

The bargaining began.

Charlotte knew Jack had followed her, though? That he’d kissed her? But she couldn’t make that case. It was up to Jack to explain.

Edie thought about what was going to be said. She had to leave. Now. She made herself steady and check her watch: 9.14 p.m. Too late to get a train? Could she get a taxi? To London? At no notice? That would be insane money. Still, she’d pay it. Only she considered she’d have to pass through reception with her luggage when it arrived, a walk of shame if ever there was one.

There was only one option left: going to ground. Staying barricaded in here.

The size of what had occurred kept roaring up, fresh waves breaking against her. The disco reverberated below, the tinny squeals and squelches of Madonna’s ‘Hung Up’ mocking her predicament. Time goes by, so slowly.

This was now a horror film, where the arterial splatters and screams are ironically juxtaposed with the sitcom laughter track of whatever show the unwitting victim had been watching.

Edie wrung her hands and ground her teeth and paced the room and vacillated about going back down and facing people down, shouting, ‘It was him!’ while knowing nothing could dissolve the Dark Mark now upon her.

When she risked peeping out of the window, the gardens were spookily empty.

It was impossible not to look online, as much as she didn’t want to, with every fibre of her being. On her four-poster bed, she sat staring grimly at the moon glow of her phone. Every time she clicked, she thought she might be sick again. So far, nothing.

The calm before the storm. Tagged photos of the aisle walk, or smiling, signing the register, a status from Charlotte saying, ‘Champagne for my nerves!’ with scores of Likes. What would people say? What was happening downstairs?

‘Edie? Edie!’ a sudden hammering of a fist at the door had her fear-pulsing heart stretching right out of her chest, like a Looney Tunes cartoon.

‘Edie, it’s Louis. You better let me in.’

It was only then that Edie realised the music had stopped.

5

Louis’s unusually twitchy demeanour did nothing to make Edie less panicked. She hoped against hope he’d sail in and say, It’s blown over, what are you doing up here?

She let him pass, walking on weak, pipe cleaner legs and re-locked the door behind him, as if there really was a murderer loose in The Swan. Louis surveyed her as if suddenly in the presence of a notorious individual. He put his hands on his hips, under his suit jacket.

‘Er. So. What the HELL happened?’

‘Oh God, what’s everyone saying happened?!’ Edie wailed.

‘Jack and Charlotte,’ Louis paused, unable to keep himself from the stagey pause, as if he was announcing the winner on a talent show, ‘they’ve split up.’

Edie gasped and sat back down on the edge of the bed, to steady herself. She was trembling, almost juddering. She knew she’d ruined their wedding day. But to cause them to separate, during it? It didn’t seem feasible. It wasn’t a thing that could happen.

‘This can’t be real,’ she mumbled.

‘Charlotte’s gone back to her parents’ house,’ Louis said, enjoying himself now. ‘And Jack’s somewhere here I think, holed up with a bottle of whisky and his stag-do lads. There was a screaming match, total hysteria. It was chaos. Charlotte threw her wedding ring at him.’

Edie closed her eyes and held on to a bed post with a clammy palm, as the room swam and shifted. ‘What are they saying about me?’

‘That Charlotte caught you together. That you’ve been having an affair.’

‘We haven’t been having an affair!’

‘What happened then?’ Louis said.

It was the first time Edie had recounted it out loud and she hesitated.

‘I went into the garden and … he kissed me. Just for a moment.’

‘Wait, are you saying you weren’t shagging?’

Edie’s jaw fell open. ‘Shagging? No?! Of course not! How could we have been … Are you winding me up?’

‘Some people are saying you were, you know. At it. Or on the way to being at it.’

Edie knew Louis was prone to exaggeration and amping up drama but she had no way of telling if this was what he was doing. She could well imagine the Chinese whispers were out of control. As if the truth wasn’t terrible enough.

‘We were only a few yards from the hotel!’

‘Yeah, I did think that’s more the sort of encounter that happens on a car bonnet, after midnight. And usually, y’know. Not with the groom. So he kissed you?’

Edie nodded.

‘But you are having an affair, yeah?’

‘No!’

Oh God, this was agony. Everyone thinking the last thing she’d want them to think, ever. If she could be granted the option of being forced to streak, instead of this kind of exposure, she might just take it.

‘Erm, OK, darl. So out of the blue, Jack was like, “Are you enjoying my wedding day oh and also my tongue”?’

‘He started saying I meant a lot as a friend, he was very pissed I think, and the next minute he’s kissing me.’

‘And you didn’t kiss him back?’

‘No! Hardly. I mean, I was shocked.’

‘Mmm. Kind of odd you were hanging around out there alone? How did he find you? Sure you hadn’t texted him?’

‘I’d gone to take a photo. I can show you the photo!’ Edie waved her phone at him. ‘Also, no texts on here!’ As if there’d be a court case, and she could put her phone in a Ziploc evidence bag. It was the court of public opinion. She’d do much better from the former kind of trial.

‘Louis, think about it,’ Edie pleaded. ‘Why today, of all days, would I try to get off with him?’

‘Why would he try something like this, out of nowhere? You’re leaving something out, Edie. You must be.’

‘We messaged at work. Chatted. That was all. We were friends. Nothing more.’

‘You flirted?’

‘A bit. I suppose.’

She couldn’t give Louis nothing and get his vote, she knew that. He chewed his bottom lip, weighing things up.

‘… I believe you. I think you’re going to have a problem getting anyone else to believe you, though. The rumours are halfway around Harrogate and the truth doesn’t have its boots on. Also …’

Louis’s pause made Edie’s eyes bulge. ‘What?!’

He lowered his voice.

‘There’s only two people who are going to be blamed here: you and Jack. He’s the kind of guy who falls into a pit of shit and comes out wearing a gold watch. Not to sound cold, but you need a PR strategy. You have to let people know it was him who did this, not you.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Louis said, magnanimously. ‘You should think about that though. We work in advertising. Do crisis management for your brand.’

Edie nodded. She had to put aside everything she knew about Louis and trust him. A friend in need was a friend you couldn’t afford to doubt.

‘Do you think Jack and Charlotte are over, really over?’ Edie said, voice wavering.

Louis lifted his shoulders and let them drop.

‘Not sure I’d forgive a wedding day like this. The shame of it. Could you?’

Edie shook her head, miserably. She hadn’t thought of that until now. She’d focused on her own survival. Look at what Charlotte would have to face, the fact everyone would know about this carnage.

There was a clomp-clomp and a banging at the door, a thud as if a slavering wild animal had suddenly thrown itself at it. Both she and Louis jumped out of their skins.

‘EVIE THOMPSON! This is Lucie Maguire! I am the chief bridesmaid! Open the door THIS INSTANT!’

Edie and Louis boggled at each other.

‘EVIE! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, YOU LITTLE COW. FACE THE MUSIC.’

‘Tell her it’s your room!’ Edie hissed to Louis.

‘What? What if she goes off to my room instead?’

‘You’re not in that room.’

‘I will be later.’

‘Then tell her that’s your room, too.’

‘Then she’ll know I lied about this room.’

‘Louis!’ Edie said, near-feral in desperation. ‘Tell her.’

He grimaced and said, loudly: ‘Hi, Lucie, this is Louis. Not Edie.’

‘Where’s Evie? This is her room! The man on reception told me! Do not toy with me, I am in a VERY AGGRESSIVE STATE.’

Louis made a middle-finger gesture with both hands at the door and sing-songed: ‘No, my room. Little Louis in here.’

‘… Let me in. You know this girl? You can tell me where to find her.’

‘I’d rather not. I’m naked.’

‘Put some clothes on, then.’

‘I’m naked, with someone else who is also naked. Get it?’

‘Is it her?’

‘No, it’s a man, man. Now if you don’t mind, we’d like to get on.’

A pause.

‘Do you know where this slut is?’

‘No, I thought we’d established I’m otherwise engaged.’

‘Well if you do see her, tell her I’m going to be wearing her tits like they’re ear muffs.’

‘Will do!’

Edie winced.

Pause. ‘Also, can I just say I think it’s very bad taste to be having sex while a woman’s life is in ruins? We’re trying to help. And meanwhile you’re up here, naked.’

‘That’s me. Always naked in a crisis. It’s when I do my best work.’

There was tutting and Lucie’s fearsome clomping stride retreated. In the depths of the despair, Louis and Edie couldn’t help small, stifled laughter.

‘How am I going to get out of here in one piece?’

‘Mmm. There may be scenes of a harridan nature. I’d check out early.’

Edie had already formed this plan. The reception was staffed 24 hours, she could escape at dawn. She reasoned that even the very angriest were unlikely to be prowling around, fired up by fury, at half five. Although with Lucie, who knew.

‘Look on the bright side. No music Lucie can get you to face can be worse than the music she already made you face.’

Edie laughed weakly and thought how that experience, where someone else was the centre of attention for the wrong reasons, seemed an era ago.

‘I think it’s safe for me to leave, now,’ Louis said.

At the prospect of being alone again, Edie felt desolate.

‘Louis,’ Edie said, in a quiet, broken voice, ‘I know what I did was wrong but I’d never want any of this. I feel terrible. Everyone will hate me.’

‘They won’t hate you,’ Louis said, unconvincingly, ‘Just let them know Jack jumped you, not vice versa.’

They both knew that a) it wouldn’t be possible to let everyone know this and b) no one was going to be inclined to absolve Edie and thus lose a key player in such compelling You’ll Never Guess What gossip. The narrative needed a vixen.

‘We’re still friends, aren’t we? I feel like I’ll have no friends.’

‘Babe,’ Louis squeezed her in a quick, hard, brusque hug, ‘Course we are.’

After re-locking the door after him, Edie sank back down on the bed. Every bump or scuffle in the hotel startled her. She imagined a procession of people queuing up, Lucie Maguire having rejoined at the back, waiting to scream and rant at her and do horrible things to her tits.

When she could bear it, she looked online. Again, nothing but a chilly calm. She couldn’t see any comments alluding to what had gone on, she hadn’t been unfriended on Facebook (though that was coming, obviously).

And yet … as time ticked by, suddenly, an ugly, worrying notion gripped a panicky Edie. She wrestled with it. She was being paranoid. She didn’t need to check. Of course she was wrong.

OK, Edie had to look. Just to reassure herself she was being paranoid. She fumbled with hot fingers on the touch screen. Oh, God. No. She blinked back tears and hit refresh and refresh again and willed herself to have made a mistake. But she hadn’t.

Louis had deleted the picture of them together.

6

Edie never wanted to be this woman. The Other Woman. Who would? Who in their right mind wanted the heartache, the unsympathetic misery of playing that part? No one was the villain of their own story in their own mind, wasn’t that screenwriting law?

Edie had a feeling for some time that her life had wandered badly off course, and she had to face facts now: it might never come back.

It wasn’t always like this. After a romantically chaotic youth gadding about the capital in the post-university years, she’d settled down by her mid-twenties with her picture perfect soulmate: a difficult, intense, complicated young northern poet and Alain Delon lookalike, called Matt.

He was the glorious culmination of a reinvention, where messy Edith became Edie, pretty, funny writer girl who was taking life in her stride and London by the scruff.

Edie had tried to make the relationship as great on the inside as it looked on the outside. They matched. People envied them. She fantasised the wedding, even babies, but increasingly when faced with Matt’s moods, it was obvious to Edie that it was best kept as fantasy.

After three years of wrestling with difficult, intense and complicated, Edie was thoroughly knackered with the effort of trying to work him out and cheer him up.

They split, and while Edie was very sad, she was also twenty-nine. She wasn’t short of men hovering at the edges of the fall-out, willing to help pick up her pieces. She assumed that Mr Right was a few dalliances away, over the other side of the horizon of thirty, holding a bunch of flowers.

Yet somehow, he never happened. Single went from a temporary glitch to a permanent state. There was no one worth falling for. Until Jack. Who she absolutely shouldn’t have fallen for.

Do we ever choose who we fall for? Edie had many a long lonely evening in with only Netflix for company to contemplate that one.

Edie often cast her mind back to that first meeting with Jack, at the advertising firm where she was a copywriter. Charlotte was an ambitious account executive and had successfully talked their boss, Richard, into hiring Jack, despite a strict No Partners rule.

Edie hadn’t given the arrival of Jack Marshall much thought, beyond assuming he’d be another gym-before-work super over-achiever, like Charlotte.

‘Edie, this is my boyfriend!’ she had called across the table, late last summer, in the Italian wine bar they piled into every Friday. ‘You’ll love Edie, she’s the office clown.’ A mixed compliment, but Edie took it as one and smiled.

Over the table, awkwardly pitched half on the pavement and half inside the restaurant, she stood up to shake the tips of Jack’s fingers in lieu of his hand. She’d later marvel at her total indifference at the time. Jack looked prima facie Charlotte business, with his sharp suit, sandy hair and slim build, and Edie returned to her conversation.

In the weeks afterwards, Edie caught Jack throwing the odd stray glance her way, and assumed he was simply getting the measure of his new workplace. Charlotte was a willowy goddess of the southern counties, it seemed unlikely he was admiring a Midlander who covered her greys with L’Oreal Liquorice and dressed like Velma from Scooby Doo.

One lunchtime, she was reading a Jon Ronson book and eating an apple at her desk and she caught Jack staring at her. She would’ve blushed, but Jack said quickly: ‘You frown really hard when you read, did you know that?’

‘Elvis used to slap Priscilla Presley when she frowned,’ Edie said.

‘What? Seriously?’

‘Yeah. He didn’t want her getting lines.’

‘Wow. What an arsehole. I’m giving away my copy of Live in Vegas now. You don’t need to worry, though.’

‘You’re not going to slap me?’ Edie grinned.

‘Hahahaha! No. No lines.’

Edie nodded and mumbled thanks and went back to her book. Had she been flirted with? She doubted it. But not long after, a passing client, Olly the wine merchant, had paid Edie particular attention, and again, she felt Jack’s gaze.

‘My little Edie! How are you?’ Olly said, clearly kippered by the lunchtime intake. ‘What a delightful blouse. You remind me terribly of my daughter, you know. Doesn’t she? Richard? The image of Vanessa.’

Her boss, Richard, hem-hawed the sort of agreement you gave someone who you had to agree with, for money.

Edie thanked him and hoped everyone else in the office knew she did nothing to invite his whisky-breathed attentions.

As Richard guided him away from her desk, her G-chat popped up on her screen. Jack.

‘Young lady, may I tell you, in a completely platonic way, how much I’d like to have sex with you?’

Edie boggled and then noticed the inverted commas. She almost guffawed out loud. Then, gratified, typed back:

Ahem, Olly’s a valued client. He’s family … *like the Wests were family* *seasick face*

Without knowing it, she was sunk. She had picked up the baton from Jack. The journey to ruin starts with a single step.

Jack

The only thing worse than his pick-up patter is his wine. Have you tried the Pinot Grigio? BLETCH

Edie

I think you’ll find my copy describes it as having a tingle of green plum acidity and a long melony finish, perfect for long afternoons in gardens that turn into evenings

Jack

Translation: a park-bench session wine, aromas of Listerine mixed with asparagus wee

Edie

The bouquet could be described as ‘insistent’.

Jack

I’ve actually looked it up for the lols. ‘A fruit forward blend of ripe, zesty flavours. Will transport you to Italian vineyards.’ Will transport you to A&E, more like.

If this sort of instant familiarity had come from a single male colleague, Edie would have treated it as clear flirting. Obviously. But Jack was Charlotte’s boyfriend and she was sat right there, though, so this couldn’t be flirting. It was G-chat, but not a G-chat-up.

They became messaging mates. Most mornings, Jack found some witticism to kick things off. He was catnip to someone with Edie’s quick wit, and he seemed entranced by her. He had an easy self-confidence, and ran on dryly humorous remarks and giant Americanos.

In the boredom of office life, the ping of a new message from Jack on her screen became inextricably associated with pleasure and reward. Edie was like a lab rat in a scientific experiment, pressing a lever that gave her a nut. To follow the analogy, sooner or later it’d give her an electric shock, and she’d prove the mechanics of addiction by keeping on pressing for another nut.

It was all a bit of fun.

Even when the conversation naturally strayed into slightly more serious, personal topics. Amid the anecdotes, the casual intimacy and larks, she found herself telling him things she hadn’t told anyone in London.

Edie found her spirits dip at home time on a Friday – a funny reversal – realising there’d be no more ‘special chemistry’ chatter until Monday.

Eventually, there were text-jokes from Jack at the weekend – saw this, thought of you – and favouriting of her tweets, and explosively she’d even occasionally get the notification he’d Liked an old photo of hers, buried in the archives on Facebook. Truly, the footprint on the windowsill of social media courting.

Jack would sometimes say in front of Charlotte, during the Friday night drinks, that he’d shamelessly distracted Edie at work. Charlotte tutted and chided Jack and apologised to Edie – and then Edie definitely felt a whisper of guilt.

But, why? For conversation that Jack was openly acknowledging in front of his girlfriend that he instigated? If it was anything untoward, it’d be secret, right?

There was enough plausible deniability to park a bus.

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