who’s thirty-one, really.’
She said this before she realised it sounded like a dig at Meg.
‘Alright, Yoda.’
It was tiring, being around someone who not-so-secretly despised her.
The food arrived and Edie was glad of something that could unite them, the simple pleasure of stuffing your face. They carried trivial conversation through food and a second round of beers, with Edie asking a string of questions about things and people she’d missed in Nottingham. There was no foothold for Meg to complain about her being lordly.
‘Oof. I feel as if my innards are trying to knit me a beef vest,’ her dad said, exhaling and patting his stomach.
‘Your colon will be sluggish with decomposing animal protein,’ Meg said.
‘Not my colon,’ her dad said. ‘Business is brisk, let me promise you. Nice frock, Edith,’ he added, as the plates were cleared away. Edie was in a dark blue, long-sleeved cheap-buy dress that she’d pulled, crumpled, from her case. She’d not worn it much as it had a wide strip of lacy material across the bosom that acted as a cleavage viewing window. She reasoned no one here would be interested in taking the opportunity.
In a misguided attempt at paternal even-handedness, her dad added: ‘You’d look nice in that too, Meg.’
Meg wrinkled her nose. ‘No thanks, that’s a very Edie dress.’
‘Oh, an EDIE dress,’ Edie said, doing shock-horror palms. ‘What could be worse?’
‘You know. It’s a bit “Have you met my breasts?’’’
‘Megan!’ her dad said. ‘Settle down.’
Of all the things to mock Edie about at the moment, the idea she was a showy tart really was going to hurt the most. In front of their dad, too: cringe. She took a deep breath.
‘Why do you have to be so horrible, Meg? Do I ever say anything critical about your clothes? No.’
‘God, it was only a joke,’ Meg muttered. ‘Chill out, Cranky McCrankerson.’
‘And I’d have thought it’s not totally feminist ethics to comment on another woman’s chest like that, is it? Didn’t you just “slut shame” me?’
‘Oh, here we go.’
‘No, there you went.’
Meg squeezed the American diner style tomato-shaped tomato sauce holder and said, reflectively: ‘As George Monbiot said, if hypocrisy is the shortfall between our principles and our behaviour, it’s easy to never be a hypocrite, by having no principles.’
‘I have no principles?’
‘You called me a hypocrite.’
‘Well. Cheers. Thanks for dinner, Edie!’ Edie said, in sing-song voice.
‘Oh, what a surprise, you had to throw that in my face. I didn’t ask to come here.’
‘Actually, you did.’
Meg scowled and Edie tried to regain self-control because she was angry enough to say plenty more.
This had escalated quickly.
‘Sod this, I’m having a smoke,’ Meg said, pushing her chair back with a loud scrape.
She disappeared off, digging the Rizlas out of her kangaroo-like dungarees front pocket for her roll-up. The waitress reappeared and Edie muttered: ‘We’ll have the bill please,’ as her dad looked uncomfortable.
Edie felt bad for him. It surely wasn’t nice, having children that couldn’t stand each other. Edie wasn’t able to face a sullen car journey and the four walls of her bedroom yet.
‘Dad, you keep the peace and take Meg home. I’ve texted a friend and I’m going to meet them round the corner, so I’ll be back home in an hour or two,’ she lied smoothly, as smooth as when she was fourteen and sneaking off to meet boys.
Her dad nodded, as Edie tapped her pin number into the card reader and handed it back.
‘Tonight was a nice idea, you know,’ he said, and leaned over and gave her shoulder a squeeze, with the unspoken addendum, just terrible execution.
A friend called a big-ass glass of wine.
At the arts cinema café bar up the road, Edie got herself a thumping beaker of red and found a relatively quiet corner. She sat alone, back half-turned to the room, free to play with her phone unfettered and do some discreet weeping. She was overdue some self-pity. Edie indulged in leaking-eyes-and-holding-fingers-horizontally-underneath-to-catch-the-water crying. Everyone around her was far too lively-drunk to notice the dark-haired woman dissolving in the corner.
Everything was so fucked in so many ways. Her life wasn’t great. She wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, living her hashtag ‘Best Life’. But it was hers and it worked, sort of. Now what?
She’d talk to her dad tomorrow and say she’d move out to a flat for the next few months. He’d object vehemently. She’d have to insist that she and Meg under the same roof was a recipe for disaster. Her sister hated her, she didn’t know why, and that was that. It just wasn’t tolerable when the world at large hated her too.
Edie had a sudden and overwhelming urge to speak to someone who loved her, and understood her, and confess all. Little chance of Hannah answering at this time on a Saturday night, mind you …
‘Edith!’
‘Hello! You’re there?!’
‘Of course I’m here, this is my phone.’
‘I know, but it’s a Saturday night.’
Edie put a finger in her spare ear to block out multiple other conversations and Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’.
‘I was just thinking I should call you.’
‘Noel Edmonds’ cosmic ordering,’ Edie said, feeling her chest swell and trying not to wail HELP ME, OBI WAN KENOBE, YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE.
‘You sound funny, where are you?’
‘I am funny. I’m crying a bit and I’m in a bar. In Nottingham, actually.’
‘Really?! That’s a coincidence. Why are you crying?’
Edie steeled herself. She should’ve done this sooner.
‘Ready for a dreadful story and a big pile of I Told You So? Hang on, why is it a coincidence?’
‘I’m here too. At my parents’. Where are you?’
‘Urrr … Broadwalk? No, wait, Broadway. The cinema.’
‘Can you hang on ten minutes? I can cab it to you.’
Could she hang on ten minutes? Edie wanted to do a lap of the café-bar, face daubed with woad, whooping war cries of joy.
Quarter of an hour later, Hannah appeared in the doorway of the bar, fists bunched in the pockets of her jacket, ponytail whipping from side to side as she scanned for Edie. Hannah wore big eighties-ish secretary spectacles with coloured frames that somehow made her look even more attractive. Edie would’ve looked like a serial killer’s wife.
She waved and did a two-finger point at the two glasses of red in front of her. Hannah was as tall, lithe and handsome of face as she’d ever been – she’d skipped the puppy fat and spots of adolescence entirely. She was born aged thirty-five, in more than one way. The only sign of the years passing was that her delicate Welsh skin had acquired a network of fine lines you could only see up close, like varnish crackling on pottery.