Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘I said yes. I said yes to Candice.’

‘Finally! Nell, this is amazing. How much have you charged her? Did you take her through the price list we did?’

‘Yes, but we haven’t agreed on a final figure or anything yet. I’m still trying to work out the details.’

‘Like?’

And there he is. Blunt, straight to the heart of the matter Ed. Everything is A to B. Anything in between: fluff. We’d met the next day, after we’d arranged, Mum, Ian, Dilly and I, that I’d say yes to the wedding. And Ed’s face changed. Brightened, widened. ‘This is brilliant, Nell. Now, make sure you charge her a reasonable amount, yeah? Don’t undersell yourself.’ And before I could open my mouth to speak, he was whipping out his phone, opening up his notes app. ‘So, how much is labour for this stuff?’ he’d asked, as we’d plonked onto the sofa and two hours later, I’d left his flat with a price list and my head banging with information – about taxes and profits and savings. It almost sucked the fun right out of it. Almost, though. It’d take a lot to rain on the parade I’m leading at the moment, I’m like an excited conga dancer at the front of the line. I’m all feather boas and whistles.

‘You know, you’d have known I was looking out for all this if you were to actually accept my Instagram request. I put a call out on my stories. For recommendations …’

‘I told you,’ laughs Ed. ‘I don’t ever go on it. And recommendations – for what?’

‘Like … suppliers up in Edinburgh, for a start,’ I tell Ed now, back on that sofa, a few days later. We’re seeing more and more of each other lately, and I’ve seen less and less of Sam. I’ve barely heard from him since the launderette. It’s just been texts about Frank really. I send him an update, and he replies with ‘Great!’ or ‘Thanks.’ Unlike Ed, he does sometimes watch my Instagram stories, though, and he likes every post, and butterflies tussle inside of me every time I open the app now and see a new message. And they die, fall like a flock out of the sky every time I see it isn’t him. I got one yesterday and dove on it like it was catnip, but of course it was someone pretending to be a god-fearing soldier needing a good wife and I’d blocked, deleted and cursed myself for being so bloody needy. Because of course, he’ll be with Jenna, at the wedding, falling back in effortless bloody love beneath fairy lights and stars. He doesn’t have time to be on Instagram, and especially to ‘react’ to a photo of my supplier waffle or hefty sausage sandwich breakfast.

‘OK, and what else?’ presses Ed.

‘And a van or something to hire once I’m up there,’ I say, ‘and a hotel for me to stay in and a train there because I doubt my car will make it and – well, I might need help so I’m trying to find out from Candice if there’s a wedding planner up there, or an assistant that might be around and––’

‘Whoa, whoa,’ says Ed, putting his beer down on the coffee table and plonking himself back next to me on the sofa. ‘I can help. When is it again?’

‘September twenty-eighth, but I’d leave the day before.’

Ed nods, scrolling down his phone, his hand raking through his curls. ‘I’m working,’ he says, ‘but I finish at twelve on the twenty-seventh, so I could – meet you up there, maybe? Sleep on the train.’

‘No, no, that’s mad, I can’t ask you to do that. You’d be exhausted, Ed, after a bloody night shift. Don’t you remember Dorset? That mini break. You hallucinated on the train.’

Ed shrugs, laughs. He’s been out in the sun, his skin, golden, but two smudges of almost-red like war paint on his cheekbones. Too much sunshine from those beers he went out for with work, I bet.

‘Was a laugh though, wasn’t it? Me thinking Denzel Washington was in the train bog.’

I laugh. ‘And you thought there was a finger in your sandwich, but it was just a roll of wafer-thin ham.’

Ed laughs throatily, throws an arm behind me, stretching on the back of the sofa. ‘See. Fun. And it’ll be nice, hanging out in Edinburgh with you. A hotel.’ He smiles then, green eyes glinting.

‘To work,’ I say.

‘To work,’ he mocks. Then he leans and I turn my face, and he kisses my cheek. This keeps happening. He keeps leaning in, and I think I want to – a big part of me wants to – but I turn away, give him my cheek, or make a joke, or talk about bollocks, like some weird article I read on BuzzFeed or the price of eggs in Tesco compared to Waitrose. The other day, we were both sitting on the sofa watching TV and his hand found mine, and I was surprised in that moment, how right it felt for me to take it, squeeze it, feel his fingers slip between mine, rest heavy and familiar in my lap. We’ve slipped into a bit of a routine, enough that I even told Mum and Charlie about it yesterday.

Mum hadn’t been as delighted as I expected her to be, and Charlie had looked up from her appointments book and her skin had turned the colour of clay.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked, and she’d retracted, like a little crab, looked down at her lap, hurt. I’d told her everything then, that I was afraid she might tell me it’s a bad idea and that it felt so natural, so comfortable and easy, and I wasn’t ready to hear it.

‘But are you sure this isn’t convenience for him, Elle?’ she’d asked. ‘I mean, it seems it to me. He comes back, and you’re here waiting. His old life. It must be nice for him, just to come back and slip back into it.’ But I told her that it was nice for me too, to slip back into things. Into Ed, my warm blanket, my everything-I-ever-knew. ‘We were together a long time,’ I’d said, like Sam and Jenna, I wanted to say but didn’t.

Her brow furrowed and eventually, she nodded. ‘I guess I was just hopeful for Sam. It’s like a little love story me and Theo have been watching from afar or something.’ And I felt my heart fall to my arse then as the I like Sam question mark scribble drifted through my mind like a plane spelling words in the sky.

‘What’s happening with your mum?’ Ed asks now, leaning and grabbing a handful of peanuts from an ugly paint-splodged bowl on the table. I don’t think I like being here, in this flat, and I think it’s because it belongs to some fifty-something medic who’s currently in Dubai with his twenty-something wife. It feels like a stranger’s home. It’s all white and chrome and misguided décor choices. Something he looked at and thought ‘this says cool and young and hip’ when it actually says, ‘I am a present-day Austin Powers.’

‘Dilly’ll be home with her. He gets home about lunch time.’

‘So, she does still need people around then?’

I shrug, but my shoulders stiffen up by my ears, like plaster setting. ‘You know she does.’

‘Just – you say she’s getting better.’

‘She is,’ I say. ‘In some ways. But …’

‘You still have to arrange a babysitter.’ Ed sighs, leans back on the sofa. ‘Nell, you know how I feel about this, that it shouldn’t be up to you to––’

‘She isn’t well, Ed.’

‘Then she needs the help.’

And we slip straight back there, as easily as we slipped into our routine – like a scratch in a record that the needle can’t help but get wedged on. Ed’s views on how I live my life, how Mum lives hers. I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out at first. We’ve had this conversation so many times. It was the source of so many of our arguments, and the subject of Mum and me, it’s even more loaded now. It’s what came between us in the end. It’s why we broke up.

‘She has to want the help,’ I say carefully, but my words are clipped, with sharp edges.

‘And maybe she would if you – you know, withdrew yours.’

I scoff, lean away from him. ‘Oh, because that’s what we do to people who aren’t well, is it? Withdraw the help. This, from a doctor––’

‘Nell, I’m not saying neglect her.’ He laughs now, as if I’ve been ridiculous, as if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, and holds my hand. ‘I’m saying … you know what I’m saying.’

‘I know,’ I sigh. ‘But you can’t just switch anxiety and panic and fear off. I know that. You know I do.’ You’d have known too, if you’d come home to visit me back then, I think, tore yourself away from the endless parties and gallons of cheap university beer for longer than a single weekend where you just sighed and looked helplessly at me, like I was a car that wouldn’t start.

‘But she’s had her life, Nell,’ he says, ‘and she travelled, and she did all the things she wanted to do and – you could’ve …’

‘I know,’ I say again. Yes, Ed, I could’ve done anything. I could have gone to America with you. We could’ve had it all. I could’ve been the Noelle you wanted to start a new life with, away from here, so desperately. Then it tumbles from my lips.

‘Why did you come back?’

Ed cocks his head, gives me that classic, infamous sideways wince, eyes narrow. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, why would you come back here? Really? You wanted to get away so badly, you wanted a new life somewhere different––’

‘I – I got the job offer, Nell.’

‘Did you meet anyone over there?’

Ed freezes, eyes round and unblinking. That look again. The look he gave me when I asked him about Daisy’s camera. Pity, worry … something he’s holding back. Then he takes a deep breath, the way someone does when preparing to sing, or to say something important. ‘Nell, I don’t want to lie––’

‘So you did. You did meet someone.’

Ed takes another deep breath and looks at me. ‘I did.’

I freeze – a movie still. A lump gathers in my throat, and I just look at him. It’s not like I expected him to never look at anyone else ever again. Of course not. But hearing about it for the first time, knowing he’s kissed someone else, touched someone else, used all those funny Ed anecdotes that used to make me cry tears of laughter, that felt like they were only for me, on someone else – it stings a little, like vinegar in a wound.

‘But nobody worth talking about,’ he says, then he takes my hand in both of his.

‘Really?’

‘Nah. Just random dates.’

I think of the woman with the auburn curls, how much I obsessed over her. And yet, apparently, she is nobody worth talking about. I lost so much sleep over her, in the beginning. Sat stewing, with sadness and jealousy so powerful, I practically pulsated with it. ‘Nell, what is this all about?’

I look at him and shake my head, feel myself deflate, like a pierced pool toy. ‘I don’t know. I’m just – I feel confused.’

‘About?’

Race cars screech like hornets around a track on the TV screen, around and around, faster and faster, at dizzying speed.

‘Everything. This. You and me. About what it is.’

Ed rubs a thumb along the back of my hand, tracing the bumps of my knuckles. ‘Why does it need to be anything?’ he asks softly. ‘Why can’t we just … let it be what it is.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Catching up. Turning back the clock a bit. That’s not a crime, is it?’

‘Right.’

Ed moves a hand, strokes the side of my cheek. ‘Aren’t you glad I’m here?’ he whispers.

And I nod.

‘Because I am,’ he says, and when he leans, I let him this time. I let the warm flesh of his familiar lips press against mine and I melt into it. I have missed him. I have missed this security, the life we had – the life we almost had. And isn’t it something we all want, from time to time, to turn back the clock?