Page 20 of The Man Who Didn't Call
Is thatwhat?
I was going to have to write something. If Eddie really had been wasting away in a ditch, if he really had drowned in the Strait of Gibraltar, I was being pretty damned casual.
I opened up his Facebook page and took a long breath.
Has anyone seen Eddie recently?I typed.Have been trying to get in touch with him. A bit worried. Let me know if you’ve heard from him. Ta.And before I had a chance to stop myself, I pressed ‘Post’.
Suddenly the loo was filled with sounds I remembered. High-pitched chatter, make-up bags being unzipped, mascara wands being pumped. Several women talking through curved mouths as they smeared on lipstick. They shrieked with laughter about how they were still doing their make-up inthe toilet mirrors after all these years, and I smiled despite myself.
Then: ‘Have you seen Sarah Harrington?’ someone asked. ‘That was a surprise.’
And then Mandy’s voice: ‘I know! Pretty brave to just turn up like that.’
Murmurs of agreement. ‘Can I borrow your mascara? Mine’s gone clumpy.’ Taps being turned on and off; the useless sigh of the hand dryer that had never worked.
‘If I’m honest, I was a bit disappointed to see her,’ Claire said. The other women went silent. ‘I just wanted to have a nice afternoon, support Matt – know what I mean?’
Know what I mean?I’d said it for a while, to fit in.
‘Yes,’ Mandy said. ‘And of course she’s got as much right to be here as anyone else, but it’s . . . well, difficult. For us, at least.’
Claire agreed that it was.
‘She pretended not to have seen me earlier,’ Mandy said. ‘So I’m afraid I did the same. And so should you, Claire, if it’s going to stress you out.’ This was the kind of leadership that had made her popular at school.Let’s ignore Claire tomorrow. Let’s make some fake IDs. Although not for you, Sarah – you don’t look old enough.‘I’ve got too much on my plate at the moment – I haven’t the mental space for Sarah Harrington.’
Further murmurs of agreement.
Then: ‘Tommy Stenham’s looking well,’ Claire said lightly. ‘Don’t you think?’
Oh, she’d been deadly at that! Drop some poor person into the conversation – tone innocuous, intentions murderous – and wait, quivering, for Mandy to take the lead.
‘Looking very well indeed,’ Mandy agreed, ‘although I wasa little confused by his girlfriend.’ Her voice just skirted laughter.
I tried to breathe quietly.
‘Oh, that’s not his girlfriend,’ Claire said. ‘His girlfriend’s a lawyer. Matt’s seen a photo of her. Apparently she’s much better-looking than the woman with the kid.’
Mandy said, ‘I suppose the real surprise is that he has a girlfriend at all.’
Witchy cackling. More taps. More towels. And then they started recounting, voices thick with guilty pleasure, all the things the boys used to say about Tommy. Through gales of laughter they agreed it had beenvery cruel. On a roll, now, they moved on to the length and appropriateness of Jo’s dress, the generous proportions of her body, the embarrassing spectacle Rudi had made, and I began to boil. Hearing them talk about me had been bad enough, but it was nothing I hadn’t spent years imagining them saying. Tommy, though? Jo? No.
So I wrenched open my cubicle door and I faced them: this row of thirty-seven-year-old women, with their carefully done hair and their perfume and their outfits that they wouldn’t admit to having bought especially for the occasion. They turned round, mascaras in hand, lip gloss sparkling sickly. They stared at me, and I stared at them.
And I said nothing. Sarah Mackey, keynote speaker, lobbyist, campaigner. She stood there in silence in front of her old friends, and then she fled.
Chapter Nine
DAY EIGHT:The Day I Left
‘This has been the best week of my life,’ Eddie said, the day I left his house.
I loved this about him. He seemed always to say what he was thinking; nothing was edited. Which was a novel experience for me, because everyone edited everything when I came back to England.
Smiling, he placed two big hands round the sides of my face and kissed me again. My heart was wide open and my life was starting over. I had never been more certain of anything.
‘I do want to meet your parents,’ he said, ‘because they sound very nice, and because they made you. But I’m quite glad they had to go away.’
‘I agree.’ I traced a finger along his forearm.
