Instead of using my work hours for actual work, I used it for painful introspection. I created a document on my desktop with an innocuous title but contained within there was …
| Pros | Cons |
| ?????? | Rowan sleeping with other people |
| Rowan leaving me | |
| I’ll always know that Rowan wanted to sleep with other people AGAIN and I’ll have to carry that around forever and how do I live with that knowledge? |
It took me three days to build that table. During which time I ignored calls from the girls, and told Rowan five times that I needed to think. But after days of thinking, what I needed was time to talk. On my way out of work I sent an SOS message to the group chat. By the time I arrived home, Molly was already outside my building. She was leaning back against the wall with her phone pressed to her ear. Her other hand was flat against her forehead. I didn’t catch any of the conversation, apart from the hurried goodbye – ‘No, Edi’s here now … See you soon, yep …’ – but she looked panicked. I felt dreadful, because it crossed my mind she might be having a crisis bigger than the crisis I’d called her over here for. Then we could ignore my problem entirely and focus on whatever had made Molly look like her last slab of cheddar had gone off in the fridge.
‘Edi, what’s happening?’ She held me by the shoulders. ‘Are your parents okay?’
Shit. She’s panicked about my panic. I forced a smile. ‘They’re fine, Molly, why?’
‘Okay. Okay.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Then it’s Rowan.’
Back then, in the weeks and months after Skye, I’d wanted this conversation so many times. I’d wanted to sit down with my friends and talk about how I didn’t understand, how I didn’t know what to do – talk about what an utter shit Rowan had been. While Molly waited for a response, I flashed through all the imagined versions of this very conversation and in every single one I’d mentioned Skye by name. Now, though, I was ready to cry over the girls Rowan hadn’t even slept with – yet. I felt my eyes fill up and I tried to think of a way to phrase things that might sum everything up, so I wouldn’t have to explain it all to Molly the same number of times Rowan had had to explain it to me. But I couldn’t find anything descriptive enough …
‘I think he might be behaving like a bastard, Moll.’
Her eyes stretched. ‘Okay, inside, let’s get you inside, inside.’ She yanked my keys out of my hand and ushered me through the entryway to the building as the first tears tumbled free.
*
I was in the bathroom when the rest of them arrived. Before that, Molly had sat me down on the sofa and asked for everything and I’d told her, in between making ugly crying faces and gulping in air like a semi-strangled fish. Christ, no wonder he wants to sleep with other people, I thought as I stared myself down in the vanity mirror. When the doorbell had sounded, Molly rushed me out of sight and told me to get my face back on. She’d deal with the girls, whatever that meant. I wondered whether, when I emerged from the en suite, they might all know already. My mouth formed a petit O as I reapplied mascara and then I blotted my cheeks with pale compact powder, to try to compensate for the pink glow of post-cry. I huffed.
‘This is as good as it’s going to get, Parcell.’
I opened the door slowly to try to delay the creak of it. There was a conversation happening still, but I couldn’t make out the gist – nor could I hear any shouted expletives, though, which felt like a sign that they didn’t yet know the reason for the impromptu gathering. When the whine of the door finally sounded, their talking stopped. I took my time walking along the hall, but when I arrived at the doorway to the living room they already had their stares fixed on me, as though they’d only been sat there waiting. Either that, or they’d sensed my gloom shifting along the corridor like a scorned woman from a B-Movie. I flashed them all a tight smile and Cora, as though spring-loaded, leapt from the bucket seat in the corner and rushed over to me.
I spoke to Molly over Cora’s shoulder. ‘You’ve told them?’
‘She’s told us.’ Cora held me by the waist at arm’s length. ‘What reaction do you need?’
I shrugged. ‘I really can’t—’
‘Can’t believe what a colossal bastard he is, Edi, if I’m honest.’ Betty was sitting on the windowsill. She’d got one hand dangling out of the window to keep a hold of her cigarette. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her smoke. ‘I know you don’t know what reaction you need but that’s the reaction you’re getting.’ She moved her head out to take a drag and then came back in. When she spoke again, smoke billowed out of her and she reminded me of a dragon; a fierce, feminist, sweary dragon. ‘This is exactly the sort of shit I’d expect a man of his standing to pull. Middle-class, self-important, entitled twa—’
‘Betty.’ Faith raised an eyebrow. ‘Cora asked what reaction Edi needs.’
‘And Edi said she didn’t know,’ Betty answered.
‘Actually—’ Cora squeezed in between them both ‘—Edi didn’t answer yet.’ But the comment went ignored. Still, I squeezed her arm softly in thanks.
Meanwhile, Faith only kept her cautionary eyebrow raised in Betty’s direction. ‘Surely that means we should check our feelings at the door and let Edi speak, which is probably what she called us here for.’ She turned to me. ‘Right?’ Faith was the human in shining armour at the best of times. That evening, though, she was the wild-haired friend straight from the pages of a magazine, in her white T-shirt and black braces. And her level tone was a great comfort. She was trying hard to give nothing away. ‘Walk us through it. What are you feeling?’
I sat between Molly and Cora on the sofa. ‘I don’t know. Shock? I’m confused about … everything. He doesn’t want to break up. Like, he must have said that ten times over. But he also thinks it would be good for us, to have this space and this time and … I don’t know.’
‘So, you’re both free to sleep with other people?’ Cora asked, and I nodded. ‘With no comeback, at all, at a later date?’
‘Providing there aren’t pregnancies or STDs involved, I assume?’ Betty chimed in.
‘Pregnancy is an STD to some of us.’ Cora shuddered and Molly backhanded her thigh for the comment. ‘Whatever, yeah, what Betty said.’
‘We didn’t talk about that stuff explicitly. I don’t think he has a hit list or anything like that,’ I replied, and Betty snorted from her perch. We all pretended not to hear. ‘I think he just wants us to be able to explore ourselves and other people, but also not lose sight of what’s important. Which is each other, and the wedding, and everything that comes after the wedding.’
‘So, it isn’t a permanent thing?’ Faith asked.
I shook my head. ‘Three months.’
‘Three months?’ Cora’s eyes widened. She made an effort to sound less surprised on her second repetition. ‘Three months. Okay, well, that’s not … I mean, three months isn’t that long, really. How much can possibly happen in three months?’ Betty cleared her throat as though she might answer, and Cora held up a finger to pause her. ‘It was rhetorical.’
Betty sparked up another cigarette. ‘Edi, aren’t you livid?’
No, I thought. Only a bit sad. I shrugged. ‘I’m just … confused.’ And I was. Rowan had been so remorseful after Skye – not that I could say as much to the girls – that it had never crossed my mind something like this would cross his. I thought we were fine – better than fine!
Molly put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me to her for a hug. ‘Chinese?’
I laughed. ‘Please.’ I hadn’t eaten properly since the conversation with Rowan. It wasn’t a strike, only the consequence of my brain being so full of other thoughts. I’d been pacing back and forth on what to do, how to handle things, and the minutes had slipped into hours that meant self-care had become an afterthought. I’d only remembered food when I was lying in bed already, or when I was halfway to work and out of my way from getting breakfast anywhere. As Molly pulled up the menu on her iPhone, I realised just how hungry I was.
Talk turned to what everyone wanted to order, and I let them decide for me. Molly would know what was best for heartache. She’d apply chicken and rice and noodles; Cora would bring curtness while Betty brought sarcastic comments and Lily … I looked around the room for her and found her leaning on the window next to Betty. She was stealing a cigarette from Betty’s pouch. I got to the window as she lit up.
‘You’ve been suspiciously quiet.’
She smiled. ‘I think Betty here has shared opinions aplenty on the matter.’
‘Come on,’ Betty joined, ‘you’re telling me you don’t have an opinion on this? Or is the reason you’ve kept quiet because you’ve got exactly the same opinion that I do?’
Lily exhaled smoke through her nose. ‘Maybe I’ve kept quiet because I’ve got a different one?’
‘Bollocks.’
‘Lil, are you serious?’ I pushed.
She nodded. ‘Babes, real talk for a second here. It’s radical thinking and I do, as it happens, agree that he’s a total shit for suggesting it.’ She paused to take a pull on her smoke. ‘But, while it’s obviously a huge benefit to Rowan, or so he thinks, I mean, really, he isn’t all that and it’s going to be hard out there for him but whatever, that’s his bad shout. That aside, while it’s going to be hard for him, it’s actually going to be pretty easy for you. You’ve got the world at your feet with this deal.’ She pulled me into a hug.
‘She’s not wrong, you know,’ Faith added from behind me.
‘About?’
‘Well, any of it.’ She eased me away from Lily. ‘But specifically, the part about you having the world at your feet. You’ve literally never had a clue about how beautiful you are, Edi. It’s a shit trick of Rowan, but Lily is right, you won’t do badly out of this.’
‘Finally, something we all agree on.’ Betty winked at me.
‘It’s a bit outdated, isn’t it? To assume that open relationships can only be good for the man,’ Lily started and Faith shot her a warning look; that seemed to be what she was bringing to the evening. Lily held her hands up in a defensive gesture. ‘I’m not hopping on men’s rights. I’m only saying, for a lot of women in long-term relationships, if there was an opportunity to sleep with men other than the one they share a bed with, there’s a good chance they’d take the offer.’ She inhaled greedily on her cigarette again. ‘They might not admit as much. But that’s only because they’re not supposed to.’ She rolled her eyes as she spoke, and Betty rumbled her throat in agreement.
‘So, you’re saying I should do it?’ I looked between the three of them, desperate for their guidance; better still, desperate for them to make the decision for me.
Faith gave me a kiss on the forehead. ‘I think what we’re actually saying is—’
‘You should think about the benefits you might get out of this and make the decision you want to make. Right, Bett?’ Lily looked to Betty for support, but she couldn’t muster it.
‘That—’ she dabbed her cigarette on the outside wall of the building ‘—or you chuck him.’