I laugh, partly at how quintessential Susie Hart this is.
‘Technically Mark dumped me, so he only has himself to congratulate,’ I say.
‘Yes but only because you chose to stay here.’
‘Who would leave all this?’ I say, toasting the room, and then Leonard. And we laugh, but I know, as we hit our mid-thirties, it’s feeling just a trifle hollow.
We can feel ourselves, if not having already made irreversible mistakes, right on the verge of making them. Hester recently observed that we are mutually ‘idling in neutral gear’. And ‘having each other stops all of you lot looking for more. Co-dependency. You are each other’s other halves, so you don’t bother with relationships as well.’
Apart from Ed and herself, of course. God, she’s a joy.
The thing with Hester is, there’s a big whistling gap where her niceness is meant to be, but she’s absolutely everything else. Good-looking, energetic, high-earning, organised, confident, effortful, sociable, homemaking, birthday-remembering, smart. So I can see how it happened. You’d need to be paying attention.
And Ed’s very loyal. Sometimes naturally loyal people fail to spot when they shouldn’t be loyal.
‘Speaking of disappearing acts. Why are we missing Hester?’ Ed says, at her empty seat, and Justin mumbles we’re not, just quietly enough that Susie and I hear but Ed doesn’t.
Conversation is interrupted by a shrieking metallic noise, feedback from misfiring audio equipment, which makes everyone’s shoulders involuntarily hunch, and our mouths twist.
‘Whoops! Let me fiddle with this. There we are. Hello! Before the quiz starts again, this young lady wants to use my kit for a moment. As it were, haha! Therefore I am handing over … to Esther? Hester, sorry.’
Our heads snap round and we frown in confusion to see Hester standing on the other side of the bar, wielding the microphone with a look of beatific anticipation, as if she’s about to belt out a karaoke ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ or announce Sweden’s scores on Eurovision, as soon as the producer in her earpiece says ‘Go.’
‘Hi everyone,’ she says, as the saloon bar falls silent. ‘I’d been wondering for a while about when best to do this, and I had a divine fit of inspiration. It’s his favourite place, there’s a mike,’ she waggles it at her mouth like a lollipop she’s about to lick and I sense a few males in the room paying keen attention. Hester’s presence often has that effect. It’s like when you’re interested in a lot on eBay and it tells you that Four Other People Are Watching This.
‘So … That man over there …’ she gestures at Ed, who’s looking embarrassed, vaguely gratified, but mostly perturbed, ‘is the love of my life.’
She pauses for the awwwww to ripple round the room and closes her eyes for a second and nods. My stomach flexes.
‘I know, right. Even in that shirt!’ Laughter. Hester’s giving it the full Gwyneth with her Oscar, in terms of regally commanding the room.
‘Yep. We’ve been together for …’ she pretends to remember, counting it off on her fingers ‘… sixteen years! We are right about to age out of the “youth” demographic, my dear. Thirty-four is the cut-off. I know this because I work in advertising.’
Another laugh. You work for a marketing agency. I’ve heard you tartly correct people calling it advertising.
‘The autumn I met Ed, we’d only been going out a few months … he did something amazing.’
God, I am way too British not to find this excruciating. I can’t imagine Ed feels any different.
‘… My sister was going through a serious illness and it wasn’t sure she’d pull through, for a while. Ed and I were very new. Most guys would’ve run a mile from the commitment I needed. Not Ed,’ she looks at him, eyes shining, and the room holds its breath. ‘He came and stayed with my family that Christmas, he cooked the lunch for us, he took care of my parents, and promised me he’d always be there …’
Oh did he now. Well, it’s possible he didn’t, Hester’s a great self-mythologiser.
‘… And I knew right then I had found someone very, very special.’
The room’s part-liquid.
‘Now we’re thirty-four, what I’m wondering, Ed Cooper … after sixteen amazing years, of highs and lows, laughter and tears, is – will you marry me?’
A pause, and a roar of blokey expectation goes up from the steamily packed pub.
Susie, Justin and I look at Ed in shock, and he momentarily returns it, and gazes at us, as if for our cue or permission. I literally see the thought pass across his face that he’s going to get into horrendous trouble if he spends more than a single second weighing this offer up.
‘Yes!’ Ed says. Then louder: ‘Yes, I will marry you!’
He stands up and belts over to the bar and leans over, and he and Hester have a quick kiss while the room cheers and claps.
Susie, Justin and I all realise we should be doing the same as we look around us, and join in, in mechanical fashion.
‘What are you like …? What on earth?’ I can hear Ed saying to Hester as she does a ‘oh you know me, what can I say’ delighted both-palms-up gesture, and Justin, Susie and I drink our drinks and say nothing in the din.
Ed and Hester continue whispering and Ed is clearly expressing his ongoing amazement at Hester’s romantic audacity. I tear myself away from the sight and look once more at my friends.
‘I didn’t see that coming!’ Justin says, with a pointedly upbeat, even tone. ‘At The Gladdy quiz, no less. Keep your gondolas in Venice or your sunsets in Marrakech, this is the way to do it. I will pencil mine in for when we’re next getting doners in Panko’s Fish Bar. What do you say, Leonard, fancy the job as ring bearer?’ Leonard wakes up and stares at his owner and goes straight back to sleep, face down on tufted front paws. Yep, hard same, Leonard.
Susie and I make polite murmurs of agreement and it’s fair to say, for once, we’re both speechless.
Ed and Hester are back at the table and we make non-specific but emphatic noises of ‘Wow!’ and ‘Congrats!’ and ‘Oh my God!’
At times like this – OK, there haven’t been many times like this, but at times in general when we’re meant to show genuine and natural enthusiasm for Ed’s relationship – I marvel that someone as perceptive as Ed has tuned out the fact that we obviously aren’t that keen. Or maybe he knows full well, and sets it to one side.
Whenever the issue of their marrying arose, he used the fact they bought a ‘doer-upper’ of a house as distraction. ‘We’ve got better ways to spend twenty grand than that, thanks to Crapston Villas.’ I hoped against hope his reluctance was about more than the cost.
‘Well then! Here we are!’
Hester plonks celebratory Cava down on top of the quiz sheet, Ed juggling five flute glasses, as we croon fake awe at recent events. He’s crimson-tinged with shock and glee and booze. Hester unpeels the foil and wrestles the cork out of the bottle and, as it snaps out with a phut, the fizz bubbles over, streams down the sides and splatters our quiz sheet below.
‘Whoops!’ I move to rescue it, but Hester picks up the bottle and wipes the base with the sheet of paper, the spreading ink turning the writing into indecipherable Rorschach blots. Oh. I pick it up and it’s as limp as a tissue.