Page 25 of You Belong With Me

She’d seen a first aid box in the corner and soon found gauze bandages inside.

‘Uhm, do you want to … Or shall I …?’ she muttered, realising Declan was semi out of it and she was going to have to play nurse.

‘Maybe if you pull your shirt up?’ she said timidly, as he stood, unbuttoned it, and yanked it over his shoulders.Ah, OK.Edie did the obligatory teeth-sucking at the sight of blood:‘That’s quite a nasty graze.’

Declan looked down and grimaced. The fact he was woozymade partial unclothedness and their physical contact less peculiar for him, Edie thought. Or certainly the lesser of his problems.

Meanwhile, Edie was fully sentient that she was winding a roll of cloth round a man’s bare abdomen when she’d been expecting to ask him his Starbucks muffin order.

She kept up inane chatter to defuse any Indiana Jones and Marion energy flying around the room, but Declan swayed dangerously and caught hold of her to steady himself, so they were momentarily clasping each other. It jolted Edie. There was a definite jolt.

‘Sorry, sorry, this is a bit much …’ Declan said, and Edie said: ‘It’s fine!’ in her most chipper and very normal voice.

She got Declan some water and made some phone calls in the stairwell. They confirmed: 1. His being conscious and able-bodied enough to push his bike half a mile meant it was a taxi to A&E, not blue lights, and 2. Richard wanted her to lock up the office for as long as it took and keep him company.

When she came back in, Declan was looking angst-ridden, holding his phone.

‘Now, I know the WebMD doomscroll is for suckers, but I’ve been researching head injuries and found out about this thing called the Talk and Die Syndrome.’

He read from his handset: ‘The person may appear fine initially and be quite talkative. They insist they’re well because there isn’t too much pressure on the brain yet. At some point, they worsen, lapse into a coma and brain death gradually occurs.’

‘Sounds exactly like any office job – you’ll be fine,’ Edie said.

Declan burst out laughing, before wincing at the pressure on his wound.

‘If this is my finallucid intervalbefore the darkness takes me,’ Declan said, ‘I can already tell you’re the right person to spend it with.’

13

A wait with no end in sight was a baptism of fire for new acquaintances. Edie and Declan had hour upon hour of conversation to find after they arrived at A&E and no reference points for the other beyond sharing an employer.

Edie had kept herself to herself at Ad Hoc, with one dismal exception, and it had left her unprotected by a clique when scandal hit. She’d not expected to make friends since. She didn’t have managed expectations so much as very low ones.

Yet she and Declan seemed to share a wavelength. If he was acting in bad faith, he was an even better actor than Edie’s love interest.

Once they’d compared general notes on the agency’s most colourful and trying clients, she learned he had vivacious twenty-five-year-old twin sisters on whom he clearly doted. He was evidently very close to his family in his Dublin suburb of Drumcondra. He had a thing for climbing mountains, shared Edie’s love of Adam Buxton podcasts andTwin Peaks, and laughed easily and often.

Edie liked a generous laugh: her forays into online datinghad taught her that men who could only assess and compete were absolute chores.

‘Why did you accept the Nottingham gig?’ Edie said, cracking the ring pull on a Diet Coke. ‘I heard it was a very tough sell to the Ad Hoccers.’

‘Ah well, I’ve never been here before, so I thought it’d be exploration.’ Declan sipped his 7UP. ‘A chance to discover a new realm.’

‘Hahaha. Like those Winter Wonderland experiences where the headline saysBLUNDERLAND. The elves are all swearing and smoking, there’s a dads’ brawl in the Gingerbread House and Rudolph is a depressed Alsatian in a tiara. Kidding, obviously – I’m very fond.’

‘Hahahaha. “Santa’s on the sex offender” register. Nah, I’m not a London person,’ Declan said. ‘Been there two years and the experiment had concluded. I like fewer people and open spaces. Do you like being nearer your family?’

Declan had unwittingly passed a tiny yet matterful character test. He’d have been well within his rights to ask:Why did you move back here?and play innocent, despite the fact there was no way he didn’t know. Nevertheless, he’d skipped the phishing attack in favour of something uncontroversial for Edie to answer.

‘I live with my younger sister, so I must do! Yeah, it’s been great, actually. It wasn’t London’s fault, but my life there didn’t have much authentic goodness in it. It wasn’t very real. I needed the factory settings reset.’

Declan nodded.

Edie drank her drink and thought the elephant in the waiting room probably needed addressing.

‘We should maybe get this out of the way – I know you’ll have heard bad things about me, regards weddings and ex-colleagues and a general dog’s picnic. I’d say “it’s all true”, except, apart from there being a kiss, it isn’t. I got turned into a conniving whore who plotted to steal a married man. In reality, it was a split-second moment of terrible judgement that cost me a lot. It was horrible for his wife, but she took pretty major revenge on me, not him.’

‘Yeah, Jessica told me of some uproar, and I said he was the one getting married and you’re a nice-looking girl. Seemed obvious to me he was being audacious after too many black velvets. No one tries to kiss a groom on the off-chance he’s up for it, do they? It had to come from him.’

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