Eva · The Catering Quote

Eva was on her sister's laptop when she saw the name.

She had not been looking for the name. She had been looking for the catering quote, because Joss was getting married in seven weeks and Joss had asked Eva to be the maid of honour and Eva had said of course with the full luminous certainty of a woman who had not yet realised that being the maid of honour involved logistics, and the logistics had now arrived in Eva's lap in the form of a Google Sheet called J + M Wedding — Vendor Tracking v6 and Eva had been on row seventeen for fifteen minutes pretending to understand the difference between a passed-canapés package and a stationed-canapés package, and then she had clicked the email link in the vendor column to confirm a price, and the email had opened in Gmail, and the email had been signed —

Warmly, August Reed Founder · Reed & Sons Catering

Eva went very still.

Eva sat in her sister's kitchen with her sister's laptop open in front of her, with a mug of her sister's coffee going cold next to her, with her sister humming in the next room to the playlist her sister had been making for the rehearsal dinner for the last four months, and Eva went very still.

She thought, in the very orderly way she thought about things she did not want to think about, no.

She thought, Joss does not know.

She thought, Joss will need to be told. I will tell Joss. I will tell Joss in a minute. I will tell Joss in a minute, but first, I will read this email.

—

The email was about scallops.

The email was three paragraphs long. The first paragraph confirmed the head count — eighty-four — and the per-head rate of the Coastal Tasting Menu, which Eva noted was £138 per head, which Eva noted was also £11,592 in total, which Eva noted was a number that had appeared nowhere in Joss's stated wedding budget at any point in the last six months and which Eva would absolutely be addressing later. The second paragraph was an extremely tactful enquiry as to whether the bride and groom had any allergies, dietary preferences, or — and here Eva, despite herself, felt the small smile she had not made in four years tug very faintly at the corner of her mouth — strongly-held opinions about coriander.

The third paragraph said:

Looking forward to working with you on what sounds like a beautiful weekend. Yours warmly, August.

The signature was a small graphic of a sprig of rosemary.

Eva closed her eyes.

—

The first time August Reed had spoken to Eva, four and a half years ago, in the kitchen of a flat in Hackney where neither of them had been entirely sober and Eva had been trying to make a single piece of toast without burning it, August Reed had said —

'You're holding the bread upside down.'

Eva had said, 'Toast doesn't have an upside down.'

August Reed had said, 'It does. The crust on top. The crust gets crispy.'

Eva had said, 'That is the most extra thing I have ever heard a person say about toast.'

August Reed had said, very calmly, 'Eva. I run a catering company.'

That was the first time he had said her name. He had said it before she had told him her name. He had known her name from somewhere — they had been at the same flat warming for two and a half hours and he had been watching her, and she had been pretending not to know, and he had been pretending he wasn't, and the moment he had said Eva in the kitchen with the toast had been the moment they had both stopped pretending —

and then Eva had said something witty back, and August had laughed properly, and August's laugh had been the kind of laugh Eva had spent four years not thinking about, and Eva had thought — leaning against the kitchen counter of a flat in Hackney with a piece of toast that was definitely going to burn — oh. Oh, this is going to be a problem.

—

The problem had lasted seven weeks.

The problem had not been a relationship. They had not slept together. They had not even kissed.

They had eaten dinner together fourteen times.

They had texted, every night, between the hours of eleven pm and one am, for forty-nine consecutive nights.

They had once spent six hours on the phone, in a single call, neither of them sleeping, neither of them quite admitting why they were not sleeping. Eva had been in her flat in Crystal Palace. August had been in his flat in Bow. The phone call had ended at twenty past five in the morning because August's neighbour had begun playing the cello.

They had been, by any honest definition of the word, falling in love.

Then Eva had gone to her mother's for the weekend, and Eva had not come back.

She had not come back because, on the Saturday morning, her mother had said something — small, careless, the kind of thing her mother had been saying Eva's whole life — about the fact that Eva always did this, Eva, you always do this, you find one and you build the whole thing in your head before you've even met him properly — and Eva, who had not slept properly in seven weeks, who had been telling no one about August because there is nothing to tell, Mum, we haven't even, it's not a thing, had sat at her mother's kitchen table and looked at the cold bowl of porridge in front of her and had realised, with a small bleak certainty, that her mother was right.

Eva had built it all in her head.

August had not said anything. Not once. Not in fourteen dinners, not in forty-nine consecutive nights of texting, not in a six-hour phone call. August had not said I am falling in love with you. August had not said Eva, stay. August had not said come home, my flat, tonight.

August had said only — small, careless, the kind of thing he had been saying for seven weeks — you're holding the bread upside down.

Eva had not come back.

Eva had stopped replying.

Eva had let August's last three text messages sit unread until the read-receipt timer had aged them past the point where reading them would have been anything other than cruel, and then she had read them, and they had said —

Eva, are you alright.

Eva, I'm worried.

Eva, please tell me what I did.

— and Eva had not answered.

That had been four years and three months ago.

—

Eva opened her eyes.

She was in her sister's kitchen. Her sister was humming in the next room. The coffee was now definitively cold. The catering quote on the laptop screen said £11,592 for eighty-four people, and the email was signed August Reed, and the signature had a small graphic of a sprig of rosemary, and August Reed was going to be at every event in the run-up to her sister's wedding for the next nine weekends, and Eva — Eva, who had been pretending for four years that she had not built the whole thing in her head, who had not in fact built the whole thing in her head, who had been built into something every bit as real as she had ever been afraid it was — Eva was going to have to see him.

She was going to have to see him because she had agreed to be the maid of honour.

She was going to have to see him because if she dropped out now, on the grounds of a four-year-old almost-relationship she had never once mentioned to her sister, her sister would correctly conclude that Eva had not been okay for a very long time.

She was going to have to see him because Joss had hired the company already.

She was going to have to see him in eleven days, at the tasting, which Joss had RSVP'd Eva to without asking.

Eva put her forehead down on her sister's kitchen table.

The laptop fan ticked, twice.

Eva said, into the wood of her sister's kitchen table, very quietly —

'You absolute idiot, Eva.'

In the next room, Joss called out, cheerfully, 'Eva! How's the vendor tracker going? Are we on track?'

Eva did not lift her head.

Eva said, in the voice she had been using for four years, the voice that had successfully concealed every important thing Eva had ever felt from every member of her family —

'Going great, Joss. Going great.'

She did, in fact, then begin to cry, very quietly, into the wood of her sister's kitchen table.

She did not stop until the kettle clicked off.

She wiped her face with the sleeve of her cardigan.

She did not tell her sister.

She did, instead, the only thing she could think to do.

She opened a reply to August Reed's email, and she typed, with completely steady hands:

Hi August,

Confirming the head count of 84 and the Coastal Tasting Menu. No allergies. No coriander objections from the bride or groom but I personally would prefer to keep it to a minimum.

See you at the tasting.

Eva

She hit send before she could think.

She closed the laptop.

She sat at her sister's kitchen table, in the dim afternoon light, with the cold coffee and the now-quiet kettle and the closed laptop, and she waited.

It took August Reed exactly forty-seven seconds to reply.

Her phone, on the kitchen table, made a small bright sound.

She picked it up.

The email was one line.

The email said:

Eva. It's good to hear from you. I'll keep the coriander away.

There was no signature.

There was no sprig of rosemary.

There was just her name, at the start, in his handwriting-of-an-email, the way he had said it, four and a half years ago, in the kitchen of a flat in Hackney, when she had been holding the bread upside down —

Eva.

She put the phone face-down on the table.

She picked it up again immediately.

She put it face-down.

She picked it up again.

She did this seven more times before she made herself stand up, walk into the next room, smile at her sister, and say —

'Joss. Tell me about the canapés.'

Joss told her about the canapés.

Eva did not hear a word.

In her hand, in her pocket, against her thigh — Eva's phone was, for the first time in four years, warm with a message from August Reed.