Just Last Night

The novel opens with a prologue set after the central tragedy. Eve, a writer for a Nottingham entertainment website, wakes from a dream of her deceased best friend, Susie Hart, and mentally scripts a text conversation in Susie's voice. She reflects on grief as a weight she carries alongside her rather than something behind her.

The narrative shifts to "Before," introducing the close-knit friend group at their weekly pub quiz at The Gladstone in Nottingham. Eve, Ed Cooper (a head of English at a local school), Justin (who manages a care home and is openly gay), and Susie (who works in finance) share the easy banter of deep familiarity. Eve harbors a long-standing love for Ed that she hides from him. When Ed's girlfriend, Hester, who relocated to Nottingham for Ed, commandeers the pub microphone and publicly proposes, the group is stunned. Ed accepts, Hester asks Eve and Susie to be bridesmaids, and Ed nominates Justin as best man. The friends mask their dismay with forced enthusiasm.

Eve provides backstory on her feelings. The four friends met as sixth formers, roughly 16 years old, when Justin and Ed approached Eve and Susie in their school common room. Eve initially felt no attraction to Ed, but on the eve of departing for university, Ed confessed he was in love with her and she realized her feelings were reciprocal. He wrote from university declaring she was "everything" to him. Eve wrote back the same day, but a flood in Ed's university kitchen destroyed her reply. Believing himself unrequited, Ed began dating Hester. Eve was devastated and has never fully gotten over him in 16 years.

The morning after the engagement, Ed calls with devastating news: Susie is dead, hit by a car while walking home the previous night. At Queen's Medical Centre, a consultant explains that Susie sustained a fatal brain injury and never regained consciousness. Eve and Ed identify her body, and the sight makes the death irrevocably real.

That evening, the three surviving friends grieve together at Eve's house. They discuss Susie's father, Iain Hart, who has dementia and cannot comprehend his daughter's death, and the need to contact Susie's estranged older brother, Finlay Hart, a psychologist in New York. Eve finds Finlay in Susie's phone under "My Wanker of a Brother" (97). When she calls, Finlay already knows about the death, asks Eve to handle funeral planning, and reveals that the driver had a stroke at the wheel and will not face charges. Eve and Ed visit Susie's house to remove compromising personal items, and Eve takes a box of old letters and diaries, vowing not to read them.

Meeting Finlay in person, the friends find him cold and imperious. He vetoes burial near the siblings' mother, insisting on cremation. Eve writes the eulogy while Ed volunteers to deliver it. The night before the funeral, Eve reads a letter visible through a torn envelope in the box. Written by Becky, Susie's university friend, the letter references a sexual encounter between Susie and Ed and reveals that Susie knew about Eve's feelings for Ed. Eve is shattered: her best friend slept with the man she loved, fully aware it would devastate her.

At the funeral, Ed delivers Eve's eulogy to a packed chapel, ending with: "Susie, you were always too much. But we wanted more" (170). At the wake, Eve confronts Ed on the hotel terrace, and his shocked pause confirms the truth, but Hester interrupts before they can speak further. Hester announces the wedding will proceed on schedule, and Eve snaps, telling Hester no one cares about her wedding tonight. Ed sides with Eve. Finlay, leaning in the shadows nearby, comments dryly that at least Eve will not have to be a bridesmaid anymore.

In the following weeks, Eve avoids Ed. She begins visiting Mr. Hart, who recognizes her as Susie's friend but does not understand his daughter is dead. She eventually allows Ed to explain: the night with Susie was a drunken, drug-fueled mistake 10 years earlier, and Justin also knew. Ed admits Susie believed Eve was in love with him and said learning the truth would "destroy" her. Eve was the only one kept in the dark. In a later rash act fueled by wine and resentment, Eve destroys the diaries by soaking them in her kitchen sink.

When Finlay returns to England, he discovers his father has traveled alone to Edinburgh, prompted by Eve's innocent suggestion to visit his brother Don, who died five years ago. Finlay asks Eve to accompany him to retrieve his father, offering to drop the dispute over the diaries in exchange.

Over several days in Edinburgh at The Waldorf hotel, Eve and Finlay develop an unexpected rapport as they search the city for Mr. Hart. Finlay offers piercing analysis of Eve's situation: Ed has "had his cake and eaten all of it" (285), enjoying her devotion without bearing its costs. He suggests Susie's fling with Ed stemmed from jealousy not of Ed but of Eve's capacity for deep feeling. Their connection intensifies, though a charged moment one evening ends with Finlay pulling back. A visit to Finlay's Aunt Tricia yields a clue to Mr. Hart's whereabouts but also a whispered warning that Finlay "destroyed that family." Mr. Hart is found in The Waldorf lobby, already packed to drive home, and they return to England.

At Justin's birthday weekend in a Derbyshire cottage, Hester accuses Eve and Ed of an affair. Ed defuses the confrontation by confessing the Susie fling, and Hester throws her ring on the table and drives away. Ed then declares he has always loved Eve. She rejects him, applying an insight Finlay offered in Edinburgh about people who assume responsibility for others but will not take responsibility for themselves: Ed maintained her attachment for his own benefit, keeping her as his backup while she went home and wept. She tells him she is worth more than someone who spent 16 years deciding whether she was worth the hassle. Ed absorbs this overnight and offers a genuine apology the next morning, asking to remain friends with no agenda. Eve accepts.

Back in Nottingham, Eve and Finlay exchange increasingly warm messages. When she visits Mr. Hart, Finlay arrives separately. After Mr. Hart erupts in rage, Finlay has a panic attack and reveals that his father physically abused him from roughly age six to 12, beating him behind closed doors. His mother refused to believe him, and Susie dismissed his account. His insistence on cremation, he explains, stemmed from a childhood punishment in which their father locked both children in a wardrobe, causing Susie to hyperventilate with terror of suffocating. Eve confesses she destroyed the diaries, and Finlay accepts this with grace.

Outside Eve's house, Finlay tells her that if he comes inside, he will not want to leave. Eve replies that given everything they have overcome, the distance between England and New York should not stop them. They kiss, and Finlay tells her he knew he loved her when he watched her hobbling in her heels across the hotel lobby in Edinburgh. Eve names the lesson they have taught each other: "recovery" (385).

An epilogue three months later shows the reconstituted friend group, now including Finlay and Justin's boyfriend Francis, winning the pub quiz under the team name "Susie's Losers." A final chapter mirrors the prologue: Eve dreams of Susie, sends a message to Susie's still-charged phone, and hears Susie's voice objecting to Eve dating her brother. Finlay stirs beside her. The rain has stopped. Eve's grief has not ended, but it has been joined by love and the sense that Susie will always be alongside her.