‘Thank you,’ Edie mumbled, because although Richard was offering her a deal she fancied as much as a rectal bleed, he was trying to fix things.
Edie made fake-positive noises of assent and put her mobile down. Why had Elliot changed his mind again? Was the cross-city dash really that bad? Had he found her prurient, unprofessional? It wasn’t just her professional pride that hurt. It was plain old pride. She’d told him about her life, he’d acted interested. Hah, acted being the operative verb.
Her phone rang with an unknown mobile number and Edie very nearly didn’t answer. She had a squirmy thought it might be some associate of Charlotte’s, or Charlotte herself, Mafia-style, advising her that she wouldn’t go back to Ad Hoc if she knew what was good for her.
Should she let it ring out? She hesitated, and then thought if it was something that had to be dealt with, now was probably better than a sweaty later.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Edie? It’s Elliot.’
‘Elliot!’ Edie said, a little too loudly. ‘Hello! This is a surprise …’
In the disarray of her bedroom, she saw last night’s bra lying on the floor, and had to turn away so she didn’t have to look at her floral M&S D cups while speaking to one of People magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People 2014.
‘Hi. I wanted to apologise for the project being canned.’
‘Oh. Yeah. You went off the idea? Hope it wasn’t my crap questions.’
‘No, of course not … They didn’t tell you why it was cancelled?’
‘Only that you’d changed your mind.’
‘Oh, man. You must’ve thought I was a right dickhead.’
Edie made vague noises of false denial. This really was a surprise. He’d gone to the effort of finding out her mobile number rather sending a message via his agent, too.
‘It’s this other writer. Jan someone. She’s writing an unauthorised book on me. That’s why my agent bullied me into doing this one, to spoiler her efforts. The idea is that we can’t stop her doing it, but we flatten her book sales because people buy the proper one instead. You didn’t know any of this?’
‘No?’
It would’ve been nice to have been told.
‘Yeah. She’s going round my friends and family trying to get some dirt on me. And yesterday, she managed to trick my gran into talking to her. My gran said, “Does Elliot know you’re doing this?” and of course she says Oh yes, he knows. My gran told her things and then when we explained who this Jan was, my gran was in tears, saying she’d let me down. You know, I get they think I’m fair game and that I gave up the rights to any privacy when I said I’d be in a TV show. I don’t agree with them, but I get the logic. But what the fuck did my gran do to her? How can you sleep at night, making an eighty-three-year-old woman cry?’
‘That’s vile!’ Edie said, with feeling. ‘Can’t you tell her she can’t use it?’
‘The law around withdrawing consent … there’s a longer version but basically, no. Once they’ve got it, they’ve got it.’
‘Ouch. Really, Elliot. I didn’t know.’
‘She put something on my old school’s Facebook page, fishing for “stories” about me. My mate pretended to have things to offer, and in private messages it was all, “I only want to know who he slept with.” It’s gruesome. I lost it a bit last night. Why are we dancing around, doing another book because she’s doing a book, and letting her call the tune? Fuck that noise. So she makes a load of money. If she can still look at herself in the mirror, good for her. I prefer a dignified silence. I don’t need the money.’
His reluctance made a lot more sense now. Edie wished she’d been put in the picture. She’d have approached the whole thing quite differently.
‘I had no idea about any of this, Elliot. Did you tell the last writer about it? The other ghost-writer before me?’
‘Hah, that guy. The one who said unless I could offer him things that were more lurid than her discoveries, we were going to “look ridiculous”? I told him to piss off.’
Oh. Edie had assumed Elliot Owen was an obnoxious and trivial person. It turned out Edie was a person with a third of the information. Judging without all the facts, wasn’t that what her online critics were doing?
‘I’m so sorry,’ Edie said. She had nothing to lose in honesty any more. ‘I got this really wrong, Elliot. I thought you were being flippant about the whole thing because you couldn’t make up your mind, I didn’t know there were … external pressures. I completely understand why you didn’t much want to do the book now.’
‘Spoiled, I think you said,’ Elliot said, with a smile in his voice. ‘Nah you were right. I wasn’t my best self the first time you came round, what with the break-up with Heather.’
‘You broke up?’ Edie said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry, I’m not. Heather and I were business. She approached a relationship with a human like she was in the Build-a-Bear Workshop.’
‘Hah.’
Edie had an intuition, for the second time today, that Elliot was lonely. Why say this to her otherwise?
‘Anyway, I wanted to say sorry. Didn’t you say that you didn’t want to go back to London?’
‘Ah thanks. I’ll live,’ Edie said. ‘Thanks for thinking of me.’
A pause where they both perhaps wondered how to say ‘enjoy the rest of your life’ and exit gracefully. Given it was the last time they’d ever speak, and Elliot wouldn’t remember her in a few days’ time, Edie wanted to linger.
‘You know, it’s a genuine shame I don’t get to write the book.’
‘It can’t have been that appealing to you. C’mon. You seem too smart for a load of halo polishing.’
Edie had worked out how to deal with Elliot, and it wasn’t dissimilar to Richard. He could clearly handle honesty. Her mistake had been to think Elliot was going to be several degrees less intelligent than her. Wrong play.
She decided to voice something that had only properly crystallised at Margot’s.
‘I’d had this crazy idea. You know when we were chased out of Stratford Haven? When I got you to take the hat off? I wondered if we should ditch the whole sterile vanity thing and instead write it as a snapshot of what it’s like to be you, at a time like this. “Life inside the bubble.” We could use that anecdote as an introduction in the first chapter and do it as more “in conversation” than me pretending to be you.’
‘Hmm, yeah. Interesting idea. As long as the publisher wouldn’t find it too “out there”.’
‘They’d have to like what you liked, wouldn’t they?’
‘Guess so.’
‘Anyway. I’m not trying to talk you into it. I don’t think I’d do it, in your position.’
‘Ah, true say.’ Pause. ‘Nice to meet you, Edie. Lovely name, by the way.’
‘Thank you,’ Edie said, feeling bashful. A famous likes my name!
‘See you around.’
‘Yep. Bye.’
Ending the call, Edie felt twitchy, unsatisfied, strangely bereft.
Yes, she was crapping herself about being forced back to London, but it was more than that. She’d adjusted to the idea of writing the book, and finally found a rapport with the subject. She disliked being in Nottingham, but now she was going to climb on a train and disappear again. Unfinished business. She was doomed to be constantly abandoning unfinished business.
She added ‘Elliot Owen’ to her mobile contacts, as a show-off memento. He no doubt changed his number weekly, like a drug-dealer, but it’d feel cool to have it. Her phone rang.
Elliot Owen.
Uh?
‘Hello?’
‘Edie. OK, call me an infuriatingly inconsistent typical fucking strop-throwing actor idiot. Your idea?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s good. Let’s do it.’
25
You didn’t need a photogenic horde of friends, whatever anyone said. Whatever lies the media and advertisers – and Edie should know – told you, you only neede
d a few properly good ones. And in Edie’s case, perhaps fewer false ones.
Edie was walking through The Park at dusk, one bottle of wine and another of flat-warming champagne gently clanking in a bag against her legs, musing on this.
She saw now that her superficially popular London years hadn’t been full of good friends, just people she knew. One unfortunate incident, and they all turned into enemies. Their regard for her blew away like a sandcastle in a gale, it wasn’t built on anything solid.
She couldn’t even confidently reach out to a non-Ad Hoc friend, Louisa. She’d left the agency years back for a rival firm, but stayed in touch for loud wine-fuelled gossipy catch- ups every six weeks or so. Louisa had recently got pregnant and moved out of London, meaning the nights with Edie had come to an abrupt halt. After the baby arrived, Edie visited with cuddly toys and clucked and tried to empathise with the difficulties of breastfeeding. But it was obvious while their raucous acquaintance had survived no longer sharing a workplace, once you took alcohol and geography out of the shared items list too, there wasn’t enough left. Louisa kept asking when Edie was going to have a kid, and Edie kept gritted-teeth joking she hadn’t yet found a sperm donor, and the relationship quietly drifted by mutual agreement.
Now this had happened, Edie felt pretty certain that being at home with a screaming newborn, husband working long hours in offices with other women about whom Louisa knew little, she would take a dim view of unwed groom-kissing colleagues, whatever the context. Edie could already see the pained expression and feel the loaded silence that would greet her admission in St Albans Pizza Express, Louisa turning to fuss with a griping infant rather than look her in the eye.
And this was pretending that Edie needed to tell her – it was much more likely Louisa had already heard, and was dearly hoping Edie didn’t contaminate her by reaching out to her. Edie felt pretty sure she wouldn’t hear from her again.
It was startling and humbling to realise how much time you could spend with people to whom you meant so little, and vice versa.
Hannah had once defined a true friend as ‘someone you’d let see you in a vomit-stained dressing gown’, and on this basis, Hannah qualified. (Their teenage ‘Poke’ cocktail was an evil drug.)
Edie hadn’t felt good for so long. On the way to Hannah’s new flat for dinner, the sun dappling through the trees in the quiet streets, she felt almost peaceful. The Charlotte conversation threatened to intrude, but she firmly pushed it away and locked a mental door on it. It’d pick the lock and come creeping out later. She was losing sleep to it, her eyes becoming shadowed with purple, which she diligently powdered over.
Edie pulled her phone from her pocket and checked she had the right house number. Oh, wow. Well played, Hannah. The Park was a private estate on the edge of the city centre, full of beautiful pink-bricked, ivy-clad Victorian houses, the whole area lit by gas lamps. Edie might’ve guessed Hannah wasn’t going to give up the New Town in Edinburgh for any old place, but her flat was still a stunner. It occupied the bottom half of a huge, Gothicky-looking pile, sat at a bend in a tree-lined road.
‘God, Hannah. This is incredible,’ Edie said, handing over her Sainsbury’s Bag for Life, after Hannah cranked a giant arched door open. Hannah was in her big specs and a ‘didn’t have time to change’ outfit of sloppy jumper and spray-on jeans that looked better than Edie’s dress.
Beyond her there was a large, light-filled hallway with Persian rug, that led into a sitting room with practically floor-to-ceiling windows, and a huge fireplace.
‘Look at that ceiling rose!’ Edie said, neck craned.
‘Hah, it’s full of original features. We’re all old enough to get excited by ceiling roses now, aren’t we? The ceiling rose age.’
‘I doubt Nick is. He’s definitely coming?’ Edie said.
‘Yeah. He was cagey though. A lot of “I’ll tell you how I am when I see you.” Ah.’
At that moment the doorbell rang and Hannah went to answer. Edie looked around at Hannah’s half-unpacked boxes, and stumpy palm tree in a wicker basket. She envied her having somewhere to call her own, like this. Edie realised her flat in Stockwell had only ever felt like a holding pen, on the way somewhere else. To someone else, she guessed.
Nick came into the room, holding a bottle of red. He had a small build with neat features and close-cropped, fair hair. People always took Nick for a decade younger than his years. He always dressed very nicely, in a discreet way, like today’s small-checked shirt, Harrington jacket and desert boots. He had a quiet voice that belied an extremely sharp wit. He was perennially disappointed with the world, everything in it, and probably most of all, himself.
Edie and he hugged hello.
‘How are you?’ she said.
‘Fucking awful. You?’
‘Shite,’ Edie laughed.
‘Same here, but we have booze,’ Hannah said. ‘Shall we start with the fizzy?’ She went to the kitchen to find cups.
And just like that, nothing could be quite as bad as it was before. Edie counted herself lucky, for the first time in an age. Yes she’d wound up on her arse, but with these two people it surely couldn’t be all bad. She was aware it was by chance, and that made her feel guilty. She could’ve made more of an effort to see them in recent years.
‘Alice and I broke up,’ Nick said, accepting a half-pint tumbler of champagne from Hannah. ‘Is my news. Old news, now. A year ago.’
‘Oh God,’ Hannah said, and both she and Edie made awkward tutting and clucking noises that stopped short of having to express actual specific regret.
‘A year! Why didn’t you tell us?!’ Hannah said.
‘I was sparing you having to pretend it was a bad thing,’ Nick said, with a small smile, which they returned, guiltily.
‘Neither of you need to ask “what took you so long?” I don’t know. But the bad part is that I’m not seeing Max.’
Nick swigged his drink.
‘What do you mean?’ Edie said.
‘Alice said he didn’t want to see me so I couldn’t see him. I went to court to say it wasn’t true and I wanted to see him, but the process took ages. By the time they were interviewing Max, asking if he wanted to see me, he didn’t any more. He’s only seven, he’d probably half-started to forget who I was. His mum had been telling him he hadn’t wanted to see me on a loop. So there we are.’
There was a short pause, filled only with the low burble of Hannah’s radio, tuned to a jazz station.
‘That’s horrific. She’s stopping you, for what reason?’
‘She said I was a crap dad, I never had any time for him when we were together. If I wouldn’t be with her, I couldn’t see him.’
‘Can you appeal?’ Edie asked.
‘Nope. Nothing to be done, Max has to change his mind. All I can do is keep sending him Christmas and birthday presents. And paying. I think I should be paying, can we be clear.’ He pointed at them each in turn, with gallows humour, and swigged his drink again. Edie felt the force and speed he was drinking at was slightly concerning. ‘But you know, it’s nice she still thinks my money’s good enough, if nothing else.’
‘You know what, Nick, I’ll be honest. I thought your wife was a cow. But this has left me speechless,’ Hannah said.
‘I always thought she would do something like this. It’s one of the reasons it took me so long to leave. That, and I’m a lazy twat. What’s for dinner, by the way?’
Edie and Hannah had been gawping. Hannah recovered quicker.
‘I had plans to make you this nettle pesto and homemade pappardelle dish, but I can’t find half of my kitchen stuff so wondered if fish and chips was alright?’
Nick glanced in Edie’s direction.
‘Weed sauce? That sounds revolting.’
‘It’s a River Cottage recipe!’
‘At Crapston Villas, nettles are things dogs piss on.’
‘You’ve nominated yourself to get the fish and chips.’
‘Suits me. I can have a f
ag on the way.’
It was agreed that Edie could keep Nick company on the short walk down the hill, and Hannah could spend the time unpacking the kitchen boxes that had plates and ketchup in them.
They set off with a scribbled scorecard of haddocks, mushy peas and gravy.
‘You should’ve told us about what happened with Alice, you know. We’d never have abandoned you in a crisis. I feel so bad – I was emailing you videos of cats and I didn’t know.’
Nick finished lighting up and pulled the cigarette from his mouth, as they walked on.
‘Always time for cat videos. Ah, thanks. It wasn’t a crisis, though. It was a slow dawning realisation that I’d jumped into a pit of shit and it came up to well above my knees.’
Edie nodded. ‘Not seeing Max … it must be so awful.’
‘It’s pretty bad, yeah. I deal with it by not dealing with it. I don’t think about it. If I did, I’d go mad. Confronting things is overrated, in my opinion. What’s up with you, then? Hannah said you’d had some drama at a wedding and got ex-communicated down south?’
For the first time, Edie felt this story was not the biggest deal. She filled Nick in.
‘It sounds as much him as you, to be honest, if not more. Why is it on you? You’re single. He’d literally just got married.’
‘Thanks for saying so. I don’t know. It’s easier to blame me, I suppose.’
‘We’ve all had a bash at Thompson at one time or another, doesn’t need to cause problems.’
Edie was caught off guard, remembering a cider-sodden attempt at a bag off in Rock City from Nick when they were nineteen, and his garbled attempt to declare sincere and lustful love. She’d turned him down, but with a surprising grace and maturity that belied her years. It was one of the few things she could look back on without guilt. She honestly often forgot, it seemed so long ago.
Edie blushed and Nick smiled.
Who's That Girl? Page 14
