The prosaic truth was, going out with Elliot was like going out with anyone else, with a few more practical cautions and restrictions. A week after they started seeing each other, a gossip column story appeared saying Elliot and Edie had ‘rekindled’ their love at the Gun City wrap party, but ironically, though it was now true, it somehow merited fewer column inches.
‘It’s because they only have photos of us at each others’ throats,’ Elliot explained. ‘Pictures are everything nowadays. It might be best to be quite cautious and stay indoors a lot,’ Elliot said on a lazy morning at the Park Plaza, picking at a room service tray at the end of the bed. ‘If they get any more photos of us, it will definitely mean more stories.’
Edie said this was the slickest excuse for a boff-a-thon she’d ever heard.
‘Do we honestly need one? You only have to look at me the wrong way,’ Elliot said.
Edie wilted.
‘Be honest,’ he said, unwinding a croissant, ‘is it massively off-putting, the attention?’
‘I don’t much like the attention, but no,’ Edie said, leaning up to touch his face, ‘it’s not enough to put me off you. Not even near.’
‘It’s so great to go out with an adjusted person,’ Elliot said. ‘Heather lived for the attention.’
‘Argh, don’t bring her up again or I’ll think you have an unresolved Taylor-Burton love-hate thing going on,’ Edie said, succumbing to a sharp sting of green-eyed monster.
‘Oh!’ Elliot said, in mock indignation. ‘The worm has turned! The worm who makes me well jealous all the bloody time. The worm is you, by the way.’
Edie laughed. ‘I don’t …?’
‘I remember the lovely romantic ride on the big wheel I organised, and then I said all fake-casually “oh are you SURE you weren’t sleeping with that married fella” and you were all “wait we’ve already discussed this” and I thought you’d seen through the fact I spent all my time brooding about you.’
Edie shook with laughter. ‘I had no idea! I just assumed you had a crap memory!’
‘Hmm,’ Elliot chewed pastry, ‘I felt a right tool.’
‘Not as much of a tool as I felt in the Gun City read- through. What was that about?’
‘Oh that,’ Elliot grinned. ‘That was, hand on my heart, fully professional in its aims. I was struggling with that scene and I thought if I played it with someone I did feel those things about, it might start working. As it turned out, you looked as if I’d walked in smelling of drink with my lad in my hand and were going to hit me with a rolling pin. I never did take the curse off that I’m thinking about it right now line.’
‘You organised the big wheel to be romantic?’
‘Yeah. Well, ish. Any excuse to spend time with you. That was what anything was about.’
‘I best come up with some other things we can do together, then. Other than this. But still indoors.’
Elliot sighed: ‘And you’ve got to meet my parents. They insist. The unfortunate post-coital encounter needs to be overwritten in the official version of events.’
‘Ah OK. Oh no, that means by rights you have to meet my family too?’
Their eyes met and Edie sensed them both contemplate discussing why they were meeting the parents in week one of what was destined to be a fling, and decide not to tackle it. It was a fling, wasn’t it?
‘I want to meet your family. And your friends. I want a crash course in your life and times, please,’ Elliot said.
‘Hah, won’t take long. The Tales of Robin Hood would’ve been tons better, they had an animatronic Friar Tuck.’
‘You always do this, you always do the self-deprecating, put-yourself-down propaganda, Thompson,’ Elliot said, propping himself up on the pillow, and pushing her hair behind her ear. ‘It bears no relation to the reality of you, to the point where I spent some time early on figuring out if it was false modesty. You know, Archie’s making his thudding jokes about you ruining my concentration and you looked like you wanted to die.’
‘I did.’
‘A lot of people wouldn’t have minded the “you are very attractive” implication of all that.’
‘I didn’t think that was the implication, only that I was a bit … free with my favours.’
Elliot shook his head. ‘I can see how you got yourself in a proper mess in the past.’
‘I wasn’t in a mess!’ Edie huffed, but smiled.
‘You know when you nearly fainted, that time?’
‘Yes?’
‘I walked back on set completely distracted and I kept thinking: Who is she? There’s something completely compelling about you. Not just the beauty, or the being funny, or bright. You’re someone who you meet, and can’t get out of your head afterwards. It’s an enchantment so powerful even my idiot brother felt it. Charisma, that’s the word for it, but “charisma” always makes me think of smarmy gits. It’s genuine. OK, maybe I’m overthinking all of this and it is your eyes. Edie … why are you crying, you spoon?’
74
Edie had forgotten Nick’s request that she get Elliot to appear on his radio show, until they were lying horizontal at an undignified time that afternoon, listening to Nick host a phone-in on the new tram works, with a neat segue into the Lighthouse Family. She’d been explaining her enduring love for her two BFFs when the memory of her promise moved from back to front brain.
‘I don’t suppose you’d give him an interview?’ she said, nervous that she might be overstepping some bounds that only famous people knew about.
‘Sure,’ Elliot said.
Edie sat up, screamed and hugged him. ‘Really? Nick will be absolutely overjoyed.’
‘Yeah. Whenever suits. I’ve done interviews before, you know.’
Elliot went for a shower and Edie texted Nick and said ELLIOT IS ON FOR INTERVIEW!! And Nick texted back with I LOVE YOU/HIM/YOUR SELFLESSNESS IN UNDERTAKING THE DEBILITATING, DEGENERATE NAKED THINGS HE WILL MAKE YOU DO IN RETURN.
They pre-recorded it the next day so they could use excerpts to trail it for a week and get the largest listener figures.
She and Hannah listened at Hannah’s flat and Edie nearly combusted with pride at how warm, funny and insightful Elliot sounded. He even managed to make Gun City sound like it wasn’t nonsense. Was any of it her effect? It was the first time Elliot sounded in public the way he did in private, to Edie. With some of his pithier observations and swearing edited out, obviously.
‘Oh he is nice, Edith,’ Hannah said, as she turned the volume down on her Roberts radio. ‘You’ve actually chosen a nice one for a change.’
And Edie thought, he’s nice because I chose, rather than letting someone choose me. The girl that everyone wanted and nobody chose.
Later, Nick and Elliot convened at Hannah’s place, too. It was strange, seeing how awkward and guarded Hannah and Nick were around him at first, and realising that’s how she’d been, too. However, a combination of witnessing how completely at ease Edie was with him, and alcohol, meant they soon loosened up. A bit too much, truth be told.
‘I’m not usually into Puff the Magic Dragon bollocks,’ Nick said, ‘But Blood & Gold was alright. Better than that other one, anyway.’
‘They should put that on the posters,’ Elliot said. ‘Word for word.’
And Nick drank enough to tell Elliot that Edie used to say she didn’t fancy him and he looked like a trainee barista.
‘NICK!’ she and Hannah cried, in unison.
‘The best relationships are based on honesty,’ Nick said, unperturbed. ‘I’m told.’
‘It’s OK,’ Elliot said, mildly. ‘I don’t wish to embarrass Edie any further, but if this is how she treats a man she doesn’t fancy, God help the one she takes quite a shine to. Probably swallow her prey whole and regurgitate him like an owl pellet.’
‘In case it’s not clear, I like him,’ Nick said to Edie, pointing at Elliot.
On the walk from The Park to the hotel, Elliot said: ‘Your friends are as sound as I knew they would be.’
Edie glowed and hung on to his arm.
‘Nick doesn’t get to see his son at all?’
‘Nope.’
‘I can’t imagine that, not getting to see someone you love. Being separated by circumstance.’
It was funny that when there was only one off-limits, sensitive topic, all conversational roads seemed to lead back to it.
‘Circumstance is the nicest word for Alice I’ve heard so far,’ Edie said.
Another evening, they met Elliot’s parents at Hart’s for dinner.
Elliot wore a suit and looked so good in it, it made Edie shy. He walked out of the bathroom, doing up his cufflinks. ‘Why the face? Do I look like a plum?’
When they were travelling down in the hotel lift, Edie said Hart’s had reminded her she was seeing a boy from south of the river: ‘Hart’s is well posh for a first meeting.’
‘Oh, they’re just showboating as you’re future daughter-in-law material.’
Elliot said this absently while checking his phone and his head jerked up as he realised what he’d said.
‘A very roundabout way of asking me! Edie Owen. It works. Thus I accept. Tomorrow? West Bridgford registry office?’
Elliot shot over from his side of the lift and pinned her to the wall by the wrists.
‘You’re forgetting what a kind of big deal I am. I could call someone and this could actually be arranged. Turtle doves and Armani suits for the ushers and Maroon 5 for the reception. A finger buffet with cheddar and pineapple hedgehogs, everything.’
‘You’re on then,’ Edie said, laughing against his chest. ‘My answer is yes.’
They became the revolting people caught kissing when the lift doors slide open.
In the restaurant, Elliot reached for Edie’s hand under the table, whenever there wasn’t food in front of them. Edie imagined they were being discreet until Elliot’s mother said: ‘Elliot, dear, if you let go of her, she’s not going to float away. She’s not a balloon.’
Edie instinctively liked his parents, a lot. Like their son, they didn’t feign interest, they were interested. They inquired about Edie’s background and she gave them honest answers, and they asked sensitive questions. There was no snobbery whatsoever, a quality she could see they’d passed to Elliot.
She didn’t pry about what had gone on with Fraser, but Elliot reassured that all was harmonious so far. There’d been no story by his biological father, so maybe Elliot getting in first and spoilering had worked wonders.
When he was in the loo, the whole restaurant surreptitiously watching him cross the room, his mum leaned over and said: ‘I’m so pleased you’re independent, and have such a good head on your shoulders. He doesn’t need adulation, he needs a challenge. I can see you’re that.’
‘Congratulations, you were a huge hit,’ Elliot said, back at the hotel.
Edie was a dimension drunk enough to chance saying: ‘Still, daughter-in-law material is a high bar to clear …’
‘Are you goading me?’ Elliot said, gently pushing her further into the room, as Edie’s stomach whirlpooled. That suit. ‘Am I supposed to look terrified at the idea? Or are you suggesting that you think the idea is a joke?’
Edie could only laugh nervously.
‘You haven’t spooked me, I’m afraid,’ Elliot said, pushing her down on the bed and looming over her. ‘Not one bit. Try again.’
‘… You have to meet my dad and my sister tomorrow. They both want to know if you can really talk to wolves in a special language and they’d like to hear you do some more of it.’
‘Yes, now I’m spooked,’ Elliot said, and they laughed as they kissed, conversations on the future parked again, for the moment.
When meeting her dad and Meg, Edie went for a down-to- earth venue.
‘They’re not going to be comfortable anywhere like Hart’s,’ Edie said.
‘Good, we’ve just been there anyway.’
In the end, they opted for The Trip to Jerusalem pub, carved out of ancient sandstone caves.
‘I know it’s where tourists go, but now I’m in the States all the time, I get weirdly affectionate for the historic stuff,’ Elliot said.
The States, all the time. Edie twinged and said nothing.
After a small warm-up where Edie found a stream of conversational topics, and Elliot joined in enthusiastically, her dad and Meg relaxed and treated Elliot like any friend of Edie’s. Her father had never seen Blood & Gold and Meg didn’t do reverence, in any great quantity. And they didn’t get much time to chat, as they hadn’t realised there was a pub quiz that night.
They joined in with gusto, Elliot and Meg debating the largest species of tiger, her dad adamant that the leader of military campaigns who had a boot named after him was Wellington, not Doctor Marten, as Meg had it. Elliot rubbed his eye and met Edie’s, both trying not to laugh, and she’d never loved him more.
Edie sat there thinking: this is a typical Nottingham night out, with Scampi Fries, Nik Naks and a beer-dripped answer sheet. Elliot was one of them.
Only, except, he wasn’t.
Edie had learned the rules of dating a famous person, whenever they ventured out to busy places with lots of people under the age of thirty. Walk briskly when in public thoroughfares, no eye contact. Show politeness when approached. Make swift departure once recognised.
And Edie was surprised: she got little to no thrill from Elliot’s notoriety. He was special to her, she didn’t like him being of interest to others, who didn’t know him at all. She wanted him to herself.
Because Edie hadn’t ever been in love like this. She hadn’t known that losing yourself in someone could make you feel so here, so present, at the same time. When Elliot was with her and on her and in her and around her all the time, she’d never felt more like Edie.
They were the best days of Edie’s life so far, but there were so few of them. She refused to think about it. It was the elephant in the corner of the palatial hotel room with the crumpled sheets.
75
On their last night, they went for dinner early. Elliot had a ‘first light’ call for the airport. He’d already said his goodbyes to his family and transferred his luggage to the hotel. Edie felt the size of the compliment that he wanted to spend the remaining time with her.
They went to a Persian restaurant in a quiet back street, with Formica tables and giant servings of kebabs on skewers and dill-flecked mounds of rice. Another discovery of famousness: if they went to places no one expected to see a famous, no one saw a famous. There were stylised paintings on the wall of Eastern women in veils, with huge almond-shaped eyes, mouths like tiny bows and centre-parted dark hair. ‘Looks like you,’ Elliot said, with an adoring smile, and Edie fluttered.
As they dawdled their way back, Edie thought perhaps they’d say goodbye without discussing it. Without ever saying: ‘What was this?’
A light rain started and Elliot drew Edie to his side.
‘I’m about to escape this weather for the land of the lotus eaters. LA and its no seasons, how weird is that. Nothing to mark the passing of the year.’
‘Hah, yeah. Make the most of the mizzle while you can.’
‘It’s not the weather I’m going to miss.’
‘Ah you’ll be back soon enough,’ she said, avoiding his eyes.
‘Not if I’m in some network show with a punishing schedule.’
‘Mmm.’
They walked the remaining distance to the hotel in silence, Edie agonising over whether to say something.
Once inside the room, it was obvious the mood wasn’t going to clear by itself.
Edie fussed nervously with her handbag while Elliot closed the door and leaned against it.
‘Edie,’ he said. ‘Why are we avoiding this? Are we going to talk about it?’
‘About you leaving?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know you have to go, I just don’t want to think about it.’
Elliot studied her and Edie suddenly didn’t know what t
o do with her hands. They hung heavily at the ends of her arms and she had to find something to do with them. She pushed them under her armpits.
‘Do you not think I care, and I’m going to say, See ya, thanks for the good times? Or is this about you? I’ve been going mad trying to work out if you’re hedging because you think I’m hedging or if you really are hedging.’
Edie didn’t know what to say to this. Both.
‘Unless I’ve got this badly wrong, you’re my girlfriend, aren’t you?’
Edie smiled.
‘I’d like to think I am.’
‘Then why aren’t we talking about this? Look, Edie,’ Elliot paused, ‘you’re too important to play games with. I love you. I don’t want this to end tomorrow. I want to be together.’
‘I love you too,’ Edie said. She wanted to have said it again, before anything else.
Elliot stepped forward.
‘Come with me, come to LA.You can stay in the apartment. And then depending on what happens with me and the jobs, we’ll plot our next move. Together.’
Edie smiled. ‘And become your green card-less sponger girlfriend?’
‘No! What’s mine is yours,’ Elliot said. ‘It’s an adjustment, that’s all, you’d need a little time to find things and until then it’s a break, on me. Fuck’s sake, why earn all this stupid money if I can’t look after people I care about? What else is it good for? Or, if you’re really bothered by working in the States, we could come back to London as soon as possible. I’m never in the place in New York as it is. You know, whatever. Whatever you want.’
Who's That Girl? Page 38
