Who's That Girl?

by Mhairi McFarlane

  The hotel was silent, and Edie winced as if the squeak of her trolley case was making the noise of a jumbo jet taking off. She pushed the handle down and picked it up. She reasoned with herself: what percentage of people will have stayed awake, patrolling the building? What percentage of people, bar Louis, would be able to visually ID her as the fallen woman anyway?

  She breathed deeply and jabbed her finger on the button to call the lift, as her skin glowed and prickled with the combined heat of an intensely bright yellow summer morning and the slick of guilty, fearful sweat. As per last night’s vomiting episode, she knew that once the practical problem of getting out of here was out of the way, the creeping psychic torture would be far, far worse.

  The middle-aged man on reception looked startled as Edie rolled her case out of the lift and said, testing her croaky voice: ‘I’d like to check out, please.’

  He stared at Edie for a moment, putting two and two together, and Edie felt like a celebrity for all the wrong reasons. She had some dark glasses somewhere in her bag, but wasn’t going to put them on until she hit exterior sunlight. Only Stevie Wonder was allowed to wear sunglasses indoors without being a tit, even Edie’s predicament didn’t change that. She wished Hannah was here. She wished she had just one person on her side, to vouch for her. Although she knew Hannah would have some vigorous words for her, too.

  ‘Could I order a taxi to the station?’ Edie said, ‘I’ll wait out there.’

  The man nodded in embarrassed understanding. Given her state, Edie couldn’t help but think that he was thinking was this woman really worth it.

  Edie pushed through the revolving door, into the car park and came face to face with another human being. She tried not to startle at seeing the 40-something mother with curly hair, a very small baby in her arms and a toddler bumbling around at her feet. Thankfully, Edie didn’t know who she was, and the woman smiled at her as a reflex response, suggesting she definitely didn’t know who Edie was.

  ‘Morning!’ Edie said in a peppy, sergeant major-ish voice.

  ‘Morning! Nice one, isn’t it?’

  ‘Gorgeous.’ Appalling.

  ‘You’re up early!’ Her eyes moved from Edie to her case, and back again. ‘And you don’t have this lot to contend with,’ she jiggled the baby, who frowned at Edie with its suspicious crumpled face.

  ‘Haha no, tons of work to do. Big project on. Thought I’d best get home.’

  Oh God, taxi, please turn up, and soon.

  ‘Do you have far to go?’

  ‘London.’ Edie swallowed, with a dry mouth. ‘You?’

  ‘Cheltenham. We won’t be going til his nibs wakes up though. Far too much red wine. Have you been at the wedding, too?’

  Shit.

  ‘Uh. Yes.’ Edie gripped the handle on her trolley case more tightly.

  ‘Awful business, wasn’t it? Stanley! No digging up handfuls of earth, thank you. Clean play only or we go back inside.’

  Edie couldn’t be more grateful for Stanley’s sort of muck raking.

  ‘Seems Charlotte found Jack having some how’s your father, or snogging or something, with another guest. Unbelievable,’ the woman said. ‘Can you believe it? On your wedding day? To be carrying on with another woman?’

  ‘Huh,’ Edie said, trying to make an incredulous-yet-also-disinterested face. ‘Wow.’ She shook her head.

  The woman shifted the baby to her other Boden trouser-clad hip.

  ‘… Did you not know?’

  Shit.

  ‘Uh, I knew … something had happened. I didn’t know exactly what,’ Edie said, quickly. Think. Think of something to say to keep her occupied. ‘Where are they now?’ Edie said, mindlessly.

  ‘Charlotte left with her parents. You know her parents? They have the big white house over on the other side of the green.’

  ‘Oh, right. Yes.’

  ‘Poor, poor thing. I can’t imagine what she’s going through.’

  ‘No, dreadful.’

  The woman was contemplating Edie more carefully now. She was wondering why she was really stood outside the hotel before six in the morning, looking like a bedraggled Walk of Shamer, and feigning improbably little knowledge of the previous night’s earthquake.

  ‘How do you know Jack and Charlotte?’ she said hesitantly, asking for confirmation of a hunch.

  ‘I work with them.’

  There followed an acutely uncomfortable few seconds where the woman’s face became a taut mask of revelation. It was as if she’d seen a WANTED poster over Edie’s shoulder.

  A minicab finally swept up the drive and Edie could’ve thrown herself arms wide across the windscreen in exultant relief.

  ‘Bye!’ she said to the woman, who was staring dully at her, not noticing Stanley was now eating gobfuls of soil.

  The driver helped Edie haul her case into the boot and she hopped into the back like a scalded flea, in case the woman started screeching that the man from Blueline Taxis was unwittingly aiding and abetting a dangerous felon.

  9

  As the car turned through near-empty roads, Edie couldn’t resist looking at her phone. If it had been hard for her father to grasp why they pulled duck-face selfies, she imagined explaining to him why, at a time like this, she would investigate things that were guaranteed to violently upset her. Because the big online glass palace full of funhouse mirrors was where half your reputation lived, now.

  Edie had a flurry of a dozen or so Facebook messages. She opened them, nauseous with foreboding. They were distant acquaintances, the social media version of phishing scams – feigned concern and closeness, to gather information. Bloody hell, how shameless.

  Long time no speak! Heard something kicked off at the wedding yesterday. Are you OK? Laura x

  It’s been a while, hope all is good! And WOW: is what people are saying true? What happened, Edie? Hope everything is still going well at your company. I’ve had a second child since we last spoke! Best wishes, Kate

  Hi. Do you know what people at Ad Hoc are saying? I felt I had to tell you … don’t know whether it’s true. Terry PS we worked together from 2008-9

  Edie gulped and hammered delete-delete-delete, only skimming the first few lines of each. Long time no – DELETE.

  She had messages (3) in ‘Other,’ i.e., from people who weren’t in her friends list. She guessed they’d be more savage. U R A RANSID FIRECROTCH TART was all that ‘Spencer’ had to say. She deleted and blocked.

  She also deleted and blocked a total stranger called Rebecca who used lots of words that couldn’t be published in a family newspaper. Edie wasn’t upset by the language, the ferocity behind it was frightening. As if she actually would beat seven bells out of Edie if she could only get her hands on her.

  Speaking of which …

  Edie. This is Lucie, I am Charlotte’s chief bridesmaid and best friend since our university days. Since you are too gutless to face me and got your ridiculous friend Lewis involved in your devious games (that’s right, I worked out you swapped rooms with him, and I hope you enjoyed the sign I left on your door ‘Please Do Not Disturb I’M SHAGGING SOMEONE’S HUSBAND’), I am forced to tell you here what kind of person you are. It’s no exaggeration to say you’re the worst person I’ve ever met or heard about. It’s one thing to try to steal someone else’s man but to DO IT ON THEIR LITERAL WEDDING DAY beggars belief. I hope you realise you have ruined a woman’s life and wasted countless thousands on venue hire, catering and transport. I can’t imagine she will want to keep the photographs either. Will you pay her back? Methinks not.

  I know Jack to be a good guy despite this mistake and don’t doubt for a second you’ve been offering it to him on a plate, trying to break them up.

  I hope you are happy now you’ve got your wish but you won’t be because terrible people never are.

  Lucie Maguire

  She’d learned Edie’s name, at least, and it sounded as though Louis got a nice memento.

  The activity overall was an odd blend of frenz
y of attention and rejection: Edie could see her friend numbers had dipped, yet a lot of people wanted to talk to her – another couple of notifications pinged as she browsed. She clicked through, stomach churning, to Charlotte’s Facebook page and saw, ‘This Link May Be Broken’. This link is very broken. She didn’t blame Charlotte for coming off entirely. In fact, that was one small mark of respect she could offer, and do the same.

  Edie deactivated her own page. Why provide a toxic waste dump site.

  ‘You’re off early,’ said the taxi driver.

  ‘Yes,’ Edie said, blearily and blankly. ‘Lots of work on.’

  ‘The trains won’t start for a while yet.’

  ‘Oh. I best get a coffee then.’

  ‘The café might not be open for a bit either.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’

  Edie spent the next few hours waiting for a connection to Leeds, hiding in the loos for fear of running into other wedding guests, then staring unseeing out of grimy windows, feeling a queasy mix of listless and terror-struck. This wasn’t, she accepted, one of life’s wrinkles. This was one of those jolt-crashes that nearly threw you out of the dodgem car. She felt so morally unclean, it was like she needed a whole-body blood transfusion.

  She could call Hannah. But she couldn’t face it, not yet. Hannah would be raging at Jack but might not see Edie’s role in it as much better. Edie didn’t yet have enough distance on this to work out how even those closest to her would see it. And if her best friend withdrew her support, Edie would collapse completely.

  After rewording it three or four times, she risked a text to Jack.

  Hardly know what to say, but, what happened & why? Call me if you can. E.

  No reply. She didn’t think there would be one. Ever, possibly. She needed to message Charlotte too, but that was going to take more time and thought.

  Once she was through the door of her cupboard-sized flat, she flopped down on the sofa and burst into heavy, heavy sobbing. She wanted to scream those childhood complaints, that This Was So Unfair and It Wasn’t Her Fault.

  This was Jack’s fault. He’d chosen to marry one woman and kiss another, and both were paying a horrendous price. Edie was furious with Jack, but most of all, she was mystified. If he’d wanted her, even so much as for an affair, why choose the first few hours of making an honest woman of Charlotte for his rankest act of dishonesty?

  By lunchtime, she steeled herself to call their boss, Richard. Leaving her job, without one to go to, wasn’t only a professional disaster, it felt personal. She hated letting Richard down, and she writhed at the thought of him being repulsed by her behaviour. It was one thing to be despised by the Lucie Maguires of this world, another to disgust people whose good opinion you really valued.

  Richard was an incredibly handsome black man and so impeccably dressed, Edie imagined he’d walk away from a plane crash adjusting a cufflink, with one extra waistcoat button undone. (‘He doesn’t sweat,’ Jack said. ‘Literally or figuratively. Ever.’) His wife was a high-flying prosecutor, and they had two eerily well-mannered kids. The secret nickname among their colleagues was ‘the Obamas’.

  Everyone said Richard had a soft spot for Edie and she was his ‘little favourite’. Edie didn’t know if that was true. If it was, she could only think it was down to the fact that she dealt with someone as smart as Richard by being absolutely straightforward. A lot of others responded to his fearsomely cool intellect by bullshitting him, which was, to use a Richard phrase, the wrong play.

  He answered his mobile immediately.

  ‘Edie.’

  ‘Richard, I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday.’

  ‘OK. We can skip the explanation as to why.’

  ‘… Can we?’

  ‘Louis helpfully put me in the picture.’

  Setting aside what this told Edie about Louis’s loyalty, she said: ‘I’m so, so sorry, Richard. I’m handing in my notice. I won’t be coming into work tomorrow so you don’t have to worry about a bad atmosphere or anything.’

  ‘You’re required by your contract to work four weeks’ notice.’

  ‘I know,’ Edie said. ‘Under the circumstances I thought you might … let me off it. I can take part of it as holiday owing?’

  ‘I’m not clear which half of the unhappy couple will be reporting in yet. Am I supposed to have two staff on gardening leave, and a third functioning from behind a vale of tears?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Edie said, in a small voice.

  Richard sighed.

  ‘Why did I break the no couples rule? Mind you, even when your employees aren’t a couple, it’s no guarantee, eh.’

  Edie said nothing.

  ‘Look, your extra-curriculars are none of my business, except when it affects my business.’

  ‘Richard, I’m sorry. If there was any way I could come back I would, but I can’t.’ Edie tried not to sob.

  ‘I don’t want decisions made about that, yet. It so happens I have a suggestion for a solution that might suit us both. A very short-notice job has come in, I was going to talk to you about it tomorrow. Have you heard of the actor, Elliot Owen?’

  ‘Er. Yes. From that swords and sandals show?’

  The conversation had taken a surreal turn.

  ‘That’s him. A friend at a publishing house has on their knees begged me to spare a copywriter as a replacement to ghost-write his autobiog, after the last guy walked at the last minute. Or the first minute, the one where they met each other.’

  ‘OK …’ Edie grimaced.

  ‘He’s back home in Nottingham to do some TV thing. “One for the cred not the bread,” I’m told. There’s a three- month window starting now to get all his hilarious stories out of him, before he’s off to America. Then four to six weeks to type the thing up. You’re from Nottingham too, am I right? So, go. See the folks. It’s good money. Then afterwards, we’ll look at how the land lies in the office.’

  ‘I’ve never ghost-written a book before,’ Edie said. ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘No, but how hard can it be? This will be one of those “separate kids from their pocket money” jobs where you pretend this vacuous pretty boy has amassed a lifetime of wisdom at twenty-five and everyone just looks at the pictures. You’re plenty literate enough to make him sound halfway articulate.’

  Edie fell silent.

  ‘Seriously, it’s stenography. He talks, you marshal his self-aggrandising drivel into something vaguely coherent.’

  Edie swithered. On the one hand, this sounded fairly mad. On the other hand, her boss was offering her a way of paying her rent for the near future. And Richard was right: as an alternative, he could contractually insist she worked her notice in the office. Anything was better than that.

  ‘OK,’ Edie said. ‘Thanks for the chance.’

  ‘Great. I said Tuesday to start, his people will be in touch. They’ll courier the cuttings over to you, so drop me a text with your folks’ address. By the way - I pass this on with a wry eyebrow raise – they, and I quote, want you to “really get under his skin and get some real meat out of this”. Try to ignore ground that’s been covered already in his press.’

  ‘Mmm-hmmm,’ said Edie, with the firm assurance of someone agreeing to do something they had no idea how to do.

  ‘Check in with me, every so often.’

  ‘Will do.’

  There was a pause where Richard heavy sighed again.

  ‘And this part of the conversation is strictly off the record. I couldn’t care less about the rights and wrongs and who-did-whats of your superannuated game of kiss chase with Jack Marshall. But I’m disappointed in your taste.’

  Edie was surprised at this, and could only say:

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You’ve always struck me as a bright woman, with a lot about herself. He’s an irrelevant person. Learn to spot irrelevant people. Don’t expect someone who doesn’t know who they are to care who you are.’

  Edie, surprised, nodded meekly and then remembered he couldn’t see
her.

  ‘OK. Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, and Edie. I’m sure it’s not necessary to say this, but in the circumstances I’m going to go belt and braces.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The advice was about getting under his skin, not his clothes, and let’s set aside the “real meat” thing entirely. For fuck’s sake, don’t get off with Elliot Owen.’

  10

  Edie paid first class to get back to Nottingham, even though it was an extravagant amount extra, travelling on a Monday. The last luxury for the condemned woman, a Big Mac and large fries on Death Row.

  It was tough, she knew, to equate her native city with the Electric Chair. Nevertheless.

  In their twenties, everyone who’d escaped to The Smoke had shuddered at the thought of moving back to wherever they’d come from. Edie had fitted right in. They were the ones who’d got away, and they revelled in their success every weekend. On Fridays, when Edie drank in Soho pubs, everyone spilling out of the doorways, she felt she was at the centre of the universe.

  Then slowly but surely, the tide turned. People married and planned babies, and wanted good schools and a garden. They didn’t go out to explore the capital’s cultural riches and superior shopping at the weekends anyway. Even those who didn’t have families got sick of the commute, the cut-throat competitiveness, the gargantuan property prices, the way London geography made social spontaneity impossible.

  Gradually, the very same people who’d proclaim loudly after a few pints that the rest of the country was a backward dump full of UKIPers, began to romanticise home. Being in striking distance of the grandparents, being able to have a dog, a friendly local where everyone knew your name. It taking ten minutes to get into town was a desirable convenience, not a sign you were in Shitsville, Nowhereshire.

  As Charlotte said, when justifying St Albans, Now you can get a decent coffee and a cocktail most places, you don’t need to be in London.