Who's That Girl?

by Mhairi McFarlane

  16

  A friend called a big-ass glass of wine.

  At the arts cinema café bar up the road, Edie got herself a thumping beaker of red and found a relatively quiet corner. She sat alone, back half-turned to the room, free to play with her phone unfettered and do some discreet weeping. She was overdue some self-pity. Edie indulged in leaking-eyes-and-holding-fingers-horizontally-underneath-to-catch-the-water crying. Everyone around her was far too lively-drunk to notice the dark-haired woman dissolving in the corner.

  Everything was so fucked in so many ways. Her life wasn’t great. She wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, living her hashtag ‘Best Life’. But it was hers and it worked, sort of. Now what?

  She’d talk to her dad tomorrow and say she’d move out to a flat for the next few months. He’d object vehemently. She’d have to insist that she and Meg under the same roof was a recipe for disaster. Her sister hated her, she didn’t know why, and that was that. It just wasn’t tolerable when the world at large hated her too.

  Edie had a sudden and overwhelming urge to speak to someone who loved her, and understood her, and confess all. Little chance of Hannah answering at this time on a Saturday night, mind you …

  ‘Edith!’

  ‘Hello! You’re there?!’

  ‘Of course I’m here, this is my phone.’

  ‘I know, but it’s a Saturday night.’

  Edie put a finger in her spare ear to block out multiple other conversations and Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’.

  ‘I was just thinking I should call you.’

  ‘Noel Edmonds’ cosmic ordering,’ Edie said, feeling her chest swell and trying not to wail HELP ME, OBI WAN KENOBE, YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE.

  ‘You sound funny, where are you?’

  ‘I am funny. I’m crying a bit and I’m in a bar. In Nottingham, actually.’

  ‘Really?! That’s a coincidence. Why are you crying?’

  Edie steeled herself. She should’ve done this sooner.

  ‘Ready for a dreadful story and a big pile of I Told You So? Hang on, why is it a coincidence?’

  ‘I’m here too. At my parents’. Where are you?’

  ‘Urrr … Broadwalk? No, wait, Broadway. The cinema.’

  ‘Can you hang on ten minutes? I can cab it to you.’

  Could she hang on ten minutes? Edie wanted to do a lap of the café-bar, face daubed with woad, whooping war cries of joy.

  Quarter of an hour later, Hannah appeared in the doorway of the bar, fists bunched in the pockets of her jacket, ponytail whipping from side to side as she scanned for Edie. Hannah wore big eighties-ish secretary spectacles with coloured frames that somehow made her look even more attractive. Edie would’ve looked like a serial killer’s wife.

  She waved and did a two-finger point at the two glasses of red in front of her. Hannah was as tall, lithe and handsome of face as she’d ever been – she’d skipped the puppy fat and spots of adolescence entirely. She was born aged thirty-five, in more than one way. The only sign of the years passing was that her delicate Welsh skin had acquired a network of fine lines you could only see up close, like varnish crackling on pottery.

  They hugged across the table and Edie said, not completely able to staunch the waterworks: ‘Oh, it is so good to see you. Why are you here? Home, I mean?’

  ‘Tell you in a minute. You alright? Is your dad OK? Your sister?’

  ‘They’re fine. It’s me. I’ve been an idiot.’

  Edie relayed the wedding carnage. Hannah was quiet, sipping her red wine, brow furrowed. ‘I never liked the sound of this Jack. That’s certainly not changed. To be honest, I thought you were going to tell me his girlfriend caught you showering together or something.’

  Edie’s jaw dropped.

  ‘You don’t think I’m the most despicable woman who ever lived?’ Edie said.

  ‘I think you fucked up in the heat of a moment but you’d hardly be the first person to do that. Also, he jumped you, right?’

  ‘Yes but, I kissed him back though,’ Edie said, morose. ‘I kissed someone’s husband, Hannah, on their wedding day. They’d only said vows about forsaking all others a few hours before.’

  Hannah sipped her wine and put her head on one side.

  ‘Hmm. What would not kissing him back have looked like in that situation? I mean, even if you’d stood there, it’d have looked bad. Sounds like he lunged and you were buggered, really. I can’t judge you. My dad always says, only beat yourself up about the harm you did that you meant to do. That’s on you. The harm you did by accident, feel bad but let it go, ultimately it’s not on you. Only way I got through junior med school, was with that in mind.’

  Calling Hannah tonight was the best idea Edie had had in a long time.

  ‘Yes!’ Edie said, feeling a rush, a flood, of gratitude and relief. ‘Who would possibly expect it? If I’d had any time to think it’d have been a “no”.’

  ‘Toxic arsehole. Please tell me he’s out of your system?’

  ‘God, yes,’ Edie said, nodding vigorously. ‘I was already well on my way to over him by the wedding.’

  She said this, not knowing if it was wholly true. Would she have replied to that first post-honeymoon G-chat? Probably, yes. In a guarded way. She was an addict. Addicts weren’t to be trusted. Addicts lied to everyone, and themselves in particular.

  ‘If you’re looking for my reputation, however, it’s in the toilet. I had to come off Facebook, I was getting a barrage of abuse,’ Edie said.

  ‘Well, you know my views on that merry shitshow.’

  Hannah was an avowed loather of social media.

  ‘I’ve got news, too, as it happens,’ Hannah said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Pete and I have split up.’

  Edie paused, glass of wine halfway to her mouth.‘What?’ she said dumbly. ‘That sounded like you said you and Pete …?’

  ‘… have split up.’

  ‘No?’ Edie said. It was as much a statement as a question. Hannah and Pete couldn’t simply ‘split up’ any more than the Queen and Prince Philip. Together since university, inseparable, finished each other’s sentences, each other’s equal and opposite reaction. This was unthinkable. This was like your parents divorcing.

  ‘I don’t know where to start,’ Hannah said, and Edie heard the unusual tremor in her voice. ‘We’d been not happy for so long we’d forgotten what happy felt like, so we were numb to it all. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, I kept losing my nerve. I lay in bed at night thinking, “I’ll do it tomorrow” and then the next day was never the right day to do it. I went away on this training course and shagged someone else so that I’d done something definitive I couldn’t take back.’

  ‘You had an affair?’ Edie said. This was un-possible.

  ‘Not sure if it’s an affair if it’s a one-off? I fell off the fidelity wagon with a thud, yes. I knew Pete and I were over and had to push myself to make it real. I haven’t told him. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. It was as if I had to prove to myself we were over, as well as him. I came home two weeks ago and finished it.’ Hannah paused. ‘I was going to call you before now but I needed to get it straight in my head and we had to tell the parents and everything … With Mum having the MS flare up, I wanted to pick my moment …’

  Edie nodded. She owed it to Hannah to be as supportively hard-to-shock as she’d been for her.

  ‘I had no idea. You seemed so steady.’

  ‘We had no idea. Or we had some idea, but it was like carrying a weight. Sooner or later you forget you’re carrying it and think you always walked with a stoop. Fuck, Edith, I can hardly bring myself to admit this to you, but I found myself thinking: we can’t split up because we’ve just had the floors sanded. We were seriously staying together because of sofas and tiles and stripped floors. Like the beautiful house had become this tomb we were interred in together.’

  Edie had forgotten how smart Hannah was. It was intimidating she was so good with words when Edie
did words for a living. You’d hardly let Edie tinker with your urine- filtration system.

  ‘We didn’t want a wedding or kids and so it was possible to drift, you know? And the whole constant mantra about how long-term relationships are hard work and everything has its ups and downs and you’re going to be annoyed by their toenails and stick with it and the grass only looks greener and so on. It’s actually very hard to tell when you should split up with someone. All I knew was I was waking up every morning thinking this can’t be it, until death. When your relationship is making you feel life’s too long, something’s gone awry.’

  Hannah’s voice had become thick, and she sipped her wine. Edie felt bad that Hannah had obviously churned on this a lot, with her friend so many hundreds of miles away, not able to help.

  ‘You should’ve said …’

  ‘I didn’t want to say it out loud until I was sure. You know that’s me.’

  Edie nodded. She’d done the same over HarrogateGate, after all. Waited until she could face saying it.

  ‘… I’m moving back to Nottingham,’ Hannah continued. ‘I was here for a job interview at the Queen’s Med yesterday and they’ve offered it to me. I don’t want to hang around in Edinburgh and bump into Pete all the time. I can’t stand the whole access arrangements to mutual friends thing, I want a clean break. My mum’s not getting any better. I start in two weeks.’

  ‘Oh my God! Both of us back at the same time, what are the chances?’

  ‘You’re not staying, though?’

  ‘No,’ Edie said, with a small shudder, although why she thought London was the safe haven was unclear. ‘I technically have my job to go back to.’ As if that made it more appealing.

  ‘How lucky are we, to at least end up here at the same time in our hour of need,’ Edie said, as Hannah returned from the bar with more massive glasses of red that were going to wreak flamboyant revenge in the morning.

  ‘Well, qualified lucky,’ Hannah said, into her glass, and smiled.

  ‘OK, we know our lives are a shitty mess. To the outside world, I am a celebrity biographer and you are a superb renal surgeon and we have most of a bottle of Shiraz to neck.’

  They clinked glasses.

  ‘To being together in our time of need,’ Hannah said. ‘Shall we look Nick up? Have you heard from him lately?’

  Edie shook her head, guiltily. She’d not seen Nick for eighteen months, bar trading the odd ‘did you see this’ funny email. Nick was a friend they’d made in sixth form. You might say he was ‘Eeyore-ish’ although ‘prone to mildly depressive episodes’ might be more accurate. With bizarre juxtaposition, he had a very sunny local radio show where he chatted with old dears and played Fleetwood Mac.

  Aged twenty-four, he’d made a catastrophically bad choice of sour, bossy wife in Alice. Hannah had once described marrying Alice as ‘an act of self-loathing’.

  It seemed as if it was so much strife for him to wriggle out from under the yoke of oppression, it was easier to turn down social occasions. They had a young son, Max, and Nick had pretty much been grounded by Alice, forever.

  ‘Do you think A Town Called Malice is letting him roam around free range, yet?’ Hannah said. They had called her this for some time.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Edie said.

  ‘I want to talk to him, you know. Life is too short to put up with being unhappy.’

  Edie nodded, though she suspected it was futile. ‘We should definitely let him know we’re back.’

  Now she thought about it, Nick had been unusually quiet on email, even by his standards. Maybe Baby 2 was on the way and he didn’t want to face their creaky-polite erm great what wonderful news.

  ‘If he tries to avoid us, we can call in to his radio show,’ Hannah said.

  Edie agreed. ‘We could even ask him out with Alice? Turn a new page?’

  ‘We could. I bet that page will say Yep Still A Cow on it though.’

  When she rolled in later, revived, Edie was surprised to find her dad waiting up for her, watching the television with a glass of Glenmorangie.

  ‘Haven’t waited up for you to come home for quite a few years,’ he said, smiling.

  Edie had to say it fast or she’d lose her nerve. ‘Dad, I’m going to find somewhere else to stay, tomorrow. Me and Meg is too much stress for everyone.’

  Her dad didn’t look surprised.

  ‘Look. Give it a week or two. The settling in was always going to have its rocky moments.’

  ‘She hates me!’ Edie said, in hysterical whisper-squeak. ‘I don’t do anything to provoke her and she gets at me, all the time.’

  ‘I know you don’t. She doesn’t hate you. It’s very difficult for Megan. She sees you as the success who gets all the glory and her feathers get ruffled. I’m not excusing her behaviour tonight and I’ve had a word. But she really does suffer with some sibling envy, I think. Let it settle down a bit. For me.’

  Edie already knew she couldn’t refuse her dad this. Her shoulders sloped.

  ‘… OK.’

  ‘It is good for us to see you, you know.’ He gave her a hug and Edie surrendered to it with that waterlogged feeling in her heart. ‘You never know, one day we might even be good for you.’

  He said this with such forced-lightness and sadness that Edie had to squeak ‘Night’, before she teared up.

  17

  The Elliot Owen Story had started in the somewhat sleepy but ‘sought after’ suburb of West Bridgford. It was a place Edie had lived, long ago. Her brain had been too small to record many memories but she had a few. They flashed on and off like old jumpy sound-free sunny frames of a Super 8 Cinefilm and Edie turned her internal projector off.

  Elliot’s parents’ home was large and comforting, the doorway partially hidden by clematis. He would have one of those mums who used to pack his ingredients for Home Economics into a wicker basket with a pristine gingham tea towel on top. Edie used to buy her supplies from the local inconvenience store, while missing the bus and factoring in a sneaky fag. She rang the solidly middle-class, stiff brass bell and waited, prickly with anticipation.

  Elliot answered the door himself, which surprised Edie a little. His neon-green eyes met hers, and there he was, in the sculpted flesh. A fact that was both shocking and completely banal at the same time. It was ridiculous to be surprised he answered his own door, the man had to be by himself sometimes. He wouldn’t have an Alfred, as if he was Bruce Wayne. (Would he?)

  She kept her expression steady and said: ‘Hi, I’m Edie,’ and as soon as she said it, felt irrationally foolish, as he had a mobile clamped to his ear and she was talking over him. Elliot made the ‘point to phone and make twirling finger to indicate the call is running on’ gesture.

  He wedged the door open with a pristine white sneaker-clad foot as Edie brushed past him into the house, nerves jumping like fizzy beans. She’d sternly told herself not to wilt and thrill at being in his presence, yet it wasn’t possible.

  It didn’t matter how indifferent you declared yourself to be to the particular celebrity, seeing someone famous in the flesh had a weird hysterical buzz of cognitive dissonance. Edie couldn’t quite compute Elliot Owen’s proximity, even though it was a simple thing to understand.

  The clean-shaven, dark-haired man in the stripy jumper in this suburban hallway had the same face as the dishevelled hero she’d seen charging around in battle on her telly. Her brain roared IT’S HIM IT’S HIM OH MY GOD IT’S REALLY HIM.

  OK, the sight of Elliot didn’t knock Edie out or make her almost ovulate. He was just ‘people’, except a pumice-stoned, cleaner, clearer, more bone-structured, symmetrical version. He looked like he’d smell of cut apples and fresh linen. And like all famouses, was smaller than the towering, glowering hunk she was expecting. He was a fairly good height, if on the slim side.

  Elliot opened the door to the sitting room with one hand and Edie took that as direction to go and sit in it.

  She thought he’d follow her, instead he went into what must be
the kitchen next door. He’d only half-closed the sitting room door so Edie could hear most of what he was saying.

  ‘… that’s not it, though, is it. Why would I do that? Tell Larry that I’ll pay the deposit and if I can make it I can ma— oh bloody hell, Heather, really? Is this how we’re going to do it? You know what my schedule is like … oh WELL when you put it like that …’

  Edie had a jolt of realising she was overhearing a domestic between Elliot and his famous girlfriend. Something actually newsworthy – well, if you subscribed to our messed-up twenty-first-century news values – was happening on the other side of that white glossed door, with an audience of only Edie. Not that she could do anything with it, if she valued her employment.

  She wriggled out of her coat and laid it neatly on the arm of the sofa, got her Dictaphone and notepad out. She felt the hum of her jittery anticipation: she’d once again steeled herself for the first meeting and once again, he’d hit pause. And how was he difficult last time, exactly? Was he going to toss his curly hair around and get shirty at her opening questions? She wished she could’ve spoken to the outgoing writer, though that might not’ve helped.

  The row continued offstage.

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re being so stroppy when you knew … what the fuck’s the dog’s quarantine got to do with me?! Oh, I invented rabies, my mistake.’

  Edie scribbled ‘Inventor of Rabies’ at top of her notes, giggled idiotically to herself and then heavily scored it out. More disorientation: in Blood & Gold, Elliot had a cut-glass English RP madam I’m afraid I must ravish you at once voice. In real life, it was a soft Midlands burr. Not Nottingham-Nottingham, a middle-class version, still with the flat vowels. Actors put voices on, who knew!

  Edie considered that this humdinger with Heather Lily wasn’t going to put him in the best mood for their chat. Or maybe it’d help, maybe he’d be fired up and unguarded? Think positive.