Who's That Girl?

by Mhairi McFarlane

  They ate giant cheese ploughman baguettes at the breakfast bar. Fraser declined – ‘Meeting the lads for some beers at Mudflaps. Oh, what’s it called? Mudcrab’ – and slammed out, noisily.

  ‘Sorry about my brother. Please don’t sue for sexual harassment.’

  ‘Haha. He’s nice.’ Edie decorously picked a shard of a tombstone-sized slab of cheddar out of the bread. Elliot clearly wasn’t one of those actors who didn’t eat.

  ‘He’s a bloody liability. Any brothers or sisters yourself?’

  ‘A younger sister, Meg. She’s … yes, let’s go with liability.’

  ‘Eldest child mentality is definitely a thing, isn’t it?’ Elliot said, handing Edie a square of kitchen towel.

  ‘Yes,’ Edie said. ‘It really is. They’ve got an extra parent and you’ve had a kid.’

  ‘Haha, in one,’ Elliot said, screwing up his square of paper, necking the last of his beer and looking at her over the bottle.

  Edie noticed that his sly, laconic sense of humour made a return in Fraser’s absence. Around his younger brother, he was wary and a little exasperated. It humanised him, this normal, fractious relationship. Edie felt she could slide in between the two of them in front of the telly and guffaw, snipe and referee away as if they’d known each other for years. Even if in reality, without this job, a pair of posh lads from the right side of town would have had nothing to do with her.

  Edie turned on her Dictaphone, put it between them, staking a claim in ‘this is business now’. She asked Elliot questions about what it was like, the first time he came home as a celebrity.

  ‘Friends, I won’t lie, it is weird sometimes. It makes you appreciate that thing about how you “can’t make new old friends”. Your best mates know you’re still you and if you disappeared up your arse they’d let you know. You just have to still be able to hear it. New friends are trickier. The question of whether they’d still laugh at your jokes if you worked in Greggs is always there, hovering. You need to have good instincts. And you discover there’s a strange subcategory – you’re in this category, although it’s mainly male …’

  Edie sat up straighter: ‘What? How?’

  ‘People who pre-dislike you because they’re so sure they’re going to dislike you, they may as well get it over with. Frustratingly, they’re often the smart people you’d quite like to like you.’

  Hoo, boy. Edie had been seen through. ‘That’s not true,’ she said, in a small voice that admitted it absolutely was.

  ‘Paradox of fame: people refuse to treat you normally and then complain you’re not normal. Put that in your so-called book.’

  Elliot tapped her Dictaphone and gave a roguish smile and Edie thought: the one thing she hadn’t thought Elliot would possibly be, was witty. Edie needed to steer the subject matter in an assured manner, reclaim some ground.

  ‘Is this all true of romantic relationships too?’

  Elliot leaned over and turned the tape recording off.

  ‘Do you mean was Heather a catastrophic misjudgement and does her heart pump frozen blue Slush Puppy?’

  Edie laughed. ‘No I didn’t, actually.’

  ‘Say that we “wanted different things”. She wanted to carry on being a petulant wazzock and I wanted to fire her into the heart of the sun. Also put “she’s a free spirit, I don’t think anyone will ever be able to tie her down” as euphemism for about as faithful as a bonobo monkey.’

  Edie laughed and Elliot reminded her of Hannah now: I do the words, stop being casually so good at ‘words’ when it’s not your job. Edie thought Elliot might be one of those actors that directors allowed to ad lib.

  ‘Should I do the standard “What first attracted you to the gorgeous woman?” question?’ Edie said and Elliot grinned.

  ‘It was one of those things match-made by her people getting in touch with my people and saying she’d like to have dinner,’ Elliot shrugged. ‘I was flattered. You live, you learn. Or you don’t.’

  Edie smiled and didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Do you want a softer seat, by the way?’

  ‘Er, yes. Sure.’

  Edie followed Elliot to the sitting room; scene of their first, less auspicious encounter. A stereo was playing. Edie heard which song it was, with a twinge.

  ‘Would you mind if we didn’t have the music? Concentration breaker.’

  ‘Oh. Sure.’ Elliot turned the volume down to an audible whisper.

  Edie squirmed.

  ‘Off, if that’s OK?’

  Elliot gave a small look of surprise and clicked it off. Edie, a little disconcerted at having sounded a bit of a nag after all the carefree fun of the ping-pong, blurted: ‘The album has bad associations for me.’

  ‘Oh. OK,’ Elliot said, looking perplexed.

  Edie fussed with the Dictaphone and got Elliot to talk for another half hour about the mental realignment involved in becoming famous. She found it genuinely interesting, hearing about the journey few would ever take. Onto the front pages. Into a world where everyone thought they knew you.

  The only moments where he became monosyllabic was when they got anywhere near the topic of fame’s effect on opportunities with women.

  ‘I dunno how to discuss any of that without coming off as a huge nause. Plus it’s invading the privacy of other people.’

  ‘You say that, but Heather is putting things about you two on Twitter.’

  It was a slightly tabloid gambit, to set him against her. And Edie didn’t know if Elliot knew this. She judged they were getting along well enough that she could chance it.

  ‘You mean her picture of cats touching paws, hashtagged: “This Could Be Us But You Playin’?”’

  Edie nodded.

  ‘My feeling on seeing that is that it turns out I’d had a relationship with an adolescent and didn’t realise. Operation Yewtree. Operation Mewtree. Don’t put that in the book.’

  Edie laughed. ‘I’m hardly going to put things like that in!’

  ‘Didn’t we have a deal that I get to ask you questions too?’

  ‘Didn’t I bore you so much the first time we tried that, we gave up?’

  ‘Hah, good attempt at deflection. OK, then. My turn.’ Elliot sat back, one foot balanced on the opposite knee. ‘What’s the bad association with Hounds of Love?’

  And just like that, the mood was ruined.

  29

  The lie or the truth? Edie didn’t feel right, soliciting confidences from Elliot, then fobbing him off.

  ‘It was my mum’s favourite album. She was a Kate Bush fan. It reminds me of her. She used to listen to “Cloudbusting” over and over again. And it has that “Mother Stands for Comfort” song, brrrr,’ Edie steadied her voice. ‘Can’t do it.’

  Elliot’s face fell.

  ‘Oh … Edie. And your mum is …?’

  ‘Dead, yep.’

  The air hung heavy.

  ‘Shit. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think it’d be anything that bad or I wouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘I know,’ Edie said. ‘Usually there’s a time this comes up one way or another. Really, don’t stress.’

  ‘How did … how old were you?’

  ‘I was nine. She was thirty-six.’

  Elliot paused and Edie decided to spare him having to decide whether to ask the next question.

  ‘She committed suicide. Jumped off Trent Bridge. People tried to talk her out of it for half an hour, then she did it.’

  Elliot looked genuinely horrified now. How much by the information, and how much by having unintentionally provoked the sharing of the information, Edie couldn’t tell.

  ‘… She’d had depression for years. My dad had a breakdown afterwards, couldn’t do his job, he was a teacher, head of science. We moved from Bridgford to Forest Fields and he did supply work.’

  Elliot rubbed his chin and frowned.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Jesus, not sure I can ever listen to Hounds of Love now, so can’t imagine how you feel.’

  ‘It was a long
time ago. I’m fine, honestly. It’s not like it’s a fresh wound.’

  Nevertheless, Elliot was looking at her differently, and Edie started to wish she hadn’t told him. She’d worked out years ago that victimhood could take over your identity. This was why most people she met in adulthood – bar Jack, the bastard – got the abrupt, no-frills ‘cancer’ version.

  She didn’t want to be That Girl. The girl with the sad story attached. She wanted to define herself, not be defined by an event over which she had no control, from a quarter of a century ago. That’s what people with comfortable lives who were only playing the victim didn’t understand, how they gave themselves away – if you’d actually been one, you were desperate to shed the label. You craved the normality that had been taken from you.

  So Edie left out lots of colourful detail that made people’s faces turn into tragedy masks. That they couldn’t see the body because her mum didn’t wash up whole. That she and Meg were bullied for it at school. That her mum’s family blamed her dad for what happened and cut them all off afterwards, at a time when they were shell-shocked enough by having to work out how they functioned as a unit without the fourth member of the team. The helpful detail in the local paper coverage, that onlookers on the bridge had said to her mother: ‘Think of your children.’ That had burrowed deep into Edie. She thought about it every day of her life.

  There was the rattle of a key in the lock and Fraser bounced into the room like a Labrador.

  ‘I’m back! What did I miss?’

  ‘We’re working, Fraz,’ Elliot said, rubbing the back of his neck, smiling at Edie. Actually, it had saved them both from an awkward silence.

  ‘Working, hah. Hey, shouldn’t I be interviewed by Edie too? I’ve got some memories of you I’d like to share.’

  Before he could get a sense of the strained mood in the room, Edie said: ‘Sure! That’d be good.’

  ‘Not with him here though. I have to feel I can speak freely.’

  ‘OK?’ Edie said, with a look towards Elliot.

  ‘Oh. Fine,’ Elliot said, mock-offended.

  He closed the door after him, making a small tacit look of apology in Edie’s direction. She turned the Dictaphone back on.

  ‘What do you want to know? Kid stories?’

  ‘Actually we were talking about the craziness of fame.’

  ‘Do you know, Elliot is now so famous that I’m slightly famous by being his brother? Honestly. I’ve had people meet me as prospective clients. The conversation’s stilted and then they ask me about him and I realise it’s actually about that.’

  ‘No?’ Edie was genuinely taken aback. She got her notepad out too.

  ‘Way. One woman was flirting really hard. Imagine how tight his vetting procedures have to be. Creeps me out.’

  Fraser leaned back on the sofa, his frame so much more hulking than the brother who’d just vacated the same seat. Edie searched his features for signs of Elliot, but they were completely dissimilar. She tried to think of a single physical attribute she and Meg had in common, beyond both being female. The small hands and feet, maybe.

  ‘I remember when he’d been in that crap show about the doctors for a while, he came home and we went for pizza on Central Avenue. I didn’t watch his show, because it was crap. I didn’t know he was “known”. I thought, why are people staring at my brother, has he left his flies undone? Then it dawned, oh, right. Yeah. I felt a bit scared, to be honest. Like he no longer belonged to us.’

  Edie kept making notes, in the hope he’d feel comfortable to say more.

  ‘… You feel a little bit ruffled by him hogging limelight for five minutes and then you see he can’t go for a slash without hassle and you shudder your skin off. Now I think of it as there’s two Elliots. There’s my brother, who I know, and there’s this other person who you see in the paper who looks like him and isn’t him and I try to ignore completely.’

  ‘Was it bothering you, reading about him?’

  ‘Yeah, if I thought something wasn’t true, which it usually wasn’t.’

  Fraser played with a lace on his shoe and hesitated.

  ‘The thing about Elliot is, he doesn’t trust many people. But he’s stupidly loyal when he does. At school, if someone so much as looked at me the wrong way, he’d be right there, squaring up to them. You’ve seen my brother, he’s not really that big a physical threat. He was lucky not to get thrashed. He was quiet and kept himself to himself and had got picked on a bit for it. So a lot of people who are saying they knew him well, they didn’t. I know how much this “everyone wanting to be his friend” freaks him out, and it makes me protective.’

  Fraser pulled his hooded top over his head and down over his eyes. ‘Oh GOD why am I telling you this. I sound like I’m about to get my period.’

  Edie laughed loudly. She’d thought being famous was largely great. Increasingly she felt the percentage of nightmare was greater than dream.

  When Edie was leaving, she put her head round the kitchen door to say goodbye, but Elliot was on his mobile. Fraser was milling about in the hallway, waiting to open the door for her. The Owen boys had nice manners.

  ‘Tell Elliot I said bye?’ Edie said. ‘Nice to meet you. Thanks for the interview.’

  ‘Hey, come out for drinks next time I’m up? We’re going to head into town with a group on the 20th.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks! Uhm, I’m more of a colleague of Elliot’s though? Wouldn’t want to intrude.’

  ‘Don’t be a melv! You’re totally welcome, Elliot likes you. And I’m inviting you. Come on! If you let me have your number …?’

  ‘Er. OK,’ said, Edie, smiling, thinking she could always find an excuse, and he’d no doubt forget. She listed the digits as Fraser tapped it into his BlackBerry.

  She walked to the bus stop in the sunshine, turning the visit over in her head. It had been mostly good, she thought.

  Her phone pinged with a text. Fraser.

  And this is me! Good to meet you. Fraz x

  Was he hitting on her in any serious way? Hard to tell. He seemed someone who flirted as naturally as breathed, and Elliot’s eye-rolling around him seemed to confirm that.

  Another text. Elliot.

  Edie, I’m still squirming at having pushed you into talking about that stuff about your mum. Really sorry. Ex

  She was touched. He’d done nothing wrong, apart from show an interest.

  Please don’t worry, it’s fine. See you soon! Ex

  As Edie’s bus was trundling up the road past the cricket ground, and she was texting Hannah that she’d thrashed Prince Wulfroarer at ping-pong and he’d made her a Wookey Hole cheddar sanger, she had a jolting epiphany. Something that had been nagging at her, formed into a conscious thought.

  Oh my God. Elliot’s gay. That’s what he particularly doesn’t want unearthed in the unauthorised autobiography. As she went over the evidence, it started piling up. There’d been those murmurings online and Edie had set them aside on the basis every heartthrob actor was meant to be gay, with a beautiful beard (the female sort, as well as the Wulfroarer sort).The comments that Fraser had made, almost unthinkingly, about his brother being a fruity ponce.

  Think about it: the way both Elliot and Fraser described his withdrawn, sensitive school years, and the arty refuge of the drama club. His disgust over the biographer wanting to talk to people he’d slept with. His lack of emotion over Heather, the peculiar ‘we were business’ comment. His ongoing reticence over discussing any laddish bed-post notching.

  And also – Edie felt guilty about thinking this way, like a mini-Margot – his sheer prettiness. I mean, he’d make an incredible cover of Attitude. She’d sat there taking notes about everything he said, and not paying any attention to him.

  ‘Ironically I’m bad at pretending to be something I’m not when I’m playing myself, if you know what I mean?’

  CODE. Edie didn’t know how it worked, if she should try to get him to talk about it? She thought about what Elliot said about the last biograph
er – that unless they could match the other unauthorised book in revelations, they’d look ridiculous. What if Edie’s book was full of stuff about his blazing red-blooded Tom Jonesing heterosexuality, and when Elliot finally came out, it would be quoted as a notorious joke?

  She’d have to find a clever, tactful way to float it. Hmm.

  An email from Richard arrived, as mood-puncturing as an open-palmed slap round the face.

  Edie. Congrats on persuading the flounce-off-er to flounce back in. What a precious gem he is, I want to wear him as a brooch. My condolences on your reward being having to do more work with the blithering penis. The publisher would like a meet up with you to discuss how it’s going to pan out, but the good news is they really like your sample chapters. As luck would have it, I’d like to host that conference with you and Charlotte. When can you get to London next week? Cheers, Richard.

  The muscles in her neck tightened and Edie had to fight back the rising panic. She’d have to call Richard and say she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it!

  She had to do it.

  Not only was refusing cowardly and ungrateful – Richard rightly judged this cold-water shock treatment was the only way of bringing her back – it could jeopardise the book. If she no longer worked for Ad Hoc, she might no longer be the biographer. Richard could quite reasonably and would very possibly say: ‘If you won’t do this, you can’t do that.’ He was far too smart not to spot the weak point to push.

  Somehow, she minded terribly being off the book now. She had to see it through. A voice whispered: Because you’ve got nothing else left.

  Edie’s bus took a turn and they were on Trent Bridge. As usual, she stared at her hands in her lap, until they were on the other side.