Who's That Girl?

by Mhairi McFarlane

  Edie laughed. ‘Imagine if you’d picked The Meadows.’ It was funny how tough areas tended to have these pretty names, like the smoke-stained tower block in Judge Dredd’s Mega- City One dystopia being called Peach Trees.

  Edie felt a mixture of sorrow and admiration for Margot: things had not gone her way, but there was admirable sang froid in her wicked sense of humour and determination to enjoy her vices.

  ‘You’ve gone a little pink, darling,’ Margot said. ‘I’d head back in. That sort of pale skin wrinkles like tissue paper.’

  Edie smiled, put her sunnies on and got up. As she walked back to the kitchen, Edie could hear Margot humming to herself.

  ‘My kind of town, Nottingham is …’

  40

  There ought to be a modern word coined to describe the greasy, snaky, clammy anxiety of being flatly ignored after a misjudged message, Edie thought.

  After spending Saturday morning relentlessly checking her phone for a reply, she’d braced herself and sent a follow-up text to Elliot thanking him for the bouquet, and wince-apologising for her previous. And, nothing. For the whole of the weekend.

  At least with less than diligent correspondents, you could console yourself they simply hadn’t got round to it. However, despite his vastly busy international superstar lifestyle, Edie had always found Elliot prompt with his replies. This was unlike him. It was now Monday. She had to assume the personal testicle-grooming query was to blame.

  Argh, why had she sent such a thing, why? How was it possible Drunk Brain could seem like Sober Brain and yet be so different? It was the most sinister impersonation of your usual judgment imaginable, taking place in your own head.

  When she’d typed that text, Edie was high on life and full of fun, unstoppable: convinced that obliquely inquiring after the hairiness of someone’s scrotum was top larks. Now, she wanted to dissolve with shame.

  She wished she could see the flower-strewn house without it having negative associations.

  Meg assumed Edie was deep in self-congratulation, of course, and observed: ‘He’ll have got some lackey to send those. Just pushing a button, for him.’

  ‘Yes, probably, thanks, Meg,’ said Edie, still nursing her hangover, both physical and psychological. Meg chuntered about the air miles involved in exotic flowers and lest the Sinatra incident had left any doubt, Meg was making it clear that the amnesty around Edie’s friends was firmly over.

  Edie couldn’t stop herself looking at her phone every five minutes, even though the blank screen was an ongoing rebuke. Oh God, even if you call me a dreadful arse, say something, she thought. There was nothing worse than nothing.

  Edie had plenty of time to write, at least, and the work-in-progress manuscript on her laptop was looking pretty good, if she did say so herself. Her choice of quotes from her entertaining conversations with Elliot had brought out his sardonic, Northern side, without making him sound sarcastic, conceited or chippy. The insights into what it was like to get very very famous, very very fast, were genuinely interesting. There was zero gushing over Elliot being the Olivier of his generation, in the body of a Greek god, and yet he was coming out of it really well, she thought.

  They’d yet to tackle the tricky chapters on romance – Elliot was dodging them, and so was Edie, what with the giant GAY? question hovering over it – but other than that, this was an elegant solution that pleased everybody. The response, following some regularly emailed chapter updates, from the subject himself, his agent and the publisher had been highly positive.

  Although the response from Elliot might be about to change. Edie writhed: what if he’d formally complained about her? It seemed unlikely, but then so did days on end of silence.

  When her mobile finally rang with an unrecognised number on Monday evening, Edie’s nerves did somersaults. Sing Hosannah! Maybe Elliot had lost his phone or something? Perhaps he never even got the text?! LET JOY BE UNCONFINED.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, tentatively but eagerly.

  A female voice.

  ‘Is that Edie Thompson?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is Sally, I’m Archie Puce’s assistant. He’d like a word with you.’

  ‘Sure.’ Edie paused, waiting for Archie to be handed the phone. Silence. ‘Now?’

  ‘I’ll send you a car. Where are you?’

  ‘Oh. OK.’

  Edie dictated her address and sat fidgeting until an unmarked dark Audi drew up outside the front window. On the journey, she fretted about what could require an abrupt summons with the Puce-inator. Last time she’d been faced with his volcanic temper, Elliot had stood between them. She didn’t fancy a repeat, presumably without the person of greater status there to protect her.

  This couldn’t be to do with the testes text, could it? Her nerves told her Yes, you fool! but she couldn’t fathom why Archie would’ve got involved. Was Elliot outsourcing her dismissal? Was she to be sacked – over discussing someone’s sack?

  The car with the inscrutable driver was driving her south, out of the rapidly darkening city, and she started to feel very uncomfortable.

  ‘Er, sorry. Where are we going?’ Edie asked, slightly apologetically, as they left the ring road.

  ‘To the set,’ said the driver.

  She’d missed a few pages here, without a doubt.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Wollaton Hall,’ the driver said, in a terse manner that didn’t imply he wanted to shoot the shit with Edie on the way there.

  Her phone buzzed with a message from Jack. How times had changed: his message couldn’t have been more unwelcome.

  E.T. I couldn’t get to the bottom of the Ian Connor thing, I tried, I’m really sorry. Charlie doesn’t know who he is either, but you can appreciate I had to be tactful about why/who I was asking for. She agreed the comment about your mum was beyond. That page is gone. I had a big go about it. I did find this Twitter account, don’t know if you could contact him there? I might leave it though, he’s clearly an arsehole. (Anyone who’s confused social media with the Yellow Pages is worse than ISIS, in my book.) Hope you’re doing OK. Jx

  Edie followed the link to a Twitter account. Another cartoon character avatar, this time Roadrunner. It was bland stuff, mostly whinging about the London Underground, and as Jack said, trying to crowd source answers to boring questions about the best place to buy Hunter wellies.

  When she scrolled far back enough she saw Ian Connor’s initial posts –@EdieThomson how does it feel knowingyou ruined a woman’s life you slutty cow? Swiftly followed by @EdieThomson sorry I thought you were someone else.

  A thought occurred: if these were the first tweets, then the account had been initially set up to abuse her? It gave Edie a spinal chill.

  She clicked her phone off again. This was a fantastically unhelpful pastime on her journey into the unknown here.

  As they swept up the long drive through rolling parkland to the illuminated stately home, the buzz of lights and trucks around it, Edie’s heart was in her throat. This face-to-face was hardly likely to be good news. Why was Elliot ignoring her?

  41

  The car pulled up and announcements were muttered through rolled-down windows. It was a different mood, this time. Edie sensed she was no longer an irrelevance, milling at the edges. A fair-haired, middle-aged woman was stood waiting to briskly convey Edie to a trailer at the perimeter of the set, her expression grim.

  ‘Nice to meet you!’ Edie said, hoping to spark a conversation and possibly a hint of what this was about. The woman pretended not to have heard her.

  Inside, Archie Puce was pacing the narrow space, hat on table. The woman shut the door behind them and retreated behind Archie. She stood with arms folded, staring accusingly at Edie.

  ‘Hello again!’ Archie said, faux-cheerily, without any warmth. ‘It’s the Yoko Ono of my little television production! How’s the bed-in for peace going? Because I feel fairly un-fucking-peaceful.’

  ‘What?’ Edie said.

  Archie pr
owled right up to her. He wasn’t physically large, just incredibly imposing given his malign, livewire energy.

  ‘Let me make this very simple, “Edie Thompson”. Either encourage lover boy to leave your side and come back to work, or I will tell powerful people in this industry, who aren’t blessed with my gentle nature, that you’re responsible for our current unscheduled and very fucking costly hiatus. And trust me, they will treat you as tenderly as a beer-can chicken at a tramps’ barbecue.’

  Edie struggled to work out what was being said, aside from the vivid poultry-vagrancy threat.

  ‘How am I responsible? I don’t know where Elliot is,’ she said.

  ‘In bed, where you left him?’ Archie said, eyes boggling with j’accuse.

  ‘I’m not sleeping with him!’

  ‘Oh, we all must’ve imagined the very low-budget remake of An Officer and a Gentleman you staged on my set a few days ago. I mean, I’m always picking women up! I don’t even know most of them. I see them, I put them over my shoulder like Captain fucking Caveman and off we pop.’

  ‘That wasn’t anything romantic, I’d had some bad news.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. Some bad and yet strangely sexy news.’

  Jesus. Where angels feared to tread, Archie Puce was quad biking.

  ‘Look, no less authority than the women in make-up say you’re the only female in his life. So stop fucking flirting with me and tell me WHERE YOUR BLOODY BOREFRIEND IS BEFORE I BECOME JUST SLIGHTLY TETCHY.’

  Aha. Edie spotted the tactic: bluster you know more than you do, shake the target up, and see how many marbles roll out in the panic. She refused to quail before him.

  ‘I’m ghost-writing his autobiography. You can’t go round accusing people of shagging with no evidence!’ Edie said, thinking as she said it, you absolutely could. ‘I’m only working with him – I’m what she is to you,’ she gestured towards the glowering onlooker woman.

  ‘Sally is my wife.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bloody hell. Imagine being Archie’s assistant and his wife. Mind you, she was probably the only woman he wouldn’t sack.

  ‘OK,’ Edie said. ‘If I was in bed with Elliot when you rang, why would I come out here? Wouldn’t I fob you off and go back to my X-rated activities?’

  She had him there. Archie pursed his lips and said nothing.

  ‘What happened, when did Elliot disappear?’ Edie asked, because she really wanted to know, actually. What if some sick superfan with duct tape and a Stanley knife had him in a basement, and was right now dancing around to ‘Stuck in the Middle’? The thought tied her gut in knots.

  ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel fucker got a phone call on Friday afternoon, no one knows who from …’ Archie paused to glare at Edie ‘… and did one. Left. Off he fucked. His parents are somewhere in the Caribbean and his brother’s skiing, so he’s not with them. He was seen once that evening going into his house, coming out with a bag. We’ve been filming around his absence using his body double in back-of-head shots, but we’re out of time and over budget. Forgive me if this is very “movie biz” technical, but sometimes you need the actual fucker who’s starring in the thing, actually here.’

  ‘I texted him about something on Friday night and didn’t get a reply, either. That’s all I know,’ Edie said.

  There was a brief silence where Edie felt she might be finally being believed.

  ‘Well this is fucking great, isn’t it?’ Archie said to his wife. ‘If he’s shagging the last one, he’s balls deep in Bel Air. Why do I work with actors, Sally? Tell me that? I’d rather run a cattery on the fucking moon. It’s like they give Equity cards out to people who need Velcro-fastening shoes.’

  Wait, Elliot could be back with Heather? He’d possibly absconded across the pond? Without saying goodbye? Edie felt surprisingly churned up, and hurt. He’d sat there and said those slighting things about Heather, then she’d snapped her slender fingers and he’d gone racing over the Atlantic? Jesus, actors were giant fakes. Team Archie.

  ‘Alright,’ Archie pinched the bridge of his nose, ‘do me a favour. Try to get hold of him again, would you? And put some emotion into it. Really remind him you have breasts.’

  Edie grimaced.

  ‘Call it an old man’s hunch, but I think you’re going to have more luck than we have,’ Archie said. ‘And when you do get hold of him, wherever he is, tell him unless he wants to spunk his career into a crusty sports sock, he’ll get back on this fucking set, pronto. Alright. BYE.’

  A sombre Sally guided Edie back to the Audi. Was Edie imagining that everyone they passed paused in what they were doing, and stared at her?

  In the car, she turned the situation over in her head.

  Elliot’s phone was probably out of charge, on another continent, lying on the floor in a heap of hastily discarded clothes at Heather’s. Yuck. Edie’s disappointed anger at this development was a useful antidote to her embarrassment. At a loss for what else to do, she texted him again.

  Elliot, I don’t know where you are or what’s going on, but Archie thinks I have something to do with it & just hauled me in for the hairdryer treatment. If you’re not dead, could you at least let him know that much isn’t true? Cheers. Hope you’re alright. Ex

  She stuffed her phone back into her pocket. She felt it buzz within seconds and thought: It can’t be him. Her heart leapt: oh my God, it was him!

  Shit, I’m really sorry, Edie. Where are you?

  In a car, leaving the set in Wollaton. Where are you?

  In a hotel in the city. Do you have time to see me right now?

  He wasn’t in California! Or with Heather. Edie felt incredibly relieved, aglow even.

  Yes! Sure.

  Tell the driver to take you to the Park Plaza. Don’t tell him who you’re meeting. I’m checked in under the name Donald Twain, just come up to the room.x

  OK! See you in a bit. x PS ‘Donald Twain’? Haha.

  You clearly don’t know your classic films, Thompson. No wonder you want me to do the playboy gynae one. See you in a bit xx

  42

  Edie had a moment of thinking like a secret agent and asked the driver to drop her off in Market Square, then walked the short distance to Elliot’s hotel. Archie might ask the driver where he took her, and it did sound as if he had Elliot’s parents’ house staked out.

  As the lift took her to his room on the fourth floor, Edie’s jubilation at her invitation to see him receded. What if he was having a full-scale nervo? What if his room was littered with evidence of a painkiller habit, or some other very American way that ‘troubled young stars’ killed themselves? And Elliot swore her to secrecy, and she had to choose between breaking his most desperate confidence and being partly responsible for his premature demise?

  Elliot answered the door in a grey T-shirt and black jeans, looking embattled and tired and yet also like he was doing the ‘behind the shoot’ photos for an Esquire cover. Edie’s stomach did a lazy forward roll. The room beyond was softly lit, the window open to the nighttime air, and Edie was struck by how many women would be delighted to be here. And men, for that matter. She was mainly apprehensive, however: to the point of being slightly scared.

  ‘Ah, it’s good to see a friendly face,’ Elliot said, with a rueful smile.

  ‘I’m not sure if it is friendly yet, Archie gave me a serious bollocking,’ Edie said, talkative with nerves, smiling back.

  ‘Oh God, did he? I’m really sorry. Why the fuck does he think you’re responsible for my not turning up to work?’

  Well, quite. Sadly Elliot had summed it up. She feared plenty of people might’ve put Archie straight on the likelihood of Elliot being with Edie, if only Archie didn’t terrify others to the point of speechlessness. Edie definitely didn’t want to see the shock-horror on Elliot’s face when she explained what had been assumed, so she merely shrugged.

  ‘I’m hitting the mini-bar miniatures, feel free to join me,’ Elliot said.

  ‘I’m OK, thanks.’

  The room seeme
d mercifully free of drug paraphernalia, unless you counted a mini Jack Daniels and half-empty Coke bottle, next to a toothpaste mug.

  He poured a dinky Smirnoff vodka into it and threw himself down on to a chair.

  Edie lowered herself on to the edge of the double bed.

  ‘What’s going on? Who was the phone call from? Archie said you took a call and left?’

  ‘It was my publicist.’ Elliot drank.

  He didn’t expand on this statement and Edie didn’t know what she was supposed to ask first.

  ‘… Why aren’t you at home?’

  ‘Because there’s some mope sat in a car across the street watching the house. Suspect it’s something to do with Jan. Or maybe it’s just press. Either way, it spooked me.’

  ‘I think that might be Archie.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘He said “you’d been seen” getting your things on Friday evening. So he must’ve sent someone to your house.’

  Elliot rubbed his eyes. ‘God. It’s been a horrible weekend, Edie.’

  At a loss for what to say, Edie waited.

  ‘When I said I didn’t want the woman writing the unauthorised biography prying into my life, there was a particular thing I didn’t want her prying into.’

  Yup. His sex life. She wanted so much to give him a hug and to say that many had probably guessed anyway.

  ‘The call was to say the shit is about to hit the fan and it’s going to come out. I shouldn’t have freaked, but I did. This job. You know, sometimes I really regret having chosen this job, Edie. And you can’t say so, because then you’re ungrateful.’

  ‘You can say so,’ Edie said, forcefully. ‘You can say it to me, and kick a pillow round the room or something.’