Elliot smiled. ‘Thanks.’
‘Elliot, you’ll get past this. Keeping the secret is obviously not worth the toll it’s taking on you. You might even feel better once it’s out in the open.’
‘Mmm, I’m not sure it’s that simple,’ Elliot said.
‘I know. I get it,’ Edie said, with a vigorous and encouraging nod.
‘Wait. Do you know about this …? And if so, who from?’ Elliot spoke sharply, the idea simultaneously occurring to him and angering him, and Edie sensed danger.
‘No!’
Once again, Edie was rueing her lack of preparation.
‘… I just meant that life hasn’t always been easy for you as it might look, and maybe keeping this secret is why.’
‘“This secret”? It does sound like you know, Thompson.’
Elliot looked serious, yet as he’d never called her a nickname before – OK, it wasn’t a nickname as such, but he had jocularly referred to her by her surname – Edie relaxed a little.
‘I don’t. But isn’t it possible I could’ve intuited it?’
‘Intuited it? Like an astrologer, or a clairvoyant? Or did you hack my phone?’
Wow, had he not heard of gaydar?
‘I’m a writer, and we’ve talked a lot.’
‘Yeeees?’ Elliot said, with a pray continue tone.
‘Sometimes you get a sixth sense.’
‘Pretty powerful sixth sense. More like a third eye.’
Oh for goodness’ sake. Because he was such a bleeding raw hunk of unreconstructed machismo?
Edie plunged on.
‘… I’m also a woman.’
Elliot boggled. ‘All the secrets are coming out tonight, eh. What the hell does that mean?’
‘I mean, like I said: you get a feeling, don’t you?’
Edie had been inching into this chilly water and now it was up to her waist. Soon it’d be up to her neck.
Elliot was half laughing, half spluttering in incredulity. ‘No, sorry, I don’t know what you mean. A feeling. Have you got cosmic ovaries or something? Or like in that film, the chest that can forecast the weather? I’ll be honest with you, I thought weather boobs were fictional.’
Hah, see! Only a gay man would be so confident to refer to her mammaries in comedic fashion, and never once glance down at them during doing so.
Edie hoped he wasn’t going to be devastated when she told him she knew, but it was unavoidable now.
‘Elliot. I know you’re gay.’ Boom. Drops mic, Edie thought, as the kids say.
Elliot’s jaw dropped instead.
‘… What? How?!’
Edie opened her mouth and nothing came out. She didn’t expect to be asked to raise her evidence, she thought it would be enough she knew.
‘Because you don’t want to talk about being with women?’ she offered.
Elliot gasp-laughed. ‘So straight men sit around saying, “Oh aye look at the bangers on that, let me tell you about some classic intercourse I’ve had”? Where did you conduct your studies prior to me, Walkabout bars?’
Edie flushed hard red, up to her hairline.
‘You think that’s the secret, I’m in the closet?’ Elliot said.
Edie nodded and wanted to fly out of the window. She could tell Elliot wasn’t feigning this response.
‘Wow,’ Elliot said, one hand on his head. ‘But we have talked about relationships … why was I with Heather, for one?’
Edie cringed.
‘… Publicity? You said it was very … business-based.’
Elliot’s face fell further. The curtains blew in the night breeze as Elliot absorbed this insult and Edie wanted to kick herself. How hard would it have been to simply ask him what he was talking about? No, she had to call him a secret botter with a beard. To his face, in a time of torment. Five out of five, Edie.
‘This really wasn’t the understanding I thought it was, was it. You had the same views about me as people who post below the line on the internet.’
Elliot made a sad grimace face. Edie felt terrible.
‘I’m sorry! I didn’t think it was a bad thing.’
‘You just thought I was a liar, sure.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Edie said. ‘I added up two and two and got seventeen. You know, once you follow a line of thought … argh. Sorry.’
There was a heavy pause and Elliot sighed.
‘No, Edie, look. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have got you to guess. I’m being a mardy selfish bastard and lashing out at the one person who’s in front of me, who also happens to be the one person trying to be understanding. I don’t mind being thought gay, obviously, though I’m disappointed you thought I was closeted. There’s also a bit of wounded masculine pride involved here that I’ve obviously not been coming over the way I thought I was.’
He gave Edie an apologetic ‘forgive me’ smile and she squirmed, because he was absolutely impossible not to love, when he was being self-deprecating. And he wasn’t safely playing for the other team. She felt her stomach cave in.
‘I mean. Why wouldn’t I be out and proud and shopping at Santa Monica’s Farmers’ Market with my NBA player boyfriend, in matching muscle vests?’
Edie laughed and really wanted to give him a hug now. Order and harmony had been restored. Apart from the other giant unsaid thing.
‘If it isn’t about sexuality, what has the other biographer found?’ Edie asked.
‘My father,’ Elliot said.
43
Pause.
‘Your dad? He’s away on a trip, isn’t he?’
‘She found my real father. Ugh, I hate the word “real”. My real dad is my dad on the cruise, yes. The other man, the one who contributed to my DNA. Him. You definitely don’t want a drink?’
‘Maybe a gin,’ Edie said, feeling she damn well needed it now. Elliot poured out a Gordon’s with a fizzy tonic, the froth almost spilling over. He stared at the carpet.
‘I found out I was adopted when I was eleven. I’d had a fight with Fraz and used to stomp off and climb the ladder to the loft. I always had dramatic tendencies, even then.’
Edie said nothing, riveted.
‘I was poking around and I turned up adoption papers, for someone called Carl, from St Helens. At first I thought my parents had taken in a son who we didn’t know about. Maybe he died, I thought. Maybe I shouldn’t ask them and drag it all up and upset them. But I think, deep down, I knew that wasn’t it.’
He looked at Edie and she had an urge to lean over and squeeze his hand.
She resisted it.
‘Not least because it was my date of birth on the form. Yeah, DERP, right?’
Edie still said nothing, as she feared anything she said would come out sounding glib, or small. Elliot ran his hands through his hair.
‘I mean, there’s me as an already highly strung, imaginative, self-styled outsider and then I stumble across this information. My mind starts whirring: what if Fraser was adopted too? Then I looked up the old family albums, my mum in the maternity unit holding him, still got the cannula in her hand. No, he was theirs. Then I recalled there were no photos like that of me, with them, at that age. The odd Polaroid of me in a crib that didn’t look like the one they put Fraser in. When I asked why it was: “No one took as many photos in those days, oh there will be more, somewhere.” I realised I’d been fobbed off.’
Elliot drew breath.
‘I slept with the papers under my pillow for three weeks or so, and then me and my mum were having words and I just came out with it. I wasn’t intending to. Part of me still hoped there was some other explanation, and she’d laugh and say oh is THAT what you thought, haha.’
‘… What did your mum say?’
‘She was really upset. Devastated, in fact. They’d made a decision it was better for me not to know and of course, me finding out, and like that? Worst of all worlds.’
Edie nodded.
‘She and Dad sat me down and told me the full unexpurgated version. I was adopted after
my alcoholic father crashed a car while blind-pissed and killed my mother.’
Elliot looked at her and Edie stared back, open-mouthed. All this time she’d been thinking Elliot’s life was charmed, uncomplicated and, before fame, uneventful.
‘She was in the front seat, no seat belt. He survived. And amazingly, I survived, given I was in the back without a child seat. They found me in the footwell with barely a scratch on me.’
Elliot lifted an arm and pointed to a tiny mark near his elbow. ‘I think I might’ve done this, but I’m not sure.’
‘Oh, Elliot … God,’ Edie said, with huge feeling. She remembered that solemn, lamp-eyed little boy from the family photos. He did look darkly different to the rest of the fair, middle-class clan.
‘I should say, I can’t remember any of this,’ Elliot said, with a hand on the back of his neck. ‘It’s as much a story to me as it is to you. I was two years old.’
‘Why hadn’t your parents told you?’ Edie said. Adding, hastily: ‘I’m not judging, just asking.’
‘They adopted me thinking they couldn’t have kids themselves and my mum almost immediately fell pregnant with Fraz. They told me they uhmmed and ahhed and the scan showed it was a boy, and they thought, why not bring us up simply as brothers – they weren’t going to treat us any differently, after all. I think they were in turmoil, to be honest: overwhelmed. They had years of wanting a family they couldn’t have. Then when the adoption finally came through, my mum was unexpectedly expecting. From nought to sixty. It wasn’t the greatest choice in hindsight, but there it is. It was made with good intentions.’
Edie nodded.
‘And I think they thought they would tell me, at the right time. But the right time never arrived. It went on too long and became too big a thing to be broken to me. They worried I’d be really angry they hadn’t told me, that I’d spin out. Push them away.’ Elliot paused. ‘Something I now have a lot of sympathy with, given my own choices.’
‘… How do you mean?’
Elliot raised heavy-lidded eyes to hers.
‘Fraser still doesn’t know. I asked them not to tell him.’
The curtains riffled in the breeze and Edie repeated: ‘Fraser doesn’t know you’re adopted?’
‘No,’ Elliot said. ‘I begged my parents to keep it secret. We were scrapping a lot back then. Just big brother, little brother trivial stuff, but you know. I wasn’t having the greatest time at school, either, and if it got out, if Fraz talked to his friends or whatever, I didn’t want to become known for being “different” because of the adoption as well. Sounds so silly now, but when you’re eleven, it’s huge. You just want to fit in, you know?’
Edie nodded; yes, she did.
‘And I wanted some time to come to terms with it myself before Fraser found out. I was worried that he’d feel differently about me, that I’d be the odd one out in my own family. You know, every time you’ve questioned your differences – why was I not sporty like Fraz, why was I not confident like him – I felt like every time he looked at me, he’d see that story. That every time we fought, he’d think, Well, you shouldn’t even be here.’
Elliot’s eyes looked shiny for a moment and Edie twitched with the urge to help in some way, though she couldn’t.
‘Aaaannnnd. Can you guess the rest? As time went on, it was never the right time. It had gone on so long that not having told him became just as big a scandal, and one I was responsible for. Imagine, Edie …’
Edie felt the force of the trust he was placing in her. Although maybe there was no one else?
‘… The drama stuff took off and I was more different from Fraz than ever. Home was the one place I was just myself. Fraser used to look at me funny in those early days when I was on TV, as it was. There was no way I was going to make that harder. “I’m not your brother.” It’s a big bloody chat, isn’t it?’
‘You are his brother, though! You’re as much his brother as Meg is my sister.’
Elliot smiled at her in a fond, sad way. ‘Yeah.’
Edie recalled what Fraser had said about ‘It was like he didn’t belong to us any more.’ Edie might go back and remove that line. Would they have to cover the adoption in the book, if it was going to be in Jan’s? She’d worry about that later.
‘And your da— father, he never came looking for you?’
Elliot took a sip of his drink. ‘Nope. Nor me for him. So until this lovely bin-diver of a writer, Jan Clarke, called him a few months back, my father didn’t know I was his son. Good of her to take it upon herself to break the news.’
He rubbed his eyes and gave a pinched, murderous scowl into the middle distance. Edie remembered the expression from Blood & Gold.
‘What?’ said Edie, disbelieving, ‘How could he not know?’
Elliot picked up his mug again.
‘He’s not seen me for three decades. I presume the adoption agency would’ve told him who I was placed with if he asked, but as far as I know, he never cared enough to ask. I’ve grown up, I look different, I have a different name. No reason he would recognise me.’
Edie tried to imagine having a magazine thrust under your nose and being told Prince Wulfroarer was your long-lost spawn. She didn’t have much sympathy for Elliot’s father but it must’ve been quite the mind-blower.
‘And if you say that I must’ve known this’d come out sooner or later, I did. I’ve been a twat. I buried my head in the sand and hoped it’d all go away and that Jan wouldn’t be thorough enough to get hold of my birth certificate. My publicist has been pretty forthright that I’ve made it much worse for myself. You’re supposed to control this sort of thing. Not wait until your manslaughtering father’s trying to call your people from prison.’
‘What? That was the phone call? The one that made you leave the set?’
‘Yeah. He’s realised there’s money to be made in going to the tabloids and selling his story. It’s now a race between him and Jan to see who can get into print first. My father will likely win because he’s up for parole in three weeks.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘I know. So I’ve got to tell Fraser. Time’s up. I’ve been such an idiot, Edie. You must think I’m an absolute goon.’
Edie shook her head, vigorously.
‘No, I don’t. I think you had to make a big decision, as a child. Your parents made a bigger one as adults that they probably regret now. It’s not your fault. It was a lot to bear.’
Elliot stared at her.
‘You’re so kind, you are.’
Edie almost flinched at the pleasure of him saying this, with such sincerity.
‘It’s honestly what I think. You’re being too hard on yourself,’ she said.
‘Yeah I know. And you’re kind, so it comes out that way.’
Edie glowed. She hadn’t been made to feel like a good person for quite some time.
‘… Fraz is skiing right now so I can’t get hold of him. He’s back next week. I guess I should go down to Surrey. I can’t do anything else about this mess, until I’ve done that.’
‘It’ll be OK,’ Edie said, though it sounded rather thin.
‘It’ll be OK, or it won’t,’ Elliot said, flatly. ‘I won’t blame him for being absolutely raging with me. It wasn’t fair for him to not know something the other three of us did, for all those years. And when that dust’s settled, we’ll see if things can ever feel the same again.’
There was a pause.
Elliot set his cup back down. ‘God, I’m absolutely shitting it about Jan realising Fraser doesn’t know. Imagine the coup if she got to break the news to him.’
Elliot looked at Edie, morose.
‘I’ve been jumping like a cat every time my phone goes. And it’d be my fault. A stranger being able to hurt my family like this – it’s all my fault.’
‘No, it isn’t your fault. You did the best you could at the time. All of us are making it up as we go along.’ Edie paused. ‘Fraser didn’t have to find out he was adopted, did he? He s
hould have some sympathy with you, too.’
Elliot leaned over and clinked his toothpaste mug against Edie’s. They shared a moment of complete understanding and Edie felt a feeling she chose not to name, for the time being.
44
‘Room service!’ a voice rang out, startling them out of the intimate mood.
‘Oh yeah, I got a club sandwich. Do you want anything?’
Edie shook her head and there was a pause while the door was opened, plates were put on the side table, a tip handed over and the door closed again. Elliot sat back down.
‘Of course, as well as my brother hating me, there’s the chance the public will hate me after my dad’s story, too. My publicist explained, if my dad positions himself as the victim, it’s very hard to get into tit-for-tat denials without looking like the bully. I’m going to have to “rise above”, which means staying silent while horrible untrue things are said about me.’
Edie, mindful of how recently she’d ineptly made the hidden homosexuality allegation, wanted to be careful how she handled this.
‘But. Your father killed your mum, and almost killed you. Surely people won’t think he has much place to criticise you?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I said,’ Elliot said. ‘Again, it was gently pointed out to me he’ll play that as his tragedy. You know, first I lost my wife, then my son.’ Elliot stood up, inspected his club sandwich, picked up a triangle of it, and sat back down. ‘It’s so nice to see a decent human being, you know. All I’ve been doing all weekend is talking to people in Los Angeles about disaster recovery, and brooding. Very moody, like,’ Elliot did his ‘Crumple Zone’ face and then grinned.
He bit into the bread and Edie smiled, shyly. She so wanted to be the friend he needed. She guessed pretty much any woman would, right now.
‘You’re very well liked and I think people know the way the grubby exposé works,’ Edie said. ‘Like you said to me, goodness will get you through it.’
Who's That Girl? Page 23