Who's That Girl?

by Mhairi McFarlane

  Edie’s laptop was open on the sun lounger. As the back door banged shut loudly, the G-chat pop-up appeared on her screen. Mercifully, it wasn’t Jack. Less mercifully, it was Louis.

  EDIE EDIE EDIE! I S@@ YOU!

  Hi Louis

  When are you baaaaaack? It’s SO boring without you IsweartoGod *nail painting emoji*

  Hah. Louis had sussed she might be gone for good and wanted the exclusive. Not so fast.

  Few weeks! All good at Ad H? x

  Yeah. How’s the actor boy? Have you rumped him?

  Not yet but reckon I’m in there

  Boom. Pass that joke on as sincere if you will, Edie thought. Let it confirm all their prejudices about me. She wouldn’t say she didn’t care but she certainly cared a lot less than she used to.

  REALLY hoping it turns out he likes cock instead.

  If wishes were (hung like) horses

  Hahahhaa! Ah funny Edie. MISS YOU BABE <3

  Yeah yeah. There was something concerning Louis that was tickling the edge of Edie’s consciousness, an important detail she’d absorbed but was yet to process. Was it the petition? Was it a key piece of information he’d let slip? It’d come to her, eventually. Telling Richard she wasn’t coming back was the bigger issue, for now. She hated the thought of that conversation. He didn’t respect quitters.

  47

  ‘Was that the dulcet tones of your sister I heard?’

  Edie jumped out of her skin. She typed ‘BRB’ at Louis and turned to face Margot. Her auburn hair was looking even more Ken Dodd-ish than usual as she twinkled roguishly over the fence.

  ‘Cherish her!’ Margot said, gaily.

  ‘Trying to.’

  ‘I’m an only child. Brothers and sisters are the only ones who’ll stick by you when you’re old. Along with your children. Except in my case, of course.’

  This seemed a change of (big band) tune. Margot put her cigarette to the side of her mouth and Edie felt too uncomfortable to ask what she meant. She thought of Elliot, and wondered if he’d told Fraser yet.

  ‘I meant to say thanks again for the cake,’ Edie said. ‘It was absolutely amazing. Oh and I’ve got your lottery tickets!’ she rustled in her handbag at her feet, and produced them.

  The cake had been so amazing, that despite Meg knowing the provenance of the cake, and there clearly being eggs and cream cheese involved, Edie didn’t think it was her non-sweet-tooth-having dad who’d snaffled a quarter of it overnight.

  ‘I’ve made you another. Chocolate ganache. I’d got all my baking kit out so I thought I’d carry on.’

  ‘Wow, that’s incredibly nice of you,’ Edie said. ‘I’ll have to share it out so I don’t get tubby.’

  Margot peered at her. ‘You can take a few pounds more to my eyes. Mind you, they’re old eyes. Want to pop in and get it now?’

  ‘Uh …’ Edie looked at her laptop. ‘Yes!’

  ‘Front door’s not locked.’

  Edie could hear Meg’s angry music upstairs as she stuffed her laptop under a jumper on the stairs, closed the door quietly behind her and hopped the fence to Margot’s.

  She let herself in, through the door with the sticky seal, and once again marvelled at an environment so very different to the one on the other side of the bricks and mortar: a mini-verse of fluff, oyster satin and chintz.

  In the kitchen, Margot was in a cerise batwing top, pouring champagne into flutes. An absolutely magnificent chocolate gateau was out ready in a biscuit tin, a crown of piped swirls of icing.

  ‘Not for me thanks. Too early,’ Edie said, waving off the flute. Kerrrrist. It wasn’t even midday. ‘Cake looks incredible.’

  ‘It’s my birthday!’ Margot said, forcing the glass into Edie’s hand.

  ‘Ah! Happy birthday!’ Edie accepted it and felt sorry for Margot’s celebration being one she had to strong-arm a neighbour into. At a loss for anything else to say: ‘Am I allowed to ask which one, in return?’

  ‘Oh, I forget. On purpose.’

  Margot saluted her with her glass, and sipped.

  ‘Seems much better than the alternative,’ Edie said, feeling the champagne go straight to her eyes. Daytime drinking made her brow feel heavy.

  ‘What no one tells you, darling, is that some people are good at being young, and terrible at being old. I am one of those people. Don’t get old, if you can help it. Go out on a high with a lovely big aneurysm at your sixtieth at the Dorchester, holding a Dirty Martini. Leave behind a beautiful corpse and wonderful memories. Do what they call a French Exit from the party, and don’t bother with goodbyes.’

  Margot was still very much the actress, Edie thought.

  ‘I’ll pencil one in.’

  ‘Shall we have a seat?’

  They took their glasses to the sitting room, with the frilly pelmets and the budgies. Looking again, they might be some sort of parakeet, they were too big for a budgie. Hannah had a point that Edie wasn’t hugely at one with nature.

  ‘Where’s your mama, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  Margot pronounced ‘mama’ like an aristocrat rather than an American.

  ‘She died,’ Edie said, flatly. ‘Killed herself when we were children. Depression.’

  She was done with euphemisms and obfuscations. Elliot’s experience had made her realise: often the secret weighed heavier than the truth.

  ‘Dear oh dear. With two little kiddies? How selfish.’

  ‘It wasn’t selfish,’ Edie said, with the calmness that came from having given this speech to herself many times. ‘She was mentally ill and she’d probably stopped herself hundreds of times before she did it. Suicide’s a desperate act, it’s not selfish.’

  ‘Beg to differ, darling, it can be. My ex-husband blew his brains out with a shotgun after an argument with his second wife’s family at their holiday home in Gdansk. That wasn’t unselfish, let me assure you. They had to hire a pressure washer to clean the loft and completely repaint it.’

  Edie had no reply to this other than: ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘He always was a “See Me” person, Gordon,’ Margot said, stubbing out the last of her fag. ‘No pills and hot bath for him, had to make a mess.’

  ‘Why did he do it?’ Edie said.

  Margot sparked up her next cigarette. ‘He was a moody so-and-so, temper like an Irishman in a heatwave. Apparently it was something of a stormy marriage and he had a lot of debts. He wasn’t good at marriage; God knows why he tried it again. Mind you, neither was I, for that matter.’

  ‘Is he who you have the children with?’ Edie said, carefully.

  ‘Singular, one son. Yes. I don’t see Eric. We don’t get along.’ For the first time, Edie could see tension in Margot’s face.

  ‘What happened?’

  Margot hesitated. ‘He blamed me for not being around much when he was younger. I wanted adventures, you see. I was “with child” too young, I was still a child myself. We had the money for a nanny and so I would leave him with her, and gad about, go out on the tiles. If I could go back and do it differently, I would. He sided with his father when we separated, went to live with him … I wasn’t the best of mothers, admittedly …’ she trailed off. ‘And his wife and I can’t bear each other. She’s quite the sourpuss. So. That’s that.’

  She snapped her lighter shut. Edie imagined the force of Margot’s personality and beauty in her youth, and could imagine it was like trying to keep a snow leopard as a house cat.

  ‘Why did he side with Gordon?’

  ‘His father told him I was a philandering drinker. His father was also a philandering drinker, of course, but somehow that was less of a crime. His wasn’t the hand that rocked the cradle. Neither was mine, of course.’ Margot gave a brittle, false laugh and Edie felt intensely sorry for her. So much bravado hiding so much sadness.

  ‘You don’t see Eric at all?’

  ‘No,’ Margot dragged on her fag and blew the smoke out in a haze, ‘not for years. He blamed me for his father’s grisly end. Gordon’s canonised
now, you can’t touch him, in Eric’s eyes.’

  Edie gulped. ‘Wow.’

  ‘This is why I say to make it up with your sister, before it goes too far. You’re bound to have your problems, without a mother around. But family is everything, darling. You don’t get another.’

  ‘You’re the one who thinks Meg’s mad!’ Edie snorted.

  ‘She cares, though. She’s got passion. Nothing worse than someone who doesn’t care about anything except themselves.’

  This made Edie think about Jack. She felt in a different mood to the last time she was with Margot, a more adventurous one. The Moët was helping.

  ‘Margot, you know when you said I’d brought bad men upon myself? Do you really believe that?’

  Margot smiled as she picked up her drink again. Edie noticed that, like all committed drinkers, Margot had a way of somehow drawing down half a glass of liquid in one sip.

  ‘Have you ever heard the saying “critics are always reviewing themselves”? You remind me of myself. That’s why I was hard on you.’

  That, and the brandy, Edie thought. Oh God, would Edie gad about on the tiles, instead of care for a child? Was that what she was doing, in a way, when she ran wild in her teens?

  ‘You knew me that well from one visit?’

  ‘The walls are terribly thin, darling, and your brood spends quite a time in the garden, too.’

  Edie smiled. Nosy swine.

  ‘… You won’t find someone who treats you as you should be treated until you start to believe you are worth the ones you want, the ones who aren’t asking you to do any work. Find the man who appreciates you at your best, not one who confirms your worst suspicions about yourself. I saw a film a few moons ago, it said, pay attention to those who don’t clap when you win. Gordon despised my career. He resented any success I had. He didn’t want me to be happy, he wanted to keep me in a box. In my place.’

  Edie thought about Jack. He had kept her in a box, like a pet. She was like the school stick insects, with a tea towel thrown over her cage at home time, her use as entertainment value over.

  Margot sussed her train of thought.

  ‘What was the last one doing? Carrying on like a cad behind his lady friend’s back, trifling with you? Refuse to be trifled with. That would be a start.’

  Margot tapped her cigarette into the swan ashtray.

  ‘Don’t wait for men’s permission. Don’t wait for anyone’s permission, in fact.’

  Margot, a feminist! Sort of. She wished Meg could hear this.

  ‘This all sounds wise. The ones I want are very likely married by now, though,’ Edie said, sadly.

  ‘Nonsense. Opportunity knocks when you least expect it.’

  Edie and Margot discussed Margot’s ex-husband’s terrible investments in stocks and shares and numerous infidelities. When Margot offered Edie the inevitable second glass, Edie declined on the basis of having work to do, but reminded Margot she’d very happily take her cake home.

  ‘Would you like to go out for a drink sometime? Just local?’ she asked, as she stood in the hallway, clasping the cake tin.

  ‘The ale houses around here are complete fleapits, darling,’ Margot leaned on the door jamb, striking a sultry pose like Lauren Bacall.

  ‘In town, then. My treat. We could even get dinner too.’

  A whole evening of Margot, hmm. Could be full on. Edie fancied the tales of the Swinging Sixties though.

  ‘I shall certainly consider it,’ Margot said, primly. If she was gratified by the invitation, she didn’t show it.

  ‘Enjoy the rest of your birthday,’ Edie said.

  ‘Oh, it isn’t my birthday.’ Margot waved a bony hand, decorated with a gobstopper-sized crystal cocktail ring.

  Edie’s jaw dropped.

  ‘Then why did you say it was?!’

  ‘It was the only way to get you to have a little champers. Loosen you up.’

  Edie tested whether she was outraged, and laughed.

  48

  ‘Edie, there’s a big wheel in Market Square,’ Elliot said, delivering this non sequitur of an opening line from somewhere that sounded noisy.

  ‘Yes. I’ve seen it …?’ Edie said, phone clamped between raised shoulder and ear as she picked up her popped toast from the toaster and threw it on to the plate, between finger and thumb. She still got that spurt of nervy alert celebrity-presence adrenaline when Elliot called, yet she was also wearing the involuntary grin of someone speaking to a beloved friend. The lines were blurring around Elliot, and her feelings were getting smudged, too.

  ‘Can we go on it? I’ve got the afternoon off. We’ve had all the lighting cables nicked. “By thieving rob dog gypsies,” according to Archie, who’s never met a PC term he liked to use.’

  ‘Am I meant to interview you on Ferris wheels now?’

  There was a pause where Edie fancied Elliot might be looking awkward, though obviously, she couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Er, I was thinking we could do it for larks, to be honest. Who knows what secrets I might part with when I’m squeaking with fear, though.’

  Edie laughed. It was nice to hear Elliot sounding happier. She wanted to ask about Fraser, but it needed to be face to face. Perhaps that was what this was about.

  ‘Will it be alright, with the crowds? You won’t get mobbed?’

  ‘I reckon if we get on the wheel without me being recognised, yes. Call me when you get there and I’ll appear, like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn?’

  Edie agreed joyfully and rang off. She hammered out a text to Hannah and noticed her hand was trembling slightly.

  Now the actor wants me to go on the ‘Nottingham Eye’ with him! My life gets ever weirder. x

  Is this a sex euphemism I’m yet to learn? Hx

  I wish! X

  Edie sent that without thinking, then as the speech bubble appeared in lurid green, regretted it somewhat. What did she wish? What was going on …

  DO you now? X

  Ah. No, probably not. X

  EDITH THOMPSON. STAY AWAY FROM MEN YOU SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM. X PS got to tackle a radical nephrectomy now, your life beats my life.

  ‘Does he summon you like some feudal overlord with a serf wench then? Like in his shitey television show?’

  Edie started, she hadn’t realised Meg was behind her.

  ‘Big flappy Dumbo ears! Yeah pretty much. Only it’s not work today, he’s got a day off.’

  Meg raised her eyebrows.

  After touching up her make-up with extra care and telling herself it wasn’t for any particular reason, Edie caught the bus into town and walked the short way down into the centre. She hit dial on her phone and sure enough, as she spoke to Elliot, he emerged from the crowds, woolly hat in place, ridiculous bone structure and glowing skin still a giveaway that he was an exalted personage. It was dismally grey, the fag end of the summer, and yet Edie felt wreathed in rainbows as he broke into a smile. She’d have to make sure she didn’t become too used to this sensation. Elliot, too, was going to be gone as fast as a spell of good weather.

  ‘Why do you want to go on a big wheel?’ Edie said.

  ‘What does a man do when he has it all?’ Elliot said. ‘It was this or LaserQuest. Or you know,’ he gave a sly smile, ‘twerking in NG1s in my disco tits T-shirt.’

  Edie went red and rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah yeah.’

  They joined the queue and Edie heard murmuring and shifting of feet as, she guessed, a few people started discussing why that guy in the hat rang a bell.

  Elliot sensed it too and made a small hmmm? quirk of the mouth at Edie. He gently put his hands on her waist, moving her so she was standing directly in front of him, their bodies close. He positioned himself so he was gazing down on her as if they were a couple, sharing confidences, and incidentally, blocking their view of his face.

  ‘Sorry, needs must,’ Elliot said, in a low voice, in her ear, in a way that would make onlookers think they might be about to kiss.

  ‘Pretty sure I’m not getting pai
d for this,’ Edie said, mock-indignant, while her heart thudded and her skin tingled. Play-acting Elliot’s girlfriend was too much for her nerves to cope with. It gave her disturbance of her blood sugar levels. She looked up at him and tried not to wear any expression that could be construed as adoring.

  ‘I’d ask them to give you a bonus for special services rendered,’ Elliot said, still joke-husky, ‘but I’m thinking of your reputation, here.’

  ‘Hah,’ said Edie, cynical. ‘That horse has bolted.’

  ‘It looks fine from where I’m standing. Seriously,’ Elliot said. ‘It’s how many people? Screw them.’

  Speaking in low voices somehow gave Edie the confidence to say more than she would have, normally.

  ‘What if they’re right about me? What if I am a terrible person and a home-wrecking slut and they’re the ones to say it? It’s not as if anyone awful goes around thinking they’re awful.’

  Edie didn’t know where that blurt had come from. She couldn’t help herself from being herself around Elliot. No, it wasn’t that. She wanted to be herself with him.

  ‘Don’t be soft. Did you want to cop off with a groom? Did you plot it on the back of a napkin?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Well then. Did you … were you …’ Elliot jerked his head.

  ‘What?’

  Elliot sucked in breath.

  ‘Y’know. Sleeping with him?’

  ‘No!’ Edie was sure they’d covered this. ‘I said I wasn’t, didn’t I?’

  ‘Just confirming. Updating my spreadsheet.’ Elliot surveyed her. ‘It’s quite an accolade that he’d risk so much for a kiss. Romantic, really. In a twisted way.’

  Edie said, ‘Oh God, believe me, it’s not romantic,’ and Elliot grinned. She had a funny sense he was impressed by her, though God knows why, on the current topic.