Who's That Girl?

by Mhairi McFarlane

  ‘Anyway want me to call him up as the Prince and tell him his head is going to be thrown in Tinkers’ Pit?’

  Edie guffawed.

  ‘Haha! Ah … I don’t know. Yes?’

  ‘Think of it this way. You auditioned for a job you didn’t get. Now the film’s out and it’s absolutely abysmal. Terrible reviews, you dodged a bullet. Someone else is his co-star in a total turkey.’

  Edie knew Elliot was a smart wit but this couldn’t all be off the cuff. He’d been thinking about it. Her stomach fluttered.

  A light rain started to spatter and Edie pulled up the hood on her coat. As she turned her head, she saw no more curious glances. No doubt they’d not unreasonably decided that Prince Wulfroarer wouldn’t be queuing for a fairground ride in the pissing rain with a tattily dressed lady.

  ‘You look like a Jawa in Star Wars,’ Elliot said, tugging at the fur trim, as Edie tutted and protested and enjoyed the affectionate teasing immensely.

  Were they flirting? They were at the front of the queue and ushered into one of the cars, the safety bar slammed down over their knees.

  As they began their wobbly ascent, then stopped again, Edie said: ‘Have you spoken to Fraser yet?’

  ‘No,’ Elliot said, jaw tightening. ‘I haven’t been able to pin him down for a date to come and see him. It’s tricky, I’m having to pretend it’s just a jaunt. I can’t say Clear Your Diary I Have Big Things To Say because he’ll lose his shit and make me tell him on the phone. He was the kid who used to get up at four a.m. to open his Christmas presents.’ Elliot paused. ‘Not that I’m likening this to opening a Christmas present.’

  ‘It must be stressful,’ she said.

  ‘Every time I think that Jan might call him, I get the jangles. I haven’t been sleeping, the women in make-up are noticing the dark circles. I had to ask the hotel if they could bar Jan, because the thought of her lurking outside my bedroom was giving me squeaky bum time.’

  The women in make-up, who knew her name. Was Elliot mentioning them on purpose? He appeared unperturbed. Obviously merely small talk. Edie should shrug it off. She was quiet as the car swung upwards again gently, squeaking on its hinges.

  ‘Do you ever miss your mum?’ she said, eventually.

  She hadn’t known she was going to ask something so stark, and personal. They were suspended in mid-air above the crowds and it shook it out of her. She’d never had this kind of solitude with Elliot, she thought, that’s why these things were coming out. For the next ten to fifteen minutes, right in the middle of the city centre, they were alone.

  Elliot looked at her. ‘Yes, sometimes. It’s a strange sort of missing, though. I didn’t know her. Missing someone you don’t know. It’s more like a sense there’s a blank that will forever be blank and never be filled in … Do you? I mean, that’s a ridiculous question. Sorry.’

  Edie nodded. ‘It isn’t. Yes. In the same way, really. I didn’t have the chance to get to know her properly. It’s a part of me that will always be missing. A dull ache, rather than a sharp pain. Lots of questions that I will never, ever get answers to. Sometimes I think about what I would give for one hour with her. Just an hour. To ask everything I want to ask.’

  ‘Yes!’ Elliot said emphatically, looking at her intently. ‘You learn to live with that incompleteness. That’s what other people don’t understand. You have to make peace with this … forever unknownness. That’s what’s different between me and Fraz. He’s very rounded, and complete. I sometimes wonder if I do this job so I can try on other personalities who are a bit more sorted out. People who know who they are … people who don’t exist. So. That’s healthy.’

  Edie nodded again. This was dynamite for the book, though very probably too personal.

  Edie had never considered if there was a parallel with her loss, and choosing advertising. She could perhaps find one in running to London and building herself a new persona that was like a lavishly gift-wrapped empty box. Beautiful, shiny, full of foam peanuts. If her life was a memoir, it would be called Display Model Only.

  ‘Is your dad OK? Did he remarry?’ Elliot asked.

  ‘No,’ Edie said. ‘No. He had a breakdown, the year after my mum died, it knocked his confidence. He ended up running out of a classroom he was teaching, in tears …’ Edie found this hard to say, to think about what had gone on. The loss of dignity. ‘He was a year head, and he had to go off long-term sick. That’s when we moved to Forest Fields, downsized. His life has seemed much more like coping, ever since, than living.’

  Elliot reached over and put his hand over Edie’s, gripped it supportively, and let go. She was silently ecstatic at the gesture, and the unexpected skin-to-skin contact.

  As they drew level with the clock in the Council House, she thought: this was why you should never succumb to despair. One moment, everything looked lost. The next, the big wheel had turned and you were feeling on top of the world, surveying the rooftops and trading witticisms with a famous beautiful actor who even felt moved to hold your hand. (Briefly.) How bizarre and improbable and downright funny.

  To underline life’s absurdity, the rain made up its mind and started pelting them, and they had nothing to shield themselves with except hats and hoods. They were both half-wailing, half-laughing. The descent started and Edie squealed: ‘Owen, you BASTARD,’ heads shielded by their arms, soaked to their skin.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Thompson. The whims of eejit thespians.’

  They peeled themselves, sodden, from the car as soon as it swung to a halt. Edie guessed half her carefully touched-up make-up was now in oily pools on her cheeks, and didn’t care. She was about to suggest a restorative coffee when Elliot pulled his phone from his pocket, wiped the water from it with the cuff of his coat sleeve and said: ‘Balls to it, they’ve sourced some cables. I’m wanted back on set.’

  Edie felt her face and spirits fall.

  ‘Thank you for being excellent company, Edie,’ Elliot said, and leaned in to peck her on the cheek.

  At that moment, a scream went up from the nearby Five Guys burger bar.

  They looked over to see a group of middle-aged women in quilted coats, pointing at Elliot and whooping.

  ‘See you soon,’ Elliot said, quickly. He angled his chin into his collar and set off down the watery pavement, suddenly reminding Edie of the iconic black-and-white photo of James Dean in Times Square, hunched in an overcoat against the elements.

  Although with a very twenty-first century difference: Elliot with iPhone clamped to his ear, in place of the cigarette clamped between the teeth.

  49

  When had Edie last been to Sneinton? It was south of the city, walking distance from the city centre. Cheap housing, one good pub, a lot of other pubs you weren’t advised to go into unless you were a Krav Maga master.

  She had a watery memory of a really scutty party around here in her teenage years, where the trippy décor involved wilting daffodils Sellotaped to the wall at dado-rail height, a sink overflowing with tins of Skol, and someone dubious putting on a white-paper-sleeve video of German nuns urinating.

  Edie knocked on Nick’s door and wiggled the hand and wrist that had gone to sleep with the weight of the shopping bag. She waited, and knocked and waited, and eventually called his mobile. Nick had said it was a sad bachelor flat but it was a house, a semi. A pretty one, with a window box of pansies, which indicated a decent landlord, as Nick wasn’t known for touches like this. The area could be a bit fruity but his street seemed peaceful, and heavy with cats.

  ‘I was having a fag in the garden, sorry love.’ Nick leaned in to give her a kiss, a smoky whoosh of Marlboro Red accompanying his embrace.

  ‘I like your shoes,’ Edie said, glancing at the chestnut-brown boots beneath his turned-up jeans, which looked a little ‘Madness nutty boy’ to her untrained eye. ‘Clarks?’

  ‘They’re Grenson’s, you dozy mare!’

  Nick seemed drawn and edgy, and his mood even stayed flat when Hannah piled in the door, sporting thick s
wingy new hairstyle in a treacly colour, with fringe. She looked about five years younger and Edie immediately began coveting it and thinking she should do similar.

  ‘What do you think? My hairdresser says it’s “bronde”.’

  ‘I think it looks incredible,’ Edie said, circling her for the full effect. Nick muttered approval and went to get drinks as they sat themselves down on the front room sofa, which had been cheered up/disguised with a striped bedspread doubling as a throw.

  ‘I thought, if Pete’s parents say I’m having a midlife crisis, I should do it properly and have the new image too.’

  ‘Does it feel like you’re having a crisis?’ Edie said.

  ‘No. It feels to me like the crisis was the last five years and this is the part where I’m starting to sort it.’

  Nick returned and handed them both beakers of red wine. Once again, Edie got that expansive feeling that she was exactly where she should be. It was so novel, she took a moment to recognise it.

  Nick came back again, pushing the door to with the toe of his boot while balancing a mug of tea.

  ‘Taking a break?’ Hannah said, with a clear note of surprise in her voice.

  ‘Yeah, I’m hanging from last night. Just boshed down Dioralyte though, puts you right back in the room, have you tried it? It’s for diarrhoea. I’m giving you a total insider’s tip here. Neck it down, and even if you’re filthy, you can be back in the bar by seven.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Hannah said. ‘Remember the part where I’m a doctor? Me condoning this doesn’t sound consistent with taking the Hippocratic oath.’

  ‘Look the other way. With me it can be the Hypocrite oath.’

  ‘Where did you go last night?’ Edie said, and as soon as the words left her mouth, knew the answer.

  ‘Just in.’

  ‘Nick,’ Hannah said, ‘you’re drinking too much. It’s worrying.’

  ‘I know,’ Nick said, playing with the turn-up on his jeans. ‘I know.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence, yet both Hannah and Edie let it be uncomfortable, to see where it went.

  ‘… Alice is making me do counselling.’ At their horrified expressions he added: ‘Not “get back together” counselling, “sorting out a working relationship as divorcees” counselling.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Edie said, cautiously. ‘If it means you’ll get to see Max?’

  ‘Mmm. I don’t think that’s where it’s going though. So far, she wangs on about what a bastard I am at great length. I am “holding space” for her, apparently.’

  ‘Holding space?’ Hannah said. She wasn’t one for pseudo-therapy speak.

  ‘The counsellor says most people don’t listen during conversations with their other halves, they just wait for their turn to speak. So in the sessions, the other person talks and you don’t say anything or plan your response or play Angry Birds, you only listen. While imagining Alice being thrown into a medical incinerator. I added that last part myself.’

  ‘Why do it if she doesn’t want a better relationship?’ Edie said.

  ‘She thrives on conflict and when I had to accept I couldn’t see Max, she’d won. I reckon this is a way of stirring it up again.’

  ‘You need to see the counsellor separately and tell her your ex-wife is a toxin,’ Hannah said.

  ‘She seems to be loving Alice’s righteous furies. She’s being fed more shit than a fecalphiliac on a farm.’ Nick shrugged.

  ‘When you get your turn for Alice to “hold your space”, talk about how it feels not seeing Max,’ Edie said.

  ‘That’s all I’m hanging in for.’ Nick twiddled the lace on his boot. ‘I know I drink to blot it out. It’s not even mysterious; the sadness cloud descends and I feel better after a pint. But there it is.’

  ‘I’m not going to lecture you now, but we’re going to keep talking about this,’ Hannah said. ‘There are other things you can do to feel better that aren’t propping up the bar in ’Spoons.’

  ‘Also, food!’ Edie said. ‘I’ll start dinner.’

  In Nick’s red-tiled kitchen – Edie really liked this house – she made a huge pile of chilli con carne and they sat forking it from bowls while listening to Nick’s latest mix tape and laughing at his terrible Single Man choice of décor, a bizarre painting above the mantelpiece.

  ‘What is that?’ Hannah said.

  ‘It’s Elton John singing “Candle in the Wind” to Princess Diana. A listener sent it in. Look, that’s the candle, you see, hovering. It’s very haunting.’

  ‘Looks like Rose West and David Van Day from Dollar about to be hit by a flaming tampon,’ Edie said.

  ‘It’s quite impressionistic,’ Nick agreed.

  Full of mince and goodwill, laced with alcohol, Edie had a powerful urge to declare something she’d only just decided upon. She held back, because as Hannah had said, she wanted to be sure before she said it out loud.

  Instead she said: ‘I think sometimes, shit things in life can’t be learned from, they just “are”. You have to live around them and with them. No one admits it, because it doesn’t sound inspiring if you put it over a picture of a sunset. I was discussing this with Elliot yesterday.’

  ‘I was discussing it with Elliot yesterday!’ Nick said. ‘Get you. Oh, as I was saying to little Kenny Branagh in The Groucho.’

  ‘Classic mentionitis,’ Hannah said. ‘I see you, Thompson.’

  ‘Oi! Hold some space for me. Elliot’s a case in point, is all I’m saying,’ Edie said. ‘Anyone you think has it all worked out, chances are, they don’t.’

  ‘This is a long way round to telling us you’ve uncovered his whoring habit,’ Nick said. ‘What’s his private pain then?’

  ‘Yeah, what do you mean?’ Hannah said.

  ‘Nothing specific,’ Edie said, and was drowned out by booing and catcalls from them both.

  ‘You utter prick-tease!’ Nick said. ‘You’ve even got a coy gloaty little I Can Haz A Sekret face on!’

  ‘No!’ Edie said, laughing hard in that way that felt so therapeutic. ‘OK, there is something. I can’t tell you now because it’d make me a snitch. But I will eventually. When it comes out.’

  ‘When it’s in the papers anyway and not a secret. Thanks a bunch,’ Nick said. Edie thought how much she’d like them to meet Elliot and then felt the force of its impossibility, and was a little sad.

  ‘Phew,’ Nick said. ‘What a rollercoaster of a night. Acting man maybe is interesting but we can’t know why. Can I have a wine now to soothe myself down?’

  ‘Nope,’ Hannah said.

  ‘Tetleys it is then.’ Nick got to his feet. ‘I’ll bring the bottle through for you two soaks.’

  ‘Thank you for coming round,’ he said, putting his head back round the door, ‘You both cheer me up loads.’

  ‘Me too,’ Hannah said.

  ‘Me three.’ Edie leaned back on the sofa. ‘Spend your time on the right people,’ Edie said. ‘It’s one of life’s big secrets, isn’t it? I wish someone had told me when I was twenty. Don’t make “friends”. Make two friends. Find people you love to bits and don’t want to confuse things by sleeping with, and keep them close.’

  Nick held up a palm.

  ‘Woah. There might’ve been a misunderstanding here.’

  50

  The serial killer in Gun City certainly didn’t make life easy for himself.

  This corpse – Edie had a bet with herself it was another lingerie model – had been placed atop a pile of books inside the Nottingham Contemporary art gallery, as a gruesome installation. It was a fair guess there was a pithy aside about qualifying for the Turner Prize, by a hardboiled DI.

  The city-centre location for this part of the shoot had brought onlookers out in droves, and Edie had to squeeze past the fuss to get to Elliot’s trailer, parked in front of the Galleries of Justice building, a little way along the road in the Lace Market.

  Edie feared she might be in for a long wait, as Elliot was going to run the gamut of autograph hunte
rs when he’d finished filming.

  But within a half hour of Edie getting her things out and settling down to read her Kindle with a builder’s tea, Elliot bounced in, Tigger-ish, eyes shining.

  ‘Hi, honey, I’m home!’

  Edie rolled her eyes and smiled and chewed her pen. He pulled his leather jacket off and opened the fridge, swigging from a bottle of water.

  ‘Think that scene went quite well,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a drink, I see. Cool.’

  Edie sat swinging her feet, feeling strangely like when her dad used to take her into school and leave her in the staffroom, colouring in. Elliot sat down opposite her and smiled. His short hair was tousled – did many detectives meddle with their hair using Wella Shockwaves? – and his teeth looked especially white against his detective’s five o’clock shadow. Edie felt a swoon coming on and needed to quickly re-establish their irreverent rapport. She felt she knew her way around him now, they could recreationally squabble and easily make it up: the litmus test of familiarity.

  ‘Elliot,’ she said, ‘can you explain something, about the show? Why would a serial killer go to all that trouble of breaking into an art gallery, instead of just ditching the body in a layby off the A453?’

  Pause, while Elliot wiped his mouth and looked contemplative.

  ‘He’s the flamboyant sort of serial killer, isn’t he?’

  ‘But how many murderers take risks like that? I thought Archie was on about Gun City shining a light on crime in the regions. It’s like something from a Thomas Harris novel.’

  ‘Well, not everything has to be naturalistic …’

  He boggled at her indignantly and she thought she might’ve genuinely annoyed him. ‘It’s ART, Edie Thompson! It’s not meant to be anything like life!’

  They both burst out laughing and Edie had a stab, a pre-pang, of missing Elliot before the moment arrived when they said their final goodbye, forever.