‘Fine, thanks. Glad to not be of interest to the media any more. Now you’re with Greta.’ She was aiming for playful here, it came out sounding stiff.
‘Hah, right! Amazing, isn’t it. Different day, same bullshit.’
This sounded like a denial. It was a denial, wasn’t it?
‘I wanted to tell you I’ve spoken to Fraser. I’m doing a story with the Guardian about the adoption. It’ll run in the next few days. It should help draw their fire from you.’
‘You’ve spoken to Fraser?’ Edie sat back down on her chair. ‘How did it go?’
‘At first, badly. You can imagine he was madly pissed off at me having shut him out, all those years ago. His point was: did you have so little faith in me that you didn’t trust me not to reject you? When I asked did it change anything, he looked at me like I had two heads and said, ‘What, after thirty years of growing up together?’
Elliot’s voice had got more emotional and Edie wished they were having this conversation face to face. ‘Then after a lot of shouting at me and slapping the table and shouting “Fuck!” and calling my parents on a satellite phone to shout at them too, he calmed down. I had to remember that I’ve had twenty years to come to terms with it, and I was expecting him to get his head around it in twenty minutes. But after a while, he started on how it should’ve been obvious we didn’t share DNA when he saw me play football.’
Edie laughed, gently. Elliot was uncharacteristically quiet, and she sensed he was trying to sort her into friend or foe or other category, too.
‘Anyway. He was also blazing about Jan and my dad, trying to make money out of it. He insisted I should spike their guns. I talked to my parents too and they agreed we should talk about it. The Guardian story won’t discuss Fraser, but it’ll explain my background. My real dad can do his version, but this way my version’s out there to contradict it. I’ve said I won’t be doing any other interviews about it.’
‘This all sounds really positive,’ Edie said.
‘Edie, I’m sorry. If I’d not been such a coward then I could’ve potentially timed this better and stopped there being as much interest in you. I’ve said on the record that I’m single and Heather and I are no longer together, in this article. Not that the press ever takes my word for it, mind.’
Single.
‘Oh,’ Edie was touched. ‘Thanks. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘It was, I should’ve been more careful than to let those photos get taken. I feel awful that you had your past raked over. It’s one thing for me to choose a life where I get this attention, but I hate it when it affects my loved ones.’
What? Edie held her breath.
Elliot added: ‘Or people I’m working with,’ and Edie let the breath out. ‘The Guardian piece will also effectively spoiler Jan,’ Elliot continued. ‘Hurray for that.’
‘Why hasn’t she gone to the press about the adoption already?’ Her restraint in the Mail piece had surprised Edie.
‘Apparently it’s a fairly common thing, once a biographer’s dug some dirt – it’s much harder to pulp a book once it’s out there and you’re less likely to launch legal action once the damage is done. They wait until it’s safely on the shelves.’
‘Oh,’ Edie said, staring at the ceiling, ‘I suppose that makes sense.’
‘In light of this, we should cover the adoption briefly in our book, too.’
‘Of course.’
She hesitated. Then, jocularly, with feigned lightness, pushing again: ‘So you’re seeing Greta now? Fast work.’
Please don’t say ‘Yes, funnily enough they’ve got this one right’! Please.
‘Oh yeah, it seems I’m hooking up with her. No rest for the wicked, eh?’
Nope. Edie was going to need more than that.
‘There was me thinking you didn’t get on!’
Deny it, DENY IT.
‘Ah well. I didn’t read the signs, obviously. I’m never able to tell when women like me. Or don’t.’
Ouch. It wasn’t just the jibe: there was a deliberate Don’t Come Any Closer reserve in his tone that had never been there before. There would be no return to the old joshing.
Embarrassed, Edie said sadly: ‘Hah.’
‘That said, I can’t begin to imagine what dating Greta would be like. Those photos were just standard Greta touchy-feely moves. She’s the same with everyone. Well, except for Archie. If you tried to touch Archie like that, he’d probably bite you.’
Edie wanted to say: Thank God. But she didn’t.
‘So. Can you make it to mine tomorrow for the interview? Is two OK?’
‘Yes, sure.’
‘This is the last one, by my schedule?’
‘… Yes.’ Oh, no.
Edie was sure there must be good, affectionate, friendship-mending words she could say at this point, but she was damned if she could find them.
64
When Edie arrived at the Owen family home the next day, Fraser answered the door. He was lounging around in sweats and Elliot was nowhere to be seen, a distant pulse of music signalling his whereabouts higher up in the house.
‘OK Computer,’ Fraser said, making a ‘put gun barrel to temple and pull trigger’ two fingers gesture. Edie smiled and hung her coat up and wondered if she was meant to know about his and Elliot’s conversation. She should’ve thought to ask Elliot that.
‘This blow-up between you and Lell. I feel awful about it,’ Fraser said, at lowered volume.
Edie frowned.
‘Lell?’
‘Oh, Elliot. Sorry, kid nickname. Hah, that’s weird, I never say that to anyone who’s not family. Sure you’re not an Owen?’ He rocked back on his heels.
Edie guessed now that Elliot hadn’t told Fraser what she knew. It was a very near-the-knuckle remark otherwise.
‘Hah, pretty sure,’ Edie said. That was a thought: Elliot could have half-siblings he didn’t know about. Press cuttings of the future.
‘Just as well. This’d be some messed-up Luke and Princess Leia shit if you were.’
Edie laughed. Wait, who was Han Solo here? She didn’t know, other than Fraser was good at flirting. He always managed to do the suggestive jokes without ever coming off as overbearing or greasy. He was like a big Golden Retriever: he might break things in his exuberance, but it was hard to be angry at him for it.
‘Can you please make it up,? Because I hate Radiohead and he’s not even playing their one half-decent album.’
‘We have made it up,’ Edie said.
‘Errrrr, his complaint rock moods say you haven’t.’
‘We have. I’ve said I forgive him, and we’ve talked. It might be about something else altogether. Or someone.’
Argh. If there was a new girl on the scene, Edie was selfishly glad she’d arrived too late to make the first edition print run.
Fraser pulled a face. ‘Don’t be soft. He’s completely besotted with you.’
Edie’s heart missed a beat and her stomach muscles contracted. Besotted?
‘… He is?’
‘Yes! He’s gutted about upsetting you. Seriously, Edie. I wouldn’t have come on to you if I’d known. You must’ve thought I was a right sleaze, hitting on you, in the circumstances.’
The circumstances?
Fraser paused.
‘He takes things hard, you know. He always has. I’m not asking you to do anything over and above, but at least tell him you don’t hate him?’
‘Of course I don’t hate him!’
‘Well right now, he hates himself and you’re the only person who can help.’
‘I’ll speak to him,’ Edie said, slightly stunned. Fraser wound himself round the banisters and bellowed up to Elliot that Edie was here. The music shut off.
‘Ack, I am so sorry I messed up and made things difficult. You forgive me?’ Fraser said.
‘Course,’ Edie said.
Fraser stepped forward and threw his arms around her in a bear hug. Edie patted him on the shoulder. When they separate
d, Elliot was on the stairs, watching them. He had one arm on the lintel above, which made his grey T-shirt ride up a little, exposing his stomach. Edie had to stop herself from wilting, a bit. Her heart rose up to block her throat.
‘Hi,’ he said, flatly.
‘Hello,’ Edie said. ‘Fraz was—’
‘… Fraz. Do you need a drink or shall we get on?’
‘Let’s start,’ Edie said, feeling the chill of Elliot’s disapproval.
As she fussed with her Dictaphone in the sitting room, she tried to make sense of what Fraser had said. Besotted?
She should try to clear the air, as she’d promised Fraser.
‘Elliot, before we start. I want to say, about what happened. Outside the bar. Once and for all, apology accepted. Please accept mine in return, for screeching abuse at you?’
‘Sure,’ he said, neutrally. ‘But you don’t owe me an apology. I can’t think about it without wanting to stab myself in my leg with a fork. If you want to see Fraser, it’s cool by the way. I had absolutely no right to get involved.’
Eh? Hadn’t they resolved that?
‘I’m not …’ Edie was going to say ‘interested in your brother’ but it sounded a little harsh. She settled for: ‘Thanks. I don’t.’
‘That’s cool too,’ Elliot said, with a small shrug.
Oh. Edie had even less idea what to think, in front of this wall of indifference. Seeing Fraser was cool? It was obvious Elliot wasn’t keen on her, in that way. She’d mistaken Fraser’s meaning, and cringed slightly. ‘Besotted’ – you could be besot in a completely sexless way, right? She’d once been besotted with her gerbils.
They discussed the family background, the adoption, leaving out the Fraser-being-in-the-dark element. Elliot lowered his voice. ‘He’s taken it really astonishingly well, all considered, and I don’t want to jeopardise that.’ Edie nodded vigorously. ‘I mean, he seems OK for now but it may hit him in stages.’
‘And he doesn’t know I know?’ Edie whispered back.
Elliot shook his head. ‘I wanted to keep the list of people who knew before him as short as possible.’
‘Sure.’
They chatted the official biography, and by the time Edie had enough in her notepad, she hoped things between her and Elliot would’ve warmed up, but the thermostat remained resolutely low.
Filming on Gun City was days away from being finished.
‘Um. Let me know if you fancy a drink before you leave,’ Edie said, perkily, emptily, braced for rejection. She felt very sad. These weren’t the terms she thought they’d part on.
‘Sure thing,’ Elliot said, in a tone that conveyed, I won’t.
How did they get past it? How did they fix what had happened between them? Maybe her refusal to fully confront it was why. Edie had done some thinking, since she last saw Elliot.
As she stepped out of the front door for the last time, she turned abruptly.
‘Elliot, I’m not dragging it up again for the millionth time to be annoying, but I have to ask something. What you said to Fraz. Why did you pick that to put him off, alluding to what happened to my mum? Why not have had a go at my looks or my personality or my writing ability’ – Edie flapped her arms – ‘or my stupid laugh and crap clothes, or something else. Why of all bad things, that bad thing?’
That was the crux of what upset her: that’s what she’d been unable to forgive.
Elliot folded his arms and pushed at the door jamb with the toe of his Converse.
‘There isn’t anything bad to say about you. The only bad things about you are bad things that have happened to you. That was why.’
He looked up and met her gaze. If he thought that highly of her, why were things so perfunctory between them?
‘Thank you,’ Edie said.
‘What for?’
‘Letting me know.’
Edie extended her hand and said: ‘It was great working with you, Elliot.’
He scratched his head as if she wasn’t making much sense, paused and shook it.
‘Likewise. Take care.’
Edie was yet again struck by the feeling there were a hundred more things they should talk about, and yet she couldn’t think of anything to say.
65
It turned out Margot’s ‘maybe sometime’ was a long form ‘no’, when it came to Edie’s proposition to go for drink. It might not have helped that Edie’s turbulent imaginary love life had delayed matters.
‘Not fussed. I have all the grog I want at home, dear heart.’
‘I know, but it’s a change of scene! They have fizzy booze at The Lion, you know. I’ve checked.’
‘It’s my legs, darling. They’re old legs.’
Eventually, through determined probing during the now-regular garden fence nattering, Edie wrung the truth out of Margot: a lifetime on the snouts had left her with virtually no lung capacity. She was housebound.
‘My doctor said I couldn’t run for the bus if my life depended on it,’ she said, adjusting her ‘Princess Margaret in Mustique’ turban. It was a last burst of days of tolerable warmth before autumn set in proper.
‘What about using a wheelchair?’
Margot’s face contorted in disgust. ‘A wheelchair, like a poor crippled sort? Or an old person?’
Edie laughed. ‘Consider it role play. Acting a part.’
‘The horror,’ said Margot, rolling her extravagantly made-up eyes.
‘What if I hired one, and we tried it, the once? If you hate it, we never need do it again.’
‘Meryl and Beryl become very truculent when I abandon them.’
Edie hoped she hadn’t named body parts.
‘Who?’
‘My lovely girls! The birds.’
‘Ah. They can cope for a few hours.’
‘Don’t you have a boyfriend yet? What happened with the actor, has he moved on to pastures new?’
‘No,’ Edie said. She paused. ‘I don’t know.’
She’d re-read Elliot’s Guardian interview many a time. He looked pensive and … well, devastating in the accompanying photo. His measured words about the difficulties of his real parents and generosity of his adoptive parents and the sympathetic tone of the piece made it hard to imagine anyone was going to be very hard on him, when his father made his effort to blacken his character. Edie had a brief look at the chatter online and it seemed the taint of tragedy made women more in love with him than ever. It made Edie feel possessive.
‘I really did like that actor you know, and amazingly he maybe liked me at one point, but the trail went cold,’ she blurted to Margot, carelessly.
‘That’s actors for you. They’re itinerants, darling. Wherever they lay their hat is their home. If you want to settle down, you don’t want someone laying his hat somewhere else by next week. I should know. Gordon’s—’ Margot made air quote marks, ‘“hat” was better travelled than Phileas Fogg.’
‘Some sex would’ve been nice though,’ Edie muttered, to much cackling from Margot.
She hadn’t seen her dad walk into the garden, who overheard this and immediately remembered he’d forgotten something indoors. Both her father and Meg had softened slightly toward Margot since the awesome chocolate gateau. Meg hadn’t officially tried it, of course. She merely conceded it looked tasty, based on zero first-hand information.
‘I’ll think about it,’ Margot said.
That evening, Edie went to meet Hannah and Nick in the grounds of Wollaton Hall for the outdoor cinema.
Thoughts of Elliot infected her mind, hardly avoidable when she’d last been here when the place was a Gun City murder scene. Things were so different between them that night. She remembered Elliot drawing her into his arms. Hardly likely to happen now, she thought, glumly.
They unpacked their fold-out chairs and picnic food, and cracked open beers. ‘Look, mine’s got a cup holder in the arm!’ Nick said, slotting his can of Stella into it. ‘And I’ve got Marks & Spencer pork pies with hardboiled eggs in the middle. True content
ment,’ Nick said. ‘Apart from the fact I will never know the touch of a woman again.’
Hannah prodded Nick’s hand with a forefinger.
‘There you go.’
‘I am sated.’
‘The temporary toilets are over there, for your clean-up.’
Edie always felt worlds better for being with her friends. As the sun set, a safe distance from other cineastes, she told Hannah and Nick about the whole sorry saga with Elliot.
Hannah frowned at her and drew the blanket around her. She always felt the cold.
‘Pass me another Mini Roll, please. Am I being very stupid or are you being very stupid?’
Edie frowned back. ‘History would suggest it’s much more likely to be me. So this is worrying.’
‘He didn’t want you to sleep with his brother because he wanted to sleep with you himself, didn’t he? What am I missing?’ Hannah picked the foil from her Mini Roll.
‘Nah … I don’t think it was that strong a wish, if it existed at all …’
Through a red-mist fug when they fought, had Edie missed this? Was that seriously possible? She’d thought he was just doubling down on bullshit.
‘… Why not say so, if he did?’ Edie said.
‘Why does anyone not say so? It’s intimidating, to come out with it, if you’re not sure of the other person. Whoever you are.’
‘OK, but now we’ve sorted it out and he’s acting like I don’t matter at all.’
Nick crumpled his first can and popped a second.
‘Do you think sometimes you’ve treated this man a bit too much like he’s from another planet? I mean, by the normal rules of interaction, I agree with Hannah, it sounds like he was into you.’
Hannah nodded.
‘Look at his behaviour in the round. He sent you flowers, flirted with you, confided in you. It’s all pointing towards him liking you, not thinking you’re a Steer Well Clear,’ Hannah said.
They made a good case.
Who's That Girl? Page 33