Who's That Girl?

by Mhairi McFarlane

  Wow, his international jet-set life, where money and geography really wasn’t a consideration. For a split second, Edie let herself feel what it would be like to be lady of that manor. And just as quickly, she let it go.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Her voice came out sounding lower than she expected.

  ‘Don’t thank me, you daft arse. It’s not about thanks.’

  ‘It is, because it’s amazing you’ve asked me and I’m grateful and so, thank you.’

  ‘Oh, right. This sounds fully ominous.’

  Elliot stepped back.

  ‘Elliot, I’ve thought about nothing else but how to be with you. But I’m staying here.’

  ‘In the UK?’

  ‘In Nottingham.’ Edie said. ‘I have my family here and I don’t want to leave them again so soon, or my best friends. I have a job I can do remotely. I gave London some good years. It’s time for a change.’

  ‘I understand,’ Elliot nodded. ‘Then it’s huge phone bills and flying back and forth for a few months and then we could look for a place.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Well, here and there. We’d figure it out.’

  Edie shook her head.

  ‘You know this isn’t how it works. Successful actors don’t commute to the Midlands from California. I’d have to go to America.’

  Elliot made a face.

  ‘Don’t “successful actor” me, Edie, that’s shit,’ Elliot said. ‘I’m offering you any compromise you want.’ He paused and she could see he was really, really hurt, ‘If it’s a no it’s a no, but don’t hide behind the logistics.’

  Edie put both her hands on his upper arms, as he dropped his chin and avoided her gaze.

  ‘I’m not being ungrateful about what you’re offering. Think about it. You have to try America. And you said it yourself, you’ll get a big job and you’ll never be around. If we got a place together anywhere, my life would be on hold, waiting for you to come home every night. Trying not to hit the gin and pills thinking about what you’d been doing all day, some days.’

  Elliot met her gaze and raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, it’s that.’

  ‘No it’s not that. My point is we’d be unequal.’

  Elliot opened his mouth to speak and stopped, paused and composed himself. Edie felt her chest compress.

  ‘My mum said to me, No sensible girl will want to commit to you now, it’ll be like marrying Prince Harry,’ Elliot said with a taut, miserable smile. ‘I laughed at her. It’s true, isn’t it? Here I am with one. And she doesn’t.’

  ‘It’s not that stuff. I like you far too much to let any newspaper story put me off. It’s because giving me what I want would make you unhappy, and me giving you what you want would make me unhappy.’

  ‘It can be figured out.’

  ‘It can’t. You have to go. I have to stay. Trust me, I haven’t been saying anything because I’ve been thinking about nothing else, hoping to find another answer. It’s the hardest and simplest decision I’ve ever made, because it’s so clear. I wish it wasn’t.’

  Elliot shook his head and looked completely agonised, yet Edie knew the one thing he wouldn’t say – and she didn’t want him to say – was that he’d stay. It wasn’t his reality any more and it couldn’t be, however much he loved her. He was passing through on his way somewhere else, as Margot had said. Edie would have to tag along and fit into his life, one way or another, and she wasn’t prepared to make that sacrifice again, not even, she was astounded to find, for him. She wanted her own life. She’d finally learned to value it. She’d learned how to live it.

  ‘Elliot,’ Edie said, ‘also. I’m thirty-six. You could have anyone you—’

  Elliot looked outraged, so much so it startled her.

  ‘Oh my God. Do not,’ he cut across her, ‘do NOT say that to me, for one single second. If you say that, all it tells me is you don’t believe I feel for you what you feel for me, which is completely insulting.’

  ‘I do believe you,’ she said.

  ‘But …?’

  ‘But everything else I’ve said.’

  ‘So, what? It’s over?’ Elliot said, and his eyes welled up.

  Edie had to swallow hard. His tears were going to bring on her tears.

  ‘Now’s not the right time. That doesn’t mean it won’t ever be. But you’re not on a promise, when you leave. You’re free to do what you want,’ Edie found that part hard to say. ‘That’s the point.’

  ‘Is this a fidelity test? I’ll pass it, but I don’t see why I have to take it.’

  ‘No, no, no. Absolutely not.’

  ‘If you’re building up to saying, “and if it’s meant to be, it will be,” I will buy you a dream catcher and tell you to sod off,’ Elliot said, wiping under his now-streaming eyes. ‘Relationships are choices, it’s not about fate and karma and all that.’

  ‘I know. None of this is because I don’t love you enough to try something difficult. This is too precious for me to mess it up by doing something that every instinct I have tells me is wrong. It’s taken me so long to get my life in order, Elliot. I can’t throw it all away to sit around alone on the other side of the world, waiting for you to live your life and then find time for me. Can you see what I’m saying?’

  Elliot took a shuddering breath.

  ‘My head says maybe, sort of. My heart says no, this is stupid. We love each other. There has to be a way.’

  ‘The way is to do the difficult thing, go our separate ways and see what happens.’

  A silence where the only sounds were those of mutual stifled sobs, sniffing and throat clearing.

  He looked at her with pink eyes. ‘Why don’t you just say it’s over, for good?’

  ‘Because I love you. Never say never.’

  ‘You’re really not going to change your mind? I’ll be looking over my shoulder in Heathrow, you know. I know how this shit works. I’ve seen films.’

  Edie laughed in relief and sadness and affection and was so glad he wasn’t angry, pushing her away and saying Oh well then, you don’t care enough. That would’ve broken her. Then again, it was another reminder of the size of person she was giving up.

  ‘Please say you understand,’ Edie said, holding him. ‘It wasn’t easy to think. Or say.’

  ‘I do understand, I just hate it,’ Elliot said. ‘I think part of me knew it was coming. This is the most elegant and confusing dumping I’ve ever had.’ Tears ran down Elliot’s face. ‘But I can see you mean it.’

  He hugged Edie again so hard it momentarily squeezed the breath out of her. As their breathing became more even, he muttered into her hair.

  ‘Don’t marry some beard-having craft-ale-bore bicycle clips wanker and move to the street next to my parents and call your kids Victorian scullery maid names, OK? Don’t break my heart twice over.’

  Edie was laughing, as well as crying. She gulped and said: ‘Don’t marry a Victoria’s Secret model called something like Varsity and move to Malibu and buy two ugly Boxer dogs and be in a shit side-project rock band. No one will tell you it’s shit but it will be terrible.’

  They held on to each other for a minute, eyes closed and arms thrown round each other, to record the feeling for posterity.

  ‘This is goodbye though,’ Elliot said, wiping at his eyes with his jacket sleeve. ‘You know that? I can’t stay awake all night staring at you and crying. I’ll only spend the whole time pleading with you to change your mind.’

  Edie nodded miserably, she had known that, which is why she had avoided it. ‘Yes. I know.’

  Elliot mumbled into her hair: ‘How will I ever find anyone like you again? Tell me that, eh. OK. Fuck. Goodbye, Edie.’

  Edie was glad she wasn’t looking him in the eyes for those last words, or her resolve might’ve finally wavered.

  ‘Goodbye, Elliot.’

  They disentangled and looked at each other, both teary messes, and Edie grabbed her bag from the floor. To make an elegant exit, she’d forego the toothbrush in the bathr
oom. Elliot kissed her hard on the top of her head, and reached down and held her left hand.

  He wiped at his eyes again with his other hand, shook his head. Edie squeaked ‘bye’, and slipped through the door, closing it gently behind her.

  As she fled down the carpeted stairs, making another emotional exit from a hotel, it was all she could do not to turn and run back up to Elliot, into his arms. She had to let him go.

  In the time she’d known him, she’d found everything that mattered to her, and that was enough.

  76

  Edie and Meg scattered their mother’s ashes at Lumsdale waterfall in the Derbyshire dales, a beautiful place in Matlock their dad told them she used to like walking with him, long ago, before either of them were born.

  Their dad retrieved the urn from the back of the wardrobe. It was printed with her name, Isla Thompson, and a date, in small type, as if it was a doctor’s prescription. It was strange looking at it, trying to comprehend some fragments of their long-lost mother were contained inside.

  The spot was as wonderful as their dad had promised: damp emerald green, ferns and bracken underfoot, complete peace, apart from the sound of rushing water.

  ‘She loved the waterfall,’ their dad said, when Meg raised the contradiction that she’d died in the Trent. ‘I promise, you she’d approve.’

  They opened the urn and found a tiny cellophane bag inside, which had to be torn open. They took turns to lean over and shake the fine, silvery powder into the clear stream, all they had left of a precious human being who’d left their lives so long ago.

  ‘Do we say goodbye?’ Meg said, in tears, and their dad said: ‘Say anything you like.’

  ‘Bye, Mum. I wish I could remember you more,’ Meg said, and Edie held her and their dad wept, and then they ended up wrapped round each other.

  ‘Bye, Mum,’ Edie whispered. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I wish she could meet you both, as you are now,’ their dad said. ‘She’d think you were both wonderful.’ Her dad’s laugh broke through his tears. ‘She always did have a soft spot for an eccentric.’

  ‘I’m not an eccentric!’ Edie said, and then they were all laughing and sobbing.

  ‘She adored you both, you know. You were the apples of her eye. She thought you were better off without her. That’s what I can’t—’ Her dad couldn’t finish the sentence.

  They simply stood for a while, letting the loveliness of the surroundings calm their spirits.

  ‘The way I see it,’ Edie said, holding both their hands, as they looked at the water rushing over the rocks, ‘you get people who are important to you, for as long as you get them. You never know how long it will be. You have to accept it and make use of the time you have. We didn’t have Mum very long. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t make a huge difference to us. We loved her and she loved us. We’ll never forget her. We still love her.’

  A plane passed high in the clouds overhead and Edie gazed up at it. She squeezed both their hands.

  They drove to Matlock Bath and went for lunch in a pub with a flotilla of motorcycles outside it. They were deep in biker country.

  ‘Isla is such a beautiful name,’ Edie said. ‘If I ever have a girl child, she’ll have the middle name Isla.’

  ‘If you still have a viable uterus,’ Meg said, conversationally.

  ‘Dependent on that,’ Edie agreed. ‘There’s probably a family of moles living in there by now.’

  ‘Good grief, Meg. Never get a job as a political speech writer,’ their dad said.

  ‘That reminds me. I’ve applied for a bunch of jobs,’ Meg said. ‘At care homes. I thought I could use the experience I’ve already got and get something with more hours.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Edie said. ‘Well done. Actually, I’ve been wondering,’ she continued, as she plunked a piece of scampi in her pot of tartare sauce, ‘if you’d like to live with me?’

  Meg did a double take.

  ‘What? Why?’ she recovered, ‘I mean, thanks. Really?’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Edie said. ‘I thought it might be fun. I’ve been looking at houses in Carrington. I need a lodger, they might be big for me on my own. If Dad could spare you? It’s only an idea. We’d be walking distance from Dad, obviously, too.’

  ‘Dad, what do you think?’ Meg said.

  ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea. You might, both, er, feel more comfortable to entertain young gentleman callers under Edie’s roof. Can’t stay as comforts to your father forever.’

  ‘My squalid morals guarantee it will be naught more than a bonking shop, Dad. Are you finishing those chips?’ Edie helped herself to one.

  ‘I have one condition, however.’

  ‘Yes?’ Edie said.

  ‘You take those bloody squawking budget parrots which I was completely hoodwinked into letting over the threshold. RSPB, my arse.’

  77

  Four months later

  Edie and Meg had never catered Christmas lunch for guests before, and it’d be a lie to say the planning went off without a hitch or a cross word. The last few months living together in Edie’s three-bed redbrick semi had gone extraordinarily well, but this hospitality tested the reborn sisterly harmony.

  With some swearing and loss of temper, days before, she and Meg had assembled an IKEA side table on wheels, one that could accommodate the Meg spread, adjacent to and yet separate from the main meaty event. They drove there in Edie’s new Mini, which had been purchased with the funds from her bestselling book.

  The official Elliot Owen autobiography had sold an awful lot, way beyond expectations, netting Edie a hefty bonus. Whether it was simply the Elliot Owen effect, or the result of the publicity with Edie, no one was quite sure. As Richard relayed with evident pleasure: ‘Failure is an orphan and success has many parents, and let me tell you, there’s now so many parents of this project you’d think we were in a sex cult in Utah.’

  Edie couldn’t recommend having cardboard boxes full of hardback books bearing a stunning cover photograph of your beloved and much-missed ex-boyfriend around the house for your psychic calm, but the money had come in handy. She’d deliberately swerved knowing much about Jan’s book, but the splash it made seemed to have been minimal, and the more diehard Owen fans had organised a boycott.

  The dining room in Edie’s house had doors that could be opened on to the front room, creating a bigger space, and they’d crammed in seven chairs round a table that was looking pretty cramped with this many place settings.

  Edie’s small galley kitchen was a chaotic scene, as one p.m. drew near: pans on every hob, cross-hatched Brussel sprouts waiting in a colander, the turkey resting while Meg blasted her somewhat fecal-looking nut loaf at the top setting. There was stuff everywhere. Edie felt if only she had a second kitchen, of equivalent size, her cooking would flourish and her angst would disappear.

  Things eased when Meg made an executive decision to pop one of the cavas early: ‘chef’s privileges.’

  Edie ran over to the CD player and moments later, they toasted the festive season and their culinary efforts to ‘My Funny Valentine’, background harmonies by Beryl and Meryl.

  ‘It’s our tradition we have Frank Sinatra during the making of lunch,’ Edie said.

  ‘Is it?’ Meg said. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since now. Traditions have to start somewhere. I’m starting one.’

  Meg was unsure as Frank Sinatra represented a lot of patriarchal control and gangster capitalism, but Edie pointed out as a Sicilian-American he’d also done a lot for immigrants, so they agreed to overlook Ol’ Blue Eyes more questionable qualities, for one day.

  As Edie stirred the cranberry sauce, she wondered about absent friends. She had no idea where he was spending this day. Maybe on a beach. Maybe at a new girlfriend’s. There had been no texts, tweets, emails, no 21st-century communications between them, whatsoever. They both had instinctively understood that not enough would be worse than nothing at all. Fraser had made an effort to stay in touch
however, to let her know she was gone but not forgotten, and Edie was pleased.

  ‘I have to tell you this so you don’t ever think he’s being ignorant or rude if you have any big personal news,’ he said, in his first call. ‘Elliot told me he didn’t want to know, on pain of death, if you met anyone.’

  Fraser clearly thought this was hard for Edie to hear but it comforted her, to know that was mutual.

  ‘Likewise, if that’s OK. I doubt the media will respect my wishes in this matter, mind you.’

  ‘I think you’re both being massive crywankers myself, you could just Skype. But what do I know.’

  They had met for coffee a few weeks ago and Fraser said he knew that Elliot told Edie about the adoption.

  In the long conversation that followed, Fraser said, ‘You realise what that meant, him telling you? That was well huge.’ Edie agreed it had been ‘well huge’, and at the time, she hadn’t realised.

  The media definitely didn’t get Edie’s memo about Elliot, far from it. And a few weeks ago, Edie couldn’t avoid some good news of his professional success, a major film role that meant he was going to get even more famous, and he wasn’t coming back. It was possibly what prompted the postcard.

  It was upstairs in Edie’s bedroom, tucked in the mirror on her night table: palm trees silhouetted against a Californian sunset. It had only two sentences on it, the most reread sentences in the history of sentences.

  I notice, when you’re not around. I think the word is ‘saudade’.

  Edie had allowed herself one bout of sobbing and fretting she should’ve gone with him. Then looked around at her home, and reminded herself why she hadn’t. What happened between them wasn’t sad, it was wonderful. It would be with her forever.