You Belong With Me

chapter004

After Elliot’s robust indifference, Edie had started to hope her Instagram judgement fail had slipped past the censors and was a momentary lapse she could choose to learn from. Emphasis on the choose.

Yet her mobile shrilled with an incoming call from RICHARD within minutes of Elliot’s taxi pulling away to his parents’ house, so it was clearly nonsensical self-soothing.

Richard was her employer, proprietor of the ad agency Ad Hoc, and more intimidating than that, one of the human beings Edie most respected in all the world. He had a mind like a steel trap, the sanguine manner and good looks of Barack Obama at a podium, and suits so sharp it was like he fashion-directed GQ.

You did not fuck with Richard, and if you did, you’d most certainly find out.

She answered the call in a hot flush of trepidation.

‘Ms Thompson!’ Richard said, vivacious and upbeat. ‘It’s Boxing Day, and instead of enjoying a smorgasbord of cold cuts and my Uncle Stuart’s tangy homemade pickle with a glass of mid-priced champagne, I’m calling you. Can you imagine why that might be?’

‘I have … one idea.’

‘Do you. I’m told there is a depiction of what the downmarket titles refer to as a “steamy clinch” – you, with a highly significant other. It appeared on one of the devil’s doodle-pads. Instagram, I believe?’

‘Richard, I’m so, SO sorry – it won’t happen again, I—’

‘Let me stop you there. I’ll tell you what I told my helpful source. Your private life is no business of mine, unless it impacts your work. Which to my knowledge, this time, it hasn’t.’

‘Oh. Thank you.’

Edie hadn’t been quite sure what she was guilty of, she supposed, beyond ongoing silliness in a public forum. During she and Elliot’s pre-courtship phase, they’d been papped arguing in the street. Richard had reasonably pointed out that this wasn’t exactly the behaviour he wanted the autobiography’s publisher to see from the firm’s supplied copywriter.

Yet, project over, project wreathed in bestselling glory, what were the rules on portraits with Elliot Owen?

‘This isn’t a telling off – it’s to let you know that as well as a colleague feeling it was their heavy burden to notify me, I’ve also had a call from a silver-tongued gentleman at the Mail, wondering if I had any insights to offer.’

Edie gulped. As she’d thought, it had escaped into the jungle. ‘Oh God. Why call you and not me?’

‘Because the agency landline on the website defaults to my mobile, out of hours. If you’ve not been bothered, they haven’t got your number, I assume.’

Yet.

It was even more dispiriting to hear that Edie still had active adversaries within the Ad Hoc agency. It wasn’t unexpected – her situationship disaster and ex-colleague Jack Marshall had been sacked, ditto his former bride, her ex-colleague Charlotte, and her frenemy and their foot soldier Louis. Yet the poison likely lingered in the system.

Being caught kissing a groom on his wedding dayby the bride was the kind of infraction people tended to remember.

Several of those still present had signed a petition asking her to leave. Edie suspected there was a view that cheats had prospered, with her staying on the payroll and scoring remote working.

They were passably nice to her at the Christmas party, but then, people were to your face, and she had acquired a very famous boyfriend since she last saw most of them. Guess they’d get even nicer now. To her face.

‘Be on your guard that not everyone is behaving with honour about what you share online. I reminded Jessica that those who bully in my workplace, subtly or not, get their P45s.’

Oh, Jess. Edie had hoped Jess might’ve moved on. She was a comrade of Charlotte’s and had been one of the first names on that petition. After Charlotte’s departure, Jess had unofficially become a kind of leader of the office.

Her hostility especially stung Edie for a ridiculous reason: Jess, with her dirty laugh and line in sarcasm, masses of auburn hair in a top knot, peg trousers and loafers, didn’t present as any sort of sorority Mean Girl. She looked like someone Edie might’ve been friends with in the Before Times. To be disliked by her felt like a proper indictment: marked a traitor to the sisterhood by someone who’d not assign the status frivolously. Indeed, it made Edie the Mean Girl.

Of course, Jess and Charlotte would probably still be in contact, wherever Charlotte was now. It’d be Jess’s duty to breadcrumb Edie disgraces, rumours and talking points.

‘What was Jessica’s excuse for bringing it to you? Do they think I’m an embarrassment?’ Edie asked, not really wanting to know.

‘Oh, she harked back to the scrap in the street and some Ad Hoc clients grumbling at the time. It was a thought you should know before the media rang me, but I can spot a malicious stirring of the pot at my great age.’

Edie mumbled thanks.

‘So, is it all on and all in with the actor chap? Thought he was something akin to a harrowing ordeal to work with?’ Richard said.

Edie understood the genuine paternal concern underneath the slight disbelief: Richard thought she might be picking Jack Marshall 2.0.

‘Honestly, he wasn’t – he’s great. Absolutely nothing difficult about him at all. His critics were using difficult as useful shorthand for “too smart to do what we want”. I went in with the same preconceptions because of his … status.’

She felt like Elizabeth Bennet promising her dad that Mr Darcy wasn’t a proud dick after all and that the great estate at Pemberley wasn’t a factor, promise.

‘But you’re not off to the Hollywood Hills?’

‘We’re trialling an arrangement where I visit him and we go to Nobu Malibu and eat snapper sashimi. And he visits me and we go to Bacon Derek’s food truck at Sneinton Market for breakfast baps.’

‘Splendid. Very on trend. It’s what I believe is called the high low. In other news, I’d intended to leave this announcement until the New Year, but since I’ve got you now – how do you fancy running a Nottingham office for me? I’ve decided, with it having gone great guns for you since you moved up, it makes sense for you to helm the first official regional outpost of my empire.’

‘Seriously?! I’d love that.’

Edie beamed in surprise and gratification: Richard praise was always earned.

‘Great. I’ve earmarked premises in the Lace Market. Secondly, you’re not a manager without someone to manage. I’m not going to lie to you, the response from the metropolitan elite here when I requested volunteers to relocate – on a generous package, I might add – was quite something. I started compiling the greatest hits. “Is it a market town?” to “Is there a seaside?” “Does anywhere make a serviceable cacio e pepe?” and my favourite – “Crouch End is northern enough.”’

Edie guffawed. Yeah, and she bet that many cast it as opting for a prison cell with Rose West.

‘However, one brave soul not only stepped up but said he genuinely liked the idea – Declan Dunne. Do you remember him from the Christmas party? Tall. Irish, obviously. Sunny disposition. Strangely partial to exercise.’

‘I … don’t, off the top of my head.’

And new people don’t really fraternise with the notorious wedding-wrecking tart who can even draw characters from fictional multiverses into the tractor beam pull radiating from her crotch.

‘I think you’ll really gel. He reminds me a lot of you, in some ways,’ Richard was saying. ‘Promising chap. I wouldn’t ask you to spend all day together if I didn’t think the chemistry was right.’

‘Understood,’ Edie said. ‘I trust your taste.’

This was true, and yet, privately, she doubted. Declan might well have been infected by the sniping. Worst case, he was running reconnaissance. Pretty big commitment to being nosy, yes, but these days, Edie wouldn’t rule out any far fetched possibility.

‘He’s going to report to you at nine a.m. on the first Friday back. Thought it might be nice to start on a day where you can take him for a drink at lunchtime, and he’s got the weekend to settle in.’

‘Typing “get him wasted” into my Notes app as we speak, got it.’

Richard laughed. ‘Not to pressurise you or make you dread Mr Dunne’s arrival – especially as it sounds like you’re going to have a busy social life – but if you did fancy taking him under your wing and acting as local tour guide, it’d be hugely appreciated, I’m sure. He’s the self-sufficient type who won’t take much launching.’

‘I’ll try my best. I can rank the pizza restaurants and save him from the fighting pubs, at least.’

‘One last thing, Edie. In case it wasn’t clear, I will leave it to your discretion whether you want to confirm to your colleagues that you’re stepping out with Marlon Nando’s. Speak soon.’

After they rung off, Edie had a notion to check her Instagram followers to see if this guy had been curious about her. Yep, there he was: Declan Dunne, or @dunneonthewold. She hadn’t recognised him to follow him back, and she remedied this now, thinking she had to be positive at the outset if they were soon going to be at close quarters.

She scrolled his profile. He was tall, attractive in an unkempt way, and good-natured to an extent that it transmitted through the lens. He looked like the result of DNA splicing Fred and Shaggy in Scooby-Doo. A mere four pictures ago, last Bonfire Night, was a photo of a grinning Declan proudly brandishing a sausage in tongs at a barbecue. Her new nemesis Jessica was wrapped round his waist, one of her hands making a peace sign. Edie twinged. You like peace, do you? Not much of a peacenik as far as I’m concerned.

The caption made it clear that Declan was a good enough friend to hang out at her house.

They were affectionate in the comments, too.

Aww. Love you, Dunny! King of the Cumberland Ring! xxx

Great to see you all! xx

Ye gads. Jessica had her husband still entirely Insta-visible within the last six months, so she doubted their bond was romantic, but fact remained that Edie’s Eden might have a snake problem.

No way had Jessica not warned Declan off working with Edie. If so, why didn’t he heed it? It pretty much had to be a spying mission. Even if it wasn’t intended as such, it might possibly turn into one.

She blocked Jess and set her Instagram to private. Gesture politics: there were still plenty who could pass her material if they wanted to, but Edie felt it necessary to make it clear to Jessica she knew.

It had been such brilliant news, and now this.

The high low.