You Belong With Me

chapter005

They assembled at the gates of Wollaton Hall’s majestic deer park in a sub-zero temperature, Hannah using the what3words app to share the precise location: salt.metro.bounty.

Last time Edie was here, she was being summoned by the director of Elliot’s then-drama to explain why he’d gone briefly AWOL from the set. Said director was certain Elliot was busy between the sheets with his ghost-writer; in fact he’d gone into hiding after the news broke that he was adopted. At the time, Edie had thought the notion he’d be interested in her in that way was humiliatingly preposterous.

‘I always thought that what3words app was for people who’d been abducted?’ Nick said. ‘I wish someone would abduct me. Whose thoroughly dipshitted idea was this, anyway?’

He shuddered into the Liberty print scarf wound in the collar of his coat. Nick loved clothes far more than either of his female best friends did, so it was three-quarter length wool with a houndstooth pattern. He looked clad for a first date somewhere smart, not trailing around a field.

It had taken Edie until now to replace her tatty tartan parka with something spendy in tailored navy with toggles.

‘Mine. A Boxing Day walk has always been my family tradition!’ Hannah said.

‘Inherited generational trauma,’ Nick replied. ‘I notice both girlfriends made excuses.’ He looked to Elliot. ‘Idiot.’

Elliot military saluted him. ‘Look, let’s be real – I want to get laid.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Nick pulled the vape pen from his mouth. ‘I thought we were going on a walk.’

Elliot had been there first when Edie arrived, his dark head bowed as he stared at his phone.

‘Hey, the app actually calls the house Wayne Manor – playful,’ Elliot had said in greeting, looking from handset to gesture behind him, up the hill at the Grade I Elizabethan stately home that had doubled as Batman’s mansion.

Edie had a teenaged shiver of delight that he’d turned up: ooh that’s my boyfriend innocence that was Class A spiked with that’s literally Elliot Owen.

You’d be saying yes to Elliot. His fame felt like a greater obstacle to her than to him. That was unexpected, but then he had been living with his double-identity imposter-self for years and Edie for only months. He’d sought it; the spotlight had landed on her by chance.

Last time around, she’d perceived a shift in how she thought of him as familiarity grew: eventually he became someone she knew who was also famous, as opposed to a famous person she knew.

Their time apart had affected that a little. They were no longer in the bubble where he was making a show set in this city and they had regular work-dates for her to transcribe key passages from his history. He’d been away and done freshly impressive things, and Edie needed to acclimatise again.

Meg joined them last, cheeks coloured from having rushed, her blue scrubs covered by a brown teddy-bear coat that Edie had got her for Christmas.

‘Sorry, sorry! I’ve never got that bus before – it took ages.’

‘It’s OK, you didn’t miss anything. The plan is doing more exercise,’ Nick said. His comedic grousing was an established habit, and everyone knew he was glad to be there, however well he hid it.

‘Hi, Elliot, I didn’t know you were coming!’ Meg said.

‘He explained why he was keen on coming in general, but you missed it – let’s leave it that way,’ Nick said to Meg.

‘Grateful for your restraint,’ Elliot said to Nick.

Another thing Edie appreciated about Elliot: he hadn’t said can’t we be alone? He was totally up for dossing around at Hannah’s lovely flat in The Park after this, as he had been for Pictionary on Christmas Day.

Elliot told her it could work, but she realised he’d also thrown himself into showing her it could.

‘I said the reward was Chinese food and old-fashioneds at mine, Nick,’ Hannah said. ‘You accepted the terms gladly at the time.’

‘October Me hates December Me, I can tell you that much,’ Nick said.

‘Excuse me. I’m sorry to intrude but I’m a big fan,’ said a well-spoken man with an intense gaze in a Carhartt insulated jacket. He looked about forty. ‘We never missed an episode of Blood Gold, but it wasn’t the same after you left.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ Elliot said smoothly, never startled, while the rest of them were visibly startled.

A stealth attack. It was Boxing Day! Fame didn’t get public holidays – or rather, holidays from the public.

‘Would it be OK to get a picture with my wife?’

They followed his pointing and saw that Carhartt man was an emissary from a group of seven wildly goggling people.

‘Sure. Given there’s more of you, shall I come to you?’ Elliot said.

He walked over and shook gloved hands, submitted with charm to the rota of pleasantries and selfies.

‘I would never ask that – way too shameful. Even if it was David Attenborough or something,’ Meg said, watching in bemused horror.

Edie thought this was true. Her sister had entirely her own rules of etiquette, and bothering notable personages was far too status-conscious lamestream.

‘That was mad. I didn’t even notice them noticing you!’ Hannah hissed, once Elliot had been released from his duties and they’d stomped a short way into the park.

‘Standing still for any period of time increases the risk,’ Elliot said.

‘Like thrombosis,’ Nick offered.

‘In the States, they’re prepared to shout “is it you?” but British people are scared of misidentification, so they like time to confer,’ Elliot said. ‘Like they’re a quiz team.’

Edie took Elliot’s hand. She was aware, and wondered if he was, that she was instinctively doing it only once they were beyond any current onlooker sightlines.

It had a funny redolence of not wanting your peers at school to know, in case you got stared at and teased. She needed to feel ready, that was all. Edie wasn’t quite ready.

‘Shift go OK, Meg?’ Hannah asked.

‘Yes, it was quiet, and we had mince pies. After I helped John with the shower commode, I explained about the faecal plume.’

‘The faecal what?’ Edie said.

‘You don’t know about the faecal plume either?!’ Meg said ‘The dispersal of particles of waste matter when you flush the toilet! It’s why you should always keep the lid down!’

‘The faecal plume is one of the villains in my movie,’ Elliot said, and everyone laughed, Edie partly in relief.

She was lucky Elliot found Meg an offbeat pleasure.

Enjoy your soul-nourishing winter ramble; my sister’s understanding of etiquette rules out asking for selfies and rules in discussing the arse aerosol.

‘Oh look, a deer,’ said Hannah, not seeing a deer but obviously feeling as Edie did about pursuing this further.

Not long afterwards, somewhere in their circuit of the park and across to the frozen mirror stillness of the lake, they hit the moment of endorphin release when battling the elements started to feel hearty and life affirming, instead of arduous. Even Nick became positive.

‘Yesterday was magic, by the way, Edith,’ he said. ‘I thought we must do it next year, then fretted: what if any of us aren’t available to do it next year? This is a curse of the human condition. I’ve discussed it with my counsellor. Enjoy good times; don’t become obsessed with prolonging and managing them. The only constant in life is change. You cannot step twice into the same stream.’

‘I know you’ve switched to vaping, but are you smoking weed?’ Hannah said.

‘I’m making a valid observation about how life is in flux,’ Nick said.

‘Why can’t you step twice into the same stream?’ Meg asked, fists balled for warmth in the front pockets of her coat.

‘The water’s moved?’ Elliot said. ‘It’s not the same water?’

‘Five points to Owen – I think that’s what the Greek philosopher meant,’ Nick said. ‘And in time, the water changes the rocks.’

When the others had briefly strode on ahead, Elliot said to Edie: ‘My parents are looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. Fraz sends his apologies – he’s off to his new girlfriend’s in Suffolk.’

‘I’m looking forward to seeing them! Ah, Fraz. He and I still send each other links to idiot things every week. No words or explanation, only the raccoon getting chased by the police and so on.’

‘Sounds like my brother.’ Elliot paused. ‘You never sent them to me, though? Maybe I like felon raccoons?’ He was smiling, making it clear this was merely curiosity.

‘I wanted to message you all the time, but I knew I’d become quietly obsessed with it if we did. It’d turn into a drip-feed of false hope. Then one day I’d see a story that would explain why you didn’t reply as often any more, and I couldn’t face that – feeling like you’d betrayed me and our raccoon.’

‘I get it,’ Elliot said. ‘Or, I got it. All or nothing. I didn’t want to be friends either.’

‘Exactly.’

Edie breathed in and out, a lungful of chill oxygen, and contemplated how lucky she was. Was that what she was frightened of, accepting good fortune? The way this walk was meant to go was Edie wondering if Elliot was only fifteen minutes’ drive away, at his parents’ – or ziplining into a pool, somewhere exotic.

Instead, he was sharing the same what3words location with her: i.love.you.

They’d said it before and said it again, by the glow of the chilli fairy lights.

That other version of her Boxing Day would’ve been a sort of agony, but there was safety in it – it contained no challenges for her, other than enduring it.

Edie thought about Nick’s stoner wisdom. What part of not surrendering to happiness was fear of not staying that way?

When the good news and the bad news was: you could never achieve that certainty anyway. Let go and jump. Or rather, hold on.