You Belong With Me

chapter008

On the walk home, Elliot’s mother twitched Edie’s sleeve, abruptly fascinated in how a house they passed had got a profusion of magenta bougainvillea to grow ‘in that lovely arched shape’.

It was a few moments, and suggesting twine was involved, before Edie twigged that Deborah was inventing a pretext to hang back and put some distance between them and Elliot and his father.

‘Edie, I’m sorry if this is overbearing. My son’s happiness matters to me too much not to risk grabbing this chance to speak to you.’

‘OK,’ Edie said, abruptly very worried. And things had been going so well. What was coming? Now, I know a ‘pre-nup’ seems unromantic …

‘Could we keep the fact we’ve spoken between us? Elliot’s naturally very protective of you, and I don’t know if he’d judge this outrageously overstepping.’

Edie was now wondering what she needed protecting from. She didn’t know if she objected until she knew what this was, but to say so felt combative.

‘This sounds ominous …’ she said more neutrally, trying not to make it clear her teeth were practically rattling.

‘Oh, I hope it’s not! I’m flapping. Bob and I are utterly thrilled you and Elliot have worked it out. You’re remarkably good for him. There are so many girls who’d fall at his feet, and that’s useless. I assume he told you what happened today? The story with his biological father?’

Edie nodded. ‘Yes, unfortunately.’

‘Elliot has this curse of appearing to cope when he’s not coping. He makes sure everyone else is all right and ignores and denies his own needs. He was like that as a very little boy. You’d think coming from the chaos he had that he’d have been badly behaved or difficult, but he was like a tiny adult, checking I’d remembered my house keys. He had to be a grown-up, because the first grown-ups he knew weren’t safe.’

‘I can see that,’ Edie said.

‘When you had your time apart, Elliot talked about you a lot. I worried about him, how desolate he’d be if he heard you’d met someone else, and alone with his thoughts in some hotel room. His ever-tactful brother told him to cheer up because “he has everything” and Elliot replied that none of it meant anything without you.’

Edie flushed with pleasure. She wished she could enjoy his mother ratting him out like this, but the fact it was a preamble made her wary. Did she think they were unhealthily infatuated? Or that Edie had blown hot and cold?

‘… So, I hope you don’t mind, he told me about your mother.’

Oh. Right. Here we go. Edie steeled herself, hoping this wasn’t a go to counselling and don’t bring any incipient mental illness into our family speech.Edie had Googled is post natal depression hereditary herself. She’d be stiffly polite if it was, for Elliot’s sake, even though it was a weaponisation of a tragedy against her.

‘I don’t mind that he told you,’ Edie said honestly, thinking what she might mind would come next.

‘It set me thinking. Aside from the obvious reasons you both get on so well, as bright young things …’

‘Hah. Youngish.’

‘I don’t know if this has occurred to you, but both you and Elliot have known profound loss and abandonment, at young ages. I think there’s a very deep level of understanding between you as a result.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Edie said, rather startled that she hadn’t. She’d thought their traumas were very different.

‘I say abandonment – I know your mother was very ill, and I am sure she didn’t want to leave you.’

‘It’s how it’s felt at times, even if that wasn’t what it was.’

Deborah nodded. Edie saw now why she was keen to keep this exchange from Elliot. Heck of a pep talk. Twenty minutes ago, they were doing coffees and Ferrero Rocher.

‘… It’s a very deep bond, as I say. I fear it could equally cause mistrust and push you apart, if you don’t recognise it’s there – especially with all the silly hoopla that surrounds my son.’

‘You mean we’d worry about … fidelity?’ Edie said, too interested in what Deborah had to say to be embarrassed.

Edie realised at that moment, like being caught in a second’s sun beam, a God ray on a chilly day, how she missed this kind of loving, knowledgeable maternal concern. There was no substitute.

‘About fidelity, about careers, money. Anything, really,’ his mum said. ‘Don’t let it, whatever it is, trigger the ongoing fear that, somehow, someone you love that much will leave.’

Edie couldn’t form a reply for a moment as she absorbed the weight of this.

Deborah glanced over. ‘Oh goodness, sorry! This has been such a lovely evening, and look at how I’ve ruined it! Bob always says I never really retired.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I was a psychotherapist. I trained when the boys were little. It was to help Elliot, really. We didn’t have the same understanding then about the body “keeping score” and so on, but I knew he’d not been unaffected by his start in life. The attitude was that the first few years are “pre-memory”, but of course now we know that nothing is.’

Edie said: ‘Thank you for talking to me about this. Really thank you, not polite thank you.’

‘Oh gosh, I’m so relieved you’re not offended. The stakes couldn’t be higher for him where you’re concerned, and … well … He’s an extraordinary person but vulnerable in ways only his close family understand. For years after he came to us, he was having nightmares so bad, the GP would’ve had us drugging him. I said absolutely not, of course.’

‘He was?’ Edie said, freshly appalled.

‘Oh yes. Some part of his psyche remembers his parents, remembers being put in danger. This is deathly private stuff, and I’d not say this to any girlfriend, Edie – I never have. But I trust you, and I trust his taste.’

She squeezed Edie’s arm, both in approval and to alert her to the fact that Elliot and his dad had stopped ahead of them and would soon be in hearing range.

Edie turned and hugged her. ‘Thank you, Deborah. I promise I won’t repeat it, and I’m so glad he has you.’

‘What was all that conspiring with my mum about?’ Elliot said later in a half-whisper in bed.

His parents were leaving at first light to visit Bob’s sister in Cornwall, and she and Elliot had discreetly established between themselves that, given they’d be alone tomorrow, tonight could be respectfully chaste and involve pyjamas.

Therefore, they were holding hands and talking like teens at a sleepover.

‘She was thanking me for the charitable outreach of dating her undateable son.’

‘Funnily enough, I suspect she was saying something like that. She’s been terrified my career prevents me having an in quotes “normal relationship” with a nice person for ages. Now you’re here, I’m sure she’s taking no chances.’

Edie adjusted her thinking, pondered that she’d short-changed what she knew of Elliot’s parents by wondering if they wanted him to bring home a glamorous Somebody. They wanted him to be happy. If it looked like she could achieve that, she was somebody. The values in this house resided in the right place.

‘Edie,’ Elliot said, sotto voce. ‘Earlier you said “your kids” to me. Sorry if I’m being paranoid, but I feel like assuming you’re thinking the way I am has got me into trouble in the past …’

Edie held her breath. Uh oh. That Big Conversation. She’d probably had enough of those today.

‘Did you phrase it that way ’cos, option one, we’ve not talked about that yet and you didn’t want to presume I’d have them with you? Or, option two, because you see our thing as a very intense rekindling that will quite possibly burn out, and if so, we’ll go have kids with other people? Or, option three, you’re letting me know you don’t want them?’

‘Emphatically, option one,’ Edie said. ‘Which are you?’

‘Also one – that’s a relief.’ Elliot paused. ‘I’ve not brought it up because whatever you want or don’t want is fine by me.’

‘That’s how I feel.’

‘OK. Thank God this was easy – I needed some easy,’ he said.

‘We’re being forced against our will to face up to our huge compatibility,’ Edie whispered.

She felt Elliot relax. She should try reassurance more often and was perhaps guilty of thinking he didn’t need it.

‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Elliot said. ‘Sorry everything was more fraught than intended earlier.’

She could tell he was awkward about breaking down in front of her, and she didn’t blame him. Edie recalled loathing her own public fainting and weeping fit on his set when being trolled online, what felt a lifetime ago.

‘I very much want to be here for anything fraught or less fraught and all stories about your incontinent brother.’

Elliot groaned and laughed, squeezing her in tacit gratitude.

As he went to sleep, Edie looked up at the slab of night sky in the window above them and thought that, while it was true they had compatibility, they didn’t have stability. Today was yet another reminder that their village was built inside a volcano.