You Belong With Me

chapter011

Waiting for host to start the meeting

Edie tapped her fingers as her apprehensiveness prickled. Elliot had passed on her number to his publicist, and here she was, him now Stateside, her still struggling to understand why this was necessary. Her laptop was on her old make-up table in her bedroom, and she was praying Meg didn’t noisily slam the front door below when she came in from her Sunday shift shouting ‘MY MANAGER IS A FULL SHITEHAWK’, mid-meeting.

She’d reminded Meg, but Meg sometimes respected society’s norms and other times decided society needed Megging up a bit.

Ping.

Elliot’s publicist Lillian sprang into full-screen life. She was fifty-something, dark-haired, with shrewd eyes behind large black-framed glasses, and had the white shirt and minimal jewellery look of the tastefully wealthy.

She reminded Edie a little of the make-up artist Bobbi Brown, except she seemed more likely to read Edie her Miranda rights than recommend she contour her nose.

‘Hi! Edie?’ she boomed.

‘Hi, yes! Nice to meet you. You’re Lil—’

‘Elliot tells me you’re in a serious relationship.’

Oof, OK.

‘Yes.’

‘We’re going to discuss how we manage this in the press.’

‘Right.’

In this line of work, in sparkling offices in Manhattan (offices, on a Sunday? Maybe her home office?), you obviously didn’t waste energy trying to ingratiate yourself without purpose. You’re not in Kansas now, Dorothy.

‘The difficulty we have in launching this relationship is that the images already in the public domain are negative,’ Lillian said. ‘We’ve seen a quarrel between you both in the street, and you making aggressive gestures.’

Edie felt she was being told off. ‘That’s the V-sign – it’s popular here,’ Edie said, deciding that even if her humour went down badly, she was still going to use it.

‘We can translate it into the American,’ Lillian said, and Edie couldn’t tell if she was being dryly funny or merely literal.

‘We weren’t a couple then,’ Edie added redundantly, and Lillian regarded her coolly through her Prada eyewear, as if Edie had mistaken her for a relationship counsellor.

‘My advice in future is never lose your temper or argue – it makes the photos more valuable. If someone puts a camera in your face after a meal out and insults you to get a reaction, keep your head down. And hold his hand, so they can’t use the pictures to claim you had a fight.’

Edie nodded. She was going into witness protection.

‘My suggestion to move the narrative forward from the fracas in Noddingham – we stage paparazzi photos, somewhere cute, maybe Central Park? Affectionate. Coffee cups. Woollens. Linking arms. Make it clear you’ve put that initial volatility behind you.’

‘Stage them?’ Edie repeated. ‘Why would we do that? Elliot doesn’t need to be more famous?’

Lillian removed her glasses, which Edie suspected she only did when addressing spectacular dipshits. ‘Do you want to go to restaurants, to cafés and bars, to parties with Elliot? Do you want to buy your own groceries and get your own flat whites, or send someone to get them?’

‘Is this a trick question?’

Edie was starting to not like Lillian very much. She wasn’t doing anything wrong.

‘My point is: pictures will be taken anyway. We can control them, or not. We can write the story, or they will.’

‘… The game is out there, it’s either play or get played,’ Edie said. ‘That’s Omar in The Wire.’

Lillian flickered a smile. Breakthrough.

‘Whenever new photos land, I’m going to give them an unnamed source, close to you both quote saying you’re a healthy match for Elliot, not awed by his success – try to reframe those earlier images as a positive. Spunky British girl, heart in the right place. The whole kinda lovable Bridget Jones thing.’

Lillian held her palms up and moved them in outward circles, like she was washing a window, and Edie feared she was gesturing at Edie’s imaginary bum.

‘Why don’t you get his parents to say they like me? I’m fairly sure they do.’

Lillian did a perceptible double-take as she put her glasses back on. ‘Parents are quoted saying they like you when there’s an engagement, not before.’

‘Oh,’ said Edie, as chastened as a primary schooler. She appreciated Lillian was allowing for Edie not being the Zoom-meeting girlfriend in six months’ time, and maybe Edie should, too.

‘… But I don’t really care what the press say about our relationship, if they have no real information?’

Lillian blanched. ‘You are a private citizen. Elliot is not. His career can be affected by the coverage of his private life. If it’s mishandled, it becomes an image problem. Studios hire the whole package.’

‘Really? That’s so … unfair.’

‘You think Ben Affleck got offered good roles by serious directors, twenty years ago, when he became a joke and a sideshow with Jennifer Lopez?’

Edie had never pondered the range of Ben Affleck’s creative opportunities. ‘At least it worked out for them as a couple in the end.’

‘There are missing years on his resume he’ll never get back. Do you have any bitter exes likely to do stories?’

This was like a smear test for your lifestyle.

Lillian squinted at a note out of shot. ‘This Jack Marshall guy going to be a problem?’

Edie flinched at the thoroughness of her research and at that name. ‘Not an ex, and no.’

‘Are there any nudes or explicit videos of you? Anything where you’re doing drugs?’

‘Haha, what?’ said Edie, guffawing, then remembering Lillian wasn’t up for jokes. ‘Er, no, none. I’m old. And shy. And too skint for cocaine.’

‘None? At all?’ Lillian said, in the same tone a GP disbelieved your alcohol units per week. ‘On your camera roll, even unsent?’

‘Why would that matter?!’

‘Because in an iCloud hack, they can get hold of those, too.’

In that moment, Edie broke into a light sweat. She’d exited the world where images of her had little more currency than any other woman’s. She had a bounty on her head and would be shot by hunters with Canon DSLRs.

Edie remembered the second time she’d met Elliot, an interview in a suburban pub, and in the few minutes where ripples of recognition erupted around them, it was like zombies sniffing a human in their midst.

Now her flesh was tasty, too. Fuck.

‘No face recognition for unlocking your phone, or someone can wave it in front of you and open it. Passcode security only. I think that’s everything for now,’ Lillian said, having destroyed Edie’s peace of mind and struck fear into her very core.

‘Thank God for that,’ Edie said, curt, smiling tightly.

‘Listen,’ Lillian said, ‘take this thought away with you. I’m not your parent. I’m not interviewing you for a position. I’m not the neighbourhood women you have wine with. You don’t need to worry about being judged by me. I don’t officially care what you’ve done unless it’s illegal, and unofficially, I still won’t care if it is. Disclosure is all I care about. If there’s something you need to warn me about, the earlier you tell me, the better I can help you. Wait for me to find out on DeuxMoi along with everyone else, and we’re playing catch up.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Edie said, now disturbed that she had no idea what a DeuxMoi was.

‘Nice to have met you, Edie,’ Lillian said, before pressing Leave Meeting by way of farewell, and Edie thought: was it, though?

Edie flopped down on her bed and stared at the ceiling, as the enormity of what she had agreed to by kissing Elliot Owen on Christmas Day a few short days ago finally sank in. Faustian pacts had never looked fitter.

She had acquired huge bragging rights and lost her ones to privacy.