chapter017
Edie’s phone buzzed, and she couldn’t have ever anticipated a time she’d feel revulsion at that magical name appearing. But she did. Raw, ungoverned fury, the woman scorned stuff there was classic literature and crown court cases about. If he’d been there in front of her, she might have slapped him.
Elliot
Have you seen it, and can I call you?
She replied with shaking hands. The anger, the disorientation, the jealousy, the betrayal, the fear of whatever was going on at Padrona she didn’t understand. Edie had been kidnapped by the level of emotion and wasn’t herself.
Edie
You left out the part where you and Ines are getting off with each other in every photo? Weird! And no, you can’t.
Elliot
FUCK she’s really OTT tactile like that with EVERYONE and you don’t want to say STOP TOUCHING ME, but obviously it made for worse photos. I am SO so sorry – this is phenomenally grim and unfair, and I hate you going through it.
Edie
Er, if it’s all her, why are you holding her hand?
Elliot
I wasn’t. I put my hand down, and she put her hand over mine for about 30 seconds.
Edie
THAT’S HOW HOLDING HANDS WORKS. You’re gaslighting me – it’s not nothing when a newspaper can use it as proof you’re sleeping together, is it? Sorry if I’m being thick here, but are you?
Her phone flashed with his call, and she pressed to end it. She didn’t trust herself not to shriek.
Elliot
Of course not – it’s absolute bullshit! Edie, I was a bottle of wine to the good and what you’re seeing is a few minutes inattention with someone being inappropriately overfamiliar. I really want to talk to you.
Edie
No, I’m not in private, I don’t have good enough reception, and I don’t want your ‘this is how it goes down in the big city, little country girl’ excuses. People who are as famous as you and who don’t want it to look like they’re shagging someone don’t end up in photos like that. Have I misunderstood? Is the issue that I’ve found out something about our deal earlier than I was meant to? Because if so, I don’t want any part of this deal at all.
Elliot’s reply this time stalled for a minute, and Edie took savage, bitter pleasure in having shocked him into hesitating.
Elliot
WOAH. I know my space on the moral high ground is very limited here, but we know each other better than this. I was completely fucking stupid to make pictures like this possible, but can we at least establish that it doesn’t represent anything unfaithful? Absolutely nothing of any sort is going on with Ines. Zero.
Edie’s level of torture felt like her villain origin story. And as a result, she was catching up in the rules of this game.
Edie
Lillian warned you how bad the photos were, didn’t she? That’s why you called to get me onside? But you were playing for time to see just how bad they were before you admitted to it? Were there other things that they didn’t get a photo of?
Elliot
She said the reporter said we looked ‘cosy’ and that it was a ‘strong story’ from their point of view. She also told me, if I didn’t want them to write a story like that, I’d not been very smart.
Edie
Why not pass that on? Why leave me to see it without that warning?
Elliot
Because I thought it was sadistically winding you up before either of us had seen it. Reporters say all kinds of things to goad you into admissions, plus add the fact I’d been drinking and could only vaguely recall she had her arm round me at one point. She was exactly the same with the director, but because he’s 60, they didn’t make anything of that.
Edie
Let’s be grown-ups and call it what it was, shall we? You were flirting. Hard flirting with the woman you’d got a pass from me to have make-believe sex with. And you got caught. Now you want me to react by instantly agreeing you can’t possibly be a cheater. Go to hell, Elliot.
Elliot
I swear I wasn’t doing anything as proactive as flirting. I was being unassertive in not shrugging her off. I was drunk and tired, and actresses (and actors) are often quite mad – it’s easier to go along with it when you’ve got to work with someone in long days.
Edie had no more to say. She wasn’t fully sure what she thought or what she believed. After a few minutes of consideration, she turned her phone off completely. Elliot might notice his messages weren’t getting ticked as received. Let him sweat.
It wasn’t only about punishment and revenge; she didn’t want to say things she’d regret.
Edie walked back indoors and through to the sitting room, where Hannah and Nick were shaking dice for Yahtzee.
‘I need to get totally obliterated fucking drunk,’ Edie said.
Hours later and once in bed, knowing she was in no fit state to absorb its revelations but unable to resist, Edie held her phone power button until the Apple icon appeared and the handset rippled back to life.
Within seconds, Elliot’s name sprang to the centre of the screen – along with a horde of Instagram nosy enquiries, linking to the article, many no doubt awash with schadenfreude that she’d had a taste of her own medicine.
He’d said the Christmas night photo was fine, and it had led here. Thanks for the humiliation.
She expected to find multiple messages from Elliot, and possibly mounting frustration or even criticism at realising she’d cut him dead, but there was only one.
Edie, I cannot fucking bear having hurt you like this, and I absolutely despise myself for my stupidity. If you want me to walk away from this job, I will. All I care about is you. I haven’t been unfaithful – I wouldn’t so much as think about it. There’s no room left in me for anyone except you. I know that’s just words right now, and I can’t make it better. I love you. X
He was good at forceful declarations, and it had an effect on her. Yet he was right: it didn’t mend it. Edie went to sleep in tears, pissed tears of complicated remorse.
She didn’t, these hours later and having calmed down, think they were involved. It was too fast, and it wasn’t the person she knew.
But she couldn’t set it all aside as irrelevant, either.
Edie kept thinking about how remarkable Elliot and Ines looked together, how right. How much everyone would desperately root for them to be in love for real. She felt like she was defying the forces of gravity by trying to build something lasting with him.