chapter019
Do NOT be impressed because he is beautiful, important, and he flew across an ocean for two hours with you, Edie told herself. That is not what matters here.
As soon as a black Range Rover pulled up across the road and Elliot, chin angled down and hands thrust in pockets of a double-breasted navy pea coat, ran across the road towards the house, inside Edie was screaming HE IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND IMPORTANT, AND HE CAME ALL THIS WAY, FOR YOU! FFS. Pathetic. Not the freedom that Suffragettes died for.
Edie opened the door. They gazed at each other for a heavy, unsmiling moment, and Edie said: ‘Hello.’
Elliot was evidently assessing how hostile she was, and Edie was wondering how he could bear no trace of a seven-hour flight. Genetics and first class, she guessed.
‘Hi. Can I come in?’
She stepped aside. They walked through to the kitchen and into a silence you could slice with a knife from its oak knife block.
‘I’ve had a lot of time to work on something better than “sorry”, and I’ve not achieved much,’ Elliot said. ‘Edie, to be absolutely clear about our “deal” – because I felt sick that you needed to ask that – what I’m offering, and what I want, is old-fashioned monogamy, not some creepy variant with loopholes. There’s no small print to the exclusivity. I’m not operating on any what happens on tour sleazebag rules. I thought that was our understanding, and I think I’d said as much in, erm, passion, but probably the weirdness of my situation – our situation – is that I really need to say it in so many words.’
He was using his practised actor poise for this nerve-racking speech, in cold light of day and after an ugly fight. Edie did not have that facility herself and felt her face grow warm and her palms slick in self-consciousness.
She knew exactly which conversation he was referring to, because it was in her internal inventory of treasured moments that she held secretly dear and that she’d never disclose to anyone, including, amusingly, him. It was a bit crass really, because he’d told her he didn’t like talk of famousness in the bedroom. (‘It feels like putting a distance with me when we’re at our closest.’) Nevertheless, she’d had her hands on him and breathed in wonder: ‘I can’t believe so many people want you, and I’m the one who gets to have you,’ and he’d said: ‘The only one.’ Nnnggg.
The first rule of being obsessed with each other club is you don’t do post-match analysis of the moments of heat. You conjure them up in memory on slow days at work, uncross and recross your legs and pretend to be concentrating on the greenwashing in the budget airline campaign while remembering that Elliot Owen told you he’d never known desire like this.
‘I hate that I forced you to doubt that. What happened was … completely disrespectful.’ He drew a breath. ‘Because so much of what’s written about me is horseshit, somewhere along the line I became arrogant and lost sight of my own responsibilities. I thought because I knew I’d not committed any infidelity, all I had to do was reassure you it was trivial. Now I see that it isn’t, not once it’s out in the public domain and traumatising someone I love. All I can do is say sorry, from the bottom of my heart, and that it won’t happen again.’
‘Not sure I like you enough to call it traumatising,’ Edie joked, now worrying she’d seemed crazy, but Elliot looked pained at this.
She’d said some pretty salty things when possessed by the green-eyed monster, she supposed. Go to hell, Elliot was very 1940s weepie.
Edie folded her arms. Anger had evaporated, even if the injury remained, and all she wanted to do was grab hold of him.
She couldn’t make it that easy. She’d test the Hannah and Nick hypothesis.
‘She was flirting with you.’
‘Yes,’ Elliot said, clearly having figured out that only total honesty was going to be sufficient. ‘She’s one of those people who flirts like other people breathe, I think. Not that it’s an excuse for me.’
‘You were flirting back?’
‘I was letting her do it because it was easier and because I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot by slapping the behaviour down.’
‘And it was flattering?’
‘No, it was low-key stressful. You’re trying to figure a new person out, and they’re at second base before the plates have been cleared. When it comes to Ines, I just want to be friendly and not snipe at each other when we’ve got an early call and flambeed crêpes need setting up for eighteen takes. If we don’t get on, given the amount of scenes we have together, this job will be pure anguish.’
This landed as truthful.
‘You don’t have “incredible chemistry”?’ Edie said, with quote marks.
‘I hope we mimic that for the show, but no, not otherwise in real life. And I know exactly what that feels like.’
Edie was unwinding and would have to concentrate on her last question. ‘Would you have told me what she was like with you if the photos hadn’t come out?’
Elliot paused. ‘I wouldn’t, because it would’ve upset you and there’d be no need to. I’d have made sure I didn’t sit next to her at dinner again. That’s sensible while we’re long-distance, I think – neither of us need stupid things putting in our heads.’
Edie had discovered herself unexpectedly reluctant to tell Elliot the Naked Rambler story about Declan, even though it meant nothing and wasn’t her fault. It started with a man staying over and ended with him stark bollock, and it just felt … tricky. She accepted the justice of what he was saying.
She hadn’t planned her side of this conversation and had to take a second or two to work out what she needed to say.
‘… I think I should admit I’m not a Cool Girl, capital C capital G. I totally accept your work is going to involve getting off with other people – I deal with it by sort of … dissociating. I emotionally cut out. There will be a day soon when you kiss a stranger for hours on end and remove her clothing, and honestly, I’m not sure I cope with it. I just try not to think about it, which isn’t the same thing. I know I wanted you to take this job, and I trust you. But there are limits to what I can handle. When I saw that story, I felt like someone who had agreed that her relationship involved breaking her own heart. In fact, when I saw that story, I wondered if I understood what I’d agreed to at all.’
‘It was hardly an oversensitive reaction,’ Elliot said gently, sounding more Nottingham than actor. ‘Anyone wired up in the normal way would hate it if it was their other half. I bloody would.’
That was it: they were fixed. Edie felt understood. It turned out being taken seriously was the charm.