chapter022
Edie had yet to return the favour and fly across water to visit Elliot, and yet seeing him in the capital was enough to make her feel out of place, a gauche tourist in a foreign land. His London wasn’t her London as she remembered it: it was a parallel version, the playground of the rootless and very rich.
When they were confirming plans for the weekend, Elliot said, with throwaway grandeur that made Edie squirm: ‘Tell me what time you’re getting in – I’ll send a car to St Pancras for you.’
He did a good job of impersonating a grounded, regular individual most of the time, but on basic analysis, he wasn’t one and hadn’t been for some time. Edie tried not to flinch at reminders: all relationships were a process of discovery about the other, right?
Elliot wasn’t to be deterred by Edie’s blushing protestations about swaglording, however.
(‘Right then, let me phrase this differently: let me save us an hour and a half.’)
The original plan of dinner and drinks had been revised by Fraser. He prevailed on Elliot to introduce Edie to his new girlfriend, Molly. They were throwing a party at a hotel out west, celebrating Fraser’s promotion. He was in financial services, and Molly was a fashion buyer, and Edie didn’t fully understand what these things entailed. Several friends from home were visiting, too, including Fraz’s best friend, the apparently legendary, disreputable Iggy, and the pull was too great to resist.
Elliot had made extensive apologies to Edie, but Edie wasn’t at all fussed, as long as they were together.
They’d thrashed this out on WhatsApps in different time zones. Elliot was back in L.A.; The Void film had wrapped, but he was needed for something called pickup shots. He was on set in sun-bleached studios in Burbank, wearing black contact lenses, a suit of dark green Neoprene, his face drawn on with felt-tip markers for the CGI, as revealed by the scowling selfies he’d sent.
Edie was being suffocated by a cloud of mango e-cigarette and enduring someone sodcasting Family Guy in a queue for the No.58, as not revealed by selfies she didn’t send.
Elliot
Being completely honest with you, I’m not sure about Molly. Bit … superficial, maybe? She posts Instagram stories where she’s kissing Aperol Spritzes to Drake songs. Her family were all over me in an odd way when we met at Fraser’s birthday, too. But Fraser’s gone all in. So. Fail He May, Sail We Must.
Edie
Hah. I’d love to meet her. And I always enjoy Fraser’s company. PS odd how?
Elliot
Yeah, it’s the company that’s the problem – Fraser’s mates are a brace of scallywags. You know how ginger cats are silly? Prepare yourself for the human equivalent of a lot of ‘orange behaviour’.
PS explain later. The short version is, I think they like high society.
So it was that on Friday evening, Edie rolled up in a black Mercedes outside a quietly flashy looking hotel address with logo-ed awnings, downlighters, and a row of wooden box planters delineating premises from pavement.
She pressed send on her greeting – Here! X – as the driver heaved her no-brand trolley case from the boot.
Inside, there was a scroll-like sweep of gold reception desk, and Edie felt conspicuously unsuited to the Daliesque luxe gorgeousness.
The women behind it gave practised smiles of hospitality welcome, and Edie said: ‘Hi. Uhm, I’m with …’
Erk.Elliot usually used false names for hotels, like he was Bono. She’d not asked him what it was.
Both the women suddenly broke into looks of rapture and familiarity at someone over her shoulder.
Edie turned and saw Elliot, phone clamped to face, mid-conversation. He was pointing at Edie and pointing at himself, and then back down again at their check-in screens.
They nodded and beamed with a newfound degree of acceptance towards Edie, started tapping at buttons. A key with a tasselled fob was pushed across the desk and her luggage case was spirited away.
Elliot was wearing black jeans and a dark-blue t-shirt with sunglasses hooked over the neckline, his usual peacocky actor boy off-duty uniform. It was February, but Edie had learned that Rich World was seasonless.
‘… Yeah, I know, but I think we’re in danger of seeing Jesus’s face in the tea leaves, if you know what I mean?’ Elliot was saying. ‘I don’t want to become scared of my shadow … yep. I mean, I take your point – you’re the expert. It simply didn’t register as alarming to me. You keep an eye on it. I will. Thanks. OK.’ He made the internationally understood circling-finger gesture for I have to finish this, sorry to Edie, who nodded.
Edie had grown accustomed to the never-ending phone call, as if Elliot was a stocks and bonds trader in the yuppie 1980s. She’d learned not to take it personally. She’d taken it personally in their very first encounter and got it out of the way.
Once done, he’d put his phone on silent, and missed call notifications and messages would rain like confetti across the lock screen. It would vibrate and push itself around the table like a resentful wasp.
While the verbal admin continued, he pulled her to his side and kissed the top of her head.
She slid her arms round his middle and linked her hands. As she did so, Edie noticed a row of people sat on a chaise longue nearby observing them both with wide eyes, as if the sofa was a Jeep that had pulled alongside a pride of lions on a safari. Phones were discreetly yet threateningly weighed in several palms. She could hear their thoughts.
Definitely NOT his sister or a P.A. Is it too close-range-obvious to get a picture? As this angle, I could pretend to be checking my texts?
She turned her face away from them.
Edie had raised Lillian’s suggestion of a hard launch of their coupledom via staged paparazzi photos to a huge ‘YUCK’ from Elliot.
(‘She knows my implacable aversion to anything like that, and I don’t appreciate her using my girlfriend to try to get round it,’ Elliot had said. Edie had adolescent-thrilled to the casual use of the G-word. His name in glitter ink on her pencil case.)
‘Who was that?’ she said, as Elliot rang off.
‘Lillian,’ Elliot said, beaming at her. ‘It’s so good—’
‘There she is! Edie Thompson!’ came a possibly alcohol-amplified voice from across the lobby. ‘Soon to be Edie Owen! Or Owen-Thompson? Oh my God, I’ve got your Brangelina name. EDIOT. Hahahaha.’
Elliot closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
They were assailed by the hulking form of Fraser Owen, clad in a sky-blue cord suit, salmon-pink shirt, and white trilby hat, skidding towards Edie. He put his arms around her, swung her around in a bear hug, then took her hand and twirled her on the spot.
Fraser’s Monster Energydrink behaviour was sometimes awful-adjacent, but Fraser was impossible to dislike. Boisterous and silly, but kind. Undeniable shades of witless tomfoolery, no malice. The fact the two brothers were so different, Edie had observed, somehow made them even closer.
Fraser turned to address the sofa audience, who were now sitting very upright, in front row seats at the Actual Gossip show.
‘Just kidding, guys. They’re not engaged. Do NOT tweet the Sun news desk – thanks for your co-operation.’
‘Jesus Christ our redeemer, Fraz,’ Elliot muttered, while Edie laughed helplessly in surprise-horror.
‘We’re all up on the roof by the pool – come say hi!’
‘Not unless you take that hat off,’ Elliot said. ‘Why are you dressed like you’re in a novelty skiffle band?’
‘I’m taking no fashion lessons from disco tits Morrissey here.’
‘There’s a pool?’ Edie said. ‘Amazing.’
‘I’ll show you …’ Fraser said, bowing, extending his hand.
‘Give Edie a chance to drop her coat and we’ll join you,’ Elliot said, gently lowering Fraser’s arm and ushering Edie towards the lift.
‘Literally drop the coat, Edie, not anything else. Don’t be taking her hostage for your dark purposes. No evil cradling!’ Fraser said, as Elliot grimaced.
‘Fraser please take it down by at least seventy-eight per cent, if not a hundred.’
His brother ignored him, checking his watch and pointing two fingers at his own eyes, then two fingers back at Elliot’s, with a meaningful boggling stare, before departing.
Inside the lift, which had other occupants, Elliot said quietly to Edie with a heavy sigh: ‘Every so often, I remember my parents saying: thank God Fraser doesn’t do my job, because it would be like a coked-up raccoon hijacking a 747.’
‘He’d get “Sex on Fire” on the sound system and fly it straight to Tahiti.’
‘And it’d crash into a mountain range while he was chatting up one of the bound and gagged air hostesses,’ Elliot said. ‘Heeeeyyyy, so do you want to grab a drink when we land?’
Edie glimpsed her starstruck, happy little face in the elevator mirror.
‘It’s so good to see you,’ Elliot mouthed, and Edie wilted at the thought of being alone together.