You Belong With Me

chapter023

‘Right, cursed object phone is on silent until tomorrow,’ Elliot said, putting it in his pocket.

He locked the door, revealing his intentions, taking his sunglasses off and throwing them on the bed, in such a way that Edie suspected she’d be the next thing thrown on the bed.

‘My case is here already!’ she said, thinking she sounded like an easily impressed provincial. The room was standard Elliot Owen: modish frame-only four poster, multiple zones to the living quarters, and vast marble bathroom stretching onwards towards the north of England in the distance.

‘More importantly, you are here,’ Elliot said, focusing on her. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

‘How much?’ Edie said.

‘I’ll show you,’ Elliot said, and Edie felt all willpower dissolve as he moved in to kiss her.

‘Elliot … we don’t want to arrive an hour late, looking pointedly dishevelled?’ she said, as they gathered a particular momentum.

‘Don’t you? I do,’ Elliot said, untying the belt on her coat and starting to unbutton it. ‘I want to turn up looking like we were rescued from the Outback in a heatwave, after a fortnight of drinking our piss.’

‘Dammit, you know how to get a woman in the mood.’

They paused getting off to laugh foolishly, and Edie thought it was their real superpower. The one that might outlast the scrabbling to get each other’s clothes off era. That said, ever feeling indifferent about that seemed impossible. Elliot was a lavish gift unwrapped on Christmas Day, and she could barely believe she got to keep him.

They were interrupted by an artificial sound, which Edie realised was Elliot’s phone making the iPhone tin can rattle ring tone.

‘Not on silent?’ she said disapprovingly.

‘Fucking Fraser on fucking bypass …’ Elliot said, digging it back out of his jeans pocket. ‘You, my parents, and him are all on a setting so silent doesn’t apply.’

‘Oh.’

Edie could hardly still disapprove.

Elliot scanned, hung his head, and read aloud in a psychopath monotone, as if the text was a letter from the Zodiac Killer: ‘Seriously, I can SENSE IT IS UNDERWAY. GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER. I know your room number. I will come and play “Galway Girl” outside your door until you lose wood. FIVE MINUTES to the tin whistle if your tin whistle is outside your Levi’s.’

Edie shrieked.

Elliot shook his head. ‘I hate him.’

‘You can’t negotiate with terrorists,’ Edie said, putting her coat on a chair.

She’d worked out the turnaround time between arrival and needing to be presentable was non-existent – though not as non-existent as Elliot would’ve made it – and had travelled party-ready.

‘Do I look good enough for this place?’ Edie said nervously, smoothing her dress and putting her hands on her waist.

(She was doing the what,this old thing? routine, although her low-cut velvet maxi dress with flutter sleeves, tight on the hips, had been selected only after three hefty online deliveries and a front room fashion show for her disapproving sister, who’d have attended in dunga shorts. Meg had declared: ‘Andrea Dworkin said women’s fashion is a euphemism for men’s fashion created for women. You are trussing yourself, in discomfort, for their gaze. Your power is illusory and heavily boundaried, like an Imperial concubine.’

‘And if I was oppressing myself for the benefit of their patriarchal gaze, which one would do the job best?’

‘The long midnight-blue one.’

‘Thank you.’)

Elliot looked her up and down now and said: ‘I don’t think this place looks good enough for you. You have no idea how much I’m regretting saying yes to my brother’s plans right now.’

Edie smiled and stepped towards him to kiss him on the cheek.

Elliot jumped away. ‘Don’t or I’ll choose the threesome with Ed Sheeran.’

Oddly enough, having threatened aural contraceptive guerrilla attacks, Fraser and Molly were nowhere to be seen when Elliot and Edie made it to the rooftop, the nocturnal London vista stretching out beyond its glass walls.

Elliot waved at familiar faces, but instead of approaching, he parked them at a cabana at the opposite end of the pool, away from the throng. They were unable to be overheard and could see anyone approaching, thus could have an express form of date before the rowdiness across the water enveloped them. Naturally, a waiter appeared immediately; it was that kind of place.

‘What was the Lillian call about? Seeing Jesus in the tea leaves?’ Edie asked, as she decorously moved the glacé cherry stalk to sip a Manhattan.

‘Oh no, was that super indiscreet of me? It actually wasn’t a conversation to be having in public, but I couldn’t wait to see you,’ Elliot said.

‘No, not at all, stayed very one-sided and gnomic. Hence you’ve intrigued me.’

‘You know I hated The Void, right?’

Edie nodded. One of their catch ups after their hiatus had been about how much Elliot loathed being the lead in a superhero big budget ‘tent-pole’ movie. He’d found it both stultifying in process and overwhelming in terms of responsibility.

(‘I thought of what George Clooney said: everyone told him he had to do Batman because it was such a smart career choice – it bombed, and he found out everyone’s making it up as they go along. I’ve decided to do what appeals and sod what I’m being told to do for “profile”.’

‘Imagine Clooney being your careers adviser,’ Edie had said. ‘Mine was Mr Rumble, who told me to get shorthand and a shorter skirt.’)

‘OK, well,’ Elliot said now, ‘the plan for the publicity campaign, given I won’t sign for another, is to vague it out. Not commit to a sequel but kind of bland-positive “never say never”.’ Elliot paused, beer bottle to lips. ‘You know, that thing you say when it’s a no but you want to provide fake hope, instead of hard honesty and closure.’

It took a second for Edie to realise she’d been the victim of a British stabbing.