chapter025
‘Where’s my brother?’ Fraser called, and Elliot was out of his seat, hand held out for Edie, in a split second, weaving down the side of the underlit pool.
As they drew closer, Edie saw Molly was leaning on Fraser and extending the fingers on one hand for inspection by the women near her in an unmistakeable way. Edie had an unwelcome flashback to Charlotte in the same pose at Ad Hoc – another lifetime ago, for everyone involved.
‘We’ve done a bit of a bait-and-switch on you tonight, guys!’ Fraser said. ‘This is actually our engagement party. Molly proposed to me this week – that’s right, we’re very modern, guys – and I said yes.’ He let the whooping and hollering subside before adding: ‘Molly’s folks have very generously said they’ll put a marquee up in the garden for the big day. We’ve called in a favour at their local church – my in-laws-to-be are tight with the vicar – so …’
Fraser waited until a hush had descended. Elliot hard-squeezed Edie’s hand, and she recognised it as a contained panic signal.
‘… Wedding is in April! GET HAT SHOPPING!’
Cue cheering and whistling.
‘April next year, right?’ Elliot said to Edie, looking stunned.
‘I feel like: the wedding will be in a year and two months is less of a thing you’d shout, before spraying Veuve Clicquot?’ Edie said under her breath, looking back at Fraser now doing a Formula 1. He had a sidekick: a cherubic, ginger, curly-haired lad who Edie guessed was the notorious Iggy. All Owen family stories that noted Iggy’s presence tended to be of the colourful variety. ‘Iggy,’ they said, shaking heads, in the same way you’d intone crack pipe.
Fraser’s sky-blue suit, his five-foot-nothing bride in cerulean dress – the level of fuss did seem more consistent with that sapphire bauble on her left hand than with Fraser moving up to greater managerial responsibilities. But how could Edie have foreseen it? This was how she thought the Owens always rolled.
‘No way …’ Elliot said. She’d never seen him lost for words before. ‘He can’t be for real.’
Fraser and his diminutive bride-to-be were mobbed by eager well-wishers, and Edie and Elliot were edged out of the inner circle, waiting their turn in the scrum.
Edie thought this was no bad thing if it gave Elliot time to get his face straight. The indecent haste seemed to have floored him.
‘Can I be your date for the wedding?’ Edie asked, grasping for a nice thing to say.
‘Sure. You won’t need to get changed – we’ll taxi from here,’ Elliot said, and Edie grit-smiled back at him.
‘ELLLLIIOOOOTTT! You’re going to be my brother,’ squealed Molly, bowling into his arms.
Elliot said: ‘Congratulations! Can I introduce you to my girlfriend?’
‘Oh! Edie! I’ve heard so much about you.’
Molly turned, face aglow. She was alive with the exhilaration of the occasion but strikingly pretty anyway: wide, round eyes, small, upturned nose, and wide, toothy smile. Her light brown hair was back in a loose plait. She was woodland cartoon animal cute, and after a second’s consideration, Edie thought she should’ve predicted this would be Fraser’s type. One thing Fraser always managed to be was wholesome. You could stick Molly on a This Morning presenting segment, no problem.
Both she and Edie made polite noises of enthusiastic greeting and did the little mutual back-pat party hug, though it was tricky for Molly to have much spare bandwidth for making new acquaintances, given the circumstances.
An overclocking Fraser joined them. ‘See – this is why I had to whip you to be here on time!’ he said to Elliot, grabbing him round the shoulders. ‘You and Iggy are my best men, of course.’
‘Congratulations, Fraz. You’ve told Mum and Dad?’ Elliot asked evenly, and Edie knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling underneath the smooth surface.
‘FaceTimed them this afternoon, and I’ve asked Molly’s dad for permission. All sorted.’
‘They’re excited then?’ Elliot said.
Fraser and Molly were vibrating at a frequency where Elliot’s concern wasn’t registering, which was just as well.
‘Yeah, they love Molly …’ Fraser held her hand as she twisted round and spoke to others near them, like a parent keeping hold of a wilful child in a toy shop. ‘They were a bit shocked they’ve got less than two months to prepare, haha!’
‘Were they? What’s the thinking there then?’
‘Why wait?’ Fraser said, shrugging, as Molly peeled off entirely to show another gaggle of girls her ring. ‘We watched When Harry Met Sally, and it clicked. When you know you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your lives to start straight away. No, Iggy, YOU put that down, come the fuck on …!’
Fraser’s attention was captured by some other point of interest, and he capered off again. With bombshell dropped, his already divided attention span was fractured into a hundred pieces. He was full Imp Mode.
Elliot held a placeholder smile for onlookers as he said, in a low voice: ‘What-the-fuck-just-happened-Edie? They’ve known each other less time than we have. Nora Ephron films are not a YouTube tutorial.’
‘It’s … a lot,’ Edie whispered. ‘Also, being picky … hadn’t Harry and Sally known each other about a decade? The whole point is it takes them years to realise?’
Elliot squeezed her hand again. ‘You’re the voice of sanity I need. I also need another one of those,’ Elliot said, looking at a tray of beers. ‘I might need twenty. I’ll go to the loo – get you another of those red things on the way back?’
Edie nodded, knowing a Diet Coke would be wiser. She’d consumed one skewer total of some spicy chicken business.
Edie saw Elliot seized by a guest on his way, so his return would not be instantaneous. She was going to have to do the dreaded mingling. Did anyone look approachable?
They were intimidatingly loud, confident, Made in Chelsea-ish: salon-blown hair, tanned legs jutting through splits in dresses, quilted bags on chains with logos, the men all bone structure and signet rings. They were what Hannah called ‘Upspeaking Yahs’.
Edie had a pang for Nick and Hannah. Followed by a harder pang that these weren’t her people and never would be, and that sharing taste in human beings mattered.