You Belong With Me

chapter027

Some time – and a proper reunion, featuring no ‘Galway Girl’ – later, Elliot and Edie lay awake against starched square pillows, room illuminated by pools of honeyed light from chintzy lamps, picking over the evening’s events.

Edie wasn’t surprised to discover that Elliot was a stern critic of the imminent nuptials.

‘I’m going to have to talk to Fraser ASAP, and I’m absolutely dreading it. I rate my chances of getting through to him very low and my chances of making myself persona non grata very high. I know the nice brotherly thing would be cheering it on. But he has friends to do that. Unlike them, I can see where it ends. He’ll take being a thirty-year-old divorcee very hard, however he may come across.’

‘You definitely think it’ll fall apart?’

‘Marrying his girlfriend this quick? After six months together? I mean, it’ll be a miracle if it pans out, won’t it? My parents are no doubt chagrined but won’t be as direct as I’m going to be. Fuck’s sake, I know he can be hyperactive, but this latest clownery is stretching credulity even for him. Shotgun weddings.’

‘You don’t think …?’

‘Oh, nah. Speaking figuratively. She was hard on the champagne.’

Edie shook her head: ‘I guess … if they’re happy …?’

‘They are, though whether there’s anything like enough between them to get married is another thing.’ He paused. ‘Please don’t repeat this next part, because I won’t go anywhere near it with Fraz, but I think I may be a factor.’

‘You?’

‘Yep … I hate talking about it, because there’s no way I can without it coming across as self-obsessed, world revolves round me shit. This is why it’s good to know Cam – he and I can privately compare notes on the insanity with no one calling us ego-ridden megalomaniacs.’

‘Allow me,’ Edie said.

Elliot laughed. ‘There’s nothing I can’t share with you. A thing Cam said to me early on was: “getting famous is like winning the lottery.” All good when they’re handing the big cheque over, but it affects everyone around you. You can’t foresee the impacts. This is absolutely confidential, but Cam bought a large house outright for his sister. Her deadbeat, dodgy ex-boyfriend, who they hoped had gone for good, came straight back and proposed. Nothing Cam could do – it’s her life. Not like you can revoke a gift like that, based on choice of spouse. He’d accidentally honey-trapped an absolute wastrel. Your success is a butterfly wing flap effect. More of an eagle wing flap.’

‘Fuck!’

‘Yeah, so you see why being nice doesn’t always cover it. No danger of that here, in as much as Molly’s family are well off, a little dynasty in their bit of Suffolk, I think. But I got the distinct feeling they’ve gone wild on Fraser as a son-in-law prospect because he’s a package deal with me. Fraz is immensely good-natured, and that’s the kind of thing he misses. I’m far more cynical and alert to it. They bombarded me with inappropriate questions when I met them. Molly’s dad took me on a tour of his wine cellar. They’d volunteered to host Fraser’s birthday – which seemed a lot – then specifically asked he bring me. Fraser saw it all as the generosity of their welcome and to me it felt more like the hospitality you get as veiled corporate aggression. “We’re in charge here. We’ve ordered for you.”’

‘Maybe they were a bit overwhelmed by your status, and mishandled it?’

‘I know. I allow for that. I know the difference between natural curiosity and how it feels to be sized up as a valuable acquisition. My instincts said, fame groupie social climbers who want the connection. I know that sounds awful. And in what world do you say: they’re using you to get to me, and not expect your brother to hate you?’

‘You don’t think Molly is?’

The fact Elliot hesitated, Edie thought, said a lot.

‘I don’t know. I sincerely hope not. Fraser’s never struggled for female attention, irrespective of anything I’ve been doing. If you’d asked me before today, I’d have said no, but now she’s pushing to be Mrs Fraser practically overnight … I’m not sure I can completely subtract it. Fraser’s had to fend off her attempts to put me on her Instagram many, many times.’

‘I got away with it.’

‘That’s different. I have to beg you to be seen with me.’

Edie laughed. ‘I completely see the wisdom of what you’re saying, and you absolutely have Fraz’s back. I feel protective of you wading into this, though, because I’m not sure telling anyone not to marry anyone else ever goes well. I hope he realises you’re doing it because you love him.’

‘To be clear, I’m not telling him not to marry her. I’m telling him not to do it this fast.’

Edie doubted Fraser would make that distinction and said nothing.

Elliot sighed. ‘When we were kids, he would climb trees so high the fire service had to get him down. He hitchhiked to Glastonbury with no credit card, kept all his cash in a Converse trainer. He called it Bank of Boot. Of course, it got stolen, and my dad had to drive down and get him. When he was twenty-two, he went to Thailand with his best mate, Iggy – who, as you may have gleaned, is a complete mongoose. They had no jabs, flew out with no insurance. A tuk-tuk driver nicked their passports, and he had Dad at the embassy for hours with photocopies of his birth certificate, to get them home … You get the idea. This is absolutely consistent with Fraser’s relentless pursuit of calamity.’

‘In light of this, can I be annoyingly logical?’

‘You’re the smartest person I know, so all and any confrontational opinions are welcome.’

‘If this is classic Fraser, then Molly’s family might be an incidental factor?’

‘Yeah, fair point. I suspect the full picture is petrol has met matches. Flammable has met accelerant. Anyway, enough of my whining. I hope you had a good enough time tonight.’

Edie hesitated. Wanting to be a Cool Girl was at war with need for reassurance.

‘I always enjoy seeing Fraser, it’s … just …’ Edie felt the booze, the emotion and the environmental dislocation come together suddenly, like three lanes of traffic all green lit at once, moving forward and honking at each other.

‘What?’

‘I don’t fit in with your crowd, do I? I thought the fact there’d be a Nottingham lot meant I’d be OK, but I’m still a sore thumb outsider in her ASOS dress. And when it’s not private schoolers with YSL handbags, apparently it’s Cameron McAllister. I know you’ve made an effort with my friends, and I want to reciprocate. But if tonight’s any test, prepare yourself for ongoing confusion about why you’re with me.’

Elliot blinked at her, and she felt like a dick.

‘Sorry. That was a lot of words for I felt stupidly lonely when you left my side. I need to be a grown-up.’

There was a silence, and Edie pondered that drinking on no dinner was never wise.

‘You know I said you’re a catastrophist? I think it might be a full-on doom boner. Nothing gets you going like the chance to foretell disaster,’ Elliot said.

‘Doom boner?!’ Edie said, laughing in relief.

‘One parody Wolf of Wall Street do thrown by my brother is not a litmus test of anything.’

‘Well, to make it worse …’ Was she going to say this? It seemed she was. Elliot might not have done anything wrong, but she wanted him to account for the discrepancy, at least. ‘When I tried to socialise, I met some guy who told me you were seeing a very, er, volatile Swedish girl during our break? It intimidated the fuck out of me. I don’t want to know about your exes, and he didn’t need to tell me that, did he? It was the first day at school, I tried to make friends in the playground, and he promptly stuffed snow down the back of my coat.’

‘I was seeing someone who was what, now?’

‘He said you had a fling with a very randy Swedish girl.’

Edie waited for Elliot to look shifty. He only looked nonplussed. ‘I have no such ex. Genuinely. After we split up?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t see anyone when we were apart – I told you that. I had no interest, after that karate chop to the windpipe you dealt me. Also, I’d have karmically felt I was giving you permission in return, and screw that. No way was I handing you a hall pass.’

He smiled at her. Edie exhaled in gratitude at having normality as she currently understood it being fully restored. He could jibe at her fickleness all he wanted now. It was almost worth being wound up about fictional Swede to vanquish her.

She pushed her arms round him and reminded herself that she alone got to do this.

‘Who told you that?’ Elliot said.

‘Uhm … Anto! Full name Anthony of Stevenage.’

‘Edie, I have no idea who this guy was, but he was probably hitting on you.’

‘Hitting on me?’

‘That’s the only reason I can think he’d be lying to you? Destabilise your prey with undermining bullshit and then go in with the feelings repair kit. Let me guess, you got compliments, too?’

Edie opened her mouth and closed it and said: ‘Hitting on me, when I’m here with you, though?’

‘The audacity of hope.’

Edie was at a loss to understand why anyone would do this, which was no doubt what Anto relied on.

‘… That is so casually monstrous.’

Edie had been briefly in the company of a supervillain and had no idea. That was sociopathic straight after a ‘hello’? He knew who she was from the start. He’d pulled a string, and her eyes had changed colour.

‘My friends will love you. I hope it’s very clear from that – those weren’t my friends. Could you eat? I say we get room service.’

Edie beamed.

‘Oh God, I could murder a burger and chips, actually. Is that possible, when it’s this late?’

As the words left her mouth, Edie thought: You’re probably in a ￡1.5k a night suite.

Elliot paused, and she could see him calculate this wasn’t the time to ridicule her naiveté. ‘Reckon it is.’

They pulled nightclothes on and ordered a decadent amount of food, putting it on the bed and eating it sat cross-legged.

‘About your feeling out of place,’ Elliot said, in a different register to his joking, as he brushed his hands of chip salt, ‘the secret truth of my life, one that I’ve never told a living soul, is that I’m homesick as a permanent way of being. I’ve been homesick so long now I’ve almost forgotten how it feels to not be homesick. Worst of all, I don’t even know what I’m homesick for.’

‘Saudade,’ Edie said, a Portuguese word she’d introduced Elliot to when they were falling for each other. ‘… A profound longing for something or someone absent, that may never return.’

‘Exactly that. The only time I don’t feel that way is when I’m with you. Before you came along, it was as if I was shut in a room no one else could get into. You came in and sat beside me. Not asking for anything, not with any agenda. Nobody had ever done that, and it was such a powerful feeling, not being alone. You do belong here, Edie, because you belong with me. And I belong with you.’

He looked up, and tears were running down Edie’s face, tears that she didn’t wipe away.