chapter035
‘Who’s the white whale client for us?’ Declan asked, Manic Street Preachers his soundtrack.
Edie feared this work environment would spoil her for all others. They’d introduced the rituals of Wednesday pizza and Friday afternoon cake break and were still performing well enough to get warm words of encouragement from Richard. (‘Yet he still won’t let me have The Face That Lunched A Thousand Shits as my email boilerplate,’ Declan said.)
‘White whale?’ Edie said absently. It hadn’t been a morning designed to encourage her concentration.
‘Yeah, like Don Draper with Coca-Cola. Who do we really want and can’t get? I feel like a challenge. I feel like you and me could be the dynamos of regional ad agencies. I want awards. I want Richard hanging oil paintings of us as his king and queen. I want this office teeming with fresh hires to bully …’ He swept an arm at the great space.
‘Do you? Colleagues are a complication, in my experience.’ She gave an eye roll, and Declan smiled. ‘Present company excepted. Uhm, white whale … for me, Pepsi. Just their social media. Use the whole Is Pepsi OK? joke about that being their full name, and run with it. I love finding a weakness and making it a strength. Never got round to doing a proposal and putting it in front of Richard. My hubris is tempered by my laziness.’
‘Fuck, yes!’ Declan’s eyes lit up. ‘Can I start on that? You add to it, we take it to Rich as a joint project?’
‘For sure. I do think fewer people around is giving our brains more space to breathe.’
Edie relished the solitude, the two of them in a room that could comfortably fit twenty.
‘This is possibly my cue to tell you something,’ Declan said, looking tense. ‘It’s total crap, but I don’t want you to hear it any other way, in case it gets mangled. I left the work WhatsApp group with Jess and the others. Jess and I aren’t currently on the best terms.’
‘Shit! Because of me? … It was the story about me and Elliot at the party, wasn’t it?’ Edie said.
She was starting to understand Elliot’s permanent homesickness. Before that cataclysm of a wedding in Harrogate – as rubbish as her life was, and as Elliot-less – she’d had tedious anonymity, and boy, she missed it.
‘Yeah. She got snarky about it, and I defended you. She had a go at me for being “a simp”’ – Edie could see Declan judiciously editing himself as he spoke – ‘I said, you know what, I’m resigning from this discourse. Left the chat.’
‘I hate that I’m causing you trouble and losing you friends. Weren’t you and Jess quite close?’
Aww. Love you, Dunny! xxx. A penny dropped quietly somewhere for Edie: Declan was a good-looking, personable man, and Edie had Jess bracketed under ‘married’. However, she thought back to the jubilant look on Jess’s face in that picture.
‘Yeah, we were. I don’t get it. I know she’s tight with the fella’s ex-wife, and pain was caused. But everyone’s moved on. Why can’t they call it blood under the bridge?’
‘Maybe it’s Jess being married. She can understandably empathise only with the horror had her wedding day been similarly detonated, not with one of the detonators. Which is fair enough.’
‘Jess and Wes have split up, actually. You didn’t know?’
‘Ah. No. They’d not tell me.’
She got up to inspect whether a plant needed watering and peered out of the window as an afterthought.
‘He’s still there!’
‘Lenny the Lens, you mean?’
‘Yep. Must be waiting until I go home now, I guess?’ Edie said.
Declan chewed his pen. ‘I dunno how you deal with it – it’s so strange.’
‘I’ve never dealt with it before. This is the first time.’
‘Really?’ Declan said.
‘Fuck it,’ Edie said. ‘I’m going down there to talk to him.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘What’s the worst he can do? Take a photo?’
Declan grinned. ‘Have at it. You have what they call moxie.’
Edie bounded down the stairs, out the door, and strode towards the man. He was having a cigarette and couldn’t pick his camera up in time even if he wanted to.
‘Edie,’ she said, extending her hand.
He wiped his free palm on his fleece and took it. ‘Alan.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘I’m a freelancer. Sent by a picture agency.’ He paused. ‘Because you’re the girlfriend of that actor,’ he added, as if Edie might otherwise think it was her work on the hummus-flavoured crisps account.
‘Then you sell the pictures to anyone who’ll have them?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Are you waiting for me to leave work now? Didn’t you get photos before?’
‘Nah, they’re a bit crap. Only took a few from behind, and your pal up there ruined the rest.’
‘If you get a decent one, you can go? Better for both of us?’
‘Definitely.’ He dropped the fag and screwed it underfoot.
Edie checked her watch. ‘It’s five to three – how about if I get a coffee at three and you get a picture then?’
‘That’d be great. Will you be carrying it back?’
‘The coffee? I can do, I guess? Does that matter?’
‘If you’ve got the drink in your hand and maybe your pal with you, it’ll look more natural.’
‘I see. I’ll ask him. See you in a minute.’
‘Thanks,’ Alan said, giving her a tobacco-stained smile.
Edie bounded back upstairs and said to Declan: ‘Fancy making your paparazzi pics debut?’
‘He wants me in it?’ Declan said, double-taking. ‘Why?’
‘I think he wants the caught unawares on a standard day, being standard Peeping Tom vibe.’
‘Urgh. Grimy swine,’ Declan said. ‘Stalking women for cash. If you want me to, sure.’
Edie said: ‘Very, very grateful.’
It was nice having a wingman.
‘Wait, won’t your being in this make the Jess clique go even madder?’ Edie added.
She felt remorse at the fact that blameless, bright Declan had already had her shadow cast over him.
‘Oh, fuck that,’ he said, pulling his duffle coat on. ‘They’ve banished me from the kingdom anyway. Imma sexy exile.’
Edie guffawed.
Alan waved, camera down, as they passed, and Edie did a thumbs up in return.
‘You’re being very nice – I’m not sure I could be,’ Declan said, pushing his thick, fashionably unkempt hair out of his face after they turned the corner. They paused as a car came hurtling past them over the speed limit, Declan instinctively and unobtrusively holding his arm an inch from Edie’s back, before they walked on.
Edie realised the Jess may have particular regard for him revelation had been right there to be made the whole time, but Edie was too spoiled by being Miss Elliot Owen to assess anything about other men. Ironic, really: your target couldn’t be in safer hands, Jessica. My hands are full.
‘Elliot’s publicist explained to me that if the pictures will be taken either way, you might as well exert any influence you have over them.’
‘You must really like this guy to put up with all this?’ Declan said, then reeled. ‘Sorry! Fuck. That was so personal …’
‘No!’ Edie said. ‘Look at what I’m asking you to do right now – it’s not. I like that we can talk openly and honestly. A bit more of that in my old Ad Hoc life would’ve been a good idea. I do really like him, but I’d be lying if I said what comes with it isn’t miserable sometimes.’
Edie hadn’t thought this through before, and she was glad of Declan giving her the chance.
‘… By the time I knew how I felt about him, it was a done deal and the famousness couldn’t stop me. That’s how it is getting together with anyone you don’t meet on a date, I suppose? You start in the middle. If there are difficulties, you simply take them on. You fall in love, then work out what it’s going to entail, in that order.’
Falling in love is a temporary insanity.
‘Very true,’ Declan said. ‘You do the crime, then find out the time. I vowed to myself after Aisling … you know, my long-term ex … I’d not get together with anyone who wanted to live somewhere I didn’t. That’ll be in my first three questions, now.’
‘You really don’t like Dublin?’
‘Ah well, Aisling wanted a rural area, four kids, hens and an Aga. I was whevsy on staying in Ireland, but it was a whole specific vision within that. I’m not a farm type lad. Nor am I big city, as you know. I’m a pointless in-between who likes a lot of green but also a decent coffee.’
Edie nodded.
On their way back, grasping hot beverages, Alan crouched and snapped.
Declan muttered: ‘Feels like submitting to a molestation, doesn’t it? Poor Mariah Carey.’
Edie laughed, hoping she didn’t have a double chin.
A horrible illogical stupidity of her situation was knowing she’d be constantly assessed as to whether she was sufficiently attractive enough to be a correct companion for Elliot Owen, despite the fact she was by definition sufficiently attractive to be a correct companion for Elliot Owen, because Elliot Owen found her attractive.
The worst thing was: it didn’t make simple evident sense to her either.