You Belong With Me

chapter036

The fruits of Alan’s labours ran in a tabloid a couple of days later, headlined: Down to Earth Life of Elliot Owen’s New Love: Star’s Girlfriend Keeps 9–5 Job. The copy explored the exciting and novel improbability of earning a salary and purchasing Americanos and dating a well-known actor, concurrently, as if contact with his groin prohibited gainful employment.

Edie

For fuck’s sake, Elliot, ‘down to earth life’! It makes me sound like I’m a simpleton sat on a hay bale, in stained overalls, hooting vacantly at passers-by.

Elliot

Hahahaha. Living La Vida ‘Local’. You look cute in that coat. Who’s your friend?

Edie

Declan. Remember, I told you about him? Lovely Irish guy who I’m supposedly line managing but is more line managing me.

Elliot

Ah yeah, of course! Hmm, he’s annoyingly tall. So, you’ve been caught red-handed, sluttishly sharing jokes with other men when I’m abroad? Noted. The sooner I install you pregnant with bodyguards in Graceland, the better.

Edie laughed out loud. Whenever they were handling this, she felt like she could conquer the world. It was a triumphal kind of day – right up until Edie’s mobile flashed late afternoon with a call from Meg.

Meg never rang her unannounced, so either she’d dropped her house key down a drain and was about to make it Edie’s problem, or it was something cataclysmic. Those were the only two options when it came to reluctant cold callers in their benighted era: absolute nonsense, or possibly the end of your world as you knew it.

‘Edie, it’s Dad! He’s sick – we’re at the hospital! You have to come now.’

The latter. Edie’s heart stopped.

Meg was crying and using her little-sister voice that implored Edie to fix it.

‘What? What’s happened?’

‘He’s fallen down the stairs and hurt his leg, and he called me, and he wasn’t himself. Edie, you should’ve heard him. He was gibbering. I think he’s had a heart attack or a stroke or something, and that’s why he fell.’

‘Where are you?’ Edie said, in a freezing sweat already.

‘We’ve just got to QMC. I called Dad an ambulance and I got a taxi, and we arrived at the same time. Now they’ve taken him away, and they’re seeing him.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘Not really. He was on a trolley thing, and he waved hello, but they rushed him away.’ Meg cough-sobbed.

‘Which bit are you in? Of the hospital I mean?’

‘AE. Edie, please come quickly – I don’t want to talk to the doctors without you!’

‘I’m on my way to QMC – stay where you are, OK? I’m getting a taxi now. I’ll be fifteen minutes.’

One thing about a quiet office with two occupants: every word of Edie’s side of the conversation had been heard by Declan, who was already on the phone to a cab company, telling them it was urgent.

He rang off. ‘Didn’t want you relying on an app. What happened?’

‘Thank you. My dad’s had a fall – my sister thinks he might be … critical.’

Edie very much wanted to be a pillar at this moment, but changes had taken place during the conversation with Meg and she’d been unaware of her altered state until now. She felt dizzy and realised she was trembling uncontrollably.

‘Shit, I can’t focus …’ Edie said. She tried to get up to grab her coat and sat back down heavily again.

‘Take a moment.’ Declan gestured for her to stay put, jumped up and got her coat.

‘You’re all right,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be OK.’ He kneeled by her seat and held her arm.

‘I’m having some sort of turn,’ Edie gasped, trying to smile, tucking her hair behind her ears.

‘You’re in shock,’ Declan said, rubbing her back. ‘Which is understandable. Try to get your breathing steady – it’ll help.’

Edie nodded.

‘It’s what happens when you go from boring day at work to fight or flight in two minutes flat. It keeps us safe from being eaten by bears.’

Edie smiled in gratitude.

‘Your brain will realise there’s no bear chasing you if you give it a minute.’

‘What if there is a bear?’ Edie squeaked out. ‘A sick dad bear.’

‘He’s in exactly the right place to be sick if he is sick, and you’re going to be with your sister, and everything will be OK. It may not feel like it right now, but you can cope, I promise.’

He rubbed her back again, and Edie, to her surprise, felt more in control than she had a moment ago.

A horn sounded below, and Declan got up to glance out of the window.

‘If you feel you can move, I’m going to put your coat on you and walk you down there, all right? Take it slowly.’

Edie nodded in mute gratitude. She pushed herself up from her desk and put her heavy arms into the proffered coat sleeves.

They took the stairs at a pensioner pace, with Declan’s arm around her, his other holding her bag.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Declan asked, opening the car door.

‘We can’t leave the office like that?’ Edie said.

‘Respectfully, fuck the office.’

They smiled at each other, and she said: ‘I think I’ll manage, but thank you so much.’

‘Call when you can,’ he said.

The stop-start journey in early rush hour gave Edie a chance to calm down a few degrees. She tried to count blessings. Her dad had been conscious. It was a great hospital, a huge teaching hospital. He’d be fine. He was healthy. He had two kids on hand to help him convalesce.

When she emerged from the taxi, looking up at the concrete edifice of Queen’s Medical Centre, she said: ‘Please let him be OK’ aloud, not caring if she looked mad to anyone in earshot. She’d been here with Declan just last month, in very different spirits. Life kept happening.

Edie fumbled her phone out and quickly scrolled to Elliot’s number. She’d be strong for Meg and strong for her dad; right now she missed the person who’d hold her up. She knew that with the time difference and his filming, there was no chance he’d pick up. She tried three times anyway, desperate enough to find comfort in a dial tone for a device somewhere near Elliot’s person.

Edie pressed the microphone symbol and left a somewhat fraught, vocally wavering voice note, explaining where she was and why, and that she’d hopefully speak to him later.

She did conscious, measured breathing as she walked through the sliding doors into AE. As she scanned the crowd, Meg came barrelling towards her. She was in pyjamas with a hoodie over the top and welly boots.

She threw herself into Edie’s arms and said, voice muffled: ‘Good news! It’s a fracture and a bad sprain! It’s only his metatarsal bones!’

Edie looked at her quizzically. As Meg stepped back, Edie saw that her sister looked authentically exultant.

‘Was it? Why was he confused?’

‘He fell down the stairs, twisted his ankle and then dragged himself to his phone, which was on the counter. By the time he got there, he was light-headed because it hurt so much. Dad sounded unusual, and when he said he’d had a fall, I lost it. But he says he didn’t even hit his head on the way down! Or have a brain episode that made him fall! He slipped on a Jaffa Cake!’

‘Ahhh.’ Edie’s pulse slowed, her adrenaline level began descending, and she gathered that she’d been a victim of Meg’s tendency to hyperbole.

Edie wasn’t going to make a word of complaint about this.

Firstly, she was awash with too much gratitude. She’d have given anything for this diagnosis mere seconds ago; she wasn’t going to insult God by responding with wrath. Secondly, she’d not been a model of proportionate reaction herself. Thirdly, she wanted Meg to feel she could offload onto her, if she needed to. Sibling duties.

Within half an hour, their father emerged on his crutches, foot swaddled in bandages. Both his daughters ran to him for a hug, awkwardly accommodating walking aids.

Back at the family home, they opened wine and ordered fish (vegan minty pea fritter for Meg) and chips, eating from their cardboard boxes while watching a documentary about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Edie remembered herself and texted Declan:

Massive false alarm, huge relief. It’s an ankle injury and nothing else. My sister spiralled a bit Thank you for being such an absolute rock when I fell apart. xx

Instant reply.

Declan

GREAT NEWS! Ah, Edie, that’s put a smile on my face. Love to you all. Tell your sister I’m holding her to the mashed potato promise. Mind you, that was made before I forced her to view my bare buttocks. xx

Edie sniggered. She recalled his summoning a taxi to the hospital before she’d even rung off. He was such a delight of a human being, and she was lucky to have him as a friend. After all the Ad Hoc woe, she’d rolled a six.

Edie

Who knows, maybe that’ll have clinched second helps. Will do. xx

Declan liked her reply with a heart. Was Edie flirting? She was too nerve-shredded and two glasses too tipsy to judge. She was mostly glad that if Declan was making light of that incident, he must be recovering from it. She was surprised he’d raised it. It was, as foretold, alchemising into comedy. A vision of him unclothed swam into her head, and she banished it, because the better she knew him, the odder it felt. And somehow, rather less like comedy.

‘How come Sherlock Holmes had so much cocaine?’ Meg asked. ‘Was it allowed in those days? Because life was more boring?’

‘Why was life boring?’ their dad asked. ‘No Wetherspoons and Netflix?’

‘Yes,’ said Meg, her usual literalism disarming her father’s satire. ‘They only had pianos and maps and murders.’

‘They didn’t know it did you any harm, I think,’ Edie said.

‘Like sugar now,’ Meg replied. ‘In the future, we’ll think of Vanilla Coke and Kit Kats like Class As. Injecting a Wispa Gold.’

She made a tightening a tourniquet mime.

Edie phone-googled and read aloud: ‘In the late nineteenth century, cocaine was thought to be totally harmless and was used both as a nerve tonic and for local anaesthetic. Cocaine was used in throat lozenges, gargles, and in several alcoholic drinks.’

‘I’d love me a cocaine gargle,’ Meg said.

Edie continued: ‘Holmes took cocaine to help him “escape from the commonplaces of existence”.’

‘Boring! See, Dad,’ Meg said.

‘Thankfully, you have no need of cocaine, with your Twiglets and Say Yes to the Dress,’ their dad said, dabbing his chin with kitchen roll.

‘What?!’ Edie shrieked. ‘Meg’s been watching Say Yes to the Dress? Bridal gowns? What happened to Andrea Dworkin and the toxic male gaze on our prostituted bodies?!’

Meg adjusted her top knot of dreadlocks and made a mardy little face. ‘The patriarchy won’t monitor itself.’