chapter045
‘The place we’re going in the West Village tonight, I think you’ll really like it,’ Elliot said. ‘It’s a bar with food and pretty much functions like a restaurant, except you keep your table all night and the meal never really ends. They keep bringing small plates. Someone famous usually ends up playing the piano. No photos get taken. A friend calls it the “anecdote generator machine”.’
Edie hoped ‘friend’ wasn’t generic cover for ‘Ines’.
‘Is it members only?’ Edie said.
‘Kind of. You couldn’t call up and book a table if they didn’t know you.’
There was a question about how they could get to know customers if they didn’t recognise cold-calling new ones, and Edie decided to leave it be. Let it dwell in the heavy mists of being an illustrious personage, like disappearing through a doorway full of dry ice.
Elliot was right; she did like the venue: the wood panelling, round leather banquettes, gilt mirrors, red-fabric dining lamps on every table: a very mid-century infidelity and Martinis aesthetic.
The Fraser group was there on their arrival. He’d WhatsApped Edie fifteen minutes before with:
v glad you’re here to cheer the bastard up FYI!He was glum as hell on the stag. Could only get him to have two lap dances. (Joke) xxx
Edie was troubled that the brothers were on a collision course, if Fraser couldn’t anticipate the way Elliot was thinking. She said nothing to Elliot.
Iggy up close was a striking looking individual: red hair like copper wire in curls, a chilli-powder colour Edie had never seen other than in youthful experiments with box dyes. He had a half dozen freckles that looked pencilled on, like a Bash Street kid, and a laugh like that wheezing cartoon dog in flying goggles. It was like Roald Dahl had thought him up and Quentin Blake had drawn him.
(‘Is his name really Iggy?’ Edie had asked Elliot in the cab on the way there.
‘Oh, no. He’s called Eric, after his dad. Iggy was some school nickname that stuck. “Iggy Stardust” as I first remember it – dunno why, though. Don’t ask. With Fraz and Iggy, it’s always better to leave a mystery unsolved.’)
Miniscule Molly’s conker-brown hair had been ironed into a geometrically perfect, poker-straight parting, a coral manicure on show as she clasped a jewelled clutch bag.
‘Can I sit next to you, given we’ve had no time to talk before?’ Edie said, choosing Molly’s end of the upholstered seating horseshoe.
‘Oh yes! That’d be so nice, thank you,’ Molly said, bumping her backside along several inches, as Fraser beamed.
The waitress sold them on a ‘chilled red wine’, which sounded like a descent into the inferno and tasted like heaven.
Molly was fluttery with her, and Edie very quickly ascertained, to her surprise, that she wasn’t the most nervous about making a good impression. All Edie had to do was demonstrate she wasn’t either stuck up or pulling rank in any way, and Molly was enchanted.
Edie told her about her flight, and Molly gurgle-laughed. Elliot shot Edie a very pure adoring look for her effort and its evident reward. Edie liked it, while thinking she didn’t really deserve it; Molly wasn’t difficult.
Edie saw the problem with Elliot’s perception of Fraser’s fiancée within half an hour: they had a personality clash. Molly was extremely apprehensive around her brother-in-law-to-be – Edie guessed it wasn’t so much his fame as his sharply confident Elliot manner. She might well have been intimidated by him without his IMDb credits.
The more edgy Molly got, the quieter she got, punctuated by bouts of skittish giggling – which in turn made Elliot surer she was a bit of an airhead.
Whenever Edie gently sent Elliot up or disagreed with him, Molly looked at her in astonishment, like she’d snout-slapped a crocodile.
Food kept arriving – Elliot had ordered the whole menu, it seemed. Edie would try an arancini ball or a tiny crostini, and it was somehow the best example of the genre she’d ever had.
‘I have a call I need to take …’ Elliot said, when things had degenerated to a liveliness where no one was going to notice much.
Edie was surprised to see a message arrive from Elliot, seconds later.
I don’t have a call – Lillian sent me this, and I have reached my hard limit and had to walk out. Literally, only you and Fraz knew about it. Fuck this, I have to talk to him. I’m absolutely fucking incandescent now.
Edie opened the link he’d added.
EXCLUSIVE: ACTOR’S HEARTbrEAK INSPIRED TEARJERKING HIT
Blood Gold star Elliot Owen’s turbulent love life is the real inspiration behind platinum-selling Cameron McAllister’s new song ‘Last Time’.
The lyrics describe a heartbroken man returning to ask a woman to rekindle their affair – not knowing if this is the ‘last time’ he has a chance or if he’s missed the opportunity to win her back.
The song was written after the actor had a late-night heart-to-heart with the 34-year-old Scottish singer, a close friend of Owen’s since they were both struggling artists. McAllister was encouraging him to patch things up with his former girlfriend, copywriter Edie Thompson, while she was still single. The couple split late last year but have recently got things back on track, suggesting McAllister’s advice when playing Cupid worked.
‘Edie ended things with Elliot because of their incompatible lifestyles, but he couldn’t get her out of his system,’ said a source close to both. ‘Cameron persuaded him to tell her how he felt before it was too late, and it looks like it paid off … and spawned another monster hit for Cam.’
Edie stopped reading, palms in a light sweat. She felt the embarrassment and exposure for both of them. She didn’t want the ins and outs of their relationship picked over like this, didn’t want this emotionally intimate detail about their reconciliation cast up for Ad Hoc to ridicule. She didn’t want them pointing at her when ‘Last Time’ came on at the Christmas party disco.
Edie looked over at Fraser, arm around Molly, loquacious and genial as always. It was impossible he was knowingly betraying his brother’s confidences. His concern was wholly genuine, as was his loyalty. It seemed barely less impossible that Molly was.
Stay where you are. I’m coming to talk to you. x
Edie slipped out and found Elliot in the lobby, leaning against the wall, arms folded, wearing the unmistakeable air of someone revving themselves up for a confrontation.
‘Couldn’t it have been Cameron? It’s great publicity for the song,’ Edie said. She felt Elliot on the brink of doing things that would not be easily undone.
‘Cam is utterly Masonic about the inspiration for his songs and everyone who works with him knows that. He’d not have told anyone either, to make sure. This is the same person who’s been leaking about me throughout, and I’m absolutely done with it. It’s affected my girlfriend, my family, now my closest friends. Whatever privacy I had is now gone, like there’s a silent breather on my phone line. I want to crawl out of my own skin, Edie.’
‘Totally empathise, but … is it a good idea to raise it tonight?’ she said. ‘Especially after we’ve all been drinking …’
‘Probably not, but everyone’s got a plan until they’re punched in the face,’ Elliot said. ‘Sorry. I will try my best to keep it civil and brief. But Fraser has to help me find the answer here.’
‘Don’t directly accuse Molly, will you? I don’t think she’s capable of this, not at all,’ Edie said, while knowing events, and Elliot’s resolve, had overtaken her. It reminded her of a piece of Richard wisdom: if there’s ‘never the right moment,’ the wrong one will find you instead.
‘I know she’s nice,’ Elliot said. ‘But so much of this information has been known only to me, you, and Fraser, and by extension, her. The only person he’d tell about our being the background to that love song is her. I know that for sure. Enough’s enough. Can you tell Fraser I want to have a word?’