Who’s That Girl?: A laugh-out-loud sparky romcom!

They both knew that a) it wouldn’t be possible to let everyone know this and b) no one was going to be inclined to absolve Edie and thus lose a key player in such compelling You’ll Never Guess What gossip. The narrative needed a vixen.

‘We’re still friends, aren’t we? I feel like I’ll have no friends.’

‘Babe,’ Louis squeezed her in a quick, hard, brusque hug, ‘Course we are.’

After re-locking the door after him, Edie sank back down on the bed. Every bump or scuffle in the hotel startled her. She imagined a procession of people queuing up, Lucie Maguire having rejoined at the back, waiting to scream and rant at her and do horrible things to her tits.

When she could bear it, she looked online. Again, nothing but a chilly calm. She couldn’t see any comments alluding to what had gone on, she hadn’t been unfriended on Facebook (though that was coming, obviously).

And yet … as time ticked by, suddenly, an ugly, worrying notion gripped a panicky Edie. She wrestled with it. She was being paranoid. She didn’t need to check. Of course she was wrong.

OK, Edie had to look. Just to reassure herself she was being paranoid. She fumbled with hot fingers on the touch screen. Oh, God. No. She blinked back tears and hit refresh and refresh again and willed herself to have made a mistake. But she hadn’t.

Louis had deleted the picture of them together.

6 (#ue8c6b6e4-7ba6-55cf-9f56-d601f6ca3258)

Edie never wanted to be this woman. The Other Woman. Who would? Who in their right mind wanted the heartache, the unsympathetic misery of playing that part? No one was the villain of their own story in their own mind, wasn’t that screenwriting law?

Edie had a feeling for some time that her life had wandered badly off course, and she had to face facts now: it might never come back.

It wasn’t always like this. After a romantically chaotic youth gadding about the capital in the post-university years, she’d settled down by her mid-twenties with her picture perfect soulmate: a difficult, intense, complicated young northern poet and Alain Delon lookalike, called Matt.

He was the glorious culmination of a reinvention, where messy Edith became Edie, pretty, funny writer girl who was taking life in her stride and London by the scruff.

Edie had tried to make the relationship as great on the inside as it looked on the outside. They matched. People envied them. She fantasised the wedding, even babies, but increasingly when faced with Matt’s moods, it was obvious to Edie that it was best kept as fantasy.

After three years of wrestling with difficult, intense and complicated, Edie was thoroughly knackered with the effort of trying to work him out and cheer him up.

They split, and while Edie was very sad, she was also twenty-nine. She wasn’t short of men hovering at the edges of the fall-out, willing to help pick up her pieces. She assumed that Mr Right was a few dalliances away, over the other side of the horizon of thirty, holding a bunch of flowers.

Yet somehow, he never happened. Single went from a temporary glitch to a permanent state. There was no one worth falling for. Until Jack. Who she absolutely shouldn’t have fallen for.

Do we ever choose who we fall for? Edie had many a long lonely evening in with only Netflix for company to contemplate that one.

Edie often cast her mind back to that first meeting with Jack, at the advertising firm where she was a copywriter. Charlotte was an ambitious account executive and had successfully talked their boss, Richard, into hiring Jack, despite a strict No Partners rule.

Edie hadn’t given the arrival of Jack Marshall much thought, beyond assuming he’d be another gym-before-work super over-achiever, like Charlotte.

‘Edie, this is my boyfriend!’ she had called across the table, late last summer, in the Italian wine bar they piled into every Friday. ‘You’ll love Edie, she’s the office clown.’ A mixed compliment, but Edie took it as one and smiled.

Over the table, awkwardly pitched half on the pavement and half inside the restaurant, she stood up to shake the tips of Jack’s fingers in lieu of his hand. She’d later marvel at her total indifference at the time. Jack looked prima facie Charlotte business, with his sharp suit, sandy hair and slim build, and Edie returned to her conversation.

In the weeks afterwards, Edie caught Jack throwing the odd stray glance her way, and assumed he was simply getting the measure of his new workplace. Charlotte was a willowy goddess of the southern counties, it seemed unlikely he was admiring a Midlander who covered her greys with L’Oreal Liquorice and dressed like Velma from Scooby Doo.

One lunchtime, she was reading a Jon Ronson book and eating an apple at her desk and she caught Jack staring at her. She would’ve blushed, but Jack said quickly: ‘You frown really hard when you read, did you know that?’

‘Elvis used to slap Priscilla Presley when she frowned,’ Edie said.

‘What? Seriously?’

‘Yeah. He didn’t want her getting lines.’

‘Wow. What an arsehole. I’m giving away my copy of Live in Vegas now. You don’t need to worry, though.’

‘You’re not going to slap me?’ Edie grinned.

‘Hahahaha! No. No lines.’

Edie nodded and mumbled thanks and went back to her book. Had she been flirted with? She doubted it. But not long after, a passing client, Olly the wine merchant, had paid Edie particular attention, and again, she felt Jack’s gaze.

‘My little Edie! How are you?’ Olly said, clearly kippered by the lunchtime intake. ‘What a delightful blouse. You remind me terribly of my daughter, you know. Doesn’t she? Richard? The image of Vanessa.’

Her boss, Richard, hem-hawed the sort of agreement you gave someone who you had to agree with, for money.

Edie thanked him and hoped everyone else in the office knew she did nothing to invite his whisky-breathed attentions.

As Richard guided him away from her desk, her G-chat popped up on her screen. Jack.

‘Young lady, may I tell you, in a completely platonic way, how much I’d like to have sex with you?’

Edie boggled and then noticed the inverted commas. She almost guffawed out loud. Then, gratified, typed back:

Ahem, Olly’s a valued client. He’s family … *like the Wests were family* *seasick face*

Without knowing it, she was sunk. She had picked up the baton from Jack. The journey to ruin starts with a single step.

Jack

The only thing worse than his pick-up patter is his wine. Have you tried the Pinot Grigio? BLETCH

Edie

I think you’ll find my copy describes it as having a tingle of green plum acidity and a long melony finish, perfect for long afternoons in gardens that turn into evenings

Jack

Translation: a park-bench session wine, aromas of Listerine mixed with asparagus wee

Edie

The bouquet could be described as ‘insistent’.

Jack

I’ve actually looked it up for the lols. ‘A fruit forward blend of ripe, zesty flavours. Will transport you to Italian vineyards.’ Will transport you to A&E, more like.

If this sort of instant familiarity had come from a single male colleague, Edie would have treated it as clear flirting. Obviously. But Jack was Charlotte’s boyfriend and she was sat right there, though, so this couldn’t be flirting. It was G-chat, but not a G-chat-up.