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

Edie nodded. She owed it to Hannah to be as supportively hard-to-shock as she’d been for her.

‘I had no idea. You seemed so steady.’

‘We had no idea. Or we had some idea, but it was like carrying a weight. Sooner or later you forget you’re carrying it and think you always walked with a stoop. Fuck, Edith, I can hardly bring myself to admit this to you, but I found myself thinking: we can’t split up because we’ve just had the floors sanded. We were seriously staying together because of sofas and tiles and stripped floors. Like the beautiful house had become this tomb we were interred in together.’

Edie had forgotten how smart Hannah was. It was intimidating she was so good with words when Edie did words for a living. You’d hardly let Edie tinker with your urine- filtration system.

‘We didn’t want a wedding or kids and so it was possible to drift, you know? And the whole constant mantra about how long-term relationships are hard work and everything has its ups and downs and you’re going to be annoyed by their toenails and stick with it and the grass only looks greener and so on. It’s actually very hard to tell when you should split up with someone. All I knew was I was waking up every morning thinking this can’t be it, until death. When your relationship is making you feel life’s too long, something’s gone awry.’

Hannah’s voice had become thick, and she sipped her wine. Edie felt bad that Hannah had obviously churned on this a lot, with her friend so many hundreds of miles away, not able to help.

‘You should’ve said …’

‘I didn’t want to say it out loud until I was sure. You know that’s me.’

Edie nodded. She’d done the same over HarrogateGate, after all. Waited until she could face saying it.

‘… I’m moving back to Nottingham,’ Hannah continued. ‘I was here for a job interview at the Queen’s Med yesterday and they’ve offered it to me. I don’t want to hang around in Edinburgh and bump into Pete all the time. I can’t stand the whole access arrangements to mutual friends thing, I want a clean break. My mum’s not getting any better. I start in two weeks.’

‘Oh my God! Both of us back at the same time, what are the chances?’

‘You’re not staying, though?’

‘No,’ Edie said, with a small shudder, although why she thought London was the safe haven was unclear. ‘I technically have my job to go back to.’ As if that made it more appealing.

‘How lucky are we, to at least end up here at the same time in our hour of need,’ Edie said, as Hannah returned from the bar with more massive glasses of red that were going to wreak flamboyant revenge in the morning.

‘Well, qualified lucky,’ Hannah said, into her glass, and smiled.

‘OK, we know our lives are a shitty mess. To the outside world, I am a celebrity biographer and you are a superb renal surgeon and we have most of a bottle of Shiraz to neck.’

They clinked glasses.

‘To being together in our time of need,’ Hannah said. ‘Shall we look Nick up? Have you heard from him lately?’

Edie shook her head, guiltily. She’d not seen Nick for eighteen months, bar trading the odd ‘did you see this’ funny email. Nick was a friend they’d made in sixth form. You might say he was ‘Eeyore-ish’ although ‘prone to mildly depressive episodes’ might be more accurate. With bizarre juxtaposition, he had a very sunny local radio show where he chatted with old dears and played Fleetwood Mac.

Aged twenty-four, he’d made a catastrophically bad choice of sour, bossy wife in Alice. Hannah had once described marrying Alice as ‘an act of self-loathing’.

It seemed as if it was so much strife for him to wriggle out from under the yoke of oppression, it was easier to turn down social occasions. They had a young son, Max, and Nick had pretty much been grounded by Alice, forever.

‘Do you think A Town Called Malice is letting him roam around free range, yet?’ Hannah said. They had called her this for some time.

‘I doubt it,’ Edie said.

‘I want to talk to him, you know. Life is too short to put up with being unhappy.’

Edie nodded, though she suspected it was futile. ‘We should definitely let him know we’re back.’

Now she thought about it, Nick had been unusually quiet on email, even by his standards. Maybe Baby 2 was on the way and he didn’t want to face their creaky-polite ermgreat what wonderful news.

‘If he tries to avoid us, we can call in to his radio show,’ Hannah said.

Edie agreed. ‘We could even ask him out with Alice? Turn a new page?’

‘We could. I bet that page will say Yep Still A Cow on it though.’

When she rolled in later, revived, Edie was surprised to find her dad waiting up for her, watching the television with a glass of Glenmorangie.

‘Haven’t waited up for you to come home for quite a few years,’ he said, smiling.

Edie had to say it fast or she’d lose her nerve. ‘Dad, I’m going to find somewhere else to stay, tomorrow. Me and Meg is too much stress for everyone.’

Her dad didn’t look surprised.

‘Look. Give it a week or two. The settling in was always going to have its rocky moments.’

‘She hates me!’ Edie said, in hysterical whisper-squeak. ‘I don’t do anything to provoke her and she gets at me, all the time.’

‘I know you don’t. She doesn’t hate you. It’s very difficult for Megan. She sees you as the success who gets all the glory and her feathers get ruffled. I’m not excusing her behaviour tonight and I’ve had a word. But she really does suffer with some sibling envy, I think. Let it settle down a bit. For me.’

Edie already knew she couldn’t refuse her dad this. Her shoulders sloped.

‘… OK.’

‘It is good for us to see you, you know.’ He gave her a hug and Edie surrendered to it with that waterlogged feeling in her heart. ‘You never know, one day we might even be good for you.’

He said this with such forced-lightness and sadness that Edie had to squeak ‘Night’, before she teared up.

17 (#ulink_22606af3-08cb-5832-9a95-c5f94f4344dc)

The Elliot Owen Story had started in the somewhat sleepy but ‘sought after’ suburb of West Bridgford. It was a place Edie had lived, long ago. Her brain had been too small to record many memories but she had a few. They flashed on and off like old jumpy sound-free sunny frames of a Super 8 Cinefilm and Edie turned her internal projector off.

Elliot’s parents’ home was large and comforting, the doorway partially hidden by clematis. He would have one of those mums who used to pack his ingredients for Home Economics into a wicker basket with a pristine gingham tea towel on top. Edie used to buy her supplies from the local inconvenience store, while missing the bus and factoring in a sneaky fag. She rang the solidly middle-class, stiff brass bell and waited, prickly with anticipation.

Elliot answered the door himself, which surprised Edie a little. His neon-green eyes met hers, and there he was, in the sculpted flesh. A fact that was both shocking and completely banal at the same time. It was ridiculous to be surprised he answered his own door, the man had to be by himself sometimes. He wouldn’t have an Alfred, as if he was Bruce Wayne. (Would he?)

She kept her expression steady and said: ‘Hi, I’m Edie,’ and as soon as she said it, felt irrationally foolish, as he had a mobile clamped to his ear and she was talking over him. Elliot made the ‘point to phone and make twirling finger to indicate the call is running on’ gesture.

He wedged the door open with a pristine white sneaker-clad foot as Edie brushed past him into the house, nerves jumping like fizzy beans. She’d sternly told herself not to wilt and thrill at being in his presence, yet it wasn’t possible.

It didn’t matter how indifferent you declared yourself to be to the particular celebrity, seeing someone famous in the flesh had a weird hysterical buzz of cognitive dissonance. Edie couldn’t quite compute Elliot Owen’s proximity, even though it was a simple thing to understand.

The clean-shaven, dark-haired man in the stripy jumper in this suburban hallway had the same face as the dishevelled hero she’d seen charging around in battle on her telly. Her brain roared IT’S HIM IT’S HIM OH MY GOD IT’S REALLY HIM.

OK, the sight of Elliot didn’t knock Edie out or make her almost ovulate. He was just ‘people’, except a pumice-stoned, cleaner, clearer, more bone-structured, symmetrical version. He looked like he’d smell of cut apples and fresh linen. And like all famouses, was smaller than the towering, glowering hunk she was expecting. He was a fairly good height, if on the slim side.

Elliot opened the door to the sitting room with one hand and Edie took that as direction to go and sit in it.