live up to the swooning hagiography of the Sunday magazine piece. The papers and women’s glossies were mainly interested in the fact Elliot was dating a hot British actress called Heather Lily. (Two flowers? Impossibly fragrant.) They featured together in recent paparazzi pictures in New York; Elliot in that very self-conscious ‘off-duty’ outfit of no-doubt hideously expensive binman’s style donkey jacket and artfully battered brown boots, carrying Starbucks cups. His blonde girlfriend only a perfect Dairylea triangle nose peeking through a bundle of thick blonde hair, with a tiny sphere-of-fluff dog on a lead bouncing behind her. Why did starlets always have dogs? Maybe it was the pissy cat lady stigma.
Hmm, Edie conceded the angle of Elliot’s jaw was caught nicely in photo number five, as he stepped out to hail a yellow cab. She caught herself getting sucked into the whirlpool of trivia and thought, you really had to wonder at a society that was fascinated by couple buy coffee.
She put the cuttings back inside the envelope and laid back on her bed. Her dad had yet to find the funds or the will to fix the damp problem at the back of the house, so the off-white walls in this back room sagged and bloated like a wedding cake that had been left out in the rain. The ghostly remnants of her teenage self filled it, from the greasy blots left by Blu- Tack on the walls, to shreds of ripped-off stickers (the New Kids on the Block phase.)
Edie was once obsessed with glow-in-the-dark stickers, peppering her navy-blue bedroom ceiling with a constellation of white-green paper stars, crescent moons and comets.
She lay in her bed and stared at the universe on her ceiling in the late afternoon murk. Edie used to lie there thinking what a big world it was and how, one day, she was going to strike out into it.
That had gone well.
‘Whereabouts, love?’ said the taxi driver, as they both peered at deserted acres of not much at all, some ugly squat container buildings and trailers dotted about.
It seemed making dramas – the fictional sort – was less thrilling than Edie expected. When she got details of her first on-set meeting with Elliot Owen via his flunkies, she expected to be told to meet at somewhere like the Council House, which they were re-dressing as a haunted library, or something.
Instead she got the coordinates to an industrial estate at the south of the city, near a race track. A pile of churned mud. Oh.
Edie could see some vans in the distance, and possibly the odd human.
‘Just here, thanks,’ she said, doubtfully, wondering at the wisdom of having worn a small heel and her beloved tartan coat with brown fur hood. (Jack always asked if it was ‘real gerbil’. She HAD to stop thinking about Jack.)
She picked her way towards the vague signs of life in the distance, men in North Face jackets, holding walkie-talkies. If she squinted, beyond them she could see some arc lights and maybe cameras.
As Edie drew nearer, she realised what she thought was ‘someone telling a funny story, in a heightened excitable voice’ was in fact, a person having a massive rant. A wiry, bespectacled man in a long narrow beanie hat was having a meltdown, hopping around, gesticulating at a deeply dismayed looking member of the North Face team.
They were gathered round in a circle, staring at something. As the people shifted, Edie glimpsed the focus – a figure of a garden gnome, in a hat with a bell, holding a watering can at a jaunty angle.
Edie suspected, due to the sense of cowed deference, that the shouter was enfant terrible Archie Puce – being terrible if not enfant. The words faded in.
‘—back and get me what I FUCKING WELL ASKED FOR, THE FUCK IS THIS? Do you grasp the significance of Buddha, Clive? Do you realise why this scene where Garratt smashes up a statue of BUDDHA in ANGER is IRONIC? I mean should I even BOTHER MAKING ART, WITH THIS SORT OF CLOWN WORKSHOP OVERT COCK-ENDERY?’
Lots of shaking of heads and chewing of lips and shuffling of feet. Blimey, Edie didn’t think even divas did shit fits on day one at 10 a.m.
Archie waved a sheaf of paper in his hands and read from the page.
‘Garratt sees the terracotta figurine, and gripped by an unreasoning fury at its ironic juxtaposition in these war-torn surroundings, destroys the smiling round-bellied icon of peace as he hurls it at the fence, again and again. As it shatters, so does Garratt’s hope.’
Archie looked up at Clive.
‘Perhaps I should have been more explicit for the hard of thinking. He is committing an act of ICONOCLASM. What is iconoclasm, please?’
Clive looked pretty miserable and very pale. He scratched his cheek. ‘Smashing up … religious stuff?’
‘OH, A BREAKTHROUGH. Religious “stuff”. So, on the one hand, Buddha, an enlightened sage of the sixth century and figurehead of a faith. What do we have here as substitute?’
Archie picked it up.
‘A gnome. A small old cunt with a pointy beard found in suburban gardens. Do we see the difference? What does smashing a gnome up signify? GOOD TASTE?’
Edie was suddenly gripped by an urgent need to laugh and had to choke back a honk as it surfaced.
Archie read the lettering on the base. ‘Ninbert. So we have two options, Clive. Either we found a new religion based on THE CULT OF FUCKING NINBERT OR WE BUY THE RIGHT ITEM WHAT STRIKES YOU AS MORE FEASIBLE WITHIN OUR SHOOTING SCHEDULE?’
Clive was in that deeply unpleasant situation during a bollocking where you were required to explain the unacceptable and dig yourself in deeper.
‘Sorry it’s just B&Q didn’t have any garden statue Buddhas and then I … looking at comparative size …’
‘Size?’
Clive nodded.
‘My head is comparative in size to a large gourd. Should I replace my head with a large gourd, Clive?’
He shook his head.
Archie hurled Ninbert in the air, and booted him with the toe of his shoe, causing onlookers to duck.
‘What’s in there?’ Archie said, spotting another B&Q bag, beyond Clive’s legs.
‘Uh. Another one.’
‘Get it out!’ screeched Archie.
Clive miserably produced the second gnome, which was lying on its side, insouciantly smoking a bubble pipe, which seemed in the circumstances likely to inflame Archie. ‘Who’s this, Dildo Baggins?’ He inspected its name. ‘Boddywinkle.’
Archie kicked that gnome clear of the group too, with a menacing zeal.
‘This production,’ he pulled his hat from his head and threw it on the ground, ‘is a PROPER SHITTERS’ PICNIC.’
An obliging runner nervously ducked in and snatched the hat up.
‘LEAVE MY HAT WHERE I PUT IT, YOU ARSEFUCK!’
