silence where no one said anything, for fear of being an arsefuck. Edie couldn’t back away without it being noticed. She stood very still, as if she was a small shivery mammal in an old wildlife programme and a tiger was prowling around nearby. Unfortunately, Archie’s boggling eyes swept over the company for fresh meat, and Edie had rather made herself stand out by being dressed as a cute librarian in an indie movie, instead of the regulation fleece.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
Edie cleared her throat as everyone turned and stared.
‘Edie Thompson. I’m a copywriter … I’m here to interview Elliot Owen.’
Archie ignored this.
‘Since you’ve decided to join us without invitation, let’s hear your thoughts on Buddha being substituted by Ninbert and or Boddywinkle.’
‘I haven’t read the scene.’
‘Well neither has Clive, clearly.’
‘Erm,’ Edie was sweating inside her coat. ‘… Why would there be a statue of Buddha lying around on an industrial estate in Colwick?’
There was a pause while Archie Puce went, well, even more puce. Then his features twisted in an unpleasant fashion, as if he’d thought of something cunning and done a sly fart at the same time.
‘Why is there a fucking gnome out here?’
‘… Because you sent Clive to B&Q?’
Edie couldn’t be sure but it seemed as if there was a beat of shock followed by some suppressed laughter-snorts. A harassed-looking woman at Archie’s elbow who’d previously stayed neutral stepped forward and said briskly:
‘Can I see some sort of ID?’
Edie dropped her bag to fumble for her wallet and the crowd dispersed, amid mumbling. When Edie looked up, Archie was stalking back towards the set and the air pressure had reduced considerably.
‘When did he say he’d see you?’ the woman said, handing Edie’s driving licence back to her in disgust.
‘Just to be here at ten.’
‘Alright, wait here.’
The woman turned on her heel and left Edie feeling like turning up at the appointed place and time had been the most presumptuous thing she could’ve done.
After ten minutes, the irascible woman with a walkie-talkie trudged back to Edie.
‘Elliot can’t see you today, sorry.’
‘Oh. Can I—’
‘That’s it. Sorry.’
‘OK …’ Edie tried to say more but the woman had already turned. She hit the taxi number on her mobile and tried not to feel stupid, as people milling nearby glanced at her.
Usually, Edie would be very pleased to find herself with what amounted to a paid day off. Time tooling around by herself felt a lot less appealing now she had huge anxieties and a guilty conscience, with no online rabbit hole to tumble into, either. She wanted to be busy-busy-busy to avoid all the bad thoughts.
Also, while she appreciated he was an important man, she suspected she’d had her first taste of the behaviour that caused the previous biographer to exit stage left from the Elliot Owen Story. Edie had a very nasty feeling she was going to fare no better, and be what Boddywinkle was to Ninbert.
Edie finally had a reply from Jack. Six days after he’d unpinned a grenade and lobbed it into the middle of several lives at once, then scattered before the smoke had cleared.
She was getting ready for what could be grandly called ‘an evening out’, applying her make-up, peering into the old milky mirror of her youth with the plastic red frame, rummaging around in a cosmetics basket that had a topsoil of shattered kohl pencils and lidless grey eye shadows.
The name that used to give her such a sting of excitement appeared on her phone screen. Now it just stung. Involuntarily, Edie recalled how his lips felt on hers before she pulled away. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about that until now.
Hi you. So. Sorry about everything. Hear you’re up north for now? Take care. Jx
That was it?!
Trembling slightly, Edie hammered out three different replies of varying sarcastic rage, and deleted each of them in turn. This man had dabbled with her heart like it was a finger- painting kit and he never ever took responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
But if she got too emotional, he could simply drop the conversation. How did Jack always manage to shield himself from feedback? Actually, he couldn’t, not without her help. She needed to breathe deeply and be smart, here.
Hi yourself. ‘What were you thinking’ might be a cliché but, what were you thinking?
Near-insta ping back.
I wasn’t, clearly. I know you weren’t either. Apologies for inviting you to a wedding that had an ‘aftermath’ in place of a ‘reception’. Man alive. Jx
And this was how Jack’s wiles had sent her slowly mad. Within seconds of receiving this ostensibly self-deprecating reply, Edie realised he’d apologised, but neatly stopped her screen-grabbing the conversation and using it as proof of his guilt. To her, it worked as Jack’s usual easy charm: ‘I assume nothing from your momentary reciprocation’. To anyone else, it read as if they were equally to blame.
She had to find a direct question to ask that he couldn’t wriggle out of. She steeled herself and typed:
But why decide to kiss me?!
‘Edie! Time to get going?’ her dad called from downstairs. He’d volunteered to drive them to their dinner. Edie had thought the best way to get her dad and Meg out was to promise to pay but let them choose the restaurant. Which meant, Meg choosing.
As they crushed into the back of her dad’s old Volvo, footwells lined with old newspapers, Edie wondered why her dad burning a fossil fuel was OK with Meg, but taxi drivers doing it was not.
Meg also gave them a long explanation about rewarding venues that offered solid vegan options, to justify picking Annie’s Burger Shack. Edie suspected the ethical reasoning boiled down to Meg fancying a burger. She was just relieved that Meg hadn’t found some café full of nubbly seed-filled discs of tempeh and hemp burgers that looked like something you’d leave on a bird feeder table.
It took a lot longer to get a response from Jack this time and given the starkness of her question, Edie wasn’t surprised. Evade THAT, motherfucker. She tried not to twitch her phone out of her pocket every sixteen seconds as they rumbled towards the city centre, to see if Jack had replied.
By the time they were seated at Annie’s, had the menus and ordered drinks,
