Читать книгу Who’s That Girl?: A laugh-out-loud sparky romcom! - Mhairi McFarlane, Mhairi McFarlane - Страница 14

As the car turned through near-empty roads, Edie couldn’t resist looking at her phone. If it had been hard for her father to grasp why they pulled duck-face selfies, she imagined explaining to him why, at a time like this, she would investigate things that were guaranteed to violently upset her. Because the big online glass palace full of funhouse mirrors was where half your reputation lived, now.

Edie had a flurry of a dozen or so Facebook messages. She opened them, nauseous with foreboding. They were distant acquaintances, the social media version of phishing scams – feigned concern and closeness, to gather information. Bloody hell, how shameless.

Long time no speak! Heard something kicked off at the wedding yesterday. Are you OK? Laura x

It’s been a while, hope all is good! And WOW: is what people are saying true? What happened, Edie? Hope everything is still going well at your company. I’ve had a second child since we last spoke! Best wishes, Kate

Hi. Do you know what people at Ad Hoc are saying? I felt I had to tell you … don’t know whether it’s true. Terry PS we worked together from 2008-9

Edie gulped and hammered delete-delete-delete, only skimming the first few lines of each. Long time no – DELETE.

She had messages (3) in ‘Other,’ i.e., from people who weren’t in her friends list. She guessed they’d be more savage. U R A RANSID FIRECROTCH TART was all that ‘Spencer’ had to say. She deleted and blocked.

She also deleted and blocked a total stranger called Rebecca who used lots of words that couldn’t be published in a family newspaper. Edie wasn’t upset by the language, the ferocity behind it was frightening. As if she actually would beat seven bells out of Edie if she could only get her hands on her.

Speaking of which …

Edie. This is Lucie, I am Charlotte’s chief bridesmaid and best friend since our university days. Since you are too gutless to face me and got your ridiculous friend Lewis involved in your devious games (that’s right, I worked out you swapped rooms with him, and I hope you enjoyed the sign I left on your door ‘Please Do Not Disturb I’M SHAGGING SOMEONE’S HUSBAND’), I am forced to tell you here what kind of person you are. It’s no exaggeration to say you’re the worst person I’ve ever met or heard about. It’s one thing to try to steal someone else’s man but to DO IT ON THEIR LITERAL WEDDING DAY beggars belief. I hope you realise you have ruined a woman’s life and wasted countless thousands on venue hire, catering and transport. I can’t imagine she will want to keep the photographs either. Will you pay her back? Methinks not.

I know Jack to be a good guy despite this mistake and don’t doubt for a second you’ve been offering it to him on a plate, trying to break them up.

I hope you are happy now you’ve got your wish but you won’t be because terrible people never are.

Lucie Maguire

She’d learned Edie’s name, at least, and it sounded as though Louis got a nice memento.

The activity overall was an odd blend of frenzy of attention and rejection: Edie could see her friend numbers had dipped, yet a lot of people wanted to talk to her – another couple of notifications pinged as she browsed. She clicked through, stomach churning, to Charlotte’s Facebook page and saw, ‘This Link May Be Broken’. This link is very broken. She didn’t blame Charlotte for coming off entirely. In fact, that was one small mark of respect she could offer, and do the same.

Edie deactivated her own page. Why provide a toxic waste dump site.

‘You’re off early,’ said the taxi driver.

‘Yes,’ Edie said, blearily and blankly. ‘Lots of work on.’

‘The trains won’t start for a while yet.’

‘Oh. I best get a coffee then.’

‘The café might not be open for a bit either.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’

Edie spent the next few hours waiting for a connection to Leeds, hiding in the loos for fear of running into other wedding guests, then staring unseeing out of grimy windows, feeling a queasy mix of listless and terror-struck. This wasn’t, she accepted, one of life’s wrinkles. This was one of those jolt-crashes that nearly threw you out of the dodgem car. She felt so morally unclean, it was like she needed a whole-body blood transfusion.

She could call Hannah. But she couldn’t face it, not yet. Hannah would be raging at Jack but might not see Edie’s role in it as much better. Edie didn’t yet have enough distance on this to work out how even those closest to her would see it. And if her best friend withdrew her support, Edie would collapse completely.

After rewording it three or four times, she risked a text to Jack.

Hardly know what to say, but, what happened & why? Call me if you can. E.

No reply. She didn’t think there would be one. Ever, possibly. She needed to message Charlotte too, but that was going to take more time and thought.

Once she was through the door of her cupboard-sized flat, she flopped down on the sofa and burst into heavy, heavy sobbing. She wanted to scream those childhood complaints, that This Was So Unfair and It Wasn’t Her Fault.

This was Jack’s fault. He’d chosen to marry one woman and kiss another, and both were paying a horrendous price. Edie was furious with Jack, but most of all, she was mystified. If he’d wanted her, even so much as for an affair, why choose the first few hours of making an honest woman of Charlotte for his rankest act of dishonesty?

By lunchtime, she steeled herself to call their boss, Richard. Leaving her job, without one to go to, wasn’t only a professional disaster, it felt personal. She hated letting Richard down, and she writhed at the thought of him being repulsed by her behaviour. It was one thing to be despised by the Lucie Maguires of this world, another to disgust people whose good opinion you really valued.

Richard was an incredibly handsome black man and so impeccably dressed, Edie imagined he’d walk away from a plane crash adjusting a cufflink, with one extra waistcoat button undone. (‘He doesn’t sweat,’ Jack said. ‘Literally or figuratively. Ever.’) His wife was a high-flying prosecutor, and they had two eerily well-mannered kids. The secret nickname among their colleagues was ‘the Obamas’.

Everyone said Richard had a soft spot for Edie and she was his ‘little favourite’. Edie didn’t know if that was true. If it was, she could only think it was down to the fact that she dealt with someone as smart as Richard by being absolutely straightforward. A lot of others responded to his fearsomely cool intellect by bullshitting him, which was, to use a Richard phrase, the wrong play.

He answered his mobile immediately.

‘Edie.’

‘Richard, I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday.’

‘OK. We can skip the explanation as to why.’

‘… Can we?’

‘Louis helpfully put me in the picture.’

Setting aside what this told Edie about Louis’s loyalty, she said: ‘I’m so, so sorry, Richard. I’m handing in my notice. I won’t be coming into work tomorrow so you don’t have to worry about a bad atmosphere or anything.’

‘You’re required by your contract to work four weeks’ notice.’

‘I know,’ Edie said. ‘Under the circumstances I thought you might … let me off it. I can take part of it as holiday owing?’

‘I’m not clear which half of the unhappy couple will be reporting in yet. Am I supposed to have two staff on gardening leave, and a third functioning from behind a vale of tears?’

‘Sorry,’ Edie said, in a small voice.

Richard sighed.

‘Why did I break the no couples rule? Mind you, even when your employees aren’t a couple, it’s no guarantee, eh.’

Edie said nothing.

‘Look, your extra-curriculars are none of my business, except when it affects my business.’

‘Richard, I’m sorry. If there was any way I could come back I would, but I can’t.’ Edie tried not to sob.

‘I don’t want decisions made about that, yet. It so happens I have a suggestion for a solution that might suit us both. A very short-notice job has come in, I was going to talk to you about it tomorrow. Have you heard of the actor, Elliot Owen?’

‘Er. Yes. From that swords and sandals show?’

The conversation had taken a surreal turn.

‘That’s him. A friend at a publishing house has on their knees begged me to spare a copywriter as a replacement to ghost-write his autobiog, after the last guy walked at the last minute. Or the first minute, the one where they met each other.’

‘OK …’ Edie grimaced.

‘He’s back home in Nottingham to do some TV thing. “One for the cred not the bread,” I’m told. There’s a three- month window starting now to get all his hilarious stories out of him, before he’s off to America. Then four to six weeks to type the thing up. You’re from Nottingham too, am I right? So, go. See the folks. It’s good money. Then afterwards, we’ll look at how the land lies in the office.’

‘I’ve never ghost-written a book before,’ Edie said. ‘I don’t know how.’

‘No, but how hard can it be? This will be one of those “separate kids from their pocket money” jobs where you pretend this vacuous pretty boy has amassed a lifetime of wisdom at twenty-five and everyone just looks at the pictures. You’re plenty literate enough to make him sound halfway articulate.’

Edie fell silent.

‘Seriously, it’s stenography. He talks, you marshal his self-aggrandising drivel into something vaguely coherent.’

Edie swithered. On the one hand, this sounded fairly mad. On the other hand, her boss was offering her a way of paying her rent for the near future. And Richard was right: as an alternative, he could contractually insist she worked her notice in the office. Anything was better than that.

‘OK,’ Edie said. ‘Thanks for the chance.’

‘Great. I said Tuesday to start, his people will be in touch. They’ll courier the cuttings over to you, so drop me a text with your folks’ address. By the way - I pass this on with a wry eyebrow raise – they, and I quote, want you to “really get under his skin and get some real meat out of this”. Try to ignore ground that’s been covered already in his press.’

‘Mmm-hmmm,’ said Edie, with the firm assurance of someone agreeing to do something they had no idea how to do.

‘Check in with me, every so often.’

‘Will do.’

There was a pause where Richard heavy sighed again.

‘And this part of the conversation is strictly off the record. I couldn’t care less about the rights and wrongs and who-did-whats of your superannuated game of kiss chase with Jack Marshall. But I’m disappointed in your taste.’

Edie was surprised at this, and could only say:

‘Oh?’

‘You’ve always struck me as a bright woman, with a lot about herself. He’s an irrelevant person. Learn to spot irrelevant people. Don’t expect someone who doesn’t know who they are to care who you are.’

Edie, surprised, nodded meekly and then remembered he couldn’t see her.

‘OK. Thank you.’

‘Oh, and Edie. I’m sure it’s not necessary to say this, but in the circumstances I’m going to go belt and braces.’

‘Yes?’

‘The advice was about getting under his skin, not his clothes, and let’s set aside the “real meat” thing entirely. For fuck’s sake, don’t get off with Elliot Owen.’