Page 13 of You Belong With Me

‘You’ve not seen the papers, then?’

Edie swallowed. So, in actual fact, hewasn’tall right with the selfie bork? Oh God, depending on how they’d angled it, she supposed … And she hadn’t told him about theMailcalling her boss.

‘No?’ she said, untying the belt on her coat.

‘Sorry, I shoulda said, but I’ve been non-stop on the phone to the usual crisis managers. Not that it’s a crisis – it’s merely bullshit.’

‘What is?’ said Edie, now petrified.

Elliot held out a hand for her coat, and as he took it, he passed her his phone with his other hand.

Edie peered at a tabloid story on his handset. There was a grizzled-looking, gaunt, pensionable-age man sat in an armchair, staring into the camera bleakly, grey hair swept back and streaked with its original black. He looked like a survivor in a dystopia. In his hands was a framed photograph of an angelic, dark-haired toddler.

EXCLUSIVE: ‘MY SUPERSTAR SON IS ASHAMED OF ME.’

Elliot Owen’s father gives first interview about his estrangement from theBlood & Goldhero and begs him to answer his calls.

‘Fuck!’ Edie exclaimed loudly. ‘Answer his calls?’

She skimmed down hurriedly, heart rate increasing as she did so.

‘Wild, isn’t it? Can’t take calls he hasn’t made,’ Elliot said. ‘Kind of works as a metaphor for everything untrue written about me. But they know I won’t respond, so they’re free to invent. I’m sure he was told what to say.’

Edie read on:

‘I messed up, horribly. I’d never say different,’ says the 62-year-old, in his spartan rented flat on the outskirts of Cardiff, a far cry from the luxury lifestyle of his 32-year-old son. Final notice bills are piled up on a side table, but David is adamant he doesn’t want a penny from Owen, who’s said to have netted £4 million from his latest action role. Thewidower is candid about his chronic alcoholism, which led to his fateful decision to get behind the wheel 29 years ago. His 27-year-old wife was killed instantly when he lost control of the vehicle in South Wales. Neither of them was wearing seatbelts, and their infant son, then called Carl, was found miraculously unscathed in the footwell. David, who sustained only minor injuries, was jailed for manslaughter. His son was adopted by a barrister and his wife in Nottingham, who changed his name to Elliot.

Edie looked up. ‘The way he’s “David”, he’s our pal, and you keep getting “Owen”, like you’re defending yourself in court!’

Elliot nodded.

‘I lost the love of my life and 30 years of my life for that mistake, but losing my only child is too much,’ David says, finding it hard to speak with the emotion. ‘All I ask is that Elliot – he’s still our little Carl to me – meets me, to hear my side of the story.’

Edie looked up again. ‘Youdidhear his side of it? You saw him in prison?’

‘Precisely,’ Elliot said. ‘He mentions that later on, but turns out it happened very differently to the way I remember. It’s all blackmail – facilitated blackmail. Give me money or I’ll keep saying you’re a cold piece of shit and damaging your reputation.’

Edie scrolled on.

David lost his job at a garage shortly before the accident and couldn’t afford to buy his infant son Christmas presents. They were driving to see his parents in the town of Tonypandy when the accident happened. David intended to beg them for financial help. ‘There’s no excuse for what I did that day, but I was a broken man, at rock bottom. I couldn’t provide for my family. I wanted to escape my problems, so I hit the bottle. I couldn’t have imagined that mistake would cost me everything.’

Edie paused. ‘You kill your wife and you almost kill your son, and you’re the victim?’

‘Of course he is,’ Elliot said. ‘I was wondering why he didn’t use the fact he’d no idea where I was or what I was called until that hack biographer told him I was a celebrity. Then I realised, it was because it’d show he didn’t give a shit what happened to me until then.’

Edie couldn’t quite believe the extent of the scumbaggery.

… The only time that David cries during our conversation is when he says: ‘The thought of never meeting Carl’s children, the only grandkids I’ll ever have … that absolutely breaks my heart. When I go to sleep at night, I think about how I’m going to die, having never seen their faces.’

‘As if you’d ever let him anywhere near your kids after what he did to you,’ Edie muttered, then regretted speaking unguardedly in her rush of defensiveness.

Your kids.Their eyes met. It was a totally unbroached topicbetween them. Edie was thirty-six, and she knew they’d have to tackle it at some point reasonably soon. This very much didn’t feel like the moment.

‘Well, quite,’ Elliot said, after a pause.

There was only the soporific ticking of a large clock to soundtrack the tiny yet telling silence that ensued. Breaking eye contact to carry on reading was welcome.

… Owen gave an interview to theGuardianearlier this year, having become a patron of a charity for children in adoption and foster care. In it, he revealed he and David had no relationship by mutual agreement. ‘Not true,’ David says, shaking his head. ‘He met me once in prison after he got famous, to tell me not to embarrass him by talking to the newspapers.’

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