Page 14 of You Belong With Me

Owen also told theGuardianthat he considered his adoptive parents his ‘mother and father in every single meaningful sense.’

‘That cut like a knife, truth be told,’ David said, explaining he wasn’t warned that Owen was going public about his background. ‘I know they’re well off and have provided for him, but blood is blood.’ He stumbles as he says this, aware of the heavy irony that Owen’s beloved alter ego Prince Wulfroarer in the hit television seriesBlood & Goldwas heroically loyal to his family crest. As David speaks, a man clearly laden with regret and not in good health, you can’t help hoping that Elliot Owen finds some mercy for his real-life relations while there’s still time.

‘Haha, oh my God, this is such manipulative drivel,’ Edie said. ‘What the fuck has a character you’ve played got to do with it? The show also had killer bats who could survive fire – do they think that’s eerily significant?’

‘It’s hinting: Elliot’s a big fake, he’s got all the power and not this poor old shattered abandoned guy who can’t pay his gas bill,’ Elliot said. ‘None of it has to make sense – it builds a mood. Also, the reporter no doubt thinks what I do of my dad. But it’s better copy to trash me as some ice-hearted VIP.’

Edie scrolled further and reached an image of a striking young woman with shoulder-length brown hair, eyelashes spider-legged with mascara. It had the bleaching light and impassive expression of a passport booth photo. Edie put the parents’ faces together and made Elliot: the hard angles and high cheekbones of his father’s pinched scowl and the feminine, generous prettiness of his mum’s features.

Owen’s mother, Suzanne. The star was almost three years old when she was killed in the car smash that he miraculously survived.

Edie looked up at Elliot in concern, now saying nothing. She could see he knew exactly what part she was reacting to – he already knew the article by heart.

‘I’d never seen her before,’ Elliot said, in a low voice.

‘Never?’ Edie said.

Elliot shook his head.

Finally, Edie fully understood the nature of this particular hurt. Elliot knew who his father was: he’d met him; he’dconfronted that disappointment. And Elliot had been forewarned that some sort of tell-all was coming, even if he hoped his birth father wouldn’t do it. His mother was an unknown quantity, and she’d always be that way.

‘I don’t think the adoption agency had much, if anything, to give my parents, bar a handful of Polaroids of me in a crib. When I found out the truth of this when I was eleven years old, I was very, very anti knowing any more. So she’s only ever been a name to me. It hadn’t occurred to me they’d use a picture, stupidly.’

‘I can’t imagine how strange and … obscene this must feel,’ Edie said.

‘Maybe I’m strange and obscene. Who avoids ever seeing a photo of their own mother?’

‘You weren’t given the choice!’

‘There’s a whole person I’ve disregarded. A person who gave birth to me. For all I know, she did what she did in getting into that car because she was scared of my father? Maybe she was drinking because he was? I mean, he’s not telling the truth about me and him, is he?’

‘No.’

His phone started to vibrate and flash, and Edie looked down to see an international number.

She’d never known Elliot drop a call before, but he took it, put it down on the hall table, and pulled Edie towards him.

‘I wish I’d never done this job,’ he said, face buried in her shoulder, and she realised he was crying. ‘I fucking hate what they’re able to do to me. All I do is put on masks and take them off again and avoid real life. In return, they get to saywhat they want about me. I’ve spent so much time being angry today that none of it’s true, but maybe it is? Am I Carl or am I Elliot? Is Elliot a mask? I don’t know who I am, Edie.’

She held him tightly and said: ‘I do.’

7

Sometimes, being with Elliot was like doubling as his security detail, making sure premises were safe for him to enter.

Instead of sweeping for explosive devices, they were scanning for excitable girls who were several proseccos to the good, liable to shriek and produce phones, start collecting raw footage like amateur documentary makers. Or gangs of lads who behaved like trophy hunters, the selfie their scalp:told you it was him.

Usual British uptightness vanished: encountering a famous person was, in the twenty-first century, a combination of living totally in the moment and for many other moments, simultaneously. The embarrassment or pushiness didn’t really matter as long as you came away with proof it had happened.

It wasn’t that Elliot was in any physical danger – though Edie belatedly remembered stalkers were a thing, and he was at the level to acquire one. It was more the time-swallowing, overwhelming scrum that developed if someone recognised him in an enclosed space. Having said yes to one person, you had to say yes to everyone, and the ensuing fuss could obliterate the intended occasion.

‘I have to remember that the twentieth person who asks for a picture isn’t responsible for the nineteen other requests. You can’t short-change or blame anyone if you feel hassled and leave them with a bad memory,’ Elliot had said to her once. ‘It was implicit in the deal when I got the call to tell me I had the role.’

Therefore, they’d come to a neighbourhood Italian where the owners knew the Owen family of old and gave them the table furthest from other diners, and the staff knew not to ask for autographs. It still required Elliot’s parents and Edie to go in ahead, secure their position and only then, usher Elliot in.

While they were trying to catch the owner’s eye, Elliot’s dad, Bob, said: ‘If only we’d known letting him go to drama club when he was twelve would lead here, eh?’

Edie grinned.

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