Page 4 of You Belong With Me

Meanwhile, Hannah’s girlfriend, Chloe, looked bedazzled by her first encounter, and Nick’s girlfriend, Ros, sat nearest to them, completely neutral.

‘Nice to meet you, Elliot. You’re with Edie? How did you two meet?’ Ros said, grinding pepper over her plate.

She had limpid, thoughtful eyes behind rectangular, amber-rimmed glasses. She was the sort of person to ask direct questions.And how do you feel about that?

Hannah and Chloe were each other’s first same-sex relationship, in their thirties, and Ros had probed the intricacies with the unembarrassable, purposeful clarity of a first responder paramedic.

‘I ghost-wrote his autobiography,’ Edie said. ‘I do copywriting for my day job in advertising. As a special project, it kind of skill-mapped.’

‘Autobiography? You’re very young to have an autobiography?’ Ros said to Elliot, frowning in confusion. ‘Was it self-published?’

Edie stifled a laugh. She suspected that Nick had told Ros his friend had dated a celebrity, and Ros, New Agey and not much caring for conventional accolades, had forgotten. She was yet to put together that tale, with a photogenic man drinking red wine from a beaker.

‘I’mfartoo young for one, Ros,’ Elliot said, with the practised ease of someone who performed for a living. ‘I’m not sure I’m worth one full stop. But other ones were being written, and I was advised to do my own to counter theirs. It’s not advice I’d take now, to be honest. Then again, if I hadn’t, I’d not have met Edie.’

‘Did it sell well?’ Ros said, clearly trying to ascertain Elliot’s grip on sanity.And are the other autobiographies in the room with us now?

‘It paid for my kitchen you like,’ Edie said, smiling.

She was delighted with her turquoise units, the shade of a Cadillac. After an adult lifetime of landlord magnolias and biscuits, she’d gone to town on colour. Edie loved this bay-fronted, red-brick semi with its 1930s stained-glass door so much.More than you perhaps should love things,she thought, but to Edie, it signified arrival, security, and belonging.

With her sister as lodger and her father a frequent guest, Edie was looking after them. And, whether they knew it or not, they were looking after her.

‘Oh, did it now? You owe me a full English tomorrow then,’ Elliot said. ‘A Meg-compliant full English.’

He smiled a sly smile over his cup, having soft-launched the expectation that he was staying over.

Edie raised her eyebrows, though it had never really been in doubt.

‘And you’re a couple? I thought you said you were single, Edie?’ Ros said, with more of her disarming frankness. She clearly wasn’t going to squirm on worries like:what if this is an on-off hook up without a label.

‘… Yes, we’re a couple?’ Edie said, a statement with a question mark, looking at Elliot, her heart skipping a beat. They’d not ever used the word that she could remember, and Ros was bouncing them into agreeing formalities. It was the obvious conclusion of the doorstep chat, and yet it was all brand new. Frank was singing ‘Fly Me To The Moon’.

‘We’re a couple,’ Elliot said, answering her note of doubt with confidence.

They locked eyes in private wonder for a moment.

‘As of today?’ Ros said. Ros was a loss to Notts CID.

‘We were seeing each other for a few weeks, four months ago. I guess it was a … fling?’ Edie said, making an apologetic face at Elliot. ‘“Affair” makes it sound like there was infidelity involved.’

‘Wouldn’t call it afling,’ Elliot said.

Nick offered Ros another glass of wine.

The chatter around them resumed, and they were relieved to be speaking one to one.

‘Why not?’ Edie said.

‘A fling has built-in obsolescence,’ he said. ‘Did you ever think,oh, here we are, having a fling? I thought we felt serious from the start.’

‘We did.’ The introductions to each other’s loved ones wasproof they’d embarked on it in the style of it mattering. ‘I thought it was … I didn’t know what it was, other than a very rewarding experience,’ Edie said.

Elliot laughed. ‘Like volunteering?’

‘Exactly. Giving back to the high-profile thespian community.’

‘Very kind of you to extend a helping hand. Mucking in with the grunt work.’

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