Page 5 of You Belong With Me

‘Honestly, I think it gave me more satisfaction than the people I helped.’

‘I’ll say.’

Edie shook with laughter; Elliot grinned, and she had to stifle it before anyone tuned in to the intense flirting.

Elliot had sent Edie a postcard not so long ago, which was tucked into the vanity-table mirror in her bedroom. She could dart upstairs at some point to hide it. But what was cool – or indeed necessary – about pretending not to value it? It read:I notice when you’re not around.

That he felt her absence enough to bother telling her about it had been incredibly touching to Edie. They’d cared about each other a lot, but his world contained so many distractions and opportunities that she thought he’d surprise himself by healing faster than he thought possible.

After all, wasn’t acting about inhabiting another identity, intensely yet briefly, stepping back out of that skin and moving on? What was temporary could be fully sincere.

Actors,their late neighbour Margot had once said, after lighting a Sobranie Black,have vagabond souls.

Yet he’d missed her sufficiently to come back. It was toohuge a turn of events to be processed upfront; Edie was still preoccupied with its enormity.

‘What was it in your mind, back then? If never a fling?’ Edie asked.

‘The beginning,’ Elliot said, without hesitating.

2

Edie sat up in the pinkish bordello hue of her verysingle woman tastebedroom. She was wearing a t-shirt that readThe Horrors Persist Yet So Do Iwith a picture of a gerbil in a fez, smoking – a gift from Meg which she wouldn’t have worn in company if in her right mind.

At least the light was low. She’d inherited long voile curtains in a pillar-box red material that made a dramatic partner to her blush-pink Art Deco style bed, chilli fairy lights and tasselled-pendant chinoiserie lampshade.

‘Kind of Amsterdam window meets the feministBarbie,’ Elliot had said last night. ‘There’s gonna be big fights when we decorate together.’

Edie had liked the assumption but pretend-objected to the description.

Elliot replied: ‘It’s still my favourite room in my favourite house in the world, so keep it in context.’

There didn’t seem to be any amount of drinking that diminished his verbal dexterity.

Speaking of which … Edie noticed her phone on the nightstand, blinking with light. She pulled it out of thecharger and inspected an unusually lengthy cascade of notifications.

WOW

Go Edie! xx

Erm – what? AMAZING

OMFG is that who I think it is?! Is this NOW?

This has blown me away NGL! Are you in the States? You can’t be here?? Do you want to get a drink soon? Ages since I’ve seen you xoxo here’s my number in case you don’t have it …

Well, well, LOOK at what you found under your tree. Beats my fucking Lakeland tea urn.

Ohfuck fuck fuck– what HAD she done last night? On social media, that was – the main thing she’d done was sleeping with his face crushed into the left-hand pillow, out like a light due to residual jet lag and their only going to sleep at about three a.m.

Edie clicked onto Instagram and, with a slow turn of her stomach, vaguely recalled being absolutely shitfaced on red wine and high on love at midnight, when they were finally alone in the sitting room.

She had taken a commemorative selfie of Elliot kissing herface, her eyes squeezed shut in boozed-up, cartoon-stars-circling delight. There wasn’t loads of him in it, but there was enough, given they’d been linked in the past. He didn’t look much like other people.

Edie had experienced an out of character moment, the sort only ethanol could supply: the heady sense you were freeing a part of your nature you kept needlessly imprisoned. She’d captioned it with one pink heart, and she recalled thinking it was definitely fine to post it because they were so, so happy and looked so happy. How could anything made of happiness be wrong?

SOBER REASONS,she now thought, furious with herself. Like,you’ve not told anyone beyond this property and its guests yet, and a stupid pissed upload wasn’t how you wanted to do it.

Worse, her Instagram only had a modest 650 followers, but it was set public.

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