Page 91 of You Belong With Me

‘Fuck I might’ve known it’d be the sodding Hamburglar,’ Elliot said, sipping his wine. ‘He even looks like the Hamburglar.’ Elliot looked at Fraser, ‘He’s been behind every stupid plan you’ve had since you were six years old.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ Iggy sniffled, as Fraser reiterated his total stupefaction. ‘Are you sure I shouldn’t go?’

‘Do more grovelling,’ Fraser said. ‘I trusted you, you twat! What made you think you could do this?’

‘I got back into the online gambling,’ Iggy said. ‘I’m about a hundred and fifty K in the hole, Fraz. I’m so fucked. I’ve got this evil debt collection agency after me, and I needed money really fast.’

‘Not Leprechaun’s Luck again?’ Fraser said. ‘It’s not even a good game.’

‘And the rest. When I got dumped by Nadia, I started staying up until two or three every morning on payday weekend, and it went from there.’

‘Ah fuck. You should’ve told me.’

‘I was going to stop, and it got out of hand … When you lent me your phone that night, you got a message from Elliotabout how he hated that superhero film.’ He looked shamefacedly at Elliot. ‘The one where you can disappear.’

‘I think I know the one,’ Elliot said, with a rueful look at Edie, and she smiled back, feeling a rush of relief.

‘I had thisbingothat I could pinch the odd bit of gossip and flog it, and no one would care or notice. I didn’t think the people I contacted would like what I gave them so much, push me to get more. Like the gambling, it got totally out of hand,’ Iggy said.

When Elliot and Edie had mused that the leaker’s prolific work rate indicated they were either inept or spiteful, they’d missed the third option: desperate.

‘I’d have lent you money to help you out,’ Fraser said. ‘Why not ask me? We’ll get the paperwork out once we’re home – we’ll make sure you don’t lose the flat. Then we’ll get you counselling. There’s rehab you can go to for addiction.’

‘Thank you,’ Iggy said. ‘I felt like such a div, such a worthless turd.’ A tear slid down his cheek. ‘You guys are sogoodat life, you know? You always have been. Look at you. The numbers on the letters got worse, and they got more threatening. I was like a rat in a trap, gnawing his own leg off to escape.’

Elliot cleared his throat. ‘Pretty sure that was my leg you were gnawing.’

‘Yeah. Sorry.’

‘I can see you’ve got yourself into a mess, and I do have some compassion for that, having got into one or two myself,’ Elliot said. ‘Aside from what we officially call reputational damage and I’ll call having my underpants drawer humiliatingly turned out for the public to poke through …’

Iggy hung his head.

‘… As you can see, me and Fraz were on the brink of falling out over this, in a serious way. If he and I had stopped talking to each other, right before he got married, what would you have done then? That’s the part I find harder to forgive than tattle in the press.’

‘Yeah. You had us all at each other’s throats,’ Fraser said.

Iggy looked at the tablecloth. ‘I didn’t think you’d suspect Fraz, ’cos you’re so close. I thought maybe Elliot told, like, a dozen people this stuff. I thought I’d have paid off my debt before you worked it out.’

Edie felt a sort of incredulous pity towards Iggy.

‘With anyone else, I’d call bullshit,’ Elliot said, ‘but given I’ve never known you foresee an obvious consequence in your life, it might be true. Can you apologise to Edie and Molly, please? Edie for calling her “Princess Nut Nuts”, and both Edie and Molly for putting them under suspicion, as our confidantes?’

Molly had yet to process any of this, and Edie thought this was a deft way of Elliot accounting for Fraser’s indignance and devaluing it to her, at the same time. If the same question mark had hovered over Edie, it couldn’t be as offensive. And thanks to Lillian, it had.

Neither Elliot nor Fraser were anything like as furious with Iggy as they might’ve been, it seemed. As far as Edie could tell, it was a product of their kind natures, the length of the association, and because, on a practical level, Iggy as the culprit was in the end, a least-worst and manageable outcome.

It exonerated Molly and short-circuited the brothers falling out. Fraser could hardly continue with his golden flounce now that Elliot was being so forgiving about Fraser’s passcode cock-up and Fraser’s best friend’s subterfuge. And Iggy had been frightening as an omnipotent, unknown quantity, a shadowy agent of chaos – but he was merely a daft boy. They’d had a nightmare and now the big light had been turned on.

‘I’m very sorry, ladies,’ Iggy said. He looked at Edie. ‘I thought if I admitted it, none of you would ever speak to me again. My mates are all I have left.’

Elliot made a sceptical face. ‘You’ve got your job, your home, your family …’

‘Yeah, but they’re not as good as my mates,’ Iggy said, and against all odds, Edie could see Elliot stifling laughter.

‘Wait,’ Molly said, large blue eyes like saucers in horror, ‘Fraser’s got nudes of me on that phone!’

‘I didn’t see any?!’ Iggy said, palms up. ‘On my mother’s life, I promise I didn’t. I will swear on the Bible. You know I’m telling the truth because if I knew they were there, I’d definitely have looked at them.’

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