Page 94 of You Belong With Me

Finally, don’t come at me with any accusations of running Edie’s PR. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll work out why we aren’t friends any more. She told me I was fake, shallow, and duplicitous, and guess what, loves, I realised she was right.

Plus, I’m gay, so you can stop with any ‘clungestruck’ insinuations(FYI @luciemaggy is it 1955? You need to reconsider the devil whore misogyny. And that’s me saying that – A MAN.)

Edie doesn’t know I’m posting this, and I don’t even know if she’d want me to, given we parted on bad terms. I’m not Team Edie. I’m a fan of the truth. Which might be the same thing here?

HAVE A BLESSED DAY

xxx

Edie concluded reading with a huge whoosh of emotion and thought:well, well, fucking well.

‘That’s … quite something,’ Edie said, tears springing to her eyes. ‘I never thought anyone would see it clearly. And Louis! Of all people.’

‘Innit? I hope you don’t mind, but I rejoined the work WhatsApp to send them this. The entire conversation has switched to how Jack’s a fetid male archetype abuser. Jess is reading every message and saying nothing.’

‘Thank you. Sod it – I’m sharing it, too.’

‘Do it!’

She stubbed a metaphorical cigarette out on Jack’s corpse, screenshotting every frame of Louis’s post. She set herInstagram public again, shared it on her stories, fired her metaphorical gun.

It might Streisand effect it – good: this vindication was too meaningful to pass up. Let the gossips repeat this as much as they wanted. She tagged it:

This is the first and last time I’ll discuss this. A lot of lies have been told, and it can be a struggle to be believed. Thank you for your accuracy, and your honesty, @princesslouis. x

People could disappoint you, and they could surprise you, too.

The papers ran with it within twenty-four hours:

Elliot Owen’s GF Hits Back at ‘Homewrecker’ Allegations on her Social Media

Interview requests from women’s magazines and news sites crowded her inbox, different in tenor from previous approaches: now, she was sympathetic. She deleted them all, thinkinglast time I’ll discuss thiscovered her position.

Edie came home the next day to a huge bunch of flowers from Elliot on her doorstep, but best of all, somehow, was a message from the fearsome Lillian:

The current washed up his skinny ass even faster than I thought it would.

49

‘Hi, I’m staying for one night. Double room.’

To date Elliot Owen was to have a luggage case handle near-permanently welded to one hand.

‘What name please?’

This time, she’d asked Elliot to clarify that. Edie felt ridiculous repeating it, more so in her city than a foreign metropolis. This was the land of the Brian Clough legend, green buses, and a university boating lake, not pseudonymous hotel check-ins. She felt like she was part of a sunglassesindoors, tranquilisers-and-champagne era Fleetwood Mac.

‘Uhm, it’s under Roger Thornhill.’

They still wanted to see Edie’s ID, so she was glad she’d not called herself Ada Minge.

(‘Why the phony name? No one our age is called Roger – they’ll think I’m on the blow job payroll of a sugar daddy!’ Edie had said, additionally irked that the aliases were an old wheeze of Elliot and Heather’s.

‘Why do you think?’ Elliot had said. ‘Cuts down attention and cutting down attention cuts down hassle.’

‘Would anyone honestly notice?’ Edie said, a little waspishly,and Elliot replied: ‘That’s what we’re not bothering to find out, Mrs Danvers.’)

‘Ah, you’re in the suite,’ said the man on reception, jabbing at a keyboard.Of course.

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