Who’s That Girl?: A laugh-out-loud sparky romcom!

‘He started saying I meant a lot as a friend, he was very pissed I think, and the next minute he’s kissing me.’

‘And you didn’t kiss him back?’

‘No! Hardly. I mean, I was shocked.’

‘Mmm. Kind of odd you were hanging around out there alone? How did he find you? Sure you hadn’t texted him?’

‘I’d gone to take a photo. I can show you the photo!’ Edie waved her phone at him. ‘Also, no texts on here!’ As if there’d be a court case, and she could put her phone in a Ziploc evidence bag. It was the court of public opinion. She’d do much better from the former kind of trial.

‘Louis, think about it,’ Edie pleaded. ‘Why today, of all days, would I try to get off with him?’

‘Why would he try something like this, out of nowhere? You’re leaving something out, Edie. You must be.’

‘We messaged at work. Chatted. That was all. We were friends. Nothing more.’

‘You flirted?’

‘A bit. I suppose.’

She couldn’t give Louis nothing and get his vote, she knew that. He chewed his bottom lip, weighing things up.

‘… I believe you. I think you’re going to have a problem getting anyone else to believe you, though. The rumours are halfway around Harrogate and the truth doesn’t have its boots on. Also …’

Louis’s pause made Edie’s eyes bulge. ‘What?!’

He lowered his voice.

‘There’s only two people who are going to be blamed here: you and Jack. He’s the kind of guy who falls into a pit of shit and comes out wearing a gold watch. Not to sound cold, but you need a PR strategy. You have to let people know it was him who did this, not you.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Louis said, magnanimously. ‘You should think about that though. We work in advertising. Do crisis management for your brand.’

Edie nodded. She had to put aside everything she knew about Louis and trust him. A friend in need was a friend you couldn’t afford to doubt.

‘Do you think Jack and Charlotte are over, really over?’ Edie said, voice wavering.

Louis lifted his shoulders and let them drop.

‘Not sure I’d forgive a wedding day like this. The shame of it. Could you?’

Edie shook her head, miserably. She hadn’t thought of that until now. She’d focused on her own survival. Look at what Charlotte would have to face, the fact everyone would know about this carnage.

There was a clomp-clomp and a banging at the door, a thud as if a slavering wild animal had suddenly thrown itself at it. Both she and Louis jumped out of their skins.

‘EVIE THOMPSON! This is Lucie Maguire! I am the chief bridesmaid! Open the door THIS INSTANT!’

Edie and Louis boggled at each other.

‘EVIE! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, YOU LITTLE COW. FACE THE MUSIC.’

‘Tell her it’s your room!’ Edie hissed to Louis.

‘What? What if she goes off to my room instead?’

‘You’re not in that room.’

‘I will be later.’

‘Then tell her that’s your room, too.’

‘Then she’ll know I lied about this room.’

‘Louis!’ Edie said, near-feral in desperation. ‘Tell her.’

He grimaced and said, loudly: ‘Hi, Lucie, this is Louis. Not Edie.’

‘Where’s Evie? This is her room! The man on reception told me! Do not toy with me, I am in a VERY AGGRESSIVE STATE.’

Louis made a middle-finger gesture with both hands at the door and sing-songed: ‘No, my room. Little Louis in here.’

‘… Let me in. You know this girl? You can tell me where to find her.’

‘I’d rather not. I’m naked.’

‘Put some clothes on, then.’

‘I’m naked, with someone else who is also naked. Get it?’

‘Is it her?’

‘No, it’s a man, man. Now if you don’t mind, we’d like to get on.’

A pause.

‘Do you know where this slut is?’

‘No, I thought we’d established I’m otherwise engaged.’

‘Well if you do see her, tell her I’m going to be wearing her tits like they’re ear muffs.’

‘Will do!’

Edie winced.

Pause. ‘Also, can I just say I think it’s very bad taste to be having sex while a woman’s life is in ruins? We’re trying to help. And meanwhile you’re up here, naked.’

‘That’s me. Always naked in a crisis. It’s when I do my best work.’

There was tutting and Lucie’s fearsome clomping stride retreated. In the depths of the despair, Louis and Edie couldn’t help small, stifled laughter.

‘How am I going to get out of here in one piece?’

‘Mmm. There may be scenes of a harridan nature. I’d check out early.’

Edie had already formed this plan. The reception was staffed 24 hours, she could escape at dawn. She reasoned that even the very angriest were unlikely to be prowling around, fired up by fury, at half five. Although with Lucie, who knew.

‘Look on the bright side. No music Lucie can get you to face can be worse than the music she already made you face.’

Edie laughed weakly and thought how that experience, where someone else was the centre of attention for the wrong reasons, seemed an era ago.

‘I think it’s safe for me to leave, now,’ Louis said.

At the prospect of being alone again, Edie felt desolate.

‘Louis,’ Edie said, in a quiet, broken voice, ‘I know what I did was wrong but I’d never want any of this. I feel terrible. Everyone will hate me.’

‘They won’t hate you,’ Louis said, unconvincingly, ‘Just let them know Jack jumped you, not vice versa.’

They both knew that a) it wouldn’t be possible to let everyone know this and b) no one was going to be inclined to absolve Edie and thus lose a key player in such compelling You’ll Never Guess What gossip. The narrative needed a vixen.

‘We’re still friends, aren’t we? I feel like I’ll have no friends.’

‘Babe,’ Louis squeezed her in a quick, hard, brusque hug, ‘Course we are.’

After re-locking the door after him, Edie sank back down on the bed. Every bump or scuffle in the hotel startled her. She imagined a procession of people queuing up, Lucie Maguire having rejoined at the back, waiting to scream and rant at her and do horrible things to her tits.

When she could bear it, she looked online. Again, nothing but a chilly calm. She couldn’t see any comments alluding to what had gone on, she hadn’t been unfriended on Facebook (though that was coming, obviously).

And yet … as time ticked by, suddenly, an ugly, worrying notion gripped a panicky Edie. She wrestled with it. She was being paranoid. She didn’t need to check. Of course she was wrong.

OK, Edie had to look. Just to reassure herself she was being paranoid. She fumbled with hot fingers on the touch screen. Oh, God. No. She blinked back tears and hit refresh and refresh again and willed herself to have made a mistake. But she hadn’t.

Louis had deleted the picture of them together.

6

Edie never wanted to be this woman. The Other Woman. Who would? Who in their right mind wanted the heartache, the unsympathetic misery of playing that part? No one was the villain of their own story in their own mind, wasn’t that screenwriting law?

Edie had a feeling for some time that her life had wandered badly off course, and she had to face facts now: it might never come back.

It wasn’t always like this. After a romantically chaotic youth gadding about the capital in the post-university years, she’d settled down by her mid-twenties with her picture perfect soulmate: a difficult, intense, complicated young northern poet and Alain Delon lookalike, called Matt.

He was the glorious culmination of a reinvention, where messy Edith became Edie, pretty, funny writer girl who was taking life in her stride and London by the scruff.

Edie had tried to make the relationship as great on the inside as it looked on the outside. They matched. People envied them. She fantasised the wedding, even babies, but increasingly when faced with Matt’s moods, it was obvious to Edie that it was best kept as fantasy.

After three years of wrestling with difficult, intense and complicated, Edie was thoroughly knackered with the effort of trying to work him out and cheer him up.

They split, and while Edie was very sad, she was also twenty-nine. She wasn’t short of men hovering at the edges of the fall-out, willing to help pick up her pieces. She assumed that Mr Right was a few dalliances away, over the other side of the horizon of thirty, holding a bunch of flowers.

Yet somehow, he never happened. Single went from a temporary glitch to a permanent state. There was no one worth falling for. Until Jack. Who she absolutely shouldn’t have fallen for.

Do we ever choose who we fall for? Edie had many a long lonely evening in with only Netflix for company to contemplate that one.

Edie often cast her mind back to that first meeting with Jack, at the advertising firm where she was a copywriter. Charlotte was an ambitious account executive and had successfully talked their boss, Richard, into hiring Jack, despite a strict No Partners rule.

Edie hadn’t given the arrival of Jack Marshall much thought, beyond assuming he’d be another gym-before-work super over-achiever, like Charlotte.

‘Edie, this is my boyfriend!’ she had called across the table, late last summer, in the Italian wine bar they piled into every Friday. ‘You’ll love Edie, she’s the office clown.’ A mixed compliment, but Edie took it as one and smiled.

Over the table, awkwardly pitched half on the pavement and half inside the restaurant, she stood up to shake the tips of Jack’s fingers in lieu of his hand. She’d later marvel at her total indifference at the time. Jack looked prima facie Charlotte business, with his sharp suit, sandy hair and slim build, and Edie returned to her conversation.

In the weeks afterwards, Edie caught Jack throwing the odd stray glance her way, and assumed he was simply getting the measure of his new workplace. Charlotte was a willowy goddess of the southern counties, it seemed unlikely he was admiring a Midlander who covered her greys with L’Oreal Liquorice and dressed like Velma from Scooby Doo.

One lunchtime, she was reading a Jon Ronson book and eating an apple at her desk and she caught Jack staring at her. She would’ve blushed, but Jack said quickly: ‘You frown really hard when you read, did you know that?’

‘Elvis used to slap Priscilla Presley when she frowned,’ Edie said.

‘What? Seriously?’

‘Yeah. He didn’t want her getting lines.’

‘Wow. What an arsehole. I’m giving away my copy of Live in Vegas now. You don’t need to worry, though.’

‘You’re not going to slap me?’ Edie grinned.

‘Hahahaha! No. No lines.’

Edie nodded and mumbled thanks and went back to her book. Had she been flirted with? She doubted it. But not long after, a passing client, Olly the wine merchant, had paid Edie particular attention, and again, she felt Jack’s gaze.

‘My little Edie! How are you?’ Olly said, clearly kippered by the lunchtime intake. ‘What a delightful blouse. You remind me terribly of my daughter, you know. Doesn’t she? Richard? The image of Vanessa.’

Her boss, Richard, hem-hawed the sort of agreement you gave someone who you had to agree with, for money.

Edie thanked him and hoped everyone else in the office knew she did nothing to invite his whisky-breathed attentions.

As Richard guided him away from her desk, her G-chat popped up on her screen. Jack.

‘Young lady, may I tell you, in a completely platonic way, how much I’d like to have sex with you?’

Edie boggled and then noticed the inverted commas. She almost guffawed out loud. Then, gratified, typed back:

Ahem, Olly’s a valued client. He’s family … *like the Wests were family* *seasick face*

Without knowing it, she was sunk. She had picked up the baton from Jack. The journey to ruin starts with a single step.

Jack

The only thing worse than his pick-up patter is his wine. Have you tried the Pinot Grigio? BLETCH

Edie

I think you’ll find my copy describes it as having a tingle of green plum acidity and a long melony finish, perfect for long afternoons in gardens that turn into evenings

Jack

Translation: a park-bench session wine, aromas of Listerine mixed with asparagus wee

Edie

The bouquet could be described as ‘insistent’.

Jack

I’ve actually looked it up for the lols. ‘A fruit forward blend of ripe, zesty flavours. Will transport you to Italian vineyards.’ Will transport you to A&E, more like.

If this sort of instant familiarity had come from a single male colleague, Edie would have treated it as clear flirting. Obviously. But Jack was Charlotte’s boyfriend and she was sat right there, though, so this couldn’t be flirting. It was G-chat, but not a G-chat-up.

They became messaging mates. Most mornings, Jack found some witticism to kick things off. He was catnip to someone with Edie’s quick wit, and he seemed entranced by her. He had an easy self-confidence, and ran on dryly humorous remarks and giant Americanos.

In the boredom of office life, the ping of a new message from Jack on her screen became inextricably associated with pleasure and reward. Edie was like a lab rat in a scientific experiment, pressing a lever that gave her a nut. To follow the analogy, sooner or later it’d give her an electric shock, and she’d prove the mechanics of addiction by keeping on pressing for another nut.

It was all a bit of fun.

Even when the conversation naturally strayed into slightly more serious, personal topics. Amid the anecdotes, the casual intimacy and larks, she found herself telling him things she hadn’t told anyone in London.

Edie found her spirits dip at home time on a Friday – a funny reversal – realising there’d be no more ‘special chemistry’ chatter until Monday.

Eventually, there were text-jokes from Jack at the weekend – saw this, thought of you – and favouriting of her tweets, and explosively she’d even occasionally get the notification he’d Liked an old photo of hers, buried in the archives on Facebook. Truly, the footprint on the windowsill of social media courting.

Jack would sometimes say in front of Charlotte, during the Friday night drinks, that he’d shamelessly distracted Edie at work. Charlotte tutted and chided Jack and apologised to Edie – and then Edie definitely felt a whisper of guilt.

But, why? For conversation that Jack was openly acknowledging in front of his girlfriend that he instigated? If it was anything untoward, it’d be secret, right?

There was enough plausible deniability to park a bus.

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