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Edie
Luckily, as her history could prove, Edie was nothing if not patient so unlike the grumblers behind and in front of her, she didn’t mind that the queue for passport control was long and slow moving. In front, a couple tutted and remarked that this was what happens when there’s no first-class option while behind, two parents juggled a red-faced toddler, a whiny older child and no doubt prayed the baby in the mum’s arm stayed asleep. Edie felt empathy for the family and rolled her eyes at the ones ahead who’d been forced to slum it with the peasants. They would get to the front eventually and in the meantime it would give her time to prepare.
She was so nervous about staying with Ace and his family, but her friends had said that was natural; meeting the parents was a biggie especially when one of them was Joe Jarrett. Edie tried to be logical about it all, but it didn’t work because even though they talked all the time on the phone and via messages this was next-level stuff.
She honestly hadn’t meant to strike up a proper friendship with Ace, and definitely didn’t expect to fall for him. What began with curiosity, had unexpectedly blossomed into a wonderful ‘thing’ and no matter what anyone might think, her feelings, pent up or otherwise were true.
She’d been following him on Instagram for ages, sticking to commenting on his photography that she genuinely admired. It wasn’t until she began a module on graphic novels that Edie plucked up the courage to ask him if he’d ever consider using his work in that way, and a private conversation opened up. Ace messaged her first. The rest had led from there, via mutual interest. His in her studies, especially when she told him all about her previous module on cultural theory, and hers in his photographic art. Then he added her on Facebook, she followed him on Twitter and soon they were messaging all the time.
They’d met five times. Four in London and once when he went to visit his aunt in Manchester. The first, she was racked with nerves as she travelled to London to interview him for her thesis. The cheapest day return ticket, a packed lunch to eat on the way because she was skint. She’d got lost on the Tube and was running late so she rang him in a panic, he said he would come and find her. She waited in Trafalgar Square and when he tapped her on the shoulder and she turned, Edie looked into brown eyes that were laughing slightly at her predicament, not her.
His voice was kind, a weird blend, a hint of a French accent and perfect English. He’d told her that he was the family translator because their closest friends, Nanou and Silvestre were French and his dad wasn’t exactly fluent and lots of things between them got lost in translation, especially because his dad had clung onto his Mancunian accent. His mum was American, so at home he spoke mostly English and then flipped to French the second his foot stepped on the school bus. Still, the moment he spoke to Edie that day in London, he sounded so familiar yet different. The barrier of a phone screen removed so that the flesh, close enough to touch, hair darker than she imagined, his frame taller and broader, too, his accent, all of it altered preconceptions.
‘Hey you. I got here as quick as I could. Hell, you look stressed.’
‘I am stressed. I got on the wrong side and when I realised, I was so squashed in I couldn’t get off straight away and ended up two stops down and had a panic attack thinking you’d not see me if I was late and…’ She stopped when Ace rested his hand on her shoulder.
‘You’re here now so why don’t we go get a drink, then have some fun?’
This threw her because she only had a few hours and a train to catch. An off-peak return and she had to get the exact one on her ticket. ‘But what about the interview?’
‘It’s fine, come on, I have an idea.’ And in that moment, as he took her hand and led her through the crowd, Edie fell for Ace.
It had been the best day ever. They chatted non-stop as they rode a London tour bus, then went on a river cruise where she asked him all her questions. He took photos, seeing things in the mundane that Edie wouldn’t have noticed, like the back of Japanese tourists’ heads as they listened to the commentary, lost in a world of jewels and towers and princes imprisoned. He’d taken photos of her, too, and some of them together and to this day, she could still feel the weight of his leather jacket as he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. It had all been so natural, innocent, simple and relaxed. They ate Chinese food in Soho, and he bought her a carrier bag of snacks for the journey home, gave her a peck on the cheek before she boarded the train wanting nothing more than a promise she would come back soon, or let him come and visit her. Edie was smitten.
He kept her company all the way back to Manchester on video call and when they lost the signal, by text. Her friends wanted to know all about it the next day, and she could tell they were slightly disappointed by her big day out and no doubt Ace himself who she made sound super ordinary because really, he was. He hadn’t introduced her to his famous dad who was in town and he hadn’t taken her to any of the places they’d want to go, like The Ritz for tea, or Annabel’s for dinner.
Edie didn’t care and kept the day for herself, like a photo in a locket that lay close enough to her heart to hear it beat when she thought of Ace. She didn’t tell her friends her innermost thoughts, about the easy-going guy who was kind of Zen in his own gentle way, hypersensitive to everything and everyone around him, a deep thinker, clever too, while at the same time he could be a bit over-particular.
Like when he invited her back to London, and planned everything down to the last detail, sending her a step-by-step itinerary and a map of the station, marking the exits, so she wouldn’t get lost. He’d paid for her ticket in first class, so she’d be safe and have something nice to eat on the journey and sent a driver to pick her up from Euston. The chauffeur even had her name on a card which he held up, like in films, which made her blush but feel special at the same time. He’d ferried her to the apartment in Notting Hill and instead of finding just Ace there, she’d met two of his friends from home who were staying too. Dominique and Charles had known Ace since they were five, and like him had no airs; one the son of farmers, the other had the misfortune (or so he said) to have teachers for parents. They’d had the best time, the four of them, listening to music, watching films, eating take-out, getting very drunk, and she wanted it never to end.
Edie was enthralled by Ace, on every level. A contradiction in so many ways, the son of a legend who preferred the company of the friends and people he’d grown up with. And even though he’d lived away from the spotlight, he morphed seamlessly into it when he wanted to, unfazed by the photos of his dad’s famous friends on the shelves, but happy to hang with some of the greats if they were in town. Ace’s photo reel and contacts list were a who’s who of A-listers who were sandwiched between the gang from the village in France. His football coach, Eban, was followed by Ed Sheeran; Daniel Craig came before Dominique.
In return, Ace took her as she was, a student studying English literature who had been brought up by her gran. She said she didn’t want to talk about her mum, saying it was painful. ‘I’ll tell you when I’m ready,’ she’d said, and he’d respected that. In total contrast to Ace, if anyone scrolled through her phone and photos she was just an average twenty-one-year-old who took lots of selfies with her uni friends; a borderline geek who posted mainly about the theatre, films and books.
There was the occasional snap of Tom, her not-bad-looking, on-off boyfriend who suddenly became a great inconvenience. If nothing else, he’d made her look legit on her profile. Not like some man-hungry stalker who longed for a famous boyfriend or a complete saddo who nobody fancied. At first, the spectre of Tom turned out to be the perfect alibi and barrier, not where Ace was concerned because she knew he was a gentleman, a good guy. It was because she didn’t trust herself.
So, she’d kept up the pretence right until the last minute, tolerating Long-Gone Tom (as she now referred to him in her head) until she couldn’t bear it anymore. When she dumped him, Edie made up an alternative story where he’d accepted a post-grad job in Canada and who was she to hold him back? There was no future in the relationship, so they’d parted friends. She didn’t want Ace to think she was mean, but the time had come to set herself free.
On date three, he’d come to Manchester and stayed a whole week, in her room in the house she shared. While she was in lectures, he visited his aunt and cousins and in the evenings they hung out, did normal things that a boyfriend and girlfriend do. She remembered him lying on her bed, watching afternoon telly while she typed up lecture notes and in between dunking his biscuit in his brew, one of his dad’s words for a cup of tea, he asked her a question. Boom, no messing about.
‘Are you my girlfriend now? When we met your tutor earlier, you said I was your friend from France.’
Edie had stopped mid-sentence and turned to face him. ‘Have you been thinking about that all this time?’
‘Yes. And I like to have things all neat and tidy in my head. In a box, yellow for you because you make me smile and feel warm, like the sun. Don’t worry if you don’t want to be, but for the record, that’s how I think of you now, since we slept together.’
Never had she met anyone who said it like it was, simple, to the point and it was ace, Ace was ace. ‘Well in that case you can put me in a nice yellow box with a tag that says ‘girlfriend’. Now shush, I need to get this done and you have ginger biscuit on your chin.’ She leant over and kissed his smiling lips, then got on with her work.
It was during that week Ace told her of his dreams to backpack around the Far East. When he said he wanted to make it a working holiday of sorts, gathering photos for a book he had in mind, Edie’s went into overdrive. The thought of losing him almost sent her insane, so when he casually suggested it would be amazing if she came too once she’d graduated, Edie nearly bit off her tongue in her eagerness to say yes.
But before any of that, they had to make proper plans and plot a route and book flights, which is why she’d accepted his invitation to France for a holiday. She’d also accepted how she felt about Ace, and it was the real deal. But there was a massive problem. To use a phrase she’d seen many times on profiles where people were trying to be mysterious or cool, it was complicated. Very, very complicated.
She knew it had all got out of control, like one of those big round cheeses they threw down a hill and the whole town chased after it, going faster and faster, people tumbling and bouncing along, like the hormones and adrenaline that fizzed in her veins whenever she thought of Ace.
If only she’d told the truth from the start or just gone about all this in a different way. Instead, she’d thought she was clever, sneaking in the back door unnoticed, keeping her secret well hidden, letting her imagination get carried away, merging facts with fiction, painting pictures in her head of what could have been, erasing the bad bits, rewriting history and wrongs, and creating a new ending. And if her gran knew, she’d have a fit which was why she had put Ace off meeting her, making excuses that Gran was away on a course, or visiting friends. She hated lying so told herself it was just a story. She was good at writing fiction but hadn’t intended her love of it to seep into her life where she’d altered narratives to suit her situation.
She’d always been inquisitive and creative, with a love for the written word so had spent much of her childhood lost in a book, therefore her choice of degree surprised nobody. Referring to Edie in group chats her friends often used #noseycow in a jokey reference to her insatiable appetite for gossip, be it campus news or celebrity rumours. It was true, there was nothing she liked more than googling famous people and finding out who they were married to, where they lived, scandals, stuff like that. Then on a more intellectual level, she liked to keep abreast of world issues, politics, the environment, and had Sky News alerts set on her phone. Knowledge was power. The truth a drug. A bit like revenge – or maybe that was too harsh a word. Perhaps settling a score would be a better term.
