Page 60 of You Belong With Me

Edie’s mouth fell open. ‘What?How?No one knew about that?!’

‘Yeah. I’m now likedoes my phone have spyware on itlevel of cold-sweat spooked,’ Elliot said. ‘I should’ve taken Lillian seriously earlier.’

‘The only people who knew about that were me, you, Fraser, Nick, and Hannah?’

‘And my agent, because he had to know why I was pissingeveryone off by pushing a table read back by a day. He told no one in the production the details, onlyfamily emergency. So yeah. Six people that I can identify.’

‘Is it worth me stressing again that I’d never do that to you?’ Edie said.

Elliot leaned over and held her face. ‘Soft arse. Of course you fuckin’ wouldn’t.’

‘Never mind doing it to you, this isn’t a story I want shared either,’ Edie said sorrowfully, and Elliot dipped his gaze and murmured: ‘Sorry.’

‘… Anyway, Lillian has moved to a war footing and completely rejects any tech interference speculation from me. “Elliot, I believe in Occam’s razor, and it does not tell me end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp has been hacked. We’re not looking for Julian Assange. This is human fallibility, and it’s someone close to you, with fewer scruples than you thought. We’ve opened the jar labelledhard pills to swallow.”’

‘That’s a very good impression.’

‘Thanks, I’m an actor.’

He smiled, and Edie felt fluttery. Even in minor crisis, it was nice to notice they were still very much on a date.

‘She pointed out the faster I figure it out, the better for everyone. But, how?’

‘I’ll check with Nick and Hannah about who they told, but they’re so unlikely to have passed it on to anyone, let alone to someone who’d do this.’

‘You didn’t tell anyone else?’ Elliot asked. ‘I’m not saying you couldn’t. As Lillian says, these conversations are being forced on us now.’

‘No one,’ Edie said, recalling her seconds-long madness nearly disclosing it to Declan, deeply grateful she’d thought better of it. ‘Not even my sister, given her interest level in my love life can be summed up as “barf”.’

Elliot sipped his pint and shook his head. ‘I’m going to say it, because otherwise it hangs there as A Big Unsaid. Fraser’s always been completely military drill on not telling people what I’m up to. He’s beyond reproach. What’s changed is that he’s madly in love with Molly, about to make her part of the family. Naturally, he’s telling his fiancée absolutely everything. She’s got to be involved somehow. It’s the only explanation I can think of. I’m going to have to cut Fraser out of the loop for a while and see if that fixes it, but I hate doing it. What a horrible fucking bind.’

‘Yeah,’ Edie said. ‘It’s awful. Fraser’s devoted to you. You don’t know that it’s Molly.’

Edie’s vanishingly brief encounter with Molly told her she was sweet and guileless. Yet Edie had missed the nature of Jack Marshall, not so long ago. Also, Molly might be – even unwittingly – doing the bidding of another, if her family were mercenary about Elliot.

‘Lillian had a worse idea that I don’t currently have the stomach for.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Telling Fraser alone something untrue and seeing if it filters through.’

‘Fuuuuuuck,’ Edie said, eyes wide. ‘Like Coleen Rooney with Rebekah Vardy.’

‘Well,exactly.I’m not treating my brother as an enemycombatant. I’m not testing him. Imagine if he found out I’d done that? Imagine the betrayal?’

Edie shook her head and put her hand on his arm.

‘It gets worse when you reason it out,’ Elliot said. ‘If through this news blackout I have some sort of evidence his fiancée is likely selling me out, where will that leave me and Fraz? Molly will carry on denying it, because of course you would. Journalists won’t reveal their sources. So I’d be asking Fraser to choose who he believed and that very quickly becomes choosing between us, full stop. What would I do if he came to me and said, “Edie has done this terrible thing, here’s reasonable standard proof. It’s me or her.” Yet you denied it?’

Edie nodded, hoping this was rhetorical.

‘I know what I’d do. I’d choose you.’

Elliot said this in a throwaway manner, as if it wasn’t one of the most profound statements he’d made since they met. If this was a temporary insanity, fuelled by oxytocin, he was writing some large cheques off the back of it. They were sufficiently leveraged to be heading for the 2008 crash.

Edie gulped. ‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ Elliot said. ‘Except if the bad thing was raging infidelity, then you’d have some ground to make up, little lady.’ He sighed. ‘How can I expect Fraser to be any different?’

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