Page 70 of You Belong With Me

Within half an hour, their father emerged on his crutches, foot swaddled in bandages. Both his daughters ran to him for a hug, awkwardly accommodating walking aids.

Back at the family home, they opened wine and ordered fish (vegan minty pea fritter for Meg) and chips, eating from their cardboard boxes while watching a documentary about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Edie remembered herself and texted Declan:

Massive false alarm, huge relief. It’s an ankle injury and nothing else. My sister spiralled a bitThank you for being such an absolute rock when I fell apart. xx

Instant reply.

Declan

GREAT NEWS! Ah, Edie, that’s put a smile on my face. Love to you all. Tell your sister I’m holding her to the mashed potato promise. Mind you, that was made before I forced her to view my bare buttocks. xx

Edie sniggered. She recalled his summoning a taxi to the hospital before she’d even rung off. He was such a delight ofa human being, and she was lucky to have him as a friend. After all the Ad Hoc woe, she’d rolled a six.

Edie

Who knows, maybe that’ll have clinched second helps. Will do. xx

Declan liked her reply with a heart. Was Edie flirting? She was too nerve-shredded and two glasses too tipsy to judge. She was mostly glad that if Declan was making light of that incident, he must be recovering from it. She was surprised he’d raised it. It was, as foretold, alchemising into comedy. A vision of him unclothed swam into her head, and she banished it, because the better she knew him, the odder it felt. And somehow, rather less like comedy.

‘How come Sherlock Holmes had so much cocaine?’ Meg asked. ‘Was it allowed in those days? Because life was more boring?’

‘Why was life boring?’ their dad asked. ‘No Wetherspoons and Netflix?’

‘Yes,’ said Meg, her usual literalism disarming her father’s satire. ‘They only had pianos and maps and murders.’

‘They didn’t know it did you any harm, I think,’ Edie said.

‘Like sugar now,’ Meg replied. ‘In the future, we’ll think of Vanilla Coke and Kit Kats like Class As. Injecting a Wispa Gold.’

She made atightening a tourniquetmime.

Edie phone-googled and read aloud: ‘In the late nineteenth century, cocaine was thought to be totally harmless and wasused both as a nerve tonic and for local anaesthetic. Cocaine was used in throat lozenges, gargles, and in several alcoholic drinks.’

‘I’d love me a cocaine gargle,’ Meg said.

Edie continued: ‘Holmes took cocaine to help him “escape from the commonplaces of existence”.’

‘Boring! See, Dad,’ Meg said.

‘Thankfully, you have no need of cocaine, with your Twiglets andSay Yes to the Dress,’ their dad said, dabbing his chin with kitchen roll.

‘What?!’ Edie shrieked. ‘Meg’s been watchingSay Yes to the Dress? Bridal gowns? What happened to Andrea Dworkin and the toxic male gaze on our prostituted bodies?!’

Meg adjusted her top knot of dreadlocks and made a mardy little face. ‘The patriarchy won’t monitor itself.’

37

After a draining day, both Meg and her father turned in by ten p.m. Edie left her phone for two minutes to get a glass of water, and when she returned, saw she had racked up three missed calls from Elliot and a WhatsApp.

Elliot

Sweetheart, I am so so SO sorry. I was on set, and I didn’t get this until now. Fuck. I’m back. Call whenever you want. xxxx

She carried a blanket into the front room and lay down on the sofa, pulling it up to her chest and putting her mobile to her face. Elliot answered on the second ring.

‘How are you? How’s your dad? I feel awful I wasn’t there when you needed me.’

---