My Invisible Boyfriend (6 page)

And then he flails off to be scarily enthusiastic in the direction of the props department.

“Can you draw?” I ask Simon, hopefully.

He shakes his head, blue-black hair dangling in his eyes.

“Know anything about the eighties?”

He shakes his head again, and picks a hole in his black nail varnish.

I feel a bit mean for thinking it, but Simon really is kind of weird. I mean, to the untrained eye, so is Fili, so I shouldn’t judge. And my boyfriend’s personal charms aren’t necessarily all that obvious to anyone else, on account of me not having imagined them yet, so I’m not really in a position to snark. I suppose that’s what love is: seeing the non-obvious best in someone.

Still, signing up for this job with uncommunicative Gothboy was not the most stellar plan. Especially when I can’t draw and also know nothing about the ‘80s, apart from what
I learned from TV. According to which the ‘80s were mostly very, very day-glo. In helicopters. And short shorts.

Probably not what Shakespeare had in mind, but it’s a start.

My phone goes off inside my Bubble Wrap bag, sending the
Mycroft Christie Investigates
theme tune twanging out across the room. I burrow in my bag. The caller ID reads M
OTHERSHIP
.

I scrunch up my face, then scurry into the safety of Music Room 1 to answer.

“Babes? You’re where? Oh. Right. You be good for Mr. Venables, now. What? Oh, yeah. Just wanted to remind you, I’ve got girls’ aqua aerobics tonight, so you’ll have to eat in the Dining Hall, babes, OK, and I’ll pick you up after? Or if you’d rather wait, there’s my things in the fridge, but don’t have the blueberries, I’m going all blue tomorrow. Yes, I know traffic lights aren’t blue. All right then, cheers, babes.”

I perform a mental calculation involving the contents of my last pay envelope and the pizza delivery guy. The results are not good. Looks like Potatoes “R” Us for dinner again.

I shove the phone away and head for the foyer, knocking against a tub full of those spongy lollipop-shaped things you hit xylophones with and spilling a few.

“Twenty says she’s dumped,” I hear Dai say, as I stop to put them back.

HELL.

OH.

I hang back, for a little detecto-eavesdropping.

“You are SO mean! Ed totally wouldn’t do that. Not on the phone anyway.”

“He’s in London, Ludo. What’s he going to do, skywrite? I’m just saying, he can’t be that into her. He hardly ever phones. He doesn’t even text.”

“Perhaps she’s not that into him?” That’s Henry. Hooray for Henry. I think.

“Henry! She is TOTALLY into him. Like, OBSESSO.”

“She doesn’t have a photo of him in her wallet.” Dai again. No hooray for him.

“You looked?”

“Just out of curiosity. None on her ULife profile, either, which, by the way, still says she’s single.”

OOPS.

“Dai, sweetheart, I think you’re the obsesso one.”

“Henry,
sweetheart
, what’s the background on your mobile phone?”

“A…picture of you and me.”

“And Henry,
sweetheart
, how long have we been going out?”

“You may have a point.”

“Maybe he’s just too minging and gross for her to want to look at.”

“OH MY GOD, Dai, he is SO not gross!”

“How would you even know?”

I decide that’s probably enough, and do a big notice-mecoming cough as I come out from my Music Room 1 hiding place.

There’s blushing and hair-tweaking and a general checking of watches, like the audition has already begun, and they’re rehearsing Overplayed Pretending To Be Invisible. Apart from Yuliya, who has sat silent through the whole conversation as if it’s very much beneath her (along with everything else), and Fili, who looks stony as always but is so, so amused on the inside. I think.

“Was that Ed on the phone, then?” says Dai, casual-like.

I nod.

“Everything OK?” says Ludo, looking hopeful on my behalf.

“He’s…going through some stuff,” I say, fiddling with my phone. “Having an identity crisis, kind of. It’s a thing. No big. All fine. We’re good.”

Or we will be. Just as soon as I get my mental recipe book out again and start cooking.

I’ve been going about this all wrong. I get that now. I got all overexcited about the idea of me, snuggled up in Mycroft Christie’s coat, listening to him—I mean
Ed
—talking about his heroic detective exploits, and forgot that it wasn’t really
me who needed to hear it. After all, it doesn’t matter if I don’t love Ed at all, so long as everyone else believes I do.

The gingerbread man on my desk looks despondent.

OK, he doesn’t. But he looks like he might be thinking about it. I give him a reassuring little pat on the head.

I’m going to fix it anyway. I’ve constructed my pretty boy who falls off motorbikes and plays me songs on his guitar while tragically wounded. The basic recipe is awesome. Ed just needs to be a little more proactive, and a little less four inches high and leaning on my desk lamp.

The “actual existence” thing I’m skipping, obviously. And with Ed being off in London (somewhere) at his boarding school (which has no name), he can’t be expected to participate in any octopus action. I don’t need to handwrite cute Post-it notes to be left inside my copy of
Deutsch Heute
, like Dai keeps leaving for Henry. He’s not required to sweep up behind me, wrap his hands over my eyes, and whisper filthy nothings into my ear, like Peroxide Eric. No sharing of mirror compact and the loan of dark cherry lipstick, like Simon does for Fili.

All of which I’m completely fine with. Especially the lipstick.

And thanks to the Mothership, I have the occasional phone call sewn up (so long as I can encourage her to ring me at random intervals, which will be easily achieved by me rearranging the fridge).

The rest, however, is a teensy bit more complicated.

I don’t even know if you can text your own phone, but
caller ID will not be on my side, and my Little Leaf wages are not going to buy me a whole new phone. So texting is out.

The Little Leaf wages aren’t going to run to deliveries of red roses and posh chocolates, either, and posting myself a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk isn’t going to have quite the same effect, so prezzies are out.

I can cut ‘n’ paste with the best of them, but a screencap of Mycroft Christie with my head Photoshopped onto Jori Song’s is going to come out fugly. So the photo is out.

Which leaves…nothing.

And
I’ve got to create a working scale model of the solar system out of drinking straws and bouncy balls, come up with those costume designs for PAG somehow, and write another Poem on an Autumn Leaf for Prowse.

It’s impossible.

A dimly lit penthouse. Mycroft Christie, time-traveling gentleman detective, is admiring the view of the city of London. His delightful sidekick, Miss Heidi Ryder, is wearing pajamas with giraffes and looking sort of grumpy.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Nothing is impossible: only improbable.

HEIDI: Fancy seeing you here. And yeah, yeah, episode 2.1, “Ghost Town,” explaining to Inspector Dedman that ghosts could’ve done all those murders, which you’d think he’d know what with him being one. This is supposed to help me how?

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: The solution may be closer to home than you realize, Inspector.

HEIDI: What’s that supposed to mean? Ed is a ghost?

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: No, Heidi, Ed is not a ghost.

HEIDI: Eh?

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: I said, “No, Heidi, Ed is not a ghost.”

HEIDI: But you don’t say that. On the TV. In the show. You never say that.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: I do now.

HEIDI: OK, I’m officially weirded out.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: You’re having an imaginary conversation with a character off the television. It took you until now to become “weirded out”?

HEIDI: Fair point. Actually, this is kind of cool.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Of course it is. That’s why you’re making it happen, you dork.

HEIDI: Mycroft Christie would never say “dork.”

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Madam, you can make me say whatever you like. Bum. Wee-wee. I’m leaving that hussy Jori Song behind, my darling, let’s run away and detect things together!

HEIDI: Yes, please! Er, I mean, I couldn’t possibly, I already have a boyfriend. And don’t say “bum.”

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Make me.

HEIDI: OK. Done. You are now bottomless.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Very clever. Now, might we apply the same principle to young Edward?

HEIDI: Ed? I don’t think I want him to be bottomless.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: I was referring to your skills of ventriloquism. If you can make me say whatever you like, you can make Ed say whatever you like, too.

HEIDI: How does that help, if no one can hear it?

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Your technology is rather unimpressive to a time traveler like myself, true enough, but I believe the internet might offer some assistance?

HEIDI: Ooh.
Ooh.
Actually, that could work.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Naturally.

HEIDI: But, if I made you say that, then I must’ve known it already, before you said it. So technically it must be my idea. Right?

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: (pouty face)

HEIDI: (sighs)

He’s right, though. Or I am. You can be anyone you like on the internet. You can even be two people at once. I can log into my ULife whenever (and sneakily update my status to “in a relationship,” just in case Dai happens to check again). But I can just as easily start a whole new ULife, with whatever name I choose, and it’s like creating a whole new person for all the world to see.

I fire up the Dread Pirate Laptop, and get creative with my new ingredients. E-mail address, username, profile. I hesitate over the Profile Image option, wondering if Photoshopped Mycroft Christie really is the worst idea ever;
wondering if leaving it blank is just asking for suspicion. Then I catch the winking squished eye of my gingerbread man, and whip out my phone. One blurry camera phone upload later, and he’s all set for public consumption.

The London penthouse. Miss Heidi Ryder is working hard at the desk, while Mycroft Christie, time-traveling gentleman detective, sulkily observes.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Edmund?

HEIDI: Only because [email protected] was already taken. I like it anyway. It sounds sophisticated.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Of course it does, my dear. And his disdain for television?

HEIDI: A cunning disguise so no one will guess he’s me, mixed up with a few bits I borrowed off you.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: Cunning indeed. Although your memory seems to be faltering: I believe, if you refer to episode 1.7, “Librarians Do the Funniest Things,” you’ll discover that my favorite book is
The Tell-Tale Timesink
, by H. R. Pendellikon.

HEIDI: Shush. I am busy with my other imaginary boyfriend, whose interests are not allowed to be as made-up as yours.

I had to do quite a lot of Googling. But he seems like the kind of boy who might sit on the Manor steps and play songs to passing girls, the kind of boy the girls might stop and chat to, because of his effortless charm and good looks and knowledge of hipster writers I haven’t read. Not the kind of boy who stops and talks to girls like
me
, anywhere but inside my crazy head. But that doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. I can make this Ed like me: That’s all that counts.

He still needs to talk, though.

I click on “Post to ULife,” and hover my hands over the keyboard.

Subject: first post

Good evening.

Too formal.

Hey you guys!

Too Venables-esque.

hey

It’s a typo, but I like it. It’s his typing schtick: He’s lowercase ed, too cool for the shift key. I can even go back and edit “e. e. cummings” into his “Likes” list, just for consistency.

heidi made me come on this site so i can talk to her because apparently i never do

OK, way to cast yourself as Whiny Girlfriend #1.

heidicakes has an account here so i just had to as well so i could tell her how gorgeous she is!!!

Ick. He’s imaginary, not blind and delusional. And “Heidicakes”?

so i guess i should update this or something, since it’s here, and i’m feeling kind of lonely.

This, I like. He’s melancholy, nonchalant, and all those other things people only are in poems.

i guess h is the only one who’ll read it anyway.

I like the “h” thing. No one’s ever called me “h” before.

sorry for not phoning much this week, bb, got caught texting in media studies and mr smith has confiscated my phone.

My boyfriend, last of the great rebels. (And Mr.
Smith
? Come on, brain.)

sorry i haven’t been calling much. been trying to get the bike running again, marco’s got me some shifts at the garage, still doing physio. plus whenever i have to hang up it just reminds me how far away you are.

Yeah, baby. He’s probably crying a Single Perfect Tear through the grease marks on his face as he sweats over his big foxy motorbike.

Too much?

Well, yes, but I don’t care.

you’ll only yell at me for trying to get back on the bike anyway, amirite? :P

Does Ed say :P?

you’ll only yell at me for trying to get back on the bike anyway, right?

OK, he’s going to have to say :P, otherwise it looks like we’re having an argument, and it’s a bit too soon in our relationship for us to be fighting.

how’s tricks? am bored out of my mind already. new roommate guy continues to suffer personal hygiene issues.

Too prissy for manly motorbike boyfriend.

new roommate bilbo continues to smell. mostly of socks. think he has just the one pair. suggestions?

I start formulating cute banter immediately. Brilliant. We really are an adorable couple.

ok, getting dragged out of the door for a run. would bring laptop with me and keep typing, but i’m not quite that talented. (ok, i am exactly that talented, i just don’t want to dazzle you from afar, it’s too cruel.) thanks for the parcel. marco says “hello heidi like your picture nice to know he didn’t just invent you to make his summer sound less crappy.”

i have to go now so i can hit him on your behalf.

ok, really going now. miss you like tuesday afternoons,

ed

The penthouse. Mycroft Christie, time-traveling gentleman detective, leans over Miss Heidi Ryder’s elegant shoulder to assess her work.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: A commendable effort, young lady. The validation of your story from the mythical “Marco” is particularly astute.

HEIDI: Why, thank you. I like the way I’ve sent him an invisible present: I’m totally doing that again with everyone at Christmas.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: I wish you luck. Might I inquire as to the significance of Tuesday afternoons?

HEIDI: Picnics under the cherry tree by the lake. I figure the “miss you like…” thing can be a running gag between us. You know, every time he posts he says something from our many happy hours together: I miss you like sharing apple pie, I miss you like holding hands in the sunset…

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: I miss you like correct speech and punctuation?

HEIDI: Shut it, future boy. You’ve got a malfunctioning Twenty-First-Century Linguistic Etiquette Implant, which makes you talk like a loon. Ed doesn’t.

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: I’m not sure this young man is a good influence on you. You’re getting rather cheeky.

HEIDI: Who, me? (fluttery eyelashes)

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: (smoldery eyebrow, jealous look)

HEIDI: Ahem. Yes. Do you think I should add some kisses at the end?

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: As you’ll recall from the undelivered letter in episode 2.12, “The Charge D’Affaire Affair,” my preferred sign-off is “With love & affection.”

HEIDI: It’s a good job you’re pretty, isn’t it?

MYCROFT CHRISTIE: (sighs, continues smoldery eyebrow to fade-out)

And that’s it. He’s done. Gingerbread Ed Hartley, fresh from the oven, and ready to serve.

ORES.

UM.

I’m kind of desperate to show him off right away, but I have to be a professional about this. My many hours of TV detective training have taught me the importance of patience: of hanging back and waiting for the quarry to take the bait, in case the quarry turns out to be flying manmonkeys of death. Not that I’m exactly expecting that. And Mycroft and Jori on stakeout eating doughnuts definitely get to have more fun than I do sitting in History, trying to casually steer a conversation about Henry VIII round to hot boyfriendly types. But blurting out, “Please go and look at this website where you will find convincing evidence of how much Ed loves me,” could ruin the whole operation.

Result: I’m practically skipping when I hit the Little Leaf for my next shift and get to at least share Ed with
someone.

I dutifully strap on my frilly apron, and admire today’s Wisdom: O
UR BLUE POPPY SEED CAKE IS NOT ACTUALLY BLUE
:
JUST THE POPPY SEEDS IN IT
. S
ORRY TO DISAPPOINT
. I sling the usual toast, jam, English Breakfast pot for two at the ancient couple seated at the window. I wait for Betsy to get us set up with our own pot. Then I whack the Dread Pirate onto the counter, piggyback onto the Big Bean’s wi-fi network from across the road, and introduce Betsy to
gingerbread_ed
in all his ULife glory.