The curry is gorgeous too, warm and comforting and just perfect after a late night and a full day outdoors in sub-zero temperatures. Then after dinner, as Harry is about to slope back to his computer, I strongly suspect to make contact with Eva from the park earlier on Facebook, Instagram or similar, Mike suddenly hauls him back.
‘What’s up?’ says Harry, eyes narrowed down to two suspicious slits.
‘Hey! Get back here!’ Mike says, mock threateningly. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘I was just going to …’
‘Look, the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year you can spend with your face stuck up against a computer screen, but just for today, it’s family time.’
‘That is so lame,’ Harry groans, rolling his eyes, but Mike is having none of it.
‘Come on,’ he says firmly, ‘we’ve got a guest. Who’s only here because of you in the first place, so put that iPhone away. Now what do you both say to a good old-fashioned game of charades?’
‘Charades? Are you for real?’
‘Just give it a try,’ Mike insists. ‘Who knows, you might just like it.’
Jeez. I don’t think I’ve actually played a game of Charades since my Old Life. My Life Before. But if initially I’m a wee bit wary of all this enforced fun, I quickly settle down and really genuinely start to enjoy myself. Mike proves himself to be absolutely hilarious, not just at the miming part, but also at picking the most ridiculously obscure movie titles and the names of TV shows and books for Harry and me to act out.
The Remains of the Day is one he lands me with, and I defy anyone to try tackling that one. So I hit him back with Maleficent, which astonishingly, he manages to nail inside of the three-minute time limit, how I do not know. Harry really gets into the spirit too and pretty soon has me miming away to American Hustle and, dear God help me, Casablanca.
It’s perfect. It’s all so perfect. Too bloody perfect in fact and that alone should have been my giveaway that it was all about to implode.
‘Yet another incredibly easy one!’ I mock groan as a cushion is playfully tossed into my face. Then, after a few more rounds where we’re all messing and acting the eejit like there’s three teenagers in the room instead of just one, the pull of technology gets too much for Harry and I swear you can physically see him twitching to get back to his computer and iPhone.
This time Mike lets him, and there’s a slightly awkward moment where it’s unspoken between us, but we both realize … well, it’s coming up to eleven at night and here we both are. Finally alone in front of a roaring fire, with a gorgeously rich bottle of Merlot he uncorked earlier going down an absolute treat. The stage is all set.
Silence. But it’s an easy, comfortable silence, the kind you can only really enjoy when you’re one hundred per cent comfortable with another person. Knees almost touching. So close to each other I can smell him now. Musky and manly and just gorgeous.
‘Thank you,’ I say simply.
‘For what?’ Mike asks, getting up to stoke the fire, but I’m barely listening to him. Instead all I can think of is how incredibly handsome he looks in this light. He really is that good-looking, one of those guys who’s just an irresistible magnet for the eye. Suddenly self-conscious, I start absent-mindedly twisting at a cushion tassel right beside me.
‘Oh, you know exactly what for. For taking in a homeless stray over Christmas. For making me feel so welcome. For taking me out on the town last night.’
‘Even though I’ll bet you were cursing me when you came round first thing this morning,’ he says, looking at me sideways from where he’s crouched over the grate.
‘Do you mind? I’m having a moment here. For unquestioningly accepting me into your family at a time when I’m sure the last thing you wanted or needed was a house guest tagging along. But most of all …’
You can do it, Holly, you can get to the end of this sentence. Mike is lovely and a good listener and surely by now you at least owe him some kind of explanation?
As ever, though, whenever I go to talk about this, the words just seem to turn to antifreeze on my tongue. Brings me back to countless sessions with a very expensive therapist which I could ill afford, where pretty much all I was capable of doing was sitting there focusing out the window and instantly clamming up the very minute I was asked a direct question about what I’d been through.
Useless. I’m bloody well worse than useless. Myself and Joy generally get far, far further in unravelling the whole emotional mess of it all over a decent bottle of wine and a tub of Ben and Jerry’s of a Friday night. But then as she’s always at pains to tell me, unless I can learn to start confiding and trusting in others, then how can I ever expect other people, and more specifically guys, to reach back to me?
Jeez, I suddenly think from out of nowhere. Makes perfect sense that I’m the type who spiralled off into an online relationship and it served me bloody well right that it turned out to be with a hoaxer. Distance: that’s all I was ever after really. Space. An arm’s-length sort of relationship. A ‘this is never really going to go anywhere’ fling and no more.
But then that’s me all over. Putting up barriers kind of tends to be my speciality and the higher the better. Anything to protect myself from having to suffer through that pain and loss all over again.
Mike is sitting down again now, with his long legs stretched lazily out in front of him. And he’s looking right at me, the firelight flickering off his skin, making him look a glowing picture of health.
‘You’ve gone very quiet on me, Holly Johnson,’ he says gently. ‘You’re miles away.’
‘Not so far,’ I tell him.
‘Something on your mind? Because whatever it is, you know you can talk to me.’
‘Alright then,’ I say quietly, formulating my thoughts. ‘There actually is something. I just want to say that … ermm … well … you gave me a Christmas gift yesterday and now it’s my turn to repay the favour. Because I do have a tiny little something for your family. A Christmas gift of sorts, that is.’
‘Oh come on, you didn’t have to go and do that …’ he starts to say, but I don’t let him finish.
‘No, please, hear me out. Although this one is more for Harry really,’ I tell him.
‘Yeah?’
‘You’ll remember how mad I was the first night when we met up in that bar, Papillon?’
‘Don’t talk to me. I was fully expecting to be served with legal writs the next day.’
‘Anyway, I made a whole lot of misguided, badly misjudged threats. I mean, about outing Harry not just on the shows I work on back home but online too, basically making a public example out of him …’
‘Yee-ees,’ Mike says cagily. ‘Don’t worry, I hadn’t forgotten.’
‘But now that I’ve had all this time to spend with Harry and now that I’ve really got to know him that bit better …’
‘Go on,’ he says hopefully, almost second-guessing me.
‘I’ve given it a lot of thought, and looking back now, I think it was mostly misdirected anger on my part. I took it out on Harry that night, but the person I really was angriest at was myself.’
‘Why would you say that?’ says Mike, eyes glinting in the firelight.
‘I was furious with myself for having been taken in by a hoaxer on some lousy dating website so easily. For being that gullible and naive, when all the signs were there that I was being taken for a ride, if I’d just bothered to look closely enough. Only I decided to ignore them because … well, to make a long story short, I suppose what I’m really trying to say is that I’ve decided to scrap the whole catfish story.’
Silence now while I scan his face, trying to gauge his reaction.
‘Holly …’ he eventually says, but I’m already all over this.
‘No, hear me out. I’m ditching the story and I know it’ll land me in trouble, but to hell with what my producer thinks anyway. Because I think it really would be so wrong. I think that Harry is actually a really
sweet kid who just got in a bit deep over his head. That’s all. So if he’s happy to learn a lesson from all this, then I’m more than prepared to head home and call off the whole feature. No one need be any the wiser. And that’s a promise.’
‘Do you mean it …?’ he starts to ask, but I don’t let him finish.
‘Besides, look on the positive side. At least Harry’s going off the rails now when he’s young and can get it out of his system properly. We once did a whole radio show on the type of people who are immaculately behaved as teenagers, then spiral off into midlife crises and end up vomiting down your loo aged forty. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.’
And this is absolutely the right thing for me to do, I know it is. I’ve been thinking about little else all evening and I just feel it.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ says Mike softly, leaning down into me so that this time we’re barely inches away from each other now. His eyes are really shining now, and there it is again, that musky, gorgeous smell.
‘Except thank you,’ he goes on. ‘Though it goes without saying that I hope this doesn’t land you in any trouble with your boss. After all, didn’t your job send you all the way over here explicitly to unearth a gem of a story about catfish?’
‘If it lands me in hot water, then I’ll just deal with it,’ I tell him firmly. ‘After all, which is worse? Me getting a slap on the wrist for time-wasting, versus destroying a fifteen-year-old’s whole life and reputation?’
‘That’s so good of you, Holly. I … well I really do owe you one. Big time. And not just me, Harry too.’
‘You owe me nothing! You and your whole family have made this whole Christmas just so magical. This really is the least I can do in return.’
‘But I hope you know that wasn’t the only reason I asked you to join us yesterday and today.’
He and I are nose-to-nose by now, almost touching. It’s the most intimate and certainly the most open we’ve been with each other since last night, and for one fleeting moment I think, well this is it then. He’s just about to kiss me now; he has to. I’m actually starting to feel like I’ll burn up if he doesn’t. He’s millimetres away from me now, our noses tipping lightly off each other.
‘You know, there’s something I very much wanted to do last night,’ he murmurs softly, ‘but let’s just say you were a little the worse for all those cocktails, and there are rules about taking advantage of situations like that.’
‘So what exactly was that then?’ I smile, as his arms slip over my shoulder and he pulls me in tighter to him. Then he leans down, lightly nuzzling against my cheek till, I swear, I’m actually starting to physically tingle all over. Now he’s expertly running his fingers through my hair as I’m curling into him and we’re just about to kiss when …
Next thing the silence is completely broken by the sound of a key in the lock. Followed by the loud clattering of a handbag and coat in the tiny hallway outside.
Then Dorothy’s voice, suddenly shattering the whole atmosphere into shards.
‘I won! Kids, you still up? Come and congratulate your card-sharp of a mom … for once in my life, I actually won!’
The overhead lights above us suddenly get snapped on and that magical mood between Mike and me is completely blown sky-high.
‘Oh good, Holly, you’re still here,’ she says, the quick, gimlet-y eyes taking the whole scene in at a blink.
‘Congratulations, Mom,’ says Mike, blinking in the sharp light and hauling himself up on one elbow to chat to her. ‘So how much did you win?’
‘Twelve dollars, fifty cents,’ she beams proudly, like she’s talking about the State Lottery. Mike rolls his eyes, which she immediately intercepts.
‘Oh you can sneer all you like, sonny,’ she says, kicking off her neat court shoes and collapsing into the armchair opposite us. ‘But we do only play for five cents a pot. And it was worth it to see the look of shock on Doris’s face when she realized that for the very first time, I’d actually come out of her game with more cash on me that I had going into it.’
‘Congratulations,’ I smile warmly back at her.
‘Just don’t spend all twelve dollars of it in the one store,’ Mike grins cheekily.
Silence falls while Dorothy looks from one of us to the other, just assessing it all: the fire, the open bottle of wine, the fact that we practically leapt apart the minute she came into the room.
‘So you pair look pretty cosy, huh?’ she says. I blush a bit at this and stammer something about how it’s getting late and I should probably think about getting back to my hotel. Mike automatically offers to take me back, like I hoped he would, ‘just to make sure you get home safely’.
Dorothy nods approvingly, then the minute he’s out of the room organizing a cab, she sits back and gives a disappointed sigh.
‘You’re such an adorable girl, Holly,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Why couldn’t you have walked into our lives at any time other that this?’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask her, genuinely mystified.
‘You didn’t hear the news tonight, honey? The snowstorm is officially over. The roads are all due to reopen by tomorrow.’
‘Oh, I see …’ I tell her, uncertain of how I really feel about it myself. Bit mixed, I suppose. To put it mildly.
‘Oh, not just that, sweetie. The airports are due to reopen too. It was all over the ten o’clock news. Looks like they’ll all be running normal flight schedules starting from first thing tomorrow.’
Well, that’s it then. It’s over. It’s all over, before it ever really had a chance to barely begin. But I hardly have time to register the instant sense of deflation, because just then Harry bursts back into the sitting room, hair stuck to one side of his head, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a Book of Mormon T-shirt.
This time though, he looks pale, ashen-faced, miles away from that cocksure ‘take on the world’ attitude he normally swaggers round with.
‘Harry!’ says Dorothy, instinct immediately telling her that something’s off-centre here. ‘What are you doing still awake? It’s late, come on, say goodnight to Holly, then back to bed.’
Instead though, Harry just shoves his hands in the tracksuit bottoms, shuffling awkwardly and staring at the floor, immediately sending alarm bells ringing in my head too.
‘Everything OK?’ I ask him tentatively.
‘Not really,’ is all he can say though. ‘Mike about? I kind of need to talk to him. Like, now.’
‘Oh dear God,’ says Dorothy, sitting bolt upright, suspicions instantly heightened. ‘What have you been up to now?’
Mike comes back into the room and seems to sense the shift in atmosphere. One look at Harry’s pale face tells him something is seriously up.
‘Kiddo,’ he says, ‘what’s wrong?’
‘Now you’re not to flip out, OK?’ Harry stammers, tripping over his words.
‘Just tell me!’
‘Look … it’s pretty bad, OK? It’s kinda … the worst. Thing is, bro … I think I’m in a whole lot of trouble.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sweet Mother of Divine is all I can think the following morning. Did I dream it all? Or did Harry really …?
No I think, coming to with a sharp tension headache, as my head practically pounds off the pillow. No I didn’t imagine the last nightmarish few minutes of what had started out as such a blissful evening yesterday. It happened. Or more correctly, it’s actually happening. Now. Or else soon, very soon. Probably as soon as the snow has started to thaw out and the roads reopen.
Dear Jaysus, I think, panic forcing me out of bed now; how did we all suddenly get landed into this God-awful situation? I try to untangle it through the fuzziness of my not-quite-awake-yet brain and here it is. Here’s as much as I can remember before Mike bundled me out of the McGillis’ apartment late last night and saw me safely to a cab.
I remember Harry, white-faced and anxious, desperately saying he needed to be alone with Mike, Dorothy and I looking wor
riedly across at each other while the brothers quickly disappeared back into Harry’s bedroom; Harry slamming the door firmly shut behind him. She and I making desultory, stiltedly polite small talk about how great it was the weather was finally taking a turn for the better, while we could clearly hear muffled voices seeping through the walls. Then Mike coming out, jaw clamped, eyes full of steel, followed by a sulky, bashful-looking Harry.
Mike explaining how much he knew to me on our way down to the waiting taxi. Asking me not to say anything for the moment. Not that this isn’t going to leak out sooner or later. We both know it, albeit it’s left unsaid between us. I know myself from long and bitter experience that trying to keep something like this under wraps is a bit like trying to contain a bagful of wild cats and just hoping for the best. Not going to happen.
My mobile rings. Please, please, please be Mike, I think, fumbling around the bedside table for it. It’s just past 8 a.m. and he did promise to keep me posted on any and all developments, no matter how insignificant …
‘Hello?’ I answer, heart walloping off my ribcage.
It’s not him at all though.
‘Holly? About time you and I got to chat!’
Aggie, my boss. Calling bright and early all the way from Dublin to check up on the latest news and to see exactly how I’m progressing with my catfish story. The very same story that up until last night I’d effectively promised to shelve, not having the first clue it was about to take such a dramatic twist.
So I do what any researcher worth their salt would do when caught on the hop. Faff about and pray to God Aggie will just let me buy more time.
‘Nothing but dead ends to report here, I’m afraid!’ I laugh just a wee bit too pitchily down the phone.
‘Fill me in,’ she says, abruptly coming to the point, like she always does. Which I sort of do, editing myself as I go, carefully omitting the last few hours’ dramatic twist.
‘So it all turned out to be a bit of wild goose chase really!’ I say over-brightly, hoping she won’t pick up on the unspoken subtext in my voice. Drop this, just drop this, forget about the whole thing, nothing to see here folks, so just move on and let it go.
Meet Me In Manhattan Page 22