Love Byte

by David Atkinson

  I had managed to clear up all the mess and, apart from a bizarre lack of glasses and the odd strange dent in the plasterwork here and there, it was hard to tell anything had happened. Only one cupboard full of crockery had been smashed. Another identical sized cupboard still had a full complement of plates and bowls. I wondered who the landlord had in mind when he had purchased all this stuff. My iPad was inoperable and I would need to get another one, but apart from that I tried to put the whole incident to the back of my mind.

  I hadn’t said anything to Pauline about the break-in, and if I managed to buy some new glasses over the next day or two, I might not mention anything. The knowledge might have made her a little uneasy if I needed her to babysit Amy in the apartment for me.

  After Pauline left I got my daughter settled down for her afternoon nap on the couch. She was still clutching her precious teddy tightly to her chest. She’d not let go of it since we’d got out of the car earlier that morning. We had made the bear at the Bear Factory the week Lindsay died. The bear’s birth certificate said it was a female bear called Joy. Amy called her Teddy. I couldn’t help staring at her face – Amy not the bear, though that had a pleasant face too. It was peaceful with slumber and I was so thankful to have Amy back home with me. I had been so sure that she was going to die. . . . The thought made tears spring into my eyes again. Thankfully, to spare me any more painful recollections, my mobile vibrated on the kitchen table. I didn’t recognize the number, but answered it anyway.

  ‘Mr Hunter, this is Detective Sergeant Mokes, from the other day?’

  ‘Oh hi. Yes of course, I’m sorry once again for wasting your time.’ I was apologizing a lot lately.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, I was just giving you a quick call, as I’m about to close the file on your case and I wanted to make sure you didn’t want to press any charges. I realize you weren’t at your best yesterday.’

  I didn’t want to press anything. I just wanted to forget about it all. ‘Thanks for your call, Detective, but I’m just trying to put it all behind me – so no, I don’t want to take it any further.’

  ‘OK Mr Hunter, that’s fine, I just had to check. One more thing before I go. I know you probably haven’t had a chance yet, but I would definitely recommend you get your locks changed.’

  ‘Thanks, yes I will.’ I meant it as well, but on my list of things to do it was around number seventeen or something.

  Later that evening, once Amy was sound asleep in bed I muted the TV, sat on the couch with my phone and tried to psyche myself up to make some calls. I was going to try and fix some of the mess I’d got myself into. I hadn’t always been a confident but incompetent womanizer. My first serious girlfriend at school looked like Eric Bristow in drag – for those who can remember the famous dart player in his pomp. For those who can’t: Google him circa 1983 and imagine the addition of a flowery dress and a black wig and you are somewhere near Diane, my first love. Maybe she was still single and available. . . . On reflection I’d probably be better off single.

  Firstly I tried to get hold of Amanda. Her phone rang out and after four rings went to voicemail. I was relieved and left a message apologizing and followed up with a text. I had no illusions about resurrecting our relationship, nor did I want to.

  Next I tried to phone Molly. When she had visited me at the hospital I wasn’t in any position to judge or deal with her mood, or take on how things were between us. Given she came to me in my darkest hours I assumed that all was not lost between us, but I was well aware of how I had betrayed her and didn’t deserve any second chances. I only got through to her voicemail too. I left a message for her to call me and was secretly relieved she didn’t pick up as I had no idea what to say to her. For the same reason, I didn’t text her.

  Lastly, I pulled up Jamie’s number from my contact list and hit ‘call’. It rang for a moment before I heard his voice. ‘Well Andy, you are the last person I thought I’d hear from. How’s Amy?’

  At least he had the decency to ask.

  ‘Much better, thank God. She only came home this morning.’

  There was silence for a moment. I was first to speak.

  ‘Listen Jamie, I don’t expect you to understand – I’m not sure myself what’s been going on in my life for the last few weeks – but if it makes you feel any better nobody is speaking to me. . . .’

  ‘Serves you right.’ I could hear the bitterness in his voice. I couldn’t blame him, but I wasn’t about to let him have all the moral high ground.

  ‘Look, Jamie, I’m sorry about what happened but—’

  ‘You mean you’re sorry you got caught.’

  Was that what I meant? I wasn’t sure. I had wanted time to decide who I liked best between Amanda and Molly and with hindsight it was obvious who was suited to me, who was the natural choice. At the time I’d got caught up in it all. My ego had carried me away.

  ‘Maybe you’re right, Jamie, I was in a situation I was not equipped to deal with. Shagging about is more your style than mine.’ Jamie didn’t respond but I knew the barb had hit home. ‘Anyway, I’m just phoning to let you know that nobody is speaking to me and I can’t say I blame them, but I can’t change what happened and to be honest, the last few days with what has happened with Amy has given me a whole new perspective on things.’

  I chose my next few words carefully. ‘I didn’t plan what happened with Molly, we just went for a chat and hit it off. I guess if you’d never cheated on her then none of this would have happened.’

  I wasn’t trying to deflect my guilt in any way, but I wanted him to know that he was partly responsible.

  There was anger in his voice. ‘I know that, Andy, I’ve tried to tell myself things would have been OK if that stupid Polish bitch hadn’t sent that email to Molly in the first place. I still don’t know why she did that.’

  I knew the stupid Polish bitch was oblivious and I hoped Jamie never found out otherwise. He sighed and there was resignation in his voice. ‘I think that Molly and me were just about finished anyway. Maybe we could have fixed things but I doubt it. What made me really mad was when she told me about the two of you. You should have told me, not her.’

  ‘I know that, Jamie, I just couldn’t find the words or anything. I was going to eventually.’

  The word ‘eventually’ hung in the air for a moment.

  Once again I broke the silence. ‘One more thing, Jamie, have you still got the spare set of keys to my apartment?’

  ‘No, I didn’t take them. I left with Molly a short time after you rushed out. I gave the keys to Amanda. She said she had to get her stuff together and would lock up when she left.’

  I thought that was what had happened but I just wanted to be sure.

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so simply said, ‘OK, Jamie, thanks, you take care of yourself.’

  He snorted down the phone. ‘Yeah sure, Andy.’

  I was left listening to dead air.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  A few days later I had my final meeting at Perennial Mutual. Pauline came and took Amy away for the morning, and said she would bring her back later in the afternoon.

  The lack of any response from Molly made me sad but what could I expect? I had some time to kill before I went into Perennial Mutual for my final marching orders so I made a cup of strong coffee and opened the new iPad I’d managed to buy. I logged on to the oracle that was Men Like Women and Women Like Shoes to see if it had any pearls of wisdom relating to my situation.

  There was a section entitled ‘When All Else Fails’. I reckoned that I had pretty much reached that position so I opened up the link and started to read.

  When you have tried everything you can think of to win over your sweetheart, it is time for a GRAND ROMANTIC GESTURE.

  I wasn’t sure what a grand romantic gesture entailed, but thankfully the site clarified this for me.

&
nbsp; Romantic gestures come in many different guises. See the list below for some ideas:

  • A hot-air balloon ride over Paris.

  I was scared of heights so that was a non-starter. Having a jelly-kneed, gibbering idiot beside her on such a venture was unlikely to endear me to Molly.

  • Scatter rose petals in her bedroom and in her bed.

  That was unlikely to work on several levels. Firstly, I would have needed to gain entry to her flat and I wasn’t a competent house-breaker. I could have asked Amanda who was adept at the art, for help, but I didn’t think she would have been a willing assistant. I was also fairly sure that Molly was a hay-fever sufferer, so if I didn’t freak her out by breaking into her flat she was unlikely to thank me for inflicting a runny nose and itchy eyes on her.

  • Write a love poem.

  I wasn’t very good at that sort of thing. I could do a pretty good limerick, maybe something like:

  There was a young man called Andy,

  Who was so incredibly randy,

  He dated those blondes,

  Who dared correspond,

  Named Ellen, Terry, or Mandy.

  I knew Amanda wasn’t blonde but allowed myself some artistic licence. When I read back my effort I decided that it was also unlikely to endear me to Molly who wasn’t even mentioned – plus it wasn’t very good, so I moved on.

  The website also suggested that I write her a song, post her a copy then stand outside her home and sing it to her. My attempt at song-writing would, in all likelihood, be similar to my limerick and the thought of standing outside her flat (which was in a block of about forty) singing in my tone-deaf baritone was unlikely to win her over.

  In fact, when I started to discount all the website’s suggestions of ‘grand romantic gestures’ I started to feel completely out of my depth. Men Like Women and Women Like Shoes tended to have that effect on me.

  Finally the site advised that if you cannot think of anything original yourself you could perhaps emulate the movies and steal an idea. One of the suggestions was to stand outside her house with a series of boards telling her how much she means to you whilst playing her favourite song (thank you Love Actually) but my issues with that were similar to the song in that forty other flats would also get the benefit of my gesture. It was possible that some other female might like the effort and feel sorry for me but that would only complicate my life even further and I didn’t want that. I sighed and turned off my iPad. I didn’t think any of the approaches from Men Like Women and Women Like Shoes would help me. Maybe something would come to me later.

  I’d felt a headache coming on so after I’d donned a clean shirt, tie and a new suit I swallowed a couple of aspirin tablets, left my flat, took the lift to the basement and jumped in my car. I had decided that my sore head wouldn’t tolerate public transport. I had also decided that the meeting was likely to be relatively short so the parking costs would be worth the convenience of having my car handy.

  I was right about the meeting. They simply handed me some official paperwork and confirmed what I would receive in ‘compensation’ as they put it. I said little and left the meeting sad that I would never set foot in my office again.

  Very few of my former colleagues were around to bid farewell, so I headed down to the main entrance. I managed to avoid going anywhere near the HR section where Molly worked. On a whim I had one last glance at the staff noticeboard. It was supposed to be restricted to information about impending meetings and company updates but over the years had developed into a kind of Perennial Mutual Gumtree. If anyone had anything to sell, swap or get rid of, this was the place they usually posted it.

  My eye was drawn to a small blue card placed by Carol Davis who worked part-time in the Accounts Department. I knew her reasonably well as she was the woman who had the dubious pleasure of approving and signing off my expenses each month.

  Her cat had recently had kittens and she was offering them for sale at £5 each. Given that the price was so low I assumed her cat was not a pedigree breed and her attempt to sell them was maybe more of an effort to divest her house of kittens rather than to make any serious money.

  Suddenly I had the germ of an idea and phoned her on my mobile. She picked up on the third ring and in the background I could hear the excited scream of young children and the unmistakable screech of a cat in distress. I remembered that Carol had in total four children, all girls - aged two, four, six and seven. I could only imagine the chaos added by the introduction of some kittens into her home.

  She shouted down the phone. ‘Carmen, stop chasing Candy, she doesn’t like getting her tail pulled.’

  Intuition told me that Candy was the mother cat and not some mutant daughter with a tail. The non-mutant daughter would be Carmen. I briefly considered how much more complicated my life would have been had Lindsay and I been given time to produce more than one child. It almost certainly would have curtailed my ability to go on Internet dates and, given my current dilemma, that might not have been such a bad thing. Before I could ponder more on the multiple children question Carol asked impatiently, ‘Who is this? I’m kind of busy right now.’

  ‘Hi, Carol, sorry, I know it sounds chaotic in there. This is Andy Hunter from the risk management unit, well former risk management unit. I read your card on the staff noticeboard . . . about the kittens?’

  Carol’s tone was calmer when she replied. ‘Oh, sorry, Andy, I just thought you were one of those sales call things.’

  I considered passing on my wisdom of how to deal with sales calls, but decided to reserve that for a later time.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about you losing your job,’ Carol continued. ‘It must be tough on you, with a wee one and all?’

  ‘Yeah I know but it’s OK, I’ll get something else,’ I said more confidently than I believed. ‘Listen, Carol, I know you’ve got your hands full just now. Is there a better time to phone you back?’

  ‘About the kittens?’

  What else would I want to phone her about? To chat about my impending redundancy? The weather? My Internet dating experiences? I kept my sarcastic side in check.

  ‘Yeah, I’d like to buy one of your kittens.’

  ‘Just one?’

  ‘Yeah, just one.’

  ‘I could do a bulk discount.’

  ‘How many kittens do you have?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘Nine?’

  ‘Yeah, nine.’ She sounded depressed when she said nine. I wasn’t surprised. Four young kids and nine kittens.

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘Fuck knows.’

  I didn’t press for any more details. ‘To be honest, Carol, I really only want one. Could I come over just now and maybe pick one out?’

  ‘I’ll need to round them all up.’

  I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the kittens or the kids, maybe both.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Blackhall Drive in Trinity.’

  I did a quick calculation in my head. ‘It’ll take me about twenty minutes to get there. Is that enough time for you?’

  ‘Yeah, that’ll be fine, see you soon. Our house is number eight. You’ll find us by the noise.’

  When she opened her front door to me twenty minutes later, I realized Carol hadn’t been kidding about the noise. I was met by a cacophony of cries and screeches and couldn’t tell if they belonged to the kids, the cat or the kittens – probably a combination of all three. A flustered and tired-looking Carol ushered me into her cluttered kitchen. Carol was very thin with light brown hair. She was reasonably pretty and wore very little make-up. She probably got very little time to spend beautifying herself.

  Huddled together in a basket beside the cluttered kitchen table were four kittens. I assume the other five were doing kitten type things elsewhere in the house. One of them raised its head and mewed quietly.
It was a small tabby with a wet nose and clear blue eyes. It was gorgeous.

  I smiled. ‘It has to be that one.’

  Carol smiled back. ‘That’s Trooper. We called him that because he was the smallest and last to be born and the only tabby amongst them all.’

  I had been working on my plan during the drive over to her house and then made my slightly unusual request. ‘I have a confession to make. The kitten isn’t actually for me, it’s for a friend – someone who has always wanted a cat. Can you hang onto him until later today and I will come back and pick him up?’

  Carol looked puzzled but was pleased to be getting rid of one of the kittens and didn’t raise an objection. ‘Yeah, no problem, I’ll be in all day anyway, what time will you be back?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, I’ll phone you with a time as soon as I can if that’s OK?’

  Carol shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

  Glad to be out of the noisy household I drove a short distance and then pulled my car over and executed part two of my plan. I looked up the details of Colin Spark’s agent on Google and dialled his phone number. The phone was answered almost immediately by a grumpy sounding male.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Is this Paul Burns, Colin Spark’s agent?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hi, my name is Andy Hunter, I was wondering if Mr Sparks would be able to do me a small favour. . . .’

  ‘He’s stopped doing nineties nights.’

  I was slightly taken aback, I hadn’t even made my request yet. It also occurred to me that nineties nights – given that this was the era of his fame – would probably be the bread and butter of his livelihood, but then maybe the much publicized bankruptcy was exaggerated.

  I continued. ‘Well, I wasn’t actually looking for him to do a nineties night—’

  His agent interrupted again, ‘He doesn’t do kid’s parties, fetes, supermarket openings, beach parties, summer festivals, hen parties, retirement dos, twenty-firsts, thirtieths, fortieths, fiftieths, sixtieths or sixty-fifths.’