A Mistletoe Moment

by Natasha West

  Chris smiled and tipped an unnecessarily pantomime wink at Cleo. Gotcha’ he said. Tilda rolled her eyes. He’d been so close to being cool for a second.

  Cleo said loudly ‘I’ll just check if we’ve got that model’ and then turned around, giving the screen a shove in the process and it swung as predicted. Tilda quickly read the name and address of her mobile’s previous owner and then said loudly ‘Never mind, Cleo. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want that one. Got everything I need.’

  Cleo turned back from her ‘search’ and said ‘Okey dokey. Best of luck.’

  Chris and Tilda ran from the shop.

  ‘Did you get-’

  ‘Shh!’ Tilda stopped him ‘I’m trying to keep this address memorised. Twenty-two, Cherry Lane, Gillian Stamford. Twenty-two, Cherry Lane, Gillian Stamford. Twenty-two, Cherry Lane, Gillian Stamford…

  ‘For god’s sakes, she hasn’t been on this thing in years. And there’s practically no information on her at all. No email address, nothing. I just can’t catch a break!’ Sam exploded.

  The rest of the office looked around as Sam’s voice rang clear in the quiet of the workplace. Sam ducked her head down in embarrassment.

  Imogen continued to scroll but it was clear that Tilda hadn’t updated in a few years. Her last update had been two years ago and it had read;

  Fiji’s gorgeous but my legs are currently not. Why do mosquito’s love me so much?

  It had been accompanied by a series of snaps of Tilda engaged in riotous fun on the island. Kite surfing, snorkelling, up to her neck in a mud bath. And it wasn’t just Fiji, there were pictures from all over the globe. Hong Kong, Morocco, various bits of North and South America. She’d been all over the place.

  It was the kind of travelling that Sam had never done. She was more of a city break girl.

  Sam’s last trip had been to Prague for the weekend with Lara. It had been their one and only break together. She’d booked it as a surprise, imagining a romantic getaway that would finally get Lara’s full focus on her. Sam had hoped that if it went well, she could drop the L bomb. She’d just prayed that Lara would say it back. Maybe then they could move things up to the next level of the relationship.

  But it hadn’t gone that way.

  Lara had spent the whole weekend on her phone, basically still at work. ‘It’s not my fault, Sam. I didn’t know you were going to spring this on me, did I? I can’t just drop everything at a moment’s notice’ she’d explained when Sam had asked her to switch the phone off for a few hours.

  As Sam replayed that weekend in her head, she realised something that hadn’t really crossed her mind before.

  Lara was boring.

  Yes, she was gorgeous, coiffed and confident. But when you got past all that, she didn’t really have much of a sense of humour and she was obsessed with her job. And perhaps if Lara had been a brain surgeon or a marine biologist, that might have made sense. But she was a manager in a company that sold boxes of broken biscuits (currently two for a pound) and five-year-old home vajazzle kits. What kind of person could get so caught up in that?

  Answer: A dull one.

  So what had Sam really had with her? What had blinded her so thoroughly to the truth? The answer she was left with was pretty stark. It had been sex. Nothing more.

  As Sam looked at these pictures of a very different kind of life, she couldn’t help putting them next to what she was starting to see boiled down to a fairly squalid fling with her boss. And it was depressing.

  ‘Hey’ Imogen said, interrupting the maudlin flow of Sam’s thoughts. She was deeply grateful.

  ‘What? Did she update?’

  ‘No, but I noticed this page that she’s liked, Up the Wall, it’s a climbing place.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘And I thought I saw a photo album called …’ Imogen clicked back and found what she was looking for ‘…yes, here it is. Up the Wall.’

  They clicked through the album and there was Tilda on the climbing wall, spread eagled, holding onto the brightly clouted grips on the wall. It was marked 2012. They clicked the next one and it was her again, on the same wall, but the date was 2013. They kept clicking through and the dates moved forward up until one dated just a few months ago.

  ‘You realise this place is just around the corner, don’t you?’ Imogen said.

  Sam looked at her.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘She’s obviously spent a lot of time here, we should go and talk to them, see if they have an address.’

  ‘Sam! How’s it going with that shipment of frozen cereal boxes with the misprint? We need to nail that down ASAP. Could be a big seller.’

  Imogen and Sam turned in surprise at the sound of their line manager Jack’s voice. Sam felt immediately guilty, as though she’d been caught talking in the back of class. She had a mad impulse to tell the truth. The cereal hadn’t really been at the front of her mind. It had been filled instead with Fiji, mosquitos and rock climbing. Not to mention what had basically been a series of snaps of Tilda’s rear end as she scaled the wall. And it was world class. But Sam knew that wouldn’t go down very well with Jack. He was a stressed out guy at the best of times.

  But Imogen’s bluster saved the day. ‘Come on, boss! How can we be expected to work with you breathing down our necks like this! Sam’s on it, like she always is.’

  Jack, who’d been a bit frightened of Imogen since he’d taken over Lara’s job, immediately shrank back saying ‘Of course, keep up the good work, Sam. And I know you’ll walk it tomorrow. In fact, I’ve heard some positive rumblings about your chances.’

  For a second, Sam had no idea what tomorrow was. And then it hit her. The interview. She’d completely forgotten.

  ‘Cheers, Jack.’

  He vanished back into his office. Imogen turned back to Sam. ‘Lunch in three hours. Fancy going climbing?’

  Ten

  The wall was big, there was no doubt about it. At least forty feet of concrete, with various colourful grips fixed into it. Sam had seen it in the photos but in person, it was a completely different kettle of fish. Scary fish.

  ‘Imogen, I don’t see why we actually have to climb the bloody thing. I thought we were just going to ask questions?’ Sam muttered to Imogen as she stared up at the wall, dressed in her gym kit, providentially stored in her car.

  Imogen, poised to climb the rock, glanced over at Sam. ‘I did say ‘Fancy a climb?’

  ‘I thought you were kidding!’

  ‘So you just wanted to walk in here and start asking questions about Tilda Banks? They’ll think you want to serve her legal papers! We need to just seem like this is something we do. And then, very casually, we can start asking around, talking to people.’

  ‘Where are you getting this from?’ Sam asked, bewildered.

  ‘Every movie I’ve ever seen about private investigators. You have to blend in, become part of the scenery. Get people feeling relaxed.’

  Sam shook her head. It was a little bit over the top. But she had to admit, Imogen had a point. They couldn’t just waltz in and ask for an address. They had no right to it and fairly so.

  Sam watched a middle aged, weathered looking man jump from grip to grip, like a monkey in the trees of a jungle. As she watched him go, she realised something with a shock.

  ‘Why isn’t anyone wearing safety stuff?’

  Imogen glanced around and saw a smaller wall at the far end of the room, where a group of tween girls were climbing in harnesses. She turned back to Sam.

  ‘I guess safety is for the kids. But we could ask…’ Imogen glanced around for a staff member to enquire of.

  Sam had a straight choice. It was between embarrassment and possibly having her skull broken. She made her decision.

  ‘No. If there’s no other adults using them, I’ll look a tit.’

  ‘Jolly good.’

  Imogen grabbed a low grip on the wall and began to climb. It was a tentative and not particularly graceful movement, but still, Sa
m had to admire her. Imogen was going for it.

  And now Sam had to do the same. She put a hand on the wall, feeling the material. Rough concrete, meters thick. Seemed solid enough. She got hold of a grip and attempted to pull on it, somewhat comforted by its lack of movement. It wasn’t going anywhere.

  Sam took a deep breath and began to pull herself up the wall. The first step wasn’t bad but then she had to get both feet off the floor and she wasn’t at all sure she could do it. Then she thought about Tilda, scampering up the wall in the photos. It had looked like nothing to her.

  And Sam’s foot began to lift off the ground, finding purchase. She was up. Only a foot, but still.

  Sam kept going, slowly but surely finding new handholds, pushing her body up with her slightly wobbly legs. Eventually, Sam glanced back over her shoulder and saw she was ten feet off the ground. She was elated. She’d looked at the wall ten minutes ago and seen an impossible thing. And now she was doing it. She was really doing it.

  And then her hand slipped and she was falling through the air, a scream on her lips that never made it to the world. And slap. She was lying on her back, spread eagled on the thick matts, looking up at the ceiling.

  ‘Sam!’

  Imogen, who’d been a few feet further up the wall, had heard Sam hit the floor and was trying to get down as quickly as she could.

  But as Sam watched Imogen trying to scurry back down, a shadow fell over her.

  ‘Hey dude, saw you come off’ a skinny guy with a long face said as he put out a hand to Sam. She took it, sitting up. ‘You alright?’

  Sam took a moment to ask herself the question and found that she was. In fact, she was perfectly fine. She began to laugh. ‘Yeah, I think so. I’m a bit new to this, hence the clumsiness’ she explained to the guy.

  ‘Then you’ve just gotten a merit badge. First fall off the wall. The sooner you do it, the better. Lets you know it’s not the end of the world to fall. You just get back up and start climbing again.’

  Sam smiled at the guy. He was like some kind of climbing Yoda, dispensing wisdom to the awkward. And he was right. She’d fallen. And it hadn’t been a big deal.

  ‘I mean; I wouldn’t necessarily try falling from forty feet. You might not get up so quick’ he laughed.

  Imogen was now back on terra firma and she dashed over to Sam, who was getting to her feet. ‘Good god, did you break anything?’

  Sam shrugged it off, like some old veteran. ‘I’m fine. Just my first fall off the wall.’

  ‘First?!’ Imogen goggled. ‘Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?’

  ‘She’s alright. I’m Jimmy, by the way’ the guy said.

  ‘I’m Sam, this is Imogen. Do you work here, Jimmy?’

  ‘Nah. I’m just a regular.’

  ‘Oh, maybe you know our friend’ Imogen said with a glance at Sam. ‘Her name’s Tilda?’

  ‘Tilda? Sure. I see her around here sometimes.’

  Sam’s heart leapt in her chest but she tried not to betray her excitement. Luckily, Imogen was a cooler customer. ‘She was the one who told us about this place’ Imogen went on. ‘We thought she might be around…’

  ‘Haven’t seen her in a while. How do you guys know her then?’

  Imogen paused for the briefest of moments and Sam jumped in, glad of a chance to inject the conversation with a bit more truth. ‘We met her at The Brass Lantern. We had our office party there and she was behind the bar.’

  ‘Oh, she still working there? She was always threatening to leave.’

  ‘Actually, I think she did. But that’s a bit of a problem for us. We’ve… I’ve… I’ve been trying to get in touch with her because I ended up with her phone.’ And technically, that was the truth. Minus the fact she barely knew Tilda. ‘You don’t know where I could find her do you?’

  Jimmy thought about it and was happy to have an answer for her. ‘Actually, I dropped her off from here a few months ago and she was staying with one of her parents, I think.’

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to remember the address, would you?’

  Jimmy’s eyes got a far off look and Sam was sure he wasn’t going to be able to pull the address from his memory. He looked like kind of a stoner.

  But then a spark seemed to flare in his mind. ‘Fuck, you know what, I do know it. It’s the same street as my dealer!’

  Eleven

  Chris parked the car and turned to Tilda.

  ‘This bit is on you. I think I’ve exhausted what little technical knowledge I’ve got.’

  ‘That’s cool. But I don’t want to do that whole ‘New mum’ bit again. Where did you even come up with that, anyway?’

  Chris looked at her. ‘I worked in insurance, Tild. You think I don’t know anything about fiction?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It’s all a story, isn’t it? It’s all about preparing for the worst. Which hasn’t actually happened. And might never happen. Except in people’s minds. People used to reveal those fears to me all the time.’

  Tilda looked at her father anew. ‘Right. Maybe insurance isn’t as boring as I thought.’

  ‘No, it mostly is’ Chris said a with smile at his daughter. ‘Numbers and figures. You’d hate it.’

  ‘Maybe so’ she said, returning the smile.

  Tilda looked over at twenty-two Cherry Lane from the car window, home of Gillian Stamford. It was a house that had seen better days. The grass was a foot high and there were several knackered looking gnomes that should have been retired about a decade ago.

  Tilda took a moment to consider how to handle this. She had no idea who Gillian was or how willing she’d be to help them out. And she could just walk away now, forget Sam. It would probably all end up being a big disappointment, anyway.

  But her Dad had put the time in on this. He was being sympathetic. To walk away now would have been to throw his kindness back in his face. And they hadn’t had too many things to bond over lately. It was nice to have this time with him, even if it was on some mission of romantic silliness.

  ‘Alright, let’s roll’ she said finally.

  They got out of the car and walked up the path, skipping over numerous trip hazards. At the chipped paint door, they exchanged a look of solidarity. Tilda knocked.

  After a long wait, nothing happened. Tilda knocked again.

  Eventually, the door creaked open. A woman in her forties with messy black hair, wearing a hoody and a tired face, looked out at them, confused.

  ‘Where’s the pizza?’

  Tilda and Chris exchanged a baffled glance and then turned back to the woman.

  ‘We haven’t got one’ Tilda answered, discombobulated.

  ‘Then why have you come if you haven’t got the pizza?’

  ‘I…’ Tilda said and then stopped. She really didn’t have a good answer to that question.

  ‘You’re from Dominoes, yeah?’

  ‘Oh! No.’

  The woman looked disappointed. ‘Shit. I was really hoping you were my double pepperoni.’ She took a moment to grieve for the late pizza and then seemed to realise what the next question had to be. ‘You’re not from that Jehovah crowd, are you?’

  Later, after a lot of explaining, Gillian had the story straight in her head. Luckily, she didn’t seem to mind that Good as New Tech had given them her address. In fact, she seemed kind of into the whole thing.

  ‘One time, I was in Hanoi and I met this guy at a full moon party on the beach but I never got his name. But you don’t need a name for a quickie, do you?’

  No one replied but Gillian continued with her tale, unconcerned.

  ‘Well, a few weeks later, I was walking down the beach, near the docks, and I saw him getting on a cruise boat and I thought it was fate. The universe was telling me that our story wasn’t over. So I pitched my tent right there on the beach and waited for the boat to come back. Which took three days.’

  ‘What happened then?’ Chris asked, grimly fascinated.

  ‘Well, the boat came
in and it turned out it wasn’t the same guy’ Gillian shrugged. ‘And on top of that, sand fleas burrowed into my arse. I got a fever and had to go to hospital. I was there for weeks. But still, I wouldn’t change a thing. You’ve got to follow your dreams, haven’t you?’ she said as she slipped an iPad out from under a crushed beer can. ‘Now, let’s find this mistletoe kisser, shall we?’

  Tilda watched the woman tapping into the screen and she began to feel bad for Gillian. She was a mess. She couldn’t tell the difference between an adventure and an infestation in her rear end. The ramshackle house, the diet of junk food and beer, it was no way for a woman well into her forties to be living.