‘Is that for real?’ I asked as I picked it up for a closer look. ‘Have I missed something and its April Fools today?’
‘Missed what?’ Richard obviously couldn’t see what I was looking at, and was upset that I had interrupted his reading.
‘Look at this job advert. The Bank of England is looking for a new Deputy Governor who will be responsible for financial stability. They are offering a nice little salary of £240K, how funny is that?’
‘I hadn’t seen it. Yes – that is certainly funny,’ but Richard still wasn’t sounding half as amused as me.
‘Oh come on – you have to laugh at the irony of it all? Anyway…how come you’ve bought the Sunday Times, you don’t normally buy it?’
‘Don’t know…just thought I would. I picked it up when I got the bread and milk from the shop…besides I do occasionally buy it for the financial news.’
‘I’ve got to show Maddy this, I’m gonna load it onto Facebook,’ I told him, as I walked back out of the kitchen to the study PC. The ironing had fallen by the wayside and the plastic jug had been left sitting empty on the kitchen island.
I posted the advert as a photo on my Facebook and, as usual, I opted to share with all. I left a comment beneath it; offering it as a job if anyone was remotely interested. I hadn’t spoken to Maddy yet. I’d sent her a text earlier on, thanking her for dinner at her house the previous night, but I had no idea what she was doing. By early evening she’d spotted the advert and left a comment on the photo. I clicked onto it to see what she’d written and I found myself in dialogue with her.
Maddy: I could SO do that job. With my arms tied behind my back!!! Well at least be able to do a better job than the last wanker!
Me: I know…me too…
Maddy: Not to mention I could do something with the £240,000!!!!!!
Me: To pay back the Bank! LOL!
Maddy: God…you think so differently to me! More along the lines of new Prada, holiday, car…oh and a donation to world peace x x x
Me: I am trying to appear ethical…x
Maddy: Ethical????????? Oh er…yes me too!! xxxx
I spent the next week or so flicking Facebook on and off all day long. I was starting to regard each hit of the refresh button as a treat for completing another study question. Maddy had been busy finalising arrangements for us to take the kids to a sleepover at a science museum for Halloween, which was in a few weeks’ time. The whole arrangement of the event had started off as a tit-for-tat-style banter on my Wall. We had written a staggering eighty-five comments.
I was making a start on dinner; Richard didn’t tend to get home until gone 19:00, which made evening meals in our house quite late, but I stubbornly preferred us to all to eat together. I’d moved the laptop onto the kitchen island to amuse myself on Facebook, in between chopping up the veg. With hindsight, this sort of behaviour should have probably flagged up as an early sign of Facebook addiction. Maddy hadn’t posted her comeback on my last comment, but I knew it would appear, because she always had to have the last word on things; it was just a matter of time. But that’s when Anthony logged on, the green light at the bottom of the screen indicated this. And his Status popped up at the top of my screen.
Anthony Hope wants you…
The words startled me, just like they did before, then he logged off again – also just like before.
I could hear his voice behind the words, pitched at the perfect masculine depth: the clarity and teasing naughtiness with the soft but colourful American accent – I guessed it to be the equivalent of an English posh accent. I remembered how his voice made my ears tingle, as though they couldn’t absorb enough of the sound to satisfy their hunger. It’s strange how some people’s voices become locked in your head.
I knew the message was for his girlfriend; that made perfect sense. But why did he have to post it, when I was on and then log off again so quickly? But then again, I’d been on the site so much; posting something when I wasn’t on would have been a challenge. Once I’d rationalised it as a coincidence, I hated myself for feeling disappointed that it wasn’t for me.
But the next day, I wasn’t so sure…
Anthony says that the heart rules the head…don’t ya think? ;)
It was like he’d punched me in the heart with a boxing glove. Was that how he saw me? As someone who made choices with my head over my heart, only to later discover that the heart invariably overrides you in the end anyway.
It was a good job that I’d had my energy boosting birdseed, as Maddy called it, as my brain needed it today. She was forever taking the piss about my nuts and alfalfa sprouts.
My mobile rang and vibrated on the table right next to the laptop; I jumped then I picked it up, keeping my eyes fixed on the laptop screen.
‘Hi, it’s only me,’ Maddy said in her upbeat voice. ‘I know that you are studying, you don’t need to tell me, but just to let you know in advance that William can have a sleepover at the weekend, if that’s okay with you?’
‘It’s okay,’ I said half-heartedly.
‘Erm…right, you’re not really listening to me are you? What are you doing that is so important that you can’t speak to me?’
‘Errr…it’s that Anthony Hope,’ I finally blurted out. It was the first time that I’d mentioned his name to her since I added him.
‘Yeah, well? What about him?’
‘It’s his Status Update today.’
‘So what? You don’t speak to him do you?’ She wouldn’t have seen my Instant Message about Nepal, so I was able to confirm that I wasn’t speaking to him, which however, did lead her back to why I was so bugged by his Status today.
‘I think it relates to me.’
‘How? That’s not possible.’ Maddy was as direct as ever.
‘Where are you?’
‘Home,’ I heard her exhale cigarette smoke before she answered – she was probably sitting in the lounge, curled up on the sofa.
‘Okay, then log onto Facebook and his Wall.’ I waited while she logged on. ‘Right, look at his photo.’
‘Yeah, so what?’
‘He has a can of Diet Coke in his hand.’ She could now see the same as me which was a close-up of his face; he was holding the Coke against his cheek.
‘Yeah…?’
‘Think back to our conversation at the beginning of last week on my Wall.’
‘Which conversation?’
‘The one where I mentioned your addiction to Diet Coke…’
‘Oh yeah…I thought that was funny…what was my comeback? Well the alfalfa sprouts aren’t doing you much good are they?’
‘Yeah…that’s the one. But Anthony posted this Status a few hours ago and immediately changed his profile to that picture you are looking at now. Not only has he made it his profile picture, but then, clearly not satisfied with it, he’s cropped in closer and re-posted it so the Coke can is more noticeable. It looks like he wants to emphasise it.’
‘Well yeah, but surely that’s just a coincidence?’
‘Yeah, but there’s been a couple of other weird coincidences over the last few weeks that now makes this feel less of a coincidence,’ I quickly moved on before she got me to elaborate on these. ‘When you link that photo with his Status: “heart rules the head”, I think he’s aiming it at me. I think he’s seen through me. He’s got a girlfriend, they’re already together, dating or whatever they’re doing, so why would there be a choice between the heart and head? Why would you even post it as a Status Update? You’ve got to admit I’ve got a point.’
‘It’s all a bit much for me, surely he wouldn’t be that deep?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s always known it, sensed it, oh…I just don’t know. But, yes, I do think that he would be that deep, I really do.’
‘Then I just don’t know what to say…’ and with that she hung up.
I wondered if she thought that I was going slowly mad with all of the analysing that I had been doing.
I pulled a piece of bla
nk paper closer to me and started to write:
1 Drunken email – but in my defence, he never replied to it and I never sent anymore (that was 4 months ago)
1 Instant message regarding Nepal – genuine interest in the place and he never replied and I didn’t send any more messages. I did ask Richard to look at them, but Anthony couldn’t see that. That needs to be taken into consideration (1 month ago)
1 Poke – this was true, I had poked him once, but I’d also poked everyone else on my Facebook, male and female while I was bored one day. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the hairdressers, cringing into a magazine article discussing “poking”, that I discovered “poking” on Facebook was practically code for: I want to poke you! Maddy and I had been innocently poking each other for months. And my problem was that Anthony Hope wouldn’t have seen that I’d been happily poking everyone on there.
1 Quiz – ghost question not my fault (recently)
1 Change of Relationship Status to ‘It’s complicated’ – okay that was stupid (recently)
100 Times (approx) looked at his Wall, but he cannot see that – thankfully, so not relevant; simply an issue on my conscience.
I’d not really done very well on the passive observer front. It wasn’t that it was excessive, but I had gone over my just being nosey rule. I moved on to my list of coincidences from Anthony…
1 wishes you were with me…(timing)
1 ‘Complications’ are something you throw in your own path :-) (timing and smile on the end)
1 Wants you…(timing)
1 Says the heart rules the head…don’t ya think (wink) (timing)
(All recently)
Maybe it was my drunken email that had given me away? Maybe it confirmed what he’d suspected all those years ago, and instead of replying to that email, he’d just sat and waited for the right moment to strike. There was now a conversation on his Wall about ‘complications’ being him solving the problem of fitting dates with his girlfriend around his gigs – but that explanation didn’t ring true with me.
My conclusion? I was none the wiser.
Status Updates…
12:22 Nicole…Okay my head is screwed now!!
16:15 Anthony Hope is laughing…;)
He was laughing at me! This made me feel good and yet stupid. My cheeks felt flushed with embarrassment and from my long-hidden desire. I could almost see him throwing back his head with his chesty laugh. I wished I knew where he was when he posted it. I felt like I’d been caught red-handed, and was heading straight for trouble without the will to stop myself.
17:57 Nicole likes cat and mouse.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Noooooo!’ Richard screamed at the television as he jumped up from the sofa, causing his beer to fly out of the can and land on the floor.
God, I hated football, the moronic sound of chanting and cheering with incessant commentary of the ball being passed around a rectangular piece of grass. I especially hated it on Sundays. But this particular Sunday I was hating it even more than ever. Every time he jumped up and cheered with that can in his hand I wanted to bat him one, William could be forgiven at seven years of age, he knew no better, and neither was he drinking Special Brew. Fortunately Maddy threw me a lifeline and invited Elyse and me for a stroll around the country park behind their house.
She had a tiny wooden door set in a crumbling stone wall at the bottom of her garden. I loved it because it always reminded me of entering the Secret Garden. It’s as though this was our space, and all others were intruding. On this particular day, the air was still, and the temperature cold. We’d wrapped up warm and strolled around the edge of the lake; there was barely a ripple. The old trees had interwoven over the years, creating an endless archway above the path that looked more like a trellis in the autumn. I kicked the gold, yellow and russet leaves against the spongy ground as we walked. My head was so full of Anthony Hope that I felt as though I could run around the edge of the lake forever, while my head was left to work things out.
The previous day I’d spent an hour on the treadmill and Richard made me get off in the end, I could have kept going.
My Status Update on Facebook now said:
Nicole is Forest Gump…might do a marathon.
Maddy couldn’t figure out whether I meant I couldn’t stop running, or I wanted to eat a chocolate bar.
But while I was moving I could breathe. When I stopped, I was hit with pain. The pain of knowing that I was allowing myself to open up to someone who was out of my reach, and that someone was probably having a jolly good time right now in Paris. I knew that I should simply have removed him, so that there was nothing there for me to interpret or read into. But no matter how long I sat with my cursor hovering over that tiny x to remove, I just couldn’t do it. I was still waiting for something.
We stopped off at the little cafe for a hot chocolate with whipped cream and arrived back at Maddy’s house, rosy-cheeked and refreshed from the clean air. I let my feet warm on her heated floor in her hi-tech kitchen. Her highland terrier, Tia, was sat optimistically wagging her tail with her ball conveniently placed for me to repeatedly throw. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Tia’s lucky day, because on the glass island, to the right of the extractor fan housing the suspect police bug, was Maddy’s laptop.
I’d opened up Facebook and on the screen was Anthony’s sister’s photo album. Anthony had commented on it, which meant that it had now pulled it onto his Wall – that’s how Facebook works. I forced Maddy to reluctantly look at the images on the screen while we sipped sweet, hot tea.
‘Right,’ I said, as I placed the mug back onto the glass island surface and pulled up exhibit A. ‘You see…there…a picture of a bee. That’s what you called me the other day – a busy little bee,’ I was almost singing my words as I swiftly moved onto exhibit B: a photo of a bird; eating bird seed.
‘You also wrote…had our energy-boosting bird seed…that is what you put on my Wall, the day before these pictures appeared.’
‘Yeah, but so what? Just a coincidence, loads of people have bird seed hanging in their garden,’ her top lip was almost curling as though she was thinking that she couldn’t believe she was being made to look at them.
Undeterred I continued. ‘You also said on that day same day: “William is always chirpy first thing in the morning…and there’s the bird…and birds chirp,’ I said as I clicked on the image of bird – to back me up.
‘It’s just a bird…if you’ve got bird seed you’re going to have birds.’ She reached for a cigarette, needing that kick of nicotine before I forced her to swallow more of my theories.
I could feel my frustration building. ‘Yeah, it is just a bird, you’re right, but the bird is sitting in the album with the busy bee and bird seed picture…and it’s an exotic bird. Come on, they’re weird things to put on Facebook, unless you relate them to my Wall,’ I argued. Exhibit D this time: ‘…what about the frog then?’
‘What? Oh go on then.’ She was starting to sound exasperated.
She was almost succeeding in making me feel like I was going completely mad, but I was determined to make her see them as I saw them. ‘Right, I reckon he’s been through my “Brief History in Time” album and his got his sister to help him flirt with me. Just think of the words I wrote on my girly holiday photo where I had a dig at my ex. I wrote: “…most satisfying moment, dropping a bed on his head after he tried to catch his stupid bull-frog”, and here before us is the little frog,’ I said, as I went for a zoom-in on the frog picture. Surely she could see what I was getting at now?
‘Look I can see they’re weird coincidences, but surely no one would be crazy enough to even think this up, well apart from you that is. Perhaps a frog came in the garden…I saw some pictures he’d posted myself of his parents’ house. They have a lake. Frogs like lakes.’
I understood her reasoning and I’d seen the photo of the house myself; typically American with dormer windows and an overhang – it was what made me Google New York in the end an
d established that New York was a vast state, not just Manhattan. But I couldn’t see the photo that way.
‘Yeah well, how ironic is it, that I have a severe issue with frogs, and a photo of a fucking frog pops up on his Wall, just as I think he’s playing some sort of game with me.’
Maddy took over the laptop while still laughing, ‘Well what about these images, what are these about?’ and she clicked on a picture of a sparkler, another of his sister looking into an old mirror, and finally a tray of cupcakes, some of which were themed for Halloween; orange and black icing with plastic spiders stuck on top, and another tray with pink and white icing – underneath was a caption that said Eat Me.
‘Go on, hit me with your explanation…?’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Sparkler…sexual fireworks? Maybe? I don’t know and I haven’t figured the last two out yet,’ this was the best I could offer her.
‘I guess a plate of homemade cakes would look strange to you.’
I opened and closed my mouth.
‘Can I throw another one in for consideration? That if he wants to communicate with you, why doesn’t he just use a more straightforward conventional method. One we can all understand – as in email? Just a thought. Don’t know if that’s something you’ve considered maybe?’
‘I don’t know.’ Defeated, I closed the laptop.
He was certainly giving me the game of cat and mouse and I cursed myself for noticing everything. But I think that all of the police accusations thrown at Steve had more logic to her than the summary of evidence I was currently producing with bees, bird seeds, and frogs. I hoped to God that Maddy was wrong about her extractor fan as my eyes swiftly glanced at it. I thought about a group of CID officers tapping their headsets, disbelieving their own ears. It probably could have been enough to have us all committed! I finished my tea, rounded Elyse up from the playroom, much to Henry’s relief, and we made our way home.
That night I tossed and turned, seeing the photos over and over in my mind, then it hit me –Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to figure it out – but sleep or even half sleep is often clever like that.
Past Present Future Page 8