An Autumn Crush (33 page)

‘What?’ Guy looked at him in horror.

‘Brownie points,’ Steve muttered under his breath. ‘You rescue her from this and you can be her hero, baby.’

‘Yes, Guy, you do it,’ said Juliet, without another thought. ‘Gideon, send Guy the bogus email address. Guy, you’ll have to tell this sicko that you i.e. Floz have
changed email accounts. We don’t want him corresponding with the real Floz any more by mistake, do we?’

‘Well, that’s a risk we’ll have to take,’ sighed Gideon.

‘All right, I’ll do it,’ said Guy. They had to rescue Floz from whatever this was. No one could make any sense of it yet. However, they were united in thinking it weird beyond
belief.

‘What will you write?’ asked Juliet.

‘I don’t know,’ Guy told her. ‘Let me have a think about it. I’ll send an email to him before I go to work. I’ve got an hour and a half to concoct
something.’

‘Oh God,’ said Juliet, reaching for her coat. ‘I hope for Floz’s sake this isn’t some awful con. How sick do you have to be, to pretend to be a dying
man?’

‘Very,’ said Steve. But as he’d grown up knowing, not everyone in life had other people’s interests at heart. He was only glad his life was now full of people who
did.

When Juliet and Steve left, Guy sat staring at the laptop screen. What the hell was he going to write to this Chas Hanson to make him confess he was a loony? He recalled
Floz’s soft words in her emails. She obviously had a great capacity to love, but he wondered if she had ever been truly loved herself. The section in the letter about her parents made him
ache to put his arms around her and cuddle her. How awful to view yourself as an unwanted by-product.

He tried to think what a gentle person like Floz would write to make Chas Hanson confess to whatever sick game he was playing. He couldn’t imagine her ever getting angry enough to threaten
anyone, even someone sick like this man obviously was. He began to type.

He would give Chas Hanson twenty-four hours to respond, then he’d up the ante. And if Mr Chas Hanson, or whoever he was, didn’t play ball, he was quite prepared to
go out there and squeeze the story out of him first-hand.

‘Hiya, babes!’ Lee Status’s cheesy voice rang down the receiver. ‘I need you to get cracking on this brief
ASAP
and I’m
about to board a plane to Berlin. “Mother’s Day” again, hon. Plenty of the old familiar: Mum doing everything, worrying, holding the lot together, multi-tasking, et cetera –
you know the score.’

‘Yep, okay, Lee. No problem.’

‘Oh yeah, and loads of “New Mum” cards. The sort that a dad would buy for a baby to send to his wife. Can I have them a week today?’

‘Okay.’

‘Cheers, babe.’

Lee’s timing was nothing short of perfect, thought Floz. Then Juliet breezed into the flat and asked her if she fancied going late-night shopping with her to Meadowhall to choose some baby
stuff. She thought a cheery trip out to buy things for a new life might take her mind off the dead Canadian – who may or may not exist.

As usual, Juliet would take nothing less than yes for an answer. She applied her usual brand of well-meant emotional blackmail.

‘Floz, I don’t know where to start buying maternity things. Please help me. Steve is useless. All he wants to do is look at go-karts and big toys. I’m starting to have dreams
that the baby has arrived and all I have ready for it is a set of boxing gloves. Plus I want to get Steve a bit extra for his birthday tomorrow. The big poof loves those bath balls from
Lush.’

And Floz, being soft and obliging, grabbed her car keys and said, ‘Okay, come on then and de-stress. I’ll drive.’

In Debenhams, Juliet held up a tiny little romper suit in blue and a counterpart in pink.

‘Do I risk buying a colour? Or do I buy both and keep the receipt?’ she sighed.

‘Why don’t you plump for this,’ advised Floz, and held up the tiniest little Babygro in white.

‘Oh my GOD!’ gasped Juliet. ‘How beautiful is that?’

‘I like to see little babies all in pure white.’

‘You are so right, Floz.’ Juliet looked at the green and lemon babygros in her basket and went to return them to the shelves and replace them with white ones.

Floz picked up another tiny white Babygro and held it up, under the arms, in front of her. She tried to imagine the weight of a little baby inside it. She rested it on her shoulder, imagined a
baby mouth breathing warmly and softly on her neck, rooting for something to eat, the tiny fingers curling, the smell of baby powder.

She opened her eyes. No point in thinking like that. Not any more. Babies were always going to be for other people. Lovers were always going to be for other people. Her hope was fading fast that
she was to be anything other than a woman destined to grow old, alone. Not even the glorious shades of autumn were working their magic on her. She gave herself a mental shake as Juliet called her
to check out some darling little scratch mittens.

Floz went to bed that night and thought of Juliet and Steve as parents. Their child was going to be so lucky. It would not only be raised with love, but they would give it lots
of their quality time. It wouldn’t be foisted on au pairs and nannies whilst its parents lived the life of a childless couple. She could easily see Steve pretending to be a horse with a
giggling toddler on his back, Juliet baking cornflake buns in a chocolate-smeared apron. She could see old Stripies sitting contentedly beside the baby, Grainne and Perry ringing up desperate to
babysit. Even the child’s eyes lighting up as ‘Uncle Guy’ swung him over his head like an aeroplane. Yes, Guy would be lovely with children. He obviously wasn’t that
brilliant at relating to women, but she bet he was very kind to children and old people.

Nick would have made a lovely father too. He never got the chance to hook a line for his son or show him bear-prints in the woods. And now he was gone.

Guy got in from work in the wee small hours of the morning. He hated the place. Varto had sent out two fillet steaks with strands of hair in the peppercorn sauce. And Guy had
seen a cockroach scuttle across the kitchen floor.

Kenny wouldn’t let him sack Varto until he was safely out of the picture, because he was knocking off Varto’s mother behind his wife’s back, Guy had discovered that evening.
Which explained why Varto thought he was untouchable. Guy couldn’t wait to rid himself of the arrogant, lazy, unhygienic, thieving little git.

He went straight to his laptop but no email had arrived from Chas Hanson yet. Well, after the shift he’d had, there was no way Guy was going to give him the grace of twenty-four hours to
respond. He wrote again to him, armed with some extra information he had found on the net, after doing a trawl on Chas Hanson’s name at work during his break.

Then Guy dropped off to sleep. He awoke just before nine the next morning to find that Chas Hanson had responded to his threat and replied.

Guy immediately rang Steve and read Chas Hanson’s mail to him.

‘Fuck,’ said Steve.

‘I can’t tell her this,’ said Guy.

‘Oh mate, you have to.’ Steve was speaking quietly as he was in Juliet’s flat and Floz was in the kitchen getting her breakfast. ‘And the sooner the better. Today, in
fact.’

‘It will sound much better coming from Juliet.’

‘Yeah, you’re probably right. I’ll ask her when she gets up then.’

‘Ask me what, Birthday Boy?’ yawned Juliet, waking up at the sound of her name.

And then Steve passed her the phone so Guy could give her the final piece of the jigsaw.

Steve made a sneaky exit from the flat so that Juliet could be alone with Floz. He only hoped that Guy had got it right and Juliet
was
the best person to deliver the
news. Juliet did tend to make bulls in china shops look like lambs in playpens.

‘Where’s Steve?’ called Floz, as Juliet emerged from her bedroom. ‘I’ve got a birthday card here for him. And a bottle of wine.’

‘He’s gone home to do something or other,’ Juliet shrugged.

‘You all right, Juliet? Morning sickness again?’ asked Floz, studying her friend’s troubled expression. ‘You aren’t allowed to be ill today, you know. Not if
you’re going to that very swanky hotel with Steve tonight.’

‘No, I’m not feeling unwell,’ replied Juliet. She had been so looking forward to the hotel, but there was no way she was going to go off for a night of nookie and leave Floz
alone with her heart breaking all over the carpet.

‘Can I get you anything to eat?’ asked Floz. ‘A bit of toast? Cereal? Yogurt?’

‘No, Floz, I don’t want anything to eat.’ Juliet poured herself some juice and wondered how to begin. She was never lost for words. So how come everything she wanted to say was
stuck in her throat like lumps of cement?

The phone rang just as Juliet opened her mouth to do the dirty deed. Floz picked it up.

‘Yes, this is Ms Cherrydale . . . No, I can’t remember seeing an email from you . . . That’s odd, I didn’t get an answerphone message either. If you send me the details
again I’ll ring you straight back and book this morning.’

‘Book what?’ asked Juliet.

‘I’m going away for a few days,’ said Floz, covering up the receiver.

‘Where?’

‘Canada.’

‘Canada? Why are you going there, Floz?’

‘Just because . . . I . . . it’s a holiday.’

‘Floz, tell them you’ll ring them back. I need to talk to you. It’s urgent. Please sit down.’

Whatever was on Juliet’s mind looked serious; Floz did as she was asked.

‘What’s the matter? Is it you and Steve?’ Floz asked with concern.

‘There’s no easy way to say this,’ said Juliet with a fortifying breath. ‘We hacked into your computer and read Nick’s emails.’

Floz jerked in shock.

‘You have to blame me for this one, no one else. I was worried about you, and you wouldn’t say what was wrong, and something obviously was, so we look—’

‘Who is “we”?’ asked Floz slowly.

‘Just me. And Steve. And . . . Guy.’

‘Steve and Guy?’

‘And Coco . . . and . . . Gideon.’

Floz wanted to get up but she was too horrified and embarrassed to move.

‘Why would you do that?’

‘Because we care about you.’

Floz closed her arms around herself, a tight, defensive gesture. ‘That was so wrong of you, Juliet . . .’

‘Please, Floz, there’s a lot more to tell.’

‘Like what?’ rasped Floz, finding a rare fire in her voice.

‘Guy wrote to Chas Hanson pretending to be you.’

‘What . . . why?’ Guy was now beyond the realms of weird in Floz’s eyes. He was loop-the-loop.

‘Because I asked him to. Gideon found out that – that Chas and Nick were writing from the same computer.’

‘Don’t be daft. They live hundreds of miles apart.
Lived
.’

Juliet reached into the papers she had hidden in a drawer. Gideon had printed out the incriminating emails and circled the evidence.

‘They made the same spelling mistakes. Look –
greif
.’

Greif loses its hard edge after a time
. That’s what Floz had noticed – that incorrect transposition of e and i, not the sentiment.

‘And their grammar mistakes are identical. Look – they both write “its” not “it’s”. There’s other similarities too – see? They’re all
highlighted and colour-coded.’

‘What are you saying?’ said Floz.

‘I’m saying that there
is
no Nick Vermeer, only Chas Han son. He admitted it to Guy.’

The sort of flat, heavy silence that should have precluded a nuclear blast fell on the room.

‘No, no. That’s wrong,’ said Floz, with a soft tremble in her voice.

‘We dug around a bit and found out that Chas Hanson had a son who committed suicide last year.’ Juliet found the copy of the newspaper article and passed it to Floz, then the
obituary.

Floz noticed the names and dates. But none of it made sense. The names belonged to the wrong people, the dates belonged to the wrong events. Vincente was Nick’s middle name. Rocco was the
name of his first Malamute dog. He told her that one of his sisters was called Veronica . . .

‘Then this arrived this morning in the fake email box.’ Juliet handed over the final piece of the jigsaw and Floz read.