by Emma Jackson
My mouth kicked up at the corner involuntarily as I remembered her outraged expression at my parting shot. I’d forgotten how much fun it was to spar with her. I’d forgotten how rounded and delicious her figure was. How her grey eyes sparkled with mischief and intelligence.
No. That was a lie. I hadn’t forgotten at all.
I’d been disappointed when she’d stood me up on New Year’s Eve and I’d felt like an idiot because she’d used my attraction to her to get the information she wanted for Beth. The definition of thinking with the contents of my trousers rather than my brain. Once the sting to my pride had receded, I couldn’t help admiring the cunning of it. Not that I could ever admit it to her but…she’d been right about Beth and Nick, after all.
I’d tried to put some distance between them, because I suspected Beth of using him as a helping hand around the hotel while she was having a staffing crisis at Christmas. He was vulnerable and I’d wanted to protect him. Losing Mum had been a shock to us all, but he’d been with her when it happened, tried to get her to the hospital as she went downhill to the point where he’d performed CPR on her. It had been traumatic, and he’d shut himself off from us. I hadn’t wanted him to go through any more pain. But it turned out Beth wasn’t using him at all – they had genuine feelings for each other, and she was good for him. Half a year on and they were still together.
And, despite my meddling, things were fine between us all, for the most part. Nick and Beth were far more forgiving than I was in general so after an awkward couple of months, we’d found our common ground. I imagined that if we’d been subjected to Noelle’s presence over the last six months too – her smart-arse comments winging out of her mouth – it would have been a harder task to put it behind us.
I shook my head and got out of bed, pulling my running gear on straight away. It wasn’t likely there’d ever be a day when we’d all be together anyway. I don’t know what had made me think of it. Noelle was Beth’s friend, yes, but there was no reason for me to ever see her again. Last night had been perfect to clear the air, to make sure she wasn’t left with the impression I was crying into my cocktails over her deception, and I was happy to leave it that way. If I didn’t bump into her again all summer that was fine by me.
The day was only just starting to heat up. The smell of the river and of rubbish waiting in bags to be collected from the dumpsters was a ripe tang in the air, but as I headed away from the water and towards the shops, it faded, replaced by the enticing scents of bakeries and coffee shops. There were a lot of joggers out at this time since leaving running any later was courting a trip to the emergency room with sunstroke.
I took the route straight across the financial district and slowed my jog to a walk as I passed the 9/11 memorial. Before I went to the Whole Foods Market around the corner, I took a seat in the glade so I could catch my breath – the stone slabs were cool, shaded by the white oak trees that had been planted all across the site. I squinted at the large space of blue sky where those iconic towers used to be, the rush of the enormous fountains in the background.
I’d been at secondary school when the attack happened. They’d taken us into a special assembly and explained, and when I got home Mum was there in front of the TV, crying. I watched the footage most of the evening with her, hugging close on the sofa. Nick was too young to watch most of it, though he’d understood what had happened too. It was awful and surreal, and the world felt altered afterwards. Not because I’d realised that life could be cut short so suddenly – I’d already learnt that, when David died – but because everyone was suddenly scared. At least for a little while. It was strange to see the feelings I’d squashed down inside me out on people’s faces and hear it in their conversations. Everyone felt it, and everyone still had to carry on.
Perhaps that was part of the reason Nick, Beth and I had let the trouble at Christmas go. We knew how short life could be – Beth had lost her dad too – and we realised it wasn’t worth the unpleasantness. David, my stepdad, died in a car crash when I was ten, Mum had taken a blow to the head in a freak accident at home last year. It could happen at any minute. A truck could plough into me the moment I stepped out on the road. Something could go wrong with Nick’s plane. A shiver crawled down my spine at the thought, even more chilling because of where I was sitting. He was most likely in the sky now, working. I shook the thought off.
I paid a visit to the survivor tree before I went on to the market, then walked back towards my apartment once I’d grabbed my groceries, a brown paper bag full of chicken, pasta, fruit and vegetables in my arms. There was a small bagel shop near my block, and I ducked in quickly to grab some breakfast. The old lady behind the counter recognised me now and fetched my usual whole-wheat onion bialy to eat on the go, before I even asked. We exchanged a few friendly words – she liked to talk to me about The Only Way is Essex because she streamed it and I was British – and I told her to keep the change as always.
The bialy was warm and soft, melting in my mouth as I ate it on the way home, the cooked onions sweet. I loved London, but New York had its charms. I imagined I’d miss it when I went back at the end of the summer.
Once I unpacked my shopping and showered, I grabbed some orange juice and settled down at the table to check my emails. I had a bunch of key account documents that Georgina and Patrick had sent me after I left the office yesterday. I’d have to read those through by Monday, along with keeping up with the usual news and economic journals, but for now, I had another job to do. All this thinking about how short life was had made me more determined. I needed to find my father, fulfil Mum’s wishes and then leave anything to do with him behind me.
I winced around a sip of bitter juice and opened Facebook, typing ‘Trevor Moorcroft’ into the search bar. I didn’t expect there to be many – Moorcroft was not a common a name. Age should narrow it down further; I might be able to send him a message within minutes.
I just needed to hit return.
Time to do it.
Here goes—
A list of profiles immediately appeared. As I scanned through quickly to see if any of the photos immediately caught my eye, I realised I could discount eight of them. They were either variations of his name or completely different. That left me with four. Two were too young. One a different race. And the last one…I wasn’t sure.
This Trevor was here in the US, but in Florida rather than New York. I clicked on the profile picture and squinted at it. Nothing in the man’s face looked remotely familiar, but why should it? I was older now than Trevor had been when he and my mum had me. Ten years older. That was a very strange thought. Without sending him a message or a friend request, how was I going to get any more information about him to try and move this forward? I didn’t exactly want to open with: ‘Hi – I’m searching for my father and wondered if you could be him.’ Everything else on his profile was private.
My phone buzzed with an incoming call. I scrubbed my hands back through my hair. Bloody nerves were getting the better of me again. Shaking it off, I reached for my phone and my eyebrows rose at the name on the screen.
This should be interesting.
‘Noelle,’ Stephen’s British accent purred into my ear. I could just picture him, the human equivalent of a smug Cheshire cat with a bow tie.
‘I see you still have my number saved in your cell.’ I decided to let a little of my smugness out too. This was going to be fun. He probably thought I was calling to beg for a replay of our booty call at New Year’s, this time for real.
‘It didn’t occur to me to delete it in a fit of pique if that’s what you’d suspected.’
I smiled. I did enjoy the way he talked. He wasn’t scared of using his vocabulary. Maybe it was showing off, or an inbred thing from his school days, but I liked words and he used them well. ‘I figured it was a possibility.’
‘Sorry to disappoint. Is there something I can help you with?’
‘Actually, I think there’s something I can help you with.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Well, while you’re staying out here, and I’m out here, I thought maybe we could get together and…’
‘And?’ His voice was low and dark. It tingled down my spine, but I still had to bite my lip to hold in a giggle. He was setting himself up for such a fall.
‘And I heard you’re looking for someone in New York. I can help you with your search.’
There was a pause. ‘What search?’ he asked slowly.
‘The search for the guy from your mother’s will.’
‘How do you know—’ He broke off, sighed. ‘Beth. She told you, I expect?’
‘Yup.’
‘I might’ve guessed you two would end up gossiping.’
‘It’s no great leap of the imagination. Friends talk to each other. It’s kinda the point once you’re too old to play hopscotch on the street.’
‘That’s everything she told you?’ All charm and flirtatiousness had evaporated from the conversation now.
‘Yeah. Well, you see, we’d been chatting about Nick coming out to visit you and she mentioned that he wanted to help you with it.’
‘It’s all in hand.’ His voice was frostier than a popsicle at the North Pole. ‘Thank you for your kind offer but—’
‘Wait a minute.’ I stood up, sensing that he was about to put the phone down on me. ‘Just hear me out. I’m good at this kind of thing. And I know New York. I’ll be a valuable asset.’
‘I’m not assembling a crack team for a heist,’ he said dryly.
I found my little nugget of excitement withering. He’d dismissed me very quickly. Maybe I shouldn’t have wound him up at the beginning of the conversation. I needed to backtrack and maybe nurse his ego a little. ‘Okay, just bear me in mind if you get stuck. I never had a chance to thank you last night for getting that Logan guy to leave me and Kaylee alone. Or for stopping me falling flat on my face on the way to the bar. I thought if I helped you with this, we’d be all square.’
He was quiet again. ‘Hmm. I’m not convinced. You don’t need to help me out to show your appreciation. I’m not in the Mafia; a simple thank you will suffice. What’s in it for you?’
‘How can anything be in it for me?’
‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. You can appreciate I’m not inclined to take your word at face value anymore.’
‘Ouch. You wound me, Steve. Can I call you Steve?’
‘No.’
‘Fine. Stephen.’ I took the three steps necessary to stand in front of my wall of sad Post-its again. ‘Honestly, I have a touch of writer’s block at the moment. I can’t approach the problem head on. It’s like a wild animal; it gets frightened and runs away whenever I try. So, helping you with your mystery inheritor is perfect. I get to use my deductive muscles without scaring inspiration away.’
‘That sounds so insane, I could almost believe it’s true.’
‘It is the truth. I promise you.’
‘Regardless, I don’t need anyone’s help with this. I’ll figure it out by myself.’
I turned and sat on the edge of my desk. I’d hit a nerve somewhere and I didn’t think it was from me leading him on a little at the beginning of the conversation. Maybe he was just the kind of guy who thought he could handle everything. It would make sense with my theory that he’d interfered with Beth and Nick because of control-freak issues.
‘Well, I’ll text you my address. If you change your mind. I’m not doing much tomorrow. We could go out and start the search together.’
‘I’ve already said no, Noelle. Thank you but no thank you.’
‘Ah, fine. I’ll still do it. Send you my address, I mean. I trust you not to post dog poop through my mailbox.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Trust you or post the dog poop?’
‘I guess you’ll find out if you text me your address. Bye, Noelle.’
She sent the message with her address less than a minute after I hung up the phone. Of course she did. She was tenacious, I’d give her that. And ever so slightly unhinged, by the sounds of it. That conversation had taken a U-turn I hadn’t expected.
I only looked at the address to make sure it disappeared off my screen. It was unintentional that I noticed she lived in the East Village, close enough to walk there, if I was remembering rightly.
One useful thing about Noelle’s call was that it had confirmed my suspicion that Nick was planning on coming out here to check up on me – or help me. However he wanted to word it, the fact remained that he thought I couldn’t deal with this by myself.
Well I could, and I would.
How did visiting the address go? Did you track him down yet? Nick had texted me only that morning. I hadn’t answered him. I didn’t want Nick holding my hand. It didn’t require holding and I didn’t want him to come out here and end up meeting my father. There was no reason for that man to have any impact on Nick’s life, whatsoever. I was going to deal with it and cut all ties once and for all.
I just needed to think how to word the message to send via Facebook.
Maybe Noelle would’ve been useful in this instance, since words were her trade. Tact was not though. That was why I could at least trust the fact that Beth hadn’t told her it was my biological father I was looking for. I was sure Noelle would’ve mentioned it – and hopefully not been so quick to regard the search as a writing exercise for herself had she known…although I couldn’t be certain. Good grief, that woman pressed my buttons. And she’d scored the point back by insinuating she was calling me to arrange a hook-up. I’d fallen for it. Again.
One annoyance at a time. I found the one profile I’d narrowed it down to earlier and tapped on it to send a DM.
Me: Hi, I was wondering if you used to live in
the UK? I think we might know each other.
There. That didn’t scream ‘long-lost son’.
I went into the kitchen to start grilling some chicken for the salad I wanted to make. As I was putting the croutons in the oven, my phone pinged with a message. That was quick. I picked it up before I could let myself notice how sweaty my palms were or how hard my heart was beating.
Trevor: Sorry, dude. I’ve lived in the US my
whole life. Never even visited the UK.
Happily married too and heterosexual, in case
that was some kind of pick-up.
A rush of breath left me. I didn’t know whether I was disappointed or relieved.
Me: It wasn’t. Just looking for someone.
Thank you for coming back to me.
Now what? I had no other leads.
Unless I opened the envelope.
I could see the logic in it. I’d already considered it in fact. There might be a clue in there.
Or it might confirm that it was just a handful of old rubbish – perhaps a pair of his worn-out underpants Mum had wanted to send back to him and then forgotten about. But equally, what if it wasn’t something insignificant? What if it was love letters Mum had been returning him? I didn’t want to intrude on her privacy. It wasn’t something she’d wanted us to see – that’s why she’d hidden it after all.
I really wanted to be able to stop thinking about this. I sliced some romaine lettuce and it occurred to me that not very far away was a small, red-headed solution. Possibly.
If I enlisted Noelle’s help now, then there was a chance it would all be sorted out before Nick flew out in July. And she didn’t know it was my father I was looking for. Whatever we discovered would bear no connection to me in her eyes. There would be no pity or disgust aimed in my direction. She did know the city, and – though I was loath to admit it – she was excellent at figuring things out. She’d tracked down the identity of an anonymous blogger at the hotel last Christmas, wangled information out of me, and she wrote cosy mysteries for a living.
The only question was, if I went back and asked her to help me, would we find him before we drove each other insane?
Chapter Four
The nex
t morning, I double-checked the address details in the text message Noelle had sent me. It wasn’t quite the East Village area like I’d first thought, even if it was still technically the Lower East Side, and it hadn’t gone through gentrification yet. Her road headed away from the river, on and on, up towards Sara D Roosevelt Park. The buildings were old tenements, four to five storeys high, packed in tight, over the top of small shops and restaurants, and a number of unknown entities, their metal shutters drawn down, graffiti tags decorating them.
Her apartment was above a Vietnamese restaurant. The entrance door to the side pushed open, the intercom looking like it had met with an accident with a hammer, leaving me with a strange stirring of concern for her. Perhaps I’d been guilty of imagining her living in a Friends-style apartment as she flitted about the city, frequenting bars and writing on her laptop in cafés. This was far more reminiscent of the area in South London where I grew up, with tower blocks and a higher crime rate. I hoped she had a roommate.
After five minutes of hanging around on the first-floor landing, repeatedly knocking on her door, I was prepared to give up and put my brain to work on another solution to find Trevor.
Perhaps this was Noelle’s payback for my comment on Friday night. She didn’t live here at all; she’d sent me to a random address to waste my time with the added possibility of being mugged.
But it seemed a lot of effort to go to in order to get the final mark on the scoreboard. It was equally likely she’d gone out because she hadn’t heard from me. I hadn’t told her I was coming, so it was feasible her plans had changed. One of those creative types flitting about with no real concept of days of the week—
She yanked the door open and my gaze snapped down to her bare legs. Short as they were, they were shapely and led enticingly up to the hem of an oversized T-shirt, which… Yes, she was braless underneath it. Heaven help me. My eyes finally reached her face and I nearly took a step back at the scowl she was wearing.
‘What the hell time d’you call this?’ Her voice was throaty with sleep and, along with the limited attire and the deliciously wild red hair, a dark curl of unwelcome lust snaked around me.
