An Autumn Crush

by Milly Johnson

  ‘But who the heck is this Cody bloke?’

  ‘Sending email now. Found this in the BC Times archive; it’s another Canadian newspaper.’

  Guy opened the attachment.

  MAN JUMPS TO DEATH FROM BUILDING

  Police sealed off a large area in Fallon Square, Victoria, after a thirty-year-old male jumped twelve floors to his death from the residential building where he lived. Mr Cody Campbell Hanson was taken to Victoria General Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival. It is believed that Mr Hanson’s wife of two years moved out of the apartment that morning in order to reside with an unnamed man with whom she was allegedly having an affair.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Guy. ‘Though I still don’t get how all the pieces fit together.’

  ‘No, but this fucker Chas Hanson knows,’ said Juliet, incensed now. ‘What do we do, boys?’

  ‘We could tell Floz what we know so far, or . . .’ Gideon stopped and sighed.

  ‘Or what? Come on, Gideon. Help us,’ pleaded Juliet.

  ‘It’s totally unethical and very wrong.’

  ‘Just tell us, please.’

  ‘Well,’ Gideon said slowly, hating that he was even suggesting this, ‘I could set up a false email address and someone could pretend to be her and write to this Chas bloke. But please don’t let it be me.’

  ‘Juliet, you’d be the best person,’ said Coco.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ huffed Juliet. ‘I could write a “Tell me what’s going on, you sick bastard” letter though. And don’t you think it’s a bit dodgy with both of us in the same house? I’m bound to drop myself in it.’

  ‘I don’t want Juliet pressurized,’ put in Steve. ‘Guy – you do it.’

  ‘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.

  Chas

  I’m so sorry to contact you again. I was trawling the net and I found the attached obituary. I think there are too many coincidences to ignore. Please tell me what has been going on. I am beginning to think that Nick did not exist, but I need to know because I am suffering. Will you please reply to this email address? I’ve closed the other down as it is infected with a virus.

  Kindest

  Floz Cherrydale

  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.

  Chapter 74

  ‘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.

  Chapter 75

  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.

  Dear Chas

  Please help me. I need to know what is going on. If I don’t hear from you, then I will contact the Victoria Post to try and find out the truth. I’m sure they would be interested in helping me solve this mystery. These days, with the aid of the net, it isn’t that difficult to follow a trail and I must know what has been going on. You could save me a lot of time and heartache, and yourself the embarrassment, if you answer my email. I have found a Lysa Hanson on Facebook who is friends with Rocco Vermeer and May and Constance Campbell Hanson, the people mentioned in the obituary. If needs be, I will involve them as well in my investigation. I won’t let this drop now until I have the whole story.

  Floz

  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.

  Chapter 76

  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.

  Dear Floz,

  Nick never existed except in my own mind.Unfortunately I got in too deep with you and did not know how to end it.So I just quit writing.When my son died,I was totally lost.I thought then that I should write you again and somehow let my imaginary creation die but in a way that let you know that you had touched someone.My creation had abandoned you and hurt you, and in a totally strange way,I thought it would somehow allow you to move on.When you asked for my birthdate,I was thinking of my son and used his.In my own weird way,I was trying to bring him back ,even if it was only a fantasy.My depression and its consequences have screwed up lives and its time to make amends.In attempting to escape my own reality,I hurt others.
The reason Nick so closely resembled my son is that I could not deal with his death.I am not asking for forgiveness because I do not deserve it.I am going to have to deal with my greif issue in the real world and not in a fantasy creation.

  I owe you for dragging me back into reality and I know that must sound contrived,but even I know that my depression is deadly to myself and others.

  CH

  Floz’s hand was trembling and the paper was fluttering.

  ‘Nick never existed?’ she whispered.

  ‘No, love.’

  ‘I fell in love with a man who never existed.’

  ‘You fell in love with the creation of a sick mind.’

  ‘I spoke to him. He sent me pictures of himself.’

  ‘You spoke to Chas Hanson. I don’t know what he looks like, we can’t find a picture of him anywhere, but this is a photo of Cody, the son of Chas Hanson who died. Guy found it on Facebook. There’s an RIP site set up for him.’ Juliet handed over a picture of a smiling man at the side of a red car.

  ‘That can’t be.’ Floz’s heart-rate was thudding and she felt light-headed with shock. ‘The pictures Nick sent me of himself look like this man, but older. He said he was forty.’

  ‘He must be considerably older than that, Floz. His son was thirty when he died last year. We also found these pictures on the memorial site.’

  Juliet handed over two pictures of Cody as a boy. One of him riding a toy horse, the other of him looking uncomfortable in a frilly shirt and suit.

  Floz gasped. ‘Nick said these pictures were of him as a young boy!’

  ‘He lied. They’re ones of Chas’s son. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, Floz. He’s a conman.’

  ‘But why would he lie? He never asked me for any money, he was never less than a gentleman . . .’

  ‘That’s one thing, I suppose. But he did leech off your emotions, Floz. Big time. The bastard.’

  Floz’s fists rolled and she began punching her thighs. The tears coursed down her cheeks.

  ‘I can’t believe I have been so stupid,’ she wept. ‘I trusted him. I told him everything about myself – even more than I told my ex-husband. I loved him. I loved a man who didn’t exist.’ And then she laughed, and it was a hollow, heartbroken sound that wounded Juliet to hear it.