by Jo Watson
“I can’t,” he said softly.
“Can’t what?” I asked, standing up slowly. That statement had such an ominous, final kind of quality to it, I didn’t know what to make of it.
He stepped away from the door and gestured for me to walk out of it. “You hungry?” he asked.
I smiled at him. “Are you kidding? I’m starving.” I exited the room as quickly as I could and followed him down the passage and into a small room at the end of it. It was a dark office, by the look of it. There was a large desk and an old brown couch that looked like it had come from a student’s dormitory, bits of sponge sticking out of the corners that had been worn down with time. Mike pulled a seat out for me and I sat down. The tracksuit top I was wearing was huge, I was drowning in it, and I had to pull up the sleeves again.
“Is this your office?” I asked.
He nodded and opened one of his drawers. He pulled out a Tupperware box and slid it across his desk. “We don’t have Uber Eats here, let alone any restaurants that are open at this time.” He looked up at the clock on the wall behind him and I couldn’t believe it. It was already midnight. He opened the Tupperware and I gazed inside. Neat little sandwiches with no crusts, wrapped in wax paper, sat inside like soldiers. He reached in and passed me one. I took it and looked at it.
“Pastrami and gherkin.” He took a bite of his and then leaned back in the chair, putting his feet up on the open drawer of the desk.
I bit into the sandwich and my stomach immediately growled at me. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. We sat chewing in silence for a while.
“So where is everyone else?” I asked, looking around the office.
“It’s just me tonight. There is someone else that works two days a week and then every second weekend. But he’s not here.”
“I thought you said there were no other people for the calendar?”
“Well, no other people who could have taken their shirts off.” He seemed slightly coy, having made this statement.
“Ooooh,” I said. “So you think you can take your shirt off, do you?”
He stopped chewing, swallowed and raised his eyebrows at me. “Do you?” he asked, and his voice had a slightly husky tone that was making it hard for me to swallow.
I felt my head nodding before I could stop it. He smiled at me and our eyes locked. A wave of something moved through me and suddenly I was feeling very awkward.
“Delicious,” I mumbled, with food in my mouth, trying to steer the conversation away from semi-nakedness.
“The secret is the Dijon mustard,” he said, his smile growing as he looked at me.
“Well, it’s not a secret anymore,” I said quickly, feeling like I needed to fill the silent moments with words, because something strange seemed to be buzzing in the spaces between the words and I wasn’t entirely sure what it was, and nor was I that comfortable with it.
We finished our sandwiches in silence and, when we were done, sat there looking at each other for a moment.
“You’ve seriously put me in a very difficult position, Becca.” His tone was serious, now. Quiet and thoughtful and reserved.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He reached into his drawer again and pulled out a bag of crisps.
I looked down at the bag. “Oh my God—my favorite,” I said, lighting up at the sight of them.
“What? No one likes this flavor.” He looked at me.
“I do!” I opened my hand and he poured some wasabi-flavored crisps into it. “I can never find this flavor in stores, though.”
“Amazon,” he said, shoving a few in his mouth. “I order them in bulk.”
“Really?” I said, mouth full of crunchy, burning crisps. “I never thought of that.”
We chewed and smiled at each other. I’d never met anyone else that actually liked this flavor before. I’d always felt alone in my strange taste in crisps and my need to slather my sushi with the green stuff.
“It’s an acquired taste,” he said, swallowing and putting some more into his mouth.
“Our taste buds are clearly just more sophisticated than other people’s,” I teased.
He nodded at me, and then something in the drawer caught my attention. I pointed over at it and then his cheeks went slightly pink.
“You really did read my book,” I said. The copy in his drawer looked old and worn, like he’d read it more than once.
“It was a good book.” He said it so matter-of-factly that it felt like one of the best compliments I’d received in a while, maybe even ever. I looked down at the desk and something else caught my attention. I pulled the piece of paper towards me.
“What’s this?” I asked. I could see my name at the top of it: Pebecca Thorne, without the sloping line.
“Incident report. I’ve been sitting here, deciding whether I should fill it in or not.” He tapped his fingers on the desk.
“So, are you? Going to fill it in?” I asked.
He pulled some more crisps from the bag and popped them in his mouth. He chomped them while looking at me thoughtfully. He swallowed and then wiped the side of his mouth.
“I don’t want to, Becca.” He said my name in a whispery tone and I felt myself crumple into the seat as I stared into those green eyes of his.
“Then don’t,” I whispered back, feeling like I was slipping and sliding across the desk towards him.
“I’ve been seriously thinking about that. I’ve been thinking of letting you go and telling all those people that you have some kind of an emotional problem and that you weren’t really in charge of your faculties when you broke in and decimated the nesting place of the—what was it? Black budgie thing?”
“Pigeon,” I said quickly. I smiled at him. “You know they totally made that bird up, right?”
“Made up or not, the fact is that you were there and you broke in and you caused a scene.”
“I know.” I leaned over and stuck my hand into the bag of crisps again. “God, I could eat these all day.”
He sighed and put his head in his hands. “The perfect woman in so many ways, other than the fact she’s a criminal.” He chuckled under his breath and I didn’t really know what to say to this, to be honest. One minute he was telling me that he liked me and I was the perfect woman, and now he was telling me I was a criminal. He stopped chuckling and looked up at me.
“You know, I read your book four times. At least.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “It was that good.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“And you know what I thought when I read it?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Maybe this is going to sound stupid, but I really felt like I knew you. Not the character in the book, but you. And I kept wondering if you’d had your heart broken like the character, because it was so real and I could relate so much.”
“I guess I did,” I said softly.
“And you poured your broken heart into the book?”
“Something like that.” I looked down at the desk and started picking at a small wooden splinter sticking out of it. “I guess writing the book was cheaper than going to therapy.” I looked up at him and forced a small smile.
“Reading your book was cheaper than going to therapy for me, too.” He smiled back at me, but it seemed slightly forced. The kind of smile you give people when you’re trying to put on a brave face. “Your book made me feel less alone,” he said. “I knew that, somewhere out there, a writer called Becca Thorne was going through what I was.”
“With April the girl, not the month?” I smiled at him.
“I blame her Swiss father,” he said, in jest.
“Me too, what with his watches!”
Mike laughed a little and then started swinging back and forth in his chair. “Thank God he wasn’t from the Channel Islands,” he joked.
I laughed. “You live in a strange town, Michael Charles Wooldridge.” I reached over and grabbed another handful of crisp
s from the bag. “The people here are all nuts!”
He smiled. “You’d fit in well, then.”
I rolled my eyes at him playfully. “Do you know, that guy in the shop tried to set me up with his son after I bought the condoms?”
“He what?” He leaned forward now. “Seriously? Mr. Reddy, of the Right and Reddy Store, tried to set you up with his son?”
I nodded. “He is a doctor, so it was very tempting.”
“Tempting?” He leaned over the desk even more. “I thought you were more into rugged policemen with backlighting?”
I burst out laughing. “No, actually, I prefer my policemen holding kittens.”
“Are you flirting with me to try to get out of jail?” he asked.
“Is it working?” I enquired, and then our eyes locked on to each other’s and stayed there for the longest time.
“Pebecca Thorne.” He finally broke eye contact with me, and something in his voice had changed. The flirty air was gone now.
“Yes?” I asked.
“I’m going to let you go, but you’re going to have to make me a promise.” Suddenly, he looked somewhat sad and serious.
“What promise?” I asked, feeling something change in the air between us.
But he didn’t say. Instead he stood up and walked over to the couch. He pulled a pillow and blanket out from behind it and put it down. “Try get some sleep,” he said, looking at me. “It’s been a long night.”
I nodded. I was tired. Exhausted actually now that I thought about it.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’ve got to patrol,” he said.
“Are you leaving a criminal alone in the police station?” I asked. “Isn’t that against policy?”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
“Couldn’t you get into trouble for that?” I asked.
He shrugged again. Bigger than before. “You’ve already got me into trouble, Becca,” he said and then exited.
I watched him walk away and then moved over to the couch and lay down. The pillow smelled like him and I inhaled deeply. I closed my eyes and soon the pull of sleep came.
CHAPTER 27
“So this is it?” I asked, looking at him. A sense of loss and emptiness had crept up on me, although I hadn’t lost anything, other than maybe my sanity. Then why did it feel like I was losing something I didn’t even know I had?
“This is it!” He leaned into my car window and looked at me with those green eyes that seemed almost luminous in the early morning light. We had collected my bags from the motel and my car from the eco estate, and then Mike had escorted me out of the town. Now, we were both parked on the long and empty road that headed back in the direction of Johannesburg.
“Well, I guess . . . Goodbye, then.” I could hear the reluctance in my voice as I said those words, gripping my steering wheel tightly as I did.
He exhaled, long and loud and slow. “Goodbye, Becca. It was really nice meeting you. I just wish things had happened a little differently, or it had been under different circumstances.” He sounded sad. I felt sad. This was sad! More sad than I think it should have been, given that we barely knew each other. But this was also mad! Sad and mad. And now my inner monologue was a Dr. Seuss book.
“Uh . . . me too,” I blurted out.
“I really did love your book, though.” He smiled a little. “And I’ll definitely buy the next one.”
“Even though I caused havoc in your town trying to write it?” I asked with a small smile.
“Yes.” He smiled back at me and a little ball of panic formed inside me. “Good luck writing it. I really, really . . .” He paused, and suddenly the air felt like it was being sucked out of my lungs. He looked emotional, and I wanted to cry. “I wish you well, Becca, I really do.”
My eyes were starting to sting and I could feel the tight ball of tears starting to form in my throat. “I wish you well, too,” I whispered back quickly, as if I couldn’t get those words out fast enough.
“Okay, Becca, it’s time,” he said, and I nodded. “It’s time to drive off and promise me that you won’t ever come back here again.” He looked at me questioningly.
I started nodding, slowly, tentatively. “I won’t. I’ll stay far away from this place. I promise.”
“Good,” he said. “Because, if you come back, I really will have to arrest you next time.” And then he did something unexpected. He leaned all the way into the car and slowly, softly, so tenderly, he placed his lips on my cheek and kissed me. I quickly turned my face, letting my lips come into contact with his. I pressed them into his. God, they felt nice. We stayed like that for a while—lips touching, but not really kissing—until he finally pulled away from me and stood up.
He tilted his head down to look at me through the window. “You drive safely, now,” he said.
“I will. You too.”
“I will. And good luck writing your book.”
“Thank you.” The goodbye was awkward and stilted and drawn out. But, finally, after standing there a little while longer, he turned around and walked away. I panicked again.
“What are you going to tell the eco people?” I blurted out loudly, mainly because the thought of him walking away right now was so unexpectedly painful.
He turned around again and put his hands in his pockets. “Well, I’ll either say you escaped from our storeroom, or I’ll tell them you are a little crazy and I released you into the custody of the mental institution you came from.”
“Which one are you leaning towards?” I asked.
He looked up, as if he was thinking. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“I doubt they’ll believe I escaped. I didn’t do a very good job of breaking in, so . . .”
He gave me another smile. Dazzling, heart-stopping. Shit! Suddenly, the thought that I was never going to see that smile again made me feel cold inside.
“Crazy it is, then.” He took his hands out of his pockets and then slowly raised one of them in the air and gave me a wave. I held my hand up and waved back.
“Goodbye,” he said, and then turned away from me, not waiting for a goodbye back.
I sat in my car and watched him walk away from me. My heart felt like it had slumped into the tips of my toes. I didn’t want him to walk away and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know him, not really, and yet I felt some strange familiarity with him that had me wanting to climb out of the car and run up to him and stop him from walking away from me.
“Shit!” I hissed under my breath. I was so torn. I needed to be back in that town to continue my investigation. But I’d promised him that I wouldn’t go back. Not just promised—if I went back to town, I would be breaking the law. Arrested on the spot. And so I sat in the car and watched as he drove off, unsure of what I was meant to do next. What the hell? This was a dilemma I didn’t know how to solve, like one of those algebraic equations that never seem to end and get more and more confusing as you go.
“Crappitty crap!” I started drumming my fingers on my dashboard, creating a little soundtrack for this moment of indecisiveness. My tune landed up sounding more like the Jaws theme, which left me feeling deeply unsettled. A small sense of doom and danger started nibbling at the back of my mind. As if someone bad was coming . . . As if—
I flinched as the phone rang. I looked down at it. Was this a moment of divine intervention? No, not divine—there was nothing divine about this at all. It was the opposite of divine. It was from the devil. My agent’s name flashed across my screen and, in that moment, I knew what I needed to do. Come hell or high water, rain or shine or snow or eco-freaks or hot sheriffs or promises made . . . I needed to be back in that town, because I needed my bloody story!
I didn’t answer the call—obviously. The woman drove a metaphorical icy dagger into my heart. But I did start my ignition and pull off, and then commit a very illegal U-turn. And then, even though I knew I really shouldn’t be doing it, I started driving back to the small town that I had just been kick
ed out of.
CHAPTER 28
I pulled into the small gas station on the outskirts of town to grab myself a drink, and I also needed a moment to think. I couldn’t just drive back into town—that would be a bad idea. I needed to be more sneaky about this; I needed a moment to figure out my game plan. How was I going to get around without being noticed by Mike? And, also, where was I going to stay? I couldn’t check back into the hotel he’d checked me out of this morning. And, last time I’d looked, the entire town was booked up. I really didn’t like cats!
I was also driving a Porsche, which stuck out like a sore thumb. At least it wasn’t red! I looked at my tiny back seat; there was no way I would be able to sleep in there, if push came to shove. I sat in the parking lot and looked around. I was hungry; I needed food and I thought better on a full stomach, anyway. I went into the shop and raided the junk shelf, and then walked back to my car, thoughtfully. How was I going to pull this off? Was it even possible to go back to town and somehow fly under Mike’s radar . . . ?
And then I saw it. And it dawned on me. This might be my best, my only chance to get back in unseen and blend in. I looked around to make sure no one was watching me, and then I tiptoed towards the car with the photo of a large cat on the side, and the words Lady Catterly of Kitashia written in gold underneath. The car was like a shrine to Persian cats. It was completely overboard, right down to the fluffy tail stuck on to the rear window. I crept closer. A bumper sticker or ten had caught my attention—Persians are my life and May the fluff be with you, which depicted a Persian cat wielding a lightsaber. Under normal circumstances, a girl like me might have laughed, but my circumstances were not normal. Come to think of it, my circumstances had been very abnormal since I’d walked out of that damn elevator. I blamed the elevator for this! Was it possible to blame the elevator for the fact that my whole life seemed to have gone off on a strange tangent? Since I’d found those letters, things seemed to have spiraled out of control, as if someone else was in charge of my life and I was just going along for the mad, crazy ride.
