Page 56 of The App Trap
After his pint, he left peacefully, but I still waited at the gig so that I could leave with Tommy. We left the gig together and as soon as I got off the tube, it was down tobusiness. Now that I realised thatmyHarry wasn’t married, I had to initiate a reconciliation and explain to him what the hell I was doing going up to a hotel room with a German fella in The Ampersand last night.
I was confident that I could worm my way out of this. However, the 1% battery turned into the wheel of death as my phone died, so I had to wait until I arrived home to get in touch with him. Annoying.
I plugged my phone into the charger in the lounge and watched it, willing it to come back to life. Then the doorbell rang. A ring at this time of night could surely only mean trouble, but there was no way that Travis followed me home, and there wasabsolutelyno way that he would know where I lived.
We had frosted glass in the front door, so I could see the shape of whoever was outside. When I went into the hall, I could make out a tall figure, dressed in some kind of uniform, so thinking it was one of Finn’s colleagues, I took a risk and opened the door.
There stood Ben, fully kitted out in a school uniform, complete with mascara freckles.
“Oh,” he said, his cheeks flushing crimson.
“Good to see you, too. You here for The Gimp by any chance?” I said.
“We’ll talk about this over lunch sometime.”
He smiled thinly and barged past to Finn’s room, opened the door, looked around at me, and then slammed it in my face.
“I thought you said he was out tonight?” I heard, muffled through Finn’s bedroom door.
I went back into the lounge to continue staring at my phone. When it came back to life, I composed a message to send to Harry along the lines of,‘It’s not what you think’.
Annoyingly, every time I went to send the message, I just got a red exclamation mark and a‘Message failed to send’alert. Must have been the rubbish signal we got in the flat. So, I thought I’d wait until tomorrow and give him a call at lunchtime.
The next day,I spent the morning in a snappy mood, clock-watching and willing lunchtime to come around so I could re-construct my bridge to Harryland.
Lunchtime eventually decided to put in an appearance, so I found a bench away from all the tourists. I mentally prepped myself for an angry reception, but it turned out I didn't need to. The line was dead. That could only mean one thing: he’d blocked me. I frantically flicked through every dating site I could, trying to find his profile, but he was nowhere to be seen. He’d blocked me from every available orifice. This was bad. I had literally no way of getting in touch with him. Nada.
I spent the rest of the afternoon biting the skin around my thumbnail, trying to think of a way I could get hold of Harry. I didn't even have his address, and had no idea exactly where he worked either because he kept on insisting that work was far too boring to talk about.
Dejected and miserable, I went around to see Mum, who was in a far better mood than me. I told her that I’d cocked everything up with a guy that I quite liked, and she assured me that the amount of fish in the sea was still plentiful, despite the recent hike in the price of cod.
She then told me all about her new online beau, who was apparently a millionaire. What? There was no way Neil was even close to that. He drove an old-school Porsche,which he kept immaculate. To the untrained eye, this could make a man look rich. Also, I was betting she didn't know about his wife, who incidentallywasa millionaire and pretty much kept his business afloat.
I couldn't tell her the truth, because as far as she was concerned, I hadn’t seen them both at a swinger’s club. I had to somehow get her to tell me more about him, so that I could pretend that I’d just made the link in my head. Then I could legitimately spill the beans.
“So, what’s his name?” I asked.
“Tony,” she said.
Lying prick. Shit. That means I can’t give it the old, ‘Oh, my boss is called Neil… maybe it’s the same guy’, spiel. Tony? Well, that’s obviously a textbook made-up name.
There was only one thing for it. I’d have to get a picture of me with Neil and show her some work pics. Genius. If only I could be this clever when I was trying to think up a plan to win back Harry.
I didn’t tell Mum how much I liked Harry for some reason. I guess I didn’t want to build her hopes up that I’d finally met someone I liked and within the blink of an eye, had cocked it all up. I told her about what had happened and that I had no way of getting in touch with him.
Then Mum struck gold.
“Why don’t you register on the dating site as someone else, then dupe him into going out on a date?”
Of course. I could have kissed her. And so, I did.
She looked me in the eyes. “Darling?” she said.
“What, Mum?”
She paused, and I could see her tongue tripping up inside her mouth, struggling to throw some words at me. My instinct told me that the words that followed were imposters to the original ones that were meant to come out.
“I hope this works out for you. You deserve someone so much. I know I wasn't there for you when you really needed me. I’ve never forgiven myself about leaving you boys on your own so much when I was out getting pissed all the time.”
