Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

Text from Colin: G’day from sunny Australia! Hope NYC treating you well and weather good. What do you think we should do on our indoor date? You know I give an excellent Indian head massage ;) ;)

Fury immediately sparksthrough my entire body. Even my earlobes and toes and my butt cheeks. There is fury everywhere!

What are the chances? In a city so big and busy, what are the chances that the person I have spent the entire morning wanting to kick in the goolies is here? A few metres away, ripe for the kicking?

I take a deep breath, adrenaline whizzing through my blood, geeing me up to race over there and destroy those goolies.

Then I stop myself. Violence is never the answer. Except in 1994 when Tracy Henshall stole my beloved Ninja Turtles pencil case and I threatened to snap her rainbow pen in half, unless she gave it me back at once. But I’m a grown-up now. And I’ve already gotten myself into enough trouble. I should just go over there. Calmly tell him that I think he is a bad person. That he has made me upset, that sharing my likeness on national TV is simply Not FuckingCool.

The blonde woman throws her head back and laughs at something Seth is saying. Ugh. I bet it’s not even that funny.

I feel anger bubbling up in my chest like hot lava about to boilover.

No, Olive. Keep calm. Be a grown-up. Do not lose control. You are not a woman who loses control.

‘Oi!’ I bellow, not calm at all. ‘Oi, you!’

Seth, the blonde woman, and another five surrounding people all swing their heads around.

‘You!’ I shout, pointing at him. If I had a vein in my head it would be throbbing right now for sure! ‘Yooooou. Seth! Queue jumper!’

He screws his face up, trying to place me. Without my bumbag and with my curls tucked into the beret, he doesn’t have a clue who I am. He steps out from under the canopy, into the rain, to get a closer look. ‘Sorry, do I know you?’ he asks, a quizzical look on his dumbface.

‘Watch me piddle?’ I hiss furiously, marching up to him and yanking off the beret so he can see who I am ‘Really? Really?’

His jaw falls open and he does an actual, audible gasp. With big round eyes, he starts to shake his head in astonishment. He’s pretty much doing a replica impression of me last night, you know, when I saw myself on nationalTV.

‘It’s you! Wow.’ He steps cautiously closer to me, like he’s approaching a bear or some other badass kind of animal who might kick him in the goolies at any moment.

The rain splats down on his head. The blonde woman, still under the canopy, gives me a curiouslook.

‘Seth?’ she calls over. ‘Is everything alright?’

Seth looks back at her. ‘Sharon, um… thanks for breakfast. I’ll call you later, okay?’

He puts his arm out into the street for a cab. One immediately screeches up. The woman looks a little put out at my interrupting the two of them but, after giving Seth a kiss on the cheek, gets into the cab and zoomsoff.

He turns back to me. ‘Hi. Um… I didn’t think I would ever see you again. This is… awkward.’ He looks around as if searching for an escape.

‘Yeah. Awkward!’ I say, my voice all high-pitched. ‘You humiliated me on live television. You used me for a joke! How couldyou?’

‘Umm…’ Seth grimaces, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. ‘I… I don’t know what to say… I’m, um, actually in a bit of a rush right now I have to besome—’

‘Oh no you don’t!’ I cut in furiously before he tries to slink away. ‘You can explain yourself. And apologise! People have been stopping me all morning shouting Watch Me Piddle. I pull the beret back onto my head with a tug. ‘I have to wear this hat so people don’t recogniseme.’

Seth looks skywards and the rain starts to properly come down. No longer a drizzle but chubby cold raindrops plopping down at speed. ‘Shit.’

Ha! I feel a dart of joy. Of course he doesn’t have an umbrella. This guy doesn’t charge his electrical equipment before taking trips, he jumps queues, he thinks women want to have sex with him in airplane bathrooms, he steals people’s likeness and manipulates it for a TV show. Of course he doesn’t have an umbrella.

‘Can I just…’ he says, shuffling forward and ducking his head down to try to get underneath my brolly withme.

‘No way!’ I say, taking a step backwards. ‘You don’t get to share my umbrella!’

His eyes widen. He flings his arms protectively over his head, as if that will be any use. ‘Seriously? I’m going to drownhere!’

I shrug. ‘It’s the least you deserve.’ I lift my chin. ‘I won’t keep you long. I just want to say that I think you’re a horrible person. I was really scared on that flight and you used it for jokes. And now everyone in Manhattan seems to recognise me! How many people even watch that show? It seems like everybodydoes!’

A proud little smile lifts the corners of his mouth, before he quickly realises how inappropriate that is and puts it back into a straightline.

A drop of rain falls off his hair into one of his eyes and he winces.

‘It’s only rain,’ I scoff.

‘I’m wearing hair gel!’ he protests, blinking quickly. ‘It stings.’

I sigh. It does sting when you get hair gel in your eye. As someone who used mousse every day during her teenage years, I’m only too aware of the pain that product in eyes can cause.

I don’t want him to go blind.

I suppose.

‘Just get under, already,’ I grumble.

He dives quickly under my umbrella. He’s much taller than me so he has to stand there with bended knees. All at once, his stoopid face is really close to mine and I notice that his eyes aren’t blue, like I thought. But more like a pale turquoise. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone with turquoise eyes before.

Another drop of water falls from his eyelashes and onto his jaw which, I notice, is covered in a light golden stubble that you can’t see unless you are mere centimetres away. It seems to shimmer. It must be the water or the sunlight or something. It looks like little flecks ofgold.

I must be staring because the next thing I know Seth has leaned in so close that I feel the heat of his breath on my face. ‘Hello? Olive? Earth to Olive?’

What the hell am I staring at his five o’clock shadow for? I immediately snap out of it. ‘Earth to Olive?’ I sniff. ‘Who even says “earth to” anymore? What is this? Saved by TheBell?’

Seth snorts with mirth. ‘You’re mean! You look very sweet with those eyes and those rosy cheeks.’ He waves his hand dismissively in the direction of my face. ‘But you aremean.’

‘Actually I’m not mean!’ I protest. ‘I am the opposite of mean. I have no problems with anyone. Except for my sister-in-law Donna who is a true dick, but other than that everyone likes me. Even Mr Rishi on the market – who hates everyone – loves me. YOU,’ I say, poking a finger onto his wet shirt. ‘YOU aremean.’

‘It was all in good fun!’ Seth says with a shrug. ‘You were a little crazy on that flight.’

‘I was freakingout!’

‘You let me believe you wanted us to…’ he trails off, pushing his glasses up his nose and raising a suggestive eyebrow. Ugh!

‘That was your filthy mind. I was just hoping you would accompany me down the airplane aisle. It was so shaky. I didn’t want to fall! I was scared, and you used it against me. OnTV!’

Seth stares at me for a moment. I think he’s going to apologise but instead he says, ‘It’s my job. I was just doing myjob.’

‘It’s your job?’ I repeat, raising my voice so that he can hear me over the thud of the rainfall on the top of my umbrella. Is he for real? ‘So it doesn’t matter who you hurt, or humiliate in front of an entire country, if it’s your job? That’s what… assassins say. I was just doing my job. My job of murder! Doesn’t make it okay, dude!’

He glances from side to side as if looking for an escape. ‘Look, dude, I don’t know what I can do beyond say, mybad!’

‘Mybad?’

He pulls his phone out of his shirt pocket and looks at it. ‘And I wasn’t lying when I said I was on my way somewhere. I have to go. I really am late for something.’

Ugh. What an absolute turd this man is. ‘You are a lying turd,’ Isay.

Amusement sparks in his eyes. ‘A lying turd? Nice phrase. Maybe I’ll use that in next week’sshow.’

I’m so angry that my mouth opens and closes. How darehe?

‘Seriously, Olive Maudine Brewster. I’m being truthful. I was due at the Riverside Theatre five minutesago.’

‘Oh the theatre!’ I repeat in a fancy voice. ‘How lovely for you! Well don’t let my humiliation keep you from the theatre.’

He looks at me and shakes his head in astonishment.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so mad at a person in my entire life. How can he not see that what he did to me was completely wrong! He’s acting like I’m the nutcase when he is obviously some sort of sociopath.

‘Jeez,’ I sigh, clearly getting nowhere. I pull Mrs Ramirez’s postcards out of my bumbag and push them angrily into the mailbox. Then I shoo him away with my hand. ‘Go. Go to wherever you’re going. You’re not the only one with things to do and places tobe.’

He holds his hands up innocently. ‘I’m sorry if you’re upset,’ he says, which is the flimsiest apology on earth. ‘It was all just a bit offun.’

I stare after him as he turns around and darts off back down the street, holding his arm out for a cab as he doesso.

I realise that my heart is pounding in my chest. I shake my head in disbelief. Shouting and pointing in the middle of the street in a beret. That’s just not me! I am a woman who complains via a well thought out email, or the contact form on a retailer’s website. But that idiot? I don’t think anyone has ever infuriated me somuch.

I watch through narrowed eyes as he gets into a cab and zoomsoff.

I go to zip up the bumbag dangling from myhand.

Something is amiss. I frown and peer down into the bag. My phone, Rescue Remedy, earphones, painkillers and hand sanitiser are all there…

No.

Ohno.

Nooooooo.

My stomach lurches as the familiar and comforting sight of Birdie’s letter to Chuck is no longer there where it has been safely nestled for the past threedays.

‘Noooooo,’ I mutter to myself. ‘No. NO. NO.’

I frantically open the other zips in the bag, desperately hoping that I moved Birdie’s letter to one of the other compartments.

Nope.

This is not happening. This cannot be happening.

I quickly lean forward, pull down the shutter on the mailbox and peek inside. I can see nothing. Just blackness. And the smell of paper, which ordinarily I like but today makes me feelsick.

My cheeks start toburn.

Birdie’s letter.

Birdie’s final letter.

Oh mygod.