‘Trust you or post the dog poop?’
‘I guess you’ll find out if you text me your address. Bye, Noelle.’
Chapter Twelve
Stephen
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 Elle’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 Elle 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 Elle 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 becertain. Good grief, that woman knew how to press my buttons.Andshe’d scored the point back by insinuating she was calling me to arrange a hook-up, which I’d fallen for.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’ and warrant an instant block.
I went into the kitchen to grill some chicken for the salad I wanted to make. By the time it was cooked, the room full of the warm cumin scent released from the spices I’d rubbed into it, my phone pinged with a message. That was quick. I turned off the grill and 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 itwasn’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 reluctantly acknowledged that, not very far away, was a small, red-headed solution. Possibly.
If I enlisted Elle’s help now, then there was a chance it would all be sorted 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. Shedidknow the city, and I could not deny 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 Thirteen
Stephen
The next morning, I double-checked the address details in the text message Elle 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’d had an argument with a hammer and lost, leaving me with a strange stirring of concern for her. Perhaps I’d been guilty of imagining her living in aFriends-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.
