Minnie Chase Makes a Mistake Read online

  Minnie forced herself to nod. She quickly stuck out her hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Jackson.’

  Then she felt a sudden, enormous surge of separation anxiety. It had been a talkative and quite draining 11 hours and 14 minutes. She briefly considered clinging onto him, her arms wrapped tightly around his ankles so he couldn’t walk away without her.

  He seemed to sense that she was reluctant to leave him.

  ‘I can call my sisters if you like,’ he said. ‘Or my mom. I know it’s awkward, y’know, you and me… um…we’ve only just met…’

  Minnie saved him an explanation.

  ‘Thank you. I sincerely mean that but I’ll be okay.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I have plenty time to organise a room before bedtime.’

  Tempting as it was to beg Jackson for help, she told herself that as she had got herself into this mess it was her mess to sort out. She was 32 not 13 after all. She had a laptop, her smartphone and Internet access. She was at home in cyber-space. She could do this.

  Jackson sat down on his suitcase and smiled, sunshine streaking through his bleached-blond hair.

  ‘No worries. Once you get settled, would you like to have dinner with me? Strictly a welcome-to-San-Francisco dinner. Not a romantic one.’

  Minnie had already started to drag her suitcase and hand luggage in the direction of the nearest taxi. She looked back, flustered. ‘I’m…um… thanks. But there is just so much I need to do.’

  ‘Okay, Minnie Chase,’ he said with an understanding smile and a nonchalant shrug. ‘You have my number.’

  Minnie blushed as she remembered her recent encounter with his phone. Not a great moment.

  As Minnie was whisked out of San Francisco airport towards the centre of the city, her takeaway memory captured professional surfer Jackson in wraparound sunglasses, sitting on his suitcase, still smiling like a large cat in the sunshine, like he had all the time in the world.

  She sat back into the seat and breathed deeply. Jackson and his damn euphemisms. Despite her agitated state, she smiled.

  Whizzing along the freeway in her taxi, Minnie found herself trapped in the company of yet another talkative man, the driver. Minnie only half-listened as she tried to take in all the unfamiliar sights. There was no sign of the famous San Franciscan fog. Indeed, the sun was shining brightly making the water in the bay sparkle and dance. It was a glorious golden-washed scene that highlighted striking coastal architecture while a warm wind hurried the clouds in the opposite direction. Minnie stared hard out the car window and wondered for the zillionth time how she would find Greene.

  Minnie called Angie from the taxi. The time difference put London ahead and although it would be nearly 11.15 pm Angie had told Minnie that she would wait up.

  Angie picked up the phone to a chorus of deafening barks in the background. Minnie pitied the poor neighbours.

  Minnie held the phone away from her ear. ‘Angie, it’s me. I’ve arrived.’

  ‘Minnie, is that you?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Can you speak up?’ hollered Angie. ‘Whenever the phone goes it sets the animals off.’

  ‘I’ve arrived. I’m fine. I’m in a taxi.’

  ‘Good. When are you coming home?’

  ‘Soon. Promise.’

  Minnie shouted quickly, ‘Did James George call round at the house looking for me?’

  ‘No. Has he called you?’

  ‘Well, no… he wouldn’t…’ Minnie faltered. ‘He’s giving me space.’

  ‘Does he even know you’re in San Francisco?’ questioned Angie above the background noise.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Leave it like that,’ commanded Angie. ‘Until we talk about how to deal with him.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon – your time,’ said Minnie, trying not to shout directly into the driver’s ear.

  ‘Call me any time. I don’t mind.’

  The end of the phone call left Minnie feeling lonelier than ever. She missed Angie. She saw her nearly every other day back home.

  Minnie chewed the inside of her cheek as she thought about James George. She checked her phone for the hundredth time. He hadn’t called or left a message. He hadn’t contacted Angie. He hadn’t come looking for her. He had made no effort to find her and apologise or beg for forgiveness. He hadn’t asked her to come home, hadn’t asked her to meet him somewhere neutral. Nothing. This left a desperate ache deep inside her. Minnie had believed that James George was her soul mate. She had loved him unconditionally. But when she needed him the most he had withdrawn into total silence and this had hurt her as much as the betrayal.

  She never thought she would ever think this, but looking for Greene would be a welcome distraction.

  Minnie decided to go motel over hotel very mindful that she had lost her job and that the title deeds to her apartment were in James George’s name.

  A quick search on her phone and a consultation with the helpful cab driver helped her reach a decision. She found a place on Columbus Avenue, near the San Francisco Art Institute. The driver pointed out Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown and the Golden Gate Bridge. He was an enthusiastic tour guide clearly proud of his home city. Minnie was instructed to order clam chowder at the diner across the road from the motel – a place that also did great fresh-baked sourdough bread. She wondered if food would help to fill that ever-increasing empty space inside her.

  She tipped the driver generously and heaved her suitcase towards the motel. Now she had a room for the night and a short walk to the diner across the road. She stood on the pavement and attempted to get her bearings, noting a pyramid-shaped building as a landmark. Despite the summer wind gently warming her, a deep chill suddenly ran right through her heart.

  Minnie checked in and unpacked. James George was the love of her life and yet he hadn’t even found a second to send her a text message.

  Minnie had never had her heart broken before. It was worse than she could have possibly imagined. The inconsolable loss she felt inside seemed to make her bones hurt when she walked.

  On the upside she had been given room number 28. The last room available. There were no rooms with zero prefixing another number, a British tradition, apparently, to denote the ground floor.

  This was the first time Minnie had ever travelled to somewhere that had such a significant time difference to the UK. The combination of travel exhaustion, time disorientation and heartbreak swirled around inside her, confusing her, mixing emptiness with nausea.

  She immediately went out to eat, only able to go as far as the diner across the road from the motel. She was too exhausted to explore further. It was bright and spotless with red booths and a black-and-white tiled floor. The waitress taking her order was attentive and seemed to sense that Minnie needed more than carbohydrates to revive her. She rested a hand lightly on Minnie’s shoulder as she put down the menu and asked if everything was okay. Her name tag read Sarah-Jane. Minnie nodded and forced a smile as she tried to focus on the menu but found that she couldn’t make a decision. The waitress quickly came to the rescue and ordered for her; the diner’s premium fruit shake and a Swiss cheese and jalapeno wrap.

  Minnie ate, hoping food would fill up the cold, hollow space. The waitress checked on her a couple of times with fresh coffee and a selection of cookies that looked too tempting to ignore. Minnie forced herself to push through until after 10.35pm before returning to the motel.

  She quickly fell into an exhausted sleep but frequently surfaced to the top of her dreams in a frightened shout, tangled in the bed sheet. Minnie’s mind was chaos, a frenzied mixture of painful recall, bad dreams and surreal imagination.

  Amidst the many horrors, she saw her ex-boss, A.A Jones, swooping past the motel window on a bicycle.

  She woke up at 8.33am local time with the San Francisco sunshine burning through the pea-green patterned curtains in the old motel. It cast a psychedelic swirl over one of the walls. Minnie stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling and counted the cr
acks in the plaster. She was in a strange room, thousands of miles from home and felt more exhausted than she had the night before. She had been betrayed by her husband-to-be, had lost her job and had destroyed Greene’s credibility in the business world. She hadn’t the slightest idea how to rectify any of these or even how to begin the man hunt ahead of her.

  There were better ways to start the day.

  She ran through a simplified checklist in her head: 1 to 9, no zeros.

  1 Find Greene.

  2 Apologise, apologise, apologise.

  3 Talk him through the natural gas deal.

  4 Make him a fortune.

  5 Reverse the drop in Greene Inc stocks.

  6 Reunite Greene with Bachmann.

  7 Go home to James George.

  8 Accept his grovelling apology.

  9 Get married!

  The fog that had briefly threatened San Francisco overnight had now dried out to reveal a sharply tailored city with structured architecture and a great silhouette. There was a fresh breeze to help clear Minnie’s over-stressed mind. She dragged herself out of bed and stared out of the window onto an unfamiliar street.

  As she watched the cars stop and start at the traffic lights, she briefly wondered where Jackson had gone to in his Dodge Ram. This thought was interrupted by someone else’s alarm go off through the wall. The repetitive beep beep beep beep went on and on as the person took forever to wake up.

  The noise had no effect on its intended person but it seemed to jolt Minnie into action. She needed to speak to James George. She had to talk to him.

  She picked up her mobile, paused, and phoned Angie instead.

  Angie was on a bus chugging through central London when Minnie called so they reverted to a quick conversation on Skype with a plan to talk properly once Angie got home.

  Angie Buckingham: So. How was the flight?

  Minnie Chase: National Geographic missed his connection

  AB: Damn that man

  MC: Got a surfer instead

  AB: Like

  MC: (shakes head) Tattoos for sleeves

  AB: Artistic

  MC: Catches peanuts in his mouth

  AB: Party trick

  MC: Choking hazard

  AB: Love that man

  MC: Ladies man

  AB: Surfer sounds like fun

  MC: Hmm

  AB: Name?

  MC: Jay “Snowflake” Jackson.

  AB: Did you say Snowflake?

  MC: I opted for Jackson

  AB: Good call. You okay?

  MC: I miss James George

  AB: (puke face) (puke face) (puke face)

  MC: Five years! (sad face)

  AB: Reduced sentence. Free at last!

  MC: You think?

  AB: Don’t you dare call him

  MC: I won’t

  AB: Minnie!

  MC: I won’t!

  AB: Stay strong

  MC: Phone me later?

  AB: For sure (waving)

  MC: (kisses)

  Minnie read over the conversation after Angie had gone off line. She knew that her friend was looking out for her but Minnie took a more pragmatic approach based on the basic rules of physics and practical experience – the bad stuff eventually settles to the bottom. Time is a great healer. No one need know about a broken past unless someone deliberately shakes it up. It is possible to forget, thought Minnie bravely, trying to ignore the fact that she was an expert at remembering everything.

  She decided to call James George. Angie wouldn’t approve, but Minnie’s willpower had spectacularly failed her. It would be around five in the afternoon and he would still be at work. She studied the hands on her watch realising she had been left behind and it wasn’t just to do with a different time zone. Somehow, without noticing, Minnie had fallen behind in the relationship. James George, on the other hand, seemed to be making up for lost time, sowing his wild oats before he settled down.

  He took nine rings to answer the phone, which set off a different kind of ringing in Minnie’s head: alarm bells. She’d expected him to pounce on her call with breakneck speed instead of risking it going through to voice mail.

  Her mind started racing. Perhaps he was with Her.

  She didn’t want to think about him in bed. Their bed. Shared bed.

  Then he finally answered with a, ‘Hey.’

  Minnie said, ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Did I get you at a bad time?’

  ‘No, it’s cool. I was just finishing a burger. Late lunch.’

  He eats, thought Minnie. The real and present danger of losing his wife-to-be hasn’t affected his carnivorous need for red meat.

  There was an awkward silence, an empty swimming-pool sized silence, forlorn and unloved, gathering dead leaves, algae and accusations. Burger, really? The question bounced around inside Minnie’s head.

  Minnie was affronted and didn’t believe him. She wanted to ask him the real reason he took so long to answer the phone. She felt even more neglected and unloved – even though she believed that to be impossible. She needed him to seize his phone: hand to holster, fast, in a high noon shoot-out. She needed him to have his phone grafted to his ear to facilitate an immediate response.

  ‘Hey,’ he said softly, ‘…I’ve been waiting for you to call me.’

  ‘Me to call you?’ snapped Minnie. The direction of communication seemed wrong to her.

  ‘Yes. Where are you?’

  She hardened her resolve, then collapsed. ‘I’m in San Francisco.’

  There was a slight time delay as he registered this fact.

  ‘San…eh? I thought you were staying at Angie’s.’ The surprise in his voice confirmed that he knew Minnie well: she was not the travelling type.

  ‘I was,’ said Minnie stiffly. ‘Now I’m in San Francisco.’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve never travelled with work before.’ He sounded sceptical.

  Minnie bristled. He wasn’t in the position to be suspicious about her whereabouts.

  ‘Minnie… hello?’

  ‘I’m still here.’

  ‘When are you coming home?’

  ‘Is she a prostitute?’ Minnie lobbed the question at him. She wanted to hurt him.

  ‘Who? Vicki? No!’

  Vicki.

  It was like taking a bullet. Vicki. Minnie stopped pacing the room and collapsed heavily on the bed, pulling her knees up to her chest as though this might stop her heart falling through the floor.

  Vicki! She didn’t want the woman to have a name. This made the situation a thousand times worse. Vicki was now a rhythmic beat inside Minnie’s head. She was a real person with a pulse, probably a high-powered job, on-trend wardrobe, killer heels and, as witnessed firsthand by Minnie, incredibly beautiful breasts and buttocks. Minnie had no problem imagining an appropriate nickname: Licky Vicki. The lusty woman who hungrily devoured other people’s boyfriends and husbands and always came back for more.

  Minnie almost dropped the phone. She frantically wondered, what had happened to brief encounters of the blind kind – distorted and blurred liaisons through an excessive consumption of alcohol? The kind where no one remembers a name, how it happened, or even what happened.

  Minnie lay down on the bed and wished she hadn’t mentioned San Francisco. It would have done James George good to think she was staying just around the corner with Angie. She needed to have the element of surprise on her side.

  ‘Minnie, look, it was nothing,’ explained James George.

  ‘It was definitely not nothing,’ she snapped back, heaving herself upright. There was no disguising anger or the shakiness in her voice.

  ‘Okay… okay… what I’m trying to say is that… well… she’s… we… you know… we are nothing. Not you and me,’ he added hastily. ‘Me and Vicki.’

  ‘Stop it,’ snapped Minnie. ‘Bloody hell! Stop saying her name!’ She clutched her side. Perhaps an ulcer had burst or even her
appendix. The practical side of her head quickly checked to see if she had remembered to sort out transatlantic healthcare or would she rack up thousands of dollars of debt as she wasted away in a San Franciscan hospital. Cause of death: suppurating wound from a butchered heart.

  Minnie filled the silence with a thousand questions inside her head. She was one breath away from an interrogation conversation that would surpass MI5 security levels. She wanted to know everything: where did he meet her; was he drunk; who introduced them; how long had he known her; did she have a job; was she a trustafarian; did she have less athletic interests; did she have beautiful friends; a marvellous sense of humour; in what order did she put on her limited number of clothes in the morning? The questions piled up in her head in random heaps threatening to coalesce into a migraine. Once she started asking these questions, she knew she would never stop. And why did he take so long to pick up the phone? demanded the insistent, hurt voice in her head.

  James George broke the silence. ‘Minnie, please come home. We need to sort this out.’

  ‘I have… stuff to do. Work stuff,’ stuttered Minnie.

  ‘Let’s move forward.’

  ‘To where? Our wedding?’ Minnie shouted, her voice clattered around the motel room. The cheap furniture tried and failed to absorb the sound and she sounded loud and harsh.

  ‘Minnie, I just made a mistake.’ He sounded mildly exasperated, like he had seasoned his food with sugar instead of salt. Like he could really do without the hassle.

  He didn’t even know she had lost her job. Soulmate to stranger in such a short space of time.

  ‘No, I made a mistake,’ screamed Minnie, uncharacteristically raging. ‘I made a mistake the first moment I met you.’

  She disconnected the phone with a vigorous punch using her thumb, wishing she was the kind of person who could throw a television set out of a window or trash the room.

  6

  Internet chatter

  Minnie sat quietly, tense and upset after having disconnected the call. The conversation with James George replayed over and over inside her head. She could still hear his voice whispering in her ear. Minnie was in urgent need of background noise not motel room silence so she grabbed her laptop bag and headed back to the diner she had visited the night before. San Franciscan urban birds greeted her with a rousing dawn chorus. The high-pitched chirps of the sparrows, in competition with the roar of the early morning traffic, were a welcome distraction as Minnie waited to cross the road. James George’s insistent voice, unrepentant voice, if she was honest, was finally beaten into submission.