Mum stays quiet.
"Is he married or something? Is that it? Because I’m
not above breaking up a happy home, if that’s the problem."
"It’s no one," she says.
"Does he live in a foreign country?" I try. This
is like playing
Guess Who
. "Is it Neil?"
"Neil?"
"Neil. You know? High school Neil. Lives in
Russia."
"How do you know about Neil?"
"Ah! So it is Neil."
"No, it is not Neil. I just don’t know how you even
know about him. I dated him thirty-odd years ago. How do you know he lives in
Russia? I didn’t even know he lives in Russia."
"I have my ways." I shrug, trying to be nonchalant
and mysterious and probably ending up plain annoying. "So, is it
Neil?"
"No."
"Who is it then?"
"It’s no one."
"Well, that’s not true because it is someone. You’ve
just said you’re in love with someone who isn’t Dad and may or may not be
Neil."
"It’s not Neil
or
your dad."
"What’s that line about the lady who protests too
much?"
"You need to forget about this, Mac. It’s no one. I’m
not in love with anyone else. Except Baby, of course. You must have heard me
wrong."
I completely ignore that sentence, because I’m wracking my
brain, trying to think of all the men she’s met and/or dated in her lifespan.
Besides, it all makes perfect sense. Of course she’s in love with someone else.
I should have noticed it sooner. It’s so obvious to me now. All the signs fit.
The jigsaw is complete.
"Who did you date before Neil? Because I thought Neil
was your first boyfriend, and then you met Dad, and well, we all know how that
turned out."
Mum keeps quiet.
"Okay, not before Neil then. How about after Dad? Have
you dated since after the divorce? I didn’t know you had. How did you keep that
one a secret?"
"You need to drop this, Mackenzie."
"Is it Dad? I mean, I know you said it wasn’t but it’s
perfectly okay to still be in love with him, you know. He hurt you really
badly, and I understand that it must have been a huge shock, and I’m not at all
surprised if you’re still getting over it, and…"
"Mackenzie, leave it. I’m not in love with anyone. Now
can we please just forget it?"
"Okay," I sigh.
I give in reluctantly for tonight. But I’m not going to drop
this. From tomorrow morning onwards, I am on a mission to find other men my mum
has dated and/or had extended contact with in her life. Because she
is
still in love with someone. I am right on this. I swear I’m right.
CHAPTER 35
My first port of call is Neil. First
thing the next morning I send him a quick email asking if he knows of any other
boys my mother dated before him. I hope he replies soon because I honestly have
absolutely no idea where to look. I think that this mystery man must have been
in her life before Neil, because I’m sure she hasn’t dated since Dad left. How
could I not have known? Oh wait, what if he’s hideous or something, and she’s
trying to hide him? Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to tell me last
night—because she’s in love with someone who looks like Quasimodo's long-lost
cousin. And I know that Neil and Mum hadn't been split up for long when she met
my father, so it has to have been either before or after them both, it couldn’t
have been in-between. And I’d bet any money that she hasn’t been on a date
since she got divorced. So who is it? Who am I missing? I keep feeling like the
answer is right in front of me and I’m not seeing it.
"What if it’s just a crush?" Dan says.
"Well, then I’m stuffed," I admit. "But it
can’t be just a crush. Do fifty-year-old women even have crushes? Don’t you
grow out of that at twenty?"
Dan shrugs.
"No, it can’t be a crush," I say. "It just
can’t. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I can't filter through every man my
mother has ever so much as looked at in her life. I’d never be able to find
them all. Besides, can you ever really be in
love
with a crush? I mean,
don’t you have to know someone to truly love them? I had crushes on boys in
school, but it wouldn’t have stopped me going out on a date with a different
boy, had I been asked. Whoever this person is, she loves them enough to ensure
that she isn’t happy with any other man."
"If no other man can ever measure up to the mystery guy,
I don’t know why you’re even bothering."
"Because. I have to bother, Dan. I can’t just give up.
If anything, the fact that she’s in love with another man gives me purpose. I
have to find this guy. I just hope Neil might be able to shed some light on the
matter."
Dan grunts.
"I still think it’s my dad," I say. "It makes
perfect sense, and it all fits together. He left out of the blue when she
didn’t even know there was anything wrong with their marriage. Of course she’s
not going to get over him just like that. And," I say excitedly as more
ideas form in my mind. "If she didn’t know there was anything wrong in
their marriage then she was probably just as much in love with him on the day
he left as she was on the day they got married. She didn’t, like, fall out of
love with him before they got divorced. He divorced her. Surely that’s got to
be it."
"I don’t think so somehow," Dan says.
"Why not? It makes sense to me."
"Well, yeah, it fits the jigsaw, but… I don’t know,
Mac. Don’t you think you’d have some clue if your mother was still in love with
your father after all these years? You know, how does she react when his name
is mentioned? Does she keep little mementos of their time together?"
"No," I say. "Not at all. It’s like she
couldn’t care less about him now."
"Exactly."
"What if it’s all a front? What if she’s feigning
indifference so nobody sniffs out the fact that she still has feelings for
him?"
"I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here."
"I just feel like the answer should be obvious. I feel like
I should know who it is, but I’m missing some vital clue. Do you have any
ideas?"
"None at all," Dan says. "I think you’re
reading way too much into this. Maybe what she said last night was just a slip
of the tongue, and she really isn’t in love with anybody. You’ve misinterpreted
what she said and taken it as fact."
"Do you have a better explanation for all these failed
dates? Ron is perfect for her, I know that they got on fabulously together
because I saw them with my own eyes, and suddenly it’s over because he’s ‘
just
not what she wants
’. Explain that to me, Dan."
"She’s an extremely fussy person who you’ll never be
able to please?"
"That’s not true. Not entirely, anyway. She was happy
and settled once with my dad, and I still believe that she could be again. But
something is stopping her. Like the fact that she’s still hung up on him."
"Maybe she can’t trust men anymore," Dan suggests.
"Because your dad left her without warning, maybe she doesn’t want to
settle down with anyone in case they do the same thing."
"Ah, so she starts sabotaging dates whenever they start
to go too well. That’s a good point actually, Dan. She might be doing that. But
then why did she say ‘
it’s not your dad I’m in love with
’?"
"Because she’s not still in love with your dad?"
Dan asks this in the same tone he’d use to speak to a small child.
"I’m not stupid," I huff. "The way it was
said implies that it might not be Dad she’s in love with, but it is
someone."
Dan sighs in a way that tells me he’s had enough of this
conversation. Fine, I think. This is my job, anyway. It
is
someone, the
question is who.
Neil’s email comes back that night, and it consists of one
line:
As far as I know, I was your mother’s first boyfriend
.
Great. Just peachy. Now where do I look?
Actually, I know exactly where to look. It is Monday
morning, and Mum has a yoga class at ten. I’ve taken the morning off work for a
spot of burglary. Well, not burglary exactly, but definitely a spot of
snooping. I have to find this mystery man. I
will
find him if it’s the
last thing I do. But I need some evidence. Actually, I need anything,
absolutely anything that will point me in the right direction. This is why I’m
breaking into Mum’s house at five past ten this morning. It’s not really
breaking and entering if you still have a key, is it?
Baby barks at my unexpected presence, and launches himself
at my knees, ripping my trousers again. This time I’m not quite so lenient, and
I wish I had some drugged steak or something with me like they do in the
movies. Eventually I quieten him down by getting some of his dog biscuits out
of the kitchen. He is obviously not impressed with me—how dare I give him
actual dog biscuits and not custard creams, after all—but he eats them anyway,
and goes to lie down in his basket, evidently satisfied that I don’t pose any
imminent danger.
To be honest, I have no idea why I’m here or what I’m
looking for. I suppose I’m half-hoping to come across a shrine to the mystery
man in Mum’s room, complete with burning skull and a collection of photographs.
Or spell books with candles, locks of hair, and his full name, address, and
marital status. At this point, I’d settle for anything. Even finding him tied
up in her closet. I run upstairs and check the closet quickly, just to be on
the safe side. I decide to just walk around the house and look at things,
searching for some sign that I may have missed before. Does she have a
well-worn picture of my dad on the bedside table? Any heart-shaped picture
frames bearing photos of unknown men? A note pinned to the fridge reading
"
I love so and so, who lives at such and such an address
"? Any
doodled hearts with "
Eleanor loves Mystery Man
" on the phone
table?
The answer is no. There is nothing. I read the calendar
hanging on her bedroom wall, and the only thing she has scheduled for this
month is an appointment for Baby at the dog parlour. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled
to have his hair puffed and his toenails painted. Her wardrobe of clothes
doesn’t reveal anything. I don’t even know what I expected to find in there.
Some mystery man’s sweater hanging up? Y-fronts in the laundry basket? I check
it just in case. But I have to think that this particular man is not in her
life right now. If he was, surely we’d know. And, at the very least, she
wouldn’t even have gone on the dates with the men I’ve set her up with if she
already had someone. Plus, if he was in her life/bed/closet/laundry basket
right now, she wouldn’t "
still
" be in love with him. And we’d
know. Even if he looked like Freddy Krueger and she was embarrassed to
introduce her family to someone so gruesome. I swear we’d know.
It has to be said that I am at a dead end. Even a criminal
offence hasn’t given me any clues. Where am I supposed to look next? And what
if Dan is right? What if I am reading too much into one innocent remark, and
focusing on this to avoid the fact that I have failed as a matchmaker and now I
have to either give up or get back out there and date more lunatics. And I
don’t do giving up. My mum should have someone fantastic, and someone fantastic
she shall have. But it would help if she was actually in love with him first.
Who could this guy be? Does he even exist?
CHAPTER 36
"You have to do
something," Dan hisses at me in the kitchen that night. We have both
sneaked out here under the guise of making tea. We’d like to be curled up on
the sofa watching a movie, but it’s been taken over by my mother and her dog.
And I had to get out of that room. I can feel my brain cells dying off one by
one from staring at the mindless drivel playing on the TV screen.
"What do you suggest I do, Dan?" I whisper back at
him.
"I don’t care, but that fucking dog is chewing on our
twenty quid cushions."
"So move the damn cushions," I tell him. "You
live here too, you know."
"Doesn’t fucking feel like it." He turns around
and leaves, slamming the front door behind him. Great. Now Dan is angry with
me.
"What’s gotten into him this time?" Mum asks when
I go back into the living room.
"For a start," I say, leaning over her and ripping
two cushions away from the back of the settee. "Your damn dog is
destroying our expensive cushions."
"He’s not a damn dog, he’s my Baby."
"And now I have to wash these cushions and hope that
one day they might be the same as they were before that
thing
got his
teeth in to them."
"What’s more important, Mackenzie? One wash load or
your family?"
"
He
is not my family. He is
your
dog."
"Oh. So you wouldn’t mind if it was me chewing on your
cushions then?"
"If you start chewing on my cushions, I’m calling the
men in white coats." In fact, maybe I’ll call them anyway, just for the
sake of it. Well, I need someone to take her away.
"What’s he even doing here, anyway?" I ask.
"I told you he isn’t welcome here after killing my plant."
"Your plant died because you fed it too much plant
food."
"Yeah, in an attempt to save it's life."
"Plants are like goldfish—they explode if they
overeat."
"I’ve never heard that one before." Probably
because she just made it up.
"You don’t read the magazines that I do."
"No, because I’m not fifty."
"Oh, and you just had to go to the age difference,
didn’t you?"
"Sorry," I say, not feeling in the least bit
sorry.
"The problem isn’t my Baby, anyway. It’s
your
boyfriend. Can’t control his temper, slamming doors around like that, all
because my Baby likes the tassels on your fancy cushions. Who does he think he
is?"