Summer Daydreams (37 page)
‘What’s the problem?’ He opened up the shop as he talked. Olly followed him inside.
‘I need to sell the Vespa.’
‘No way.’
‘Times are hard,’ Olly said.
‘Thought you’d sell the missus rather than part with the old Vespa Rally.’
‘Ha, ha.’ The laugh sounded as forced as it was.
Ben stopped in his tracks. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah. Deadly.’
‘Fuck me,’ Ben said. ‘I never thought I’d see the day.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Everything all right?’
Olly shook his head. ‘Not really.’ He took a deep breath.
‘Can you take it off my hands? I need the money like yesterday.’
Ben rubbed his chin and puffed out a breath. ‘I’m not really into buying at the moment, mate. Times are hard here too. Tell me where they aren’t.’
‘I know. But I’m desperate.’
‘I can see that.’
‘You know its history.’ Ben had more than likely done everything on it that had ever needed doing. ‘You know that it’s been treated like a baby.’
‘Never known a more pampered pet.’
‘Then you know what this is costing me.’
Ben pursed his lips. ‘Let me lend you the cash.’
‘I couldn’t be sure to repay it. The scooter has to go.’
Ben sighed and spread his hands. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘If you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘I’ll give you fifteen hundred quid for it. That’s all I can manage.’
It was lower than the market value, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
‘Done.’ Olly stuck out his hand and they shook again. Fifteen hundred quid should just about be enough money. It would have to be.
‘I want
Daddy
to take me to nursery,’ Petal says.
I do believe she stamps her little foot.
‘That won’t do you any good, miss. Daddy has had to go out,’ I explain. ‘He’s busy today.’
Busy making a new life without us.
My daughter pouts. She has woken up scratchy and all my attempts to cuddle and mollycoddle her have been rebuffed. Perhaps she senses something unpleasant is in the air.
Unpleasant
? That’s an understatement. Her world will be rocked when she finds out that Olly has walked out.
I can’t be the one to tell her. He will have to face that himself.
When she’s finished her breakfast, each mouthful a battle, I wrestle my moody child into her cardigan. God help her teachers today.
She drags her toes along the pavement all the way to nursery, ruining her shoes, and I don’t have the strength to tell her off. Is this the sort of thing that Olly and I will have battles about in the future? Will the buying of school shoes become a matter of strife between us? I drop her off in the playground and, gratefully, hand her over to a teaching assistant. Some of the other mothers are there, but they all stare at me and no one speaks, so I hurry off.
I steel myself to walk to my next port of call.
Ten minutes later and I’m standing outside Jenny’s flat. It’s a tired council block on the other side of town to where we are. I wonder if we’ll soon, by force of circumstances, become neighbours.
As I knock on the door, I feel that I should have some sort of speech rehearsed. My heart is in my mouth. If Olly is here, if he has come to her, then I have no idea what I’ll do. Should I rant, rave? Should I calmly accept my culpability in this?
When there’s no answer, I knock again. Perhaps they’re in there together and simply won’t answer. Opening the letterbox, I peer in. I can see right into the living room, but there’s no sign of life. Olly’s holdall isn’t by the sofa. Maybe I should be grateful for that. I try his mobile again. If I can hear it ringing inside Jenny’s flat then I shall just fall to the floor and die on the spot. It doesn’t. Wherever he is, it’s clear that my husband isn’t here.
Thwarted, I walk back into town and, inevitably, find myself rocking up at Live and Let Fry. The shop is already open and, inside, I can see that Phil is gearing up for the day ahead. As yet, there are no customers.
‘Hey,’ I say as I go in.
‘Hello, Nell, love,’ he says. ‘What brings you in so early? Come and give me a hug.’
I let myself sink into Phil’s arms.
He pats my back as if I’m a small child. ‘How’s the big bad world of designer handbags?’
Tears spring to my eyes. ‘Very big and very bad.’
He holds me away from him and can obviously read the bleakness on my face. ‘Oh, no,’ he says. ‘What’s happened now?’
‘Have you got five minutes to spare?’
‘Nell,’ he says with a sigh. ‘I have all the time in the world for you, love.’
Constance comes out of the back carrying a tray loaded with salt and pepper pots. ‘Hello, Nell.’ Then she sees my expression. ‘You look like a lady in need of tea.’
‘And sympathy,’ I add.
Her eyes crinkle with kindness. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
Phil and I go and sit together. How many times have these café tables served as my therapy couch, my confessional over the last year? How much emergency tea have they provided? What would I do without Phil and Constance? Well, I hope I never find out as I’m certainly going to need them now.
When Constance joins us and we’re all furnished with restorative cups of tea, I go on to explain that, this morning, on top of everything else that has happened in such a short space of time, Olly has left me.
Constance shakes her head. ‘Not Olly,’ she says.
‘I thought that too, but there’s no sign of him. No note. He’s not answering his mobile.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I went round to Jen’s. Before I came here. I thought that he might be there.’
‘No,’ Constance says. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have done that.’
‘But you knew that they were getting close, didn’t you?’
‘I had my suspicions,’ she admits. ‘Jen is very impressionable and Olly’s a lovely man, but I don’t think it went very far.’
‘Very far?’
‘Anywhere at all,’ she corrects.
‘I don’t know what to do. I’ve been feeling’ – How can I explain that I’ve been unable to function properly since all this happened? That I’ve been neglecting Olly, Petal, myself? –
‘poorly,’ I conclude.
Constance slides her arm round me. ‘You don’t have to cope with this alone,’ she tells me. ‘We’ll help you all we can. Won’t we, Phil?’
‘It goes without saying.’
‘Thank you,’ I whisper. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘We’ll help you get Olly back.’ She nudges her boss. ‘Won’t we, Phil?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘Don’t you worry.’
That’s all I want. I just want Olly back. But I’m really not sure how they can help me achieve that.
The plane was about to touch down at Miami International Airport. And not a moment too soon as far as Olly was concerned. He’d been getting more and more het up about his mission the closer he got to his destination.
After selling the Vespa to Ben, he’d headed straight to the ticket desk at Heathrow Airport and handed over eight hundred pounds for a one-way ticket to Miami, Florida. Hopefully, he would be coming back.
He looked at the flight ticket in his hand and, even now, it seemed to have a surreal quality about it. Had Nell realised yet that his passport had gone from his bedside drawer? He hoped not. She’d called him a dozen times already before he’d even boarded the plane. More. It had been getting harder and harder to resist answering. He wanted nothing more than to hear the sound of her voice. As the doubts set in, he wanted her to tell him that he was doing the right thing. But what if she told him he wasn’t? What if she begged him to abandon his plan and to fly straight home again? Then what?
It was too late now. He was set on this course and he’d have to see it through no matter what. The Vespa had gone and the remainder of the money would be used for a motel and rental car and, God willing, his return flight home. If this didn’t work, then they’d simply have even less money than they did now.
His flight had left England at half-past nine yesterday evening. Now he was due to arrive in Miami shortly. He wondered what Nell was doing now and hoped that she wasn’t too worried about him. Had she spent the night tossing and turning, fretting about where he was? More than likely. He’d tried to write her a note but nothing would come and in the end he’d just left without explanation. The worst thing was he hated putting her through this, but it was for the best. In the end she would come to realise that. For now, the least she knew about what he was planning, the better.
It was eleven o’clock on a fine Miami morning when he touched down. Olly thought the temperature must be well into the eighties as he hit the street outside the airport. The heat was searing and, instantly, sweat poured from him. He hailed a taxi to take him the ten minutes to the Wrecks For Rent car hire place and there he handed over twenty-eight dollars a day for the use of a Chevrolet Aveo that certainly wasn’t the worst vehicle he’d ever been in.
It was the first time he’d driven overseas and terror gripped him as he swung out into the weight of traffic, while every bone in his body was telling him he was on the wrong side of the road. He gripped the steering wheel, hot with perspiration as the air conditioning struggled to chill the baking interior of the car. The highway was wide, anonymous. To make up for its lack of charm, the sky above it was ridiculously blue. A blue so sharp and pure that it hurt his eyes to look at it. Even in the height of summer in Hitchin it never even approached that stupendous hue.
Heading north in the traffic, the swanky art deco hotels of South Beach were way over to his right, as was the sparkling Atlantic Ocean. Holidaymakers were probably getting ready to have their lunch by the beach, sunbathing by the pool, perhaps enjoying an early cocktail to sharpen the day, but he wasn’t here for the fun and sun. And where he was going definitely wasn’t the playground of rich tourists. He was going to the darker side of Miami. The place where all the guidebooks said to avoid.
He’d managed to find out where the Home Mall shopping channel headquarters were situated from the internet. A few hours or so of poking around and he’d slowly been able to peel back the layers of their company to find out where they were based. At least he hoped he was right. Home Mall, it seemed, was located in a scruffy industrial unit in a run-down area in Dade County. The sort of area that should have made them deeply suspicious, if only they had checked more carefully. A look on Google Street View had allowed him to pinpoint exactly where the building was. He only hoped that the Codys hadn’t already done a runner and that this wasn’t a heinously expensive wild goose chase. He had to take the chance though. What else could he do? He only had to look at Nell, how crushed she was, how broken, and know that he couldn’t sit back and do nothing. He wanted his wife back and if that meant getting their money back, then he had no choice but to do this.
Olly turned off Highway 95 and into the area of Opaville. Perhaps Lola and Benito Cody thought if they scammed companies on the other side of the world no one would come looking for them in Miami.
How wrong they were.