Page 85 of To Hell With It
‘Next year?’ I croaked.
‘Yes.’
‘She probably meant with her fiancée Jack,’ I said believing my own made up scenario. ‘Not Jack, her brother, it’s an easy thing to hear wrong. Especially if you’re Mr Dutson’s age, how old is he anyway, eighty?’
‘Jack’s engaged to Emily, Pearl,’ Una said more firmly.
‘But we were going to watch the dolphins.’ I stayed deluded, and slightly delirious, I might add, because why not be?
‘You don’t need Jack to watch the dolphins.’
‘But I wanted to watch them with Jack, after our barbeque and stroll along the beach.’
‘What a bastard,’ Una said more to herself than to me.
My head spun as the truth caught up, bit-by-bit-by-bit. Emily was Jack’s fiancée, not his sister. His lies swirled around my head and made me feel dizzy. The urge to come home pulled at every part of me, as I suddenly felt the distance, the thousands of miles between me and Una.
But then what? Who would I meet in Drangan? There was no one there remotely suited to me, I would end up just as Una had said I would – born and dead in Drangan, with a headstone to prove it.
I started to wish that I had been cut up into tiny pieces by Eve. At least then, there would be a better headstone: ‘She died while on a quest for true love.’No one would ever know the actual truth (that I died a desperate fool), apart from Una and Mr Dutson, of course.
I didn’t blame Una for not wanting to come to my funeral. I wouldn’t want to go to it either. What sort of an idiot flies to the other side of the world for someone who didn’t officially invite them? For someone they had only known for a long weekend? Me, that’s who. The anger came then; it flared up from my stomach to my chest, like a fireball out of control.
‘How do I find out where he lives?’ I asked with that same fire.
‘I could ask Mr Dutson for his address, she must have given it to him?’ Una said.
‘And then what?’ I said, my flame dwindling again.
‘Then you rock up there and give him shit! She might even be there. I bet she has no idea.’ Una tried to keep my fire alight but it was quickly burning out.
‘I just want to come home.’ I felt like Sally’s orphaned lamb that I rescued when I was a girl and bottle fed until it was strong enough to go out and venture into the fields again. The only difference is, I wasn’t ready to venture into anything.
‘You have to do this, Pearl. I’m going to call Mr Dutson now and ask for Jack's address. In fact, I’m going to tell him the whole story of what’s happened if that’s OK, then I know he’ll give it to me. Wait there. I’ll text you in a minute.’
So I stood outside Sunshine Lodge, in my mustard dress and red glittery sandals, wondering that if I clicked my heels three times would I magically be home.
Five minutes later, Una texted me back with Jack’s home address and I got a strange comfort that at least he hadn’t lied about living in Te Puke. At least that much had been true.
There was a part of me that still didn’t believe it. That still hoped that Una and Mr Dutson had got it wrong, somehow, like some sort of Chinese whisper, lost in translation. But deep down I knew they hadn’t. I knew it was true.
He’d stayed in my house, my bed, in my fucking vagina. I had actually believed Jack was single. That he had wanted me to come and see him. I had believed him because I was an idiot. I was more of an idiot than Una had been withShaun did everything,because at least she had kept her wits about her. At least she knew he couldn’t be trusted.
* * *
It turned out that Jack’s house was only a fifteen-minute walk from Sunshine Lodge. There was a charity shop across the road, and I only noticed it because of the faceless mannequin that was in the window wearing a pearl necklace. I wondered if Jack had walked past the same one and thought of me?
I followed Una’s directions right to his doorstep. She’d sent a screenshot of the street map with CHOP OFF HIS TURBO COCK scribbled in red across the front and it momentarily brought a smile to my face, which faded when I thought about how stupid I’d been.
I was just a fling to Jack. No promises, no commitments, it was all just a load of lies, and I'd been gullible enough to believe them.
On the way there, my mum had sent me a message with a picture of my dad holding something black in his hand and never had I wanted to be at home with my parents and their moles and birds more than in that moment.
Love, your dad caught a mole. I saw the swallows! Hope you’re having a great time, missing you!
I held back my tears but only because I didn’t want Jack to see them and think they were for him. And I was all ready to confront him; I was ready to give him what for, when a beautiful woman pulled up outside his house.
She stood out because of her hair. It was perfect. It fell like a waterfall, a beautiful, honey-kissed waterfall that bathed in sunshine all day long. It landed on confident shoulders, effortlessly, and bounced as she strode across the drive. She wore a navy blazer with gold buttons and a white blouse that she’d tucked into her jeans. She must have been boiling but there wasn’t a sweat mark in sight. She finished it off with flat, tan buckled shoes that appeared casual, but she was anything but that.
