‘It would be costly, but you could hire a private investigator,’ Dean said.
‘Are you kidding me? Is that really what people in New York do?’ Hayley shook her head. ‘I was thinking you were going to suggest looking at microfiches in the library.’
‘Do they even exist any more?’
‘This is the one!’ Angel yelled, one arm stuck inside the branches of a tree to rival the one in the lobby of Drummond Global. ‘It’s called Bruce!’
‘Holy crap,’ Hayley stated. ‘Bruce the Spruce.’
Dean squeezed her arm in his. ‘Listen, if you want to hire the PI then I can help you out with the money.’
‘I couldn’t do that, I?—’
‘You wouldn’t be asking. I would be offering.’ He patted her arm. ‘Think about it.’
Hayley watched Angel dancing around the tree like it was a beloved totem pole and she was Hiawatha. Looking back to Dean, she sighed. ‘So, tell me about your day.’
‘My day,’ Dean said, a loaded sigh leaving his mouth. ‘If I told you, I’d get fired. Which is pretty much what I thought was going to happen when I asked Oliver about your date.’
She hadn’t got away with it at all. Dean still wanted to know and she was running out of other suitable topics. Mother might be her only other option. Hayley turned her face away from her brother as her cheeks reacted. She did not want to talk about it. The hurt and humiliation were way too fresh.
‘Well, that sounds a lot easier to handle than getting a text from mum saying she’s found my ten-year diary.’ That should do it.
‘Oh. My. God,’ Dean said, putting his gloved hands to his face.
If Rita had started from 2015 and worked her way back ten years, there was far worse to come than Hayley’s search for Michel. And although it was all true – exactly how she’d really felt when she wrote the words – thinking of her mum, alone, near Christmas, reading the hurtful comments and quips was punching her with guilt. She’d thought about texting back, pleading with her not to read it, or calling and begging, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. The book had been opened and so had the can of worms.
46
DEAN WALKER’S APARTMENT, DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN
Hayley watched Angel flying around the newly erected Christmas tree like she was competing in a contemporary dance competition. Her arms stretched high, garlands of gold, silver, blue and red tinsel dripping from her fingers, then moving low, slipping bauble after bauble onto the outstretched boughs of the tree.
Mac Sullivan from the apartment next door had had to saw the bottom of the trunk off for them to even get it into the building. Angel’s face had been a picture. Her words full of concern.Don’t hurt Bruce. That’s more than thirty centimetres. Don’t bend his arms.Hayley smiled, watching Angel pat Randy on the head as she collected another sparkling decoration from Dean.
While her daughter was distracted, Michel wasn’t in her thoughts, but the closer Christmas got, Hayley knew the questions would be coming thick and fast.Why haven’t you found him? You promised.Hayley put a line through another museum address on her print-out and picked up her phone.
The intercom bleeped and Dean got up off the floor to respond to it. ‘Can we try and get it a little colour-coordinated?’
‘Dean, it’s a Christmas tree,’ Vernon responded. ‘Not an ornament.’
Pressing the button, Dean answered. ‘Dean Walker.’
Hayley watched her brother raise his eyes as Vernon passed Angel a tacky, garish-looking fairy.
‘Hey, Dean, it’s Oliver,’ the voice came back.
Hayley’s stomach plummeted to somewhere close to down-the-escalators-at-Waterloo-Underground-Station level as she heard the voice that had been sending her erogenous zones into overdrive almost since she’d met him. She swallowed, quickly remembering it was also the same voice that had sent her packing this morning.
‘Has something else happened?’ Dean asked in a panicked voice.
‘No, we’re all good. I’m on my way to deliver the news actually.’
Something was going on with the business that she didn’t know about. She wasn’t privy to any of that now she was no better than a one-night stand. Again.
‘Is Hayley there?’
Now her stomach was rushing, diving through the tunnels of the subway without stopping at any station along the way. What did he want? Hadn’t he said all he needed to say earlier?
