One Wish In Manhattan (A Christmas Story) (29 page)

T
he text
from Rita had been the last straw. The apartment had suddenly got claustrophobic. Words and sentences on all her devices had started to swim in front of Hayley’s eyes. She needed to breathe, ground herself into the city. But it seemed as if the whole world was out buying Christmas trimmings. As she stood by the tree lot, she again took in Central Park in the afternoon. Just outside the gates were the lines of horses, carriages attached, waiting to take couples and families on a romantic tour of the city’s sights. Just along from them were slightly less romantic open-top buses to do the same. The smell of hot dogs and sauerkraut made her lick her lips and remember that she hadn’t eaten all day. It took a lot for her to go off food but Oliver’s kick to the gut had done it. The only upside to the day was getting colour-coordinated drapes that weren’t going to cost a wealthy sheikh’s fortune.

‘What about this one, Angel?’ Vernon asked, pointing to a rather large, bushy spruce.

Angel wrinkled her nose. ‘Not tall enough. You said we could get the biggest.’

‘He said what?’ Dean erupted.

Hayley watched Vernon laugh and move along the line of trees for another look.

‘So how’s it going with the fundraiser?’ Dean asked, slipping his arm through Hayley’s. This was it. Dean was warming up to asking her about the date with Oliver.

‘It’s going. Whether it all comes together for the night I have no idea. It needs to be perfect. I need to live up to a professional event planner who is still phoning Cynthia every four hours even though she can barely speak.’

Dean laughed. ‘That’s New York for you. People here aren’t so good at letting go.’

‘Hmm,’ Hayley responded, her mind immediately going to Oliver.

‘And what about Michel? Any luck there?’ Dean had lowered his voice deliberately and Hayley shot her eyes to Angel who was scooping Randy up into her arms.

Hayley shook her head and put her hands into her hair as if a stress headache was about to burst forth at the mention of his name. ‘I don’t know what to do next, Dean. The only thing I can think of is getting a radio or TV announcement like they did in
Annie
. Knowing my luck it would be equally unsuccessful.’

‘And Oliver could play the part of Daddy Warbucks?’ Dean offered.

‘That isn’t funny.’ Hayley pulled her hair at the mention of Oliver. And the fact her brother had just slotted him into a step-father role. That was never going to happen. And it was all proof that keeping her distance from dates in the past was the right thing to do.

She changed the subject slightly. ‘How can a man just disappear like that? I’m coming to the conclusion that Michel gave me a false name. I mean we’ve all done it.’

‘Have we?’

‘I used to go out and tell men my name was Terri and I test-drove cars for Vauxhall.’

‘You didn’t!’

Hayley let out a heavy sigh. ‘What am I going to do if I can’t find him, Dean? I made Angel a promise, a promise I meant with all my heart. But what am I going to do if I can’t deliver?’

Dean slipped his arm around her shoulders. ‘She’s had nine years without him. You’re doing all you can. There’s only so many stones to be upturned.’

‘She might be intelligent but she’s still nine and that isn’t going to wash.’

‘Well,’ Dean started. ‘There’s only one other thing I can think of.’

‘Anything. As long as it isn’t appearing on Oprah.’

‘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 anymore?’

‘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 P.I. 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.

H
ayley 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?

Dean looked over to her then, as if waiting for some sort of response. Hayley knew what he was thinking. She hadn’t told him any of what happened the night before, but the very fact she hadn’t waxed lyrical, or come out with any hilarious anecdotes told its own story. She should be shaking her head right now. She should be waving her hands and signalling that she wasn’t there.

‘Er…’ Dean made the non-committal noise, his eyes widening as every millisecond ticked by.

‘It won’t take a minute, I promise,’ Oliver said.

Huh, a promise meant little at the moment.
And her physical reaction to his voice was betraying the level-headed side of her. The side of her that wasn’t going to let her guard down for anyone ever again.

‘She’s here. She’s coming down,’ Dean finally spoke.

Hayley sent her eyes out on stalks. Why had he done that? Hadn’t he got the message that she didn’t want to see him? Now Dean had taken the decision out of her hands. Now there was nothing she could do about it. She had to go and see what Oliver wanted. The most annoying thing about all of that was the flutter of something in her stomach that was utterly unwelcome.
Desire
. She now officially hated herself.

She slipped down from the bar stool. She could do this. She would go down there, let him say whatever he had come to say and be done with it as quickly as she could. Like a doorstep conversation with an election candidate.

‘What’s going on with you two?’ Dean asked her.

She sighed. ‘Let me pass on answering and I won’t ask a thing about whatever is going down at Drummond Global.’

Dean closed his mouth like a drawbridge at a castle under threat of invasion and Hayley headed for the door.

O
liver was going
to deliver this message and nothing else. When she walked out this morning he was adamant he wasn’t going to see her again. Just being here was screwing him up, but he didn’t have a choice. He sighed as he waited. He wasn’t going to look into her eyes or drop his gaze to her lips or admire her defiant jaw which, under these circumstances, would definitely be defiant. He’d hurt her. At a time when she least needed it. She was vulnerable, in an unfamiliar country, looking for her daughter’s father and he had treated her so badly. He pulled in a breath as the cold started to seep through his woollen coat and sink its way into his bones. He had to carry on treating her badly. It was the only way forward.

The door creaked open and light from the hallway framed her image. It was like someone had put his insides into a blender. He was turning into pulp right there on the step.

‘Hi,’ he greeted when the power of speech had come back to him. He cleared his throat, trying to get back on task.

‘What are you doing here?’

It was the very to-the-point question he’d been expecting after everything that had happened at the hospital. He held out a gift bag.

Hayley shook her head. ‘What’s this? Something from Tiffany’s to buy back my affections?’

He cleared his throat again. ‘It’s the bow tie and waistcoat we bought for Randy.’

He watched her expression change and she took hold of the bag, accepting it.

‘Oh … thank you.’

She looked directly at him then, those eyes meeting his. He hurried on. There wasn’t time to be distracted.

‘So, I just wanted to give you that and also to … to give you this.’ He passed forward the brown envelope he’d had tucked under his arm all the way here. It had felt like a bomb on a timer because, despite his honourable intentions, he was in deep and dire conflict about it. Half of him wanted to tear the papers to shreds and let them never see the light of day. The less selfish side of him, the pieces of the Oliver he aspired to be if he ever got his head straight, was urging him on.

Hayley took the envelope but, instead of looking at it, or tearing at it, she left her eyes on him. It was as if she were trying to see inside him and translate the contents without actually having to look.

Was she going to make him say the words? He blinked, breaking their connection for just a second. They shouldn’t matter so much. He needed to think of it as a business deal. Fulfilling wishes was what he did after all.

‘I found Michel,’ he stated.

H
ayley grabbed
the railings at the top of the stone steps, immediately snapping her hand back as the frozen metal burnt her fingers.

‘When I say found, I mean … someone I work with,’ Oliver took a breath. ‘Someone I use for difficult situations … I asked him to find Michel and in the envelope are his latest contact details.’ He swallowed. ‘There’s an address, here in New York, and … a number.’

She looked at the envelope in her hands, disbelieving. Was the answer to Angel’s dearest wish really held inside? After months of searching every place she could think of – every directory, every website, every different web provider – it seemed too good to be true. And all this was being delivered to her by the guy who stamped all over her heart only a few hours earlier. She smoothed her hands over the paper. Was this a trick? She jerked her head up then, facing Oliver.

‘Is this for real?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Because I have a little girl up there I made a promise to and if this is just false hope …’

‘It’s not,’ Oliver said. ‘My source confirmed the location.’

‘Can you please stop speaking “spy”?’

‘He’s spoken to his neighbours and he’s seen him.’ Oliver let out a sigh. ‘It’s an address in Brooklyn.’

Hayley shook her head. How could that be possible? How could he have been so close yet so impossible to track down? She couldn’t stop the tears from spilling from her eyes, feeling so many sensations all at once. Hope. Joy.
Fear
.

As the salty tracks of her tears started to crystallise on her face she looked up at Oliver. She watched him put his hands in the pockets of his coat and tighten his jaw.

‘Thank you,’ she breathed.

He nodded. ‘Well, I have a reputation for making women’s wishes come true.’ He swallowed. ‘I couldn’t let this one beat me.’

She watched him bite his bottom lip, as if he was thinking about what to say next. Why had he done this? Had he thought better about shutting her down at the hospital? She felt weak for even considering it.

‘Listen,’ he started. ‘I just wanted to say … about the McArthur Foundation fundraiser.’ He wet his lips. ‘It’s a great cause and … no matter how I feel about it … even though it’s not my bag …’ He stopped, like he didn’t know what he had started to say. ‘You’re going to make it an incredible event.’

She needed to say something. He had come over here with Angel’s wish in his hands. His hazel eyes were full of emotion and those pert lips she’d kissed so hungrily looked more delicious and tempting than an open tin of Quality Street. If she took a step towards him what would he do? She slid one foot through the dusting of snow.

He stepped back and her heart fell. This was goodbye.

‘Well, I’d better head off … lots to do’ Oliver smiled at her. ‘Goodbye, Lois.’

She swallowed the knot of emotion clogging up her throat. Her heart and libido were telling her to stop him as she watched him take the steps down to the pavement. He turned back and she held her breath. He waved a hand then pulled the handle of the waiting town car and slipped into the back seat. She sighed, watching her breath spiral in the freezing air and whispered into the night. ‘Goodbye, Superman.’