Chapter Winging It
Winging It
‘I remember coming here when I was nineteen with my friend George. It feels like a lifetime ago.’
Less than twenty minutes later, Maggie was feeling so much better. Having showered and changed into a sundress and sandals, she was sitting at a bustling cafe up near the royal palace, in the comfortable shade of a candy-cane-striped sun awning. She almost felt like a different person.
‘Though we could never have afforded to sit down at a cafe,’ she continued, looking across at Flick. ‘We were backpacking and had no money. I remember watching someone drink their coffee and leave half a croissant on their plate and George swiping it.’
As the waiter handed them their lunch menus and Flick glanced at the prices, she felt like stealing food from people’s plates too. How much for a salad? Picking up her phone, she began googling the currency exchange rate. Thank God they were only here for one night.
‘You know, until we sat down, I’d completely forgotten all about that.’
In the middle of reminiscing, Maggie’s face clouded. For a brief moment, she’d been nineteen and carefree, excited for the future, with no idea of what lay ahead – and now suddenly she was about to be fifty. Blink and thirty years had passed.
‘Sometimes I wish I could reach back through time and warn myself about the future.’
‘You can’t do that; it mucks everything up.’
‘Sorry?’
Maggie looked across at Flick. She’d presumed Flick wasn’t listening. Half the time she seemed to be in a world of her own, or on her phone. She felt like part of one of those couples you see, sitting across from each other at restaurants, glued to their phones, not speaking.
‘It’s always in those time-travel movies you see on TV. You change one thing in the past and it affects all the stuff into the future,’ said Flick.
‘They call that the butterfly effect,’ nodded Maggie.
As she spoke a brightly coloured butterfly landed on the condiments on their table. They watched it briefly flapping its wings before it flew away again.
‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s a sign.’
‘I don’t believe in signs. After Mum died, every time my Auntie Pam saw a white feather, she’d say it was her.’ Flick rolled her eyes. ‘People fool themselves to make themselves feel better.’
Maggie looked at Flick. In her crop top and denim shorts, she appeared the embodiment of young and carefree, but she was anything but.
‘I’m sorry. About your mum.’
‘Thanks. It’s OK.’ Flick attempted to shrug it off. ‘It’s been over six months now.’
‘Six months isn’t very long, especially when it’s a parent. I lost my dad two years ago. It still feels like yesterday.’
They both looked at each other across the table, for the first time realizing they shared a common bond.
‘It wasn’t long after that I met Him.’
‘Perfect timing.’
Flick was being sarcastic, but Maggie missed the sarcasm and sighed.
‘It certainly felt that way at the time. I was so sad and then there was this man who made me smile again.’
‘From everything I’ve read, romance fraudsters target women when they’re vulnerable.’
‘Can someone really be that cold-hearted and manipulative?’
Sitting across from her, Flick felt a flash of pity. Could someone really be so naive?
It wasn’t really a question. Maggie already knew the answer, but even now, a big part of her still couldn’t believe it.
‘Well, that’s what we’re here to find out,’ replied Flick as a waiter appeared at their table to take their order.
They both looked at the menus. Maggie wasn’t very hungry and ordered a small salad. Flick was starving but felt nauseous at the prices and ordered a small salad too. To drink they ordered tap water. The waiter looked pissed off. Cheap tourists. Pah.
Dumping down a breadbasket, he scooped up the menus with a flick of his wrist and quickly headed over to check on the table of six drinking champagne and eating lobster.
Flick dived on the bread and immediately begin buttering.
Maggie watched her enviously. She didn’t have an appetite. Her stomach was still off. For a few moments she could fool herself they were on holiday but there was a more serious reason why they were there, and it was making her deeply anxious.
‘Tracking him down and exposing him is one thing, but why on earth do you think he would agree to talk to a journalist?’
‘Because you’ve agreed.’
Reminded, Maggie’s chest tightened. Was it too late to change her mind when she was in Monte Carlo at a fancy restaurant having lunch with the journalist all expenses paid? She sipped her water and wished she’d ordered wine.
‘And from my experience, everyone wants to tell their side of the story; their truth, even if it’s a pack of lies . . . criminals especially always seem eager to give you their version of events.’
Maggie nodded while wondering if she should voice her doubts.
‘He didn’t want to answer the questions the police wanted to ask him.’
‘That’s different. No one wants to talk to the police,’ replied Flick, pulling a face. ‘Not even the innocent. Though to be honest, once you get to know the person behind the uniform they’re just like us.’
Flick thought about Police Constable Khan down at her local station.
They were on first name terms. She’d got to know Tariq over several years and had become quite friendly.
He was actually quite attractive, now she came to think about it.
She quickly shoved the thought out of her mind.
She had a serious boyfriend, remember? One who’d texted her this morning and she’d promised to call later.
‘And, anyway, this way you get to ask the questions you wanted the police to ask.’
‘What if he says no comment?’
‘Did you ever know him to say no comment?’
Maggie gave a rueful smile. ‘No, he had an answer for everything.’
‘I had a feeling that might be the case.’
Flick finished off the bread roll and started on another.
‘What I still don’t understand is how you first heard about him?’
‘Easy. I googled you.’ Flick shrugged. ‘When I heard the gossip in the pub, I looked you up. It’s the journalist in me, I’m afraid. That’s how it all started. I saw a photo of you at an exhibition you held at the gallery. He was standing next to you.’
‘Oh, yes . . .’ Maggie trailed off, remembering. ‘That would’ve been when we hosted an exhibition for a successful local artist. It got quite a lot of press.’
‘The caption mentioned you and your fiancé and gave me his name. And the rest, as they say, is social media.’
Maggie’s face fell as she thought back. ‘I haven’t looked at his social media since .
. . well, since after he disappeared. I did at first .
. . Drove myself crazy with the constant scrolling, hoping to find out where he was and what had happened to him, until finally I deleted the apps from my phone. ’
‘I’ve done that before,’ nodded Flick. ‘I think everyone does it with their exes, don’t they?’
‘Really?’
‘Trust me, you don’t need to have dated a romance fraudster to want to know what your ex is up to,’ said Flick, wryly.
Maggie smiled, despite herself.
‘Thing is, I came to realize I didn’t want to see what he was doing. I just wanted to erase him. To delete him. Like you do when you remove all the website data from your laptop.’
‘Clear your history.’
‘Exactly. Only, it’s not so easy in real life.’
‘I just put everyone on mute,’ confessed Flick.
‘Does that work?’
‘Kinda. Though to be honest, you end up putting so many people on mute, you’d be better off deleting the app from your phone, but of course no one can as we’re all addicted.’ She took the final piece of bread from the basket. ‘You’re lucky. You didn’t have social media when you grew up.’
‘We had phones stuck on walls in kitchens and had to conduct every conversation under the watchful eyes and ears of our parents,’ countered Maggie.
Flick grimaced.
‘And with a father who kept yelling, “What are you talking about? You were just with them the whole day at school!”’
‘Actually, maybe social media is better.’
They both laughed.
‘Well, to be honest, you probably wouldn’t have found him as he’s got several accounts with different names,’ said Flick, her face falling serious.
‘How do you know?’
‘I did a deep dive into his social media. He seems to have multiple aliases and accounts if you cross-reference.’
Opening various apps on her phone, she waved her screen towards Maggie to show her, but Maggie immediately shrank back.
‘No . . . thanks . . . I don’t want to see it.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘I don’t think I’m ready for that just yet.’
If ever, she wanted to add.
Maggie still felt like she was on the edge of a big dark hole whenever his name was mentioned, one she could so easily slip into, and she hated herself for it.
It was a strange, breathless, disoriented feeling.
She felt so weak. So pathetic. She’d come here to face her fears and yet just thinking about it left her feeling panicky and unbalanced.
She sipped some water and stared out across the view of the Mediterranean, forcing herself to regain her balance. Refusing to fall again into that hole.
‘I’ve got a photo of me taken here when I’m nineteen,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘I can still see it now. I’m wearing cut-off denim shorts, not unlike yours, a bikini top and red Converse. I had to borrow a long dress to go into the chapel. George started crying over Grace Kelly’s grave.’
‘Started crying? Why?’
‘George is like that. He cries at everything.’ She smiled, fondly. ‘He once cried over my haircut. I chopped all my hair off and dyed it purple. When I got home to the flat, he took one look at me and started bawling like a baby.’
‘I can’t imagine you ever having purple hair.’
‘I wasn’t always this age, you know. In fact, I wasn’t much younger than you are now.’
Their conversation was interrupted by Flick’s phone beeping up a message. Maggie watched her glance at her screen and bite her lip.
‘Is everything OK?’
‘Oh, yes, it’s nothing. It’s my boyfriend, Rory.’