Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
T his guy was not going to give up. He’d obviously bought another pay-as-you-go phone just so he could continue harassing me.
The text abuse was continuing all day and he even sprinkled in a couple of voice messages for good measure, so I blocked him again.
I counted down the hours until his next visit to the phone shop, but it seemed that he may have finally thrown in the towel.
Even though the threats seemed to have cease-fired, I was still more paranoid than Inspector Clouseau arriving home after a hard day’s sleuthing. I was suspicious of anyone who held my gaze for more than a couple of seconds.
After work, I went straight to my gig, which was at the same comedy club as my ‘debut’.
I nabbed myself a pint and took it to the beer garden to enjoy with a delicious cigarette while I waited for Tommy.
It was approaching show time, and I was opening, which was absolutely terrifying.
What made it worse was that there was an odd-looking chap with a short crewcut that had seemingly come to watch some comedy on his own.
He kept staring at me, and after we locked eyes for the fourth time, I was convinced that he somehow had to be Harry’s husband.
I knew for certain that my name was tweeted on the line-up, so there was a distinct possibility that he could have seen it.
The show started and Crewcut stood at the back with his arms folded. He didn't laugh at the compere once, and I noticed him staring at me from time to time. I thought about bolting, but I couldn't let Tommy down, who incidentally still hadn’t turned up.
I went on stage and had an absolutely shocking gig, stumbling over my words and hardly getting any laughs unless I commented on how badly my material was doing.
Then at last, my paltry five minutes and brief stand-up career were over and Tommy had finally arrived.
He was an enormous man who also happened to have a keen interest in a terrifying South London football club.
For that reason, I presumed that he wouldn’t be opposed to having a tear-up with an absolute psycho on my behalf, especially as he really liked me.
I zipped over to Tommy’s friendly bosom as soon as I left the stage, and explained to him that I thought I was being stalked by an angry husband, relaying the whole situation to him. Then the would-be Travis Bickle stormed over with his cheeks puffed out angrily.
“Danny?” he asked.
“Uh… yeah,” I said, choosing my words carefully and not in any way attempting any wisecracks, even under Tommy’s guard.
“I wanna word with you. I think you know who I am,” said the now confirmed husband of Harry.
“He didn't know he was married, mate,” said Tommy, stepping in front of me, like a legend .
“I don’t give a fuck, mate. Who’s this anyway? Another one you’ve bought along to watch you show off?” said Travis.
“Show off? What are you talking about?” I said.
“I know he came along to watch you, cos Oscar told me,” he continued.
“What? Wait. Hang on… Oscar? Has your husband got rainbow-coloured hair by any chance?” I asked, still in a state of disbelief that Freddy/Harry/Whatever’s mate was actually called Oscar .
“What? Are you taking the piss? ‘Course he fucking has,” said Travis.
Then the penny dropped. This was the wrong Harry’s husband. This man was married to the stalker that I definitely didn't have sex with. Then I realised that I’d never actually asked Freddy his real name. I just presumed it was Freddy because of the FreddyLovesJason screen-nam… oh.
I explained to Travis that his husband did in fact stalk me and that I hadn’t been anywhere near him in a sexual sense. Tommy demonstrated impeccable people skills by calming him down and explaining to him that I hadn’t done anything wrong and that it was in fact his husband that needed berating.
He seemed to calm down and the situation diffused itself as I offered to buy him a drink––an offer that I obviously extended to Tommy.
Apparently, this was Travis’s local comedy club, and after hearing about me performing here through his promiscuous other half’s friend, he had been coming here every week to look for me since leaving prison.
After his pint, he left peacefully, but I still waited at the gig so that I could leave with Tommy.
We left the gig together and as soon as I got off the tube, it was down to business.
Now that I realised that my Harry wasn’t married, I had to initiate a reconciliation and explain to him what the hell I was doing going up to a hotel room with a German fella in The Ampersand last night.
I was confident that I could worm my way out of this. However, the 1% battery turned into the wheel of death as my phone died, so I had to wait until I arrived home to get in touch with him. Annoying.
I plugged my phone into the charger in the lounge and watched it, willing it to come back to life.
Then the doorbell rang. A ring at this time of night could surely only mean trouble, but there was no way that Travis followed me home, and there was absolutely no way that he would know where I lived.
We had frosted glass in the front door, so I could see the shape of whoever was outside. When I went into the hall, I could make out a tall figure, dressed in some kind of uniform, so thinking it was one of Finn’s colleagues, I took a risk and opened the door.
There stood Ben, fully kitted out in a school uniform, complete with mascara freckles.
“Oh,” he said, his cheeks flushing crimson.
“Good to see you, too. You here for The Gimp by any chance?” I said.
“We’ll talk about this over lunch sometime.”
He smiled thinly and barged past to Finn’s room, opened the door, looked around at me, and then slammed it in my face.
“I thought you said he was out tonight?” I heard, muffled through Finn’s bedroom door.
I went back into the lounge to continue staring at my phone. When it came back to life, I composed a message to send to Harry along the lines of, ‘It’s not what you think’ .
Annoyingly, every time I went to send the message, I just got a red exclamation mark and a ‘Message failed to send’ alert. Must have been the rubbish signal we got in the flat. So, I thought I’d wait until tomorrow and give him a call at lunchtime.
The next day, I spent the morning in a snappy mood, clock-watching and willing lunchtime to come around so I could re-construct my bridge to Harryland.
Lunchtime eventually decided to put in an appearance, so I found a bench away from all the tourists.
I mentally prepped myself for an angry reception, but it turned out I didn't need to. The line was dead. That could only mean one thing: he’d blocked me.
I frantically flicked through every dating site I could, trying to find his profile, but he was nowhere to be seen.
He’d blocked me from every available orifice.
This was bad. I had literally no way of getting in touch with him. Nada.
I spent the rest of the afternoon biting the skin around my thumbnail, trying to think of a way I could get hold of Harry. I didn't even have his address, and had no idea exactly where he worked either because he kept on insisting that work was far too boring to talk about.
Dejected and miserable, I went around to see Mum, who was in a far better mood than me. I told her that I’d cocked everything up with a guy that I quite liked, and she assured me that the amount of fish in the sea was still plentiful, despite the recent hike in the price of cod.
She then told me all about her new online beau, who was apparently a millionaire.
What? There was no way Neil was even close to that.
He drove an old-school Porsche, which he kept immaculate.
To the untrained eye, this could make a man look rich.
Also, I was betting she didn't know about his wife, who incidentally was a millionaire and pretty much kept his business afloat.
I couldn't tell her the truth, because as far as she was concerned, I hadn’t seen them both at a swinger’s club. I had to somehow get her to tell me more about him, so that I could pretend that I’d just made the link in my head. Then I could legitimately spill the beans.
“So, what’s his name?” I asked.
“Tony,” she said.
Lying prick. Shit. That means I can’t give it the old, ‘Oh, my boss is called Neil… maybe it’s the same guy’, spiel. Tony? Well, that’s obviously a textbook made-up name.
There was only one thing for it. I’d have to get a picture of me with Neil and show her some work pics. Genius. If only I could be this clever when I was trying to think up a plan to win back Harry.
I didn’t tell Mum how much I liked Harry for some reason. I guess I didn’t want to build her hopes up that I’d finally met someone I liked and within the blink of an eye, had cocked it all up. I told her about what had happened and that I had no way of getting in touch with him.
Then Mum struck gold.
“Why don’t you register on the dating site as someone else, then dupe him into going out on a date?”
Of course. I could have kissed her. And so, I did.
She looked me in the eyes. “Darling?” she said.
“What, Mum?”
She paused, and I could see her tongue tripping up inside her mouth, struggling to throw some words at me. My instinct told me that the words that followed were imposters to the original ones that were meant to come out .
“I hope this works out for you. You deserve someone so much. I know I wasn't there for you when you really needed me. I’ve never forgiven myself about leaving you boys on your own so much when I was out getting pissed all the time.”
“Mum. We were fine. In fact, we loved having the house to ourselves at that age. What teenager wouldn't want that? We had parties all the time. It did our popularity no end of good.”
“Yeah, I know you did. And don't think I didn't notice the breakages. I may have been pissed, but I wasn't blind.”
“Oh. I genuinely thought that we’d got away with all those.”
She raised her left eyebrow. I put my arms around her and squeezed her tightly.
“I love you so much, my Danny. Now get your shit together and go get that fella.”