Meet Me In Manhattan: A sparkling, feel-good romantic comedy to whisk you away !. Claudia Carroll

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       Chapter Four

      ‘Holly Johnson! You are one barefaced liar and you should be utterly ashamed of yourself!’

      I was sitting at our tiny kitchen table for this earbashing from my flatmate Joy. It was not long after I first ‘met’ Andy online, and I was topping up our glasses with a bottle of Pinot Grigio that I’d bought us as a Friday night treat to have along with a bowl of pasta. And frankly I was starting to regret that I’d ever bothered confiding in Joy, who was sitting right opposite me, eyebrows knitted down crossly.

      ‘But doesn’t he sound just so lovely? Captain Andy McCoy,’ I distinctly remember trying to convince her. ‘And get of load of the profile picture he sent me … look! He’s got eyes exactly like Matthew McConaughey.’

      ‘You told him you could bake! Out and out pork pies, Holly. You even had the cheek to embellish it, by blathering on about getting flour and apricot jam all over your iPad, for feck’s sake.’

      ‘I know, but …’

      ‘… Listen to this for a big load of my arse! “Baking is my fundamental switch-off mechanism.” When we both know the only “baking” you did last night was to shove your lean cuisine dinner for one into the microwave.’

      ‘Yeah, OK, so you and I may know that, but he doesn’t …’

      ‘… You never even go near the oven in this kitchen, unless you want to check the time on the clock. And as for that load of horse dung about “my chocolate cherry cupcakes are worthy of The Great British Bake Off”? That sounds like such a cheesy come-on, if I ever heard one! Who do you think you are anyway, Nigella?’

      ‘… But the thing is, everyone knows it’s been statistically proven that guys are more attracted to women who can bake. I’ve been online dating for a scarily long time now and I know that much at least is true – so why not?’

      ‘… In fact, just for the laugh, I’d love you to show me where we keep our springform baking tin. And if you can tell me the difference between that and a Kugelhopf tin, then I’ll gladly hand you a tenner right now. Mother of God, you’ve even lied about your height! “Tall and slender?” Holly, you’re five foot three! You think you’re not going to get caught out in that one pretty quick? Suppose you ever meet up with this guy? What are you going to do, sprout an extra nine inches in the meantime?’

      Thing was, I’d made the cardinal error of physically showing Joy all the backwards and forwards messaging that went on between myself and Andy McCoy ever since that very first night and now she was reading it off my iPad and guffawing.

      ‘Oh and so now you’re a skydiver as well?’ she said dryly. ‘You, that has to take a Xanax and knock back a gin and tonic before you’ll even get on a Ryanair flight? And you also go mountaineering? Can this be the same Holly Johnson who gets vertigo even sitting on the top deck of a bus?’

      ‘And what’s so wrong about coming across as being an active type?’ I asked her in a small voice, flushing to my roots and wishing to God there was some other way to get off this deeply mortifying subject.

      ‘Nothing wrong with it, if it’s the truth,’ she said crisply, tossing geometrically sharp, jet-black bobbed hair over her shoulder. ‘But let’s face it, your idea of being active is to join a gym, pay a year’s subscription, then drop out after the first month.’

      I was silenced here, mainly because this would be a fairly accurate assessment, but Joy still wasn’t done.

      ‘Come on, love,’ she said, waving her fork around with a lump of penne pasta wobbling dangerously on the edge of it, for added emphasis. ‘You’ve got to wise up a bit. After all, you’re lying through your teeth here so how can you be certain that this Andy guy, whoever he is, isn’t doing exactly the same thing right back at you? And supposing he is? What’s your master plan then?’

      ‘Excuse me, for a start I’m always super-careful online,’ I told her stoutly, ‘and over time you just learn to develop an instinct for these things. OK, so maybe Andy is tweaking the odd minor detail about himself; so what? Everyone sexes their lives up a bit online, we’re all guilty of it. But it’s the big stuff that counts, and if Andy were lying through his teeth to me on that score, I’d know; I’d just feel it in the pit of my stomach.’

      ‘Oh you would, would you?’

      ‘Absolutely,’ I told her firmly. ‘And another thing; can I point out that he’s actually a widower with a little boy? So therefore he’s been married before and isn’t afraid of commitment.’

      ‘Ha! Don’t make me laugh. There isn’t a man on this planet who isn’t afraid of commitment. And you can take that one to the bank.’

      ‘He’s a family man and that’s good enough for me,’ I told her, a bit primly. ‘After all, everyone knows that men who’ve committed before are by a mile the most likely to commit again. Plus, may I remind you he’s actually Captain Andy McCoy? Senior airline pilot with Delta, if you don’t mind. Now come on, even you have to admit; the job description alone is a serious turn-on.’

      Then I drifted off a bit, just imagining what Andy looked like in that sexy uniform pilots wear, with the cap and the epaulettes and the calm, authoritative voice saying, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.’ And, of course, immediately blurring the image with that famous production still of Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can, all gussied up as a Pan Am pilot.

      Thing СКАЧАТЬ