Meet Me In Manhattan

So I guess, here’s my question. Would you do me the great honour of having dinner with me? And if your answer is yes, then maybe you’d give me your phone number, so I can call you to arrange?

So that was pretty much it for me then. No more sleep for the rest of the night and come to think of it, for the whole rest of the week ahead.

Chapter Seven

The following day, I was back to work in a blurry haze from sleep deprivation, but was I complaining? Far from it. Instead, I almost skipped round our huge open-plan office, beaming and smiling at the world. I let all the small stuff that normally bugs the arse off me slide, and at once stage, even insisted on bringing back an americano for Maia Mars, seeing as how I was passing by Starbucks anyway.

‘Look at you, the Smitten Kitten,’ Dermot teased, perching on the edge of my desk and blocking my computer screen, so I’d no choice but to give him my undivided attention.

‘Well?’ he said probingly, but I just threw him a knowing smile and kept my mouth zipped.

‘Ask me what I’m doing this weekend. Go on, just ask me,’ I told him, all excited.

‘You’re meeting up with this mystery man? That’s fabulous news!’

‘Dinner,’ I told him proudly. ‘He wants to have dinner. Not just drinks where he can skedaddle off if he doesn’t like the look of me; full-on dinner. He’s even calling tonight to arrange it.’

‘I’ll even forgive your adolescent excitement. After all, there have been three popes and counting since the last time I even heard you use that sentence.’

It was an absolute gold star, red-letter of a day in work too. We went live on air with the idea I pitched about long-distance relationships and I’m not joking, the response to it was phenomenal. The segment was originally only intended to run for about fifteen minutes max, but we were so inundated with callers that it ended up stretching to a full hour, which, in a show like Afternoon Delight, is roughly the equivalent of striking a goldmine.

Throughout the show, all the gang in work kept coming up to me to say congratulations and even Aggie gave me a wink and said, ‘Great work, Holly. Keep this up and you’ll end up doing my job someday.’

Wow. Just wow.

And you want to have heard some of our callers’ love stories. Swear to God, it did me good just to listen in, and more than a few even reduced me to tears. One caller named Annie rang in to say she’d recently divorced and was living with three young kids all under the age of ten, while her ex was now shacked up with a newer, thinner ‘life partner,’ as he apparently refers to her.

‘I was in a complete slough of depression after my divorce,’ Annie told us, sounding shy and a bit wobbly, really speaking from the heart. ‘Even having to drop my kids off at my ex and the “life partner’s” fancy apartment for weekend visits was just killing me. Worst of all was the feeling that another woman – a complete stranger – was getting all this fun, quality time with my children, while I just spent weekend after weekend all alone by myself, with nothing but the telly for company.’

‘So what then?’ Noel Browne, our presenter, gently probed in that honey voice of his, like the expert he is in sniffing out a good story.

‘Well … there I was at my lowest ebb,’ she said, growing stronger and more confident by the second as her story came pouring out. ‘Then a pal suggested online dating to me. She very kindly told me that I was still only in my forties and that the romantic part of my life was far from over. Which was reassuring to say the least, and at the time, exactly what I needed to hear. But the problem was my confidence around men was on the floor after my divorce and I really did reach a point where I thought I’d never be happy again.’

‘So you signed up to a dating website?’

‘Yeah, I did. Terrified at first, because it was all so new to me. After all, I hadn’t been single and out there for the guts of twenty years and believe me, Noel, things have certainly changed since my day.’

‘But then someone special came along?’

‘After a few false starts, eventually, yeah. He’s a divorcé with kids, just like me. The only problem is that he lives in London and I’m here. But we got to messaging and emailing each other so frequently that eventually it was as though I felt I knew him inside out, without ever having met him. Does that make any sense?’

It certainly did to me I thought, nodding along as Annie chatted away.

‘Now I was a complete bag of nerves meeting for our first date,’ she told the nation live, ‘but I needn’t have worried, turned out he was every bit as petrified as I was. And we ended up having an absolute ball together. We’d so much it common; it was ridiculous! So of course from then on, there was no question of our not ending up together.’

‘But how do you make the whole long-distance thing work for you?’ Noel asked gently.

‘Well, that’s just it, you see. It’s not like work at all,’ she laughed and I swear I could practically hear the lightness breaking through in her voice. ‘The brightest part of my day is when he emails or calls me. We Skype first thing in the morning and last thing at night and it’s just fantastic. Then every other weekend, he’ll come and stay with me, and on the weekends when I don’t have the kids, I take a trip over to London. It’s magic and, trust me, the distance between us is absolutely nothing.’

‘I totally agree with your last caller!’ said Emily, who rang in hot on her heels. ‘I met my husband online and even though he works in Dubai now, the sparkle is still there. Our golden rule is we see each other once every six weeks and in the meantime, we probably chat more now than I ever do with anyone I know from home. Everyone said I was mental when we first got together, but like I always say, I’d rather a fabulous relationship with the man of my dreams who lives thousands of miles away, then a mediocre one with some fella from down the road who I met in some bloody local bar.’

And by that stage? I honestly felt like encoding that phrase onto my desk and making everyone come and admire it, just for luck.

And then there was Matthew, who called in to say that he too met his partner via a dating site. She lived in Edinburgh and neither of them could relocate so, as he put it, ‘we just make it work. And it’s fantastic. After all, I’d rather have two weekends a month of pure magic, then four full weeks of being nagged for leaving my underpants hanging off the back of the radiator.’

Took the words right out of my mouth.

After the show, Noel even sought me out to thank me personally; an event so rare round here that there was pin-drop silence all around the office while he and I had a stilted, professional chat.

But then Noel has one of those man-of-the-people, I-too-feel-your-pain personas that’s totally at odds with the real him. In reality, he’s actually a multi-millionaire on a massively inflated salary who lives on the Hill of Howth in a palatial mansion. In fact apart from a quick daily briefing with the team before we go on air, we only see him round here sporadically. He’s usually in and gone the minute the show wraps, then straight off to his far more glamorous job at Channel Six TV, where he presents a late-night current affairs programme. Which, as you’d guess, is a shouty mess of a show, involving yet more ranting, hammering on desks and basically doing whatever he can to inflame public opinion.

‘Good work, Holly,’ Noel said, towering over me and patting his over-large tummy, like he was ready for one of his legendary boozy, Michelin-starred lunches about now. ‘Long-distance online relationships. Whoever would have thought that would generate such a huge response?’

‘Ermm, well, thanks very much, Noel,’ I muttered, aware that half the office was having a good earwig in on us.

‘More of the same please,’ he added brusquely. ‘And if you keep this up, I might just have to poach you to come and freelance for me over at Channel Six.’

He was gone ten seconds later, leaving me standing there like a blowfish, just mouthing, ‘wow!’

Chapter Eight

So now it’s the morning after that hellhole of a night at the Fade Street Social restaurant and all the love bombardment from Andy really has started, full-on and furious.

The phone calls. First thing in the morning, last thing at night. Texts flying into my face throughout the whole day. Emails coming through to me constantly and that’s before the giant, oversized bouquet of flowers arrived. Pink stargazer lilies. With a note that read, ‘Forgive me for what happened, Holly. And give me a chance to explain, at least. Please.’

As for what my best buddies have to say about it all?

Joy: ‘Good riddance to Captain Fantastic, then. I know he had a perfectly valid excuse for standing you up, but I have to say half of me is relieved. All I can hope is that this’ll be a lesson to you to wrench yourself away from those bloody dating sites once and for all and stop lying your head off online. Just be yourself, Holly, and in time you’ll meet your perfect man, trust me.’

Dermot: ‘Oh please, if you heard some of the last minute call-off excuses I’ve heard over the past few years, you’d sit back and laugh. Honey, I’ve heard it all and believe me, this is nothing! So just get back online and start flirting with other guys and if Mr Wonderful suggests another date, then let him do all the organizing and arranging. If it suits you to turn up, fine and if not, the he gets a taste of his own medicine. Either way, it’s a win-win, babes.’

Mind you, I think I’d probably caved long before any of their well-intentioned Tweedle Dum – Tweedle Dee advice ever kicked in.

Truth is, I believe him, and what’s more there’s hard evidence to back him up. Andy’s a pilot after all, is my reasoning. And wasn’t this kind of carry-on all part and parcel of a pilot’s life? Yes, I’m sure it’s a rarity that there’s a ‘mid-air emergency’ and that a flight suddenly has to be re-routed to the nearest hospital, but still, there you go. And what’s so awful about giving someone the benefit of the doubt anyway? Is it so terrible to believe the good in people and not be so bloody cynical all the time?

Whether I like what happened last Saturday night or not, the fact is, if this is to move forward, then I have to accept that this guy’s whole professional life is at the whim of weather reports, flight schedules and of course the great unknown, passengers themselves.

‘So after my letting you down so badly like that last week, Holly,’ he drawls down the phone at me, during one of his umpteen phone calls this week alone, ‘Is there even the slightest chance you’d still be prepared to meet up with me again? To give me one more shot?’

One more shot. And why not, I ask myself. After all, it’s hardly like there’s another queue of eligible guys waiting to ask me out, now is there?

‘Sweet Jesus and the Orphans,’ says Joy exasperatedly when I tell her. ‘If you’d brains, you’d be dangerous.’

So it’s all arranged. Yet again. Or take two, as Andy refers to it. This Thursday night, he’s flying into Dublin (yet again), same deal, and yet again, he’s staying at the Radisson airport hotel where apparently Delta always overnight their crew, jammy feckers. He begged and pleaded to meet up at the same restaurant, but I was having absolutely none of it.

Once bitten, etc.

Anyway, this time the deal goes thusly; Andy is due to arrive into Dublin that morning, and will call me as soon as he ‘touches down’ to confirm. Then we’re due to meet in the Shelbourne bar right in the dead centre of town at 8 p.m. and it’s actually the perfect spot for me, as my plan is to just stride through the bar and if he’s there he’s there, if he isn’t he isn’t and I’ll just keep on walking.

Worst-case scenario, I’ll end up looking like a girl who’s zigzagging her way through a crowded bar scouting around for a pal who hasn’t shown yet. Public humiliation factor: zero.

Not that it’ll happen. Lightening doesn’t strike twice.

‘Holly,’ Andy reassured me over and over, ‘if I have to swim the Atlantic this Thursday night, I’ll be there in that bar at the Shelbourne hotel waiting for you. And that’s a good old Southern promise.’

What can I say? It’s less than two weeks and counting to Christmas.

And I need all the distraction I can get.

*

Second week in December now, the weather is lock-jaw cold and just trying to navigate my way up the quays to work in sub-zero temperatures is treacherous, with icy pavements and early-morning shoppers banging stuffed shopping bags off me at every turn. A school choir of carol singers are warbling out ‘Adeste Fideles’ and all I want to do is wallop my umbrella off each one of them for having the barefaced cheek to show Christmas cheer.

Even Starbucks is at it, with their special seasonal red coffee cups and ads all over the shop for eggnog latte. Not even they are immune to schmaltzy Christmassy music and, I swear, by the end of the twenty minute wait to get served, I really think I’d rather listen to human nails being scraped down a blackboard than one more chorus of, ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’. Staff are stressed off their heads and customers look completely strung out, which pretty much sums up what the holiday season is all about. If your name is Holly Johnson, that is.

And I know all this makes me out to be a terrible Bah Humbug altogether, but I’ve good reason to dread this time of year. A few of my pals have gently started asking me what my plans are; my married friend Sue has very kindly invited me for dinner with her husband and kids, while another old pal from college has asked me to spend the day with herself and her partner. Meanwhile Joy is on at me to join her family down in Limerick for the holidays, and although it’s a lovely offer and one I’m very grateful for, we both already know what my answer will be.

Instead, my plan is to do what I always do; get my head under the duvet on Christmas Eve and stay holed up in the flat till the 26th when, thank God, it’ll all be over for another twelve blissful months. And I’ll have done it and survived it and somehow lived to tell the tale, with any luck.

God bless my friends, though, that’s all I can say. I love that they’re concerned, I feel deeply blessed that they care so much. And I only hope that they’ll forgive me for pulling yet another Greta Garbo in just wanting to be alone. They know my reasons why. They know I don’t really have a choice.

Anyway, Dermot and I grab a sambo together at what passes for a lunch break in News FM (generally a snatched ten minutes at your desk trying not to get crumbs jammed into your computer keyboard). But I can tell by the way he goes eerily quiet on me that there’s something on his mind.

‘So,’ he eventually says, wiping a wobbly lump of coleslaw off his mouth. ‘C-Day approaches.’

‘Don’t remind me …’ I groan back at him.

‘… And this year, I have a plan concocted especially for you.’

‘Dermot, you don’t have to—’

‘Just hear me out, Missy. You can’t stay holed up all alone same as you do every year. So here’s what I’m proposing …’

‘Please … there’s really no need …’

‘No … trust me, I think you’ll actually like this one. Myself and a gang of mates are renting a cottage in the wilds of Donegal where the plan is we barricade ourselves in with a car boot stacked full of vodka and spend the whole holiday watching horror films on DVD. Starting with Rosemary’s Baby and working all the way up to Paranormal Activity, by way of A Zombie Ate My Boyfriend’s Brains. So come on now, what do you say?’

‘Oh Dermot, you’re so sweet to include me …’

‘Why do I sense a big, fat “but” coming?’

‘But tempting and all as A Zombie Ate My Boyfriend’s Brains sounds, I’d really be no company at all. I wouldn’t inflict myself on you. Besides, I’d really rather get through the whole day alone. I’m not ready to do any more right now, I’m so sorry. Not this year anyway.’

Dermot however is good at hearing rejection, claiming he gets enough practice at it in his sex life.

‘Offer’s always there if you change your mind,’ he says cheerily. ‘Just remember, this could be your one and only chance to see The House of the Devil on bootleg DVD.’

It’s like he and Joy are in cahoots though, because that very night when I get home, she’s already there ahead of me and I can just tell by the look on her face exactly what’s on her mind. Time for the Big Chat, that is. The same one I try my level best to dodge my way out of every other year.

‘Tick-tock,’ she says, even pausing Netflix on the telly as I burst in and clatter down Tesco shopping bags, while peeling off layers of all my winter paraphernalia; multi-weather brolly/handbag/coat/scarf etc. Everything you need to survive in a country like Ireland, where we effectively have two seasons; winter and winter minor.

I think the very fact that Joy has torn her head away from Netflix is warning enough that just there’s no dodging the Big Chat right now, try as I might. The giveaway being that she freeze-frames the telly on Breaking Bad, her all-time favourite US TV import at the moment. She’s an out-and-out Breaking Baddict and no matter who calls her in the middle of it, anyone from Krzysztof to her own Mammy, she’ll snarl at the phone and then at me, ‘Nobody calls me in the middle of Breaking Bad. NOBODY.’

I play for time by asking her whether or not she wants tea and a sticky bun, but she’s well wide to me after all this time.

‘Now we’ll have none of your diversionary tactics, Missy,’ she says tartly, getting up from the sofa and following me into the kitchen while I stick the kettle on. ‘Come on, Holly, you know right well Christmas is only ten days away and you’ve got to make some kind of a decision here. You can’t just bury yourself away again this year, like you always do. You’ve got to make plans.’

‘And so I already have,’ I tell her, busying myself whipping milk out of the fridge and unpacking groceries I stopped off for earlier.

‘You mean hide out here, all alone with nothing but the duvet, the telly and a bottle of Pinot Grigio for company? Same as last year?’

‘Can’t think of any better way to mark the worst day on the entire calendar can you?’ I ask, face reddening a bit by now.

But Joy’s having absolutely none of it.

‘Sweetheart,’ she says, softening a bit now. ‘I know. Believe me no one knows more than I do how Godawful it is for you. But staying here all alone, yet again? It’s just not good for you, it’s not healthy. I’d be worried about you.’

I shrug lightly and act like I’m tossing the whole thing aside, though I doubt strongly that she really does understand. No one possibly could. And with no offence to Joy who only means well, particularly no one like her could ever understand, with two hale and hearty parents, three sisters and two brothers to eat with and drink with and row with and love. Just like family are supposed to at Christmas.

Family.

‘I’m just saying,’ Joy goes on, eyes not leaving me, not even for a second. ‘You know you’re more than welcome to spend the holidays with my family, that goes without saying. My folks would be thrilled to have you, as would all the gang. And I know it’s always a bit boisterous and rowdy, but at least it’s better than being by yourself isn’t it?’

But that’s the thing though. And Joy knows it by now as well as I do myself.

‘Like it or not,’ I sigh, ‘I am all alone.’

There’s just the tiniest beat, like she’s weighing up whether or not she should say what’s really on her mind.

‘Not necessarily,’ she offers quietly.

‘Joy, please. Not this. Not again. And certainly not right now.’

‘I’m just saying, you can’t know that for definite.’

‘But I do know.’

‘You know I’d help you, if you ever decided to—’

‘Christmas,’ I interrupt her firmly, ‘is a time for family. If you’re lucky enough to be blessed with one, then good for you.’

‘But you could have … I mean you might still be able to find out exactly …’

‘Look. Whatever happened in the past, the fact is that now I’m alone.’

And the surest and safest way to get through C-Day, I’ve long learned, is to suffer it out, try and not inflict my company on anyone else and take comfort from the fact that in twenty-four short hours, 26th December will roll around and it’ll be all over for yet another year.

At least, that’s the plan.

*

Maybe it was the conversation with Joy and with Dermot earlier, but in bed that night, it was like the Ghost of Christmases Past came back to haunt me.

25th December, 1990.

Thank God we lived in a flat-roof bungalow, that’s all I can remember thinking when Mum got up to her annual festive ritual again. She did this, year in, year out and the seven-year-old me absolutely loved it, despite the whispers floating round the school playground.

‘… Everyone knows there’s no such thing as Santa Claus …’

‘But that’s not true! I’m telling you, I saw him last year! I waited up for him and about midnight, there he was, giant sack and all. He even took away the carrot stick I’d left out specially for Rudolf …’

‘Just listen to you, Holly Johnson. You’re off your head, that’s what’s wrong with you. Because there isn’t any Santa. It’s just your Mam and Dad doing it to try and get you to be good over Christmas. You should see what my parents do every year to keep us believing. Sure last Christmas, my Dad …’.

‘Shhh!’ I remember Sandy Curran, who we all used to nickname Sandy Currant Bun, hissing. Then an embarrassed silence while the penny dropped; that the words ‘dad’ or ‘parents’ were something not to be mentioned in front of me, as they all instantly remembered my own particular family situation. In fact, barring Jayne Byrne – a quiet-spoken girl in my class whose father had died the previous year, I was the only other girl who came from a single-parent family.

‘Sorry Holly,’ one girl grumbled reluctantly.

‘Yeah, me and all. I forgot.’

‘I didn’t mean to …’

‘It’s OK,’ I shrugged, realizing in the way that little girls of seven can, that my little family had been earmarked as different right from the get-go. Realizing it, though not having the first clue why.

‘Ho, ho, HO!!!’ was all I could hear from the roof of our little bungalow, in a woman’s impression of what a deep man’s baritone should be. Which were followed by footsteps but God bless Mum, because she was so svelte and petite, by absolutely no stretch of the imagination could anyone – even a seven-year-old – possibly confuse those footsteps with a rotund, fifteen-stone Santa Claus.

The trouble she went to just to keep Christmas magical for me, her only child. And I loved her for it, even though I hadn’t the heart to tell her all the disturbing rumours that had been circulating the playground ever since Halloween. Or about Beth, another girl in my class who was openly laughed at and ridiculed for ‘still believing’.

Then there were the snow prints on the living room carpet, leading a trail all the way from the chimney over to our Christmas tree and back again. To this day, I still don’t know how Mum even managed it. Papier mâché? Cotton wool? Back then, I was too young and thick to dig a bit deeper. And yet every Christmas morning without fail, there they’d be; real, live snow prints dotted all over our living room carpet.

Money was tight for Mum and yet still Santa never failed to deliver in style. A doll’s house that particular year, I remember. A little girl’s fantasy version of just what a proper Victorian doll’s house should be, right down to window boxes and plastic figurines in bonnets and corsets that you could move around inside.