Then there’s my mum. She can’t be in on anything for longer than two seconds without letting something slip. In fact, she’s single-handedly ruined at least half a dozen surprise parties by unwittingly calling up the person in question to wish them a happy birthday and finished off with a cheery, ‘See you tonight at the party!’
Plus that doesn’t explain my granddad either.
Anxiety quickly ratchets back up a dozen notches.
Plus why? Why would Fiona want to joke that I never went out with Seb? It’s not exactly hilarious, is it? And why would she get my mum involved? Or Gramps, for that matter? It just doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense.
I try grappling with it like you see people grappling with umbrellas in the wind, trying to find an answer, but it’s futile. I give up. I’ll just have to add this to my list of things that I’ll never understand – like the Dow Jones index, the appeal of Russell Brand, or why men always feel compelled to ask if they’ll need a coat before they go out.
There is no explanation.
‘Tess Connelly?’
Hearing my name being called, I see it’s my turn for the helpdesk. Getting up, I walk over to the counter, where I’m greeted by a chubby-faced technician wearing glasses with the thickest lenses I’ve ever seen. He introduces himself as Ali.
‘So what seems to be the problem?’ he asks cheerfully.
How long have you got? I think ruefully.
‘Excuse me?’ Ali’s smile wavers ever so slightly.
Oh crap, did I just say that out loud?
‘Oh, er, sorry, ignore me . . . one of those days.’ Feeling my cheeks go hot, I quickly pull out my laptop and plonk it in front of him. ‘It crashed, I can’t get it to do anything,’ I say quickly.
‘Right OK,’ he nods briskly. ‘Let’s have a look at it, shall we?’
Of course there’s no ‘we’ about it. Pushing his glasses onto the bridge of his nose, he cat-cradles his fingers to limber them up, then dives on the keyboard. I watch as his fingers start flying all over the keys, like some kind of magician, and try not to think about my own two-finger typing.
‘Well, we’ve managed to get the machine to turn on,’ he says brightly, as a screensaver of Johnny Depp flashes up on the screen.
‘Brilliant,’ I say, feeling a surge of happy relief. At last something is going right. Feeling myself relax into Ali’s capable hands, I watch as he starts dexterously tapping away, his face a mask of concentration.
‘Okey-dokey, what have we here?’
See: jokey, fun words. Everything is going to be just fine. Well, not everything, but at least I’ll be able to read my horoscopes online, Google completely random things and look up ex-boyfriends from school on Facebook and see how badly they’ve aged – all completely necessary ways to try to mend a broken heart.
‘Oh dear . . .’
I zone back. Hang on. That didn’t sound fun, or jokey. ‘Oh dear’ is not ‘okey-dokey’. ‘Oh dear’ is what you never want to hear your dentist say when looking in your mouth. Or your computer technician when staring at your laptop.
‘I’m afraid there’s a bit of a problem with your hard drive.’
Now I don’t know much about computers, but putting the words ‘hard drive’ and ‘problem’ in the same sentence sounds deeply worrying.
‘But you can fix problems, right?’ I ask hopefully. Actually, change that to plead.
‘Well, we do try to fix most things, but once the hard drive has gone, it’s pretty much the nerve centre of the computer . . .’ He pauses and, seeing my face fall, adds quickly, ‘But the good news is your laptop is still under warranty, so we can replace your hard drive free of charge.’ He beams widely.
‘You can?’ I beam back. See, I knew I could trust Ali. He looks like one of the super-brainy types you always wanted to sit next to in Maths.
‘It does means that you’ll lose all your data, but that shouldn’t be a problem. When did you last back it up?’
‘Back it up?’ I repeat tentatively.
‘Yes, we can transfer the backed-up data,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘Do you use an external drive, or a remote data-storage facility online?’ He stops typing and looks up.
It’s as if he’s speaking gobbledegook. Somewhere, in the recesses of my mind, lurks a memory of me thinking I must learn all about this kind of stuff.
‘Erm, no,’ I admit, reluctantly. ‘Neither.’
Followed by another memory of me thinking I’d get around to it later and watching Strictly Come Dancing instead with Fiona.
Ali’s cheerful smile freezes slightly. He falls silent and studies me for a moment, eyes unblinking behind his glasses, like a Maths student focused on trying to figure out a really tricky algebra equation he’s never seen before. ‘Oh, I see,’ he says finally, a sharp crease appearing down his forehead. ‘Well, in that case I’m afraid you’ve lost pretty much everything that was on this computer.’
‘Everything?’ I look at him with horror.
‘Everything that was stored on your hard drive, yes. So any documents, files, music—’
‘Even all my photos?’ My voice trembles. I think about all the photos I took over the past year with Seb. All gone.
‘I’m afraid so,’ he nods.
Unexpectedly my eyes start watering. It’s not the photos – after all, I threw most of them away. It’s just . . . well, everything. The last few weeks have been tough, breaking up with Seb, getting through Christmas and New Year, bumping into him again and being blanked – and now this. It’s all too much. A tear escapes and rolls down my cheek.
‘Are you OK?’
I catch Ali looking at me with concern. ‘Sorry,’ I sniffle. ‘I broke up with my boyfriend and, well . . .’ I get a lump in my throat and feeling my eyes welling up. I break off and roughly rub my eyes with my coat sleeve.
‘Look, there might be another way.’ Taking pity on me he hands me a screen wipe. ‘In nearly all hard-drive recovery cases, data can be recovered by a trained specialist technician. It’s only when there’s really bad platter damage, magnetic degradation or a file overwrite that the data is impossible to recover.’
He waits for me to say something.
‘I’m sorry, you lost me at hard drive,’ I confess, blowing my nose.
‘Well, it’s like this: your computer stores everything on the hard drive, every keystroke, every site you’ve visited, every email you’ve sent . . . If that crashes, it’s like a plane, everything goes down with it – you lose everything.’ He pauses, then leaning forwards, lowers his voice and adds darkly, ‘Unless you know where to look.’
He gives me a pointed glance and I break off from blowing my nose to stare back wide-eyed. Gosh, it all sounds very cloak and dagger.
‘The workings of a computer are extremely complex. It’s like a rabbit warren of tunnels, and computers can hide things deep, deep inside. That’s why you have people involved in criminal activity who try to erase their hard drive and browsing history, but there’s still a record of it somewhere.’
‘There is?’ I have a flashback to me on Facebook looking at the pages of Seb’s ex-girlfriends and going through their photo albums.
‘Yes,’ he nods gravely. ‘You can try to delete everything, try wiping them clean, but if you dig deep enough and know how to use the right software, you can still find things lurking. It’s virtually impossible to erase everything from a computer. In fact, I’d say it was impossible.’
‘How do you know all this?’ I gape, dabbing my eyes.
‘I used to work for a data-recovery company in my spare time when I was at university in Delhi.’
‘Wow, you really are a genius.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m just a bit of a geek. At least that’s what my ex used to tell me.’ He gives an embarrassed shrug.
‘Well then your ex was an idiot,’ I say supportively.
‘So was yours,’ he replies kindly.
We exchange sympathetic looks. Then, glanc
ing around to make sure no one is listening, he adds, ‘Look, I really shouldn’t do this, but I’ve got a fifteen-minute break – I’ll see what I can retrieve for you, if anything, OK?’
‘Really?’ I sniff gratefully.
‘Leave it with me,’ he says and, passing me another screen wipe, he leaves the counter.
Feeling slightly cheered up, I go and sit back down. I dig out my hand-mirror, and I’m wiping away my smudged eyeliner and streaked mascara when I’m interrupted by a voice.
‘Excuse me, is this seat taken?’
It has an American accent and I stiffen. Hang on, I recognise that voice.
I look up.
It’s like a bowling ball in my chest.
‘Seb?’
Chapter 9
At the sound of his name he turns to look at me.
My breath catches in the back of my throat and I hold it tight inside of me, waiting to exhale.
His eyes search mine out and there’s the longest pause. It seems to stretch out like chewing gum. Everything around me seems to disappear, people, chatter, noise . . . All gone. It’s as if someone’s just turned off the volume; all I can hear is my heart beating a drum roll in my chest. Last time he totally ignored me, but this time there’s no way he can pretend he hasn’t seen me. I mean, I’m right here. Sitting right in front of him.
I wait for him to say something. Anything.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says finally, his face void of all recognition. ‘Have we met?
But not that.
I stare at him in disbelief. You’ve got to be kidding, right?
Except the spooky thing is, he doesn’t seem like he’s kidding. Whenever Seb used to fool around there were always telltale signs. But today there’s no twitching of his lips, no nervous scratching of his head, no shifty not meeting of the eyes.
Indignation suddenly hits me around the head like a frying pan.
Well, come on, this is crazy. Not to mention fucking rude. OK, I know everyone deals with break-ups differently; going out and getting drunk, sleeping around, lying in bed with their cat eating Jaffa Cakes and watching Desperate Housewives on a loop (I’ve gone for the last option).
But pretending you’ve never met that person? Like they’ve never seen you naked? And on the loo? A flashback of Seb sitting on the toilet, with no clothes on, reading the Proust questionnaire from the back of Vanity Fair and shouting to me that there’s no loo roll. I mean, come on, this is me you’re talking to, I think hotly. The girl who came to your rescue with more Andrex.
‘Are you seriously trying to tell me you don’t know who I am?’ I blurt out.
He looks abashed. ‘You have to forgive me, I’m terrible with faces. Sometimes I look in the mirror and don’t even recognise myself.’ He smiles ruefully. ‘Then again, I’m pretty sure I’d remember you if we had met.’
Oh my god, is he flirting with me?
I stare at him aghast. I honestly don’t know what to say. Or how to react. It was bizarre before but now . . .
‘So . . . is it OK?’ He gestures to the free seat next to me.
‘Erm, yeh,’ I nod dumbly. My mind is all over the place, trying to find a logical answer for what’s going on. Maybe Seb got the same advice as I got from Fiona. Pretend like I don’t exist. Forget about me.
Even so, isn’t this a bit extreme?
‘So, was I nice?’ he says, sitting down.
I look at him in confusion. ‘Excuse me?’
‘When we met?’
I have a sudden urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, tell him to act normal. Like once when I was little and Dad was fooling around, pretending to be a scary monster, and I started crying and begged him to be himself again.
‘Er . . .’ I grope around for something to say, but now I’m lost for words.
Only he’s still looking at me, waiting for an answer. As if we’re two strangers making chitchat, not a couple who’ve just broken up.
‘I . . . er . . . can’t really remember, it was a while ago.’ Caught in some bizarre, dream-like scenario, I struggle to form a sentence.
Seb, on the other hand, seems to be having no such problem.
‘Well I hope I was,’ he smiles cheerfully and, sitting down next to me, starts looking at his iPhone.
Conversation over, I sit back in my seat, stunned. I can’t believe what just happened. What is still happening, I remind myself, sneaking a look at him out of the corner of my eye. Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe it’s a case of mistaken identity. After all, isn’t everyone supposed to have a doppelgänger? Maybe this is Seb’s.
I peer at him from under my eyelashes. He’s still looking down at his iPhone and I trace the familiar outline of his face: same golden tan from his frequent skiing trips; same thick blond hair and neatly trimmed sideburns; same strong jaw and sexy cleft in his chin; same habit of distractedly pulling at his eyebrows when he’s concentrating . . .
My heart thumps. The same name is one thing. Same physical appearance is another thing. But the same characteristics?
‘I broke the screen.’ He tuts loudly and turns to look at me, catching me staring.
Startled, I jump. ‘Excuse me?’ I say quickly, grabbing my fringe and trying to hide beneath it.
‘Snowboarding,’ he shrugs, gesturing to the glass on his iPhone that’s shattered. ‘I tried to get an appointment at their store in Regent Street, but they were booked solid till next week. So I raced over here instead.’
He’s talking to me as if everything is completely normal, as if he hasn’t noticed my discomfort. As if he hasn’t noticed it’s me. Tess. The girl he used to spoon before he fell asleep at night. I stare at him in bewilderment. What the hell is going on?
‘Hi, Miss Connelly?’
I look up to see Ali, the technician, standing over me.
‘Oh, hi,’ I try to focus.
‘I think I might have found something,’ he whispers urgently. ‘Everything else was completely erased, but this was buried deep inside your hard drive, I almost didn’t find it . . .’ He looks furtively from side to side to make sure no one is watching, then sticks his hand in his pocket. ‘It’s a Word file, I’ve put it on here.’ He quickly stuffs a disk in my hand as if he’s handing over stolen goods. ‘I’m afraid it’s not much . . .’
‘Oh, thanks,’ I smile gratefully. ‘That’s really kind of you . . .’
I break off as I catch Seb glancing over curiously. Or is it? Maybe it’s his double.
Double of what, Tess? Some guy you dreamed up?
Shit. I need to get out of here. And fast.
Saying goodbye to Ali, I shove the disk in my pocket and quickly rush out of the store.
I go home in a daze. I don’t know what to think so I try not to think anything by jamming in my earphones and turning up my iPod to full volume. The bass rattles my eardrums. Normally whenever I see those people on the tube with music thumping loudly from their ears, I tut and think, what are they doing? They’re going to go deaf!
Now I am that person and I don’t care. So what if I go deaf?? By the looks of things I’ve already gone completely bloody loopy.
I walk into the flat to find Fiona at the kitchen table in her fluffy dressing gown, hair all over the place, the phone wedged under her chin and a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. Not quite how one would imagine a health and beauty journalist. And certainly not what the readers of her magazine column would picture. The column that has a photo of her sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat, dressed in Lycra and drinking fresh orange juice.
‘I don’t care if it’s a Bank Holiday. Don’t you realise my deadline’s tomorrow?’ she’s yelling down the handset. ‘Well, fine then, you can stick your new Botox face cream!’ She gives a snort and hangs up. ‘Stupid PR woman,’ she tuts, taking a furious drag of her cigarette and pouncing on her keyboard.
Dumping my bag on the table, I flop into a chair.
‘Good day?’ she asks distractedly from behind her laptop screen.
‘Good and bad,’ I reply, heaving a sigh. ‘Gramps is good, but my laptop’s broken. Apparently it needs a new hard drive.’
‘Oh dear,’ she tuts, not looking up from her keyboard. ‘Did you back up?’
Why is it that you can go your whole life never hearing about something, and then when it’s too late, that’s all people talk about?
‘No, I didn’t. I lost everything. Including my mind,’ I can’t help adding, but she’s not really listening as she’s already furiously typing away, no doubt sending an angry email to the poor PR.
‘Oh, except this . . .’ Wiggling out of my coat, I remember the disk in my pocket and put it on the table.
‘What’s that?’ Fiona stops typing and her head appears from behind her laptop.
‘I dunno,’ I shrug wearily. ‘The man at the store says he managed to save a file or something.’ I hoist myself out of the chair and flick on the kettle. I desperately need a cup of tea. Actually, I need something stronger, but I’m not sure starting on the tequila is a good idea. Look where that got me last time.
‘Let’s have a look . . .’
I turn around to see Fiona snatch up the disk and pop it into her laptop.
‘Tea?’ I ask, reaching for the PG tips.
She doesn’t hear me. She’s too preoccupied. ‘Um . . . it looks like loads of writing . . .’
I make her a cup anyway. Fiona’s not the kind of person to turn down anything. I’ve witnessed some of her online dates . . .
‘Oh hang on, I think it’s a diary . . .’
‘Diary?’
‘That’s what it looks like.’ She glances up at me. ‘I didn’t know you kept a diary!’
I feel my cheeks colour. ‘Well, I haven’t for a while—’
I’m interrupted as the microwave suddenly pings. ‘My Tom Yum soup’s ready.’ She jumps up from her chair. ‘I had some left so I thought I might as well finish it off – in for a penny, in for a pound and all that . . . well, nearly five pounds now, actually,’ she mutters under her breath.
As she heads across the kitchen, I abandon the tea and scoot over to her computer. Sure enough, on her screen I see a diary entry from 4 January 2011: