Meet Me In Manhattan Read online

  For now, at least.

  You want to exchange photos and emails? Or maybe even real names? Seems kinda funny to keep referring to you as ‘Lady Reporter’.

  Message me back real soon. Xxx

  Photos and emails? Already? I blinked a bit in disbelief, on account of how normally it can take days or even longer to get to this stage online. OK, so this was clearly a ‘jump in two feet first’ kind of guy. So this time I left it a good hour before messaging him back, thinking safety first. Because you just never know online, do you?

  Username: lady_reporter

  Me again.

  So … you’re divorced? Separated? With shared custody of Logan?

  With apologies if I come across as being a bit nosey. It’s just you really can’t be too careful these days, can you?

  PS And just so you know, the entire screen of my iPad is now covered in flour, baking soda and apricot jam. And it’s ALL YOUR FAULT.

  PPS Logan sounds so adorable.

  I hit the send key and waited. Six minutes this time, that’s exactly how long it took for him to get back to me.

  A Very Good Sign.

  From: Guy_in_the_Sky

  Please excuse me. Guess being single for so long kind of makes me forget my manners. Fact is, I’m a widower. My beautiful wife Amy passed away when Logan was just eighteen months old. Most painful thing of all is that even though I try my best to keep her memory alive for him, truth is he barely remembers her. But right now, he keeps on badgering me for a new Mom and ‘younger brothers and sisters, that he can boss around’.

  Gotta tell you, the whole dating landscape has changed a lot since before I got married. This is my very first foray into the whole online dating thing so please bear with me if I come on a bit too strong. Just not used to the whole scene, that’s all. Be patient with me, Lady Reporter.

  By the way, you still haven’t told me what you do for a living? You said you love your job, but you never told me what exactly that is? Though I’m guessing the clue is probably in your username.

  OK. So it was at this point I started to sit up and really pay attention. He was a widower, which proved he wasn’t commitment-phobic or afraid of marriage, plus he had a kid, which clearly said ‘family man’. Exactly the type statistically proven that goes on to remarry and live happily ever after. We once did a story on it at the radio station where I work and now I was thinking … could it be possible? On a lonely, ordinary, nothing-special Friday night, had I accidentally stumbled on the holy grail of online dating?

  This time, I was back to him after just half an hour spent watching House of Cards.

  Username: lady_reporter

  Oops! Sorry, serves me right for emailing and getting distracted by my salted caramel sauce at the same time.

  To answer your question, I’m an investigative journalist on a current affairs show here in Dublin. It’s a very full schedule and it’s demanding, but even on the bad days, when it’s 5 a.m. and I’m shivering in sub-zero temperatures outside Mountjoy Prison, covering some convicted drug baron’s release, I still wouldn’t swap it for anything.

  Got to dash, need my two hands to use the Magimix.

  I winced a bit at the sheer barefacedness of the lie, because basically all the above is just a teeny bit of an exaggeration. An investigative reporter on a current affairs show? I only bleeding wish. In actual fact I’m a lowly researcher and while my dream is one day to work on TV news, the sad reality is that the only gig I can get these days is on an afternoon phone-in show; one of those caller-dependent programmes where listeners ring in to give out about their social welfare being cut or else the price of the bin charges. And my job is to trawl through the papers and the Internet in the hope that some good, juicy, contentious news item will jump out at me, which our presenter then invites callers to ring in on and pitch their two cents’ worth about.

  But then I glanced back at my last post and thought shag it anyway. Besides, it wasn’t an out and out porker, just a tweaking and a slight embellishment of the truth, that was all. Huge difference. And everyone cheats the small stuff a wee bit online, don’t they? It’s a truth universally acknowledged that if a guy says he’s ‘chubby’, it means ‘morbidly obese’. Similarly, ‘fond of fun times’ means ‘swinger.’ Oh, and ‘enjoys a few drinks’ means ‘would gladly suck the alcohol out of a deodorant bottle’.

  Online it’s acceptable, I told myself. Everyone does it, and the way I look on it, this is just how you level out the playing field. And I’m sure this guy is no different. So maybe he’s a little older than I’m assuming, or maybe he’s not six feet tall, like he claims. But when it comes down to it, these are all relatively minor concerns, aren’t they?

  Yet again, he was back to me almost instantly.

  From: Guy_in_the_Sky

  Wow. Sure didn’t realize I was messaging a bona fide celebrity! What a fascinating job; sure as hell is more interesting than mine, I can tell you.

  PS I’m guessing you got a real pretty first name.

  And I’d sure love to know what it is.

  Username: lady_reporter

  Holly. It’s Holly.

  From: Guy_in_the_Sky

  A real pleasure to meet you, Holly from Ireland, even if it is only virtually. I’m Andy McCoy, at your service.

  Really gotta go; Logan’s throwing a football into my face right now. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I’m a commercial pilot for the good people over at Delta Airlines. I fly the transatlantic route mostly and travel over and back to Ireland regularly. Shannon mostly, but Dublin too. Friendliest people in the world, and boy, are the girls pretty.

  Over and out, Ma’am, for the moment at least.

  At your service,

  (Captain) Andy McCoy.

  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 n
ine 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 is, by then things had got pretty intense between Andy and me. There was a genuine connection between us that was actually starting to feel pretty special. And it wasn’t just superficial crap about liking the same movies and TV shows and music; it was so much deeper. It was almost like he and I just seemed to think exactly the same way about things.

  Day and night at that stage, he was sending me the most gorgeous, heart-warming messages and what else could I say? Having spent so long on my own, he’d started to win me over scarily fast. This was intoxicating stuff. Addictive. Impossible to let go of.

  ‘Yeah but just remember, you’ve only got his word for everything he’s telling you,’ Joy cautioned, tearing off a big lump of ciabatta bread and soaking up the dregs of arrabbiata sauce from round the edge of her pasta bowl.

  ‘And in the meantime, here’s you sitting in front of a screen, painting a ridiculous fantasy portrait of yourself to a complete and utter stranger, who could have served time in Guantanamo Bay for all you know.’

  ‘He’s not in Guantanamo Bay …’

  ‘He could be on death row …’

  ‘He’s not on death row.’

  ‘Or he could be a woman. Jesus, he could turn out to be a woman on death row.’

  ‘He’s a pilot, not a jailbird!’

  ‘Only according to himself,’ she said just a bit too triumphantly for my liking.

  ‘Look,’ I tell her placatingly, ‘I’ve met my fair share of idiots online and trust me, by now I’ve learned to filter out all the liars and chancers from the genuine article. Plus the big advantage of online dating is that at least this way I get to meet fellas from the comfort of home, with no make-up on and three-day-old manky hair, if I feel like it. Which you have to admit is a fairly major bonus.’

  But then Joy and I had been over this ground many, many times before and she knew exactly where I stood on this particular issue. Problem is, as I’d spelled out to her time and again, work was so all encompassing and time-consuming that at the end of another long day, I was too exhausted, not to mention stony broke, to shoehorn myself into an LBD, lash on the Mac Bronzer and start trawling the town on the lookout for someone available, thinking maybemaybemaybe.

  I had the energy for all that in my twenties thanks very much, but I’m at the grand old age of thirty-one now, and whether Joy liked it or not, the fact remains that Internet dating sites are to our generation what a Saturday night dance hall was to our grannies, circa 1960.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ I said firmly, ‘is that I’ve spent so long on these sites, I could practically teach a course in what to look out for, and equally what to run a mile from.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You absolutely certain about that?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Like you did with that git Steve last summer?’

  Shit. I’m temporarily silenced here, and what’s more, Joy knows it. Steve, you see, was a guy I met online who described himself as a ‘special needs teacher, hugely committed to his work’. A major turn-on, I figured, and all was progressing very nicely thanks until he told me he was ‘available to meet weekdays only, between nine and five’.

  And the reason? Because of his loyal and long-suffering wife back home who, he explained, he had to get back to, ‘so he could help out with the kids’. I’ll spare you the rest.

  Seems Joy’s not done with me though.

  ‘And let’s not forget that theatre director bloke, what’s-his-face …’

  ‘Elliot,’ I say crisply, finishing the sentence for her. Quicker by far, I reckon, to let her just get the bloody lecture over and done with.

  ‘Elliot, that’s the one. Who blatantly told you he was single, whereas—’

  I sigh here, knowing right well what’s coming next.

  ‘—He was simultaneously dating five other women at the same time,’ she says. ‘I distinctly remember you saying he made you feel like …’

  ‘Like I was almost auditioning for the part of his girlfriend,’ I finish the sentence for her. It’s the sad truth too. In fact, when I finally confronted him, the eejit actually said to me, ‘But you should be flattered! Just think of it like this: I’m looking for a partner, and you’ve made it to the callback stage.’

  Sweet suffering Jaysus, I only wish that were an exaggeration. But then that’s the one thing about having had a rough past romance-wise, I figure. It teaches you for the future. And with every mistake, you learn. You may well be humiliated, your heart might have been trampled on, but believe me, you learn.

  ‘So have you taken absolutely nothing from all this?’ said Joy, interrupting my thoughts.

  ‘OK, so you’ve made your point,’ I told her hotly, ‘but you’re wasting your time being so cynical right now, because this guy really does sound like the genuine article.’

  I couldn’t quite catch her response, as it was mumbled between mouthfuls of ciabatta, but it sounded a lot
like, ‘Worse gobshite, you.’

  ‘And have you forgotten that this “Andy” lives in the States?’ she added, changing tack with her mouth still stuffed. ‘So what are you going to do? Hop on a plane and fly transatlantic every time you’re going out on a date with him? Oh yeah, ’cos I can really see that one working out, alright.’

  ‘So the fact that we live on different continents is certainly an obstacle, I’ll grant you that much. But then you read his messages; he commutes back and forth to Ireland all the time! Besides, I’ve spent my whole life dating guys who lived within a one hundred mile radius of here and where has it got me? Alone on a Friday night and with no plans for the weekend, that’s where.’

  ‘Well call me old-fashioned, but I think telling downright porkers to someone you’ve just met isn’t exactly getting off on the right foot now, is it?’ she muttered darkly into her glass of wine.

  ‘I mean, look at the whoppers you’ve fed the poor eejit about yourself for a start. All that shite about being an investigative reporter on telly who loves her job …’

  ‘I do love my job …’ I trailed off, a bit weakly. Or rather, to be perfectly truthful, I used to.

  ‘You work as a freelance researcher on an afternoon radio show. And of course, it goes without saying that you’re bloody good at what you do and you work round the clock for them. But come on, half the time, that crowd at News FM don’t even pay you.’

  I couldn’t even answer her back, mainly because it’s actually true. The radio show where I work, or more correctly that I used to work on full-time as a researcher, had kept me ticking over nicely and all was well until last summer when, because of drastic cutbacks at News FM, my hours got radically slashed back to just a handful a week. So just to make bloody sure I still cling tight to those, I’ve essentially been doing exactly what I always did; turning up at work same as ever and energetically pitching stories to my producer, except for approximately half of the salary I used to be on.

  Now I’ve actively looked around for other full-time, better-paid research gigs – my ultimate dream is to work as a researcher on hard news stories, which is actually what I’m trained to do – current affairs is my passion; day and night, I’m on the Irish Times website, devouring the news. But sadly this just isn’t a good economic climate to be a freelance researcher in.