At First Sight Hannah Sunderland (free e books to read online txt) 📖

almost kisses. Just because he’d told me that he wasn’t married, didn’t mean that that was the case. I’d had several moments over the last two weeks when all I’d been seeing in my mind’s eye were stills of him with his beautiful, Victoria’s Secret model wife who’d have a name like Cara, their two perfect children playing on the carpet with the Labrador beside the log fire. Charlie smiling as he withdrew a roast from the Aga and placed it on the perfectly laid, polished oak table.

Another option was that he was dead. What if he’d never made it home after that night of butchered gummy bears and tentative touches? What if he was lying, unidentified, in a morgue somewhere, heading for nothing but years as a John Doe in a freezer, ice crystals forming on those thick dark lashes? All of these theories were plausible, if not likely, but all of them had one single purpose: to not allow myself to think about the most probable reason for it all. What if he just didn’t want to talk to me? I’d gone onto Facebook and searched for him after four days of radio silence, but his profile was private and I didn’t want to dignify his ghosting, if that was what this was, with any sign that it was bothering me.

His profile picture was one of him standing on a hill, bathed in sunshine. He looked so different, slightly heavier than he was now, his stubble and long hair stripped away in favour of a clean shave and slickly styled quiff. He beamed into the camera with a cocky look of excitement in his eyes, one that I hadn’t seen there in my time of knowing him, which, granted, had not been that long. The only other picture I could see was one of him and a group of friends. They looked like your typical yuppy bankers with ostentatiously sized watches and slip-on loafers over sockless feet. Charlie, although looking a little out of place, seemed to be enjoying himself. His smile wide, his eyes bright. He looked like a stranger.

‘Well, which do you think it is?’ I asked, pushing my head through the hole of a turtleneck jumper, like I was being born all over again, and pulling my hair out from inside the collar. It was instantly hit by that static frizz that is impossible to get rid of once it happens and I quickly checked the damage in the camera of my phone. ‘Dead, married or ghosting me?’

‘Honestly, Nelly, I don’t know,’ Mum said through the screen. ‘I don’t know which one you want me to say.’ She was in her office, typing something into her computer with rapid fingers, not even glancing down at the keyboard.

‘The one that you think is the truth,’ I replied a little tetchily.

She sighed, but didn’t stop typing. ‘Honestly, love, I think it might be that he’s just a prick. One of those … what do you young people call them these days? Fuckboys. That’s it.’

‘Mum!’ I exclaimed.

‘What? You asked what I think and that’s what it is. I think he tried his luck with you and then when you didn’t hand it out on the first night or the second, he gave up on it and I’m proud of you for that. The Coleman women are anything but easy.’ She stopped typing and scrunched up her nose. ‘Well, apart from that one, single, solitary time, when you were conceived. Apart from that, we are chaste women.’

‘That’s honestly not what it was like, Mum.’

‘Well, maybe he’s just a little bit unhinged then? You did meet him via a mental health phone line.’

‘That doesn’t mean he’s crazy, Mum. People who feel overwhelmed at times aren’t all sitting in the corners of rooms, rocking back and forth in straitjackets, you know? And anyway, he was calling to talk about his uncle, not himself.’

She sighed. ‘Look, you gave him a chance, two even. I’d call it quits now.’

‘But I really liked him.’ I groaned. ‘He’s just so flaky. He said he’d text me soon, he promised. It’s been two weeks.’

‘Well, have you tried to contact him? It’s the twenty-first century, you know. Women aren’t expected to wait for the men anymore.’

‘I’ve texted him three times and sent him a couple of memes and he’s ignored every single one of my messages. He’s read them – I can see that – he just doesn’t bother to respond.’

She sucked her teeth and looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose that two weeks isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things.’

‘It is when you don’t have a job and you’ve already disappeared once already. Being ghosted has genuine detrimental psychological effects, you know. There’s been articles on it.’

‘He doesn’t have a job?’

‘He’s between jobs,’ I said, looking away from the camera to hide from her withering stare. Why was I defending him? What was wrong with me?

‘And what is his profession?’ she asked. She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair.

‘He’s a make-up artist.’

‘A make-up artist? Like the ones in MAC? Because you know that they tend to, more often than not, be …’

‘He’s not gay, Mum, but way to stereotype. No, he’s not one of those make-up artists anyway. He’s one of the ones that make fake noses out of silicone or make you look like your arm’s just been sawn off.’ I grabbed a brush from my makeshift vanity table – a spare plank of laminate flooring propped up with books at either end – and gently combed it through my hair to try and undo the damage the statically charged jumper had done.

‘What a charming job.’ Her nostrils flared a little before she spoke again. ‘Is he any good?’

‘I have no idea. That would involve him actually divulging some personal information, wouldn’t it, and that’s not something he seems capable of doing.’ I carried on dragging the brush through my hair, harder and harder, until my scalp began