Cyber Cinderella (27 page)

I looked toward Tracy’s office and fantasized about sticking her stupid job. Now that I no longer had to support George, I’d need less money. And I could always sort out the spare room in my flat and let it out. That would cover the mortgage.

I began to plan my very own publicity campaign. What were my strengths and qualities? What interested me? What was I good at? What did I want out of a career? I began to whittle away and scribble and type and Google prospective courses on the Internet. Ideas were beginning to form for the first time in months or even years. I could see a different future.

Chapter Seventeen

F
riday: different. The site was different and therefore so was my life. That was the order of things these days.

I had waited until 10 in the morning before taking a peek at my virtual reflection. The array of pap shots was the same as was the old text about me “cutting a swath” that had replaced the vanished death dates. It didn’t know that I’d soon be cutting out the PR industry from my life. It didn’t know everything about me. I was in control.

But the ticker was different. I almost didn’t notice at first amid the usual bumf about much-vaunted but never-delivered new sections of the site, the promised message boards and e-mail alerts. The words leaned limply across my screen like items on an ancient conveyor belt.

Then not words, characters: Chinese characters. My head leaned forward in interest.

They danced where the Latin alphabet had merely moved, but were soon replaced by an English translation.

That means “good morning and good wishes, people” in Chinese script. Izobel is an enthusiastic student of Mandarin, though she’s not been attending her classes lately!

True, I hadn’t been to a class for ages. What? I’m not learning Chinese and I don’t have six toes on one foot and I don’t breed chinchillas. I looked at the frowning girl in myriad photos on the site. That woman doesn’t know how to speak Chinese, but somebody thinks she does: Frank.

I had told Frank on the phone when I’d tried to investigate the possibility that he might be the site perp. It was a month or so ago, the day that I went into George’s office and rummaged through his e-mail in-box. It was a rubbish lie, but it was definitely Frank to whom I had told it. I knew that because he’d brought it up again when we’d been out in the pub, that time after seeing Elliot; he’d said I’d be able to order our food at the Chinese restaurant and I’d had to make some excuse about it being Sichuan.

Frank. All that “how would our life have been together,” those strange looks, those sentences half started. Surely not him. Frank, who had been so indignant and yet so incurious when I had told him there were things about me on the Internet. He never even inquired what site I meant when I had asked him if he’d been writing the things himself.

Frank. Let it please not be my first love, my first serious boyfriend and the only one who’s remained my friend. Frank, not Ivan, let it please be Frank. Let it please be neither.

Ivan. Did I tell him about the Chinese lessons? No, when would I have done, it’s not true. Could he have overheard a conversation with Maggie? He can tell Tracy about my Internet usage; can he read my e-mails? Yes, of course he can.

I did a search on my e-mail in- and out-boxes. “Chinese.” Nothing. Not that way, Ivan did not find out that way. Perhaps he never knew about my nonexistent Chinese lessons. Frank knew.

But Frank was in two of the pictures on the site. How had he taken the one of him and me having lunch? He had an accomplice. He must have paid someone to make the site so he’d pay someone to take photos too. That would explain why I never recognized the photographer. Poor Camilla, if she knew what her boyfriend was up to. Perhaps she’d need the services of her OnLove Internet dating after all.

It wasn’t Ivan. I felt a sensation that I had not experienced in over a week. I bubbled with that intangible, often frustrated, blurred emotion of having something to look forward to: a party, a hot date, a financial windfall, a delicious meal.

It couldn’t be Ivan. He was not behind the site, surely? Ivan was innocent. I looked around, expecting, hoping to see him arrive in the office at that moment. All I saw was Tracy, who glanced at my screen as she walked past.

Frank—it couldn’t be Frank, could it? He seemed so normal. Though he had not looked entirely happy with Camilla when we had lunched. And hadn’t he said something about her being a bully? Not a comment you’d make about your girlfriend if you were truly contented. Of course, the arguments at Maggie’s party on Wednesday night, the “I’m not in love with someone from your school.” Me and I didn’t know it. Maybe Camilla does know.

I had always had a soft spot for Frank, we’d stayed close, but I had no idea that he felt this way about me. Frank is in love with me. I would never have thought it, but he is. He’s besotted with me. I rock his world. Poor Frank, how awful that he is trying to get his academic treatises published and yet has such a terrible prose style. I’d never have thought that.

And I never would have guessed that he wanted us to be together. That would explain why he was so furious when I defined him as an ex-boyfriend of mine. Frank wishes we had never split up and he hates his bullying and bullish girlfriend. He was always ruder than he needed to have been about George. Something about his vitriol went beyond a platonic friend’s concern. Frank had been in love with me, that I had known all those years as we had spent whole weekends in bed together, pinging condoms at each other and plotting our future, but Frank still in love with me? I supposed you never got over your teenage loves, nor, it seemed, your teenage prose style.

Frank was undergoing the long dark night of the soul. I’d read about such things, people having third-life crises instead of midlife ones. He’d gone bonkers. Academia must do that to you; trying to be a media don must be very wearing.

Poor Frank.

Poor Ivan, that I had doubted him so. Innocent Ivan.

Evil Frank, the misery he had caused me. The death dates. The bastard.

Ivan versus Frank. I knew who I wanted to win.

My phone went.

“I’m innocent and I’ve got proof!” said that now-familiar voice, a slightly squeakier one than is strictly attractive on a man.

“Ivan,” I shrieked in a voice so high that only bats could hear it. “Ivan,” in a lower tone. I had been rocklike with Ivan, but now I was fluttery. He was no longer the enemy, but a boy I had kissed and now fancied and was engaged in the awkwardness of telephone calls with. “Yes, I know.” Innocent Ivan. “Well, at least I think I know. I assume so.”

“How do you know?”

“The Chinese thing.”

“What are you talking about? What Chinese thing?”

“On the site. What are you talking about? How else are you innocent?”

“I’ve found the postcode of whoever registered the site. We know where they live, well, more or less; it’s got to be one of about twenty houses with that postcode. And it’s not my house.”

“What? How?”

“I’ll explain when I see you. I can see you, can’t I?”

“Yes,” I cried. “I suppose so,” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘I suppose so’? Won’t your hectic schedule of fashion launches and restaurant openings allow it? Got a hot date with a media type?”

“Ha, ha. I said I suppose so because I still don’t know whether I can trust you.”

He sighed.

“This postcode,” I asked. “Is it in London?”

“Yes.”

I felt the phone receiver tremble against my ear. “Where?”

“West Fourteen. Shepherd’s Bush.”

“Oh,” I said.

Frank didn’t live in Shepherd’s Bush.

“How do we know it’s not a fake one?”

“We don’t, but there’s only one way to find out. Are you free at lunchtime?” he asked.

“Yes, I am.” I was badly dressed and hadn’t washed my hair that morning. If only dry shampoo actually worked but instead it makes you look like you’re wearing a dandruffy old wig. Could I at least wash my fringe in the sink and then fluff it up in the hand dryer? “Yes, let’s meet then, Ivan. Thank you. For everything.”

*

I nipped out midmorning and bought a wildly expensive chiffon top that was just on the right side of see-through: a glimpse of the curves below rather than girl band member about to go solo. It was an appropriate compromise between dressy and casual, perfect for a lunchtime first date slash investigative showdown and a wonderful sage color. I supposed I should be saving my money for potential unemployment, but I had that binge-before-a-diet feeling.

I looked in the mirror and made a pouty face as I admired it. The office toilet’s liquid soap had done a reasonable job on my hair, rendering it no longer greasy, when it actually changes color.

I knew how I wanted to look for Ivan but I wasn’t sure how I was to behave or what we were to do. We had the postcode, or what we assumed was the postcode, who knew whether it wasn’t just another red herring or false clue.

*

Ivan arrived at my offices punctually, ready for lunch. I looked through to the foyer where he stood and reveled in the seconds that I had to examine him. How could I have ever thought him unattractive? Staring at him then, he seemed embarrassingly handsome, out-of-my-league handsome, film-star handsome. If we went out together, jealous girls would think us a mismatch and consider him fair game as I didn’t deserve him. Girls did that. I had done that. They get angry when they see ugly old men with gorgeous young women, but they are even more offended should they see a plain girl with an exceptional male.

I felt his looks almost smite my eyes. I searched his face for imperfection, but instead saw that long, straight aquiline nose, that thick shiny hair, that mouth; I wanted to kiss that mouth. I appraised the broad shoulders and slim body where I had been used to seeing George’s slim shoulders and broad body. He was IT-boy indeed.

I shook my head and stood up tall. He wasn’t innocent yet. I had to try to remember that. I wasn’t sure that I fancied him. I had to stop just getting off with people and then working out whether we were compatible afterward. He was systems administrator man to whom I had never given a second glance, after all; my mind was just addled by kisses, sites and splits. I couldn’t fall for a techie, I had to remember that. I hadn’t slept with him yet. I was enjoying being single, wasn’t I, I didn’t want to meet anybody else right now.

He turned to me and grinned. We did a sort of break-dance around one another as we worked out what greeting to offer. We settled on kissing each other’s cheeks, a compromise we had not made before. Before it was all or nothing. We giggled awkwardly. He wore aftershave, another unfamiliarity. I had doused myself in perfume. I had put on lipstick, blotted so thoroughly with tissue paper that it almost didn’t exist, but left a stain upon my lips that only I could be aware of.

“Nice top,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. We stared at each other and made our way to a restaurant with a terrace. It was one of those rare London days where things go right without trying. The sun was shining and yet we got a table outside. The waiters were efficient and our beers cold. The site and the office receded. We stared at one another again.

“Tell me how you got the postcode. And why I should believe you,” I said.

“And what’s this Chinese thing you’re on about?”

“I asked first.”

“All right.” He drew breath and I felt one of Ivan’s explanations coming on. Oh dear. “I had to lie.”

“You lied? You who have a code of professional conduct, who won’t do anything remotely illegal?”

“Yes, I lied and I gave false information. There, are you proud of yourself? I couldn’t see any other way of disabusing you of the ridiculous idea that I might be behind the site.”

I blushed.

“As if,” he said and I reddened some more. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

I mumbled something that approached an apology.

“I kept on looking at all the information we had gathered and hoping to find some sort of clue. I even went through every line of code to see if there was anything more embedded there.”

“Was there?”

“Only the occasional ‘Izobel rocks’ and other such nonsense, along with more references to
Dune.
Nothing scandalous or useful. There was nothing else for me to go on, except what we’d gathered already, which was some false names, a false PO box number and the names of a couple of domain name registrars.”

“Remind me.”

“Registrars—the companies that register the domain names and URLs of the sites.”

“Not the person from
Dune
?”

“No, that’s the registrant.”

“Of course.” I remembered now why I could find him so irritating.

“There was no point pursuing the registrar in the States, but I reckoned that the two-bit company that had registered the co dot uk name in this country might be a little more open.”

“How did you know they were two-bit?”

“I’d never heard of them and their own company Web site looked like it had been done by a myopic teenager in his bedroom. It was rubbish.”

“Not like izobelbrannigan dot com,” I boasted.

“Indeed.” He had finished his beer already and ordered another. “From directory inquiries,” he continued, “I managed to get a telephone number for e-z-webbysolutions…”

“The registrars,” I commented, flaunting the word.

“Yes, the registrars of the izobelbrannigan dot co dot uk domain name, the British one. So I rang them up and it was my good fortune to talk to a girl in customer services who was both bored and stupid.”

“As is often the case.”

“But unusually, I wanted someone bored and stupid. I said to her that I was the registrant for the domain name izobelbrannigan dot co dot uk and that I was furious that they had been giving out my address to junk mail companies. She of course says, ‘But we don’t give addresses of our customers out to third parties.’”

“Reading this off an answers-to-frequently-asked-questions list she’s got in front of her,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“So?”

“I get really angry, really apoplectic. It was quite easy, I just thought about how pissed off I was that you should have accused me of making the damned site and I found myself to be enraged.”