Page 44 of Crying in the Rain

His thumb hovered over the delete button, but he left it too late.

First new message.

This is Ms. Hennessy of the recently formed Ginger Appreciation Society…

16: Brave

Ade

Ade let themessage play, smiling, and then laughing out loud at ‘quoting reference Casper’. He saved the message and sat back in his chair, reconsidering his options.

He still didn’t want to call Kris. True, he had an issue with the affair, but he was projecting, and it wasn’t fair on either of them, particularly Kris. No, what he needed to do was clarify the situation, for his own peace of mind, and that meant talking to Shaunna, except he didn’t have her phone number. But he did know what she looked like, and she was distinctive enough, with her long, wavy, so incredibly beautiful red hair, that he’d be able to recognise her profile pic, as long as it was of her and not an avatar, although that would probably still have long red hair.

Ignoring the voice calling him a paranoid snoop, Ade went online and searched the social networks, first for ‘Kristian Johansson’, which brought up the professional profiles he’d already seen. Next, he tried ‘Kris Johansson’, which did the trick, but his profile was locked down and Ade couldn’t access Kris’s list of friends, although he felt his heart pumping that little bit faster at the sight of Kris’s profile photo. Not the cheesy fake smile on his pro shots, but the genuine article, radiating real happiness; Ade spent a moment studying it before he changed his search to ‘Shauna Johansson’. After ten minutes of going forwards and backwards between the list and the profiles of the seemingly infinite number of Shauna Johanssons in this world, Ade paused to rethink his approach.

The only other information he had was that Kris and Shaunna’s daughter was called Krissi, so he typed in ‘Krissi Johansson’ and was duly rewarded with a fully accessible profile of the stunning young woman from Kris’s phone pics—there really was no mistaking the similarity to her mother in facial features.

By this point feeling like a stalker for real, although he’d come this far so he might as well continue, Ade delved into Krissi’s friends list and scrolled down…a little more…and a little bit more…and there, finally, was her mum. Shaunna—with a double ‘n’—Hennessy.

“Hennessy. Of course!” Ade resisted berating himself for being an idiot and not realising sooner. The treasure hunt over, he clicked on ‘Send Message’.

Hi Shaunna. I hope you don’t mind me contacting you like this. Are you free to talk?

Before he had a chance to regret pressing ‘send’, the three dots appeared.

Hi Ade – at work. Give me your number and I’ll call you in 5.

He did that, and then he sat, repeatedly watching his phone screen darken and reactivating it, wishing they were doing this through text rather than talking, as there was no getting around the letter ‘R’, given the reason for making contact. Strangely, Ade was far less bothered by that than usual. Five minutes passed by, and then six; he was just at the point of convincing himself she wouldn’t call when his screen lit up by itself: unknown number. He answered the call with a cautious, “Hello?”

“Ade?”

“Yes.”

“Hiya. Are you OK?”

“Yes, thanks. Are you?”

“I’m fine, hun. Sorry about the voicemail. Kris was stressing, and he didn’t want to cause more problems for you.”

Ade laughed lightly. “Ginger Appreciation Society—I love it.”

“We should totally start one, if there isn’t one already.”

“We totally should,” Ade agreed. He hadn’t planned out what he wanted to say, but Shaunna must’ve been able to tell he was preparing to say something, as she stayed quiet. After a fairly lengthy pause, he found his tongue. “Kris told me a bit about how you ended up separated.”

“Right?”

Ade continued hesitantly, “And that he had an affair?”

“Ah. Well, it kind of wasn’t an affair. I mean, I didn’t know about it, but it wasn’t really behind my back, and he was a bit bonkers at the time. To be quite honest, I think Jack took advantage of the fact that Kris wasn’t able to think it through.”

“He could’ve said no,” Ade reasoned, fully aware he was playing devil’s advocate. Saying no to Jack Malton was only marginally easier than saying no to Fergus Campbell. “And if you were still together, then doesn’t that count as cheating?”

“Yes, but…not?” Shaunna paused, and Ade jumped in.

“I’m sorry. Kris told me you were separated when it happened—”

“But you wanted to check he was telling the truth,” she guessed.

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