Free Minnie Chase Makes a Mistake by Helen MacArthur Page A

wanted to hurt him.
    ‘Who? Vicki ? No!’ 
    Vicki. 
    It was like taking a bullet. Vicki. Minnie stopped pacing the room and collapsed heavily on the bed, pulling her knees up to her chest as though this might stop her heart falling through the floor.
    Vicki! She didn’t want the woman to have a name. This made the situation a thousand times worse. Vicki was now a rhythmic beat inside Minnie’s head. She was a real person with a pulse, probably a high-powered job, on-trend wardrobe, killer heels and, as witnessed firsthand by Minnie, incredibly beautiful breasts and buttocks. Minnie had no problem imagining an appropriate nickname: Licky Vicki. The lusty woman who hungrily devoured other people’s boyfriends and husbands and always came back for more. 
    Minnie almost dropped the phone. She frantically wondered, what had happened to brief encounters of the blind kind – distorted and blurred liaisons through an excessive consumption of alcohol? The kind where no one remembers a name, how it happened, or even what happened.
    Minnie lay down on the bed and wished she hadn’t mentioned San Francisco. It would have done James George good to think she was staying just around the corner with Angie. She needed to have the element of surprise on her side.
    ‘Minnie, look, it was nothing,’ explained James George.
    ‘It was definitely not nothing,’ she snapped back, heaving herself upright. There was no disguising anger or the shakiness in her voice. 
    ‘Okay… okay… what I’m trying to say is  that… well… she’s… we… you know… we are nothing. Not you and me,’ he added hastily. ‘Me and Vicki.’
    ‘Stop it,’ snapped Minnie. ‘Bloody hell! Stop saying her name!’ She clutched her side. Perhaps an ulcer had burst or even her appendix. The practical side of her head quickly checked to see if she had remembered to sort out transatlantic healthcare or would she rack up thousands of dollars of debt as she wasted away in a San Franciscan hospital. Cause of death: suppurating wound from a butchered heart. 
    Minnie filled the silence with a thousand questions inside her head. She was one breath away from an interrogation conversation that would surpass MI5 security levels. She wanted to know everything: where did he meet her; was he drunk; who introduced them; how long had he known her; did she have a job; was she a trustafarian; did she have less athletic interests; did she have beautiful friends; a marvellous sense of humour; in what order did she put on her limited number of clothes in the morning? The questions piled up in her head in random heaps threatening to coalesce into a migraine. Once she started asking these questions, she knew she would never stop. And why did he take so long to pick up the phone? demanded the insistent, hurt voice in her head.
    James George broke the silence. ‘Minnie, please come home. We need to sort this out.’
    ‘I have… stuff to do. Work stuff,’ stuttered Minnie.
    ‘Let’s move forward.’
    ‘To where? Our wedding?’ Minnie shouted, her voice clattered around the motel room. The cheap furniture tried and failed to absorb the sound and she sounded loud and harsh. 
    ‘Minnie, I just made a mistake.’ He sounded mildly exasperated, like he had seasoned his food with sugar instead of salt. Like he could really do without the hassle.
    He didn’t even know she had lost her job. Soulmate to stranger in such a short space of time.
    ‘No, I made a mistake,’ screamed Minnie, uncharacteristically raging. ‘I made a mistake the first moment I met you.’
    She disconnected the phone with a vigorous punch using her thumb, wishing she was the kind of person who could throw a television set out of a window or trash the room. 

 
     
     
     
     
     
    6
    Internet chatter
     
    Minnie sat quietly, tense and upset after having disconnected the call. The conversation with James George replayed over and over inside her head. She could still hear his voice whispering in