Voicemail from the Pro Shop

My name is Mack Cosgrove, I'm forty-five, and I run the golf side of Dorothy Finch's cider mill here in Pembrokeshire. Nine holes cut through the orchards, one pro shop, and more drama per square foot than anywhere I've ever worked. Which is saying something, because I used to teach at a golf club on the south coast where two members had a fistfight over a buggy.

So it's Sunday afternoon and Dorothy Finch, sixty-nine, choir director, owner of the whole mill, is standing in my pro shop as a woman whose house is on fire. Because her corkscrew is gone and tonight is the big tasting.

"Mack," she says, "that corkscrew has opened every tasting we've had for thirty years. Where is it?"

I don't know. I've looked under the counter, behind the till, in the lost-and-found box that's mostly single gloves. Nothing.

And that's how I end up standing in the pro shop at 2:15 on a Sunday, leaving a voicemail for my ex, Jennie Anthony, forty-three, voice actor, the woman I dated for two years and then dumped by forgetting her birthday. Twice, technically, because I also forgot the makeup dinner I promised.

Her phone rings four times and then her machine picks up. Here we go.

"Jennie, it's Mack. Don't delete this, I know you delete these, but listen. Dorothy's lost her corkscrew. The silver one, the good one, the one she uses every tasting. It's not in the shop, I've turned the place over. And I remember you had it in your hand Saturday night after the choir party, you were opening that bottle of elderflower thing, so I'm betting it went home in your coat pocket or your handbag or whatever. Can you check? Ring me back. Also her spare is missing too, which is weird, unless you took both, which, knowing you, maybe. Anyway. Ring me."

I hang up and Dorothy gives me that look. The one that says she knows exactly what she's doing, throwing the two of us at the same errand.

"You and Jennie will sort this out," she says. "Between the two of you, surely one corkscrew can be located."

It's not about the corkscrew with Dorothy. It's never about the corkscrew with Dorothy.

Ten minutes later my phone buzzes. A photo. Jennie's car boot, and it's a war zone. Scripts everywhere, a thermos, a hi-vis vest for some reason, and there, half-buried under a stack of paper, a corkscrew. Then a second buzz. A voice note.

"Mack, it's Jennie, don't panic, there's a corkscrew in my boot under the Dickens I'm recording. But before you get smug, that one's mine. Dorothy's good one I left on the counter at the pharmacy yesterday, the one in town, when I bought plasters. You forget everything. Shall I remind you of the birthday? Shall I?"

I dial her straight away and get her machine again. Of course. She's recording, she always has her phone on silent, she lives in that barn with a microphone.

"Jennie. It's Mack again. Right, so I'm already at the chemist's in town, the one on the square, and would you believe it, it's shut. Shut on a Sunday, the whole town shuts on a Sunday, I don't know why I live here. So I'm getting in the car and driving to Maenclochog, the pharmacy out there stays open till five. If you've got Dorothy's spare, bring it to the tasting, I'll get the good one back from wherever you lost it. And I did not forget where I left mine, thank you, I remember exactly, I just choose not to dwell on it. Ring me. Or don't. You never ring me. It's always texts and voice notes with you, like a phone call costs money."

I hang up. Dorothy has made herself a cup of tea in my shop and is watching me like I'm television.

"You two were good together," she says. "Very entertaining."

"We were exhausting, Dorothy. That's what she said when she left. Entertaining is different."

Then my email pings. Jennie, because she can't talk while she's recording, has sent a photo. Her in the driver's seat of her car, that smirk on her face, the one I used to call the smirk, the one that got me into more trouble than any smile ever has. Caption says: I'm already halfway there.

Halfway there. She's recording at the mill barn, which means she's been in the barn twenty minutes ago, which means the pharmacy in town is closer to her than Maenclochog is to me. Unless she means halfway to Maenclochog. Which she can't be. Can she?

I text back one word. HOW?

She replies in under a minute, still no talking, just thumbs: Left the barn during the lunch break. Left it at the town pharmacy yesterday, which I own up to, as a responsible adult would. Already driving. You talk too much, Cosgrove. Even in voicemails.

So now it's a race. A corkscrew race across Pembrokeshire on a Sunday, and I'm in the golf cart bay getting the van out and Dorothy is cheering like I've won her the pools.

And then the voicemails start coming, because she can talk in the car, she just can't talk in the barn. First one lands while I'm pulling onto the road.

"Mack. Right, while I've got you on my commute, let's settle something. Last time. You keep saying I forgot your birthday. I didn't forget it. I was recording the back half of a thriller that week, fourteen hours a day, and I sent you a message at eleven at night, which I admit is poor form, but it was sent. You, however, have never once listened to my samples. Not one. I sent you the audiobook demos, the good ones, the ones that got me the thriller gig, and you said, and I quote, sounded nice. Sounded nice! Three years of training and a decade of work and I got sounded nice."

So I ring her back and leave one. "Jennie. The samples were fine. Great, even. But you want me to sit and listen to forty minutes of you reading shipping forecasts? I've got a course to run. And the birthday thing stands, you were a week late. A week. There's late and there's a week. Also I'm passing the turnoff for Llys y Fran and you're not ahead of me yet, which means I'm winning."

She comes back fast. "Winning? You're not winning, you're lost. Take the second left, not the first, the first goes nowhere. And fine, let's say we're both rubbish. You didn't listen, I was late. What do we do about it, Cosgrove? If I win this race, what do I get?"

That's the question that changes the whole afternoon, and she knows it. She knows exactly what she's doing, asking that with her voice all warm from the car speakers.

"If you win," I say into the phone, because now I'm leaving voicemails while driving and she's leaving them while driving and we're basically having an argument through the phone company, "you get your corkscrew back without me saying anything smug. Which will be hard for me."

"And if you win?"

"If I win, you listen to my putting tutorial. The one I recorded. All twenty minutes of it."

There's a pause on the line, and then she laughs, and I hear it properly this time, not through a machine, because she's actually rung me, the first real call of the day, and her voice is right there in my ear.

"Deal," she says. "And Mack? I can see your car in my mirror."

I look up. I can't see her car. She's lying. She's absolutely lying.

"You cannot," I say.

"Can so. Purple Golf, indicator's sticking, by the way, you should get that looked at."

I'm not in a purple Golf. I'm in a grey van.