فصل 02

2

Ashok was sorting huge bales of newspapers into numbered piles as I walked back in. He straightened up with a smile. ‘Well, good day, Miss Louisa. And how was your first morning in New York?’

‘Amazing. Thank you.’

‘Did you hum “Let The River Run” as you walked down the street?’

I stopped in my tracks. ‘How did you know?’

‘Everyone does that when they first come to Manhattan. Hell, even I do it some mornings and I don’t look nothing like Melanie Griffith.’

‘Are there no grocery stores around here? I had to walk about a million miles to get a coffee. And I have no idea where to buy milk.’

‘Miss Louisa, you should have told me. C’mere.’ He gestured behind his counter and opened a door, beckoning me into a dark office, its scruffiness and cluttered décor at odds with the brass and marble outside. On a desk sat a bank of security screens and among them an old television and a large ledger, along with a mug, some paperback books and an array of photographs of beaming, toothless children. Behind the door stood an ancient fridge. ‘Here. Take this. Bring me one later.’

‘Do all doormen do this?’

‘No doormen do this. But the Lavery is different.’

‘So where do people do their shopping?’

He pulled a face. ‘People in this building don’t do shopping, Miss Louisa. They don’t even think about shopping. I swear half of them think that food arrives by magic, cooked, on their tables.’ He glanced behind him, lowering his voice. ‘I will wager that eighty per cent of the women in this building have not cooked a meal in five years. Mind you, half the women in this building don’t eat meals, period.’

When I stared at him he shrugged. ‘The rich do not live like you and me, Miss Louisa. And the New York rich … well, they do not live like anyone.’

I took the carton of milk.

‘Anything you want you have it delivered. You’ll get used to it.’

I wanted to ask him about Ilaria and Mrs Gopnik, who apparently wasn’t Mrs Gopnik, and the family I was about to meet. But he was looking away from me up the hallway.

‘Well, good morning to you, Mrs De Witt!’

‘What are all these newspapers doing on the floor? The place looks like a wretched newsstand.’ A tiny old woman tutted fretfully at the piles of New York Times and Wall Street Journal that he was still unpacking. Despite the hour, she was dressed as if for a wedding, in a raspberry pink duster coat, a red pillbox hat and huge tortoiseshell sunglasses that obscured her tiny, wrinkled face. At the end of a lead a wheezy pug, with bulbous eyes, gazed at me belligerently (at least I thought it was gazing at me: it was hard to be sure as its eyes veered off in different directions). I stooped to help Ashok clear the newspapers from her path but as I bent down the dog leapt at me with a growl so that I sprang back, almost falling over the New York Times.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ came the quavering, imperious voice. ‘And now you’re upsetting the dog!’

My leg had felt the whisper of the pug’s teeth. My skin sang with the near contact.

‘Please make sure this – this debris is cleared by the time we return. I have told Mr Ovitz again and again that the building is going downhill. And, Ashok, I’ve left a bag of refuse outside my door. Please move it immediately or the whole corridor will smell of stale lilies. Goodness knows who sends lilies as a gift. Funereal things. Dean Martin!’

Ashok tipped his cap. ‘Certainly, Mrs De Witt.’ He waited until she’d gone. Then he turned and peered at my leg.

‘That dog tried to bite me!’

‘Yeah. That’s Dean Martin. Best stay out of his way. He’s the most bad-tempered resident in this building, and that’s saying something.’ He bent back towards his papers, heaving the next lot onto the desk, then pausing to shoo me away. ‘Don’t you worry about these, Miss Louisa. They’re heavy and you’ve got enough on your plate with them upstairs. Have a nice day now.’

He was gone before I could ask him what he meant.

The day passed in a blur. I spent the rest of the morning organizing my little room, cleaning the bathroom, putting up pictures of Sam, my parents, Treena and Thom to make it feel more like home. Nathan took me to a diner near Columbus Circle where I ate from a plate the size of a car tyre and drank so much strong coffee that my hands vibrated as we walked back. Nathan pointed out places that might be useful to me – this bar stayed open late, that food truck did really good falafel, this was a safe ATM for getting cash … My brain spun with new images, new information. Some time mid-afternoon I felt suddenly woozy and leaden-footed, so Nathan walked me back to the apartment, his arm through mine. I was grateful for the quiet, dark interior of the building, for the service lift that saved me from the stairs.

‘Take a nap,’ he advised, as I kicked off my shoes. ‘I wouldn’t sleep more than an hour, though, or your body clock will be even more messed up.’

‘What time did you say the Gopniks will be back?’ My voice had started to slur.

‘Usually around six. It’s three now so you’ve got time. Go on, get some shut-eye. You’ll feel human again.’

He closed the door and I sank gratefully back on the bed. I was about to sleep, but realized suddenly that if I waited I wouldn’t be able to speak to Sam, and reached for my laptop, briefly lifted from my torpor. Are you there? I typed into the messenger app.

A few minutes later, with a little bubbling sound, the picture expanded and there he was, back in the railway carriage, his huge body hunched towards the screen. Sam. Paramedic. Man-mountain. All-too-new-boyfriend. We grinned at each other like loons.

‘Hey, gorgeous! How is it?’

‘Good!’ I said. ‘I could show you my room but I might bump the walls as I turn the screen.’ I twisted the laptop so that he could see the full glory of my little bedroom.

‘Looks good to me. It’s got you in it.’

I stared at the grey window behind him. I could picture it exactly, the rain thrumming on the roof of the railway carriage, the glass that steamed comfortingly, the wood, the damp and the hens outside sheltering under a dripping wheelbarrow. Sam was gazing at me, and I wiped my eyes, wishing suddenly that I had remembered to put on some make-up.

‘Did you go into work?’

‘Yeah. They reckon I’ll be good to start back on full duties in a week. Got to be fit enough to lift a body without busting my stitches.’ He instinctively placed his hand on his abdomen, where the gunshot had hit him just a matter of weeks previously – the routine callout that had nearly killed him, and cemented our relationship – and I felt something unbalancing and visceral.

‘I wish you were here,’ I said, before I could stop myself.

‘Me too. But you’re on day one of your adventure and it’s going to be great. And in a year you will be sitting here –’

‘Not there,’ I interrupted. ‘In your finished house.’

‘In my finished house,’ he said. ‘And we’ll be looking at your pictures on your phone and I’ll be secretly thinking, Oh, God, there she goes, whanging on about her time in New York again.’

‘So will you write to me? A letter full of love and longing, sprayed with lonely tears?’

‘Ah, Lou. You know I’m not really a writer. But I’ll call. And I’ll be there with you in just four weeks.’

‘Right,’ I said, as my throat constricted. ‘Okay. I’d better grab a nap.’

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of you.’

‘In a disgusting porny way? Or in a romantic Nora Ephron-y kind of way?’

‘Which of those is not going to get me into trouble?’ He smiled. ‘You look good, Lou,’ he said, after a minute. ‘You look … giddy.’

‘I feel giddy. I feel like a really, really tired person who also slightly wants to explode. It’s a little confusing.’ I put my hand on the screen, and after a second he put his up to meet it. I could imagine it on my skin.

‘Love you.’ I still felt a little self-conscious saying it.

‘You too. I’d kiss the screen but I suspect you’d only get a view of my nasal hair.’

I shut my computer, smiling, and within seconds I was asleep.

Somebody was shrieking in the corridor. I woke groggily, sweatily, half suspecting I was in a dream, and pushed myself upright. There really was a woman screaming on the other side of my door. A thousand thoughts sped through my addled brain, headlines about murders, New York and how to report a crime. What was the number you were meant to call? Not 999 like England. I racked my brain and came up with nothing.

‘Why should I? Why should I sit there and smile when those witches are insulting me? You don’t even hear half of what they say! You are a man! It is like you wear blinkers on your ears!’

‘Darling, please calm down. Please. This is not the time or the place.’

‘There is never a time or place! Because there is always someone here! I have to buy my own apartment just so I have somewhere to argue with you!’

‘I don’t understand why you have to get so upset about it all. You have to give it –’

‘No!’

Something smashed on the hardwood floor. I was fully awake now, my heart racing.

There was a weighty silence.

‘Now you’re going to tell me this was a family heirloom.’

A pause.

‘Well, yes, yes, it was.’

A muffled sob. ‘I don’t care! I don’t care! I’m choking in your family history! You hear me? Choking!’

‘Agnes, darling. Not in the corridor. Come on. We can discuss this later.’

I sat very still on the edge of my bed.

There was more muffled sobbing, then silence. I waited, then stood and tiptoed to the door, pressing my ear against it. Nothing. I looked at the clock – four forty-six p.m.

I washed my face and changed briskly into my uniform. I brushed my hair, then let myself quietly out of my bedroom and walked around the corner of the corridor.

And I stopped.

Further up the corridor beside the kitchen, a young woman was curled into a foetal ball. An older man had his arms wrapped around her, his back pressed against the wood panelling. He was almost seated, one knee up and one extended, as if he had caught her and been brought down by the weight. I couldn’t see her face, but a long, slim leg stuck out inelegantly from a navy dress and a sheet of blonde hair obscured her face. Her knuckles were white from where she was holding on to him.

I stared and gulped, and he looked up and saw me. I recognized Mr Gopnik.

‘Not now. Thank you,’ he said, softly.

My voice sticking in my throat, I backed swiftly into my room and closed the door, my heart thumping in my ears so loudly that I was sure they must be able to hear it.

I stared, unseeing, at the television for the next hour, an image of those entwined people burned onto the inside of my head. I thought about texting Nathan but I wasn’t sure what I would say. Instead, at five fifty-five, I walked out, tentatively making my way towards the main apartment through the connecting door. I passed a vast empty dining room, what looked like a guest bedroom and two closed doors, following the distant murmur of conversation, my feet soft on the parquet floor. Finally I reached the drawing room and stopped just outside the open doorway.

Mr Gopnik was in a window seat, on the telephone, the sleeves of his pale blue shirt rolled up and one hand resting behind his head. He motioned me in, still talking on the phone. To my left a blonde woman – Mrs Gopnik? – sat on a rose-coloured antique sofa tapping restlessly on an iPhone. She appeared to have changed her clothes and I was momentarily confused. I waited awkwardly until he ended his call and stood, I noticed, with a little wince of effort. I took another step towards him, to save him coming further, and shook his hand. It was warm, his grip soft and strong. The young woman continued to tap at her phone.

‘Louisa. Glad you got here okay. I trust you have everything you need.’

He said it in the way people do when they don’t expect you to ask for anything.

‘It’s all lovely. Thank you.’

‘This is my daughter, Tabitha. Tab?’

The girl raised a hand, offering the hint of a smile, before turning back to her phone.

‘Please excuse Agnes not being here to meet you. She’s gone to bed for an hour. Splitting headache. It’s been a long weekend.’

A vague weariness shadowed his face, but it was gone within a moment. Nothing in his manner betrayed what I had seen less than two hours previously.

He smiled. ‘So … tonight you’re free to do as you please, and from tomorrow morning you will accompany Agnes wherever she wants to go. Your official title is “assistant”, and you’ll be there to support her in whatever she needs to do in the day. She has a busy schedule – I’ve asked my assistant to loop you in on the family calendar and you’ll get emailed with any updates. Best to check at around ten p.m. – that’s when we tend to make late changes. You’ll meet the rest of the team tomorrow.’

‘Great. Thank you.’ I noted the word ‘team’ and had a brief vision of footballers trekking through the apartment.

‘What’s for dinner, Dad?’ Tabitha spoke as if I wasn’t there.

‘I don’t know, darling. I thought you said you were going out.’

‘I’m not sure I can face going back across town tonight. I might just stay.’

‘Whatever you want. Just make sure Ilaria knows. Louisa, do you have any questions?’

I tried to think of something useful to say.

‘Oh, and Mom told me to ask you if you’d found that little drawing. The Mir?.’

‘Sweetheart, I’m not going over that again. The drawing belongs here.’

‘But Mom said she chose it. She misses it. You never even liked it.’

‘That’s not the point.’

I shifted my weight between my feet, not sure if I had been dismissed.

‘But it is the point, Dad. Mom misses something terribly and you don’t even care for it.’

‘It’s worth eighty thousand dollars.’

‘Mom doesn’t care about the money.’

‘Can we discuss this later?’

‘You’ll be busy later. I promised Mom I would sort this out.’

I took a surreptitious step backwards.

‘There’s nothing to sort. The settlement was finalized eighteen months ago. It was all dealt with then. Oh, darling, there you are. Are you feeling better?’

I looked round. The woman who had just entered the room was strikingly beautiful, her face free of make-up and her pale blonde hair scraped back into a loose knot. Her high cheekbones were lightly freckled and the shape of her eyes suggested a Slavic heritage. I guessed she was about the same age as me. She padded barefoot over to Mr Gopnik and kissed him, her hand trailing across the back of his neck. ‘Much better, thank you.’

‘This is Louisa,’ he said.

She turned to me. ‘My new ally,’ she said.

‘Your new assistant,’ said Mr Gopnik.

‘Hello, Louisa.’ She reached out a slender hand and shook mine. I felt her eyes run over me, as if she were working something out, and then she smiled, and I couldn’t help but smile in return.

‘Ilaria has made your room nice?’ Her voice was soft and held an Eastern European lilt.

‘It’s perfect. Thank you.’

‘Perfect? Oh, you are very easily pleased. That room is like a broom cupboard. Anything you don’t like you tell us and we will make it nice. Won’t we, darling?’

‘Didn’t you used to live in a room even smaller than that, Agnes?’ said Tab, not looking up from her iPhone. ‘I’m sure Dad told me you used to share with about fifteen other immigrants.’

‘Tab.’ Mr Gopnik’s voice was a gentle warning.

Agnes took a little breath and lifted her chin. ‘Actually, my room was smaller. But the girls I shared with were very nice. So it was no trouble at all. If people are nice, and polite, you can bear anything, don’t you think, Louisa?’

I swallowed. ‘Yes.’

Ilaria walked in and cleared her throat. She was wearing the same polo shirt and dark trousers, covered by a white apron. She didn’t look at me. ‘Dinner is ready, Mr Gopnik,’ she said.

‘Is there any for me, Ilaria darling?’ said Tab, her hand resting along the back of the sofa. ‘I think I might stay over.’

Ilaria’s expression was filled with instant warmth. It was as if a different person had appeared in front of me. ‘Of course, Miss Tabitha. I always cook extra on Sundays in case you decide to stay.’

Agnes stood in the middle of the room. I thought I saw a flicker of panic cross her face. Her jaw tightened. ‘Then I would like Louisa to eat with us too,’ she said.

There was a brief silence.

‘Louisa?’ said Tab.

‘Yes. It would be nice to get to know her properly. Do you have plans for this evening, Louisa?’

‘Uh – no,’ I stuttered.

‘Then you eat with us. Ilaria, you say you cook extra, yes?’

Ilaria looked directly at Mr Gopnik, who appeared to be engrossed in something on his phone.

‘Agnes,’ said Tab, after a moment. ‘You do understand we don’t eat with staff?’

‘Who is this “we”? I did not know that there was a rulebook.’ Agnes held out her hand and inspected her wedding band with studied calm. ‘Darling? Did you forget to give me a rulebook?’

‘With respect, and while I’m sure Louisa is perfectly nice,’ said Tab, ‘there are boundaries. And they exist for everybody’s benefit.’

‘I’m happy to do whatever …’ I began. ‘I don’t want to cause any …’

‘Well, with respect, Tabitha, I would like Louisa to eat supper with me. She is my new assistant and we are going to spend every day together. So I cannot see the problem in me getting to know her a little.’

‘There’s no problem,’ said Mr Gopnik.

‘Daddy –’

‘There’s no problem, Tab. Ilaria, please could you set the table for four? Thank you.’

Ilaria’s eyes widened. She glanced at me, her mouth a thin line of suppressed rage, as if I had engineered this travesty of the domestic hierarchy, then disappeared to the dining room from where we could hear the emphatic clattering of cutlery and glassware. Agnes let out a little breath and pushed her hair back from her head. She flashed me a small, conspiratorial smile.

‘Let’s go through,’ said Mr Gopnik, after a minute. ‘Louisa, perhaps you’d like a drink.’

Dinner was a hushed, painful affair. I was overawed by the grand mahogany table, the heavy silver cutlery and the crystal glasses, out of place in my uniform. Mr Gopnik was largely silent and disappeared twice to take calls from his office. Tab flicked through her iPhone, studiously declining to engage with anybody, and Ilaria delivered chicken in a red wine sauce with all the trimmings and removed serving dishes afterwards with a face, as my mother would put it, like a smacked arse. Perhaps only I noticed the hard clunk with which my own plate was placed in front of me, the audible sniff that came every time she passed my chair.

Agnes barely picked at hers. She sat opposite me and chatted gamely as if I were her new best friend, her gaze periodically sliding towards her husband.

‘So this is your first time in New York,’ she said. ‘Where else have you been?’

‘Um … not very many places. I’m sort of late to travelling. I backpacked around Europe a while ago, and before that … Mauritius. And Switzerland.’

‘America is very different. Each state has a unique feel, I think, to we Europeans. I have only been to a few places with Leonard, but it was like going to different countries entirely. Are you excited to be here?’

‘Very much so,’ I said. ‘I’m determined to take advantage of everything New York has to offer.’

‘Sounds like you, Agnes,’ said Tab, sweetly.

Agnes ignored her, keeping her eyes on me. They were hypnotically beautiful, tapering to fine, upward-tilted points at the corners. Twice I had to remind myself to close my mouth while staring at her.

‘And tell me about your family. You have brothers? Sisters?’

I explained my family as best I could, making them sound a little more Waltons than Addams.

‘And your sister now lives in your apartment in London? With her son? Will she come visit you? And your parents? They will miss you?’

I thought of Dad’s parting shot: ‘Don’t hurry back, Lou! We’re turning your old bedroom into a jacuzzi!’

‘Oh, yes. Very much.’

‘My mother cried for two weeks when I left Krak?w. And you have a boyfriend?’

‘Yes. His name’s Sam. He’s a paramedic.’

‘A paramedic! Like a doctor? How lovely. Please show me picture. I love to see pictures.’

I pulled my phone from my pocket and flicked through until I found my favourite picture of Sam, sitting on my roof terrace in his dark green uniform. He had just finished work, and was drinking a mug of tea, beaming at me. The sun was low behind him and I could remember, looking at it, exactly how it had felt up there, my tea cooling on the ledge behind me, Sam waiting patiently as I took picture after picture.

‘So handsome! And he is coming to New York too?’

‘Um, no. He’s building a house so it’s a bit complicated just now. And he has a job.’

Agnes’s eyes widened. ‘But he must come! You cannot live in different countries! How you can love your man if he is not here with you? I could not be away from Leonard. I don’t even like it when he goes on two-day business trip.’

‘Yes, I suppose you would want to make sure you’re never too far away,’ said Tab. Mr Gopnik glanced up from his dinner, his gaze flickering between his wife and daughter, but said nothing.

‘Still,’ Agnes said, arranging her napkin on her lap, ‘London is not so far away. And love is love. Isn’t that right, Leonard?’

‘It certainly is,’ he said, and his face briefly softened at her smile. Agnes reached out a hand and stroked his, and I looked quickly at my plate.

The room fell silent for a moment.

‘Actually, I think I might head home. I seem to be feeling slightly nauseous.’ With a loud scrape, Tab pushed her chair back and dropped her napkin on her plate, where the white linen immediately began to soak up the red wine sauce. I had to fight the urge to rescue it. She stood and kissed her father’s cheek. He reached up a free hand and touched her arm fondly.

‘I’ll speak to you during the week, Daddy.’ She turned. ‘Louisa … Agnes.’ She nodded curtly, and left the room.

Agnes watched her go. It’s possible she muttered something under her breath, but Ilaria was gathering up my plate and cutlery with such a savage clatter that it was hard to tell.

With Tab gone, it was as if all the fight left Agnes. She seemed to wilt in her seat, her shoulders suddenly bowed, the sharp hollow of her collarbone visible as her head drooped over it. I stood. ‘I think I might head back to my room now. Thank you so much for supper. It was delicious.’

Nobody protested. Mr Gopnik’s arm was resting along the mahogany table now, his fingers stroking his wife’s hand. ‘We’ll see you in the morning, Louisa,’ he said, not looking at me. Agnes was gazing up at him, her face sombre. I backed out of the dining room, speeding past the kitchen door to my room so that the virtual daggers I could feel Ilaria hurling my way from the kitchen wouldn’t have a chance to hit me.

An hour later Nathan sent me a text. He was having a beer with friends in Brooklyn. Heard you got the full baptism of fire. You all right?

I didn’t have the energy to come back with something witty. Or to ask him how on earth he knew.

It’ll be easier once you get to know them. Promise.

See you in the morning, I replied. I had a brief moment of misgiving – what had I just signed up for? – then had a stern word with myself, and fell heavily to sleep.

That night I dreamt of Will. I dreamt of him rarely – a source of some sadness to me in the early days when I had missed him so much that I felt as if someone had blasted a hole straight through me. The dreams had stopped when I met Sam. But there he was again, in the small hours, as vivid as if he were standing before me. He was in the back seat of a car, an expensive black limousine, like Mr Gopnik’s, and I saw him from across a street. I was instantly relieved that he was not dead, not gone after all, and knew instinctively that he should not go wherever he was headed. It was my job to stop him. But every time I tried to cross the busy road an extra lane of cars seemed to appear in front of me, roaring past so that I couldn’t get to him, the sound of the engines drowning my shouting of his name. There he was, just out of reach, his skin that smooth caramel colour, his faint smile playing around the edges of his mouth, saying something to the driver that I couldn’t hear. At the last minute he caught my eye – his eyes widened just a little – and I woke, sweating, the duvet knotted around my legs.