فصل 28

28

This was it, Josh said, clapping his hands together. He was sure he was going to get the promotion. Connor Ailes hadn’t been invited to a dinner. Charmaine Trent, who had recently been brought across from Legal, hadn’t been invited to a dinner. Scott Mackey, the accounts manager, had been invited to a dinner before he became accounts manager, and he’d said he was pretty sure Josh was a shoo-in.

‘I mean I don’t want to get too confident, but it’s all about the social thing, Louisa,’ he said, examining his reflection. ‘They only ever promote people if they think they can mix with them socially. It’s not what you know, right? I was wondering if I should take up golf. They all play golf. But I haven’t played since I was, like, thirteen. What do you think of this tie?’

‘Great.’ It was a tie. I didn’t really know what to say. They all seemed to be blue anyway. He knotted it with swift, sure strokes.

‘I called Dad yesterday and he said the key thing was to look like you’re not dependent on it, right? Like – like I’m ambitious and I’m totally a company man, but equally I could move to another firm at any time because I’d be so much in demand. They have to feel a sense of threat that you might go somewhere else if they don’t give you your due, you know what I’m saying?’

‘Oh, yes.’

It was the same conversation we had had fourteen times over the past week. I wasn’t sure it even required answers on my side. He checked his reflection again, and then, apparently satisfied, walked over to the bed and leant across to run a hand down the back of my hair. ‘I’ll pick you up just before seven, okay? Make sure you’ve walked that dog so we don’t get held up. I don’t want to be late.’

‘I’ll be ready.’

‘Have a nice day. Hey, it was great what you did with the old lady’s family, you know? Really great. You did a good thing.’

He kissed me emphatically, already smiling at the thought of the day ahead, and then he was gone.

I stayed in his bed in the exact position he had left me, dressed in one of his T-shirts and hugging my knees. Then I got up, dressed and let myself out of his apartment.

I was still distracted when I took Margot to her morning hospital appointment, leaning my forehead against the taxi window and trying to sound like I understood what she was talking about.

‘Just drop me here, dear,’ said Margot, as I helped her out. I let go of her arm as she reached the double doors and they slid open as if to swallow her.

This was our pattern for every appointment. I would stay outside with Dean Martin, she would make her way in slowly and I would come back in an hour, or whenever she chose to call me.

‘I don’t know what’s got into you this morning. You’re all over the place. Useless.’ She stood in the entrance and handed me the lead.

‘Thanks, Margot.’

‘Well, it’s like travelling with a halfwit. Your brain is clearly somewhere else and you’re no company at all. Why, I’ve had to speak to you three times just to get you to do a thing for me.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Well, make sure you devote your full attention to Dean Martin while I’m inside. He gets very distressed when he knows he’s being ignored.’ She lifted a finger. ‘I mean it, young lady. I’ll know.’

I was halfway to the coffee shop with the outside tables and the friendly waiter when I found I was still holding her handbag. I cursed and ran back up the street.

I raced into Reception, ignoring the pointed stares of the waiting patients, who glared at the dog, as if I had brought in a live hand grenade. ‘Hi! I need to give a bag – a purse – to Mrs Margot De Witt. Can you tell me where I might find her? Please. I’m her carer.’

The woman didn’t look up from her screen. ‘You can’t call her?’

‘She’s in her eighties. She doesn’t do cell-phones. And if she did it would be in her purse. Please. She will need this. It’s got her pills and her notes and stuff.’

‘She has an appointment today?’

‘Eleven fifteen. Margot De Witt.’ I spelt it out, just in case.

She went through the list, one extravagantly manicured finger tracing the screen. ‘Okay. Yeah, I got her. Oncology is down there, through the double doors on the left.’

‘I’m sorry, what?’

‘Oncology. Down this main corridor, through the double doors on the left. If she’s in with the doctor you can leave her purse with one of the nurses there. Or just leave a message with them to tell her where you’ll be waiting.’

I stared at her, waiting for her to tell me she’d made a mistake. Finally she looked up at me, her face a question, as if waiting to hear why I was still standing, stupefied, in front of her. I gathered the appointment card off the desk and turned away. ‘Thank you,’ I said weakly, and walked Dean Martin out into the sunshine.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Margot sat in the taxi, turned mulishly away from me, Dean Martin panting on her lap. ‘Because it’s none of your business. You would have told Vincent. And I didn’t want him to feel he has to come and see me just because of some stupid cancer.’

‘What’s your prognosis?’

‘None of your business.’

‘How … how do you feel?’

‘Exactly how I felt before you started asking all these questions.’

It all made sense now. The pills, the frequent hospital visits, the diminished appetite. The things I had thought were simply evidence of old age, of over-attentive private US medical care, had all been disguising the much deeper fault line. I felt sick. ‘I don’t know what to say, Margot. I feel like –’

‘I’m not interested in your feelings.’

‘But –’

‘Don’t you dare get all goopy on me now,’ she snapped. ‘What happened to that English stiff upper lip? Yours made of marshmallow?’

‘Margot –’

‘I’m not discussing it. There is nothing to discuss. If you’re going to insist on getting all wishy-washy with me you can go stay in someone else’s apartment.’

When we arrived at the Lavery, she was out of the taxi with unusual vigour. By the time I had finished paying the driver, she was already inside the lobby without me.

I wanted to talk to Josh about what had happened but when I texted him he said he was flat out and I could fill him in that evening. Nathan was busy with Mr Gopnik. Ilaria might freak out or, worse, would insist on stopping by all the time and smothering Margot with her own brand of brusque care and reheated pork casseroles. There was really nobody else I could talk to.

While Margot had her afternoon nap I moved quietly into the bathroom and, under pretext of cleaning, I opened the cabinet and looked at the shelf of drugs, noting down the names, until I found the confirmation: morphine. I looked up the other drugs in the cabinet and searched them online until I got my answers.

I felt shaken to the core. I wondered how it must feel to be looking death so squarely in the face. I wondered how long she had left. I realised that I loved the old woman, with her sharp tongue and her sharper mind, like I loved my family. And some tiny part of me, selfishly, wondered what it meant for me: I had been happy in Margot’s apartment. It might not have felt permanent, but I’d thought I might have a year or more there at least. Now I had to face the fact that I was on shifting sands again.

I had pulled myself together a little by the time the doorbell rang, promptly, at seven. I answered, and there was Josh, immaculate. Not even a hint of five o’clock shadow.

‘How?’ I said. ‘How do you look like that after a whole day at work?’

He leant forward and kissed my cheek. ‘Electric razor. And I left another suit at the dry-cleaner’s and changed at work. Didn’t want to turn up creased.’

‘But surely your boss will be in the same suit he’s been in all day.’

‘Maybe. But he’s not the one angling for a promotion. You think I look okay?’

‘Hello, Josh, dear.’ Margot walked past on her way to the kitchen.

‘Good evening, Mrs De Witt. How are you doing today?’

‘I’m still here, dear. That’s about as much as you need to know.’

‘Well, you look wonderful.’

‘And you talk a lot of old bobbins.’

He grinned and turned back to me. ‘So what are you wearing, shortcake?’

I looked down. ‘Uh, this?’

A short silence.

‘Those … pantyhose?’

I glanced at my legs. ‘Oh, those. I’ve had a bit of a day. They’re my feel-better tights, my equivalent of a fresh suit from the dry-cleaner’s.’ I smiled ruefully. ‘If it helps, I only wear them on the most special occasions.’

He stared at my legs a moment longer, then dragged a hand slowly over his mouth. ‘Sorry, Louisa, but they’re not really appropriate for this evening. My boss and his wife are pretty conservative. And it’s a really upscale restaurant. Like, Michelin-starred.’

‘This dress is Chanel. Mrs De Witt lent it to me.’

‘Sure, but the whole effect is just a little bit …’ he pulled a face ‘… Crazytown?’

When I didn’t move he reached out his hands and took hold of my upper arms. ‘Sweetheart, I know you love dressing up, but could we keep it a little straighter just for my boss? This evening is really important for me.’

I looked down at his hands and flushed. I felt suddenly ridiculous. Of course my bumblebee tights were wrong for dinner with a financial CEO. What had I been thinking? ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and change.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Of course not.’

He almost deflated with relief. ‘Great. Can you make it super quick? I really don’t want to be late and the traffic is backed up all the way down Seventh. Margot, would it be all right if I used your bathroom?’

She nodded wordlessly.

I ran into my bedroom and started hauling my way through my belongings. What did one wear to a posh dinner with finance people? ‘Help me, Margot,’ I said, hearing her behind me. ‘Do I just change the tights? What should I wear?’

‘Exactly what you have on,’ she said.

I turned to her. ‘But he said it’s not suitable.’

‘For who? Is there a uniform? Why aren’t you allowed to be yourself?’

‘I –’

‘Are these people such fools that they can’t cope with someone who doesn’t dress exactly like them? Why do you have to pretend to be someone you’re so clearly not? Do you want to be one of “those” women?’

I dropped the hanger I was holding. ‘I – I don’t know.’

Margot lifted a hand to her newly set hair. She gave me what my mother would have called an old-fashioned look. ‘Any man lucky enough to be your date shouldn’t give a fig if you come out in a trash bag and galoshes.’

‘But he –’

Margot sighed, and pressed her fingers to her mouth, like people do when they have a lot more they’d like to say but won’t. A moment passed before she spoke again. ‘I think at some point, dear, you’re going to have to work out who Louisa Clark really is.’ She patted my arm. And with that she walked out of the bedroom.

I stood, staring at the space where she had been. I looked down at my stripy legs and back up at the clothes on my rail. I thought of Will, and the day he had given the tights to me.

A moment later Josh appeared in the doorway, straightening his tie. You’re not him, I thought suddenly. In fact you’re really nothing like him at all.

‘So?’ he said, smiling. Then his face fell. ‘Uh, I thought you were going to be ready?’

I stared at my feet. ‘Actually …’ I said.