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33

I saw Agnes once more before I finally left the Lavery. I had staggered in with two armfuls of clothing that I was bringing home for repair, the plastic covers sticking uncomfortably to my skin in the heat. As I walked past the front desk two dresses slid to the floor. Ashok leapt forward to pick them up for me and I struggled to keep hold of the rest.

‘You got your work cut out this evening.’

‘I certainly have. Getting this lot back on the subway was an absolute nightmare.’

‘I can believe it. Oh, excuse me, Mrs Gopnik. I’ll just get those out of your way.’

I looked up as Ashok swept my dresses from the carpet with a fluid movement and took a step back to allow Agnes through unimpeded.

I straightened as she passed, as far as I could with my armful of clothes. She was wearing a simple shift dress with a wide scoop neck, and flat pumps, and looked, as she always did, as if somehow the prevailing weather conditions – whether extreme heat or cold – simply didn’t apply to her. She was holding the hand of a small girl, around four or five years old, in a pinafore dress, who slowed to peer up at the brightly coloured garments I was holding in front of me. She had honey-blonde hair, which tapered to fine curls, combed back neatly into two velvet bows, and her mother’s slanting eyes, and as she looked at me she allowed herself a small, mischievous smile at my predicament.

I couldn’t help but grin back, and as I did, Agnes turned to see what the child was looking at and our eyes locked. I froze briefly, made to straighten my face, but before I could, the corners of her mouth twitched, like her daughter’s, almost as if she couldn’t help herself. She nodded at me, a gesture so small that it’s possible only I could have seen it. And then she stepped through the door that Ashok was holding back, the child already breaking into a skip, and they were gone, swallowed by the sunlight and the ever-moving human traffic of Fifth Avenue. 34

From: MrandMrsBernardClark@yahoo.com

To: BusyBee@gmail.com

Dear Lou,

Well. I had to read that twice just to check I’d got it right. I looked at the girl in those newspaper pictures and I thought can this possibly be my little girl in an actual New York newspaper?

Those are wonderful pictures of you with all your dresses, and you look so gorgeous dressed up with your friends. Did I tell you how proud Daddy and I are? We’ve cut out the ones from the free-sheet and Daddy has screen-shotted all the ones we could find on the internet (did I tell you he’s started a computer course at the adult education centre? He’ll be Stortfold’s Bill Gates next). We’re sending you all our love and I know you’ll make a success of it, Lou. You sounded so upbeat and bold on the telephone – when you rang off I sat there staring at the phone and I couldn’t believe this was my little girl, full of plans, calling from her own business across the Atlantic. (It is the Atlantic, isn’t it? I always get it mixed up with the Pacific.)

So here’s OUR big news. We’re going to come and see you later in the summer! We’ll come when it cools down a bit – didn’t much like the sound of that heat-wave of yours: you know your daddy chafes in unfortunate places. Deirdre from the travel agents is letting us use her staff discount and we’re booking the flights at the end of this week. Could we stay with you in the old lady’s flat? If not, could you tell us where to go? NOWHERE WITH BEDBUGS.

Let me know what dates suit you. I’m so excited!!

Ever so much love, Mum xxx

PS Did I tell you Treena got a promotion? She always was such a smart girl. You know, I can see why Eddie is so keen on her.

25 July

‘Wisdom and Knowledge Shall Be the Stability of Thy Times.’

I stood in the epicentre of Manhattan in front of the towering building, letting my breathing slow, and stared at the gilded sign above the vast entrance to 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Around me New York teemed in the evening heat, the sidewalks solid with meandering tourists, the air thick with blaring horns and the ever-present scent of exhaust and overheated rubber. Behind me a woman with a 30 Rock golf shirt, her voice struggling to be heard over the racket, was giving a well-rehearsed tour speech to a group of Japanese sightseers. The building project was completed in 1933 by noted architect Raymond Hood in the art deco style – Sir, please stay together, sir. Ma’am? Ma’am? – and was originally named the RCA building before becoming the GE building in – ma’am? Over here please … I gazed up at its sixty-seven floors and took a deep breath.

It was a quarter to seven.

I had wanted to look perfect for this moment, had planned to head back to the Lavery at five to give myself time to shower and pick an appropriate outfit (I was thinking Deborah Kerr in An Affair To Remember). But Fate had intervened in the form of a stylist from an Italian fashion magazine, who had arrived at the Vintage Clothing Emporium at four thirty and wanted to look at all the two-piece suits for a feature she was planning, then needed her colleague to try some on so she could take pictures and come back to me. Before I knew what was happening it was twenty to six and I barely had time to run Dean Martin home and feed him before heading down here. So here I was, sweaty and a little frazzled, still in my work clothes, about to find out which way my life was about to go next.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, this way to the observation deck, please.

I had stopped running several minutes previously, but still felt breathless as I made my way across the plaza. I pushed at the smoked-glass door and noted with relief that the queue for tickets was short. I had checked on TripAdvisor the night before and been warned that queues could be lengthy but felt somehow too superstitious to buy one in advance. So I waited my turn, checking my reflection in my compact, glancing around me surreptitiously on the off-chance he had turned up early, then bought a ticket that gave me access between the hours of six fifty and seven ten, followed the velvet rope and waited while I was shepherded with a group of tourists towards a lift.

Sixty-seven floors, they said. So high that the ride up was meant to make your ears pop.

He would come. Of course he would come.

What if he didn’t?

This was the thought that had crossed my mind ever since his one-line response to my email. ‘Okay. I hear you.’ Which really could have meant anything. I waited to see if he wanted to ask questions about my plan, or say anything else that hinted at his decision. I reread my own email, wondering if perhaps I had sounded off-putting, too bold, too assertive, whether I had conveyed my own strength of feeling. I loved Sam. I wanted him with me. Did he understand how much? But having issued the most enormous of ultimata it seemed weird to start double-checking that it had been understood properly, so I simply waited.

Six fifty-five p.m. The lift doors opened. I held out my ticket and stepped in. Sixty-seven floors. My stomach tightened.

The lift began to move upwards slowly and I felt a sudden panic. What if he didn’t come? What if he’d got it, but changed his mind? What would I do? Surely he wouldn’t do that to me, not after all this. I found myself taking an audible gulp of air, and pressed my hand to my chest, trying to steady my nerves.

‘It’s the height, isn’t it?’ A kindly woman next to me reached out and touched my arm. ‘Sixty-seven floors up is quite a distance.’

I tried to smile. ‘Something like that.’

If you can’t leave your work and your house and all the things that make you happy I will understand. I’ll be sad, but I’ll get it.

You’ll always be with me one way or the other.

I lied. Of course I lied. Oh, Sam, please say yes. Please be waiting when the doors open again. And then the lift stopped.

‘Well, that wasn’t sixty-seven floors,’ someone said, and a couple of people laughed awkwardly. A baby in a pram gazed at me with wide brown eyes. We all stood for a moment, then someone stepped out.

‘Oh. That wasn’t the main elevator,’ said the woman beside me, pointing. ‘That’s the main elevator.’

And there it was. At the far end of an endless snaking horseshoe of people.

I stared at it in horror. There must have been a hundred visitors, two hundred even, milling quietly, staring up at the museum exhibits, the laminated histories on the wall. I looked at my watch. It was already one minute to seven. I texted Sam, watching in horror as the message refused to send. I started to push my way through the crowd, muttering, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ as people tutted loudly and yelled, ‘Hey lady, we’re all waiting here.’ Head down, I made my way past the wallboards that told the story of the Rockefeller building, of its Christmas trees, the video exhibit of NBC, bobbing and weaving, muttering my apologies. There are few grumpier people than overheated tourists who have found themselves waiting in an unexpected queue. One grabbed at my sleeve. ‘Hey! You! We’re all waiting!’

‘I’m meeting someone,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m English. We’re normally very good at queuing. But if I’m any later I’m going to miss him.’

‘You can wait like the rest of us!’

‘Let her go, baby,’ said the woman beside him, and I mouthed my thanks, pushing on through the morass of sunburnt shoulders, of shifting bodies and querulous children and ‘I HEART NY’ T-shirts, the lift doors coming slowly closer. But less than twenty feet away the queue came to a solid stop. I hopped, trying to see over the top of people’s heads, and came face to face with a fake iron girder. It rested against a huge black and white photographic backdrop of the New York skyline. Visitors were seating themselves in groups on the structure, mimicking the iconic photograph of workmen eating their lunch during the tower’s construction, while a young woman behind a camera yelled at them: ‘Put your hands in the air, that’s it, now thumbs up for New York, that’s it, now pretend to push each other off, now kiss. Okay. Pictures available when you leave. Next!’ Time after time she repeated her four phrases as we shifted gradually closer. The only way to get past would mean ruining someone’s possibly once-in-a-lifetime 30 Rock novelty photograph. It was four minutes past seven. I made to push through, to see if I could edge behind her, but found myself blocked by a group of teenagers with rucksacks. Someone shoved my back and we were moving.

‘On the girder, please. Ma’am?’ The way through was blocked by an immovable wall of people. The photographer beckoned. I was going to do whatever would make this move fastest. Obediently I hoisted myself up onto the girder, muttering under my breath, ‘Come on, come on, I need to move.’

‘Put your hands in the air, that’s it, now thumbs up for New York!’ I put my hands in the air, forced my thumbs up. ‘Now pretend to push each other off, that’s it … Now kiss.’ A teenage boy with glasses turned to me, surprised, and then delighted.

I shook my head. ‘Not this one, bud. Sorry.’ I leapt off the girder, pushed past him and ran to the final queue waiting in front of the lift.

It was nine minutes past seven.

It was at this point that I wanted to cry. I stood, squashed in the hot, grumbling queue, shifting from foot to foot and watching as the other lift disgorged people, cursing myself for not doing my research. This was the problem with grand gestures, I realized. They tended to backfire in spectacular fashion. The guards observed my agitation with the indifference of service workers who have seen every kind of human behaviour. And then, finally, at twelve minutes past, the elevator door opened and a guard herded people towards it, counting our heads. When he got to me, he pulled the rope across. ‘Next elevator.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘It’s the rules, lady.’

‘Please. I have to meet someone. I’m so, so late. Just let me squeeze in? Please. I’m begging you.’

‘Can’t. Strict on numbers.’

But as I let out a small moan of anguish, a woman a few yards away beckoned to me. ‘Here,’ she said, stepping out of the lift. ‘Take my place. I’ll get the next one.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Gotta love a romantic meeting.’

‘Oh, thank you, thank you!’ I said, as I slid past. I didn’t like to tell her that the chance of it being romantic, or even a meeting, was growing slimmer by the second. I wedged myself into the lift, conscious of the curious glances of the other passengers, and clenched my fists as the lift started to move.

This time the lift flew upwards at warp speed, causing children to giggle and point as the glass ceiling betrayed how fast we were going. Lights flashed overhead. My stomach turned somersaults. An elderly woman beside me in a floral hat nudged me. ‘Want a breath mint?’ she said, and winked. ‘For when you finally see him?’

I took one and smiled nervously.

‘I wanna know how this goes,’ she said, and tucked the packet back into her bag. ‘You come find me.’ And then, as my ears popped, the lift began to slow and we were stopping.

Once upon a time there was a small-town girl who lived in a small world. She was perfectly happy, or at least she told herself she was. Like many girls, she loved to try different looks, to be someone she wasn’t. But, like too many girls, life had chipped away at her until, instead of finding what truly suited her, she camouflaged herself, hid the bits that made her different. For a while she let the world bruise her until she decided it was safer not to be herself at all.

There are so many versions of ourselves we can choose to be. Once, my life was destined to be measured out in the most ordinary of steps. I learnt differently from a man who refused to accept the version of himself he’d been left with, and an old lady who saw, conversely, that she could transform herself, right up to a point when many people would have said there was nothing left to be done.

I had a choice. I was Louisa Clark from New York or Louisa Clark from Stortfold. Or there might be a whole other Louisa I hadn’t yet met. The key was making sure that anyone you allowed to walk beside you didn’t get to decide which you were, and pin you down like a butterfly in a case. The key was to know that you could always somehow find a way to reinvent yourself again.

I would survive if he wasn’t there, I reassured myself. After all, I had survived worse. It would just be another reinvention. I told myself this several times as I waited for the lift doors to open. It was seventeen minutes past seven.

I walked swiftly to the glass doors, telling myself that surely if he’d come this far he would wait twenty minutes. Then I ran across the deck, spinning and weaving my way through the sightseers, the chatting tourists and selfie-takers to see if he was there. I ran back through the glass door and across the vast internal lobby until I came to a second deck. He must be on this side. I moved swiftly, in and out, turning to peer into the faces of strangers, eyes trained for one man, slightly taller than everyone around him, his hair dark, his shoulders square. I criss-crossed the tiled floor, the evening sun beating down on my head, sweat starting to bloom across my back as I looked, and looked, and observed, with a sick feeling, that he wasn’t there.

‘Did you find him?’ said the elderly woman, grabbing my arm.

I shook my head.

‘Go upstairs, honey.’ She pointed towards the side of the building.

‘Upstairs? There’s an upstairs?’

I ran, trying not to look down, until I came to a small escalator. This led to yet another observation deck, this one even more packed with visitors. I felt despairing, had a sudden vision of him moving downstairs on the opposite side, even as we spoke. And I would have no way of knowing.

‘Sam!’ I yelled, my heart thumping. ‘Sam!’

A few people glanced at me but most continued looking outwards, taking selfies or posing against the glass screen.

I stood in the middle of the deck and shouted, my voice hoarse, ‘Sam?’

I jabbed at my phone, trying to send the message again and again.

‘Yeah, cell-phone coverage is patchy up here. You lost someone?’ said a uniformed guard, appearing beside me. ‘You lost a kid?’

‘No. A man. I was meant to meet him here. I didn’t know there were two levels. Or so many decks. Oh, God. Oh, God. I don’t think he’s on either of them.’

‘I’ll radio over to my colleague, see if he can give him a shout.’ He lifted his walkie-talkie to his ear. ‘But you do know there’s actually three levels, lady?’ He pointed upwards. At this point I let out a muffled sob. It was twenty-three minutes past seven. I would never find him. He would have left by now. If he was ever even here in the first place.

‘Try up there.’ The guard took my elbow and pointed to the next set of steps. And turned away to speak into his radio.

‘That’s it, right?’ I said. ‘No more decks.’

He grinned. ‘No more decks.’

There are sixty-seven steps between the doors to the second deck of 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the final, uppermost, viewing deck, more if you are wearing vintage satin dancing heels in fuchsia pink with the elastic straps cut off that really weren’t made for running in, especially in a heat-wave. I walked slowly this time. I mounted the narrow flight of steps and, halfway up, when I felt something in me might actually burst with anxiety, I turned and looked behind me at the view. Across Manhattan the sun glowed orange, the endless sea of glittering skyscrapers reflecting back a peach light, the centre of the world, going about its business. A million lives below me, a million heartbreaks big and small, tales of joy and loss and survival, a million little victories every day.

There is a great consolation in simply doing something you love.

In those last few steps I considered all the ways in which my life was still going to be wonderful. I steadied my breath and thought of my new agency, my friends, my unexpected little dog with his wonky, joyful face. I thought of how in less than twelve months I had survived homelessness and joblessness in one of the toughest cities on earth. I thought of the William Traynor Memorial Library.

And when I turned and looked up again, there he was, leaning on the ledge and looking out across the city, his back to me, hair ruffling slightly in the breeze. I stood for a moment as the last of the tourists pushed past me, and I took in his broad shoulders, the way his head tipped forward, the soft dark hair at his collar, and something altered in me – a recalibrating of something deep within so that I was calm, just at the sight of him.

I stood and I stared and a great sigh escaped me.

And, perhaps conscious of my gaze, at that moment he turned slowly and straightened, and the smile that spread slowly across his face matched my own.

‘Hello, Louisa Clark,’ he said.