‘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: [email protected]
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.