2. In contrast, in shops everyone talked to you. The assistants followed you around, their heads tilted forward as if to hear you better, always checking to see whether there was any way they could serve you better or whether they could put this in a room for you. I hadn’t had so much attention since Treena and I had been caught shoplifting a Mars Bar from the post office when I was eight and Mrs Barker shadowed us, like an MI5 operative, every time we went in there for Sherbet Dib Dabs for the next three years.
And all New York shop assistants wanted you to have a nice day. Even if you were just buying a carton of orange juice or a newspaper. At first, encouraged by their niceness, I responded, ‘Oh! Well, you have a nice day too!’ and they were always a little taken aback, as if I simply didn’t understand the rules of New York conversation.
As for Ashok, nobody passed the threshold without exchanging a few words with him. But that was business. He knew his job. He was always checking you were okay, that you had everything you needed. ‘You can’t go out in scuffed shoes, Miss Louisa!’ He could pull an umbrella from his sleeve like a magician for the short walk to the kerb, accepting tips with the discreet sleight of hand of a card huckster. He could pull dollars from his cuffs, discreetly thanking the traffic cop who smoothed the way of this grocery driver or that dry-cleaning delivery, and whistle a bright yellow taxi out of thin air with a sound only dogs could hear. He was not just the gatekeeper to our building but its heartbeat, keeping things moving in and out, ensuring that everything went smoothly, a blood supply, around it.
3. New Yorkers – those who didn’t take limos from our apartment building – walked really, really fast, striding along sidewalks and dipping in and out of crowds as if they had those sensors attached that automatically stop you bumping into other people. They held phones, or Styrofoam coffee cups, and before seven a.m. at least half of them would be in workout gear. Every time I slowed I heard a muttered curse in my ear, or felt someone’s bag swing into my back. I stopped wearing my more decorative shoes – the ones that made me totter, my Japanese geisha flip-flops or my seventies stripy platform boots – in favour of sneakers so that I could move with the current instead of being an obstacle that parted the waters. If you had seen me from above, I liked to think you would never have known that I didn’t belong.
During those first weekends I walked too, for hours. I had initially assumed that Nathan and I would hang out together, exploring new places. But he seemed to have built a social circle of blokey men, the kind who really had no interest in female company unless they had sunk several beers first. He spent hours in the gym, and topped each weekend off with a date or two. When I suggested we go to a museum or perhaps to walk the High Line he would smile awkwardly and tell me he already had plans. So I walked alone, down through Midtown to the Meatpacking District, to Greenwich Village, to SoHo, veering off main streets, following whatever looked interesting, my map in my hand, trying to remember which way the traffic went. I saw that Manhattan had distinct districts, from the towering buildings of Midtown to the achingly cool cobbled roads around Crosby Street, where every second person looked like a model or as if they owned an Instagram feed devoted to clean eating. I walked with nowhere particular to go, and nowhere I had to be. I ate salad at a chopped-salad bar, ordering something with cilantro and black beans because I had never eaten either of them. I caught the subway, trying not to look like a tourist as I fathomed how to buy a ticket and identify the legendary crazies, and waited ten minutes for my heart rate to return to normal when I emerged back into daylight. And then I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, as Will had done, and felt my heart lift at the sight of the glinting water below, feeling the rumble of the traffic beneath my feet, hearing once again his voice in my head. Live boldly, Clark.
I stopped halfway across and stood very still as I gazed across the East River, feeling briefly suspended, almost giddy with the sense of no longer being tied to any place at all. Another tick. And slowly I stopped ticking off experiences, because pretty much everything was new and strange.
On those first walks I saw:
– A man in full drag riding a bicycle and singing show tunes through a microphone and speakers. Several people applauded as he rode past.
– Four girls playing jump rope between two fire hydrants. They had two ropes going at once and I stopped to clap when they finally stopped jumping and they smiled shyly at me.
– A dog on a skateboard. When I texted my sister to tell her, she told me I was drunk.
– Robert De Niro.
At least I think it was Robert De Niro. It was early evening and I was feeling briefly homesick and he walked past me on the corner of Spring Street and Broadway, and I actually said, ‘Oh, my God. Robert De Niro,’ out loud before I could stop myself as he walked past and he didn’t turn round and I couldn’t be sure afterwards whether that was because he was just some random who thought I was talking to myself, or whether that was exactly what you would do if you were Robert De Niro and some woman on the sidewalk started bleating your name.
I decided the latter. Again, my sister accused me of being drunk. I sent her a picture from my phone but she said, That could be the back of anyone’s head, you doofus, and added that I was not just drunk but genuinely quite stupid. It was at that point that I started to feel slightly less homesick.
I wanted to tell Sam this. I wanted to tell him all of it, in beautiful handwritten letters or at least in long, rambling emails that we would later save and print out and that would be found in the attic of our house when we had been married fifty years for our grandchildren to coo over. But I was so tired those first few weeks that all I did was email him about how tired I was.
I’m so tired. I miss you.
Me too.
No, like really, really tired. Like cry at TV advertisements and fall asleep while brushing my teeth and end up with toothpaste all over my chest tired.
Okay, now you got me.
I tried not to mind how little he emailed me. I tried to remind myself that he was doing a real, hard job, saving lives and making a difference, while I was sitting outside manicurists’ studios and running around Central Park.
His supervisor had changed the rota. He was working four nights on the trot and still waiting to be assigned a new permanent partner. That should have made it easier for us to talk but somehow it didn’t. I would check in on my phone in the minutes I had free every evening but that was usually the time he was heading off to begin his shift.
Sometimes I felt curiously disjointed, as if I had simply dreamt him up.
One week, he reassured me. One more week.
How hard could it be?
Agnes was playing the piano again. She played when she was happy or unhappy, angry or frustrated, picking tumultuous pieces, high in emotion, closing her eyes, as her hands roved up and down the keyboard, and swaying on the piano stool. The previous evening she had played a nocturne, and as I passed the open door of the drawing room, I’d watched for a moment as Mr Gopnik sat down beside her on the stool. Even as she became wholly absorbed in the music, it was clear that she was playing for him. I noted how content he was just to sit and turn the pages for her. When she’d finished she’d beamed at him, and he had lowered his head to kiss her hand. I tiptoed past the door as if I hadn’t seen.
I was in the study going over the week’s events and had got as far as Thursday (Children’s Cancer Charity lunch, Marriage of Figaro) when I became aware of a rapping at the front door. Ilaria was with the pet behaviourist – Felix had done something unmentionable in Mr Gopnik’s office again – so I walked out to the hallway and opened it.