Both brothers were now married and settled with two kids apiece. The family converged for holidays and every summer rented the same house in Nantucket. In his teens he had resented it, but now it was a week he looked forward to more each year.
‘It’s great. The kids and the hanging out and the boat … You should come,’ he said, casually helping himself to more char siu bau. He talked without self-consciousness, a man used to things working out the way he wanted them to.
‘To a family thing? I thought men in New York were all about casual dating.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve done all that. And, besides, I’m not from New York.’
He was a man who seemingly threw himself at everything. He worked a million hours a week, was hungry for promotion, and went to the gym before six a.m. He played baseball with the office team, and was thinking about volunteering to mentor at a local high school, like his mother did, but was worried that his work schedule meant he couldn’t commit to a regular time. He was shot through with the American dream, like a stick of rock – you worked hard, you succeeded and then you gave back. I tried not to keep drawing comparisons with Will. I listened to him and felt half admiring, half exhausted.
He drew a picture of his future in the air between us – an apartment in the Village, maybe a weekend place in the Hamptons if he could get his bonuses to the right level. He wanted a boat. He wanted kids. He wanted to retire early. He wanted to make a million dollars before he was thirty. He punctuated much of this talk with the waving of chopsticks and the phrase ‘You should come!’ or ‘You’d love it!’ and I was partly flattered, but mostly grateful that this implied he wasn’t offended by my earlier reticence.
He left at ten thirty, since he planned to get up at five, and we stood in the hallway by the front door, with Dean Martin on guard a few feet away.
‘So, are we going to be able to squeeze in lunch? What with the whole dog-and-hospital thing?’
‘We could perhaps see each other one evening?’
‘ “We could perhaps see each other one evening,” ’ he mimicked softly. ‘I love your English accent.’
‘I haven’t got an accent,’ I said. ‘You have.’
‘And you make me laugh. Not many girls make me laugh.’
‘Ah. Then you’ve just not met the right girls.’
‘Oh, I think I have.’ He stopped talking then, and looked up at the heavens, as if he were trying to prevent himself doing something. And then he smiled, as if acknowledging the slight ridiculousness of two adults nearing their thirties trying not to kiss in a doorway. And it was the smile that did it for me.
I reached up and touched the back of his neck, very lightly. And then I went up on tiptoe and kissed him. I told myself there was no point in dwelling on something that was gone. I told myself two weeks was certainly long enough to make a decision, especially when you had barely seen that other person for months beforehand and had pretty much been single anyway. I told myself I had to move on.
Josh didn’t hesitate. He kissed me back, his hands sliding slowly up my spine, manoeuvring me against the wall, so that I was pinned, pleasurably, against him. He kissed me and I made myself stop thinking and just give in to sensation, his unfamiliar body, narrower and slightly harder than the one I had known, the intensity of his mouth on mine. This handsome American. We were both a little dazed when we came up for air.
‘If I don’t go now …’ he said, stepping back, and blinked hard, raising his hand to the back of his neck.
I grinned. I suspected my lipstick was halfway across my face. ‘You have an early start. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’ I opened the door and, with a last kiss on my cheek, he stepped out into the main corridor.
When I closed it, Dean Martin was still staring at me. ‘What?’ I said. ‘What? I’m single.’
He lowered his head in disgust, turned, and pottered towards the kitchen.
23
From: [email protected]
Hi Mum,
Lovely to hear that you and Maria had such a nice tea at Fortnum & Mason on Maria’s birthday. Although, yes, I agree, that is a LOT for a packet of biscuits and I’m sure both you and Maria could do better scones at home. Yours are very light. And, no, the toilet thing in the theatre was not good. I’m sure as an attendant herself she has a very keen eye for things like that. I’m glad someone is looking out for all your … hygiene needs.
All fine here. New York is pretty chilly right now, but you know me, clothing for every occasion! There are a few things up in the air at work but hopefully all will be sorted by the time we speak. And, yes, I’m totally fine about Sam. Just one of those things, indeed.
Sorry to hear about Granddad. I hope when he’s feeling better you can start your night classes again.
I miss you all. A lot.
Lots of love,
Lou xx
PS Probably best if you email or write to me via Nathan just now as we’re having some issues with the post.
Mrs De Witt came out of hospital ten days after she was admitted, squinting in the unfamiliar daylight, her right arm in a plaster cast that seemed too heavy for her thin frame. I brought her home in a taxi. Ashok met her at the kerb and helped her slowly up the steps. For once she didn’t crab at him or bat him away, but walked gingerly, as if balance were no longer a given. I had brought the outfit she’d demanded – a 1970s pale blue Céline trouser suit, a daffodil yellow blouse and a pale pink wool beret – with some of the cosmetics that were on her dresser and sat on the side of her hospital bed to help her apply them. She said her own attempts with her left hand made her look like she had drunk three Sidecars for breakfast.
Dean Martin, delighted, jogged and snuffled at her heels, looking up at her, then back at me pointedly, as if to tell me I could leave now. We had reached something of a truce, the dog and I. He ate his meals and curled up on my lap every evening, and I think he had even started to enjoy the slightly faster pace and longer reach of our walks because his little tail wagged wildly whenever he saw me pick up the lead.
Mrs De Witt was overjoyed to see him, if joyousness could be conveyed by a series of complaints about my obvious mismanagement of his care, by the fact that within a space of twelve hours she had deemed him both over- and underweight, and by an ongoing, crooning apology to him for leaving him in my inadequate hands. ‘My poor baby. Did I leave you with a stranger? I did? And she didn’t care for you properly? It’s okay. Momma’s home now. It’s all okay.’
She was plainly delighted to be home, but I can’t pretend I wasn’t anxious. She seemed to require a prodigious number of pills – even by American standards – and I wondered if she had some kind of brittle-bone syndrome: it seemed an awful lot just for a broken wrist. I told Treena, who said in England you would have been prescribed a couple of painkillers and told not to lift anything heavy, and laughed heartily.
But Mrs De Witt, I felt, had been left even frailer by her time in hospital. She was pale and coughed repeatedly, and her tailored clothes gaped in odd places around her body. When I cooked her macaroni cheese, she ate four or five neat mouthfuls and pronounced it delicious but declined to eat any more. ‘I think my stomach shrank in that awful place. Probably trying to shut itself off from their abysmal food.’