Chapter One
Strawberry
Cohen Ford’s overcoat was damp and flecked with rain, and he was cold from just ten minutes spent trudging through the bitter sleet of an English winter. His pants were wet, sticking to his legs like an uncomfortable second skin, while his socks squelched within his shoes. Looking down, Cohen angrily regarded the wet patches on his clothing. An unsuspecting American in a city full of uneven paving and forgotten potholes, he hadn’t known to keep an eye out for hidden puddles. And now, his expensive and well-cut suit was paying the price for his ignorance.
With a resigned sigh, Cohen shrugged himself further into his coat, turning up the collar in a pitiful attempt to protect himself from the vile December weather. He pulled his cell out from his pocket, squinting at the map even as droplets of water began to run down the screen, marring the image.
It was supposed to be here.
He double checked the address his mother had given him. And yes, this was it. Turnpin Lane, Greenwich.
He glanced up and around. He was standing in what felt like a narrow alleyway, all cobbles and grey stone, with quirky shops set into the buildings around him. Buildings that stood at odd angles, not quite straight and not quite uniform, with wooden-framed doorways and uneven windows sprinkled liberally with dust and grime.
He could see the occasional sign hanging over a doorway. One read Vintage Clothing in bright red lettering, while another advertised Gifts in a delicate cursive. But nowhere could Cohen find a sign for ice cream. And that made sense to him – because London was freaking cold and who wanted ice cream in this kind of weather? – while making no sense at all, because his mother told him it would be here.
And as he knew from bitter experience, his mother was never wrong.
He was rubbing the icy rain from his face again when, from the corner of his eye, he spied a colourfully painted doorway a few shops down the lane. Feeling more hopeful, Cohen took a few tentative steps in that direction, stepping over the pools of water settling into the uneven cobbles, and glanced up.
A pastel-pink doorway with pastel-green edging, brightened further by a Christmas wreath of pinecones and berries hanging merrily in the middle. A storefront window, the panes uneven but clean, the wood frame weathered but sturdy, bedecked with tinsel. There was a warm light radiating through the glass, brightening the oppressive grey of the weather and miserable London streets, and Cohen felt a flicker of a memory awaken inside of him.
He’d been here before. He wasn’t sure when, or why, but he could vaguely recall standing before this pink doorway, grey clouds above him, while his mother nervously smoothed down her hair beside him.
‘Rushi is an old friend of mine, and I respect her opinion. So, please, just be good for me today, Cohen,’ his mother had pleaded, and he’d bitten his lip, scuffing his polished shoes against the ground, a small act of rebellion at the unfairness of his mother’s words. Because he always tried to be good.
It was only later, after his father left and Cohen at last gave up on trying to win his mother’s approval, that the bigger acts of rebellion would come.
Yes. This was it, Cohen decided, pushing the past away, back into an ether where it could not hurt him. A sign just to the left of the door, prettily illustrated and in a quirky font that made him wince, only confirmed his conclusion.
The Great Greenwich Ice Creamery.
With a sigh, Cohen rolled his eyes. This was exactly the kind of sickly sweet and whimsical nonsense he did not have the time or patience for. Once again, he wondered how Rushi de Luca, a Chinese woman with an Italian surname, came to be running an ice creamery in the greyest part of South London. But even as the question crossed his mind, Cohen dismissed it. It wasn’t his place to question the lives of others, after all. Especially considering how spectacularly poor his own life choices had been to date.
Besides, he’d spent a whole lifetime trying not to be surprised by his mother’s odd assortment of friends and colleagues. A whole lifetime of dinners with Middle Eastern sheiks, Russian oligarchs and American billionaires. A whole lifetime of being told not to speak about this, and please, Cohen, don’t mention that. A lifetime of being reminded of who his mother was, and why her work was so important.
A whole lifetime of accommodating other people.
A whole lifetime of never saying what was on his mind.
So, Rushi de Luca didn’t need to worry. He wasn’t about to start asking questions now.
When Cohen pushed on the pastel-pink door, a bell chimed merrily above him, the sound still ringing in his ears as he lowered his large frame through a ridiculously small doorway. Of course, he remembered Rushi as being small, but still, this was a Hobbit level of ridiculousness, and Cohen couldn’t help but curse – loudly – when he banged his head against the doorway, pain radiating through his skull.
For a moment Cohen stood, his head in his hands, while stars danced unhappily before his eyes. It was then, while he collected himself, still wincing in pain, that he was struck by the syrupy smell of the gelateria, of strawberry sauce and chocolate shavings and burnt butter and whipped cream. It was the smell of sweetness. The smell of laughter.
It was, he suddenly realised, the smell of his childhood.
And that, to Cohen, was intolerable. It was one thing to be assaulted by a door frame. But to be assaulted by a memory? He wouldn’t have it.
Walking past wooden tables that hadn’t changed in twenty years, across a wooden floor that hadn’t changed in a hundred, through a stone-walled shop that had probably been here since the Plague, Cohen impatiently rapped his knuckle on the glass-topped counter. He deliberately ignored the rainbow colours of ice cream within, from lemon-yellow to deepest purple, pastel-green to vibrant red. He ignored words like Cinnamon Pumpkin, Birthday Cake Surprise and Crisp Green Apple, all accompanied by slightly silly sketches of the proffered product. He ignored the waffle cones, dipped in chocolate, or honey, or butterscotch. He ignored an abrupt and unwelcome memory of himself as a child, peering up and into the glass, his mother’s hand warm on his back.
Cohen swallowed hard. He was a bitter man, and this shop was a degree too sweet for him. He knocked his hand against the counter again, his patience – already ice-thin – melting further towards cracked status. But there was no reply, no flurry of footsteps from the kitchen into the shop, or hurried apologies carrying through the sugar-sweet air. After one more fruitless knock, Cohen called out, one wet foot tapping restlessly on the floor, his fingers drumming tetchily against the glass as he waited for Rushi to make her hallowed appearance.
He did not have time for this.
He did not have time for his mother, or any of her eccentric friends. He did not have time to travel an hour across the city, to cross the Thames into the southern bowels of London, where the British, in a display of ineffective quirkiness that reflected badly on their Victorian forbears, decided the tube would not travel. He did not have the time for his mother’s errands, for ‘Oy vey, just go and see her quickly. For God’s sake, Cohen, it won’t kill you to do me a favour once in a while, will it?’, or for nostalgia-heavy ice creameries. He did not have time for ice cream, for sickly concoctions in pale pink cups, or for ancient shops with empty counters, without even a bell for customers to ring so to get the attention of the staff. Staff who were clearly so busy in their ice cream dispensing duties that they couldn’t possibly take the time to dispense ice cream.