I want to know you more than I want to sleep with you, River. And I want to sleep with you more than anything, so that should tell you how deep my feelings go.
Why are you in London? the next question asked.
His brow furrowed and he felt that old, panicked sense of having to justify his life choices.
Just after my ex-wife left me, my father died of cancer and my mother remarried.
I’m a Vice-President of the company I work for and so I asked for a secondment to Europe. I made out that the work here was too important to leave to anyone else but, actually, that wasn’t true.
I told my mother that I was angry at her for remarrying so quickly, and that I needed time away from her and her new wife but, actually, that also wasn’t true.
I told the few friends I have that I couldn’t bear to see my ex-wife parading around our social set with her new boyfriend. But that was also a lie.
The truth is, I came here because I couldn’t see New York without seeing my father everywhere I went.
When he was sick, he asked me to visit him. He wanted to build bridges, mend the rift, that sort of thing. It seemed that cancer had given him a new outlook on fatherhood after a lifetime of being a deadbeat dad.
But I kept making excuses and, in the end, I never did get to see him before he died. He slipped away, alone, in a dingy New York hospice.
And now, whenever I’m in that city, I see his face everywhere I look.
And it’s always a face full of recriminations.
He ordered another pint. At this rate, he knows he’d be half-cut by eleven, but God damn if he didn’t need the dull buzz that alcohol brought.
When do you go home?
At this question, there was no hesitation.
Two weeks. Christmas. But I don’t want to go. If you’ll have me, I’ll stay with you forever.
You understand, of course, that my mama is going to kill you?
At this next question, Cohen felt a deep stab of anxiety. He didn’t have anything against Rushi, not really, but he knew that she disliked him on behalf of his mother, and that, having heard the stories of his misspent youth, she regarded him with deep suspicion if not open hostility.
He recalled Rushi’s scowl, her look of pure scepticism and her scathing disregard for any feelings he couldn’t, by her opinion, possibly have.
But with the memory of River’s kiss in his mind, the taste of her still in his mouth, he was now long past the point where walking away was an option. Let Rushi do her worst.
You’re worth it, he wrote.
The next few lines weren’t a question. Cohen felt himself fill with hopeful adrenaline, a frisson of excitement running down his spine, as he read them.
I really like you, Cohen.
But I understand why this might be too much for you.
I just want you to know, that even if this is just a one-time thing, I’ll always think of you fondly.
But before anything else, and most importantly of all, I need to know something. And you must understand, that this is a make-or-break question.
He stiffened, preparing himself for the worst. He’d made a lifetime of errors, a litany of mistakes. Which of them might be the confession that proved too much for River?
Favourite ice cream flavour?
The rush of relief that ran through his body was better than any of the numbing pleasure the alcohol let flow through his veins. He laughed out loud, hardly caring that the barman was regarding him with deep disdain.
When I was a child, he wrote, I always liked strawberry. My father hated that. He said pink was a girl’s colour and strawberry a girl’s flavour. So, whenever I was with him, he made me have vanilla. Plain, simple and inoffensive. A man’s flavour.
But when I went to sign for his body at the hospice, the nurses informed me that in the few days before he died, when he could stomach food, all he asked for was strawberry ice cream.
River’s questionnaire ended with a simple statement.
Tuesday, then?
Tuesday. He nodded emphatically as he wrote. This Tuesday, next Tuesday and every Tuesday after that. For as long as you’ll have me, River.
And he smiled, a smile of hope, as well as a smile of rue.
Because next Tuesday couldn’t come fast enough.
Chapter Five
Jaded Green Tea
The week that followed brought two surprising revelations into Cohen’s life.
The first was that he felt, for the first time in a long time, a sense of ease and well-being. It wasn’t the all-encompassing feeling of peace he’d always imagined or envied in others, it wasn’t zen-like. He didn’t wake in the morning and feel a sudden urge to do yoga by the river with flowers in his hair. But he did wake without the urge to drown his emotions in work and black coffee. He woke and was able to look at himself in the mirror, without hating the dark hair he inherited from his mother, or the brown eyes he knew he’d received from his father. He stood tall, his back straight, and was able to nod at the reflection that stared back at him.
It was odd and unfamiliar and liberating all at once.
The second was that Andrew Canning, current CEO of Roberts-Canning LLC, had decided to retire, taking his platinum silk suits and withered expression into tax haven exile. Cohen barely had time to ponder this email, or to think more than ‘Good luck, Panama, you’ll need every bit of it with that vicious reprobate in your country’, when a second, more worrying, email dropped into his inbox.
Canning wanted Cohen to take over his position.
While I fervently believe this decision to be a massive error on the part of our current, beloved CEO, Fowler wrote in his scathing email detailing the news, Mr Canning is most insistent on your taking the leadership position. He truly (though mistakenly, in my opinion) thinks you can take this company forwards into the future.
Fowler ended the email with the usual empty words: a letter had been sent with the details of this decision, a meeting with the board had been arranged for January, the company was looking forward to his forthcoming return, etc, etc. Each sentence dripped with condescending and ill-concealed disdain, and Cohen closed the email with a quick tap of his finger.
Another email from Fowler popped up, the subject box empty, with just one line crossing the screen.
You better not mess this up, Ford.
Well, indeed.
Cohen knew he shouldn’t be surprised by this turn of events. Canning had been grooming him for leadership for about ten years, ever since he’d persuaded Cohen to leave his fulfilling internship at the Sedler Foundation, swapping it for a less fulfilling role at Roberts-Canning, where the benefits (more money, bigger office and zero presence of his mother) outweighed the negatives (Canning, a less-than-ethical business practice and Tarquin freaking Fowler).
He shouldn’t be surprised. He’d worked hard for this moment. He’d put in the hours, made the right connections, put Roberts-Canning above anything and everything else in his life.
And it’d been easy. Too easy.
Too easy to put the company above Christine and the little soirées she held in their penthouse. God knew that, compared to eating vegan, low-carb and organic canapés with Christine and her vapid friends, the office was actually preferable.
Too easy to miss Christmas or Easter with his mother ... again. Too easy to lay claim to a faith in which he’d long since lost faith as a reason for his absence.
We’re Jewish, we don’t even celebrate Christmas. I don’t know why you’re so upset, he’d normally text Esther at some point in October.