I refused to let them make me feel bad about Lily’s creation (though I did hide the gift certificate for cuddling far, far in the back of my sock drawer). I remembered that first box that Gem had sent me and decided to re-create it for Lily. I bought Cadbury chocolates, a toy lorry, some childhood-favorite tomes in their British dressings, and an Oxford sweatshirt. Not a gift for no reason but a gift for reason. I wrapped it in brown paper, tied it in string, and sent it across the ocean.
Then I stared down the hardest exams I’d ever faced. And instead of staring them into submission, I blinked. And blinked. And blinked some more. By the end of it, I felt like I was all eyelid and no pupil. And I must have looked gutted as well, because when I showed up on Gem’s doorstep immediately after my final exam, she took one look at me and said, “Oh, dear.”
“I think I need to sleep for a few weeks,” I told her. “Can you wake me up when it’s midnight on New Year’s, and then let me go back to sleep?”
“You have four hours to nap,” she replied, “and then I’ll wake you up with a plan.”
Precisely four hours later, there was a knock on my door. I was still too sleepy to know whether I called out “Come in” or just thought about doing so. Either way, she came in.
She said, “I’ve looked into my crystal ball” (this is what she called her smartphone), “and I believe I’ve found an event that will put the bubbles back in your champagne.”
“Does it involve other people?” I grumbled.
“Certainly.”
“Nooooooo,” I replied, mostly to the pillow I was pulling over my face.
“Dash,” my grandmother said in her most leveling voice, “you must come to grips with the fact that you’d make a very inept monk. Tonight you get to be the dandy and I get to be the wayward contessa. And instead of teaming up to solve country-house crimes, we’ll go on a literary escapade. If that’s not a tonic for your ills, I don’t know what is.”
Even in my world-weary, sleep-deprived state, I had to admit that, put in those terms, it sounded like a pretty good plan.
“You sound like Mrs. Basil E.,” I mumbled, referring to Lily’s great-aunt, who also liked a proper turn of phrase.
“Groovy,” Gem said, dispelling any aura of Mrs. Basil E. she might have gathered, since I doubted highly that Mrs. Basil E. would have used that word even at the height of its innovation. “Now let’s get going.”
I groaned my agreement and peeked out from under the pillow to see my grandmother gripped by a fervor she usually saved for her love of Eric Clapton and David Thewlis and her loathing of Damien Hirst and the Tories.
“Lovely!” she chirped. “I’ll gather the accoutrements.”
Soon the Red Hot + Blue album—a favorite of hers—filled the air. I got out of bed and walked over to Lily’s Advent calendar, which had been the first thing I’d unpacked before my nap collapse. I looked at the doorway that led to today’s gift and felt I didn’t yet deserve to open it; this was the drawback of an Advent calendar, because I felt that I actually needed to have done something on that day to be worthy of whatever small piece of affection Lily had packed inside. I figured I still had a few hours left and could open it when I got home.
Next I went into the bathroom and made the grave mistake of (a) turning on the light and (b) looking in the mirror. I knew, intellectually, that my aversion to finding an Oxford barber and my inability to find time for a haircut had led to a certain follicular expansiveness. But now I realized that I had veered from Bright Young Thing territory straight into the land of Robinson Crusoe.
“It’s time for a lather and a shave!” I called out to Gem.
“And how about a snip and a style when you’re through?” she called back. (This was how I found out she’d worked for three years as a hairdresser at a posh salon.)
Two hours later, I bore a better resemblance to an older me, the one my university self had bamboozled, bedraggled, and balderdashed. Gem’s wardrobe included a few upscale suits that fit me beautifully. (This was how I found out she’d worked as a consultant to Liberty for two years.) She even had a top hat on reserve, left behind by a not-quite-gentleman who’d left her behind as well.
I went into my room and put on my duds; when I emerged I found Gem in a similar suit of a much more flamboyant color.
“Aren’t we just the pair?” she said with a smile.
“Swellegant, for sure,” I parlayed.
If school had become a dirge, this was a blast of sonata. I half expected a carriage to be waiting for us when Gem opened the front door. But instead we rode on the Tube, reveling in the bemused looks we got from The General Population. I took a picture of us to send to Lily but didn’t have reception underground. I imagined Gem pulling out a third suit for Lily to wear and the three of us taking the town together. It could happen.
We got off at Marylebone and paraded to Daunt Books. I had spent a good amount of time at Waterstones Piccadilly, which looked like a flagship that had sailed in from the Jazz Age. Daunt, meanwhile, looked like a place where Jane Austen and Charles Dickens would have hung out to thumb-wrestle or brood on the state of the novel, such as it was.
“Who’s reading tonight?” I asked as we approached, still in the dark.
“Not a reading. Something else,” Gem replied. Then: “Oh, look at that.”
A few steps away from us, a cat was walking without an owner attached to its leash.
As Gem stooped over to check the cat for a tag, I asked, “Is that a British thing, to keep a cat on a leash?”
“No more or no less than anywhere else.” Gem shook her head. “No identification. So careless. Perhaps she belongs to someone inside—it’s cruel to keep her out here, so let’s take her in.”
As we walked into the store, we saw that we were catching the evening’s activity in medias res. All eyes turned our way—perhaps because of the cat?—and Gem made the most of the moment, drolly asking, “Are we late?” To which I replied, “Never, my dear. The world waits for you.”
After the dread of exam season, the dark cloud of wondering if I really belonged at Oxford, I felt such delight in the dialogue, delirium in our flight of fancy. I still had no idea what we were doing here, but I instinctively knew that whatever it was would be far better than a night of stress and sensibility in my dorm room. I honestly didn’t think things could get any better—and then I scanned the crowd and saw Lily’s face looking back at me.
At first I thought: This can’t be possible. I must still be napping.
Then I thought: This must be Gem’s surprise. She is a magician.
If it wasn’t a dream, it must have been planned. But if it had been planned, why did Lily look so confused?
I headed straight to her and wrapped her in an embrace.
“I can’t believe it!” I said. “You’re here!”
“I’m here,” she said, hugging me back, sounding (yes) a little confused. Then, when we pulled apart a little, she added, “I thought you had a beard? And long hair?”
Gem’s voice came from over my shoulder. “A momentary lapse that shan’t be repeated.”
I smiled at her. “How did you do this? How did you get Lily here without telling me?”