Page 2 of Still Me
“It’s a bit complicated. But I’m sort of a paid companion.”
“Apaid companion.”
“It’s like this. I used to work for this man. I was his companion, but I would also give him his meds and take him out and feed him. That’s not as weird as it sounds, by the way—he had no use of his hands. It wasn’t like something pervy. Actually my last job ended up as more than that, because it’s hard not to get close to people you look afterand Will—the man—was amazing and we... Well, we fell in love.” Too late, I felt the familiar welling of tears. I wiped at my eyes briskly. “So I think it’ll be sort of like that. Except for the love bit. And the feeding.”
The immigration officer was staring at me. I tried to smile. “Actually, I don’t normally cry talking about jobs. I’m not like an actual lunatic, despite my name. Hah! But I loved him. And he loved me. And then he... Well, he chose to end his life. So this is sort of my attempt to start over.” The tears were now leaking relentlessly, embarrassingly, from the corners of my eyes. I couldn’t seem to stop them. I couldn’t seem to stop anything. “Sorry. Must be the jet lag. It’s something like two o’clock in the morning in normal time, right? Plus I don’t really talk about him anymore. I mean, I have a new boyfriend. And he’s great! He’s a paramedic! And hot! That’s like winning the boyfriend lottery, right? A hot paramedic?”
I scrabbled around in my handbag for a tissue. When I looked up the man was holding out a box. I took one. “Thank you. So, anyway, my friend Nathan—he’s from New Zealand—works here and he helped me get this job and I don’t really know what it involves yet, apart from looking after this rich man’s wife who gets depressed. But I’ve decided this time I’m going to live up to what Will wanted for me, because before I didn’t get it right. I just ended up working in an airport.”
I froze. “Not—uh—that there’s anything wrong with working at an airport! I’m sure immigration is a very important job.Reallyimportant. But I have a plan. I’m going to do something new every week that I’m here and I’m going to say yes.”
“Say yes?”
“To new things. Will always said I shut myself off from new experiences. So this is my plan.”
The officer studied my paperwork. “You didn’t fill the address section out properly. I need a zip code.”
He pushed the form toward me. I checked the number on the sheet that I had printed out and filled it in with trembling fingers. I glanced to my left, where the queue at my section was growing restive. At the front of the next queue a Chinese family was being questioned by two officials. As the woman protested, they were led into a side room. I felt suddenly very alone.
The immigration officer peered at the people waiting. And then, abruptly, he stamped my passport. “Good luck, Louisa Clark,” he said.
I stared at him. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I smiled. “Oh, thank you! That’s really kind. I mean, it’s quite weird being on the other side of the world by yourself for the first time, and now I feel a bit like I just met my first nice new person and—”
“You need to move along now, ma’am.”
“Of course. Sorry.”
I gathered up my belongings and pushed a sweaty frond of hair from my face.
“And, ma’am...”
“Yes?” I wondered what I had got wrong now.
He didn’t look up from his screen. “Be careful what you say yes to.”
—
Nathan was waiting in Arrivals, as he had promised. I scanned the crowd, feeling oddly self-conscious, secretly convinced that nobody would come, but there he was, his huge hand waving above the shifting bodies around him. He raised his other arm, a smile breaking across his face, and pushed his way through to meet me, picking me up off my feet in a gigantic hug. “Lou!”
At the sight of him, something in me constricted unexpectedly—something linked to Will and loss and the raw emotion that comes from sitting on a slightly-too-bumpy flight for seven hours—and I was glad that he was holding me tightly so that I had a moment to compose myself. “Welcome to New York, Shorty! Not lost your dress sense, I see.”
Now he held me at arms’ length, grinning. I straightened my 1970s tiger print dress. I had thought it might make me look like Jackie Kennedy The Onassis Years. If Jackie Kennedy had spilled half her airline coffee on her lap. “It’s so good to see you.”
He swept up my leaden suitcases like they were filled with feathers. “C’mon. Let’s get you back to the house. The Prius is in for servicing so Mr. G lent me his car. Traffic’s terrible, but you’ll get there in style.”
—
Mr. Gopnik’s car was sleek and black and the size of a bus, and the doors closed with that emphatic, discreetthunkthat signaled a six-figureprice tag. Nathan shut my cases into the boot and I settled into the passenger seat with a sigh. I checked my phone, answered Mum’s fourteen texts with one that told her simply that I was in the car and would call her tomorrow, then replied to Sam’s, which told me he missed me, withLanded xxx.
“How’s the fella?” said Nathan, glancing at me.
“He’s good, thanks.” I added a few more xxxxs just to make sure.
“Wasn’t too sticky about you heading over here?”
