Page 27 of Still Me
“Thank you. So kind of you,” Agnes said. She pulled a fifty-dollar bill from her evening bag and handed it to the woman. Then she turned to me with a smile. “Louisa, darling, shall we go back to our table?” And, with an imperious nod to the two women, Agnes lifted her chin and walked slowly toward the door.
There was silence. Then the attendant turned to me, and pocketed the money with a wide grin. “Nowthat,” she said, her voice suddenly audible, “isclass.”
6
The following morning, George didn’t come. Nobody told me. I sat in the hall in my shorts, bleary and gritty-eyed, and at half seven grasped that he must have been canceled.
Agnes did not get up until after nine, a fact that had Ilaria tutting disapprovingly at the clock. She had sent a text asking me to cancel the rest of her day’s appointments. Instead, some time around mid-morning, she said she’d like to walk around the Reservoir. It was a breezy day and we walked with scarves pulled up around our chins and our hands thrust into our pockets. All night I had thought about Josh’s face. I still felt unbalanced by it, found myself wondering how many of Will’s doppelgängers were walking around in different countries right now. Josh’s eyebrows were heavier, his eyes a different color, and obviously his accent wasn’t Will’s. But still.
“You know what I used to do with my friends when we were hung-over?” said Agnes, breaking into my thoughts. “We would go to this Japanese place near Gramercy Park and we would eat noodles and talk and talk and talk.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“Where?”
“To the noodle place. We can pick up your friends on the way.”
She looked briefly hopeful, then kicked a stone. “I can’t now. Is different.”
“You don’t have to turn up in Garry’s car. We could get a taxi. I mean, you could dress down, just turn up. It would be fine.”
“I told you. Is different.” She turned to me. “I tried these things, Louisa. For a while. But my friends are curious. They want to know everything about my life now. And then when I tell them the truth it makes them... weird.”
“Weird?”
“Once we were all the same, you know? Now they say I can never know what their problems are. Because I am rich. Somehow I am notallowed to have problems. Or they are strange around me, like I am somehow different person. Like the good things in my life are an insult to theirs. You think I can moan about housekeeper to someone with no house?”
She stopped on the path. “When I first marry Leonard, he gave me money for my own. A wedding present, so that I don’t have to ask him for money all the time. And I give my best friend, Paula, some of this money. I give her ten thousand dollars to clear her debts, to make fresh start. At first she was so happy. I was happy too! To do this for my friend! So she doesn’t have to worry anymore, like me!” Her voice grew wistful. “And then... then she didn’t want to see me anymore. She was different, was always too busy to meet me. And slowly I see she resents me for helping her. She didn’t mean to, but when she sees me now all she can think is that she owes me. And she is proud, very proud. She does not want to live with this feeling. So”—she shrugged—“she won’t have lunch with me or take my calls. I lost my friend because of money.”
“Problems are problems,” I said when it became clear she was expecting me to say something. “Doesn’t matter whose they are.”
She stepped sideways to avoid a toddler on a scooter. She gazed after it, thinking, then turned to me. “You have cigarettes?”
I had learned now. I pulled the packet from my backpack and handed it to her. I wasn’t sure I should be encouraging her to smoke, but she was my boss. She inhaled and blew out a long plume of smoke.
“Problems are problems,” she repeated slowly. “You have problems, Louisa Clark?”
“I miss my boyfriend.” I said it as much as anything to reassure myself. “Apart from that, not really. This is... great. I’m happy here.”
She nodded. “I used to feel like this. New York! Always something to see new. Always exciting. Now I just... I miss...” She tailed off.
For a moment I thought her eyes had filled with tears. But then her face stilled.
“You know she hates me?”
“Who?”
“Ilaria. The witch. She was the other one’s housekeeper and Leonard will not sack her. So I am stuck with her.”
“She might grow to like you.”
“She might grow to put arsenic in my food. I see the way she looks at me. She wishes me dead. You know how it feels to live with someone who wishes you dead?”
I was pretty scared of Ilaria myself. But I didn’t want to say so. We walked on. “I used to work for someone who I was pretty sure hated me at first,” I said. “Gradually I worked out that it was nothing to do with me. He just hated his life. And as we got to know each other we started to get along just fine.”
“Did he ever scorch your best shirt ‘accidentally’? Or put detergent in your underwear that he knew would make your vajajay itch?”
“Uh—no.”
