Page 30 of Still Me
“But—but we’ve hardly spoken. What’s going on with you? Tell me your news.”
“Some other time. Jake’s hungry.”
“Okay!” My voice was too high. “Say hi to him for me!”
“Okay.”
“I love you,” I said.
“Me, too.”
“One more week! Counting the days.”
“Gotta go.”
I felt strangely wrongfooted when I put the phone down. I didn’t quite understand what had just happened. I sat there motionless on theside of my bed. And then I looked at Josh’s business card. He had handed it to me as we left, pressing it into my palm and closing my fingers around it.
Give me a call. I’ll show you some cool places.
I had taken it and smiled politely. Which, of course, could have meant anything at all.
7
Fox’s Cottage
Tuesday, 6 October
Dear Louisa,
I hope you are well and enjoying your time in New York. I believe Lily is writing to you, but I was thinking after our last conversation and I had a look in the loft and brought down some letters of Will’s from his time in the city that I thought you might enjoy. You know what a great traveler he was and I thought you might enjoy retracing his footsteps.
I read a couple myself; a rather bittersweet experience. You can keep hold of them until we next see each other.
With fondest wishes,
Camilla Traynor
New York
12.6.2004
Dear Mum,
I would have called but the time difference doesn’t really fit around schedules here, so I thought I’d shock you by writing. First letter since that short-lived stint at Priory Manor, I think. I wasn’t really cut out for boarding school, was I?
New York is pretty amazing. It’s impossible not to be infused by the energy of the place. I’m up and out by five thirty every morning. My firm is based on Stone Street down in the Financial District. Nigel fixed me up with an office (not corner but a good view across the water—apparently these are the things by which we are judged in NY) and the guys at work seem a good bunch. Tell Dad that on Saturday I went to the opera at the Met with my boss and his wife—(Der Rosenkavalier, bit overdone) and you’ll be happy to hear I went to a performance of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Lot of client lunches, lot of company softball. Not so much in the evenings: my new colleagues are mostly married with young children so it’s just me trawling the bars...
I’ve been out with a couple of girls—nothing serious (here they seem to “date” as a pastime)—but mostly I’ve just spent my spare hours at the gym or hanging out with old friends. Lot of people here from Shipmans, and a few I knew at school. Turns out it’s a small world, after all... Most of them are quite changed here, though. They’re tougher, hungrier than I remember. Think the city brings that out in you.
Right! Off out with Henry Farnsworth’s daughter this evening. Remember her? Leading light of the Stortfold Pony Club? Has reinvented herself as some sort of shopping guru. (Don’t get your hopes up, I’m just doing it as a favor to Henry.) I’m taking her to my favorite steakhouse, on the Upper East Side: slabs of meat the size of a gaucho’s blanket. I’m hoping she’s not vegetarian. Everyone here seems to have some sort of food fad going on.
Oh, and last Sunday I took the F train and got off on the far side of the Brooklyn Bridge just to walk back across the water, as you suggested. Best thing I’ve done so far. Felt like I’d stepped into an early Woody Allen movie—you know, the ones where there was only a ten-year age gap between him and his leading ladies...
Tell Dad I’ll call him next week, and give the dog a hug for me.
Love, Will x
With that bowl of cheap noodles, something had changed in my relationship with the Gopniks. I think I grasped a little better that I could bolster Agnes in her new role. She needed someone to lean on and to trust. This, and the strange osmotic energy of New York, meant that from then on I literally bounced out of bed in a way that I hadn’t done since working for Will. It caused Ilaria to tut and roll her eyes and Nathan to view me sideways, as if I might have started taking drugs.
