Still Me, Page 3

  Mr. Gopnik was in a window seat, on the telephone, the sleeves of his pale blue shirt rolled up and one hand resting behind his head. He motioned me in, still talking on the phone. To my left a blond woman--Mrs. Gopnik?--sat on a rose-colored antique sofa tapping restlessly on an iPhone. She appeared to have changed her clothes and I was momentarily confused. I waited awkwardly until he ended his call and stood, I noticed, with a little wince of effort. I took another step toward him, to save him coming further, and shook his hand. It was warm, his grip soft and strong. The young woman continued to tap at her phone.

  "Louisa. Glad you got here okay. I trust you have everything you need."

  He said it in the way people do when they don't expect you to ask for anything.

  "It's all lovely. Thank you."

  "This is my daughter, Tabitha. Tab?"

  The girl raised a hand, offering the hint of a smile, before turning back to her phone.

  "Please excuse Agnes not being here to meet you. She's gone to bed for an hour. Splitting headache. It's been a long weekend."

  A vague weariness shadowed his face, but it was gone within a moment. Nothing in his manner betrayed what I had seen less than two hours previously.

  He smiled. "So . . . tonight you're free to do as you please, and from tomorrow morning you will accompany Agnes wherever she wants to go. Your official title is 'assistant,' and you'll be there to support her in whatever she needs to do in the day. She has a busy schedule--I've asked my assistant to loop you in on the family calendar and you'll get e-mailed with any updates. Best to check at around ten p.m.--that's when we tend to make late changes. You'll meet the rest of the team tomorrow."

  "Great. Thank you." I noted the word "team" and had a brief vision of footballers trekking through the apartment.

  "What's for dinner, Dad?" Tabitha spoke as if I wasn't there.

  "I don't know, darling. I thought you said you were going out."

  "I'm not sure if I can face going back across town tonight. I might just stay."

  "Whatever you want. Just make sure Ilaria knows. Louisa, do you have any questions?"

  I tried to think of something useful to say.

  "Oh, and Mom told me to ask you if you'd found that little drawing. The Miro."

  "Sweetheart, I'm not going over that again. The drawing belongs here."

  "But Mom said she chose it. She misses it. You never even liked it."

  "That's not the point."

  I shifted my weight between my feet, not sure if I had been dismissed.

  "But it is the point, Dad. Mom misses something terribly and you don't even care for it."

  "It's worth eighty thousand dollars."

  "Mom doesn't care about the money."

  "Can we discuss this later?"

  "You'll be busy later. I promised Mom I would sort this out."

  I took a surreptitious step backward.

  "There's nothing to sort. The settlement was finalized eighteen months ago. It was all dealt with then. Oh, darling, there you are. Are you feeling better?"

  I looked round. The woman who had just entered the room was strikingly beautiful, her face free of makeup and her pale blond hair scraped back into a loose knot. Her high cheekbones were lightly freckled and the shape of her eyes suggested a Slavic heritage. I guessed she was about the same age as me. She padded barefoot over to Mr. Gopnik and kissed him, her hand trailing across the back of his neck. "Much better, thank you."

  "This is Louisa," he said.

  She turned to me. "My new ally," she said.

  "Your new assistant," said Mr. Gopnik.

  "Hello, Louisa." She reached out a slender hand and shook mine. I felt her eyes run over me, as if she were working something out, and then she smiled, and I couldn't help but smile in return.

  "Ilaria has made your room nice?" Her voice was soft and held an Eastern European lilt.

  "It's perfect. Thank you."

  "Perfect? Oh, you are very easily pleased. That room is like a broom cupboard. Anything you don't like you tell us and we will make it nice. Won't we, darling?"

  "Didn't you used to live in a room even smaller than that, Agnes?" said Tabitha, not looking up from her iPhone. "I'm sure Dad told me you used to share with about fifteen other immigrants."

  "Tab." Mr. Gopnik's voice was a gentle warning.

  Agnes took a little breath and lifted her chin. "Actually, my room was smaller. But the girls I shared with were very nice. So it was no trouble at all. If people are nice, and polite, you can bear anything, don't you think, Louisa?"

  I swallowed. "Yes."

  Ilaria walked in and cleared her throat. She was wearing the same polo shirt and dark trousers, covered by a white apron. She didn't look at me. "Dinner is ready, Mr. Gopnik," she said.

  "Is there any for me, Ilaria darling?" said Tabitha, her hand resting along the back of the sofa. "I think I might stay over."

  Ilaria's expression was filled with instant warmth. It was as if a different person had appeared in front of me. "Of course, Miss Tabitha. I always cook extra on Sundays in case you decide to stay."

  Agnes stood in the middle of the room. I thought I saw a flicker of panic cross her face. Her jaw tightened. "Then I would like Louisa to eat with us too," she said.

  There was a brief silence.

  "Louisa?" said Tabitha.

  "Yes. It would be nice to get to know her properly. Do you have plans for this evening, Louisa?"

  "Uh--no," I stuttered.

  "Then you eat with us. Ilaria, you say you cook extra, yes?"

  Ilaria looked directly at Mr. Gopnik, who appeared to be engrossed in something on his phone.

  "Agnes," said Tabitha, after a moment. "You do understand we don't eat with staff?"

  "Who is this 'we'? I did not know that there was a rulebook." Agnes held out her hand and inspected her wedding band with studied calm. "Darling? Did you forget to give me a rulebook?"

  "With respect, and while I'm sure Louisa is perfectly nice," said Tabitha, "there are boundaries. And they exist for everybody's benefit."

  "I'm happy to do whatever . . ." I began. "I don't want to cause any . . ."

  "Well, with respect, Tabitha, I would like Louisa to eat supper with me. She is my new assistant and we are going to spend every day together. So I cannot see the problem in me getting to know her a little."

  "There's no problem," said Mr. Gopnik.

  "Daddy--"

  "There's no problem, Tab. Ilaria, please could you set the table for four? Thank you."

  Ilaria's eyes widened. She glanced at me, her mouth a thin line of suppressed rage, as if I had engineered this travesty of the domestic hierarchy, then disappeared to the dining room from where we could hear the emphatic clattering of cutlery and glassware. Agnes let out a little breath and pushed her hair back from her head. She flashed me a small, conspiratorial smile.

  "Let's go through," said Mr. Gopnik, after a minute. "Louisa, perhaps you'd like a drink."

  --

  Dinner was a hushed, painful affair. I was overawed by the grand mahogany table, the heavy silver cutlery and the crystal glasses, out of place in my uniform. Mr. Gopnik was largely silent and disappeared twice to take calls from his office. Tabitha flicked through her iPhone, studiously declining to engage with anybody, and Ilaria delivered chicken in a red wine sauce with all the trimmings and removed serving dishes afterward with a face, as my mother would put it, like a smacked arse. Perhaps only I noticed the hard clunk with which my own plate was placed in front of me, the audible sniff that came every time she passed my chair.

  Agnes barely picked at hers. She sat opposite me and chatted gamely as if I were her new best friend, her gaze periodically sliding toward her husband.

  "So this is your first time in New York," she said. "Where else have you been?"

  "Um . . . not very many places. I'm sort of late to traveling. I backpacked around Europe a couple of years ago, and before that . . . Mauritius. And Switzerland."

  "Am
erica is very different. Each state has a unique feel, I think, to we Europeans. I have only been to a few places with Leonard, but it was like going to different countries entirely. Are you excited to be here?"

  "Very much so," I said. "I'm determined to take advantage of everything New York has to offer."

  "Sounds like you, Agnes," said Tabitha sweetly.

  Agnes ignored her, keeping her eyes on me. They were hypnotically beautiful, tapering to fine, upward-tilted points at the corners. Twice I had to remind myself to close my mouth while staring at her.

  "And tell me about your family. You have brothers? Sisters?"

  I explained my family as best I could, making them sound a little more Waltons than Addams.

  "And your sister now lives in your apartment in London? With her son? Will she come visit you? And your parents? They will miss you?"

  I thought of Dad's parting shot: "Don't hurry back, Lou! We're turning your old bedroom into a Jacuzzi!"

  "Oh, yes. Very much."

  "My mother cried for two weeks when I left Krakow. And you have a boyfriend?"

  "Yes. His name's Sam. He's a paramedic."

  "A paramedic! Like a doctor? How lovely. Please show me picture. I love to see pictures."

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and flicked through until I found my favorite picture of Sam, sitting on my roof terrace in his dark green uniform. He had just finished work, and was drinking a mug of tea, beaming at me. The sun was low behind him and I could remember, looking at it, exactly how it had felt up there, my tea cooling on the ledge behind me, Sam waiting patiently as I took picture after picture.

  "So handsome! And he is coming to New York too?"

  "Um, no. He's building a house so it's a bit complicated just now. And he has a job."

  Agnes's eyes widened. "But he must come! You cannot live in different countries! How you can love your man if he is not here with you? I could not be away from Leonard. I don't even like it when he goes on two-day business trip."

  "Yes, I suppose you would want to make sure you're never too far away," said Tabitha. Mr. Gopnik glanced up from his dinner, his gaze flickering between his wife and daughter, but said nothing.

  "Still," Agnes said, arranging her napkin on her lap, "London is not so far away. And love is love. Isn't that right, Leonard?"

  "It certainly is," he said, and his face briefly softened at her smile. Agnes reached out a hand and stroked his, and I looked quickly at my plate.

  The room fell silent for a moment.

  "Actually I think I might head home. I seem to be feeling slightly nauseous." With a loud scrape, Tabitha pushed her chair back and dropped her napkin on her plate, where the white linen immediately began to soak up the red wine sauce. I had to fight the urge to rescue it. She stood and kissed her father's cheek. He reached up a free hand and touched her arm fondly.

  "I'll speak to you during the week, Daddy." She turned. "Louisa . . . Agnes." She nodded curtly, and left the room.

  Agnes watched her go. It's possible she muttered something under her breath, but Ilaria was gathering up my plate and cutlery with such a savage clatter that it was hard to tell.

  --

  With Tabitha gone, it was as if all the fight left Agnes. She seemed to wilt in her seat, her shoulders suddenly bowed, the sharp hollow of her collarbone visible as her head drooped over it. I stood. "I think I might head back to my room now. Thank you so much for supper. It was delicious."

  Nobody protested. Mr. Gopnik's arm was resting along the mahogany table now, his fingers stroking his wife's hand. "We'll see you in the morning, Louisa," he said, not looking at me. Agnes was gazing up at him, her face somber. I backed out of the dining room, speeding past the kitchen door to my room so that the virtual daggers I could feel Ilaria hurling my way from the kitchen wouldn't have a chance to hit me.

  --

  An hour later Nathan sent me a text. He was having a beer with friends in Brooklyn.

  --Heard you got the full baptism of fire. You all right?

  I didn't have the energy to come back with something witty. Or to ask him how on earth he knew.

  --It'll be easier once you get to know them. Promise.

  See you in the morning, I replied. I had a brief moment of misgiving--what had I just signed up for?--then had a stern word with myself, and fell heavily to sleep.

  --

  That night I dreamed of Will. I dreamed of him rarely--a source of some sadness to me in the early days when I had missed him so much that I felt as if someone had blasted a hole straight through me. The dreams had stopped when I met Sam. But there he was again, in the small hours, as vivid as if he were standing before me. He was in the backseat of a car, an expensive black limousine, like Mr. Gopnik's, and I saw him from across a street. I was instantly relieved that he was not dead, not gone after all, and knew instinctively that he should not go wherever he was headed. It was my job to stop him. But every time I tried to cross the busy road an extra lane of cars seemed to appear in front of me, roaring past so that I couldn't get to him, the sound of the engines drowning my shouting of his name. There he was, just out of reach, his skin that smooth caramel color, his faint smile playing around the edges of his mouth, saying something to the driver that I couldn't hear. At the last minute he caught my eye--his eyes widened just a little--and I woke, sweating, the duvet knotted around my legs.

  3

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Writing this in haste--Mrs. G is having her piano lesson--but I'm going to try and e-mail you every day so that at least I can feel like we're chatting. I miss you. Please write back. I know you said you hate e-mails but just for me. Pleeeease. (You have to imagine my pleading face here.) Or, you know, LETTERS!

  Love you,

  Lxxxxxx

  Well, good morning!"

  A very large African American man in very tight scarlet Lycra stood in front of me, his hands on his hips. I froze, blinking, in the kitchen doorway in my T-shirt and knickers, wondering if I was dreaming and whether if I closed the door and opened it again he would still be there.

  "You must be Miss Louisa?" A huge hand reached out and took mine, pumping it so enthusiastically that I bobbed up and down involuntarily. I checked my watch. No, it really was a quarter past six.

  "I'm George. Mrs. Gopnik's trainer. I hear you're coming out with us. Looking forward to it!"

  I had woken after a fitful few hours, struggling to shake off the tangled dreams that had woven themselves through my sleep, and stumbled down the corridor on automatic pilot, a caffeine-seeking zombie.

  "Okay, Louisa! Gotta stay hydrated!" He picked up two water bottles from the side. And he was gone, jogging lightly down the corridor.

  I poured myself a coffee, and as I stood there sipping it, Nathan walked in, dressed and scented with aftershave. He gazed at my bare legs.

  "I just met George," I said.

  "Nothing he can't teach you about glutes. You got your running shoes, right?"

  "Hah!" I took a sip of my coffee but Nathan was looking at me expectantly. "Nathan, nobody said anything about running. I'm not a runner. I mean, I am the anti-sport, the sofa-dweller. You know that."

  Nathan poured himself a black coffee and replaced the jug in the machine.

  "Plus I fell off a building earlier this year. Remember? Lots of bits of me went crack." I could joke about that night now when, still grieving Will, I had drunkenly slipped from the parapet of my London home. But the twinges in my hip were a constant reminder.

  "You're fine. And you're Mrs. G's assistant. Your job is to be at her side at all times, mate. If she wants you to go running, then you're running." He took a sip of his coffee. "Ah, don't look so panicked. You'll love it. You'll be fit as a butcher's dog within a few weeks. Everyone here does it."

  "It's a quarter past six in the morning."

  "Mr. Gopnik starts at five. We've just finished his physio. Mrs. G likes a bit of a lie-in."

  "So w
e run at what time?"

  "Twenty to seven. Meet them in the main hallway. See you later!" He lifted a hand, and was gone.

  --

  Agnes, of course, was one of those women who looked even better in the mornings: naked of face, a little blurred at the edges, but in a sexy Vaseline-on-the-lens way. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail and her fitted top and jogging pants made her seem casual in the same way that off-duty supermodels do. She loped down the corridor, like a Palomino racehorse in sunglasses, and lifted an elegant hand in greeting, as if it were simply too early for speech. I had only a pair of shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt with me, which, I suspected, made me look like a plump laborer. I was slightly anxious that I hadn't shaved my armpits and clamped my elbows to my sides.

  "Good morning, Mrs. G!" George appeared beside us and handed Agnes a bottle of water. "You all set?"

  She nodded.

  "You ready, Miss Louisa? We're just doing the four miles today. Mrs. G wants to do extra abdominal work. You've done your stretches, right?"

  "Um, I . . ." I had no water and no bottle. But we were off.

  --

  I had heard the expression "hit the ground running" but until George I had never truly understood what it meant. He set off down the corridor at what felt like forty miles an hour, and just when I thought we would at least slow for the lift, he held open the double doors at the end so that we could sprint down the four flights of stairs that took us to the ground floor. We were out through the lobby and past Ashok in a blur, me just able to catch his muffled greeting.

  Dear God, but it was too early for this. I followed the two of them, jogging effortlessly like a pair of carriage horses, while I sprinted behind, my shorter stride failing to match theirs, my bones jarring with the impact of each footfall, muttering my apologies as I swerved between the kamikaze pedestrians who walked into my path. Running had been my ex Patrick's thing. It was like kale--one of those things you know exists and is possibly good for you but, frankly, life is always going to be too short to get stuck in.

  Oh, come on, you can do this, I told myself. This is your first say yes! moment. You are jogging in New York! This is a whole new you! For a few glorious strides I almost believed it. The traffic stopped, the crossing light changed, and we paused at the curbside, George and Agnes bouncing lightly on their toes, me unseen behind them. Then we were across and into Central Park, the path disappearing beneath our feet, the sounds of the traffic fading as we entered the green oasis at the heart of the city.