Still Me, Page 5

  When Agnes finally emerged, twenty minutes later, she looked sideways at me and smiled.

  --

  That first week moved in fits and starts, like the first day, with me watching Agnes for signals in the way that Mum used to watch our old dog when her bladder got leaky. Does she need to go out? What does she want? Where should I be? I jogged with Agnes and George every morning, waving them on from about a mile in and motioning toward my hip before walking slowly back to the building. I spent a lot of time sitting in the hall, studying my iPad intently when anybody walked past, so that I might look as if I knew what I was doing.

  Michael came every day and briefed me in whispered bursts. He seemed to spend his life on the run between the apartment and Mr. Gopnik's Wall Street office, one of two cell phones pressed to his ear, dry-cleaning over his arm, coffee in his hand. He was completely charming and always smiling, and I had absolutely no idea if he liked me at all.

  I barely saw Nathan. He seemed to be employed to fit around Mr. Gopnik's schedule. Sometimes he would work with him at five a.m., at others it was seven o'clock in the evening, disappearing to the office to help him there if necessary. "I'm not employed for what I do," Nathan explained. "I'm employed for what I can do." Occasionally he would vanish and I would discover that he and Mr. Gopnik had jetted somewhere overnight--it could be San Francisco or Chicago. Mr. Gopnik had a form of arthritis that he worked hard to keep under control so he and Nathan would swim or work out often several times each day to supplement his regime of anti-inflammatories and painkillers.

  Alongside Nathan, and George the trainer, who also came every weekday morning, the other people who passed through the apartment that first week were:

  The cleaners. Apparently there was a distinction between what Ilaria did (housekeeping) and actual cleaning. Twice a week a team of three liveried women and one man blitzed their way through the apartment. They did not speak, except to consult briefly with each other. Each carried a large crate of eco-friendly cleaning materials, and they were gone three hours later, leaving Ilaria to sniff the air, and run her fingers along the skirting disapprovingly.

  The florist, who arrived in a van on Monday morning and brought enormous vases of arranged blooms to be placed at strategic intervals in the communal areas of the apartment. Several of the vases were so large that it took two to carry them in. They removed their shoes at the door.

  The gardener. Yes, really. This at first made me slightly hysterical ("You do realize we're on the second floor?") until I discovered that the long balconies at the back of the building were lined with pots of miniature trees and blossoms, which the gardener would water, trim and feed before disappearing again. It did make the balcony look beautiful, but nobody ever went out there except me.

  The pet behaviorist. A tiny, birdlike Japanese woman appeared at ten a.m. on a Friday, watched Felix at a distance for an hour or so, then examined his food, his litter tray, the places he slept, quizzed Ilaria on his behavior, and advised on what toys he needed, or whether his scratching post was sufficiently tall and stable. Felix ignored her for the entire time she was there, breaking off only to wash his bottom with what seemed like almost insulting enthusiasm.

  The grocery team came twice a week and brought with them large green crates of fresh food, which they unpacked under Ilaria's supervision. I caught sight of the bill one day: it would have fed my family--and possibly half my postcode--for several months.

  And that was without the manicurist, the dermatologist, the piano teacher, the man who serviced and cleaned the cars, the handyman who worked for the building and sorted out replacement lightbulbs or faulty air-conditioning. There was the stick-thin redheaded woman who brought large shopping bags from Bergdorf Goodman or Saks Fifth Avenue and viewed everything Agnes tried on with a gimlet eye, stating: "Nope. Nope. Nope. Oh, that's perfect, honey. That's lovely. You want to wear that with the little Prada bag I showed you last week. Now, what are we doing about the Gala?"

  There was the wine merchant and the man who hung the pictures and the woman who cleaned the curtains and the man who buffed the parquet floors in the main living room with a thing that looked like a lawnmower, and a few others besides. I simply got used to seeing people I didn't recognize wandering around. I'm not sure there was a single day in the first two weeks when there were fewer than five people in the apartment at any one time.

  It was a family home in name only. It felt like a workspace for me, Nathan, Ilaria, and an endless team of contractors, staff, and hangers-on who traipsed through it from dawn until late into the evening. Sometimes after supper a procession of Mr. Gopnik's suited colleagues would stop by, disappear into his study, and emerge an hour later muttering about calls to DC or Tokyo. He never really seemed to stop working, other than the time he spent with Nathan. Even at dinner his two phones were on the mahogany table, buzzing discreetly like trapped wasps, as messages filed in.

  I found myself watching Agnes sometimes as she closed the door to her dressing room in the middle of the day--presumably the only place she could disappear--and I would wonder, When was this place ever just a home?

  This, I concluded, was why they disappeared at weekends. Unless the country residence had staff too.

  "Nah. That's the one thing she's managed to sort her way," said Nathan, when I asked him. "She told him to give the ex their weekend place. In return she got him to downscale to a modest place on the beach. Three beds. One bathroom. No staff." He shook his head. "And therefore no Tab. She's not stupid."

  --

  "Hey, you."

  Sam was in uniform. I did some mental calculations and worked out he had just finished his shift. He ran his hand through his hair, then leaned forward, as if to see me better through the pixelated screen. A little voice said in my head, as it did every time I'd spoken to him since I'd left, What are you doing moving to a different continent from this man?

  "You went in, then?"

  "Yeah." He sighed. "Not the best first day back."

  "Why?"

  "Donna quit."

  I couldn't hide my shock. Donna--straight-talking, funny, calm--was the yin to his yang, his anchor, his voice of sanity at work. It was impossible trying to imagine one without the other. "What? Why?"

  "Her dad got cancer. Aggressive. Incurable. She wants to be there for him."

  "Oh, God. Poor Donna. Poor Donna's dad."

  "Yeah. It's rough. And now I have to wait and see who they're going to pair me with. I don't think they'll put me with a rookie because of the whole disciplinary-issues thing. So I'm guessing it will be someone from another district."

  Sam had been up in front of the disciplinary committee twice since we had been together. I had been responsible for at least one of those and felt the reflexive twinge of guilt. "You'll miss her."

  "Yup." He looked a bit battered. I wanted to reach through the screen and hug him. "She saved me," he said.

  He wasn't prone to dramatic statements, which somehow made those three words more poignant. I still remembered that night in bursts of terrifying clarity: Sam's gunshot wound bleeding out over the floor of the ambulance, Donna calm, capable, barking instructions at me, keeping that fragile thread unbroken until the other medics finally arrived. I could still taste fear, visceral and metallic, in my mouth, could still feel the obscene warmth of Sam's blood on my hands. I shivered, pushing the image aside. I didn't want Sam in the protection of anyone else. He and Donna were a team. Two people who would never let each other down. And who would probably rib each other mercilessly afterward.

  "When does she leave?"

  "Next week. She got special dispensation, given her family circumstances." He sighed. "Still. On the bright side, your mum's invited me to lunch on Sunday. Apparently we're having roast beef and all the trimmings. Oh, and your sister asked me round to the flat. Don't look like that--she asked if I could help her bleed your radiators."

  "That's it now. You're in. My family have you like a Venus flytrap."

  "It
'll be strange without you."

  "Maybe I should just come home."

  He tried to raise a smile and failed.

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  "Go on."

  "I don't know . . . Feels like I just lost my two favorite women."

  A lump rose to my throat. The specter of the third woman he'd lost--his sister, who had died of cancer two years previously--hung between us. "Sam, you didn't lo-"

  "Ignore that. Unfair of me."

  "I'm still yours. Just at a distance for a while."

  He blew out his cheeks. "I didn't expect to feel it this badly."

  "I don't know whether to be pleased or sad now."

  "I'll be fine. Just one of those days."

  I sat there for a moment, watching him. "Okay. So here's the plan. First you go and feed your hens. Because you always find watching them soothing. And nature is good for perspective and all that."

  He straightened up a little. "Then what?"

  "You make yourself one of those really great bolognese sauces. The ones that take forever, with the wine and bacon and stuff. Because it's almost impossible to feel crap after eating a really great spaghetti bolognese."

  "Hens. Sauce. Okay."

  "And then you switch on the television and find a really good film. Something you can get lost in. No reality TV. Nothing with ads."

  "Louisa Clark's Evening Remedies. I'm liking this."

  "And then"--I thought for a moment--"you think about the fact that it's only a little over three weeks until we see each other. And that means this! Ta-daa!" I pulled my top up to my neck.

  With hindsight, it was a pity that Ilaria chose that exact moment to open my door and walk in with the laundry. She stood there, a pile of towels under one arm, and froze as she took in my exposed bosom, the man's face on the screen. Then she closed the door quickly, muttering something under her breath. I scrambled to cover myself up.

  "What?" Sam was grinning, trying to peer to the right of the screen. "What's going on?"

  "The housekeeper," I said, straightening my top. "Oh, God."

  Sam had fallen back in his chair. He was properly laughing now, one hand clutching his stomach, where he still got a little protective about his scar.

  "You don't understand. She hates me."

  "And now you're Madam Webcam." He was snorting with laughter.

  "My name will be mud in the housekeeping community from here to Palm Springs." I wailed a bit longer, then started to giggle. Seeing Sam laugh so much it was hard not to.

  He grinned at me. "Well, Lou, you did it. You cheered me up."

  "The downside for you is that's the first and last time I show you my lady-bits over WiFi."

  Sam leaned forward and blew me a kiss. "Yeah, well," he said. "I guess we should just be grateful it wasn't the other way around."

  --

  Ilaria didn't talk to me for two whole days after the webcam incident. She would turn away when I walked into a room, immediately finding something with which to busy herself, as if by merely catching her eye I might somehow contaminate her with my penchant for salacious boob exposure.

  Nathan asked what had gone down between us, after she pushed my coffee toward me with an actual spatula, but I couldn't explain it without it sounding somehow worse than it was, so I muttered something about laundry and why we should have locks on our doors, and hoped that he would let it go.

  4

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Hey, Stinky Arsebandit Yourself

  (Is that how a respected accountant is really meant to talk to her globetrotting sister?) I'm good, thanks. My employer--Agnes--is my age and really nice. So that's been a bonus. You wouldn't believe the places I'm going--last night I went to a ball in a dress that cost more than I earn in a month. I felt like Cinderella. Except with a really gorgeous sister (yup, so that's a new one for me. Ha-ha-ha-ha!).

  Glad Thom is enjoying his new school. Don't worry about the felt-tip thing--we can always paint that wall. Mum says it's a sign of his creative expression. Did you know she's trying to get Dad to go to night school to learn to express himself better? He's got it into his head this means she's going to get him going tantric. God knows where he's read about that. I pretended like she'd told me that was definitely it when he called me, and now I'm feeling a bit guilty because he's panicking that he'll have to get his old fella out in front of a room full of strangers.

  Write me more news. Especially about the date!!!

  Miss you,

  Lou xxx

  PS If Dad does get his old fella out in front of a room full of strangers I don't want to know ANYTHING.

  According to Agnes's social diary, numerous events were highlights of the New York social calendar, but the Neil and Florence Strager Charitable Foundation Dinner teetered somewhere near the pinnacle. Guests wore yellow--the men in necktie form, unless particularly exhibitionist--and the resulting photographs were distributed in publications from the New York Post to Harper's Bazaar. Dress was formal, the yellow outfits were dazzling, and tickets cost a pocketful of small change under thirty thousand dollars a table. For the outer reaches of the room. I knew this because I had started researching each event that Agnes was due to attend, and this was a big one not just because of the amount of preparation (manicurist, hairdresser, masseur, extra George in the mornings) but because of Agnes's stress level. She physically vibrated through the day, shouting at George that she couldn't do the exercises he'd given her, couldn't run the distance. It was all impossible. George, who possessed an almost Buddha-like level of calm, said that was totally fine, they would walk back and the endorphins from the walk were all good. When he left he gave me a wink, as if this were entirely to be expected.

  Mr. Gopnik, perhaps in response to some distress call, came home at lunchtime and found her locked in her dressing room. I collected some dry-cleaning from Ashok and canceled her teeth-whitening appointment, then sat in the hall, unsure what I should be doing. I heard her muffled voice as he opened the door: "I don't want to go."

  Whatever she went on to say kept Mr. Gopnik home way after I might have expected. Nathan was out so I couldn't talk to him. Michael stopped by, peering around the door. "Is he still here?" he said. "My tracker stopped working."

  "Tracker?"

  "On his phone. Only way I can work out where he is half the time."

  "He's in her dressing room." I didn't know what else to say, how far to trust Michael. But it was hard to ignore the sound of raised voices. "I don't think Mrs. Gopnik is very keen on going out tonight."

  "Big Purple. I told you."

  And then I remembered.

  "The former Mrs. Gopnik. This was her big night, and Agnes knows it. Still is. All her old harpies will be there. They're not the friendliest."

  "Well, that explains a lot."

  "He's a big benefactor so he can't not show. Plus he's old friends with the Stragers. But it's one of the tougher nights of their calendar. Last year was a total wipeout."

  "Why?"

  "Aw. She walked in like a lamb to the slaughter." He pulled a face. "Thought they would be her new best friends. From what I heard afterward, they fried her."

  I shuddered. "Can she not just leave him to go by himself?"

  "Oh, honey, you have no idea how it works here. No. No. No. She has to go. She has to put a smile on her face and be seen in the pictures. That's her job now. And she knows it. But it's not going to be pretty."

  The voices had risen. We heard Agnes protesting, then Mr. Gopnik's softer voice, pleading, reasonable.

  Michael looked at his watch. "I'll head back to the office. Do me a favor? Text me when he leaves? I have fifty-eight things for him to sign before three p.m. Love ya!" He blew me a kiss and was gone.

  I sat for a while longer, trying not to listen to the argument down the corridor. I scrolled through the calendar, wondering if there was anything I could do to be useful. Felix strolled past, his lifted tail a quest
ion mark, supremely unbothered by the actions of the humans around him.

  And then the door opened. Mr. Gopnik saw me. "Ah, Louisa. Can you come in for a moment?"

  I stood and half walked, half ran to where he was standing. It was difficult as running brought on muscle spasms.

  "I wondered if you were free this evening."

  "Free?"

  "To come to an event. For charity."

  "Uh . . . sure." I had known from the start that the hours would not be regular. And at least it meant I wasn't likely to bump into Ilaria. I would download a movie onto one of the iPads and watch it in the car.

  "There. What do you think, darling?" Agnes looked as if she had been crying. "She can sit next to me?"

  "I'll sort it out."

  She took a deep, shaky breath. "Okay, then. I suppose so."

  "Sit next to . . ."

  "Good. Good!" Mr. Gopnik checked his cell phone. "Right. I really have to go. I'll see you in the main ballroom. Seven thirty. If I can get through this conference call any sooner I'll let you know." He stepped forward and took her face in his hands, kissing her. "You're okay?"

  "I'm okay."

  "I love you. Very much." Another kiss, and he was gone.

  Agnes took another deep breath. She put her hands on her knees, then looked up at me. "You have a yellow ballgown?"

  I stared at her. "Um. Nope. Bit short on ballgowns, actually."

  She ran her gaze up and down me, as if trying to work out whether I could fit into anything she owned. I think we both knew the answer to that one. Then she straightened. "Call Garry. We need to get to Saks."

  --

  Half an hour later I was standing in a changing room while two shop assistants pushed my bosoms into a strapless dress the color of unsalted butter. The last time I had been handled this intimately, I quipped, I had discussed getting engaged immediately afterward. Nobody laughed.

  Agnes frowned. "Too bridal. And it makes her look thick around the waist."

  "That's because I am thick around the waist."

  "We do some very good corrective panties, Mrs. Gopnik."

  "Oh, I'm not sure I--"

  "Do you have anything more fifties-style?" said Agnes, flicking through her phone. "Because this will pull in her waist and get around the height issue. We don't have time to take anything up."