Happily Ever After (38 page)

“Believe me, I will,” she said fervently, taking only another
small sip of champagne. “It’s in, out. Wham, bam. It’s Wedding Supper, Wedding, Stay with Mother, Plane Back. No deviation, nothing. I’ll be back before you can miss me.”

Mike nodded, pleased, and Elle realized this conversation could sound misleading. But she didn’t care. Two days ago it had looked as though Elizabeth Forsyte wasn’t going to let them publish with that jacket, and now it was sorted, and half a million copies could be printed, and they were all safe again, safe till the next crisis. While a small, very small part of her wanted to scream,
It was one tiny pink heart, you monstrous woman, get over it, do you realize how much time and effort has been wasted on this?
the other part knew it had Elizabeth Forsyte to thank for nearly everything. All because of Grammy Napper’s brooch.

If Elle had known what the result of her innocent remark to someone in a Ladies’ bathroom three years ago come November would have been, she would have been amazed.

It had been her lucky day, she knew it now. She had complimented the rotund, mulberry-haired lady by the sinks on her pretty brooch—a tiny gold figure carrying a bunch of glass blue and red flowers—and the lady had turned around, with joy on her face.

“Brooch? What in the world is a brooch?”

Elle had explained.

“What a beautiful accent, mah dear. This pin was mah grammy’s. How kind you are. I’m Elizabeth Forsyte.”

Elle had shaken her hand and said, shyly, how much she’d enjoyed the multimillion-seller
Ladies Dance
.

This was good luck for several reasons: Elle really had enjoyed it. Elizabeth Forsyte could write, and she knew how to tell a story. It wasn’t another slim, derivative Regency romance, it was a big old-fashioned family saga, with lots of sex and
intrigue; and the formula of a big fat beach read but with a tasteful jacket so the literati could devour it on vacation worked: it worked well enough that the book was on its way to selling a million copies in paperback, and ushering in a slew of rip-offs.

Secondly, little though Elle knew it, Elizabeth Forsyte and her agent were in that fateful day for a crisis meeting: they’d just told everyone at Jane Street that they were taking her next book to either Viking or Pocket, so badly, they said, was the publication of the follow-up to
Ladies Dance
being handled.

Thirdly, Elle had been in New York for two months. She had arrived in October, a month after September 11. The Stars and Stripes hung everywhere, 5th Avenue was a sea of them. Smoke from Ground Zero continued to rise; it hung in the air downtown. She was staying in Brooklyn, at the empty apartment of a friend of Karen’s; every evening in the early autumn sunshine little boys ran around in the yard outside, wearing Superman and Spider-Man costumes. A lady in her building had lost her daughter in the South Tower. She hadn’t even worked there, she’d gone in for a meeting. Morning and evening, Elle could hear the tramp of feet along the corridor to Mrs. Bilefsky’s apartment: friends, neighbors, reporters. The superintendent of the building brought her soup, even though the nights were still warm, long after Halloween.

At Bookprint US, she was assigned to Jane Street Press, the imprint where Daria, with whom she was doing the exchange, worked. But everyone was still in a state of shock, striving to keep body and soul together for themselves, their families and friends. Daria was miserable in London and thought she might come back; every day she changed her mind, so Elle never knew whether she’d still be here the following week. People could not have been more welcoming but no one knew why she was there. She had no idea, either. They gave her some
paranormal erotic romances to edit, she did a project on cover designs in the UK versus the US, but all the pent-up energy and good intentions with which she had arrived and which she was bursting to use were not appropriate, now.

She spent hours walking around Midtown on her lunch break, around Brooklyn on the weekends. She buried herself in New York career-girl books,
The Group, The Best of Everything, The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing,
even
Valley of the Dolls.
By December, she was actively looking forward to February, when her four months would be up and she could go back, though to what, she had no idea; she didn’t want to go back. She loved being here, loved everything about New York. But it wasn’t working out and she didn’t know how to change things for the better, and perhaps it was wrong to try.

But then, one morning, Elle was sitting at her desk shuffling some submission letters around, when she saw Caryn storming towards her. Convinced she was after her for the cover copy she hadn’t yet filed, Elle cravenly fled to the bathroom and, once the door was closed, blushed with shame at how pathetic she was being. Perhaps it was relief that made her lean against the door, panting and glancing apologetically at the lady reapplying her lipstick in the mirror, perhaps it was a desire to talk to someone, anyone.

“That’s a lovely brooch,” she’d said.

The lady had put her lipstick down on the counter, turned around, and laughed. Yes, somehow, she’d had the nerve to start talking to Elizabeth Forsyte, called a pin a brooch, and on the basis of this five-minute conversation, Elizabeth Forsyte decided she and she alone was the editor with the English charm and know-how to guide
The Marriage Game
through its delicate gestation period, and suddenly that was it.

For all that Elizabeth Forsyte was egotistical, demanding, passive-aggressive, she was a genius, in her way, and she had
spotted something in Elle, and Elle never forgot that. Her work visa was magically extended; her salary was increased. Suddenly agents took her calls; in the great glass elevators in the mornings, colleagues nodded over their skinny lattes; when she had to present another book at the terrifying acquisitions meeting Sidney Levantine, the MD, peered over his half-moon spectacles at her and said, “Ah, Miss Eleanor Bee. How very good it is to have you with us.” And when
The Marriage Game
went in at Number One that summer, smashing all records for a hardback, and Elizabeth Forsyte took out a full-page ad in
Publishers Weekly
to thank “her friends at Jane Street Press,” Elle’s place at Jane Street was assured.

Elle changed, too. She all but stopped drinking: though she had pushed to the back of her mind the memory of those bloated, lonely last months in London, she reminded herself of them whenever she considered buying a bottle of wine. It was all too easy to remember the endless lonely nights in the Kilburn flat, the walls closing in, the alcohol in the pores, coming into the office hungover again and trying to hide it. Tom had seen that, he’d told her… But it was another life, that time, and she’d been given a second chance.

Besides, here, that wouldn’t be tolerated. She didn’t know how close she’d come to the tipping point, and she didn’t want to know. She wasn’t even sure if there
was
a tipping point, just that she’d walked away from whatever it was pulling her towards a dark abyss. She had to use this time to make a change, and so she did, and it was easier than she’d thought. She was walking everywhere and barely drank anymore, apart from the odd cocktail here and there; she lost a stone without trying to. It was only when she saw the photo on her old Bookprint security pass that she realized how heavy she’d been getting, anyway. It was wine and Pringle weight, and she was viciously glad to be rid of it.

Like everyone else, she had a manicure each week, at the Korean walk-up next to the subway; her tights (pantyhose) were free of holes; she invested in a small, chic wardrobe from Banana Republic. She grew out her messy hair and had it cut into a glossy mane that hung behind her shoulders, light brown with buttery highlights. After a year, she rented a tiny apartment in the West Village, so small she had to go out, either to work or to dinner, and her possessions had to be organized, otherwise chaos would reign. But that was fine; it was small, but it was light and warm, cool in summer, with shelves already up for her books and besides, she liked being organized, now.

And, since she felt as though she’d been given a lifeline, she worked. It was almost her religion. She read everything, stayed late, never left an email unanswered. Every night as she left the office she was alone in the city once again, and she loved it here, she never wanted to leave. She felt as if New York loved her back, even the man by the subway who picked scabs off his elbow and ate them, even the smelly, frizzy-haired blind lady whom she always seemed to have to help across the road, who told her every time that she hated the British. Even when her air-con packed up and she lay sweltering in the heat, even when the traffic was awful yet again and her colleagues were terrifying… she just had to put on her trainers and walk back home as the purple sunset flashed between black gleaming towers at each corner, as the sidewalks filled with people talking, eating, laughing, back to the Village to feel that nothing, really, was that bad. Because really, nothing was.

She could barely remember her life in London now, didn’t recognize the girl she’d been there. Here, she felt, she was the person she’d always wanted to be.

“SO, YOU’LL SPEND
some time with your mom when you’re back,” Mike said.

“Yes,” Elle replied. “The wedding’s in some plush stately home in Sussex, really near her. Sanditon Hall. It’s funny, that’s where Rhodes and Melissa’s original wedding was supposed to be.”

“Is it going to be strange for you?”

“What, going back to the UK?”

They were walking up Bleecker Street, past yet another gaudy tattoo parlor, a divey, commercialized bar. Mike took her hand and squeezed it. “Everything, I guess.”

She’d told him a lot, but not all. Elle watched a guy in a leather cap wrap his leg round a street lamp. “Suppose so. I’m not massively looking forward to it, that’s all.”

“Have you spoken to—what’s her name? Melissa?—since those drinks last month?”

“No,” said Elle. “I’ll have to, though.”

“She sounds awful. I don’t like the way she spoke to you.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Elle said. She didn’t want to start talking about them now; it’d ruin the evening. They were reaching the nice part of Bleecker, with the Marc Jacobs and the Magnolia Bakery in the distance. People were eating out on the pavement, there was soft laughter from a nearby table, and Elle turned to look at two girls, around her age, with flowing blond hair, in skinny white jeans, drinking gingerly from wineglasses. They were gorgeous, a ridiculous tableau of beauty, and she stared at them. “Ah—do you want anything from London?” She didn’t know why she was asking—what could she bring him that he couldn’t get here? A biscuit tin with a picture of a soldier in a busby hat, a snow globe of St. Paul’s Cathedral?

“No, thanks, Elle.” He smiled at her and took her hand. She held it tightly. “Will you go into the office?”

“I might have to, but I don’t want to. I have a meeting with an author somewhere in town and that’s it. I’m glad. It’s kind of naff of me, but I don’t want to—I don’t like going back there much, I wasn’t that…” She trailed off, realizing she didn’t know how to carry on.

“Naff? What’s naff?” Mike said, and she thought he was probably just breaking the silence. She leaned up and kissed him.

“It means ridiculous and stupid and that’s what I’m being so forget about it.” Elle ran her thumb over the ball of his palm. They were at the turning for Perry Street. “Are you coming back with me?”

“Maybe I am,” he said, and he put his hand on her neck, pulled her towards him, and kissed her lightly on the lips, so she could feel his smooth chin, smell his light, lemony smell, clean, calm, and reassuring.

On Perry Street people were sitting out on their stoops, chatting and drinking beers. The newly leafy trees arched across the road towards each other. Marcy from next door and her boyfriend, Steven, were on the steps with some friends. “Hey, Elle! Have a great trip,” Marcy called. “Don’t let your family drive you insane.”

Elle and Marcy had had cocktails the previous week—Elle always forgot how even the most abstemious, triathlon-running New Yorkers could set about two Manhattans like they were ginger ale. Cocktails were a fast, efficient way of getting drunk, if that’s what you wanted. You could control it, two was enough if you wanted to blot everything out, just once in a while. Much more straightforward than glugging back glass after glass of rancid white wine in a vile pub surrounded by city workers in cheap Next suits.

It pleased Elle that she couldn’t take her drink anymore, but
all she remembered of the evening with Marcy was banging on the bar of the cocktail place and yelling, “Bloody brother! Bloody mother! Melissa’s an evil witch!” while Marcy applauded loudly.

Now Elle grinned at her, grimacing slightly at the extent to which she had unburdened herself. “I’ll call you when I’m back,” she said. She liked saying that. She would be back. It was only a few days. They couldn’t make her stay, though sometimes she had dreams in which they did. She hurried Mike up the steps.

Marc was loitering in the hallway, as if he knew she’d be coming. He was ostensibly checking his mail but when Elle opened the door, he pushed it into his pocket, raised one eyebrow, and said, “Hey, British girl. When are you flying?”