Happily Ever After (51 page)

It had happened all the time, after she’d come back to New York, at least twice a week. At first, she’d tried to go back to sleep, but it was useless. In fact, it was worse, because she would lie there and things would occur to her. What she should have done. What she hadn’t done.

There was no ritual for grieving, not here in the States, not back in England. You didn’t wear black anymore, you didn’t tear your clothes and wail in a group, you didn’t visit the grave on the Day of the Dead, have a picnic, tell stories about the one you’d lost. No one gave you a manual about what to do when your mum died. You were just unhappy, desperate, and alone. People were kind to you, or they avoided you, as though you were tainted with something they didn’t want to catch.

Elle sat on the couch and tucked her feet up under her. She’d tried reading, at first, but it didn’t work, reading didn’t really give her that much pleasure these days. She couldn’t concentrate when it was like this, the image of her mother on the table covered in bloody vomit, those two big black words
on the piece of paper dancing in front of her eyes, blinding her.
Sorry Ellie Sorry Ellie Sorry Ellie
.

She usually watched TV. She flicked it on now, to try and make the image go away, rocking softly back and forth and breathing deeply. She found doing this helped her, it was her own ritual, when this happened. Because when it came it hit her as though she’d run into a wall, and if she really gave in to it, after all these years, it would flatten her, so the best thing to do was just ride it out, steer a path around the wall, watch something mindless, removed from what she was thinking instead, get that image to go away, stop haunting her. She flicked through the channels. There was a debate about the election on CNN, a group of white men in thick blue-and-red ties around a table talking about Obama and Palin. She stared at the screen, running through the names of senators she could remember in her head, and then the US states, in alphabetical order, till the ball of hysteria inside her lessened, just a little.

But the image was still there. The one image she kept coming back to, again and again. It was a little thing, but it was everything. Her mother’s friend Anita (the one who imported textiles from Rajasthan, and who wasn’t in business with Mandana, never had been, never would have been, it was a pack of lies, like so many things Mandana had told Elle over the years) told Elle she’d seen her, that last night before she died. They’d been to the pub. Mandana had stuck to Coke all evening. Anita had left her purse behind and returned after closing time. She’d cycled along back towards the village and there, outside Willow Cottage, kneeling on the ground crying, semi-conscious and making no sense, was Mandana. Anita (she said) had stood her up, asked her if she was OK, and Mandana had told her to go away and leave her alone. And she’d stayed there, for God knows how long. Anita had left her there—a fine friend, Elle thought, though it turned out
they weren’t really friends at all, and she was the one going out with Bryan, not Mandana. Mandana had never even been on a date with him. It was all a lie.

How she got back to the barn, a mile away, Elle didn’t know, but she had, and she’d drunk herself to death there. Vodka, whisky, tequila. Half a bottle of each was enough to kill her. She died of massive internal bleeding, but already she had chronic liver failure, cirrhosis of the liver, had done for years, only no one knew apart from her, and the doctors. She’d been hospitalized in February; no one had told Elle, or Rhodes. When Elle asked why, the doctor sighed tiredly and said, “They probably tried. But you’re dealing with someone who’ll tell several different lies to different groups of people in order to conceal the truth, so they can carry on drinking themselves to death. She told you one thing, she told us something else, your brother something else again.”

“A cunning disease,” that’s what Melissa had called it, and she was right. It explained so much: the yellowing skin and nails, the thin hair, the confusion, the paranoia. Her liver had stopped working, it couldn’t break anything down, it sent ammonia to her brain, fluid to the legs and still she went on hiding it, using everything in her power to melt into the background, stop anyone realizing so she could carry on drinking. Even Rhodes and Melissa hadn’t known the full extent of it. No one had. Except Mandana.

It was the image of her mother, kneeling in the darkness in tears outside their old family home, that Elle couldn’t stand. It was what woke her up, this picture, and it was crystal clear in her mind, every single time. How desperate she must have been, how lonely, unhappy, and no one had done anything to help, for years and years. Not Rhodes or Melissa, not her ex-husband, not her friends in the village, and most of all, not Elle, who had simply got up and left her, run away to make
her own life. She had said the same to Gray earlier and it was still true: instead of going home to her mother, Elle had gone back to Tom’s room, had sex with him, spent the night with him, out of some needy attempt to assuage her own sense of isolation at being back. She knew Mandana had done it deliberately. Couldn’t face telling her daughter how far she’d fallen, couldn’t face life without alcohol, didn’t think she was strong enough to try. But if she’d got back that night instead of staying with Tom, perhaps it wouldn’t have been too late. Elle never knew why Mr. Franklin thought he’d seen her that morning. Perhaps he’d seen the old Mandana, a ghost, a vision from the past.

She knew she’d killed her, as sure as if she’d stuck the knife in herself, first by forcing her to confront it, then by abandoning her when she needed her. And people could tell her that was wrong, it was a terrible disease, alcoholism, it made people monsters who lied to those they loved best, and Elle knew it was all true. It didn’t change things, though. It should have been different and she would have to live with that for the rest of her life.

“The
New Yorker
editorial said this week, ‘The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction,’” said the news anchor. “What I wanna know is, what do you think of that statement?”

“Well, what I wanna know, Chuck, is, are they living in the same world as me? Where the hell do they get off referring to a man who’s a patriot, a God-fearing man who loves his country and his people, in terms like that?” A perfect blonde in a red suit thumped a tiny fist on the table. “I honestly think sometimes people don’t see what’s right under their noses, Chuck. Makes me real sad, real sad.”

“What’s going on, honey?”

Gray was standing in the doorway, in his old T-shirt and
boxer shorts, with his arms crossed. He peered at her, still half-asleep.

“You can’t sleep?”

Elle shook her head.

“Did you see her again?”

Elle nodded. He came and sat down next to her on the sofa.

“You have to see your brother when you’re back, talk to him, you know. You need to talk to someone else about it. Do you still have the number of the grief counselor?”

“I don’t want to go to them again,” Elle said. “It’s been four years, I can deal with it on my own.” She shut her mouth again.

“OK.” Gray looked at her, then at the screen. “I can’t stand that woman. Let’s turn this off.”

“No!” Elle said, grabbing the remote off him. “I need it. Leave it on. It’s fine, I just need to… let the stuff go. Leave me alone. Why can’t you just leave me
alone
?”

As she said it, she heard her mother’s voice, and realized how like her she sounded.

Gray didn’t move. He said, tiredly, “Honey, I’m done on this with you.”

“You’re
done
?” Elle said. “What, you’re sick of me being sad about Mum dying? I’ve had my time, now it’s up?” She laughed, clutching her knees tightly under her chin. “Wow, that’s good to know. Just—leave me alone, Gray. I’ll come back to bed soon.”

Why did she feel so angry with him all the time, when it wasn’t his fault? She looked at him through her lashes, at the handsome, distiguished face with the kind smile. She thought of their second date, when he’d taken her up to Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend—“away from prying eyes, honey, I don’t want anyone else to know about us, I want you all to myself”—as though she was his precious prize, a reward for
something. She loved it, loved feeling like that. That he—Gray Logan,
the
Gray Logan—had earned her, because she was worth earning.

She didn’t feel like that now. In fact, she couldn’t remember what that feeling was like.

“I mean,” he said, sighing gently, “you’re less and less like the person you were. And that’s not good. I don’t want you to change, I love you and I will always love you. But I want you to be happy, and I want our lives together to be happy, and I’m done pretending it’s all OK and you’re fine, when you bury yourself in work and thrive on conflict and you’re not fine. That’s all.”

Elle nodded. Suddenly she felt very, very tired. A wave of it swept over her, as a chilly gust of wind blew in from the street and she wished for a moment she was in England, with all her heart. She didn’t know why. Just that now and then, the smell of wet leaves or the rain on the Manhattan pavements made her think how subtly different autumn was back in London, how you felt the misty chill seep into your bones, into the damp spaces of old buildings, where pale yellow light shone from lampposts onto white stucco and red brick. Usually she pushed the thoughts away, but now she didn’t have to, because she was going back.

“I’ll send you my flight details tomorrow,” she said quietly. “I’m only there for three nights. I’ll email Rhodes, too, and ask if we can come for supper. I suppose you should meet him.”

“Yes, I should,” Gray said. He opened his mouth to say something and then shut it again. Instead he leaned over and kissed her, his hands warm on her cold skin. She leaned back against the sofa as one hand ran over her body, under her vest, squeezing her breast. He kept his hand there as he carried on kissing her. She stroked his cheek and kissed him back. It was strange, but with Gray, it was never his experience that
intimidated her, as it had been with Rory, when she’d been so young, so desperate to please, such an eager young thing. She was sorry Gray’s wife was gone, and she was uninterested in his ex-girlfriends: it was the truth. Because when they were together it was about only the two of them, hand in hand, walking through the streets together, and the rest of the world receded into a blur, and as they kissed in the dark room, the TV flickering in the background, Elle clung to that image, and that one alone because perhaps, just perhaps it might work.

BUILDING BRIDGES CONFERENCE
20th–22nd October 2008

Day 1: Schedule

Delegates to gather in the Oak Room.

9 a.m.
Coffee / mingling

9:30 a.m. Introduction
by joint CEOs
Celine Bertrand
and
Stuart Forgan
: Building Bridges and Bestsellers

10:30 a.m. Whither the printed book in the age of digital?
Panel Discussion with
Eleanor Bee
(Publisher, Jane Street Books),
Rory Sassoon
(Publisher-at-Large, BBE Books),
Tom Scott
(Owner / CEO Dora’s Bookshops)

“W
HAT ON EARTH
?” Elle said, staring at the schedule in her hand. She flicked her BlackBerry out of her suit pocket, and then realized it was 9 a.m. in London, 4 a.m. in New York. Courtney would still be asleep. Someone said, “Hello,” to her, as she stared at the tiny screen.

“Oh. Hey.” She looked up and, seeing who it was, tapped Celine’s arm. “Celine, I appear to be on this panel this morning. I didn’t know anything about it.”

“What?” Celine stopped, and frowned. She looked up and down the schedule, then at Elle. Elle felt as if she were fourteen again. “That is most extraordinary. We emailed, your assistant assured us that you were up to speed. I even spoke to her myself, to make sure.”

“Well. She didn’t tell me. That’s—” Elle shook her head. She could feel her stomach churning. Never, ever in her life had she ever blamed a mistake on someone else. Well, there was a first time for everything. She’d had no sleep on the plane or last night
in the hotel either, just that annoying state between sleeping and wakefulness, staring at the ceiling. Tonight was the dinner with Rhodes, she had umpteen unread emails already to deal with, and on top of it all she now had to sit in front of two hundred people with two of her ex—what, lovers? discussing e-books.

Wow!
she thought to herself.
I really am being punished for something.
“Look,” Elle said hastily. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure she mentioned it to me.” She was sure Courtney had, but she hadn’t been listening. “Funnily enough”—she took a deep breath—“we had a digital-only board meeting a couple of weeks ago, so I’m up to speed from our point of view. I’m pretty sure I can muddle through—”