New York Valentine (7 page)

‘Is it too late to change my mind then?’ Annie whispered, her eyes fixed on his.

‘Your luggage is checked in! That would cause all kinds of complications. Plus,’ he leaned over to whisper against her ear, ‘Lana would kill you.’

This was probably true.

Annie hugged him very, very tightly, then pushed her lips against his in a deep kiss. Suddenly a gap of four weeks and the entire Atlantic Ocean seemed very real and very frightening.

‘Do we
have
to watch this?’ Owen asked from his place behind the twins’ buggy.

Lana nudged her brother with her elbow. ‘We have to say goodbye too,’ she reminded him.

‘Yeah, well, don’t think I’m going to kiss you.’

‘You’ll be sorry if our plane stalls, dives into the sea and we’re never seen again.’

‘Lana!!’ Annie pulled away from Ed and made a horrified face, ‘don’t even joke about it.’

‘Please don’t cry over the babies,’ Ed warned her, ‘you’ll just make them upset.’

Annie knelt down in front of the buggy and both Micky and Minnie began to giggle and babble, delighted with her attention.

‘I’m going to see you later, buddies,’ Annie told them as cheerfully as she could, with a big smile across her face, although now that she was really doing this she felt as if her heart might crack.

Minnie, who was an acutely sensitive soul, seemed to pick up that all was not well and an anxious look began to build in her face.

Annie decided to unbuckle her and wrap her up in a big hug.

‘Bye-bye Min, see you very soon. Very, very soon,’ Annie said, rubbing her hand over her baby’s back.

Her baby girl nuzzled her face against Annie’s shoulder.

‘Daddy’s here, and Owen and Aunty Dinah. Mummy and Lana will be back soon.’

‘Mumma,’ Min said, squeezing her podgy arms tightly around Annie’s neck.

If Min cried or protested, Annie wasn’t sure if she would have the strength to walk through the departure gate.

‘Boo!’ Owen had crept up behind Annie and now popped up under Min’s face, causing her to break into a giggle. ‘Come to big bruv,’ he said, holding out his arms and grinning.

Min let go of Annie and accepted a lift from Owen without the slightest worry.

‘You’re a star, Owen,’ Annie said, and bent over to kiss him.

‘Watchit!’ Owen warned, ‘no lips! One on the cheek is all you’re getting.’

‘A hug? At least a hug …’

He gave her a brief, one-armed squeeze because of Min. ‘And remember my DVDs. The full list plus the money is in that envelope I put into your bag this morning. All right?

‘Take care,’ she told him, swallowing a lump in her throat the size of a potato.

‘We’ll be sweet as a nut, Mum. You go off with Lana and have a ball. And next time you’re going to New York, you’re definitely taking me, OK?’

She kissed him again and ruffled his hair, just to annoy him: ‘I love you,
all right?’

Then it was time to squeeze the life out of Micky and give Ed one last, long hug. Until the build-up of tears behind her eyes was at danger level.

‘You’ll be fine. You’ll be more than fine,’ she whispered, ‘you’re the best Dad ever and you run the house like clockwork.’

Feeling his arms hold her tight and his curly hair brush her face, for a moment she thought of when she’d first been invited into Ed’s basement of chaos. So much had changed. Imagine if she’d known then that he would become her totally domesticated husband and they would have
twins!

‘OK, see you in four weeks!’ Lana called out. She was incredibly cheerful and excited. Ever since the flights had been booked, the cloud of boredom and gloom hovering above her for so long had completely evaporated.

She whirled round her family, landing quick kisses on cheeks then took hold of Annie’s arm. ‘C’mon Mum, it’s time to go. New York is waiting for us!’

As soon as her family was out of sight, Annie cried hard.

She cried all the way through the security process and on into the departure lounge. There, Lana marched her to a bar and made her buy a glass of buck’s fizz, even though it was eight in the morning. Only when the entire drink was downed, did Annie finally stop sobbing.

She blew her nose and began to look around through streaky eyes. There was a full ninety minutes till boarding.

‘We could try on a lot of perfume in ninety minutes,’ she pointed out, with a final sniff.

‘We could,’ Lana agreed with a grin.

‘You’re supposed to stick to three or four … apparently the nose gets confused.’

‘Right.’

Annie hadn’t managed to doze for even one moment on the flight, and neither had Lana. It was cramped, chilly and claustrophobic on the plane. How had transatlantic travel managed to become like a marathon bus ride? Where was the glamour? People had once arrived in New York by steam liner with bellboys in pressed uniforms ready to trolley their initialled leather trunks behind them.

Annie pulled the lump of fibre held together by static which passed for a blanket around her shoulders.

Once the champagne buzz had worn off, the first hour of the flight had been hard. Watching the coastline of Ireland slip away beneath them and the great steely grey expanse of water begin, Annie had brooded on the fact that the entire Atlantic Ocean was going to be between her and Ed, Owen and her babies.

An ocean! What had she been thinking? She couldn’t help feeling that there was no way she was going to last four weeks. This would be impossible. But it hadn’t seemed fair to mention such doubts to Lana, who was glowing, tingling, just about out of her mind with excitement about landing at JFK in a few hours’ time.

Whenever Annie’s face looked worried, Lana had made her order another glass of fizz. So now, six hours later, Annie was gulping water and trying to recover from the effects of high altitude early morning drinking.

Plus, the concerned look on the face of their American air hostess was becoming a little bit off-putting. There had been no denying the reprimand in the last:
‘Another
glass of sparkling wine for you, ma’am? Ok-aaaaay.’

Lana had shut down the in-flight entertainment and was now looking out of her window with unmistakable delight. When Annie peered over Lana’s shoulder to get a glimpse of the view, she too felt a jolt of excitement. Below was a bright blue sea and a long blond strip of coastline.

‘Wow! Could that be New England?’ Annie asked.

‘Maybe. Doesn’t it look beautiful? There are islands … maybe it’s the Hamptons. Maybe we’re almost there.’

Annie took a glug from her bottle of water and tried to run calming hands over her hair. But it was no use: static from the blanket, from the fuzzy velour seats, from the very atmosphere of the plane was making her hair crazy. She poured a little mineral water into her hands, then smoothed wet fingers over her short blonde bob.

‘Better?’ she asked Lana.

But Lana didn’t even turn; her eyes were glued to the window. She pointed with her finger and her mouth dropped open in awe.

‘That’s it,’ she whispered, ‘the skyline. Ohmigod! We’re here. Look, Mum. LOOK!’

Lana moved her shoulder back so that Annie could see out of the little glass oval. There was a tiny, postcard-perfect view of a jagged square centimetre of Manhattan skyline. Now Annie had to gasp too.

‘Oh look! Look at that!’

‘The buildings are so
big
. The island is so
small
. Oh this is amazing.’

The plane wheeled around in the sky and suddenly they were looking at blue ocean, tiny toy ships and—

‘There! It’s the Statue of Liberty! So small!’

‘But it must be so big! Compared to that ship …’

‘We are nuts.’

‘This is soooooo brilliant.’

‘I can’t believe we’ve done it!’

‘I can’t believe we’re really going to New York!’

‘We’re going to New York, we’re going to New York!’

‘I still can’t believe it.’

‘This is the best trip I’ve ever,
ever
been on,’ Lana announced, grin right across her face.

‘Babes, we’ve not even landed yet. We might still crash … or land up in some flea-pit with cockroaches … or get mugged – murdered, even.’

‘Mum, this is the best ever trip. The best ever idea. Thank you!’

To Annie’s amazement, her sulky, grumpy, slouchy, grouchy teenager was suddenly throwing her arms around her.

‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘It’s OK. I would never have been brave enough to come on my own, babes. Thank you for forcing me onto the plane,’ Annie admitted.

As they hugged, Annie dared to stroke her girl’s hair, just as she’d done when she was little. A prickle of tearfulness welled up in her eyes and nose.

‘We’re going to have a ball, babes. A totally wonderful ball.’

All the horror of queuing for two entire hours in the cramped, windowless space of JFK’s arrival hall evaporated when Annie and Lana got into their bright yellow New York cab and began the journey into Manhattan.

When the Brooklyn Bridge and then the skyscraper skyline came into view, they began to shriek at each other in a fever pitch of excitement.

‘There’s the Empire State!’

‘No
that’s
the Empire State!’

‘Look at that!’

‘Look over there!’

‘This bridge is amazing!’

‘Everything’s amazing. Look at the size of the buildings.’

‘Look how many cabs. How much traffic.’

‘We have to shut up. The driver is laughing at us. He thinks we’ve come in from a farm or something.’

The driver did begin to laugh at this. ‘Where yo from?’ he asked, pushing back a sweaty baseball cap.

‘London,’ Annie admitted.

‘No skyscrapers in London?!’

‘Not like this. Not all jammed together like this,’ Lana told him.

It was hot. They hadn’t been prepared for the wave of heat shimmering off the tarmac as they’d climbed down the aeroplane steps. And now, inside the taxi, the black plastic seats were sticky with heat and humidity. Annie had brought choice items from her autumn wardrobe; she wasn’t prepared for the knockout heat of high summer.

‘Is it always like this in September?’ Annie asked the driver.

‘No ma’am, for September this is
hahht,’
he replied.

‘Hahht,’ Annie repeated, enjoying the accent. She couldn’t stop looking out of the cab window at the looming Manhattan skyline, hazy in the early afternoon heat.

This was heaven.

She’d only been to New York once before for a magical long weekend with Ed and she’d forgotten how brilliant it was: the excitement, the hustle, the crazy feeling of everything at once being brand new because she’d never been before and yet so strangely familiar because she’d seen it all so often on the screen.

‘Wow … wow … double wow …’ Lana repeated in a reverential whisper.

‘Here and loving, loving, loving it! Thank you. Could not be here without you.’ Annie texted Ed.

Once they were over the bridge, the cab joined the traffic swirling through the Lower East Side towards the address in lower midtown which Svetlana had given them.

‘So where are we going?’ Lana asked, eyes still fixed to the window: they were passing a play park and it was so different from London because the kids were all in baggy vest tops bouncing and chasing a basketball. By the side of the road, a man with a bucket was washing down an enormous shiny brown car with a white roof which looked like it had driven straight out of an Elvis movie.

‘We’re heading for East 16th Street between Fifth and Sixth,’ Annie replied. ‘Doesn’t mean much to me … but that’s what it says. Building 1157, apartment 121. You know Svetlana, it vill be simply vonderrrrrful.’

‘Yeah but don’t forget, this is Elena’s end of the business.’

‘Hmmm.’

Lana had a point. While Svetlana was a woman used to luxury, a woman who could not in fact see the point of life without luxury, her daughter Elena was very different.

Elena was thrifty, ambitious and tough. She had been brought up by relatives in the Ukraine on the £50 a month or so which Svetlana, busy scaling the London super-rich scene, had billed as ‘manicure’ and used to fund the upbringing of the daughter she hadn’t wanted then, but was so very fond of now.

Despite their very different styles, the business had been working well. Until their New York partner had messed things up and bailed out with lots of their money, obviously.

The cab was on a wide, four-laned avenue now, the traffic jumpy, snarled and impatient and the driver blaring his horn and yelling at everything ahead.

Annie couldn’t help gaping at the shops. Huge glass window fronts, making chain stores like Gap look as glossy and important as major department stores.

‘You do like Elena, don’t you?’ Annie asked her daughter all of a sudden. ‘I mean, she’s a bit different from how she was when she stayed with us. Do you remember?’

Both of them laughed at the memory of Elena on their doorstep in high heels and micro-mini with bad blonde hair dye and dodgy male friends. The very picture of Eastern European chic.

‘She’s better dressed for starters,’ Lana pointed out.

‘Oh yes, very smart, very businesslike. And she’s so good at her job, so efficient. I can’t really believe she let a partner mess her up like this.’

‘I bet she’s glad you’re turning up to help her out.’

‘I can’t wait,’ Annie admitted, ‘I’ve been bored out of my nut sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring.’

‘This is yo street,’ the cab driver announced, then, turning a sharp right at a huge window display of the most gorgeous handbags Annie thought she’d ever seen, he drove into a narrower one-way street with a mixture of tall apartment blocks and smaller old brownstone houses on both sides.

‘Nice neighbo’hood,’ the driver commented.

Lana and Annie scanned the street for the right number: 1123 … 1141 …

‘Isn’t that what’s-her-name?’ Annie said, pointing to a girl who was standing at the door of one of the brownstone houses, searching in her bag … maybe for a set of keys.

‘Who?’ Lana asked.

‘That girl, the English one, she writes for
Vanity Fair …
Emily … ? Emily Wilmington. I’m sure that’s her. In DVF, carrying a very nice bag,’ Annie added approvingly. ‘We’re staying on the same street as Emily Wilmington! Amelia and Ginger will never, ever believe me.’