Something From Tiffany’s (7 page)

‘No, I insist. Really. We should take turns.’

Daisy gave him a look. ‘Yeah, Dad. Your turn now. It’s only fair that way.’

‘OK, I defer to the ladies,’ he replied, effecting a ridiculous bow in an attempt to break the discomfort and retain some of the Christmas cheer. But given what had just happened, Daisy was edgy and, while he could very well be imagining it, he was almost certain from the look on Vanessa’s face that she knew something was off. He sat back on the floor and leaned against the end of the chaise longue.

‘Here it is,’ his girlfriend said, reaching under the tree, and Ethan sensed some slight affectation in her voice as he took the long rectangular box from her hand. Perhaps it wasn’t intentional, but sure enough it was there, beneath the surface of her tone and the facade of her smile. She picked her cup of now-cold chocolate off a side table and looked away while taking a long sip.

Ethan felt the urge to say something meaningful again about how special this Christmas was, but as he opened his mouth to speak he realised that this seemed pointless now.

‘Were you going to say something?’ Vanessa asked.

‘Ah, no . . .’ he replied, peeling back the pieces of sticky tape with uncharacteristic deliberation.

‘Hurry up, Daddy,’ Daisy urged, moving closer.

‘OK, OK.’ Opening the box, a relieved smile (this one genuine) came over his face. ‘Well, would you look at this! How perfect! See – great minds really do think alike.’ With some relief, he held aloft a silver bracelet. It looked antique and very masculine, a series of rectangular pieces joined together. What were the chances?

‘There’s an inscription,’ Vanessa pointed out enthusiastically.

‘Oh.’ Ethan’s immediate thought was to wonder whether or not the bracelet she’d got by mistake was inscribed with anything. If so, maybe it would provide a clue as to where the hell it had come from? Then he read the inscription on Vanessa’s gift for him, the words delicately etched into the individual pieces, and felt his heart fall heavily into his stomach.

She loved him with too clear a vision to fear his cloudiness.

‘Vanessa . . .’ He could hardly meet her gaze. ‘I don’t know what to say. Thank you.’ He reached across to kiss her gently at the corner of her mouth and lingered there for a second.

The quote came from
Howard’s End
, a story she knew he loved. During one of their arguments early in the relationship, she had told him that this particular line always reminded her of him, in that he always seemed to hover in a haze within her reach. It had become a sort of running joke since – one of those poignant references between two people that reminds them of how far they’ve come, and unwittingly breathes life into the demons of their past. They had both quoted it off and on, over dinner and wine, and conversations about the future. Regardless, the reference had always been intended as a loving and intimate exchange, but this morning it felt more like an unintentional kick in the teeth. Poor Vanessa, if only she knew that today was the day that that ‘cloudiness’ should have been lifted.

‘What does it say, Daddy?’ Daisy asked.

‘Um, it says that I’m just about ready to open the gift from my beautiful daughter now!’ he teased, tickling the sole of her bare foot. She laughed out loud and pulled it back.

‘OK then, here it is,’ she said, extending her arm proudly. ‘I wrapped it up all by myself at school.’

‘At school?’ Vanessa queried.

‘Yeah, I bought it at the Christmas Gift Sale. People donate things so we can buy gifts for our parents without them knowing.’

Vanessa stroked Daisy’s arm. ‘I would have taken you shopping, darling.’

The little girl shook her head. ‘That’s OK. I wanted to do it this way.’

‘But thank you, Vanessa,’ Ethan said, reminding his daughter of her manners.

‘Yes, thank you, Vanessa,’ Daisy echoed cheekily.

Ethan unwrapped his daughter’s gift with considerably more speed and anticipation than he had the previous package.

‘It’s a book with nothing in it!’ she announced, when all the wrapping had been removed.

‘Yes, I can see that,’ he said, faintly puzzled.

‘It’s so you can fill it in yourself, silly – so you can write your own book. You know, like you talk about,’ she clarified.

‘What a very clever daughter you have, Ethan,’ Vanessa said, cocking her head and smiling, but Ethan caught the meaning in her words.

According to Vanessa, another element of his ‘cloudiness’ was his all-talk-and-no-action approach to writing a book of his own. She was always encouraging him to put pen to paper.

‘You’re just so talented,’ was her argument, ‘and I want the rest of the world to know it too.’

He’d made a start and cobbled together some sort of outline, but finding the time to write and be a fully employed single father was like trying to count the number of raindrops that fell in London any given year.

‘Thank you, honey. I promise I will carry this with me everywhere and write longhand whenever the Muse strikes me.’

‘Yay!’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Vanessa said, tipping up her cup and slurping the very last drop of hot chocolate.

The rest of the morning passed quickly as Daisy opened her other gifts, which were modest for the sake of not travelling back to London with excessive amounts of extra luggage, and of course she already knew that the bulk of her presents came in the form of the trip itself.

Finally, when Vanessa left the room to shower and get dressed, Ethan snatched some much-anticipated time alone with his daughter.

‘Can you believe it?’ he gasped, running a hand through his hair. ‘What on earth happened to our lovely ring?’ Not to mention pretty damn
expensive
ring, but Ethan guessed Daisy wouldn’t really understand his concerns about that aspect.

She put her bare feet up next to his on the coffee table and frowned deeply.

‘I know . . . it’s so weird, isn’t it? I just don’t understand it. I remember that happened to me at school once, though. I went to eat my lunch and got someone else’s lunchbox, which only had ham and horrible plastic cheese on white bread with NO yoghurt. I was so annoyed!’

Despite himself, Ethan had to chuckle at the comparison. ‘Erm . . . yes, I suppose it is a bit like that.’

‘Well, of course I know this is different, but you know what I mean.’ She paused and looked down, scraping something from beneath one of her fingernails. ‘But what do you think happened, Dad, and what are you going to do now?’

‘Well, there’s nothing we can do now, is there? Today, I mean. I think Vanessa was disappointed, though. I think she might have known somehow or maybe expected . . . Oh I just don’t know.’ He sat forward. ‘OK, buttercup, you and I are going straight back to Tiffany’s in the morning to try to get this straightened out. There must have been some kind of a mistake while they were wrapping it up or something. Remember that nice man sent it away while we waited?’

Daisy nodded. ‘Yeah, that has to be it. Um, Dad . . . ?’

‘Yes?’ he replied, expecting some helpful insight into his predicament.

‘Am I going to have hair on my toes like you do?’

Ethan burst out laughing. ‘Yes, definitely.’ He moved his feet closer so that the outside of his right foot was touching the outside of her left one. ‘In another five years or so your feet will look exactly like mine. And I hear that touching our feet together will actually speed up the process.’

Daisy squealed and ran back towards her bedroom. ‘Stay away then!’ she cried, and while Ethan would normally have taken the cue and followed to tickle her, instead he just called out, ‘Have it your way,’ and walked over to the window again.

He checked his watch. It wasn’t even close to noon yet. This would be the longest Christmas day he had ever spent. Where on earth was the ring?

He seriously hoped Tiffany’s might be able to shed some light on it tomorrow, but what if they couldn’t? What then? Should he tell Vanessa? No, that would be too anticlimactic. But what next?

More importantly, Ethan thought, as he looked out at a now misty sky above the park, what if Vanessa was right? What if his mind truly was marked by cloudiness? And what if – despite his best efforts – he just couldn’t escape the haze?

Chapter 5

Rachel rolled over in bed, automatically running her hand through her hair.

One thing she loved about hotel stays were the thick curtains – so thick that if you had them closed tightly enough, and if it weren’t for the seam of light at the bottom, you could scarcely tell it was daytime.

First as a chef and now a restaurant owner, leisurely mornings had always been a luxury for her. Being able to sleep late was something she savoured, given the chance; however her version of this possibly differed from most people’s. For someone who was usually at work in the kitchen by six a.m., staying in bed until eight was quite a treat.

Although she’d woken at six that morning, full of thoughts about Gary and rushing to the hospital to see him, she’d then figured that it was far too early for visiting hours, even on Christmas Day. So instead, for the next couple of hours, she had cosied up with Gary’s pillow and dozed and half-dreamed about the two of them and their soon-to-be engagement.

Then, relishing one last vision of herself in white, Rachel opened her eyes. Stretching her arms out in front of her, she gazed at her left hand and envisioned that stunning solitaire on her ring finger. She’d really wanted to go to sleep wearing it last night, but had felt so guilty about finding it in the first place that in the end she’d returned it to its little blue box.

Now, leaping out of bed, Rachel realised her excitement was, indeed, tainted by considerable post-alcohol guilt. She really shouldn’t have rummaged through the bags, and she certainly shouldn’t have opened the Tiffany’s one. Still, to think that if she hadn’t . . .

No, she realised, biting her lip and looking at herself in the mirror with a playful smile, she shouldn’t feel guilty, and really she wouldn’t change a thing. It was a wonderful surprise, particularly after the shock and worry of Gary’s accident. It was also quite romantic, considering: finding herself all alone on Christmas Eve and discovering just by chance that Gary was about to propose! It was fairy-tale stuff and more than Rachel could ever have dreamed of.

But perhaps the biggest surprise of all was the discovery that Gary loved her even more than she had known. Yes, they had fun together and she loved him too, but because she hadn’t yet met his family, she wasn’t sure how serious he considered their relationship to be. Family was important to Rachel; she was an only child and had already lost her own parents, and as much as she wanted to meet Gary’s, she figured he was just biding his time until the moment felt right. A proposal was the last thing she’d expected from him and she certainly hadn’t expected anything like that ring! The beautifully cut diamond was big enough to take your eye out and being from Tiffany’s it had clearly cost him a packet. Who would have thought it?

Everything happened for a reason, Rachel told herself, so perhaps finding the box was exactly what she’d needed to allay any misgivings she might have had about their relationship.

She eyed the shopping bags in the corner of the room, thinking that she just had to have another look at that ring. God, to think that this was going to be on her hand for the rest of her life!

Rachel was giddy. Opening the box once again, she was startled afresh by what she saw. The shape and setting were utterly stunning and the diamond itself looked so much bigger in daylight, and, indeed, without the cosy filter of the wine buzz.

Yet again she was faintly shocked that Gary had spent thousands on a blingtastic ring when he had never even alluded to marriage. Strange too when, on the flight over, he’d been complaining about how much he was going to have to spend on fixing something that had gone wrong with his bike. While Gary could never have been described as generous, she’d noticed he’d been particularly careful with money over the last couple of months, and now she thought she knew the reason.

Rachel smiled. Clearly the bike thing had been just a ruse and merely went to prove how much he really loved her. Her ring was more important than the Ducati! She shook her head fondly. One thing you could say about Gary was that he was
always
full of surprises. But this had got to be the biggest,
bestest
surprise of all . . .

It then occurred to Rachel that she really should rewrap the box at some stage so that Gary wouldn’t notice anything untoward when he got back, but then she decided it could wait.

Her first priority was getting to the hospital to spend at least part of Christmas morning with her future husband, so stashing the box back in the bag, she showered, then put on some make-up, jeans and a sweater, before bundling up and heading out to hail a cab. She could pick up something for breakfast at the hospital.

During the cab ride to the hospital she was this time only too happy to natter away to the driver, a chatty Greek whose passenger seat was littered with gyro pitta wrappers, and she marvelled yet again at the melting pot that was New York. For many of its inhabitants Christmas Day was no different to any other.