Woman to Woman (33 page)

“What sort of strategy did you have in mind?” she said coolly, determined to prove that she could be just as businesslike as he. If Mark Denton wanted to give her a message, she’d show him what a fast learner she was.

After dinner, they walked back to the hotel in silence.

Unaccountably tired, Jo could think of nothing more to say.

They’d discussed business tactics for over two hours and she was tired of talking about the importance of readership surveys and ABC market share.

She just wanted to close the door of her suite and slap herself for being stupid enough to think there could be anything between her and Mark.

This time he didn’t take her arm. They walked several feet apart. When they reached the hotel, he stopped on the footpath.

“I think I’ll go for a walk,” he said abruptly.

“I don’t think I can sleep yet.”

“Fine!” she answered, not even looking at him, but gazing at the leather shop across the road as though something amazing in the window had suddenly caught her eye.

“Do you want me to call you for breakfast?” he asked.

“No!” she said sharply.

“I think I’ll have a lie-in and then wander down to the Village and Chinatown to the markets.

I’m sure you’ve lots of things to do, you don’t want me tagging along with you.” Her voice was harder than she’d intended it to be. But she couldn’t help herself. She felt hurt, bruised by his sudden indifference and the way he’d turned the evening around. He’d changed it from a magical, electric moment into a cold business meeting.

If he thought she was going to follow him like a puppy, desperate for attention, he’d another think coming.

“Fine.” he said crisply.

Jo marched into the hotel without looking back. In her suite, she threw her handbag onto the desk and picked up the TV remote control She flopped onto the huge settee, kicked off her shoes and put her feet up with relief. Damn Mark Denton. Damn him to hell. Who did he think he was giving her all sorts of enigmatic looks and then treating her as if she were his bloody secretary, someone who’d come along to do his bidding? He was a pig, just like all men. Just like Richard.

She flicked through the shopping channels, CNN, a late night chat show, the bizarre Manhattan Cable TV and some rubbish with a Barbie doll-style nurse taking the pulse of a patient transfixed by her bosom. Jo watched the show for a moment, waiting for the requisite handsome doctor to come in and tell the nurse he loved her, despite the fact that he’d married her half-sister, slept with her mother, whatever. She hated American soaps with a passion. Nobody in them ever looked like normal people, all the women had plastic smiles, plastic boobs and twenty-inch waists.

She felt her own waist, remembering when she had been just as slender as the women on the TV. At nearly three months pregnant, her body had changed only a little but the extra inches on her waist felt so noticeable to Jo. With careful dressing, she didn’t look pregnant at all. Only someone with hawk eyes like her mother or Rhona would guess her secret. But she was hungry so often that she knew she’d start

putting on too much weight if she wasn’t careful.

She still swam twice a week and had been doing step aerobics at the gym. But all those chocolate biscuits, Twixes and ice cream had to go somewhere.

She changed channels again. Goldie Hawn was standing on a yacht screaming at Kurt Russell. Overboard, Jo realised happily. She loved that film. There was just one thing missing.

She picked up the phone.

“Could you send up a pot of tea and, er … do you have any chocolate biscuits?” she asked.

“Chocolate chip would be lovely, thank you. You have shortbread ones made in the hotel? They sound great too.”

Jo awoke in a cold sweat at half eight. Even the soft cotton sheets felt damp and she sat up in the bed, dazed by her dream. What had she been dreaming about? Mark, that was it.

She’d been in a hotel bedroom with Mark Denton, a room decorated with crimson wall. hangings and with a four-poster bed in the middle, scarlet and gold muslin curtains hiding the bed from prying eyes. She could just about make out lots of people trying to look behind the curtains, men in striped shirts with braces and bow ties.

And she and Mark lay on the bed, half wrapped up in silk sheets, his naked body curled around hers. He’d been kissing her, stroking her belly and telling her he couldn’t wait for the baby to be born. She was naked too, she had been able to feel his skin burning into hers, his hands roaming all over her body … Oh my God, what a dream.

She pushed back the covers and went into the bathroom, her puffy-eyed and tired face showing the after-effects of a troubled night’s sleep.

She wet a white face cloth under the tap and gently wiped her hot face. You look awful, she told her reflection. Her lustrous dark hair was greasy at the roots, her skin was flushed and wrinkled from the way she’d been sleeping on creased sheets and her eyes were puffy from a mixture of jet-lag and dehydration.

Tea, that’s what she wanted. It mightn’t improve her face, but it would make her insides feel better. She wrapped the hotel’s fluffy white bathrobe around herself and phoned room service. She could get used to this type of thing.

Fifteen minutes later, she had showered and washed her hair. A gentle knock at the door signalled that breakfast was ready. A freckle-faced young man with a broad smile and a broader Belfast accent carried a heavily laden tray into the room and left it on the coffee table. Jo, who was never quite sure how much to tip, gave him three dollars. She hoped that was enough. Thanks. Enjoy your breakfast,” he said with another smile.

Sitting comfortably on the settee, Jo turned on the TV and listened to the news as she lifted the silver lid from a huge Irish fried breakfast. It smelled beautiful and she hadn’t had to cook it herself. Perfect. She poured herself a cup of decaff, buttered some hot brown toast and tucked in. Why were you always ravenous the morning after a big meal? she wondered, munching toast. Well, she hadn’t been eating breakfast much lately. Jo stopped mid-munch. She wasn’t sick, didn’t feel even vaguely nauseous, for the first time in nearly three months. She was thrilled. Of course she’d read that morning sickness could disappear as quickly as it had arrived, but she had begun to think that she’d always feel sick. Yahoo!

After breakfast she dressed quickly in jeans, a white Tshirt and a periwinkle-blue cotton sweater, put some money into a small leather bum bag and hung her sunglasses on the neck of her sweater. New York on a clear, sunny Sunday morning was quiet and relaxed. Only a few bright yellow cabs drove down Lexington Avenue, mingling with the light traffic speeding up to Central Park or down to the book shops and coffee houses in the Village.

Jo walked for a few blocks, savouring the sun on her face and the feeling of warmth on her skin. Two welldressed New Yorkers strode past her, arms full of newspapers and brown delicatessen bags.

Everyone rushed on the east coast, thought Jo, watching a young man glide past silently on rollerblades, overtaking a cruising taxi.

Taxi!” yelled Jo, waving her hand in the air. The car stopped and she sidestepped a fat pigeon who’d been scurrying around on the pavement ahead of her.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art.” she said to the driver, a pale-skinned man with dark hair and a skinny moustache.

“Fifth Avenue and 82nd.”

He looked at her uncomprehendingly. She tried it again, slower and more clearly.

“Sure. I know!” said the driver in a heavy foreign accent.

“Fifth Avenue. I get you there!”

The cab lurched off and immediately picked up speed, dodging traffic recklessly. Now that he knew where he was going, he was going to get her there in double-quick time.

Hopefully, alive. Just my luck to get one of New York’s novice taxi-drivers, thought Jo, sitting well back in the tattered seat and wondering if a quick novena would save her from death by automobile accident.

Somebody was watching over her, definitely. She emerged from the cab outside the Met feeling decidedly shaky. The driver grinned manically when she handed him a ten-dollar bill and drove off rapidly.

Once inside the gallery, Jo headed for the European galleries where the early Flemish paintings she loved hung. She’d never been in the gallery before, even though she and Richard had planned to spend two days there the last time they’d been in Manhattan. Somehow they’d ended up spending all their time with Richard’s friends listening to jazz in smoky clubs in the Village and had never got around to doing any of the things she’d wanted to do. But she knew exactly where to go now thanks to her guidebook. So did lots of other tourists.

Even early on a Sunday morning, a large group of Japanese tourists walked along staring blankly at the museum signs before consulting their guidebooks. The Met was so big there was no way to see everything in a few hours. People did what Jo was doing and just

picked one or two things they had to see, hoping to absorb as much as they could before everything began to blur.

After two hours staring at Van Eycks and Brueghels, Jo was weary and her stomach was rumbling.

She bought some postcards of her favourite paintings on the way out and dithered about buying two pretty Manet prints she wanted to frame. It would be too difficult to lug them around all day, she decided finally. They’d either get bent or she’d leave them behind somewhere. She could always come back and get them during the week.

The cab ride to Greenwich Village was uneventful, mainly because the driver knew where he was going and wasn’t trying to break some sort of land-speed record.

It was nearly lunchtime and the small pavement cafes on Bleecker Street were full of people enjoying Sunday brunch and reading newspapers. Jo bought a New York Sunday Times and wondered how she’d ever read it all in one day. It weighed nearly as much as her handbag and that was saying something. As a couple left a table outside a chic coffee shop, boasting every sort of coffee under the sun, Jo quickly dumped her paper on the white metal table and sank into a chair.

Within fifteen minutes she was tucking into a soft bagel spread with velvety cream cheese laced with morsels of smoked salmon. It was wonderful to sit in the sun, sipping her fragrant coffee and watching the world walk by. But Jo she couldn’t help but feel a little sad, sitting on her own while everyone and their granny seemed to be in pairs. There “Were couples everywhere, couples laughing and talking with their arms draped around each other or couples simply holding hands. She found a tissue in her bum bag and blew her nose, remembering the last time she’d been in New York. It had been Richard’s birthday, the day before they flew home, and they’d had a marvelous lunch in the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station. Then they wandered around the shops, stopping off to spend an hour in

Bloomingdale’s where Richard dragged her, giggling, into the lingerie department. He’d whispered all the erotic things he was going to do to her as she picked out a selection of sexy, lacy bras and knickers.

Typically, he’d got bored quickly. By the time she’d actually decided what to buy, Richard had vanished into the camera department and she ended up paying for the underwear herself. When he took off the coffee-coloured silky bra set later, she’d forgotten that he hadn’t actually bought it himself.

They’d done every crazy, romantic thing you could do in New York and even visited the Empire State Building. They stared down at the city from the windy eighty-sixth floor and held hands. Richard laughed that they were recreating Sleepless in Seattle.

“No, it’s An Affair to Remember,” she’d argued.

That had been over a year ago. Everything had changed so much since then. Jo gently laid a hand on her belly, as though she could feel the baby’s heartbeat with her fingers. She wouldn’t have turned back the clock for anything. Maybe she had Richard then, but now she had something much more precious. Her baby.

She was sitting cross-legged on the bed writing her postcards in the late afternoon sun when the phone rang. It was Mark.

“Hello,” she said coolly.

“Did you have a good day?” he asked.

“Marvellous,” she replied.

“I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a few hours this morning. I wanted to try out Robert De Niro’s restaurant in TriBe Ca so I could write a funny piece about it,” she said airily, ‘but I didn’t get that far. I might go down later. Then I read the New York Sunday Times, well, read a bit of it, in a coffee house in the Village.” Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, she thought defiantly. Your employee wasn’t moping in her room, dying for you to bring her out. She was enjoying New York and its rich cultural life.

So there.

“That sounds great.” He sounded unmoved by the bite in her voice.

“I’m going to dinner with some friends of mine on the Upper East Side

this evening. I wonder if you’d like to come It’s OK if you’ve something else organised. I just didn’t want to leave you going to dinner on your own.”

Jo didn’t know what to say. She’d been thinking he didn’t want anything more to do with her and now he was asking her out to dinner with some friends. She would never understand this man. For a moment, she considered saying no.

Then she thought of the alternative.

Dinner on her own in a strange city was something she’d never enjoyed, although she’d tried it often enough when she was a news reporter for the Sunday News. She’d found that a single woman invariably got the worst table in any restaurant.

Returning to the hotel to have a drink in the bar afterwards was out of the question unless you liked strange men chatting you up.

She’d spent enough of the day on her own, Jo decided firmly. She needed to get out. Who knows, she told herself, an evening out with Mark could even be mildly enjoyable.

When the taxi drew up outside a tall, elegant apartment building off Madison Avenue, Jo was very glad she’d decided to dress up and wear the hand-painted chocolate brown Mary Gregory dress. The whole place reeked of wealth and opulence.

She stared at a vast marble entrance hall, not one but two doormen in green uniforms with gold frogging and what looked like an antique table between the two lifts in the hall.