Plane Lana:
Black vest top (Topshop)
Black skinny jeans (Primark)
Pink pointy pumps (New Look)
Pink and black fringed scarf (Vintage Miss Selfridge
via Oxfam )
Overwhelming scent sensation (duty-free)
Total est. cost: £50
‘Oh look! Look at that!’
‘So you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be absolutely, totally fine? Do you promise? You won’t let one single thing go wrong?’ Annie asked, aware that her heart was racing at panic-speed.
‘Yes,’ Ed said simply, solidly, utterly reassuringly. He placed his hands on her shoulders as if to weigh her down and bring calm to her frantic mind.
‘So you’re going to go and see Mum this weekend, to give Dinah a break. And you’ll take the babies, but Owen will obviously be at the stall. But you’ll be back in time to give him dinner and—’
‘Shhhh,’ Ed soothed.
‘Mum said something about Stefano going away for a fortnight,’ Annie remembered suddenly. ‘I don’t know if that’s soon, or if maybe she’s just got confused. You need to speak to him and find out. Because if he’s going away, Mum can’t be on her own, she’ll have to come and stay with us, so we’ll need to know when that is. And I hope I’ll be back by then otherwise you’ll have too much to—’
‘Annie! Stop it! I’ll speak to Stefano on Saturday. I’ll get the dates of his holiday and the recipe for his chorizo casserole. OK? You were the one who wanted to go on this trip,’ Ed reminded her, his hands sliding to the tops of her arms, which he squeezed affectionately.
‘Yes, yes …’ she said distractedly because now that the boarding card was actually in her hand, now that her entire family was assembled around her at passport control ready to say goodbye, now she just wasn’t quite sure if she really could manage to go.
Ed put his hand under her chin and turned her face towards his.
Oh no. Oh no, it really was going to be time to say goodbye.
‘Look, you’ve convinced me that this is a good idea. That it is really important for you,’ he reminded her, ‘so now you have to go. Stop worrying about us. We’re going to be fine. And you’re going to be great!’ he encouraged her.
‘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.’
‘Get a photo!’ Lana suggested.
But too late: the girl had opened her front door and slipped inside.
‘There it is!’ Lana exclaimed and pointed to a high, ten- or twelve-storey building, of red brick. Rows and rows of bells were lined up beside the double glass front doors.
Once they were out of the taxi and standing on the pavement, Annie and Lana couldn’t help exchanging glances … both feeling a heady rush of excitement and astonishment.
‘We made it!’ Annie told Lana. ‘We’re here. We’re standing in East 16th Street, midtown, between Fifth and Sixth!’
‘We came up Sixth,’ Lana said, ‘so that—’ she pointed a short distance ahead to the junction on the other end of the street – ‘that must be Fifth Avenue. Right there.’
Annie smiled: ‘This is sooo cool. C’mon, find bell, let’s get in, let’s see Elena, let’s dump luggage and let’s get out again!’
Lana found the right number and pressed the buzzer. Several moments later, a fuzzy ‘hello’ came out of the intercom and the front door clicked open.
Inside, the lobby was dark and cool, lined with locked letterboxes and four elevators with shiny golden doors.
‘Tenth floor,’ Annie instructed Lana, looking at her scribbled instructions.
The lift brought them out into a nondescript corridor lined with brown doors and hideous wall lights. Checking numbers, they walked left, then turned down another long corridor. At number 121 they stopped and Annie knocked at the door.
Several moments later and Elena was standing in front of them. But she looked nothing like the Elena they remembered.
‘Are you OK?’ Annie asked straight away.
Elena’s long blonde hair was hanging lank and limp round a pale, exhausted face. There wasn’t a trace of make-up to hide the circles under her eyes and she was wrapped up in a short silky dressing gown. Even though it was lunchtime in NYC, Elena obviously hadn’t made it out of her pyjamas yet.
‘No, not OK,’ the deep, accented voice replied gloomily, ‘and I asked my mother to tell you not to come.’