The next eight hours are some of the busiest of my life. Edie is like a woman possessed. She has studied her guidebook until she could walk around New York blindfold, and she whisks me from one ‘Oh my God’ moment to the next. One minute we’re peering at the Statue of Liberty through the rain-spattered window of a sightseeing boat, and the next we’re standing at the Ground Zero building site, watching the rain fall on the hole where the Twin Towers used to be. Then we’re in the subway, getting only slightly lost, before finally arriving in Fifth Avenue, where all the shops are – or, as I like to call it, home.
Edie doesn’t enjoy this bit as much as me. Edie complains, in fact, that it is not necessary to see Saks and Bergdorf Goodman, Tiffany and Abercrombie & Fitch. Edie seems to think that we are wasting valuable museum-visiting time. I disagree. I am picturing the best locations for Crow’s future collections for the MIMOs. I am deciding that Bergdorf Goodman is probably my favourite, but I might have to go to Barney’s on Madison Avenue to make sure. It’s not until Edie sits down on the floor of Abercrombie, and refuses to move, that I realise that now I am the woman possessed. Besides, we’re due at Jackson Ward’s for dinner soon, and we need to change out of our sightseeing clothes.
As I struggle into an old silver-knit mini-dress of Crow’s, hoping it’s suitable for meeting a musical legend, I’m wondering how I can ever repay Harry for my ticket. New York is even taller, louder and more inspiring than I imagined. It has so much energy – it even makes London look laid-back, which takes some doing. Only one thing scares me slightly. You would have to be totally and utterly amazing to stand out here. Just being ‘great’ isn’t good enough. Jackson Ward has managed it somehow, with his Tonys and Oscars. So has Isabelle. But I wonder if Jenny has realised how much she’s taking on by performing in this city. And I wonder what I’ve let Crow in for by trying to get her that job here, too.
With Edie map-reading, we get the subway to Jackson Ward’s apartment on East 73rd Street, not far from Central Park. However, the first surprise is that his apartment isn’t an apartment at all. It’s a house. An actual old house, with a front door and stairs and, by the look of it, a lot of history. I’d been hoping for a skyscraper. Possibly even the Trump Tower, but this is cool anyway.
‘I told you it was a house,’ Jenny says in the hall.
She probably did. I probably wasn’t listening. She gushes so much about Jackson Ward and his fabulous life that I tend to tune out.
Jenny leads us through to a grand reception room. Mum would love the place. It’s full of sculpture. Stone ones, bronze ones, wood ones, even weird, twisted ones that are made out of no material I recognise. Edie sighs appreciatively. We are in a world of culture. She is happy.
‘Come and meet everyone,’ Jenny says.
At the far end of the room, a short, balding man in a silk shirt is sipping cocktails and chatting with a remarkably tall, white-haired woman and a short, pretty girl with a pale face, geek-chic glasses and almost waist-length dark hair. They all come over to shake our hands.
‘How do you do? Awfully nice to meet you. This is my wife, Jane, and my lovely daughter, Charlotte.’
He does the whole speech in the fakest English accent I’ve ever heard. I can sense Edie wincing beside me, so I smile extra politely to make up for her.
‘Ignore him,’ Charlotte says with a friendly smile. ‘He’s always like this with strangers. Shut UP, Dad. He’ll get better, though. Now, come over and make yourselves comfortable.’
I can’t help noticing, as we pass various side tables crammed with expensive knick-knacks, that there are at least two photos of Charlotte and her mother posing on a yacht. If only Granny were here. She’d be SO impressed.
‘So, girls,’ Jackson asks, ‘how was your first day in New York? What did you do with yourselves?’
Edie is less distracted by the Oscars and Tonys. She answers first.
‘Ground Zero was so poignant,’ she says sombrely.
There’s a brief pause for reflection.
‘And what about you, Nonie?’
For a moment, I wish we’d gone to the Met and the Guggenheim, like Edie wanted. That would be the perfect conversation to have right now. Instead, I have to admit to practically every store on Fifth Avenue. Some of them twice.
Jackson Ward grins. ‘Aha! Jenny’s told me all about you. A fashionista to your fingertips. I salute you!’
He takes a sip of cocktail in my honour. From then, I relax a bit and get used to being in museum-standard surroundings. Supper, which is served by a maid, manages to be super-healthy and super-yummy, which is just what we need after too many fries and emergency Starbucks milkshakes. And then Jackson sits down at the piano while coffee is served in teeny porcelain cups, and sings several of the songs from The Princesses for us.
He’s very good. He sings and plays as if he’s starring in the show himself, and it’s strange to think that he hardly ever performs in public. He could probably do a stint in Las Vegas if he wanted to. As long as he never attempts anything in an English accent.
I’m so gripped that for a long time, I don’t notice that I’m sitting alone on my gold silk sofa. But when I do, I’m suddenly concerned. Edie and Jenny have disappeared. They must have gone up to Jenny’s room. Which can only mean that Edie is telling Jenny about Gloria. Not just about the pills, which Jenny already knows about, but about what the nurses said. About how fragile Gloria is.
My concern is how fragile Jenny is when it comes to her mum. Oh my God. I came all this way to stop this and it’s happening under my nose. As soon as I decently can, I make my excuses to Jackson and head for Jenny’s room upstairs.
It takes me a few moments to find it. There are a lot of doors in this house. Then I finally open the right one and two faces whip round to look at me. Both have bright pink spots on their cheeks. The rest of Edie’s face is white and drawn, while Jenny’s is tear-stained and blotchy.
‘You think it’s my fault, don’t you?’ Jenny shouts. ‘You think it’s because of me that she’s so bad. Because I don’t look after her enough.’
‘I think you don’t look after her at all!’ Edie shouts back.
Jenny’s voice goes quiet, but she’s shaking with anger. ‘Get out! Get out! Go away! Leave me alone!’
There’s not much else we can do, under the circumstances. Furiously, I grab Edie’s arm and pull her towards me.
‘We’re going,’ I say to Jenny. ‘But look – please call me? I came all this way, Jen. Promise me you’ll talk to me?’
Edie and I go back to the sitting room. Three elegant, confused and embarrassed Wards see us politely to the door. We catch the subway home and reach the apartment in silence. I have just wasted Harry’s birthday-present plane ticket after all, by spending the most important five minutes in New York listening to an old guy play the piano and it wasn’t even Elton John. I could kick myself. I could kick Edie too, right now, but I don’t.