Eight p.m. and the city was out for the night. Ro leaned against the wall, pretending to text, as the clique in Brooks Brothers suits stopped at the door ten metres further up and spoke in lowered tones to the doorman. Rowena followed them with her eyes, her gaze fixed on the magnums in their hands. They were the sixth group to pass her so far brandishing premier cru by way of identity. She thought of the ridged glass jar in her pocket. How, in all seriousness, could she hand that over by way of hers?
Ro sighed and looked away. She’d been standing here for twenty minutes now trying to work up the courage to go in, but she’d seen enough to convince her there was little point. She pushed herself back to standing and stared down the long avenue. Tail lights glowed red into the distance even though the traffic lights were green. The milky sky she could only glimpse in fragments was leaching into a shadowy dusk, and everyone clearly had somewhere to be, except her.
She turned a circle on the spot, not sure which way to go. She couldn’t go back to the hotel room, not without losing her sanity. She’d spent eight hours in there already today, downloading yesterday’s wedding images onto her laptop and whittling out a first edit, but she couldn’t really scrutinize them until she got them under the magnifying loupe back home. There was a gym in the hotel basement, but she had long taken the view that being a DD cup was God’s way of saying she shouldn’t exercise. And she felt too conspicuously alone to sit at a restaurant table reading a book and pretending that it was fine, that it was her choice.
A couple of women, deep in animated conversation, were walking towards her, or rather the door just past her – gold foil bottle-tops clearly visible through their closed fists – and she turned in the opposite direction, not wanting to come face to face with what she wasn’t. She wasn’t slick and metropolitan, the kind of woman to walk alone into a party. She wasn’t like Matt, bold and adventurous, somewhere in the Cambodian mountains, living his dream and trekking in the Elephant Mountains for fun.
No. She was standing outside a skyscraper that had a party at the top and she was too scared to go in and chat, even to pretty much the only person who’d talked to her in the three weeks since Matt had left. She hated that she couldn’t make herself go in, hated that she was even contemplating it in the first place. Was she really that desperate? How could she be this pathetic without him? Since when had she blurred into his shadow, losing her own angles and borders, merging into him and becoming subsumed?
A cab pulled to the kerb ahead of her and she saw the woman inside handing over notes from the back seat as she continued a seemingly intense conversation she was having on the phone, head bobbing frantically in profile. Ro ran over and waited patiently for the busy girl to get out. She didn’t care where she went; she just had to get out of here.
The door opened and one lean, toned leg swung out with a stiletto heel at one end and a sharp pencil skirt at the other. Ro looked down at her own boyfriend jeans and jade-green hi-tops. Was she actually the only woman in New York not wearing heels?
‘No, no, that’s not working for me. The pitch is already maxed as it is.’ The girl glanced disinterestedly at Ro as she got out, reaching back for a large A1-sized portfolio with her free hand as she kept her other hand – and the phone in it – clamped to her ear. ‘Well, if they can’t go up, they’ll have to go down. There’s no other way. They certainly can’t go out.’
The portfolio behind her jammed between the door frames, pulling her back towards the cab, and she tugged at it, the rigid leather sides bowing slightly. Ro leaned forward to nudge it free at one side, seeing – to her astonishment – the far door open on the other side of the bench seat and a pair of dark grey flannel legs bending in.
‘Hey!’ she shouted, straightening up to make furious eye contact with the legs’ owner above the cab, but he was already sliding in. She quickly bent down again, just as the pointed, metal-capped corner of the portfolio suddenly came unstuck and jabbed her hard in the eye.
She gasped and reeled backwards, tripping over the kerb and banging her head against a lamp post as she went down. Just for good measure.
‘Oh what? Goddammit!’ she heard the girl mutter. ‘Jerry, I’ll have to call you back . . . Yeah, yeah . . . Hey! You OK?’
Ro, her hand clamped like a patch over one eye, shook her head, trying not to cry. She was seeing flashes of red behind the shut lid as her eye began to stream. It was her ‘working’ eye, the one she used to peer through the lens.
‘What were you doing? Couldn’t you see I hadn’t gotten out?’ the girl demanded in a tone that suggested this was Ro’s fault.
‘I was helping you,’ Rowena spluttered. It was impossible to open even the ‘good’ eye: that one was streaming too.
‘Helping? You were helping a stranger in Manhattan? What are you, crazy?’
‘English, actually,’ Ro replied petulantly.
‘That figures.’
They fell into silence, but even with her eyes shut, Ro could tell the girl was still there, crouched by her. Horns were hooting in frustration at the hold-ups further down the street, and Ro could hear people muttering as they had to dodge her on the pavement. How inconvenient of her to hold them up like this . . .
‘I suppose the cab’s gone,’ Ro said, trying to scramble to her feet with both her eyes scrunched shut. She felt the girl’s hand on her elbow, lightly guiding her back up.
‘Yeah. Shall I get you another? Least I could do.’ The girl’s tone was slightly more friendly as Ro’s enduring distress became more evident.
‘Thanks,’ Ro mumbled, turning her face down and removing her hand from her eye, but the moment she opened it, it was like being lasered by a sharp white light and she winced in pain. She reached out for the lamp post for support, swinging wildly for it and still missing.
The girl placed a hand on her arm. ‘Dammit, you can’t get in a cab if you can’t see where you’re going. Not in this city. And definitely not with you being English,’ she muttered under her breath, making Ro’s Englishness sound like an impediment. Ro heard her whistling through her teeth, trying to work out what to do. ‘Look, I’m headed just over there anyway. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll take a better look inside? You can get some warm water on it, do a salt bath . . .’
Ro thought she might be pointing the way, but with both eyes weeping copiously, she couldn’t be certain. She nodded silently, letting the girl take her arm and lead her towards wherever ‘there’ was. It wasn’t like she had a lot of choice.
‘Shaddywack,’ the girl said.
What?
‘Second elevator,’ she heard a man reply, and then the acoustics changed and they were inside, Ro’s trainers squeaking adolescently beside the pin-sharp tap of the girl’s heels on a marble floor. They stopped again and she heard the soft ping of lift doors opening, felt carpet underfoot as they stepped in.
‘I’m Bobbi, by the way,’ the girl said, as they started moving skywards.
‘Rowena.’
‘How long you in New York for, Rowena?’
‘Going back tomorrow night.’ She thought she could hear the faint swish of hair and imagined the girl, Bobbi, was nodding – or checking her reflection. She kept her head down; she felt awkward having a conversation with a complete stranger with her eyes clamped shut.
‘Your first time here?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘You like it?’
Rowena shrugged, wiping her ‘patch’ hand, which was wet, on her jeans. ‘It does what it says on the tin, I guess. Bright lights, big city.’
‘You’re not much of a city girl, huh?’
‘Actually, I live in London.’
‘Yeah? I love London. Whereabouts?’
‘A place called Barnes.’
There was a pause. ‘Down by the river, right? Got a duck pond and a cute little green?’
‘That’s the one,’ Ro said in surprise, her mind perfectly conjuring the little whitewashed Victorian cottage with shiny red door that she called home. The orange blossom had been on the verge of blooming as she’d left and she wondered whether Matt had noticed before he left her and their life together behind him. It had been the seal on the deal when they’d first viewed the house three summers ago.
‘Well, no wonder you don’t like Manhattan, then,’ Bobbi said, and from the direction of her voice, Ro could tell that she was indeed now checking her reflection in the mirror.
‘I didn’t say I didn’t l—’
But the doors had opened and she felt Bobbi’s hand on her elbow again, guiding her along a corridor. Ahead of them, she could hear the muffled beat of music and raucous conversation. Ro slowed her feet as they got closer.
‘To be honest, I think I’m fine now. I really don’t need to go in there with you.’ She tried to open the uninjured eye a little and she had just enough time to take in a charcoal-grey carpet and pale grey-striped wallpaper before it watered up again.
‘But your eye – you look like Rocky! We should try to ice it for sure.’ And before Ro could protest further, a door was opened and they were swamped by the din inside. She felt Bobbi hesitate at . . . What? The noise? The wall of champagne that had been built in the past half-hour as everyone arrived with identical gifts? ‘Oh Jeez! You have got to be freakin’ kiddin’ me . . .’ There was a long pause and Ro tried to imagine what on earth had made the girl stop in her tracks. ‘Just keep hold of my hand, OK?’ she shouted eventually.
Ro could only nod, one hand still clamped protectively over her eye, as she felt Bobbi’s hand close over her free one, their connected arms outstretched and taut like a mooring rope as Bobbi made holes for them in the dense, heaving crowd – seemingly knocking people’s knees with her portfolio, if the number of ‘Hey!’s was anything to go by. Ro yelped as someone trod on her foot; someone else splashed her with a drink as their arm was jogged; she could hear people shrieking a lot. The smell of cigars burning wafted past her and Ro knew she had been right to follow her impulse to walk away from this. She didn’t need to open her eyes to know she’d be the only person in the room wearing jeans – at least, wearing jeans with rips in them and that hadn’t cost $400 – or the only woman not in make-up. (Although thank God for that: she’d look like Frankenstein’s bride if she was wearing mascara right now.)
‘Watch yourself here – it’s slippy,’ Bobbi warned her.
Ro frowned – slippy? – but stepped with care, still almost slipping. Against her better judgement, she instinctively opened both eyes and in the second before pain shut them again, she saw foam. Bikinis. Waxed, muscled chests. A ball. Then red-pulsing blackness.
The crowd was less dense over here and she could actually feel space around her now as Bobbi continued towing her through the apartment. And then suddenly the noise was behind them and a door closed again.
‘Jeez-us,’ Bobbi muttered. ‘Didn’t I just know it would be like this?’
Ro said nothing: she wasn’t sure Bobbi was actually directing the question at her. And anyway, her own thoughts were racing. A foam party? She thought of Barnes again – the duck pond, the orange blossom, the pretty red door – and calculated how many hours it would be till she was back there, safe in the silence of her own home, sniffing Matt’s pillow.
She heard the sound of water running.
‘Here.’ Bobbi placed a warm, wettened corner of a towel in her hands. ‘Press that against your eye while I get a dish and some salt. Lock the door behind me, OK? Don’t let anyone else in.’
Ro nodded, pressing the towel to her eye and finding the lock with her hands. She slumped in relief at the momentary solitude. She wet the towel again and patted it against her eye over and over, grateful for the comfort it brought. The good eye had just about stopped watering altogether now and she could at least take in her surroundings without feeling like she was doped.
The bathroom she was standing in was tiled with dark green slate, the washbasin she was using seemingly carved by hand from a slab of limestone. Cubbyholes made from iroko wood housed grey folded towels, and glass bottles of colour-tinted toiletries had been coded to the rainbow. She clocked a generous-headed shaving brush next to a lime-stickered wooden box of Geo Trumper’s shaving soap.
There was a knock at the door and Ro unlocked it, but it wasn’t Bobbi on the other side.
‘Hey, you made it!’ beamed the waiter from the wedding with the disarmingly easy smile. He had a beer in his hand and was today wearing chinos with flip-flops.
‘You can’t come in here,’ she said abruptly. ‘Medical emergency.’
‘I can see that,’ the waiter said again, still smiling. ‘I saw you coming in. Maybe I can help.’
‘Not likely.’ She could guess his game. Bikini-clad women frolicking in foam? Hooking up with a bridesmaid at the wedding he was waitering at, minutes after he’d hit on her? It was pretty obvious why he’d invited her to this, and now that she’d gone and shown up, he probably thought he was in with a chance, in spite of – or maybe even because of – the travelling boyfriend.
‘I’m a doctor.’
‘No, you’re not! You’re a waiter. I saw you last night, remember?’ Oh God, had he forgotten already? ‘I’m the photographer? We met at the wedding at—’
Just then Bobbi reappeared, carrying a bowl that looked like it had recently held peanuts. Was that what she meant by salt bath?
‘Who’s this? What did I say about keeping the door locked?’ she demanded bossily, throwing the guy a dirty look as she barged past. ‘You’re English. You don’t know what these frat boys can be like.’
‘I think we’re too old to qualify as frat boys,’ the waiter replied.
‘Yeah, well, you’d think,’ Bobbi muttered. ‘But try telling that to the flesh mob out there. Come on, fella – move it. This ain’t no pickup. The girl needs some first aid.’
‘Listen, I’m a doctor.’ The waiter gave a goofy grin. ‘Was a doctor, strictly speaking. Can I see? It looks sore.’
Ro shrugged, in too much discomfort to argue the toss. He came further into the bathroom. ‘You happy for me to lock the door?’ he asked them both.
‘So long as you’re only coming in here to do some doctoring,’ Bobbi said in a steely tone of voice.
‘We’re all safe, then,’ he grinned, locking the door and turning towards Ro. ‘So what happened?’
‘Her eye picked a fight with the corner of my portfolio,’ Bobbi said quickly.
‘Really? Feisty eye,’ he murmured. ‘Do you mind if I try to look at it?’
Ro shook her head, watching warily from her good eye as he angled her face in the direction of the mirror lights, but not directly at them. ‘Can you open it for me?’
Slowly, hesitantly, she opened the eye, feeling it fill with tears as the light streamed in like water in a bath. The waiter peered closer at her, his face just inches from hers so that she could smell his cologne. She pulled away quickly. The smile left his eyes, if not his mouth, as he registered her evident distrust.
‘Well, from what I could briefly see, it looks like there’s a scratch on the retina. You’re going to need to keep it covered for a day or two. It must hurt like hell,’ he added.
Ro nodded.
‘I can patch it for you if you like.’
‘With what? Your shirt?’ Bobbi asked dubiously, watching the two of them.
The smiling guy looked behind her and nodded. ‘Well, I’d rather not, given there’s a first-aid kit right there.’
Bobbi turned. Sure enough a green plastic case with a red cross was stowed in the bottom cubbyhole. She retrieved it and watched as the waiter pulled out a crêpe bandage, an antiseptic gauze pad and safety pins.
‘So, you having fun?’ he asked, making small talk to fill the silence.
‘Not really,’ Bobbi said, folding her arms.
Ro stood quietly at the basin, watching her assailant/good Samaritan through her now-dry eye. Bobbi was tall and lean, with narrow calves, and judging from her shoes, she clearly had the indigenous ability to balance on the balls of her feet for hours at a time. Her shoulder-length hair was top-flight brunette: low lit with plum shades and cut in layers around her oval face, which was beautiful rather than pretty. She had gently rounded cheekbones, a pronounced jaw and large, dark, steady eyes that Ro guessed missed nothing.
‘No?’
‘It’s a complete waste of a cab fare. I mean, a foam party? Seriously? I thought this house share was supposed to be for people who didn’t want to live in an animal house? The ad clearly said “responsible professionals” were wanted.’
The waiter nodded. ‘I guess you have a point.’
Bobbi stared at his flip-flops suspiciously. It didn’t look like the foam party was such a surprise to him.
‘And anyway, what’s with the one-hundred-strong crowd?’ Bobbi continued, warming to her theme. ‘There’s only four bedrooms, right? I reckon this guy’s looking to capitalize on his power while he’s got it, if you get what I’m sayin’.’
‘I think I do.’
Ro didn’t, but she didn’t ask for clarification. Bobbi was clearly on a rant.
‘I mean, everyone wants a summer spot in the Hamptons and they’ll do anything, anything to get it: inside-trading tips and football tickets from the guys; and as for the girls . . . Ugh!’ Bobbi batted a hand disgustedly. ‘It’s not bad enough that it costs nearly half my salary just to get a room there for the summer weekends or that we have to compete against each other for them like performing monkeys? I bet he hosts one of these a week. Why wouldn’t he? It’s a sure thing, right? He probably filled the rooms months ago.’
‘What do you think?’ the waiter asked Rowena. He had placed the patch over her eye and was beginning to wind the crêpe bandage round her head.
She just shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’m English. Our seaside scene is somewhat different to yours – there’s no guarantee the sun will turn up, for a start. And Cornwall’s lovely, but we don’t have to audition for it. We certainly don’t have to go through –’ she waved towards the door vaguely ‘– that.’
They all three fell quiet again, listening to the party rocketing along without them. Ro wondered how it was that she could be at the party and still not actually be part of it. How pathetic exactly?
‘I don’t know your names,’ he said, breaking the silence. ‘I’m Hump.’
Of course he was! Ro saw Bobbi roll her eyes.
‘Bobbi. Winkleman.’
‘Rowena Tipton. But everyone calls me Ro,’ Ro added.
‘So what did you bring? You know, the gift that defines you?’ Hump asked, still unwinding the bandage ball asymmetrically round Ro’s head. ‘No, wait, let me guess – a magnum of champagne, right?’
‘Ha! It doesn’t matter now. I’m not staying,’ Bobbi interjected. ‘I’ve seen enough.’
‘So? I’m curious – indulge me.’ Hump smiled. ‘What else have we got to do in here?’
Before he could come up with an alternative scenario, Bobbi immediately reached for the portfolio she’d propped against the wall, pulling out a huge black and white sketch on thick artist’s paper of a low clapboarded house with three shuttered dormer windows and a covered stepped-up porch that wrapped round two sides.
Hump stopped what he was doing. ‘Did you draw that?’ he asked, impressed.
Bobbi shrugged.
‘But how did you even know what it looked like?’
‘I Google Earthed it.’
‘It’s awesome.’
‘It’s a waste of time is what it is,’ Bobbi refuted. ‘I’m not handing it over after this. He couldn’t pay me to stay in his house, not if even one of those people out there is going to be my housemate.’
Hump grinned, clearly amused by her outspoken feistiness. ‘But I don’t get it. That’s someone else’s house. How does it define you?’
Bobbi blinked at him, as if astonished by the stupidity of the question. ‘I’m an architect. This is what I do. It’s who I am. Know me, know my career.’
Hump looked back at Ro, finishing winding the bandage and securing it in place with the safety pins. ‘What about you?’
Ro folded her arms. ‘Oh no,’ she replied defensively. ‘I don’t think so. I wasn’t even going to come in.’
Bobbi looked surprised. ‘You were coming here too?’
‘Not once I saw the cliques walking in. It was pretty obvious I wasn’t going to fit. And I was right – funnily enough, I don’t wear a bikini underneath my suit,’ she said with impressive sarcasm.
‘You gotta show me what you brought,’ Bobbi said, her almost-black eyes shining with interest. ‘I showed you mine.’
Ro hesitated – she sensed nobody said ‘no’ to Bobbi – then reached into her coat pocket. Sheepishly, she held up the jar of marmalade.
‘Is that . . . ? What is that?’ Hump frowned.
‘Marmalade.’
‘What?’ Bobbi asked, looking dubious.
‘It’s a big thing back home. You have it on toast.’
‘With a cup of tea?’ Hump suggested in a bad posh English accent.
‘Exactly.’
‘It looks home-made,’ Hump said, his eyes on the handwritten sticker on the octagonal jar as Bobbi took it from her.
‘People have been known to befriend me just to get on my annual list. My social diary goes mad in the run-up to navel-oranges season. I have to limit friends and family to just three jars each,’ Ro replied.
‘Power!’ Hump grinned.
‘It was all I could think of to bring. I always travel with a jar. I bring my own teabags too,’ she mumbled.
‘It’s cute,’ Bobbi proclaimed – if a little patronizingly – handing back the jar of marmalade. ‘You’re a nester, right?’
Ro didn’t reply as she pocketed it again. A nester. It wasn’t the first time she’d been told that. Her friends at school had laughed as she’d hosted dinner parties at fifteen when all they’d wanted to do was try to get into the pub. Making a home took on an urgency those with families couldn’t ever understand.
‘So what about you? What did you bring?’ Bobbi asked, turning the tables on Hump.
‘Actually, I didn’t,’ he replied.
‘Well, that’s not fair!’ Bobbi said, instantly indignant. ‘Why should you—’ Then the penny dropped as her eyes fell back down to his flip-flops. The foam party really hadn’t been a surprise to him. ‘Oh. Oh, I get it. He’s a friend of yours. You just come here for the social element.’
‘Who? Who’s my friend?’ Hump asked, smiling even more broadly.
Was he ever not amused? Ro wondered.
‘The guy behind all this, the one with the house! Humphrey Slater.’
Another penny dropped. A bigger one.
‘You!’ Ro exclaimed.
Hump shrugged. ‘Busted.’
Ro watched Bobbi’s mouth opening and closing repeatedly as she trawled back over the insults she’d unwittingly hurled at their host in the past five minutes. She couldn’t have done a better job of doing herself out of the house share if she’d tried.
‘Well, I stand by everything I said,’ she said finally.
‘And I agree with all of it,’ Hump replied, making both girls frown. ‘That’s exactly why I do this.’
Ro looked between the two of them. ‘Sorry, you’ve lost me. I’m English – we’re divided by a common language, remember,’ she said.
Hump leaned back against the basin. ‘The house in East Hampton was my grandfather’s. I need the money the summer season generates for my new start-up—’
‘I thought you said you were a doctor?’ Bobbi interrupted.
He pulled a grimace. ‘I was a doctor. It wasn’t for me. I gave it up last year.’
‘You’re saying you just walked away from all that schooling?’ Bobbi scowled, disbelieving. ‘Listen, buddy, I’m an architect and I’ve spent as long in school as you, give or take a few years. No one just walks away from that. What really happened? You failed, right? Got thrown out?’
There was a slight pause. ‘I need to be my own boss.’
Bobbi stared at him like he’d said he needed to be an amoeba.
‘So what do you do now, then?’ Ro interjected, saving him.
‘I’m an entrepreneur. Like you.’
‘Is that your way of saying “unemployed”?’ Bobbi demanded, and both Hump and Ro shot her annoyed looks. Ro had had comments like that too.
Hump looked a little hurt. ‘I have some irons in the fire.’
They all stared at each other suspiciously – three strangers locked in a bathroom, one with a patch, another with an attitude, another with no job.
‘So that’s your interview process,’ Bobbi said finally, jerking a thumb towards the party happening on the other side of the door.
Hump shrugged. ‘Actually, this is.’
Both girls looked back at him blankly. He sighed. ‘This is my fifth year of renting out the rooms. Initially, I needed the money for med school, so it seemed like the obvious thing to do, but I didn’t want the place wrecked, y’know? It’s my grandfather’s house, but it didn’t matter how much I tried to vet people, they’d ace the interviews and then turn into animals the second they got off the Jitney. That’s the local coach,’ he explained for Ro’s benefit. He frowned. ‘Finally, I figured the best thing to do was good old-fashioned reverse psychology – put people in the kind of environment they were telling me they didn’t want and then see who went for it – and who didn’t. And you didn’t.’
Bobbi narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘Are you saying . . . ?’
Hump shrugged. ‘I can’t pay you to stay there,’ he grinned, quoting her own words back to her. ‘I do need the capital for my next venture, but there are two rooms still free. They’re yours if you want them.’
Bobbi didn’t hesitate. ‘We’d need to negotiate on the price. I work like a bitch and can’t guarantee I can get away every Friday.’ She folded her arms across her chest, unrepentant. ‘I don’t want to pay for something I can’t use. Every other weekend would suit me better.’
Hump pulled a face. ‘I don’t know. That would mean half-rent and I do need to bring in a full season’s income.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a shame. It would have been nice to have you both, given that you’re already friends.’
‘Hang on a sec!’ Ro said hurriedly. ‘There’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not looking for a room.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ Hump laughed in genuine astonishment. ‘Both of you are turning me down? Do you know what those guys out there would do to be in your shoes?’
‘I think we’ve already established that,’ Bobbi said, not budging from her tough stance. ‘And I haven’t turned you down flat. We’re negotiating terms.’
Hump looked across at Ro. ‘Why did you come to the party if you didn’t want a room?’
Ro felt her cheeks flame. How could she admit she couldn’t bear to go another day without speaking to someone? ‘To give you these,’ she said, reaching into her pocket and handing him the photo-booth snapshots. ‘And because you invited me.’
He glanced at the photo strip with a quick smile. ‘But you brought a gift that defined you,’ he said, looking back up.
‘To be polite.’
‘I don’t believe this. Who knew the Hamptons would be such a hard sell?’ Hump said to neither of them in particular, pocketing the photos. ‘Thanks for these, by the way. I was wondering how I could get hold of them.’
Ro shrugged. ‘I don’t really get all this, to be honest. What are the Hamptons, anyway?’ she asked. ‘I mean, I’m getting that it’s a nice beachside resort, but seriously? Auditions? Reverse psychology?’
Both Bobbi and Hump’s jaws dropped.
‘Are you shitting me?’ Bobbi whispered.
‘Where exactly is it?’ Ro continued.
‘It is a series of villages on Long Island.’
‘Long Island . . .’ Ro echoed sceptically.
‘Go over Brooklyn Bridge, hook a right and keep going for ninety miles till you drive into the Atlantic. It’s pretty much the single most exclusive enclave of beach villages in the whole of the entire US of A.’
‘Oh, right, I see.’
‘No. No, I really don’t think you do,’ Hump said, shaking his head. ‘Everyone who’s anyone holidays out there. Even the West Coasters – Steven Spielberg comes over, Puff Daddy, Martha Stewart, Gwyneth Paltrow, SJP . . . pretty much anyone who’s an aire.’
Aire? As in millionaire? Billionaire? ‘Do you mean rich?’
‘I do.’
Ro shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t get why you’d think I would want to come here for the summer. You already knew I was English.’
‘Yeah! With US citizenship!’ Hump laughed, holding his hands out in disbelief. ‘Why wouldn’t you use that? It’s like you won the jackpot and you don’t even know it.’
‘My jackpot’s coming in just over five months,’ she mumbled.
‘Huh?’ Bobbi asked, leaning in.
‘Nothing.’
Hump stared at her. ‘Give me one good reason why you couldn’t spend the summer here.’
‘What?’ Ro laughed. ‘You mean beyond the fact that my entire life is across the Pond?’
‘Yeah. Beyond that. Why couldn’t you spend time here? You’re self-employed, right?’
‘Well, yes, but—’
‘You got sick parents that need you to stay there?’
‘Dead ones, actually. Car crash. When I was twelve. I lived with my aunt and uncle.’
There was a stunned silence and she knew she’d said it too harshly, the words abrupt and cold as she rushed to get them out, knowing they’d come out sooner or later and wanting to control the situation. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘Didn’t mean to . . . throw that at you.’
Bobbi was frowning at her – Ro wasn’t sure whether that was her version of sympathy. Hump rubbed her arm.
‘Well, you’re not married, I can see that,’ he said more gently, his eyes on her ringless finger.
‘Not yet, but—’
‘Or engaged,’ Bobbi said quickly.
‘Not yet, but—’
‘You said your boyfriend’s travelling,’ Hump smiled.
‘Yeah? Where?’ Bobbi interrupted.
‘Far East.’
Bobbi’s eyebrows shot up. ‘For work?’
‘Pleasure.’ The word was out of her mouth before she could stop it. The sound of it stunned her momentarily, the simple truth of it a hard smack. He was out there for pleasure. He was having a great time. Without her. Because he wanted to.
‘When is he coming back?’ Hump’s expression had changed. Was that . . . pity she could see in his eyes now?
‘September. Listen, I can see where you’re going with this, but really I don’t have time to spend a summer gallivanting on American beaches. I’m in the middle of expanding my business.’
‘What d’you do, Ro?’ Bobbi asked, hoisting herself up onto the basin unit and crossing her ankles.
‘She’s a wedding photographer,’ Hump replied for her.
‘Family media, actually. I do weddings but as part of a bigger, longer-term project where I reconnect with the clients every year. Plus, I edit and organize digital videos into short films and photos into albums and books. People have literally thousands of pictures stored on their hard drives that they never even see – and more often than not, aren’t backed up. An entire life story can be lost with one spilt glass of water.’
‘Spilt water?’ Bobbi echoed, lost.
‘I’m just illustrating a disaster scenario.’
‘Oh. What’s your company called? I’ll look it up.’
‘Well, I’m in the middle of changing it, actually. I was thinking something like Tipton Family Media?’ She may as well road-test the name on them as anyone.
‘Too dull,’ Bobbi said decisively, shaking her head and crossing her arms.
‘Pedestrian, I was going to say,’ Hump agreed. ‘You can do better.’
‘Oh.’
‘But isn’t it a great idea?’ Hump asked Bobbi, clocking Ro’s disappointment. ‘I bet you have tons of photos you never look at, right?’
‘Oh God, like you wouldn’t believe. You don’t even wanna go there.’ Bobbi rolled her eyes.
‘Ro’s right, though. There’s no way a business like that would translate over here. I mean, all those cash-rich, time-poor New York families – they totally wouldn’t be your target market.’ Hump’s voice was heavy with sarcasm, almost moronic. ‘And I mean, who would want to capitalize upon them all being in one place for the summer?’
Bobbi guffawed next to him and Ro wondered when they’d suddenly become allies.
‘My life is in England.’
‘Your boyfriend isn’t.’
Ro glared at him with her one eye.
‘You could have an adventure of your own too, you know. You’ve got a summer without him. Why should he have all the fun?’
‘It’s not like that.’
No one said anything and Ro knew they thought it clearly was. She studied her trainers. It wasn’t that the idea was a bad one. If this place really was the summer playground for Manhattan’s elite, it could indeed be the perfect launch pad for her business. Why not start it here? Her US citizenship meant she could work in the States, and she’d already forecast to grow the business through franchises. Once she’d set it up here, she could sell it to a licensee and then concentrate on the UK market back home. It was back to front maybe, but—
She stopped the thoughts abruptly. It was ridiculous even to think it.
‘It won’t work. If nothing else because it’s a weekend share you’re renting out. Where am I supposed to go during the week? I don’t have a place in New York.’
Hump’s face fell. ‘Oh. Yeah.’ He sighed, looking towards the closed door. He was going to have to go back out there.
Bobbi smacked him on the arm. ‘Unless . . . unless Ro stays at the Hamptons house full-time! That way, she can pay you extra and I can pay you less. Everyone’s a winner.’
Ro narrowed her eyes, convinced only Bobbi would be the winner in this. She had that victorious sheen about her.
‘It’s the perfect solution: you get your full season’s income, I get the flexibility to do every other weekend, and Ro has a full-time base here.’
‘Wait,’ Ro protested again, trying to hold back this train of thought that was fast gathering momentum. ‘There’s no way I could afford to live there full-time. I have a mortgage back home.’
‘Couldn’t you rent it out?’ Bobbi asked simply.
Ro was quiet. She could – easily: people regularly posted notes through their letterbox asking whether she and Matt would ever lease.
She looked across at Hump. He was taking in her unruly neither-blonde-nor-brown curls and scruffy tomboy clothes . . . a socialite she wasn’t. In fact, she realized with a bit of a shock, she could have passed as his sister.
He smiled broadly. ‘It seems to me the only barrier to this working is whether Ro thinks she could put up with me all day long . . . I’m out there for the summer too.’
‘Well, of course I could,’ Ro said politely.
‘So then, we’re agreed?’ Bobbi said quickly.
Ro looked at Hump and Bobbi in panic. She hadn’t meant to imply she would, only that she theoretically could. This whole conversation was pie in the sky. She couldn’t just drop her life in London on a whim and hop over the Atlantic for the summer. That was madness. That was . . . That was exactly what Matt was doing.
‘I’m in!’
The words were as much a surprise to her as the vehemence in them.
‘Great!’ Hump said, punching the air. ‘Wait here. I’ll get us some beers and we can celebrate.’
‘And you can tell those guys out there that they’re frolicking in foam for no good reason,’ Bobbi added.
‘What? And break up a perfectly good party?’ Hump grinned. ‘I may not want those guys living in my house, but your assessment of me wasn’t entirely wide of the mark.’ He winked and disappeared down the hall.
Ro felt the butterflies take wing in her stomach. Oh God, what had she done? What had started as a desperate need to talk to someone, even to strangers, had become an agreement to live with them? A fizz of nerves surged up inside her as her mind began to process the news: she’d beaten off the sharp suits and champagne-bearing socialites to win a much-coveted summer share in the Hamptons! She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She wanted to tell Matt. She could already imagine his grin, the light in his eyes as he took in that she was doing this for him. She wouldn’t just wait; she’d be part of the adventure too. She’d be showing him that she was also capable of change, that she wasn’t stuck in a rut or old before her time. This was what he wanted her to do: live, explore, find adventure.
‘Well, I guess this means I’m going to get to try your famous jelly,’ Bobbi said.
Jelly? Ro realized she meant the marmalade and her fingers found the jar in her pocket. ‘I’ll bring a box over. I’m a regular Paddington Bear.’
‘A who?’
‘Oh.’ Ro pulled a face, embarrassed again. ‘He’s a character from my childhood. It’s an English thing – a bear who travels from deepest, darkest Peru and ends up at Paddington Station with a note round his neck saying, “Please look after this bear.”’
‘“Please look after this bear”?’ Bobbi shook her head apologetically. ‘We had Sesame Street.’
‘Well, Paddington loves marmalade too,’ Ro added lamely. ‘That’s why I . . .’ Her voice trailed away. Why was she talking about Paddington Bear at a party in a penthouse with a girl who looked like she sprinkled gold dust on her cornflakes?
They were quiet for a moment, the silence between them growing more awkward as they considered their new relationship: they’d gone from being strangers – hell, combatants – on the street to housemates in twenty minutes.
‘But the similarities end there, right?’ Bobbi asked. ‘With the bear, I mean. No . . . excess body hair issues I should know about? ’Cause if we’re sharing a bathroom . . .’
Ro laughed. ‘No, it’s all good,’ she grinned, as Hump burst back in, a beer bottle wedged between each finger.
But that wasn’t strictly true. There were distinct similarities between her and the famous bear – lots of them, in fact: she was on an adventure now too, relying on the kindness of strangers and with a jar of marmalade in her pocket. And if she had had a tag round her neck, it would have read almost identically: ‘Please look after this girl.’