August has just slipped into September and the airport is heaving with people travelling here, there and everywhere. It has been a long time since the writer has been anywhere so busy, but Emily soon finds someone to help and a wheelchair.
‘We’ll soon have you safely in the first-class lounge, ma’am,’ the man with the wheelchair says in that patronising way she finds that so many young people speak to her these days. She may be old and useless but money still speaks in New York City – the same as it ever did – and the man is right: they are soon in the first-class lounge.
‘I feel about a hundred years old in this contraption,’ she complains, and Emily raises an eyebrow. She isn’t that far off her century after all. She wonders, not for the first time, if she will live to be a hundred and how many friends she will outlive if she does. She has so few friends now; she sees so few people. This is the first time she’s been further than the park in years. She knows this will probably be her last trip anywhere, and she remembers the feeling she had as she left that she may never see it again. Things are coming full circle, she thinks. It’s about time.
‘Let’s have a drink of something,’ she says to Emily to stop these maudlin thoughts.
‘Sure, what would you like. Coffee? Iced tea?’
‘Let’s push the boat out.’ She smiles. ‘Let’s have a glass of champagne.’
When Emily returns to the table with the drinks she asks the question that the writer had been expecting her to ask days ago.
‘So, this trip to England. Why after all this time?’
‘I wanted to go home, that’s all.’
Emily looks sceptical. ‘Really? But you never talk about England; in fact I’m not even sure I knew you were English until you told me the other day.’ She pauses, chewing her lip. ‘We’ve worked together a long time now,’ she says eventually. ‘Why don’t you tell me the truth?’
The writer takes a large drink of her champagne and returns the glass half full to the table. She watches the bubbles float to the surface of the liquid for a moment before opening her handbag and taking out a copy of The New York Times. It is already open at the correct page and she places the newspaper on the table between them, smoothing out the pages. She has smoothed the pages of this article so many times over the last two weeks that she is surprised she hasn’t worn them away.
‘I know I promised you some time in London,’ the writer says, ‘and I’m not going back on that promise. But after London we are going here.’
She watches Emily begin to read the article.
‘Haverford House,’ she says as she reads. She pronounces it with the emphasis on the last syllable, as so many Americans do. The writer does not correct her.
‘I used to live there,’ the writer says. ‘A very long time ago.’