The rest of the week was, as Michael would say, interesting. Tabitha’s apartment in SoHo was being redecorated and our apartment, for a week or so, became the battle ground for a series of turf wars apparently invisible to the male gaze, but only too obvious to Agnes, whom I could hear hissing at Mr Gopnik when she thought Tabitha was out of range.
Ilaria relished her role as foot-soldier. She made a point of serving Tab’s favourite dishes – spicy curries and red meat – none of which Agnes would eat, and professed herself ignorant of that when Agnes complained. She made sure Tab’s laundry was done first, and left folded neatly on her bed, while Agnes raced through the apartment in a towelling robe trying to work out what had happened to the blouse she had planned to wear that day.
In the evenings Tab would plant herself in the sitting room while Agnes was on the phone to her mother in Poland. She would hum noisily, scrolling through her iPad, until Agnes, silently enraged, would get up and decamp to her dressing room. Occasionally Tab invited girlfriends to the apartment and they took over the kitchen or the television room, a gaggle of noisy voices, gossiping, giggling, a ring of blonde heads that fell silent if Agnes happened to walk past.
‘It’s her house too, my darling,’ Mr Gopnik would say mildly, when Agnes protested. ‘She did grow up here.’
‘She treats me like I am temporary fixture.’
‘She’ll get used to you in time. She’s still a child in many ways.’
‘She’s twenty-four.’ Agnes would make a low growling noise, a sound I was quite sure no Englishwomen had ever mastered (I did try a few times) and throw up her hands in exasperation. Michael would walk past me, his face frozen, his eyes sliding towards mine in mute solidarity.
Agnes asked me to send a parcel to Poland via FedEx. She wanted me to pay cash, and keep hold of the receipt. The box was large, square and not particularly heavy, and we had the conversation in her study, which she had taken to locking, to Ilaria’s disgust.
‘What is it?’
‘Just present for my mother.’ She waved a hand. ‘But Leonard thinks I spend too much on my family so I don’t want him to know everything that I send.’
I humped it down to the FedEx office at West 57th Street and waited in line. When I filled out the form with the assistant, he asked: ‘What are the contents? For Customs purposes?’ and I realized I didn’t know. I texted Agnes and she responded swiftly: Just say is gifts for family.
‘But what kind of gifts, ma’am?’ said the man, wearily.
I texted again. There was an audible sigh from someone in the queue behind me.
Tchotchkes.
I stared at the message. Then I held out my phone. ‘Sorry. I can’t pronounce that.’
He peered at it. ‘Yeah, lady. That’s not really helping me.’
I texted Agnes.
Tell him mind his own business! What business of him what I want to send my mother!
I shoved my phone into my pocket. ‘She says it’s cosmetics, a jumper and a couple of DVDs.’
‘Value?’
‘A hundred and eighty-five dollars and fifty-two cents.’
‘Finally,’ muttered the FedEx employee. And I handed over the money and hoped nobody could see the crossed fingers on my other hand.
On Friday afternoon, when Agnes began her piano lesson, I retreated to my room and called England. As I dialled Sam’s number, I felt the familiar flutter of excitement just at the prospect of hearing his voice. Some days I missed him so much I carried it round like an ache. I sat and waited as it rang.
And a woman answered.
‘Hello?’ she said. She was well-spoken, her voice slightly raspy at the edges, as if she had smoked too many cigarettes.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I must have dialled the wrong number.’ I briefly pulled the phone from my ear and stared at the screen.
‘Who are you after?’
‘Sam? Sam Fielding?’
‘He’s in the shower. Hold on, I’ll get him.’ Her hand went over the receiver and she yelled his name, her voice briefly muffled. I went very still. There were no young women in Sam’s family. ‘He’s just coming,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Who shall I say is calling?’
‘Louisa.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
Long-distance phone calls make you oddly attuned to slight variations in tone and emphasis and there was something in that ‘Oh’ that made me uneasy. I was about to ask whom I was talking to when Sam picked up.
‘Hey!’
‘Hey!’ It came out strangely broken, as my mouth had dried unexpectedly. and I had to say it twice.
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing! I mean nothing urgent. I – I just, you know, wanted to hear your voice.’
‘Hold on. I’ll close this door.’ I could picture him in the little railway carriage, pulling the bedroom door to. When he came back on he sounded cheery, quite unlike the last time we had spoken. ‘So what’s going on? Everything okay with you? What’s the time there?’
‘Just after two. Um, who was that?’
‘Oh. That’s Katie.’
‘Katie.’
‘Katie Ingram. My new partner?’
‘Katie! Okay! So … uh … what’s she doing in your house?’
‘Oh, she’s just giving me a lift to Donna’s leaving do. Bike’s gone into the garage. Problem with the exhaust.’
‘She really is looking after you, then!’ I wondered, absently, if he was wearing a towel.
‘Yeah. She only lives down the road so it made sense.’ He said it with the casual neutrality of someone aware he was being listened to by two women.
‘So where are you all off to?’
‘That tapas place in Hackney? The one that used to be a church? I’m not sure we ever went there.’
‘A church! Ha-ha-ha! So you’ll all have to be on your best behaviour!’ I laughed, too loudly.
‘Bunch of paramedics on a night out? I doubt it.’
There was a short silence. I tried to ignore the knot in my stomach. Sam’s voice softened. ‘You sure you’re okay? You sound a little –’
‘I’m fine! Totally! Like I said. I just wanted to hear your voice.’
‘Sweetheart, it’s great to speak to you but I have to go. Katie did me a big favour giving me a lift and we’re late already.’
‘Okay! Well, have a lovely evening! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!’ I was talking in exclamation marks. ‘And give Donna my best!’
‘Will do. We’ll speak soon.’
‘Love you.’ It sounded more plaintive than I’d intended. ‘Write to me!’
‘Ah, Lou …’ he said.
And then he was gone. And I was left staring at my phone in a too-silent room.
I organized a private view of a new film at a small screening room for the wives of Mr Gopnik’s business associates, and the hors d’oeuvres that would go with it. I disputed a bill for flowers that had not been received and then I ran down to Sephora and picked up two bottles of nail varnish that Agnes had seen in Vogue and wanted to take with her to the country.
And two minutes after my shift finished and the Gopniks departed for their weekend retreat, I said no thank you to Ilaria’s offer of leftover meatballs and ran back to my room.
Reader, I did the stupid thing. I looked her up on Facebook.
It didn’t take more than forty minutes to filter this Katie Ingram from the other hundred or so. Her profile was unlocked, and contained the logo for the NHS. Her job description said: ‘Paramedic: Love My Job!!!’ She had hair that could have been red or strawberry blonde, it was hard to tell from the photographs, and she was possibly in her late twenties, pretty with a snub nose. In the first thirty photographs she had posted she was laughing with friends, frozen in the middle of Good Times. She looked annoyingly good in a bikini (Skiathos 2014!! What a laugh!!!!), she had a small hairy dog, a penchant for vertiginously high heels and a best friend with long dark hair who was fond of kissing her cheek in pictures (I briefly entertained the hope that she was gay but she belonged to a Facebook group called: Hands up if you’re secretly delighted that Brad Pitt is single again!!).