I checked my inbox all week, but there was nothing, other than an email from Lily asking if I knew the best place to get an underage tattoo, a friendly hello from someone who was supposedly at school with me but whom I didn’t remember at all, and one from my mother sending me a GIF of an overweight cat apparently talking to a two-year-old and a link to a game called Farm Fun Fandango.
‘Are you sure you’ll be okay by yourself, Margot?’ I said, as I gathered my keys and purse into my handbag. I was wearing a white jumpsuit with gold lamé epaulettes and trim that she’d given me from her early eighties period and she clasped her hands together. ‘Oh, that looks magnificent on you. You must have almost exactly the measurements that I had at the same age. I used to have a bust, you know! Terribly unfashionable in the sixties and seventies but there you go.’
I didn’t like to tell her that it was taking everything I had not to burst the seams but she was right – I had lost a few pounds since I’d moved in with her, mostly because of my efforts to cook her things that were nutritionally useful. I felt lovely in the jumpsuit and gave her a twirl. ‘Have you taken your pills?’
‘Of course I have. Don’t fuss, dear. Does that mean you won’t be back later?’
‘I’m not sure. I’ll take Dean Martin for a quick walk before I go, though. Just in case.’ I paused, as I reached for the dog’s lead. ‘Margot? Why did you call him Dean Martin? I never asked.’
The tone of her response told me it was an idiotic question. ‘Because Dean Martin was the most terrifically handsome man, and he’s the most terrifically handsome dog, of course.’
The little dog sat obediently, his bulging, mismatched eyes rolling above his flapping tongue.
‘Silly of me to ask,’ I said, and let myself out of the front door.
‘Well, look at you!’ Ashok whistled as Dean Martin and I ran down the last flight of stairs to the ground floor. ‘Disco diva!’
‘You like it?’ I said, throwing a shape in front of him. ‘It was Margot’s.’
‘Seriously? That woman is full of surprises.’
‘Watch out for her, will you? She’s pretty wobbly today.’
‘Kept back a piece of mail just so I have an excuse to knock on her door at six o’clock.’
‘You’re a star.’
We jogged outside to the park and Dean Martin did what dogs do and I did what you do with a little bag and a certain amount of shuddering and various passers-by stared in the way you do if you see a girl in a lamé-trimmed jumpsuit running around with an excitable dog and a small bag of poo. It was as we sprinted back in, Dean Martin yapping delightedly at my heels, that we bumped into Josh in the lobby. ‘Oh, hey!’ I said, kissing him. ‘I’ll be two minutes, okay? Just have to wash my hands and grab my handbag.’
‘Grab your handbag?’
‘Yes!’ I gazed at him. ‘Oh. Purse. You call it a purse.’
‘I just meant – you’re not getting changed?’
I looked down at my jumpsuit. ‘I am changed.’
‘Sweetheart, if you wear that to our office day out they’re going to wonder if you’re the entertainment.’
It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t joking. ‘You don’t like it?’
‘Oh. No. You look great. It’s just it’s kind of a bit … drag queeny? We’re an office full of suits. Like, the other wives and girlfriends will be in shift dresses or white pants. It’s just … smart casual?’
‘Oh.’ I tried not to feel disappointed. ‘Sorry. I don’t really get US dress codes. Okay. Okay. Wait there. I’ll be right back.’
I took the stairs two at a time and burst into Margot’s apartment, throwing Dean Martin’s lead towards Margot, who had got up out of her chair for something and now followed me down the hallway, one thin arm braced against the wall.
‘Why are you in such a tearing hurry? You sound like a herd of elephants charging around the apartment.’
‘I have to change.’
‘Change? Why?’
‘I’m not suitable, apparently.’ I rattled my way through my wardrobe. Shift dresses? The only clean shift dress I had was the psychedelic one Sam had given me and it felt somehow disloyal to wear that.
‘I thought you looked very nice,’ said Margot, pointedly.
Josh appeared at the open front door, having made his way up behind me. ‘Oh, she does. She looks great. I just – I just want her to be talked about for the right reasons.’ He laughed. Margot didn’t laugh back.
I rifled through my wardrobe, throwing things onto my bed, until I found my navy Gucci-style blazer and a striped silk shirt dress. I threw that over my head and slid my feet into my green Mary Janes.
‘How’s that?’ I said, as I ran into the hallway, trying to straighten my hair.
‘Great!’ he said, unable to hide his relief. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’
‘I’ll leave the door unlocked, dear,’ I heard Margot mutter, as I ran after Josh, who was headed out. ‘Just in case you want to come back.’
The Loeb Boathouse was a beautiful venue, sheltered by its position from the noise and chaos outside Central Park, its vast windows offering a panoramic view of the lake glinting in the afternoon sun. It was packed with smartly dressed men in identikit chinos, women with professionally blow-dried hair and was, as Josh had predicted, a sea of pastels and white trousers.
I took a glass of champagne from a tray being proffered by a waiter and watched quietly while Josh worked the room, glad-handing various men, who all seemed to look the same, with their short neat haircuts and square jaws with even white teeth. I had a brief memory of events I had been to with Agnes: I had fallen into my other New York world again, a world away from the vintage clothes stores and mothballed jumpers and cheap coffee I had been immersed in more recently. I took a long sip of my champagne, deciding to embrace it.
Josh appeared beside me. ‘Quite something, isn’t it?’
‘It’s very beautiful.’
‘Better than sitting in some old woman’s apartment all afternoon, huh?’
‘Well, I don’t think I –’
‘My boss is coming. Okay. I’m going to introduce you. Stay with me. Mitchell!’
Josh lifted an arm and the older man walked over slowly, a statuesque brunette woman at his side, her smile oddly blank. Perhaps if you had to be nice to everyone all the time that was what eventually happened to your face.
‘Are you enjoying the afternoon?’
‘Very much so, sir,’ Josh said. ‘What a truly beautiful setting. May I introduce my girlfriend? This is Louisa Clark, from England. Louisa, this is Mitchell Dumont. He’s head of Mergers and Acquisitions.’
‘English, eh?’ I felt the man’s huge hand close over mine and shake it emphatically.
‘Yes. I –’
‘Good. Good.’ He turned back to Josh. ‘So, young man, I hear you’re making quite a splash in your department.’
Josh couldn’t hide his delight. His smile spread across his face. His eyes flickered to me and then to the woman beside me, and I realized he was expecting me to make conversation with her. Nobody had bothered to introduce us. Mitchell Dumont put a paternal arm around Josh’s shoulders and walked him a few feet away.
‘So …’ I said. I raised my eyebrows and lowered them again.
She smiled blankly at me.
‘I love your dress,’ I said, the universal smoother for two women who have absolutely nothing to say to each other.
‘Thank you. Cute shoes,’ she said. But she said it in the way that meant they weren’t cute at all. She glanced over, plainly wondering if she could find someone else to talk to. She had taken one look at my outfit and deemed herself way beyond my pay grade.
There was nobody else nearby, so I tried again. ‘So do you come here a lot? To the Loeb Boathouse, I mean?’
‘It’s Lobe,’ she said.
‘Lobe?’
‘You pronounced it Lerb. It’s Loeb.’
Looking at her perfectly made-up, suspiciously plump lips repeatedly saying the word made me want to giggle. I took a swig of my champagne to disguise it. ‘So do you cerm to the Lerb Berthouse often?’ I said, unable to help myself.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Although one of my friends got married here last year. That was such a beautiful wedding.’
‘I’ll bet. And what do you do?’
‘I’m a homemaker.’