They were pulling away from me now and there was nothing I could do. What kind of park had hills in it? Mr Gopnik would be furious with me for not sticking with his wife. Agnes would realize I was a silly, dumpy Englishwoman, rather than an ally. They would hire someone slim and gorgeous with better running clothes.
It was at this point that the old man jogged past me. He turned his head to glance at me, then consulted his fitness tracker and kept going, nimble on his toes, his headphones plugged into his ears. He must have been seventy-five years old.
‘Oh, come on.’ I watched him speed away from me. And then I caught sight of the horse and carriage. I pushed forward until I was level with the driver. ‘Hey! Hey! Any chance you could just trot up to where those people are running?’
‘What people?’
I pointed to the tiny figures now in the far distance. He peered towards them, then shrugged. I climbed up on the carriage and ducked down behind him while he urged his horse forward with a light slap of the reins. Yet another New York experience that wasn’t quite as planned, I thought, as I crouched behind him. We drew closer, and I tapped him to let me out. It could only have been about five hundred yards but at least it had got me closer to them. I made to jump down.
‘Forty bucks,’ said the driver.
‘What?’
‘Forty bucks.’
‘We only went five hundred yards!’
‘That’s what it costs, lady.’
They were still deep in conversation. I pulled two twenty-dollar notes from my back pocket and hurled them at him, then ducked behind the carriage and started to jog, just in time for George to turn around and spot me. I gave him another cheery thumbs-up as if I’d been there all along.
George finally took pity on me. He spotted me limping and jogged back while Agnes did stretches, her long legs extending like some double-jointed flamingo. ‘Miss Louisa! You okay there?’
At least, I thought it was him. I could no longer see because of the sweat leaking into my eyes. I stopped, my hands resting on my knees, my chest heaving
‘You got a problem? You’re looking a little flushed.’
‘Bit … rusty,’ I gasped. ‘Hip … problem.’
‘You got an injury? You should have said!’
‘Didn’t want to … miss any of it!’ I said, wiping my eyes with my hands. It just made them sting more.
‘Where is it?’
‘Left hip. Fracture. Eight months ago.’
He put his hands on my hip, then moved my left leg backwards and forwards so that he could feel it rotating. I tried not to wince.
‘You know, I don’t think you should do any more today.’
‘But I –’
‘No, you head on back, Miss Louisa.’
‘Oh, if you insist. How disappointing.’
‘We’ll meet you at the apartment.’ He clapped me on the back so vigorously that I nearly fell onto my face. And then, with a cheery wave, they were gone.
‘You have fun, Miss Louisa?’ said Ashok, as I hobbled in forty-five minutes later. Turned out you could get lost in Central Park after all.
I paused to pull my sweat-soaked T-shirt away from my back. ‘Marvellous. Loving it.’
When I got into the apartment I discovered that George and Agnes had returned home a full twenty minutes before me.
Mr Gopnik had told me that Agnes’s schedule was busy. Given his wife didn’t have a job, or any offspring, she was in fact the busiest person I had ever met. We had a half-hour for breakfast after George left (there was a table laid for Agnes with an egg-white omelette, some berries and a silver pot of coffee; I bolted down a muffin that Nathan had left for me in the staff kitchen), then we had half an hour in Mr Gopnik’s study with Mr Gopnik’s assistant, Michael, pencilling in the events Agnes would be attending that week.
Mr Gopnik’s office was an exercise in studied masculinity: all dark panelled wood and loaded bookshelves. We sat in heavily upholstered chairs around a coffee table. Behind us, Mr Gopnik’s oversized desk held a series of phones and bound notepads and periodically Michael begged Ilaria for more of her delicious coffee and she complied, saving her smiles for him alone.
We went over the likely contents of a meeting about the Gopniks’ philanthropic foundation, a charity dinner on Wednesday, a memorial lunch and a cocktail reception on Thursday, an art exhibition and concert at the Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Center on Friday. ‘A quiet week, then,’ said Michael, peering at his iPad.
Today Agnes’s diary showed she had a hair appointment at ten (these occurred three times a week), a dental appointment (routine cleaning) and an appointment with an interior decorator. She had a piano lesson at four (these took place twice a week), a spin class at five thirty, and then she would be out to dinner alone with Mr Gopnik at a restaurant in Midtown. I would finish at six thirty p.m.
The prospect of the day seemed to satisfy Agnes. Or perhaps it was the run. She had changed into indigo jeans and a white shirt, the collar of which revealed a large diamond pendant, and moved in a discreet cloud of perfume. ‘All looks fine,’ she said. ‘Right. I have to make some calls.’ She seemed to expect that I would know where to find her afterwards.
‘If in doubt, wait in the hall,’ whispered Michael, as she left. He smiled, the professional veneer briefly gone. ‘When I started I never knew where to find them. Our job is to pop up when they think they need us. But not, you know, to stalk them all the way to the bathroom.’
He was probably not much older than I was, but he looked like one of those people who came out of the womb handsome, colour-coordinated and with perfectly polished shoes. I wondered if everyone in New York but me was like this. ‘How long have you worked here?’
‘Just over a year. They had to let go their old social secretary because …’ He paused, seeming briefly uncomfortable. ‘Well, fresh start and all that. And then after a while they decided it didn’t work having one assistant for two of them. That’s where you come in. So hello!’ He held out his hand.
I shook it. ‘You like it here?’
‘I love it. I never know who I’m more in love with, him or her.’ He grinned. ‘He’s just the smartest. And so handsome. And she’s a doll.’
‘Do you run with them?’
‘Run? Are you kidding me?’ He shuddered. ‘I don’t do sweating. Apart from with Nathan. Oh, my. I would sweat with him. Isn’t he gorgeous? He offered to do my shoulder and I fell instantly in love. How on earth have you managed to work with him this long without jumping those delicious Antipodean bones?’
‘I –’
‘Don’t tell me. If you’ve been there I don’t want to know. We have to stay friends. Right. I need to get down to Wall Street.’
He gave me a credit card (‘For emergencies – she forgets hers all the time. All statements go straight to him’) and an electronic tablet, then showed me how to set up the pin code. ‘All the contact numbers you need are here. And everything to do with the calendar is on here,’ he said, scrolling down the screen with a forefinger. ‘Each person is colour-coded – you’ll see Mr Gopnik is blue, Mrs Gopnik is red, and Tabitha is yellow. We don’t run her diary any more as she lives away from home but it’s useful to know when she’s likely to be here, and whether there are joint family commitments, like meetings of the trusts or the foundation. I’ve set you up a private email, and if there are changes you and I will communicate them with each other to back up any changes made on the screen. You have to double-check everything. Schedule clashes are the only thing guaranteed to make him mad.’
‘Okay.’
‘So you’ll go through her post every morning, work out what she wants to attend. I’ll cross-check with you, as sometimes there are things she says no to and he overrides her. So don’t throw anything away. Just keep two piles.’
‘How many invites are there?’
‘Oh, you have no idea. The Gopniks are basically top tier. That means they get invited to everything and go to almost none of it. Second tier, you wish you were invited to half and go to everything you’re invited to.’
‘Third tier?’
‘Crashers. Would go to the opening of a burrito truck. You get them even at society events.’ He sighed. ‘So embarrassing.’