Then she told herself to stop being ridiculous; to buck up. They would fix it tonight. Definitely. Wouldn’t they?
She looked around the sitting room, which Joel had left incredibly tidy, as was his wont. Then she opened the cupboard, where his row of suits was hanging. She found a jumper, the only thing there not freshly dry-cleaned, that still smelled of him, and buried her face in it, trying not to cry.
Suddenly the phone rang in the suite. Flora blinked. It must be Joel! Maybe he’d be free to meet her for lunch! Maybe he’d got to the office and changed his mind, realised he should take a day off to spend with her! Realised he loved her even if she was a … well, a sloppy drunk with a loud mouth, she reflected, with another stab of agony. Oh God.
Tentatively she picked it up. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello? Joel?’ It was a woman’s voice. Flora bit back her inevitable disappointment and tried to ignore her growing fear.
‘Um, hi, no,’ said Flora stiffly. ‘This is Flora. Can I take a message?’
There was a pause. Flora’s heart was beating painfully quickly.
‘Sorry, who is this?’ she said. She couldn’t stop thinking of that blonde girl in the bathroom, or even those girls in the bar last night, what she remembered of it, the ones Joel had thought were cookie cutter, but she had thought were beautiful.
‘Oh my, sorry … Are you Scottish?’ The voice seemed older now to Flora, who was wrong-footed. ‘Mark!’ The voice on the other end was talking to someone else now. ‘Mark! It’s the Scottish girl!’
‘Excuse me?’ said Flora again.
‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ said the woman’s voice. She sounded nice: mumsy and friendly. ‘We had … we had absolutely no idea you were in New York.’
‘He never tells us anything!’ came a voice from a distance behind her.
‘I thought we’d just leave a message! Well, my dear. It is so nice to speak to you.’
Flora blinked. If she hadn’t known … or thought she knew … she’d have thought these were his parents.
She suddenly felt how little she really knew about this man and it chilled her.
Chapter Twenty-one
‘Sorry,’ said Flora. ‘Sorry if this is rude, but … who are you? Can I take a message?’
‘Of course … I’m Marsha Philippoussis and … Has he really never mentioned us?’
‘No,’ said Flora, more and more worried.
‘Well, Mark – that’s my husband – he … he used to be Joel’s … Well, I’m not sure if I can say. We’re friends.’
‘Friends.’
It wasn’t that Joel didn’t have friends, Flora knew. He had squash buddies and lawyer buddies in most cities in the world and everyone was always pleased to see him. But he didn’t have best friends, or intimate friends as far as she could tell. He didn’t have a friend like she had in Lorna. But then, maybe most men were like that.
‘You can tell her,’ shouted the voice.
‘Oh, okay. Well, dear. Mark was Joel’s psychiatrist. When he was younger. But now we’re … friends.’
‘Friends who never call each other when they’re in the city!’
Clearly Marsha and Mark were quite the double act.
‘Well … yes. We were hoping, since he’s in the city, we might have dinner … Would you like to come, dear? Tonight?’
‘Um, I don’t know what he’s got planned.’
Marsha laughed. She remembered what Joel’s plans used to be – head for the nearest bar; pick up the most beautiful girl in the room; walk out with her. So she was very keen to meet the girl who had finally – at last – apparently tamed the odd, serious, driven boy she’d known since he was a child. She was hard to imagine; in Marsha’s head she looked like a will-o’-the-wisp: a strange, exotic, bewitching creature.
‘I’ll call his cell,’ said Marsha. ‘It’ll be turned off, but usually if you call four or five times he’ll pick up eventually.’
Flora wondered how relaxed she would have to be with Joel to call him four or five times in a row. She didn’t know many people who’d dare.
She left the hotel tentatively, relaxing instantly in the warm spring sunshine. Oh, it was glorious after the long dark months on Mure. She checked she had enough sunscreen in her handbag (island skin and hot sunshine did not normally work together too well), then, despite everything, she felt herself unfurl luxuriously as she moved between the long shadows on the busy pavement, getting in people’s way but not even caring. The first hit of sun after a long winter made, she decided, everything about a long winter totally worth it. She breathed in the hot scent of New York pavements – hot dogs, pretzels, fuel, perfume, bodegas – and loved it. She let the sun tickle the backs of her arms; felt it soak through her dress and warm her back. She wanted to lift up her hands and twirl in it, to take a bath in sunshine.
It was hard to feel so down. Okay, last night had been …
It had been awful, she couldn’t deny it. Absolutely the opposite of everything she’d hoped it would be. There had been no delighted sweeping her up in his arms. There had been no impressed head-shaking at her amazing appearance. No happy astonishment and brutal kisses in the shadows of the world’s greatest buildings, him showing her round the sights, taking some time off for the weekend so they could behave like …
She was honest with herself. Like a proper boyfriend and girlfriend. Not what she sometimes felt they were: shipwrecked sailors thrown together on a desert island, clinging together for sanity and safety amid the wreckage of their own hearts.
That was not what they were, she vowed. They could do better.
She quenched her hangover with an enormous freshly squeezed juice in a huge cup and a pepperoni pretzel – which was utterly delicious, larger than her head and couldn’t possibly be good for her, although she did consider appropriating the recipe – then set off to walk to the Empire State Building even though she realised quite early on that walking the huge blocks of the city took rather longer than she’d expected, and that there was rather more of Broadway than any street she’d ever been on before.
It didn’t matter though. She was so entranced by looking at everything: the people; the shop windows; the little apartments perched in the sky; the business of everything. Maybe, she thought, she even fitted in. Well, at least until she got to the Empire State Building and had to join the enormous line of other tourists just like everybody else, but even so. She looked thoughtfully at her phone. What if he didn’t call her? What if she’d come all this way not to see him? She tried to think of a way to spin this to Lorna, who’d sent her several envious texts already, telling her it was hosing it down and asking for pictures. There wasn’t one. She glanced at Fintan’s Instagram – yes, Fintan had an Insta now for when he and Colton were flying about places having an amazingly romantic time. She tried her best not to be jealous of her brother’s relationship but there seemed to be absolutely no doubt who was having all the fun now, even if he had done nothing but sit in a barn by himself making cheese in the freezing cold for three years after their mother had died.
She sent Joel a message:
Sorry about last night – not used to NYC drinks!!!
She had added too many exclamation marks, then she reckoned they looked a bit desperate and took them away, then decided the message looked too downbeat so she added one and then one more and decided that a) this was definitely it and b) she was going crazy. Then she sent it and held her breath and tried not to check her phone every ten seconds while the queue inched forwards.
‘Joel! You didn’t tell us you’d brought someone to New York!’
Marsha just launched into the conversation; she didn’t give him a chance to say anything or tell her he was too busy or use any of his usual deflection techniques. She just bulldozered over him. Normally Joel would freeze up or become rude when faced with someone behaving like this. But he didn’t mind Marsha doing it. Quite liked it even. It showed how well she knew him, deep down.