Still Me

‘I wish you were here,’ I said, before I could stop myself.

‘Me too. But you’re on day one of your adventure and it’s going to be great. And in a year you will be sitting here –’

‘Not there,’ I interrupted. ‘In your finished house.’

‘In my finished house,’ he said. ‘And we’ll be looking at your pictures on your phone and I’ll be secretly thinking, Oh, God, there she goes, whanging on about her time in New York again.’

‘So will you write to me? A letter full of love and longing, sprayed with lonely tears?’

‘Ah, Lou. You know I’m not really a writer. But I’ll call. And I’ll be there with you in just four weeks.’

‘Right,’ I said, as my throat constricted. ‘Okay. I’d better grab a nap.’

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of you.’

‘In a disgusting porny way? Or in a romantic Nora Ephron-y kind of way?’

‘Which of those is not going to get me into trouble?’ He smiled. ‘You look good, Lou,’ he said, after a minute. ‘You look … giddy.’

‘I feel giddy. I feel like a really, really tired person who also slightly wants to explode. It’s a little confusing.’ I put my hand on the screen, and after a second he put his up to meet it. I could imagine it on my skin.

‘Love you.’ I still felt a little self-conscious saying it.

‘You too. I’d kiss the screen but I suspect you’d only get a view of my nasal hair.’

I shut my computer, smiling, and within seconds I was asleep.

Somebody was shrieking in the corridor. I woke groggily, sweatily, half suspecting I was in a dream, and pushed myself upright. There really was a woman screaming on the other side of my door. A thousand thoughts sped through my addled brain, headlines about murders, New York and how to report a crime. What was the number you were meant to call? Not 999 like England. I racked my brain and came up with nothing.

‘Why should I? Why should I sit there and smile when those witches are insulting me? You don’t even hear half of what they say! You are a man! It is like you wear blinkers on your ears!’

‘Darling, please calm down. Please. This is not the time or the place.’

‘There is never a time or place! Because there is always someone here! I have to buy my own apartment just so I have somewhere to argue with you!’

‘I don’t understand why you have to get so upset about it all. You have to give it –’

‘No!’

Something smashed on the hardwood floor. I was fully awake now, my heart racing.

There was a weighty silence.

‘Now you’re going to tell me this was a family heirloom.’

A pause.

‘Well, yes, yes, it was.’

A muffled sob. ‘I don’t care! I don’t care! I’m choking in your family history! You hear me? Choking!’

‘Agnes, darling. Not in the corridor. Come on. We can discuss this later.’

I sat very still on the edge of my bed.

There was more muffled sobbing, then silence. I waited, then stood and tiptoed to the door, pressing my ear against it. Nothing. I looked at the clock – four forty-six p.m.

I washed my face and changed briskly into my uniform. I brushed my hair, then let myself quietly out of my bedroom and walked around the corner of the corridor.

And I stopped.

Further up the corridor beside the kitchen, a young woman was curled into a foetal ball. An older man had his arms wrapped around her, his back pressed against the wood panelling. He was almost seated, one knee up and one extended, as if he had caught her and been brought down by the weight. I couldn’t see her face, but a long, slim leg stuck out inelegantly from a navy dress and a sheet of blonde hair obscured her face. Her knuckles were white from where she was holding on to him.

I stared and gulped, and he looked up and saw me. I recognized Mr Gopnik.

‘Not now. Thank you,’ he said, softly.

My voice sticking in my throat, I backed swiftly into my room and closed the door, my heart thumping in my ears so loudly that I was sure they must be able to hear it.

I stared, unseeing, at the television for the next hour, an image of those entwined people burned onto the inside of my head. I thought about texting Nathan but I wasn’t sure what I would say. Instead, at five fifty-five, I walked out, tentatively making my way towards the main apartment through the connecting door. I passed a vast empty dining room, what looked like a guest bedroom and two closed doors, following the distant murmur of conversation, my feet soft on the parquet floor. Finally I reached the drawing room and stopped just outside the open doorway.

Mr Gopnik was in a window seat, on the telephone, the sleeves of his pale blue shirt rolled up and one hand resting behind his head. He motioned me in, still talking on the phone. To my left a blonde woman – Mrs Gopnik? – sat on a rose-coloured antique sofa tapping restlessly on an iPhone. She appeared to have changed her clothes and I was momentarily confused. I waited awkwardly until he ended his call and stood, I noticed, with a little wince of effort. I took another step towards him, to save him coming further, and shook his hand. It was warm, his grip soft and strong. The young woman continued to tap at her phone.

‘Louisa. Glad you got here okay. I trust you have everything you need.’

He said it in the way people do when they don’t expect you to ask for anything.

‘It’s all lovely. Thank you.’

‘This is my daughter, Tabitha. Tab?’

The girl raised a hand, offering the hint of a smile, before turning back to her phone.

‘Please excuse Agnes not being here to meet you. She’s gone to bed for an hour. Splitting headache. It’s been a long weekend.’

A vague weariness shadowed his face, but it was gone within a moment. Nothing in his manner betrayed what I had seen less than two hours previously.

He smiled. ‘So … tonight you’re free to do as you please, and from tomorrow morning you will accompany Agnes wherever she wants to go. Your official title is “assistant”, and you’ll be there to support her in whatever she needs to do in the day. She has a busy schedule – I’ve asked my assistant to loop you in on the family calendar and you’ll get emailed with any updates. Best to check at around ten p.m. – that’s when we tend to make late changes. You’ll meet the rest of the team tomorrow.’

‘Great. Thank you.’ I noted the word ‘team’ and had a brief vision of footballers trekking through the apartment.

‘What’s for dinner, Dad?’ Tabitha spoke as if I wasn’t there.

‘I don’t know, darling. I thought you said you were going out.’

‘I’m not sure I can face going back across town tonight. I might just stay.’

‘Whatever you want. Just make sure Ilaria knows. Louisa, do you have any questions?’

I tried to think of something useful to say.

‘Oh, and Mom told me to ask you if you’d found that little drawing. The Miró.’

‘Sweetheart, I’m not going over that again. The drawing belongs here.’

‘But Mom said she chose it. She misses it. You never even liked it.’

‘That’s not the point.’

I shifted my weight between my feet, not sure if I had been dismissed.

‘But it is the point, Dad. Mom misses something terribly and you don’t even care for it.’