Still Me

‘And you talk a lot of old bobbins.’

He grinned and turned back to me. ‘So what are you wearing, shortcake?’

I looked down. ‘Uh, this?’

A short silence.

‘Those … pantyhose?’

I glanced at my legs. ‘Oh, those. I’ve had a bit of a day. They’re my feel-better tights, my equivalent of a fresh suit from the dry-cleaner’s.’ I smiled ruefully. ‘If it helps, I only wear them on the most special occasions.’

He stared at my legs a moment longer, then dragged a hand slowly over his mouth. ‘Sorry, Louisa, but they’re not really appropriate for this evening. My boss and his wife are pretty conservative. And it’s a really upscale restaurant. Like, Michelin-starred.’

‘This dress is Chanel. Mrs De Witt lent it to me.’

‘Sure, but the whole effect is just a little bit …’ he pulled a face ‘… Crazytown?’

When I didn’t move he reached out his hands and took hold of my upper arms. ‘Sweetheart, I know you love dressing up, but could we keep it a little straighter just for my boss? This evening is really important for me.’

I looked down at his hands and flushed. I felt suddenly ridiculous. Of course my bumblebee tights were wrong for dinner with a financial CEO. What had I been thinking? ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and change.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Of course not.’

He almost deflated with relief. ‘Great. Can you make it super quick? I really don’t want to be late and the traffic is backed up all the way down Seventh. Margot, would it be all right if I used your bathroom?’

She nodded wordlessly.

I ran into my bedroom and started hauling my way through my belongings. What did one wear to a posh dinner with finance people? ‘Help me, Margot,’ I said, hearing her behind me. ‘Do I just change the tights? What should I wear?’

‘Exactly what you have on,’ she said.

I turned to her. ‘But he said it’s not suitable.’

‘For who? Is there a uniform? Why aren’t you allowed to be yourself?’

‘I –’

‘Are these people such fools that they can’t cope with someone who doesn’t dress exactly like them? Why do you have to pretend to be someone you’re so clearly not? Do you want to be one of “those” women?’

I dropped the hanger I was holding. ‘I – I don’t know.’

Margot lifted a hand to her newly set hair. She gave me what my mother would have called an old-fashioned look. ‘Any man lucky enough to be your date shouldn’t give a fig if you come out in a trash bag and galoshes.’

‘But he –’

Margot sighed, and pressed her fingers to her mouth, like people do when they have a lot more they’d like to say but won’t. A moment passed before she spoke again. ‘I think at some point, dear, you’re going to have to work out who Louisa Clark really is.’ She patted my arm. And with that she walked out of the bedroom.

I stood, staring at the space where she had been. I looked down at my stripy legs and back up at the clothes on my rail. I thought of Will, and the day he had given the tights to me.

A moment later Josh appeared in the doorway, straightening his tie. You’re not him, I thought suddenly. In fact you’re really nothing like him at all.

‘So?’ he said, smiling. Then his face fell. ‘Uh, I thought you were going to be ready?’

I stared at my feet. ‘Actually …’ I said.

29

Margot told me I should go away for a few days to clear my head. When I said I wouldn’t, she asked me why ever not and added that I plainly hadn’t been thinking straight for a while: I needed to sort myself out. When I admitted that I didn’t want to leave her by herself, she told me I was a ridiculous girl and that I didn’t know what was good for me. She watched me from the corner of her eye for a while, her bony old hand tapping irritably on the arm of her chair, then raised herself heavily and disappeared, returning minutes later with a Sidecar so strong that the first sip made my eyes burn. Then she told me to sit my backside down, that my sniffling was getting irritating and I should watch Wheel of Fortune with her. I did as I was told and tried not to hear Josh’s voice, outraged and uncomprehending, echoing in my head.

You’re dumping me over a pair of pantyhose?

When the programme had finished, she looked at me, tutted loudly, told me this really wouldn’t do, and that we would go away together instead.

‘But you haven’t got any money.’

‘Goodness, Louisa. It’s immensely vulgar to discuss financial matters,’ she scolded. ‘I’m shocked by the way you young women are brought up to talk about these things.’ She told me the name of the hotel on Long Island that she wanted me to call, instructed me to tell them specifically that I was calling on behalf of Margot De Witt in order to get the preferential ‘family’ rate. She added that she had been thinking about it, and if it really upset me so much, I could pay for both of us. And there, didn’t I feel better now?

Which was how I ended up paying for me, Margot and Dean Martin to go on a trip to Montauk.

We caught a train out of New York to a small shingle-clad hotel on the shore that Margot had travelled to every summer for decades until frailty – or finance – had stopped her. As I stood, they welcomed her on the doorstep as if she was, indeed, long-lost family. We picked at a lunch of griddled prawns and salad and I left her talking to the couple who ran the place while I walked down the path to the wide, windswept beach, breathed the ozone-infused air and watched Dean Martin skittering happily around in the sand dunes. There, I started to feel, under the giant sky, for the first time in months, as if my thoughts were not infinitely cluttered by everyone else’s needs and expectations.

Margot, exhausted by the train journey, spent much of the rest of the next two days in the little drawing room, watching the sea or chatting with the elderly patriarch of the hotel, a weather-beaten Easter Island statue of a man called Charlie, who nodded along to her uninterrupted flow of conversation, and shook his head and said that, no, things weren’t what they were, or, yes, things sure were changing fast around there, and the two of them would exhaust this topic over small cups of coffee, then sit, satisfied by how awful everything had become and to have this view confirmed by each other. I realized very quickly that my role had simply been to get her here. She barely seemed to need me at all, except to help with fiddly items of clothing and to walk the dog. She smiled more than I had seen her smile for the entire time I’d known her, which was a useful distraction in itself.

So, for the next four days I had breakfast in my room, read the books in the little hotel bookshelf, gave in to the slower rhythms of Long Island life and did as instructed. I walked and walked until I had an appetite again and could quell the thoughts in my head with the roar of the waves and the sound of the gulls in the endless leaden sky and the yapping of a small, overexcited dog who couldn’t quite believe his luck.

On the third afternoon I sat on my hotel bed, called my mother and told her the truth about my last few months. For once she didn’t talk but listened, and at the end of it, she said she thought I had been very wise and very brave, and those two affirmations made me cry a little. She put Dad on and he told me he’d like to kick the arses of those ruddy Gopniks, I wasn’t to talk to strangers and to let them know as soon as Margot and I were back in Manhattan. He added that he was proud of me. ‘Your life – it’s never quiet, is it, love?’ he said. And I agreed that, no, it was not, and I thought back two years to my life before Will, when the most exciting thing that happened to me was someone demanding a refund at the Buttered Bun and realized I quite liked it this way, despite everything.