The Englishwoman Trilogy: Box set of: Englishwoman in Paris, Englishwoman in Scotland, Englishwoman in Manhattan

by Jenny O'Brien

  She’d expected nothing from Matti and there was nothing.

  Pauline was confused, and well she might be but walking barefoot across the park to her apartment, she’d decided she wouldn’t tell her about his plans for the manor. Their relationship was too new and too fragile to take yet another knock and, if she ended up finding out about where the money had come from, there was a good chance she’d go all noble on her and refuse it. She wasn't going to lie. She wasn't going to deny she’d slept with him but Pauline didn’t need to know any more than the basic details.

  ‘But I thought you liked him?’ her face creased up with concern.

  ‘I did, I do like him, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to have a relationship with him,’ she added, managing a laugh as she pulled her into a hug. ‘Mum, don’t be so old fashioned. These days there’s sex and then there’s love, and Matti is very good in bed.’

  ‘But the way he looks at you. He’s mad about you.’

  ‘Well and why so surprised?’ she asked, leaning back slightly to look her in the eye. ‘I am after all amazingly beautiful as well as rich and titled…’ She paused briefly. ‘You never told him about the money? You know it means nothing to me.’

  ‘And it would mean nothing to him.’ she sighed, placing a brief kiss against her cheek with paper dry lips. ‘You really don’t know him very well if you think he’d be influenced by something like that.’

  Oh I know him a lot more than you think, Pauline.

  But her words remained silent. She needed Pauline on her side, especially now the door was being thumped by a heavy fist, a heavy Italian fist.

  Turning away, she picked up her bag and moved towards the bathroom using the one card bound to get her out of jail.

  ‘I’ll leave you to deal with him. I’m going to have a bath,’ she added, managing to squeeze a couple of tears out, her attention now on her trembling fingers. The tears were genuine enough as was the shivering, due to delayed shock in addition to soaking wet feet. If she didn’t warm up, the undercurrents of pain stretching taut under her skin would soon be unbearable.

  ‘Leave him to me, after all, your father and I are well versed in dealing with your leftovers,’ the barbed comment piercing her just where it was meant to; right in the centre of her heart. ‘Once he’s gone, I’ll bring you a warm drink.’

  Cara knew Pauline was disappointed in her. She could see it in the set of her shoulders and the way her lips pulled into the semblance of a thin smile. But better she thought her a tart than she ever found out the truth. The truth would hurt her a lot more than thinking she’d slipped back to her old ways of shagging anything that moved. Her other self, her old self, had confused sex with love, the one emotion she’d craved above all others. But now she knew love. Now she’d known love twice, she’d never confuse the two again.

  Chapter Twenty One

  ‘Daddy, I’m back.’

  Matti awoke with a start, his worst nightmare just realised. The one thing he’d always guarded against was about to happen as the sound of her feet tap tapped against the wooden floor towards his room and it was much too late to do anything about it. Sitting up, he twisted on his side dragging the sheet to hide…to hide nothing, his eyes widening at the sight of the empty white space beside him. Apart from the slight lingering trace of her scent and one solitary long, dark hair there was no trace of her.

  ‘Daddy, what you doing in bed at this time?’ She’d burst through the door just like she’d done every morning since she could walk even though he’d repeatedly reminded her to knock. One morning she’d see more than she bargained for but that never seemed to deter her.

  He watched her scan the room, a trace of a smile on his lips because, of course, she was a suspicious minx. The one thing she’d love to do was catch him in bed and, with a silent sigh of regret, she’d never realise just how near she’d come to fulfilling her dream. He’d lie through his teeth and then think about where and, more importantly, why she’d gone.

  ‘I’m an old man, very old and I think an afternoon nap will be something I’ll take in future,’ he said, stretching to his full length, his toes poked out the end of the sheet.

  ‘You’re not old, a little dilapidated around the edges but never old.’ She laughed. ‘I thought I’d find a woman in here.’ Her voice all wide eyed innocence. ‘I know you like Mrs Bachmeire. There’s no point in denying it.’

  ‘Ha, well you’d be wrong and I’m not admitting to or denying anything with that statement.’ He pulled his dressing gown from the bottom of the bed and started to slip his hands through the sleeves. ‘Go and make me a coffee, sweetie and then you can tell me all about your day with Stella.’

  ‘Okay, pops.’ She paused, one hand on the door handle as she pulled her other hand out from behind her back, revealing a pair of long purple boots with killer heels. ‘And you can tell me about your unusual taste in footwear, or about the woman who’s left them behind.’

  He climbed out of bed with a sigh, throwing on his recently discarded clothes before making his way barefoot into the kitchen. He’d deal with his daughter and then he’d deal with Cara.

  But how could he deal with someone who wasn't available? How could he deal with someone as effervescent as morning dew evaporating into the mist? Simply put, he couldn’t.

  He’d waited until Evelyn was settled in her room practicing her flute before sneaking out the front door, careful to ease the lock shut with a gentle click in a clear case of role reversal. He’d raced past the park to the other side of the square with hope in his heart. She must have expected Evelyn back and had made herself scarce. She was a darling for even thinking of protecting him and he loved her all the more for it. He’d make it up to her in any way she’d let him.

  But she hadn’t and she didn’t. She wouldn’t see him: the first blade. She wouldn’t speak to him; the second. And the final twist of the knife shredding his heart to pieces; she wouldn’t read any of his letters, returning them time after time stamped addressee unknown. If it wasn’t for Evelyn to ground him, he’d have gone stark raving crazy trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Something must have happened. He had no idea what. Pauline had no idea what. His life was a complete mess and now he was unemployed and homeless to boot. He didn’t mind the unemployed bit because he had been in the process of gathering all his papers together in preparation to resign but the homeless part was more difficult to bear. Leaving Gramercy, and in particular the park, was gut wrenching in the extreme.

  Murray wouldn’t see him or answer his calls either, something he wasn't particularly bothered about apart from the weeks’ notice to quit the apartment. The falling through of the boutique hotel complex had cost him hard as contracts and agreements had been forged, which would now have to be broken. Not his fault in the scheme of things but apparently he was to blame all the same.

  It was also his fault that the brownstone in the Bronx had burned down to a pile of unusable rubble shortly after the last of the tenants had quit. According to Murray the joint report from the NYPD and Fire Department citing the cause as faulty wiring was a cover up. The immediate follow-up inspections of all Prymentia Holdings tenancies a stitch up. There was no severance pay. There was a stark white envelope waiting on top of a plain cardboard box by reception and a request by the snooty security guard for his key card. Twelve months work for nothing, he wouldn’t even get a reference out of it.

  The interview with Evelyn’s headmistress was the final embarrassment, not least because he ran into the two hats at the door, their arms full of musical instruments. He wanted to forget the last year but he couldn’t with them gabbling on about the amazing time they’d had in London and ‘wasn’t it nice to see the weather warming up?’

  The one thing he wanted them to mention, they didn’t and he was blowed if he was going to ask. He didn’t ask the headmistress either. He was going to but one look at her starched white shirt, presumably chosen to match her starched white smile, and he lost his nerve completely. He was
also going to discuss his options for removing Evelyn from the college, because he didn’t have the money, but again he wimped out.

  Your daughter is so talented, amazingly so. The last year is vital. That’s when the talent scouts descend for all the senior performances. Pulling her out could very well ruin her life.

  Pulling her out would ruin him financially. Pulling her out would mean a student loan when he hadn’t been a student for more than ten years but he acquiesced all the same. Evelyn had made it easy by already sorting herself out with accommodation. Stella’s parents would be more than happy to have her board with them. It was so much easier with two teenagers than one. The extra money would be helpful as they too struggled with the college fees.

  And me, what about me? What am I going to do, he asked himself, sitting on the bench in Gramercy on that final morning? This was New York at its quietest with only the rustle of the wind through the virgin green leaves to keep him company. This was New York at its best where even the birds were still asleep, their heads tucked under their wings as they too awaited the fragile beauty of the coming morn. But there was no beauty for him. Beauty was dead. Hope was dead, and not just hope.

  At thirty-four, his life was over. He’d made a hash of his first marriage because, of course, there was always two to blame. He should have been around more and not trying to study for his bar exams with a new baby in the house. He should have bought her more shoes. Would she have stayed if he’d bought her those Michael Kors she’d wanted? Would he have wanted her to stay? Could they have been happy?

  He let the questions fall into the darkness, unanswered because why ask a question when you already knew the answer? He loved only her. He’d always love only her and she was gone, his eyes now drawn to the outline of her apartment just visible in the dim light. She’d left and left him behind without a word or a thought.

  He knew where she was, of course. Well, not exactly but, as near as damn it to within a 20 mile radius - the size of Martha’s Vineyard. But he’d only found out by accident.

  Pauline, unsure but eager to please Pauline, was still in touch, but via Facebook now that his work email had gone along with his work laptop. It was more by luck than anything. Something she’d mentioned that last meeting on the doorstep about keeping in touch with an old and wrinkled Silver Surfer. The final ignominy being having to ask Evelyn to give him lessons as he didn’t know one social media app from the other.

  It saddened him that her chatty emails had taken on an awkward note; long gone were the little snippets about the church bazaar and who wore the most ridiculous hat to Louise Leary’s daughter’s wedding. She talked about her house but only briefly. She was having central heating in and the inside redecorated, not to mention the barns converted for the animal sanctuary she’d always wanted to run. There were staff now. Not many but some woman a few times a week to help with the housework and a couple of horse-mad schoolgirls to help with the abandoned ponies she’d given homes to.

  Her writing was distant, cautious even, as if she now didn’t know quite what to think of him. She never talked about Cara except in passing and he wasn’t going to ask just as he wasn’t 100% sure that’s where she’d disappeared to. But with Facebook location services he didn’t have to. He tracked her progress week by week almost, following the invisible path like a snail leaving a trail. He had no idea where they were going or what they were up to. One week in New York. Two weeks in Boston and then Martha’s Vineyard, only a stone’s throw away from Cape Cod, where he was about to crawl back to with his tail between his legs and his hire van not even half full of all his belongings.

  Pauline was now back in England, or at least her phone was but there was no mention of Cara. It was as if she’d disappeared off the face of the earth but he suspected she was somewhere still on the island, he couldn’t be sure and, in truth, it didn’t matter. Even if he went on a rescue mission; a rescue mission to recapture his heart back into his chest, there was no guarantee he’d find her. There was no guarantee she’d be there. There were no guarantees…

  The days, like seconds, disappeared like the warped hands on a watch. Time reversed, he reversed. He stepped back into the shoes of his previous life with an ease he found difficult to bear. He found himself back where he’d been that last year before college, living with his parents in the same bedroom with the same posters on the walls. It was as if he’d never been a husband, or even a dad. It was as if he’d never met her. No, he’d never say that. He’d never think that. She’d taken a huge chunk of him with her, something he was finding difficult to deal with. She’d taken his heart but not only that, she’d taken his self-belief.

  Now he doubted everyone and everything. If Evelyn missed out on her Skype calls, he’d worry something had happened to her. If his dad asked him to do something even half out of the ordinary, he panicked. He was back in the same job, albeit now full-time instead of part-time, helping his father in his little law firm along Main Street where the largest case on the books was the dispute between Mr Chan and Mrs Kowoski about who’s responsibility it was to cut the party hedge separating their back yards.

  His dad was losing patience. It was his mother who knew. It was his mother who put on the white pinny, now faded to yellow, and led him by the hand into her domain – the large white, clad kitchen. Each evening after work, he’d sit on one of the pine stools he used to sit on as a child doing his homework and watch as she sifted flour before turning it into long spaghetti strands, or rolled it out into little ravioli parcels stuffed with fragrant sauces. She soon had him joining in, relearning all the skills he’d known as a child, and forgotten as fast food and quick cooking had taken over his life.

  And with each turn of the wooden spoon filling the kitchen with the smell of crushed garlic and tomatoes gently braising on the hob, he felt the tension leave him. He still loved her. He still missed her. He still missed them and the sense of what they could have had together but there was going to be a life after loving. A different kind of life to the one he’d planned, living the high life of a top New York lawyer but…

  With spoon paused inches from his lips for that illicit taste of basil infused tomato sauce, his mind stuttered to a halt and the spoon lowered back to the pan with a quiet plop. Had it been planned by him? Had it ever been his dream or had he been living up to his father’s, and then his ex-wife’s expectations? Wasn't this what life was all about; this standing in a well-worn kitchen with a well-worn woman by his side, her face wrinkled up with the map of spreading time stamped across her face?

  ‘Matisse, don’t let that stick to the pan, you know your father hates burnt tomato!’ He felt a soft pat on his back and then the roundness of his mother grab him around to waist in a brief hug before manually shoving him away to rescue the bubbling mass.

  Pan saved from the heat, he bent down and scooped her into a big hug, her feet dangling in the air.

  ‘Ma, would I ever leave your pasta sauce to burn? It would be more than my life’s worth,’ he added, lowering her to her feet and planting a kiss against her plump pink cheek.

  He watched the look of pleasure cross her face as she smoothed a hand over her hair, now grey where before it had been as black as the coals in the grate waiting to be lit. She was old now. When had she gotten so old, as he examined the new creases around her eyes and the sag of her jawline? When had she faded from black to grey and why hadn’t he noticed until just now?

  ‘Get away with you, Mitmat,’ calling him by the name only his parents ever called him. ‘Why don’t you join your father in the lounge for a glass of Sambuca? He’s got a little job for you tomorrow. How do you fancy a trip to Martha’s Vineyard?’

  The ferry docked in Oak Bluffs at ten o’clock where his hire car was ready and waiting. Almost close enough to touch, he’d never travelled across the thin stretch of water, although his eyes had always seemed drawn to the small island just visible on the horizon on a clear day. Even as a child, he’d wondered at the strange sounding island just
a hop, skip and a jump from the coastline of Cape Cod. He’d wondered who Martha was as a child. He’d wondered what she’d done to have a whole island named after her and then he’d wondered about the vineyard when everyone knew there were no grape vines in this part of the world. And then he’d grown up and forgotten, until just now. He’d forgotten about the magical mystery of the place so near and yet so far away for a little boy to travel. He’d forgotten he’d always promised himself a visit. He’d forgotten and now he remembered, his eyes taking in the picturesque beauty of the white clapboard houses with their dark, shingle roofs and matching picket fences.

  Letter tucked away in his briefcase, he tapped in Edgartown on the GPS and drove past the famous, brightly coloured gable-fronted cottages with their ornate curlicues and scrolled balconies reminiscent of the gingerbread houses he’d used to ice with his grandmother at Christmas. Another time he’d bring his camera and snap away at the whimsical structures but not now. Now he had a job to do and not a very pleasant one at that. He’d let himself look around after the letter had been delivered and only then. He squashed down any further thought just as he pushed any ideas of finding her into that dark corner of his mind as he tried to remember what it had felt like to be served divorce papers by a stranger.

  It still hurt, even after all these years. It still hurt even though she’d walked out on him and straight into another relationship. It still hurt even though he knew it shouldn’t.