She plants herself on the love seat in the reception area and picks up a magazine that’s lying amidst brochures advertising the various Heart to Heart offerings.
“It will give me a chance to catch up on the celebrity gossip I’ve missed. But wait, Hannah—is there a brochure for the tour you give?”
I’m touched that she’s interested. I walk over to the rack next to the reception desk and select the pamphlet showcasing the various Jane Austen packages. It’s in between brochures for the Shakespeare and Cotswolds tours.
“So, the people who take your tour don’t meet you here? I’m trying to visualize you at work.”
She closes her eyes.
“Nope. Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m rarely in the office. I’m mostly out in the field. It depends on which tour I’m conducting, but most of the time I meet my charges at Kensington Palace Gardens and we head out of town from there. Sometimes I’m on the road for the better part of a week.”
“No wonder you don’t have a man.” Marla laughs and shakes her head in the direction of Violet, who is doing her best to look neutral. “How can she expect to meet anyone if she’s always away?”
“She’s one of our best guides,” Violet says.
I want to hug her. But Marla is right. It is hard to maintain a relationship when I’m on the road more than I’m at home. I think of Aiden and wonder if I should take him up on the meal he offered now that I’m back.
I brush aside the flashback to the last man who wanted to cook for me—Gabriel. At least I know with near certainty that Aiden isn’t married. But since I’m gone so much for work and I’ll be spending a lot of my free time in Paris, should I even bother to call him?
It feels complicated.
“Em’s off the phone,” says Violet. “You can go in now.”
“Marla, I shouldn’t be too long. Are you going to be all right out here?”
“Of course. I’ll just sit here and read.” She waves the Jane Austen brochure. “Now, go on. Off with you.”
She’s not a toddler who needs constant supervision. Even though sometimes it feels that way. But Violet is on a call and Marla is sitting there with one leg tucked underneath her, reading the pamphlet like it’s a best-seller.
I knock lightly on Emma’s door to announce myself before pushing it open and stepping inside.
“Hannah, I’m so glad you’re back.” Emma stands and gives me a hug. “How was your vacation?”
“Different from what I’d planned.” I tell her about Marla’s surprise visit.
Emma’s mouth forms a perfect O.
“Was this a good surprise, then?”
“Let’s say it was unexpected. We ended up going to Paris.”
“How lovely.”
“And bizarre,” I add.
I tell Emma about the turn of events with the apartment and about Granny Ivy’s secret life. When I stop for a breath, Emma’s jaw is hanging open.
“Hannah, that is fantastic. It’s like a movie plot.”
“I found a series of my great-grandmother’s diaries in the apartment.” I fish around in my bag and pull out the one I’ve been reading. “Take a look at this.”
I thumb to the part where Ivy and her roommate, Helen, go to Dingo Bar on their first morning in Paris, and hand it to Emma.
“Read this and tell me what you think.”
She reads silently, her eyes growing wider with each line.
“Pablo? Hem? Pauline Pfeiffer? You must be kidding.”
Naturally, one of the big reasons Emma and I get on so well is our mutual love of literature. That’s why she started her tour company, whose tagline is “Why just read a book when you can live it?” Of course, it has expanded to include nonliterary tours, but the heart and soul of Heart to Heart remains the tours that feature books and authors.
“No big deal—you inherited an apartment in Paris, and your great-grandmother used to hang out with the expats.” She laughs as if she can hardly believe it. I understand her reaction. I still haven’t fully wrapped my mind around it.
“I don’t have definitive proof, but she says so in these diaries. And it’s not like she’s saying, ‘Oooh, look at me with Ernest Hemingway. I’m so cool.’ She writes about them as if she’s just met them and doesn’t realize who she’s with. Of course, at that time, she wouldn’t have understood because they weren’t legends yet.”
“What year is this?” Emma lowers her head and looks at the page for a clue.
“Look at the outside of the diary. It says 1927.”
She flips the cover over, runs her finger across the embossed numbers.
“So, by 1927, Hemingway would have already published The Sun Also Rises. He was pretty well-known in his circle but was still trying to make a name for himself as a writer.”
“That was around the time that he was divorcing Hadley and marrying Pauline.”
“Hannah, this is crazy,” Emma says as she continues to scan the diary’s pages.
“That’s not the half of it.” I tell her about the clipping of Andres Armand and the manuscript we discovered. “I have no idea if it’s the real deal, but the law firm that’s assisting us with the legalities of inheriting the apartment helped us locate a scholar who is looking over the manuscript to see if he can authenticate it.”
Emma continues to read for a moment. Then she looks up at me. “Please tell me you’re not intending to leave and move to Paris permanently.”
I shrug. “Honestly, Emma, I have no idea what I’m doing next. My mother wants to stay in the apartment. She doesn’t have a history of being the most practical person in the world. I don’t know what she’ll face when it comes to obtaining visas—and we have the small matter of inheritance tax to contend with—but one of the first things that she and I have agreed on in a long time is that we can’t let go of this apartment. I mean, she wanted to hang on to it from the start, but I’m realizing how important it is to keep it in the family.”
Of course, I haven’t admitted this to Marla yet because I’m trying to manage both of our expectations.
“I don’t blame you,” Emma says. “I would feel the same way if I were in your position.”
All of a sudden, I’m gripped by a crazy idea. Before I can even think it through, I hear myself saying, “I’m not sure if this would work out or if it’s even something you’d be interested in, but what if we expanded Heart to Heart into the Paris market? What if we offered an interwar, expat tour? You know, Hemingway, Zelda and Scott, the whole Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach shebang?”
Emma squints at me for a moment. I can see the wheels turning in her mind. “What exactly are you thinking?”
“I’m sort of flying by the seat of my pants here,” I say. “But think about it. Paris in the twenties and thirties was a crazy time. It was such a rich period of literary history. I think the Parisian expat circle would make for a great tour.”
Emma pauses for a moment and then nods. “Hannah, you did a stellar job developing the Jane Austen tour division of Heart to Heart. If anyone can lead the charge into Paris, it’s you.” She waves her hand as if to give me the green light. “We need to figure out the basics and get permits and such, but Hannah, this is bloody brilliant. We’ll need to bring someone on to take over your Austen tours, but besides that, I need to know that you’re ready to relocate to Paris.”
“I am.”
I am?
“I guess I need to put together a game plan,” I say.
My head is spinning.
Twenty minutes and lots of logistics later, Emma walks out with me to meet Marla, who has abandoned the Austen excursion brochure for one that features a tour of celebrity homes in the Greater London area. I’m not surprised.
“That one seems right up your alley,” I say after I introduce her to Emma.
“Yeah, it looks fun,” she says, sounding a little preoccupied. I’m glad because it means she’s not peppering Emma with questions and embarrassing stories. “This tour wasn’t running toda
y,” Marla says. “Otherwise, I would’ve taken up Violet on her offer.”
“It’s a good one,” Emma says. “Come back any time and we’ll get you on it. On the house. Lovely to meet you, Marla, but I must run and make some phone calls.”
Em’s excited smile tells me the calls will be all about the Paris project.
“May I keep this?” Marla calls to Violet, who is on a phone call, and holds up the brochure.
Violet nods and gives her a thumbs-up as we head out the door.
“It looks like you and Violet became fast friends,” I say.
“We did. She’s nice. She turned me on to this tour after she saw me reading Hello! and the Daily Mail. Emma seems nice, too.”
When we’re in the elevator and on the way down, Marla opens the brochure and points to something. “Look at this.”
I lean in and see she’s pointing to stop number five on the tour, the home of British musician Martin Gaynor. I have no idea why I’m supposed to care.
“I can get you on that tour tomorrow if you’d like to go.”
“Nah.” Marla laughs and then sighs as she looks at the brochure. “You don’t have any idea who he is, do you, Hannah?”
“Martin Gaynor? Sure I do. He’s an old British punk rocker.”
“I guess you could call him that.” She’s smiling like she has a secret she wants me to beg her to share.
“Okay, I’ll bite. Was Martin Gaynor one of the guys you followed on tour?”
“One of them,” Marla says. “Back in the day, he was the lead singer of The Squelching Wellies. I’ve been inside that house.” She taps the paper with a chipped red nail. “Well, once, anyway.”
“Maybe you should look up your old friend and say hello.”
I wasn’t being serious, but instantly I regret putting the idea out there. Since she’s been doing so well, I’m not sure it would be a good idea for her to go for a ride down groupie lane.
Would seeing Martin Gaynor, middle-aged bad-boy punk rocker, throw her off the straight-and-narrow path of rehabilitation?
“No, I don’t think so. He wouldn’t remember me. Back in those days, there were a lot of women.”
It’s not just the familiar words, a take on what she used to say to me when I’d ask about my father—There were a lot of men, Hannah—but also the wistful way she says them that makes me wonder.
“Is Martin Gaynor my father?” I ask as we step out of the building into the chilly afternoon.
“What?” Marla snaps. “No, Hannah. Don’t be ridiculous.”
She followed The Squelching Wellies for a summer and came home pregnant with me, and she admitted to having been inside the front man’s house. It’s as logical an assumption as one plus one equals two. But I’m not going to fight with her.
“You know what would be fun?” she asks.
I’m almost afraid to ask, but I do. “What would be fun?”
“Let’s go by his house.”
“Are you serious?”
She nods.
“Are you going to knock on the door and reintroduce yourself?”
“Of course not, smarty-pants. The last time I was there—well, the only time—it had more security than the White House. I want to go by and see it.”
“So, let me make sure I’m understanding this right. With all his money, Martin Gaynor still lives in the same house that he lived in when you two were teenagers?”
“It wasn’t that long ago, Hannah, and he’s a little bit older than I am. But even if he wasn’t, why would it be so odd for him to still live in the same home?”
“Because people who stay in the same houses—even if they’re magnificent mansions—are more the type to settle down than I imagine a young punk rocker who has suddenly come into a lot of money would be.”
“Obviously you haven’t seen the house, have you?”
“No, I haven’t. Someone else handles the celebrity home tours. I’ve never been on that one.”
Marla’s eyes sparkle. “It’s a great place. Maybe it’s time you got out of your comfort zone and tried something different. Let’s go by the house so you can see it.”
“Only if you’ll knock on the door.”
She purses her lips and tilts her head to the side. “Maybe I will. If we can figure out a way to sneak past the gates.”
As we take a cab to the Richmond Hill home in southwest London, I ask Marla what became of The Squelching Wellies.
She looks confused. “What do you mean?”
Help me out, Marla. I’m trying to make conversation.
“I mean, are they still a band? Do they still tour or release music or did they break up? I’ve heard of them in passing, but since punk rock was never really my scene, I don’t know much about them.”
Once she starts talking, she tells me more than I really wanted to know. Essentially the Wellies, who were originally from Wellington, were part of the early 1990s British music scene, and at the height of their popularity, they were on par with The Smiths.
“They were part of this new resurgence of punk music and it resonated with me and what I was going through at the time,” Marla says. “You know, it spoke to me. I wanted to rebel and basically their music became the soundtrack of my life. And then I got pregnant with you and things changed. The band broke up at some point, but that was after I stopped keeping track.” She shrugs and turns her head to stare out the window. In profile, she looks so wistful it makes me miss the glory days for her.
“Really?” I ask. “Even after following them around Europe, you just quit them? You didn’t even listen to their music?”
She turns back to me. “I had a kid. It wasn’t exactly lullaby music.”
I don’t challenge her on that—even though I’d bet she never played me any lullabies—and we ride in silence the rest of the way.
The house is as magnificent as Marla described, set closer to the main road than I expected and surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence. Really, all you had to do was shimmy up the iron posts, avoid impaling yourself on the pointed finials, and drop down into the world of Martin Gaynor, punk rock sex god.
“You’ve really been inside this house?” I ask as we stand on the sidewalk peering through the bars of the gate at the yellow-stone, Italianate mansion. Its deep-set front door is flanked by twin white-trimmed bay windows that rise all the way to the second floor. To our backs is the summit of Richmond Hill. Between the summit and the house is a narrow one-way road, bordered by the sidewalk on which we’re standing.
From the front, the house doesn’t look very large, but I suspect what it lacks in width it makes up for in depth.
“It looks smaller than I remember.” There’s a dreamy quality to Marla’s words, as if she’s here in body, but her mind is somewhere in the past.
“What’s it like?”
She gives me a one-shoulder shrug. “It’s a big, fancy house. Probably exactly what you’re imagining.”
“I’m not really imagining anything. That’s why I’m asking you for details.”
“I’m sure it’s been remodeled after all this time.”
The air is damp. The soundtrack to the gray afternoon is the occasional honking car and snippets of conversation from passersby who seem unaware of or unaffected by the fact that they’re in the vicinity of punk rock royalty.
“Were you in love with him?” I ask.
“Martin?” Marla blinks incredulously. “No, Hannah. No way.”
I hold up my hands. “Well, you did follow him around Europe for a summer. Just saying.”
“Everyone wanted Martin. He was…”
She smiles and shakes her head and steps away from the gate. “I’m ready to leave when you are.”
“Wait, no. We came all the way out here. You have to at least ring the bell.”
She gives me major side-eye, then walks back to the gatepost and presses the button on the intercom. As she does, the gate begins to open.
Marla jumps back and curses under her breath. She star
ts power walking away from the house and I follow her. Once we’re a few yards down the sidewalk, we both break into a fit of giggles, holding on to each other as we try to catch our breath.
“Oh my God, did that button open the gate?” I ask. “If so, why would he bother with the fence?”
Marla sighs. “He’s been out of the limelight for a while now. Maybe he doesn’t need security like he used to.”
Or maybe he does. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the nose of a dark Bugatti emerging from Martin Gaynor’s driveway. It stops before turning onto the street in the opposite direction of where we’re standing.
The car window slides down to reveal a middle-aged man with a long, thin pale face, spiky black hair, and Wayfarer sunglasses peering out at us. He pulls his glasses down on his nose and stares for a moment.
I grab Marla’s arm and nod in the direction of the car. She turns around and freezes in her tracks.
“That’s him,” she whispers.
He rolls up the window, and we watch him drive away.
* * *
“MARTIN GAYNOR IS SEXY as fuck,” says Cressida. “How can you say he’s not, Tallulah?”
I fear she and Tallu will come to blows as we sit around the kitchen island sipping tea and debating the hotness of Martin Gaynor.
T wrinkles her nose. “He’s so tall and gaunt. He looks like a walking skeleton.” She shudders. “To each her own, I guess.”
“Marla’s opinion is the only one that matters here,” Cressida says. “Was he good in bed?”
“I didn’t sleep with him,” Marla insists.
“Oh, come on,” says Cressida. “How could you not? I would’ve. In a heartbeat.”
“Of course you would,” says Tallulah.
“At least she owns it,” I say.
Tallulah smiles and shakes her head. “I would love to stay and continue this important debate, but unfortunately I have other things to do. I’ll see you tonight. Let’s all go out.”
We toss out some ideas.
Tallulah glances at the time on her phone. “I really need to run. Text me the plan.”
The moment T leaves the room Cressida is back to Martin Gaynor. “Do you think he recognized you? I mean, you said he stopped and stared.”
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