A Gift to Remember

by Melissa Hill

  ‘Would it be possible to arrange a personal dedication from the author, please?’ asked a young woman with an officious-sounding voice, frosted blonde hair and an entitled air. ‘It’s a Christmas gift.’

  Darcy had to look twice at the book the girl was buying, trying to determine if she was actually serious. ‘From the author of this book?’

  ‘Of course,’ she replied curtly, through obviously Botoxed lips, as if she didn’t appreciate being questioned.

  ‘I’m afraid not, ma’am,’ Darcy said, smiling patiently. Several other customers had since appeared in line behind the woman and were waiting with arms full to get to the cash register. Darcy had to marvel at the way this always seemed to happen when she was about to have a tricky customer experience. The girl turned, ostentatious gold jewellery clattering on the counter as she complained loudly, ‘Why not? I was told this place was the best independent bookstore in town.’

  The other customers standing in line looked on with interest.

  Darcy tried her best to keep her voice down as she replied pleasantly, ‘Yes, and while we always try our utmost to assist our customers, I’m afraid that’s just not possible in this case. You see, Mr Lewis died in 1963.’

  ‘Not good enough,’ the woman huffed, walking away and leaving the seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia box set edition behind on the counter. Darcy sighed. Looked like it was going to be another long day.

  Later, during her coffee break in the café upstairs, over a gingerbread and cinnamon latte, Darcy took out the piece of paper upon which she had transcribed the missed call number to Aidan’s house.

  Until she was able to sort him out with his own phone, she’d promised that she would do what she could to find out who might have been trying to get in touch with him. Thinking about it more, she guessed that it must have been the person he’d been on his way to meet. What she couldn’t be sure about was whether or not this woman knew about the package – although Darcy did recall how she’d mentioned something about Aidan letting her down ‘today of all days’. Could she have been referring to a specific day, maybe a special anniversary or birthday or something?

  Based on what she’d already learned about him, she knew she could create 1,001 ideas about Aidan Harris and his life – with her imagination this wouldn’t be hard. Was he a hot-shot stockbroker with a love of art and a string of beautiful girlfriends, or a dedicated family man who’d inherited all his good fortune from Irish emigrants done good? But she wondered if his real life story wasn’t the most interesting of all?

  Darcy knew she wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it until she found out more, and as she dialled the number and waited for a reply, she started to wonder again what the beautiful package might contain.

  Seconds later, a female voice answered the phone.

  ‘Buenos dias, Kensington Residence, how may I help you?’ said a woman with a highly accented voice.

  Darcy sat up. Kensington Residence.

  ‘Hello, yes. I am hoping you can help me. I am . . . I’m Darcy Archer,’ she scrambled her thoughts frantically. What was she to Aidan? An acquaintance, a Good Samaritan? ‘A . . . friend of Aidan Harris’s.’

  ‘Yes?’ the woman on the other line said, somewhat impatiently, and Darcy could tell right away that the name meant nothing to her. ‘What can I help you with?’

  Trying to overcome her nervousness, Darcy went on, ‘Like I said, I’m a friend of Aidan Harris’s. Unfortunately he was hurt yesterday morning, in an accident – nothing terribly serious – and I was at his house and I saw this number come up on his caller ID. So I’m not sure if you know him, or whether perhaps somebody else in the . . . er . . . Residence might. Certainly someone from this number called Mr Harris yesterday, and I am really just looking for a little help and thought that maybe you might be able to assist me.’

  Suddenly, the woman interrupted. ‘Mr and Mrs Kensington are not available at the moment.’

  ‘Oh.’ Darcy was somewhat taken aback by the woman’s curt tone. Then again, she supposed she was babbling. But she wondered now who Mr and Mrs Kensington might be. Not Aidan’s parents, given the surname, but might they be his girlfriend’s parents? Perhaps wondering why he’d let their daughter down? Then, conscious that her imagination was running away with her, she forced herself back to the conversation.

  ‘Well, perhaps I could leave an urgent message for Mr and Mrs Kensington?’ she asked. ‘It’s just they may have called my friend yesterday, but like I said, he’s in the hospital right now, and I really need to get in touch with somebody who knows him.’

  ‘Didn’t you just say you were his friend?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘I am very busy right now,’ the woman said sharply, clearly bored by Darcy’s sob story. Yet again she was taken aback by the woman’s bluntness.

  ‘I guess you might say I’m a “new friend”,’ she told her. ‘Really, I am just trying to help.’

  The woman gave a weary sigh. ‘Fine, fine, give me your name and number. Miller is in Europe but I will pass it on to Mrs Kensington. She is at her spa day today so she may not call you back right away.’

  OK, so it must have been the wife who had called the house then, Darcy deduced quickly, seeing as the husband was away at the moment. Feeling a tiny amount of sunshine break through the fog that was thus far Aidan’s story, she rattled off her contact information, hoping against hope that this Mrs Kensington, whoever she was, would call her back quickly.

  ‘OK,’ said the woman. ‘I will give her your information and she will call you if she wants to.’

  Darcy harrumphed at the pompous tone. Why did some people feel that social niceties, like simply returning a call, were beyond them? And why on earth would someone as pleasant as Aidan be associated with someone so rude? No, that wasn’t fair, she was stereotyping right now, and it wasn’t Aidan’s acquaintance she was speaking to. Mrs Kensington could be a perfectly nice person, and the dragon on the line right now – be it her personal assistant or housekeeper or whatever – was just doing her job.

  ‘I certainly appreciate that, Ms . . . um, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’

  ‘Maria,’ replied the woman grudgingly.

  ‘Maria, I really do appreciate your help. Aidan is pretty disorientated right now and if Mrs Kensington is a friend of his too, then I’m pretty sure she will want to help him.’

  Maria clearly had had enough of this conversation. ‘Yes, OK, fine,’ she said exasperatedly. ‘I already said I’d pass your message along. She will be at Elizabeth Arden for the rest of the day though, just so you know.’

  At this Darcy’s ears perked up and she recalled what Maria had said earlier about a spa day. She was at Elizabeth Arden today? But she stayed quiet and simply bade Maria goodbye. She didn’t want to let the woman know that she had inadvertently given out very helpful information indeed.

  Darcy was familiar with the Elizabeth Arden salon down on Fifth Avenue; Katherine was a regular although Darcy herself had never been inside its hallowed walls.

  If the Kensington woman was spending the day at the salon, then maybe Darcy should call down there after work and . . .

  And what? She could hardly just saunter in and ask for a chat. The receptionists at these places were like guard dogs, and while Maria might have been indiscreet, there was no way they would be so flippant. Not to mention that Darcy didn’t even know Mrs Kensington’s first name.

  But for the rest of the afternoon, she just couldn’t get Aidan’s plight out of her head, and knew that waiting around for the woman to return her call would simply drive her crazy.

  The mysterious Mrs Kensington was potentially someone who ran in Aidan’s social circle, since spending the day at Elizabeth Arden wasn’t cheap – far from it. Darcy had read some of the eye-watering prices from a brochure Katherine had left lying around and the cost of a simple facial would almost keep Darcy in groceries for a month.

  Almost.

  But seeing as there was a Mr
Kensington, the woman certainly couldn’t be Aidan’s girlfriend or someone he lived with. Then Darcy shook her head, annoyed with herself for being so naïve. Married people had affairs all the time, didn’t they? Still, she was having a hard time reconciling the Aidan she’d met as someone who would be involved with another man’s wife. Or cheating on someone he was in a relationship with, she thought, recalling the women in the photographs.

  Then again – how much did she really know about him? Yes, he seemed like a nice guy and had been lovely about the fact that she had almost killed him the other morning, but oftentimes the most disarming men turned out to be the real lady-killers. Hadn’t Darcy come across that in real life and indeed fiction, all the time?

  And thinking about it, wasn’t there a very real chance that the woman who had called Aidan sounding so frantic about him being a no-show somewhere yesterday (and who for good reason couldn’t reach him on his cell phone) had tried calling the house again later from home?

  Which meant that at the moment, this woman was Darcy’s best option in finding out who Aidan was, and reuniting him not only with his memory, but his loved ones.

  She wondered then if this Mrs Kensington was the blonde woman in the photograph by Aidan’s bedside. If so, and she happened to be married it explained why the picture had been hidden away like that. Aidan was no doubt trying to keep their relationship secret. Darcy was dying to know. Lovers or not, this Mrs Kensington clearly had some connection to Aidan. She just needed to find out what it was. But how could she realistically turn up at the spa and ask to speak to the woman when she didn’t even know her first name? Darcy once again cursed her lack of technological savvy.

  Finishing her coffee, she went back downstairs and using the work computer, summoned up Google, typing in the name ‘Kensington’ and adding ‘Manhattan’ for good measure.

  Scores of references to city residents evidently sharing the same name came up.

  Damn . . . how to narrow it down? Darcy thought about what she knew or what she was assuming about Mrs Kensington – the housekeeper, pricy salon, possible society friend of Aidan’s? Amending the search terms to ‘Kensington, New York society’ and pressing enter, she took a deep breath while Google quickly considered her query then spat out a response.

  Darcy smiled – she had guessed right. Aidan’s Mrs Kensington was a society swan. Though to suggest that this particular Mrs Kensington (first name Tabitha) was simply a member of New York society was the understatement of the century. The woman was of a breed that clearly ran the island of Manhattan.

  Her name was listed on countless charity events, and like Aidan, she clearly had money to burn. Bloggers and columnists alike heralded her impeccable taste and sense of style.

  Lists of donations, with figures that literally made Darcy’s head spin, cluttered the screen. The woman’s patronage of everything from the Chanel flagship store on Fifth Avenue, to auctions at Christie’s, to her chairwomanship of various causes at the New York Public Library, were all highlighted. Truly, Tabitha Kensington was, as Katherine might say, a big deal.

  Darcy clicked on a link to the New York Post’s Page Six section, and was met with a picture of a stunningly beautiful blonde. Bingo.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t recall from memory if Tabitha Kensington was the same blonde in the picture that she had found by Aidan’s bedside, but she too was model gorgeous. Looking not a day over thirty, the woman was either very young or very well-preserved. Darcy pondered this for a moment, thinking that it could well be a combination of the two, and then automatically wondered how old Mr Kensington was.

  The inevitable gold-digger moniker quickly popped into her brain, but then she just as quickly pushed the notion away when on another website, she came across a picture of the couple together. Miller Kensington looked to be older than his wife by about six or seven years. Tabitha, it was revealed, was no slouch. She had graduated from Columbia with a degree in History and a Master’s from Harvard in Historical Preservation, had served as an assistant curator at the National Archives and taken time to oversee some preservation work at the National Gallery in London, before coming back to the US to serve as the lead curator at the Met. Which is where she met her husband, whom she’d married only five years ago. Tabitha certainly didn’t need Miller’s money – Darcy learned that she was wealthy in her own right as the only child of multi-millionaires Stanley and Martina Washbourne, who owned a series of five-star European hotels. To say the least, Tabitha Kensington was certified blue blood.

  Whether or not she was currently having an affair with Aidan Harris had yet to be determined. Darcy hoped in her heart of hearts that Aidan wasn’t that kind of guy.

  Chapter 14

  My only conclusion as to why I’m putting myself through something like this is that I really must be a glutton for punishment.

  God knows I can be an eejit sometimes.

  And I’ll be an even bigger one if I go and mess this up.

  My newly organised iPhone buzzed and whatever Jenna had done to it that time at the store, now it automatically told me just what was happening at that particular moment. In this case, Siri’s cool voice announced, ‘An incoming text, from Mel.’

  The robotic voice nevertheless warmed my heart.

  Accessing the message, I read the words and smiled. Hi, I miss you. Are you coming over later?

  I typed a quick response and said that I would be there as soon as I could, but that I had to finish up some errands first – hopefully make some progress on one big errand – and then I would swing by and pick her up.

  This earned me a smiley face along with an xoxo. My heart swelled. Even though I had been with her less than forty-eight hours before, my arms still ached to hold her. I thought of everything that had happened over the past few years and acknowledged that I would do anything for her, anything to make her happy.

  At that second, I was broken from my reverie as Bailey tugged on his leash and put on the brakes. I almost tripped over my feet as I realised too late that we had reached our destination. Regaining my composure, I decided again that Bailey really was too smart for his own good.

  How many dogs know the exact location of Christie’s Sales Rooms? Probably not many, and probably even fewer outside of Manhattan.

  What a pampered pooch.

  I smiled down at him. ‘You know you are a real snob, don’t you? I didn’t learn where Christie’s was until recently. I guess you might be a bourgeois dog, huh?’

  Bailey gave a low ‘woof’ as if agreeing that yes, he was in fact part of that socio-economic crowd of canines and then looked at the building, wondering if I was going to go inside.

  ‘Yes, I’m going. I’m going,’ I said, leading Bailey over to yet another hydrant and fastening his leash around it. ‘Unfortunately, you are stuck out here, pal. No offence. I just don’t think the guys at Christie’s need you drooling on any of their Renoirs or Fabergé eggs, or any of that racket. Wait out here.’

  Bailey met my gaze knowingly and again, I felt like he wanted to roll his eyes and sigh at me, as if the last thing he would do is engage in anything so crass as drooling. I had no doubt that this was true, and that if given the opportunity to walk the hallowed halls of Christie’s, a dog like Bailey would, in fact, display impeccable manners. However, I was pretty sure that Christie’s formidable staff would not have the same perspective on it.

  ‘Just take a load off, bud. I promise I’ll be quick.’

  The temperature was dropping quickly out here, and although I knew that Huskies were built for the cold and he had a nice winter coat, I still worried about him sitting on the chilly pavement. That couldn’t be fun, warm coat or not. I had a warm coat on and I didn’t want to do it. I felt bad for the people and animals who had no other choice.

  So I was a softie. Just because I was in the position I was in didn’t mean I didn’t have a heart. I always felt bad for individuals, be it people or animals who didn’t have what they needed to get by. And yes, I knew tha
t what I was able to do was all well and good, but I also believed in the need to give back. And I wanted to ensure that I associated with people who had the same belief structure. After all, while it was one thing to be fortunate, it was another to be fortunate and not consider the welfare of the least of us. My mindset might go against traditional thinking in some places, but at the end of the day, I was just a guy from Dublin who happened to hit a stroke of luck in New York. That’s all. Being exposed to money and nice things might change some people, but not this guy.

  I petted Bailey’s head and once again promised I wouldn’t be long. He sighed and resigned himself to the pavement. I stood up at the same moment when he looked at me as if to say, ‘OK, go on, get a move on.’ He gave a little wag of his bushy tail.

  I turned on my heel towards the entrance of the auction house in Rockefeller Plaza, a famed and prestigious destination. I knew there was a good chance I could get what I needed here. And if not, well, maybe they would be able to point me in the right direction.

  I pulled open the doors of Christie’s and walked into the lobby that was designed specifically to receive guests. Guests with money.

  I put the phone into the pocket of my trousers as the receptionist looked at me and smiled. Over the past couple of years, she and I had become reasonably well acquainted and I knew that she would immediately take me to the right people.

  I just hoped that the saying, ‘Money talks,’ would, in fact, prove true today.

  Just for luck, I crossed my fingers.

  Chapter 15

  It may be normal, darling: but I’d rather be natural. Holly Golightly

  Saying goodbye to Joshua at five that evening, Darcy left Chaucer’s, got on her bike and made a beeline for Fifth Avenue.

  Although the fresh air allowed her to clear her head, and she enjoyed feeling the positive endorphins that came with riding the bike, by the time she reached the corner of Fifty-Third Street, she was still no closer to figuring out just how she was going to get to speak with Tabitha Kensington.