And then there was Tyler. There was no getting round the fact that Rose was a lovely lady and that Tyler was besotted with her. There was also no avoiding his palpable relief at being back home in England, where his instincts were to understand what was going on and he shared the national sense of humour. Mallory had always prided herself on her irony, her cool and sceptical view of human frailty, but irony like hers was two a penny in England. She longed for something essentially American again, but at the same time dreaded it, dreaded seeing it from a newly Old-World perspective, dreaded not being in London any more, dreaded not being part of the company, settling her stage wig nightly over her red hair, extracting her nose stud and putting it in a chipped china egg cup patterned with a painted chicken, for safety.
‘When I’m gone,’ Mallory thought, folding black leggings and black T-shirts with a carelessness that would have exasperated her mother, ‘will I ever have been here? Will they forget all about me, the American actress with the English father who chose to stay behind? Will anything I’ve done really matter, in the long run? Will my being here have made the smallest difference to anybody?’
Tyler had tried to ring her. She’d had four missed calls from him, two without a message and two – the last two – asking her to ring him back. The final message also said that he wanted to take her to the airport to see her off, so would she please tell him her flight details. He’d sounded almost peremptory in the last call, exasperated, even, and part of her – the more adult part – couldn’t blame him. She was, after all, not returning his calls deliberately. She confessed to herself that she didn’t want to, so she wasn’t. But at the same time, she didn’t want to trail out to Heathrow airport on her own, and join the shuffle through security burdened with the isolation of anonymity. Tyler, she told herself angrily, needed to know that as a father, he had got his priorities all wrong even if she was ultimately the one who suffered.
It was no good expecting any of her flatmates to see her off either. Two of them were already focused on their next jobs and had adopted a manner of lavishly affectionate but fundamentally distracted behaviour towards Mallory, embracing her with one arm while checking their phones with the other. As for Jess, with whom Mallory, as her understudy, believed she had established a real rapport, she had become as elusive as a shadow once she had embarked on her relationship with Nat Woodrowe. She was amazed at herself, she said to Mallory. He was in every way completely, utterly not her type; a City boy from just the kind of middle-class, conventional background she had been brought up to despise so thoroughly. He might even, she said, rolling her eyes as if she had been beguiled by enchantment into falling for an acknowledged monster, vote Conservative. But here she was, madder about him than she ever had been about anybody. She gave a peal of self-deprecating laughter, as if her feelings for Nat Woodrowe were nothing to do with choice, and therefore no responsibility of hers whatsoever, and drifted out of the flat, leaving sheer black stockings discarded in the shower and a breath of scent and cigarette smoke in the air.
Mallory sat down abruptly on the bed. It was ridiculous to feel like this, ridiculous. She was, after all, more than used to her own company, to fending for herself. Even if her mother had still been alive, she had never been the kind of mother you could call to say you felt a bit lost, a bit sad, a bit lonely, and who could be relied upon to say consoling and cosy maternal things in return. Cindy had been cool in every sense, in the way Mallory had always prided herself on being cool. Until now, that is. Until it came to going back to New York, leaving her palpably happy father behind in his home country.
Mallory scrolled through all the contacts on her phone, all the hundreds of people and services that had been added by her over the years. She couldn’t remember half of them, she realized, couldn’t recall why she had had the momentary need to be in touch with Maharani Taxis or someone called Beau Tiranti. One day, when she either had absolutely nothing else to do or was in the mood for some ferocious editing of her life in general, she would apply herself to some serious deleting. One day. She spun on rapidly through the numbers and the names. One day that was, most definitely, not today.
Then she halted. There was Emmy Woodrowe, Nat’s twin sister, whose name she had added that weird evening in the hotel courtyard bar, when they were all swapping phone numbers in a pathetic show of extended-family solidarity, to please Rose and Tyler. Rose, she remembered, had looked haunted. Emmy, sitting as close to her mother as she could without actually sitting on her lap, had looked furious. A pretty girl, with her long brown hair held off her face with combs, but a furious pretty girl who pointedly had hardly looked at Mallory’s father. She had drunk two large glasses of wine, Mallory had observed, just casually knocking them back in the English way, as if wine and water were indistinguishable. And then, Jess said, laughing it off as if it were nobody’s loss but her own, Emmy had refused to meet her twin brother’s new girlfriend. Well, not exactly refused, in so many words, but just not responded to the request, in a way that made it perfectly clear what she felt about Nat reordering the female priorities in his life.
Almost before she knew what she was doing, Mallory had dialled Emmy’s number. She sat there, on the edge of the bed above Kilburn High Street, and held her breath. She would let it ring five times. No. Six. She would let it ring out, and then she would end the call. She wouldn’t leave a message. Or perhaps she would, perhaps she would just say she’d rung to say goodbye—
‘Hi,’ Emmy said. Her voice was flat, without a question in it, slightly indistinct.
Mallory took a breath. ‘It’s Mallory.’
There was a pause and then Emmy said, as if carefully enunciating, ‘Wow. Is it? I didn’t look.’
Mallory said courteously, ‘I hope it isn’t too late?’
‘No,’ Emmy said. ‘Not. Too late, mean.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Mm.’
‘Emmy,’ Mallory said, sitting upright on the bed, ‘what’s the matter?’
There was another pause and then Emmy said, ‘Don’t know.’
‘Are you drinking? Emmy, are you drunk?’
‘Maybe,’ Emmy said.
‘Are you at home? Are you in your apartment?’
‘Oh yes.’
Mallory glanced at her watch. She said, ‘I’m coming over.’
‘No.’
‘Yes. Yes, you – you shouldn’t be on your own. And,’ she suddenly felt full of courage, ‘nor should I.’
‘What?’
‘Emmy,’ Mallory said, standing up, ‘Emmy. Don’t drink any more. Don’t. What are you drinking?’
‘Oh,’ Emmy said, as if the question was of no consequence. ‘Vodka.’
‘Well, stop. Stop drinking vodka. I’m on my way to you.’
‘Why?’ Emmy said. ‘Why would you care?’
‘I do. I get it. I get it.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Please, Emmy. Please let me come.’ She looked down at her open suitcase, at the sad disorder of it. ‘Please,’ Mallory said again.
She heard Emmy sigh. She remembered one of her drama teachers in New York telling the class, ‘Trust your instincts. Trust them. Don’t overlay everything with reason, give your intuition its head.’ Did that sigh mean a surrender or merely that the vodka had removed Emmy’s capacity to decide?
‘OK,’ Emmy said at last. She sounded infinitely weary. ‘OK. Bring soup.’ And then she laughed, a short bark of laughter that had, Mallory thought with her new and awestruck knowledge of Shakespearean English, nothing of real mirth in it.
*
Seth Masson had enjoyed replying to Emmy’s post on his Facebook page. Yuhui, who was of a grave and meticulous bent, had researched the word ‘pedant’ for him – possibly old Italian via even older French – and he’d had a happy time devising a reply and weaving into it the suggestion that Emmy might be a person over-fond of making superfine distinctions, and been momentarily disappointed when she appeared to have tired of the sparring match already b
y failing to respond. He mentioned it to his father in one of their infrequent phone calls, and his father, ever disposed to make light of anything potentially troublesome, said to forget it, it was an English thing – a kind of tease to cover a feeling of awkwardness.
‘Awkward?’ Seth said. ‘Why the hell should she feel awkward?’
‘Because you are about to be related by marriage, and you’ve never met.’
‘But,’ Seth said, ‘she messaged me. She started it.’
Tyler said, ‘But she’s English,’ as if that explained everything.
Seth waited a moment, and then he said, ‘You sure about this marriage thing? You sure you need to get married, again?’
‘Very sure.’
‘Daddy, Yuhui and I are in it for the long haul but we don’t feel the need to get married.’
‘Then I’m different,’ Tyler said genially. ‘I do.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Seth said. His mind was slipping off his father’s plans in England, his father’s fiancée’s daughter’s incomprehensibility, and returning to the familiar and happy haven of baking. He could sense a palpable relief in his brain, a thankful abandonment of a stony and inhospitable mental terrain for the welcome landscape of the known.
‘Daddy,’ Seth said, his voice gathering momentum, ‘I’ve been approached by a packaging-giftware company. They have an idea for Doughboy gift packs, a box containing some of our sourdough starter, plus a disposable panibois and a dough scraper and a Doughboy apron and some hessian gloves. Under twenty-five bucks, they’re suggesting. What do you think?’
Tyler said, too heartily, that he thought it sounded a splendid idea. And an excellent price. Seth then told him that business was so good, they needed to hire another baker, someone who understood gluten-free, someone to whom they could offer possibly twenty thousand dollars a year. What did Tyler think about that, for evidence of success? Tyler appeared to think nothing. He failed to respond.
‘Daddy?’ Seth said. ‘Pa? Did you hear me?’
‘It’s Mallory,’ Tyler said. ‘I can’t get hold of Mallory. She’s flying back and I want to see her off and she won’t answer her phone to me or respond to my messages.’
With difficulty, Seth pulled his mind back from sourdough.
‘Mallory?’
‘Yes,’ Tyler said. ‘Have you spoken to Mallory?’
‘You know us, Daddy,’ Seth said, ‘we’re lucky if we call each other on our birthdays.’
‘You’re no use, are you?’ Tyler said cheerfully. ‘No use to anyone except the bread fanatics like yourself.’
‘He called me a fanatic,’ Seth said later to Yuhui. ‘Like I was a jihadi or something.’
She looked at him with her steady, serious Japanese gaze.
‘He doesn’t understand you, Seth.’
‘No.’
She came to stand next to him. ‘We have a calling.’
‘Yes.’
‘We are feeding minds and souls.’
He regarded her with respectful affection. He said, ‘He can’t find Mallory. She won’t return his calls.’
Yuhui began to untie her Doughboy apron.
‘She’ll have her reasons,’ she said.
*
Emmy said that Mallory should certainly ring her father. She said it with mock seriousness, wagging a finger, and Mallory made a face and said, squirming, that she really, really didn’t want to. They had made a kind of pact together, over a lot of wine in Emmy’s apartment, a defiant and happily infantile pact involving their both being abandoned children, children who were deeply disappointed by the selfish self-absorption of their parents (and brothers, Emmy added) and must henceforth make their way alone, like babes in the wood. Mallory had slept the night on Emmy’s sofa, her head pillowed on a mirrored cushion from India that left her right cheek printed with tiny indentations, and in the morning, hazy from the night before, they had agreed that Emmy would take time off work to come out to Heathrow with Mallory the next day, to be, she said, her send-off crowd. They also made a plan that Mallory would go back to Kilburn to collect her suitcase, and then return to Emmy’s flat for her final night in London.
Emmy paused in front of the mirror, arranging her hair in long curls over her shoulders. She said, to the reflection of Mallory, sitting behind her on the crumpled sofa eating muesli, ‘We didn’t think we liked each other. Did we?’
Mallory put her forefinger into her mouth to dislodge a raisin from her teeth.
‘Nope,’ she said. ‘We didn’t.’
‘And now,’ Emmy said, twisting her hair, ‘look what a little misfortune and a lot of alcohol can do.’
‘Sugar,’ Mallory said, ‘I’m kicking myself for not realizing.’
Emmy began to giggle.
‘About your father?’
Mallory made a wide gesture with her cereal spoon.
‘About you, dollface. That you were cool.’
Emmy turned round to face her. ‘We are united by misfortune.’
‘Sure are.’
‘But you will ring your father?’
‘Um . . .’
‘For you, Mallory, even if not for him.’
Mallory eyed her. ‘And you’ll meet Jess Ballantyne?’
‘Not sure.’
‘Yes you will, cupcake. If I will, you will.’
Emmy stooped to present a lightly clenched fist to Mallory.
‘Sistah . . .’
Mallory touched Emmy’s fist with her own.
‘Sistah.’
‘Wish you weren’t going.’
Mallory put her bowl down and stood up. ‘You come to New York.’
‘I might.’
‘I know a wonderful bar. In fact, several.’
‘You have to ask yourself,’ Emmy said, ‘if they’d notice.’
‘Who? What?’
Emmy picked up her jacket and began to slide her arms into the sleeves.
‘Our families.’
‘Does it matter?’
There was a pause. Emmy finished pulling on her jacket and picked up her bag. She said, not looking at Mallory, ‘I’ve got an awful headache. And yes, I think it does.’
CHAPTER TEN
The young man Tyler had summoned from an estate agency to assess the value of the mews house introduced himself as Sherif Yilmaz. He wore an immaculate suit and his accent was as English public school as his haircut. The hand he extended to shake Rose’s emerged, she noticed, from a beautifully laundered double-cuffed shirtsleeve. He glanced round the hallway with approval.
‘Mrs Woodrowe. This is an exceptional property.’
Rose inclined her head. It struck her that if she had been able, somehow, to clasp the walls in her arms, she would have liked to do so. Standing behind her at the respectful distance dictated by her ownership, rather than his, Tyler said, ‘It has a garage. And a garden. All in central London.’
Sherif Yilmaz had a clipboard in his hand and a smartphone. He gestured with the latter.
‘Would you mind if I took some pictures, Mrs Woodrowe?’
Rose didn’t look at Tyler.
‘Yes, I would, actually. As this is only a first visit.’
Tyler didn’t speak, and Rose didn’t look at him. She said to Sherif, ‘This is just an assessment, you know. There is a lot to consider.’
‘Rosie—’
‘Houses,’ Rose said firmly, ‘are far more to us than just an investment. I know they are the biggest investment any of us makes in our lives, but very few of us can see them only as piggy banks.’
Sherif regarded her soberly. ‘Absolutely, Mrs Woodrowe. That is the main reason for my going into the business.’
Tyler put a hand lightly on Rose’s arm. ‘Rosie . . .’
She didn’t turn. She said, ‘As long as that’s understood.’
‘I thought—’
‘Shall I show you round, Mr Yilmaz? Or would you prefer to explore on your own?’
He put his phone in his pocket. He said, with elaborate courtesy, �
��If you would permit me to look round alone, Mrs Woodrowe, I can make a better assessment.’
She turned away and made for the sitting room.
‘Help yourself.’
Tyler followed her, having watched Sherif climb the stairs at a speed he was sure Rose would consider over-expedient. She was standing by the French doors looking at the garden through the glass.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Rose went on looking. He came to stand behind her, not touching, merely standing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, ‘I really am. I shouldn’t have said anything. I probably shouldn’t even be here. This is none of my business. Are you angry that I organized him to come?’
‘No,’ Rose said.
‘Are you – angry with me, somehow, anyway? Or are you just upset about the house?’
‘That,’ Rose said shortly.
‘But—’
She spun round.
‘I didn’t think I’d be. I am so happy and excited about some aspects of the future, but for some reason, this is hard. Very hard. It’s ridiculous. It’s only a house, for God’s sake.’
Tyler took her hands. ‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know what it’s about. Really I don’t. But I feel all jangled up, having that boy here, knowing he’s upstairs appraising it all, for what it’s worth in money, for Christ’s sake, only money. I kind of hate it even while I know it makes sense. Of course it does. Of course I want to be able to give money to the children, of course I do. But somehow it frightens me at the same time.’
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