Happily Ever After (40 page)

“But—”

Elle remembered the last night she’d had here with her mother, nearly a year ago. A few months after she’d moved permanently to New York, she’d paid an immigration lawyer
to look at Mandana’s case, and he’d found three other similar cases where visas had been issued, with certain conditions, and it proved to be the case with Mandana. Funny that three years ago Elle would never have dreamed of doing something so… bold. They’d seen
Henry V
at Shakespeare in the Park, then they’d had dinner on the Upper West Side at a tiny restaurant Mandana had wanted to go back to ever since she’d visited it in 1969, on her way to San Francisco. They’d laughed incessantly about the bohemian couple next to them at the play, who’d very obviously mouthed key lines. Mandana had been on such good form, ebullient, happy, flushed with laughter and the heat, how good a time they were having. Elle could hear her breathing next to her in the tiny double bed, and she’d listened to her that last night, watched her peaceful face, and felt that for once, her mother was, yes, OK.

And twenty-four hours later—really? Elle’s left eye started to throb, beating a tattoo inside her head.

“Do you wanna know what she did when we told her we were having Lauren?”

Elle shrugged, and held it, her shoulders tense, her hands clenched in front of her, as if guarding herself from more blows.

Melissa ran a hand over her forehead, and her blond fringe stuck up on end. “We went to see her, the weekend before Christmas, to tell her our good news. Do you know what she did?”

“No.” Elle’s voice was small.

“She was drunk when we got there.” Melissa breathed out deeply and closed her eyes. “She said she pitied any child born into our family. She said she’d never seen any pictures of the wedding and for all she knew it would be a bastard. And she didn’t care. She said that. Then she threw up. She’s always throwing up, she’s lost so much weight. She’s sick, Elle. She
threw up and she rubbed it all—” Melissa put her hands over her face. “No. It was disgusting.”

“What did she do?” Elle thought she might be sick herself.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s enough. She was like—I don’t know! God, like Quasimodo? Like an ape, a monster, lumbering round the kitchen, smashing things, these hands everywhere, and she was—man, she was so nasty. So nasty, like she was thinking all the time, What’s the worst thing I can say now? And now?” Melissa paused, her face pink, her eyes wet. “I was
pregnant,
with her first grandchild. This is your mother. This is what she’s like. You think it’s not your problem, somehow.” Melissa breathed out, her nostrils flaring. “But it
is
your problem. I’m not responsible for her.” She looked down, and checked her phone and her watch. She drained her glass. “We’ve tried our best. But Rhodes is sick of it, to be honest, and she needs help.” She paused. “It’s a cunning disease. You’re the one she wants to be happy, and she’s hiding it from you, and it’s going to kill her. The doctor at the hospital after the crash told us her liver’s fucked, but she discharged herself before they could do more tests. And she’s fine now, God knows how she keeps on going.” She exhaled slowly, whistling through her lips. “Like I say, you have to talk to her. It’s your turn. She’s only going to get worse. Someone needs to intervene.”

“Right—” said Elle. Suddenly, weirdly, she heard her dad’s voice, that long-ago lunch in the boiling heat, the day he’d put the shelves up.
“I think you should go to New York. Leave your mum behind.”
She had. She’d done what he said. She’d done it for herself, and it had been the right thing to do. Except—

“Your turn,” Melissa said. “You need to know it. When you’re over you’ll see what I mean, Elle. You Brits, you’re in denial about putting a label on something that’s a disease.”

You sound like a Woody Allen film,
Elle had thought. Denial,
labels. Instead she had said, “Thank you,” which was the only thing she could think of.
Thanks for telling me it’s my problem now, not yours.

After their awkward good-bye Elle had gone home, walking back from the subway in the freezing slush, and she sat on the edge of her bed for a long time. She didn’t know what to do; she felt totally alone. She couldn’t ring Mandana and ask her if she was drinking, how she was; she wouldn’t tell her. Elle knew her mother well enough to know how cunning she was, and in that she agreed with Melissa. She knew if she just turned up on the doorstep her mother would clam up. In the end, she RSVP’d to the invitation that had been staring at her reproachfully on the nightstand since it had arrived two days ago and booked a ticket. She didn’t want to come back for the wedding. She had to come back, to see her mum. She’d see for herself then.

“SO, ELLE,” CARYN
her boss said, pacing up and down Elle’s tiny office, her eyes snapping with excitement, cracking gum. “What happens at an English wedding, huh? Hugh Grant making a speech? People in stupid hats? A panto?”

“A panto.” Elle laughed. “Caryn, do you know what that word is?”

“Panto?” Caryn pronounced it
pintoww
. Her default English accent was worse than Marc’s, worse than Dick Van Dyke’s. Even though she was the head of a large publishing division that had many bestselling international authors, Caryn was Queens and always would be. Sometimes, Elle thought, she took a little too much pride in it. Elle didn’t feel the need to let someone know within five seconds of meeting them that she came from a small village near Gatwick Airport, whereas Caryn would immediately say, “I’m from Queens,” as if it would be rude to withold this information from a stranger. “Oh, God, I never knew she was from Queens, I wish she’d told me,” Paul, the rights manager, had once said in a bar, and Elle had nearly fallen off her chair laughing, but also partly with shock: in New York publishing, you were professional, you didn’t slag off your boss or take the piss, you didn’t go to the pub and drunkenly rant, and you certainly didn’t sleep with your coworkers.

“Panto. It’s a stupid British thing British people do,” Caryn said, crossing her tiny, sinewy arms and smiling her glaring white smile at Elle. “I don’t know. Am I right?”

“Yes,” said Elle. “That’s completely right.” She thought of the pantomime they’d always gone to see when she was small, the year when Rhodes got picked from the audience to be shot out of a cannon by Lionel Blair, how she’d been so scared they really would fire it that her mum had had to explain it was a trick, just for fun.

“Are you a bridesmaid?”

“No, no,” Elle said. “In the circumstances…” she trailed off.

“Thank God. I think you’re nuts to even be going,” said Caryn. Elle didn’t know if this was out of some tiny attempt to show she cared, or because in her absence Elle would miss the Fall Schedule Presentation and Sidney was particularly on Caryn’s back at the moment about everything. “But is it the crazy production it is here, though? Like Judy’s wedding last year? The doves dyed blue and the groomsmen having singing lessons to learn ‘When Doves Cry’ a cappella as she walked down the aisle? Come on.” Caryn slapped her thighs. “Nothing can be as heinous as that.”

Elle laughed. “Not as much. Fewer bridesmaids.” She’d been to a wedding with Mike earlier in the month in New Hampshire, where there had been eight bridesmaids, with identical hair and dress, of identical height and weight, with eight identical groomsmen on their arms. There had been a wedding planner with a radio mic in her ear, a proper swing band, and on each table for the men there were cufflinks with the bride and groom’s initials and for the girls, jeweled Melissa Odabash flip-flops to put on when their heels started to hurt. It was like a military operation.

Caryn looked at her watch. “OK. What time’s your flight?”

“Nine thirty, it’s fine. I’ll finish up and go straight from here.”

“That’s great.” Caryn put her hand on the door. “Did you speak to Molly Goodwin?”

“Sure, and I told her I’d go see her when I’m back to discuss a new contract.”

“How about Magnolia?”

“She’s coming up from Georgia next month.”

Caryn shook her head. “What else is there for me to worry
about? You are the best, Elle. So, good work with Elizabeth Forsyte once again. It’s going to be huge for you, that book.”

One of the things Elle admired about Caryn was that though she was a total workaholic, she belonged to the “hire someone who wants your job” school of management: she actually liked the idea that the people who worked for her should do better than her. Elle had realized how lucky she was in her new boss when Bill Lewis, Libby’s ex and MD of the BBE division, had come over on one of his US trips. Not only was she reminded sharply how little she liked him as a person, she saw how self-aggrandizing he was—in meetings he took credit for books Elle knew other editors had bought—how pompous, concerned only with his own cause. Much like the way he’d treated Libby.

Libby… Elle shivered. Since she’d booked her flight back to the UK, she’d been thinking often of Libby, and wondering how she was. In a way, she owed everything to her. She’d never have ended up in New York if it weren’t for Libby and her machinations. As she waved good-bye to Caryn and sat down again at her desk, Elle was sharply reminded, she didn’t know why, of the week Diana died. That red-wine-soaked evening at the Dome in Hampstead, eating croque monsieurs and shouting about how much they loved art and literature and life and boys and life—oh, how cringeworthy. Coming home at two, Sam waking her with the terrible news. Sam—where was
she
now? Watching the funeral with Sam in their old flat, she and Sam sobbing, Libby trying not to roll her eyes. Little things, like Libby’s blue sundress, the crown of daisies she’d made the afternoon after the funeral as they lay in Hyde Park and talked about love.

It was not quite seven years, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Elle had to search hard within herself to remember being that girl. The girl who hadn’t even kissed Rory yet. She had been thinking
a lot about him too, these last few weeks, as the time of her trip grew nearer. She didn’t want to forget how deeply she had loved him, how important it had been to her; she felt as if to discard the memory would be a betrayal of her younger self.

They’d had a drink the previous year in New York and it had been so strange, to see someone you knew and obsessed over so much, to hear his light, friendly voice again. His hair was the same, chaotic and floppy, his clothes were new versions of what they’d always been—low-key, dashing English bloke round town—but the lines round the eyes, the slight weariness of the face, the desperation with which he’d said, “You’re doing so well for yourself, I wish I had your recipe. You’re so different, you look different.”

As she had left the bar of the Soho Grand—because of course he, like Bill, stayed at the Soho Grand—Elle had known he was right. She
was
different. She liked hearing it, because she wanted to recall just enough of it to remember that she never wanted to go back to being the person she’d been before.

At half past six, Elle shut down her computer and whipped out her suitcase, checked that her dress was still there, checked she had her passport, her BlackBerry, her shiny new blue iPod, and her money, and shut her office door behind her, taking one last look at the sign on the door:

E
LEANOR
B
EE
S
ENIOR
E
XECUTIVE
E
DITOR
,
J
ANE
S
TREET
P
RESS

She trundled down the wide glass corridors, casting one look behind her at the glorious view over Midtown towards Central Park. It was a beautiful evening, still bright. She fished around in her handbag for her sunglasses.

“Oh, good-bye, Elle!” Jennifer the editorial assistant said, smiling as Elle went past. “Have a great trip, please do let me know if there’s anything you need while you’re there?”

“Sure,” said Elle. “Thanks, Jen.” She raised her hand in a farewell greeting.

“Hey, let me get that for you,” Stuart Forgan, senior vice president, said as Elle arrived at the elevator, struggling with her bag, her case, her coat, her pass. “So, you’re off to merry old England, eh?”

“Sure am,” said Elle, in her best, but still terrible, American accent.

Stuart smiled and pushed his round glasses further up his nose. “Are you going to the Bookprint offices?” he said, gesturing for her to go ahead of him into the elevator. “I was going to wait till you came back but this is serendipity, in fact.”

“Oh?” said Elle, trying to look alert and interested but fishing through her handbag for her passport and ticket at the same time. She remembered how much she used to loathe lift encounters. Now she quite liked them. “What can I do?”

“Yes, well, you might try and discuss Gray Logan while you’re there. Even though they know he’s a
New York Times
bestseller, they do nothing with him. He says he doesn’t want to be published by us in the UK anymore, and that could affect our chances of doing another deal. Sidney says it needs addressing.” He folded his arms and looked at her over his glasses. “I wondered if perhaps a solution might be to have you on board.”