Looking for Andrew McCarthy (36 page)

He patted her on the arm, soothed her and kissed her curls, ignoring the curious glances of the other skaters, and they sat that way until it was fully dark.

Eventually she sat up again.

‘I’d better … I’d better get going.’

‘Of course. I’ll take you back to the hotel.’

‘No, it’s okay. The others will be there. They’ll look after me. Honestly, I’ll be fine.’

‘Well …’

‘I’d rather you didn’t. I don’t want to have to explain.’

‘Okay. If you’re sure.’

They stood up, facing each other awkwardly. Ellie rubbed hard at her eyes.

‘I’m coming back to the States anyway. Once everything’s sorted out. I think. For a bit longer.’ Ellie tried to say this carelessly to try it out on her tongue.

‘Really? Huh!’ said Andrew II. He was looking at her and smiling.

‘You know. Just to hang out and stuff. A new start. Maybe.’

‘Yeah. Well. Hey. That’s great I guess.’

He started to help her back across the ice to the hire desk.

‘Are you going to look me up?’

She tried a shaky smile. ‘God. At the moment I’m concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. Or, one skate in front of the other. Which, thank God, is easier.’

He slowed.

‘Did your daddy teach you to skate?’

‘He taught me a lot of things.’ Ellie sniffed a little.

‘Well, looks like he didn’t do too bad a job.’

‘You think?’ she asked.

‘I think,’ he said seriously.

She relaxed a little and let him take her hand, and they took one last tour around the ice not wanting to let go; they seemed for all the world like any other couple looking for magic in Manhattan.

‘I … it would be really great if you felt like calling me some time if you ever got back to LA,’ he said. ‘I mean it. It would be really cool.’

She smiled at him

‘Well, I know where to find you.’

‘Yeah … LA. Right. Sure. Whatever.’ He sighed.

‘No, I mean, you’re in the book.’

‘Oh.’ His face relaxed into a smile. ‘Oh yes. I’m in the book.’

Andrew II leaned down and cupped Ellie’s chin in his hand.

‘This is going to happen, okay? I really want this to happen.’

She swallowed heavily.

‘That’s definitely a line from
Pretty in Pink
.’

‘Endured just for you, okay? And yes, it is. But it’s also a line from me.’

He leaned down and kissed her firmly on her pouty little mouth.

‘One of these days I would like to do a
little
bit
more than just kiss you, Ellie Eversholt.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It helps a lot to know that, it really does.’

She clasped his hands tightly then let them go.

‘Well, I’d better head.’

‘Yeah … me too. Better be getting back to Hatsie.’

‘Sure … who knows what he could be up to?’

‘Stealing his father’s Ferrari … maybe converting it into a time machine …’

‘That kind of thing.’

He skated – clumsily – backwards to the side of the rink, and she waved and watched him go, treasuring and nestling the tiny kernel of warmth he had brought somewhere deep inside, to be taken out and re-examined on a better day.

‘Hey!’ he yelled from the other side of the rink. ‘You are going to be alright, Ellie Eversholt.’

‘Yes I am,’ she said to herself, swallowing hard. ‘Yes, I am.’

Arthur and Colin were going back to the hotel to pack up Ellie’s stuff and try to get her and, if possible, all of them on a flight that evening, so Julia and Loxy found themselves alone together for the first time. It felt slightly strange, and they were both picking up on the tension.

‘God,’ said Julia. ‘What a day.’

‘Yuh,’ said Lox, looking down at the street and kicking away a flyer.

‘Do you think she really did meet Andrew McCarthy? God. That would have been weird. I’d have been fucked off to miss it if she did. Especially after I did all the driving.’

Loxy shrugged his shoulders.

‘Dunno.’

‘It was amazing of you to come all this way.’

‘Well, it couldn’t wait – she’s the only next of kin they could find.’

‘God, her mother was such a selfish bitch …’

Loxy shrugged.

‘Oh, Lox,’ she put her hand on his sleeve, ‘I don’t know how she’d have coped not hearing it from us.’

‘Yuh.’

‘And …’ she stopped and turned to face him. ‘Something else. I really missed you, Loxy. I really, really did. All the time. Well, nearly all the time. I thought about us and I thought maybe we were doing the wrong thing and then I thought maybe I should see other people and then I couldn’t and then I saw you walk in and I thought, it doesn’t matter if we’re doing the wrong thing or not I just want …’

‘Julia.’ His commanding voice made her stop suddenly. It wasn’t a tone she had ever heard him use. ‘Ssh a minute. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.’

‘What? What? Sorry for what?’ Suddenly a panic
gripped at Julia’s heart. He was going to tell her it was over wasn’t he? She’d turned him down once – twice maybe, if you counted that time at the airport. He was a proud man. He wasn’t going to stand for this. Oh no. Oh no.

‘Look,’ he said. His face was serious. She didn’t like the sound of that ‘look’.

‘I realize I’ve been a bit much. All over you. I was too hasty and too much and … I’m sorry. I really am. I’m sorry I pushed you. I wouldn’t give you any space, and that’s why you had to come away, and I see that now. From now on, I promise, I’m going to be a completely casual boyfriend and never pressure you … that is, if you still want me at all and … fucking hell!’

He made the last remark as Julia launched herself at him and he nearly fell over backwards into a puddle. She leapt up with her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist until he was pushed against the side of a shop.

‘Oh, thank God!’ she said, staring deep into his eyes. ‘I love you so very much.’

His face creased into an enormous grin and he crushed her body to his. She finally broke free for long enough to look at him again.

‘Oh – and … wasn’t there something you wanted to ask me?’

Arthur put his arm around Colin as, from a short distance away, they watched the other two leaping around the street. Loxy pulled something triumphantly out of his inner coat pocket.

‘What are they doing?’ asked Colin.

Arthur drew him closer.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Well. Things other people do. Not us. We just have fun.’

‘Isn’t fun the best thing to have?’ said Colin.

‘Oh yes,’ said Arthur, kissing him hard on the forehead. ‘Oh yes.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

They had decided to hold the wedding in a big stately house rather than a church, much to the disgruntlement of both sides of the family, even though it was a beautiful place near Box Hill. And they decided not to have a bride’s side or a groom’s side either, because otherwise it looked ridiculously segregated: ‘You might as well just draw a set of railtracks down the aisle,’ as Julia had pointed out.

However, Loxy’s aunties had insisted on bringing their gospel choir, which was doing a lot to dispel the secular atmosphere, even if it was being accompanied by a rather unpleasantly wailing saxophone.

Outside it was a glorious June day, and inside there was a lot of bride-waiting-around and fanning with
programmes going on. Loxy was hopping from one foot to the other and looked like he was doing a very slow tap dance. Colin, however, his rather unexpected choice of best man – ‘You mean flower girl, surely,’ had been Julia’s outraged reaction – was standing very seriously, staring straight ahead and mouthing his speech to himself.

Upstairs in the bridal suite, a pretty, large, slightly frilly room with two beautiful sash windows overlooking the grounds, Julia, in understated ivory silk, was pacing back and forward furiously. She was waiting to go downstairs for what was a pretty bloody important day in her life, but she couldn’t go and retouch her lip gloss for the last time because the door to her powder room was locked and she strongly suspected there were people rutting in it.

‘Christ! Big Bastard!’ She hammered the door heavily. ‘I really do
not
want this to be my last view as a single woman.’

‘Eh – how about I’m only having a shit?’ came the yell, punctuated by Siobhan’s muffled giggling.

‘This really is my special day, isn’t it?’ sighed Julia. ‘Get the
fuck
– oh, I don’t want to swear in this dress. Get the FUDGE out of there. Loxy’s waiting.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to do you just once for luck? It’s your last chance ever.’

‘Yeah, because after he did you I’d chew off his entire reproductive apparatus,’ growled Siobhan.

‘Get OUT the both of you. Or I’m taking the brown sauce away from the buffet.’

A couple of seconds later they emerged, smirking and looking red in the face. She shooed them out of the suite, then took one last look around. Suddenly everything was quiet. Her father was waiting downstairs, she knew, and she could picture every detail of Loxy’s shaky face from here. Arthur too, right behind him, ready to read the poem they’d chosen, which he would do beautifully, naturally. He’d already offered to be an honorary uncle to the first baby, given how much practice he’d had. She twirled quickly in the three-way mirror, but scarcely needed to glance to know that she looked as lovely as she could. She looked as beautiful as a garden.

No Hedgehog of course. They hadn’t seen her since the funeral, and she’d been quiet enough then. Julia shivered when she remembered the long cold trip home, the horrible fussing and sorting, and custard creams and dry, curled-up catered sandwiches. Ellie’s mother hadn’t bothered to show up, unsurprisingly. A subdued Christmas with Julia’s family had followed, then, out of the blue on the 2nd of January, Ellie had picked up her battered old rucksack and disappeared, leaving a rather confused note that said something about going to look for the New Jersey Turnpoke.

Since then, correspondence had been sporadic to say the least. In one 5am phone call, they’d finally got
her to discover e-mail, but at the moment it tended to be the last line of what had clearly been very long letters, followed by strings of swear words and abrupt cuttings off. Julia picked up the picture she’d brought along to use as a stand-in – she’d discovered it in Ellie’s camera about a month before, when she’d decided to develop the film and see what was there.

What had been there was: two blurry shots of the carpet of the Ritz hotel; one of her looking pallid and Ellie looking scarlet against the first little Toyota with the Hollywood sign just visible in the background haze; a giant cockroach next to a bottle of tequila; Julia sitting exhaustedly on a kerb in the sunshine in the middle of God knows where; Andrew II and Hatsie, Andrew clearly laughing his head off at something Hatsie had just said; a big silver Thunderbird; someone who might have been the back of Arthur’s head emerging from Arrivals; an underexposed very large pig in the dark; Julia standing next to a sign that said ‘Julia 25 miles’; some blurry trees through a car window; Ellie very late at night reflected in a motel bathroom mirror; New York from a distance, Arthur’s knees; New York a bit closer up. The last one she couldn’t even remember being taken. It was a little blurry, shot inside a coffee shop on a very grey day, but once you’d looked at it closely, it definitely appeared to show Ellie kissing someone who looked
spookily
like Andrew McCarthy.

Julia shook her head and propped the last photograph up on the mantelpiece. Then she began to make her way across the room to pick up her bouquet, making very, very sure that her train didn’t get caught on any of the spikes of the five-foot-tall cactus plant which had arrived that morning with an enormous bow around it, and which was now absurdly dwarfing all the other gifts spread around the room. The return address was simply the
poste restante
in some tiny little town in Arizona. The message said, ‘With all my love, the Hedgehog. A sends love too.’

Julia wondered who ‘A’ was. It couldn’t be, could it? No, surely not.
Surely
. She smiled and shrugged to herself.

The morning sun was picking up the motes of dust through the windows. Downstairs, the choir started up a spiritual version of ‘Together in Electric Dreams’, which was Julia’s cue. She picked up the bouquet, and, on a whim, carefully plucked out a couple of cactus spikes. Sprinkling them on the top of the flowers for luck, she pushed on forwards through the open door.

Thanks to Ali ‘the super’ Gunn, Rachel Hore and Fiona McIntosh – all as supportive and fantastic as ever; Jennifer Parr, Yvette Cowles, Venetia Butterfield, Esther Taylor, Nick Sayers, Adrian Bourne, Martin Palmer, Jane Harris, Stephen Page, Julia Cass, the reps and all at HarperCollins; and Nick Marston, Doug Kean, Carol Jackson and everyone at Curtis Brown.

Also: Mum, Dad, Rob and Dom; Sandra, Shappi and Susan; Lisa Jewell and Andrew Mueller for their help in Kansas City; Henry Donne; Wesley Moody, who knows what the best thing to have is; the real Andrew McCarthy (incidentally v. difficult to track down, so not recommended), and Bliggers and Bedlamites everywhere.