The Girl Next Door (43 page)

They sat there for a while, until it got too cold.

One night, for the first time since Hope had died, Eve let Ed hold her in their bed. He’d learnt quickly, over these last few weeks, to stay on his side. But that night, just before he’d fallen asleep, she’d rolled into him, one foot pushing in between his, and he’d turned and spooned her, and she’d put her arms over his as they curled around her, pulling him closely into her, squeezing him tightly. The feel of her stomach, deflated and empty and jelly‐like, made him so sad he wanted to cry, but he didn’t let himself. He just held her, and was glad to be allowed to. It had been so long, and he had missed her so much.

The next morning, they were still entwined when he woke up. They had both slept so deeply, they had barely moved. He kissed the side of her neck to see if she was awake.

‘I can’t stay here.’

‘I know that.’ Of course he knew that. It was ruined for her now.

‘I want to go soon.’

‘I know that, too.’

‘Will you come with me?’

‘You do want me to, don’t you?’

Eve remembered the April day when she’d stood at the windows in the Four Seasons and watched steam rising from the manhole covers. Maybe she’d known, even then, that this wouldn’t work.

‘Of course I do. But work… you love it here…’

‘I couldn’t really love it here – not if you weren’t happy, and not if you weren’t here. I couldn’t be happy anywhere if you weren’t there with me.’

‘But your career? I feel so guilty.’

He raised his head, rested his jaw on his hand, so he could see her face.

‘All my life I’ve been pushing. I’ve let it get in the way. I let that happen here. I didn’t just lose Hope here. I lost you. I ignored it because I wanted it to be different. You weren’t happy. And instead of trying to fix that, or even acknowledging it, I just pretended it wasn’t so.

‘And I’m sorry for that. And I want to make it right. I want us to go home. For all sorts of reasons, but mostly because I want my Evie back.’ He stroked her cheek, felt it wet with tears.

‘I don’t know if that can ever happen, wherever we are.’

‘Not exactly the same – we’ll never be exactly the same again. I know that. Hope happened, and I don’t ever want to forget that she did. But I need you to know, to believe, that you are the most important thing in the world to me, Evie. More important than a job, or a home. You’re my home. I’m not just me. I’m half of us. It has to work for both of us, otherwise it can’t work for either.’

‘What if home doesn’t work for the you part of us?’

‘I’ll make it work. I was happy there before this all came up. Workwise. I’ll get another job.’

‘So we can go home?’

‘We’re going. I already told them, at work. I’ve told the management company about the apartment. I’ve got my secretary calling moving companies, getting quotes. We’re going.’

Eve burst into tears. She felt like a huge, dark cloud had just been lifted from her. She was going home.

There was only one thing she’d miss. After all these months. Just one person.

Violet

Violet had suspected this, from the moment Hope had died. It was the right thing for them to do, to go home. Eve was right – there was nothing here for them now. They would heal, faster and better, at home. Among the things that were familiar to them, and the people who knew them best. She worried for Eve and Ed. All the balances that had existed in their marriage had shifted when they moved here, and Hope’s death had exacerbated that. They needed to go home. She saw it clearly.

But it hurt her. As much as anything had done… in years and years. She would never see Eve again. For a while, maybe, Eve would call. Write. Then there would be Christmas cards for a few years after that. They would always share Christmas, in their hearts. They had both lost a child at Christmas, and each would think of the other, unconsciously, forever – she knew that. But Eve and Ed would have more children. Their names would appear on the Christmas cards – children she had never met, and would never know. With lots of love from Ed, Eve, Chloe, Hannah, Theo… Those children would never replace Hope, but they would make it better. The pain would recede, so long as they let it, and New York would become just a chapter in the book of their long lives together. And Violet a person who helped them, then.

She was nearly eighty years old. She would never fly to England again, she knew. Why would Eve come here? This goodbye was real, and final. And very soon the door would close and she would be alone again. Not long after that – not long in real terms – she would die.

She couldn’t wish she hadn’t met Eve, though. In some ways it seemed to Violet that Eve had helped her more than the other way around.

They’d sat here, in this apartment, so often, together, the two of them. Talking, always talking. Eve had pulled Violet’s stories out of her and listened to them like a child, and Violet had woven them around her like a shawl. Today she had no words. Ed was downstairs, lifting cases into a cab, and making arrangements with the super. The rest of their things would be collected and shipped soon. The lease wouldn’t be up until March, but money didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered so much as Eve did, and Ed knew that, and Violet was glad. She liked him, but she didn’t think he’d put Eve first as often as he should have done while they were here. It had taken something catastrophic, like this, to make him see straight.

Eve had lost weight, and it made her look really young. The bulge of the pregnancy looked odd against her skinny arms and legs, her gaunt face. She was huddled into a sweater that was now too big for her, and the neckline hung slackly around her shoulders. Or it might have been Ed’s. She still had dark and puffy circles under her eyes, red from crying, and she was crying now.

Violet’s own eyes filled, and she pulled Eve into her arms, squeezing her tight, planting kisses on the top of her head. Neither of them spoke for a moment, and it was Violet who ended the embrace, gently pushing Eve away, and holding her by both shoulders.

‘Go on now. Ed’s waiting.’

‘I’m going to miss you, Violet. So much.’

‘And I you, my sweet girl.’

‘I could never say thank you enough… for what you did for us.’

‘No thanks required. You be happy, Eve. You. Be. Happy.’

Eve nodded silently, pursing her lips. She didn’t believe, yet, that it was possible. It was too soon.

Violet reached past her and pushed the elevator button, and, below, the lift creaked into action. She pushed an envelope into Eve’s hand.

‘Read this later.’

The elevator arrived, and the doors opened. Eve backed into it, still holding Violet’s hand. Violet pulled it away softly, and waved, blowing a gentle kiss in Eve’s direction with the other, forcing a bright smile that would make it easier for both of them.

Back inside, once Eve had gone, Violet blew her nose hard, put on her glasses, and rifled through her CD collection until she found the disk she wanted. Once she’d put
La Bohème
(the 1965 Met recording) in the machine and pressed play, she poured herself a large glass of sloe gin. Then she took Steadman’s picture, the one she’d shown Eve, out of the drawer where she’d kept it, and the others, for far too long, standing it against the candelabra on the sideboard, where the lamp shone brightly on it. She rested one finger on Steadman’s cheek for a moment. Then she sat down, rested her head against the back of the chair, and closed her eyes, losing herself once more in the soaring aria, and in the memory of that night so long ago.

Eve

The flight was full. The captain had just announced a flight time of six hours and twenty minutes. There was a good tailwind, he said. Doors were cross‐checked. In the aisle, a stewardess stood wearing a life vest while, on the screen in the headrest of the seat in front of her, a jaunty cartoon steward informed you to fit your own oxygen mask before you attempted to fit that of a child travelling with you. Yeah, right.

Eve pulled her seat belt out from under her bottom. Her arm brushed the pocket of her sweater and she remembered Violet’s card. She’d cried most of the way from the apartment to JFK, lying on Ed’s lap. She cried everywhere these days, with impunity. She sometimes wondered how long it would take for normal social sensibilities to kick in again, and stop her from doing it.

She’d cried in the departure lounge, aware of, but not caring about, the mild disturbance her emotions were causing her fellow passengers. She’d watched the Hassidic Jews reading the Torah and bobbing at the plane through the sheet‐glass window. Which seemed incongruous, since the Virgin plane sported its usual scantily clad Vargas girl and was named Gloria.

She’d automatically taken the proffered glass of champagne, on boarding, but she hadn’t drunk it. The stewardess had shrugged sympathetically when she’d taken the full glass away.

Ed was reading the in‐flight magazine, looking to see which films were playing, with one hand on her knee. He was better at doing the normal stuff than she was. At first she’d found it strange and suspicious. But she understood now. It wasn’t strange or suspicious. It was how Ed got through it.

She pulled Violet’s card out, and opened it. The lavender ink transported her back to their first meeting, the spring before, on the roof terrace. To the lady in the lilac suit and pillbox hat in the picture.

It wasn’t a long note.

My dearest Eve,

You have thanked me, often, these last weeks. It is me who should thank you. You brought an old lady back to life, inside. You gave me back my memories, and reminded me of the great love I have had in my life. And it is me who is grateful.

Don’t let what has happened to you make you who you are as you go on, Eve. Let it be a part of you, but not
everything. There is more life and more love in you than that.

‘Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail …’

With all my love,

Violet xxx

Ed leant over. ‘Violet?’

Eve smiled weakly, and nodded.

‘She is a wise old bird, that one.’

‘She is indeed.’

Eve looked at Ed, then pulled his face down to hers, and kissed him lightly on the lips.

He laid his nose against hers, and brought his forehead to lean against hers. ‘Are we going to be okay, Eve?’

She put her hand on the back of his neck, and stroked his hair. ‘We’re going to be okay.’

Nine p.m.

Since it was built in 1912, there had been 107 different surnames on the mailboxes in the mailroom of the building. People had come and gone, married and divorced, been born and died. An apartment changed hands on average twice a year although, in this particular building, this was mainly the rentals on the lower floors.

Like a long‐running play on Broadway, the set stayed largely the same, but the cast moved on from time to time, and was replaced. The board met, once a month, and discussed replacing the risers, and pigeons on the parapets. They interviewed potential new owners, poring over their financial statements and references; they squabbled with the management company, and mollified people who complained about the noise and their faulty heating and the renovations happening above their heads.

The real estate brokers would be in Eve and Ed’s apartment tomorrow, extolling the virtues of the in‐unit laundry and the stainless‐steel appliances. The furniture had been wrapped and packed and driven to the docks to be put in a container, so it was empty. They wouldn’t bother to ‘stage’ this time. The New Year market was buoyant – they had three young couples lined up to see it. The law firm who owned the apartment had sent a team of cleaners in within an hour of them catching their cab to the airport. By the time they’d checked in and found a seat in the crowded departure lounge, there was almost no evidence that Eve and Ed had ever been there. No clue to the eight months they’d spent within those walls.

The city had left its mark on them. Deep red welts across their marriage and their dreams for their future. But the Gallaghers had left no mark on the city. A few containers and chairs on a roof terrace in the East 70s. A name in the records at the coroner’s office. But nothing much.

Perhaps no one ever did.

A sorority sister of Madison Cavanagh’s, Clara Morton, had bought Arthur Alexander’s apartment on the third floor. For a bargain. The walls were nicotine‐stained yellow, the kitchen units had been there since the 1950s and the whole place smelt of urine. She and Madison were testing paint colours on the grubby walls, before the contractors moved in next week. Clara worked for New York’s top fashion PR firm, and prided herself on her sense of colour. Strips of turquoise and aqua blue adorned the living room, with a vivid coral in the adjacent kitchen, where there would eventually be a wall of glossy lacquered units with stainless‐steel tops. It would never get dirty, because Clara would never cook. She barely ever ate. They’d opened all the windows to combat the stench, and icy cold air blew in at them, so they still wore their coats.

Madison didn’t know Arthur had died in the apartment – she’d never taken any notice of the old man when he was alive – but even if she had done, she wouldn’t have told Clara. People were funny about that stuff, and it might have put her off. And this was her idea in the first place. She was done with Charlotte Murphy, frump that she was. She’d only been being nice to her in the first place. And as for Emily and Jackson – let them have each other. She had buried the rejection deep. Not just Jackson – Emily and Charlotte, too. Since Halloween, Charlotte had frozen her out completely. She remembered being with them in the elevator, but she struggled to recall what had been said. Whatever it was, she’d been drunk. And she was probably only joking. No – she didn’t need it. She was a gorgeous girl, with a killer body and great style. She could do better than the lot of them. Clara would be a breath of fresh air – someone decent to have fun with at last.