With Love from London(11)

“Hold on,” I heard my mother’s voice, whispering. “The daffodils are coming.”





“You had quite a nap,” the driver says, smiling through the rearview mirror. “But look, you woke up just in time.” He points ahead. “See it?”

I rub my eyes and peer out the window. Late-morning sunbeams pierce through dark clouds and shine onto a burst of color.

“A Sunday in Primrose Hill,” the driver says. “There’s nothing finer.”

I look out at tall, narrow townhouses and storefronts standing together in a row of pastel Easter-egg hues.

“See the high windows?” the driver says. “That’s Regency architecture, right there, though they were likely built in the Victorian era. These are miniature versions of the grand villas surrounding Regent’s Park.”

High windows, I think. That means high ceilings. A lofty room filled with sunshine sounds like just the balm my soul needs right now.

“And you’d never expect it so close to central London,” the driver says, “but Primrose Hill is at elevation. Sixty-three meters above sea level.”

I smile, grateful to have such a knowledgeable cabbie.

A few minutes later, he stops the car in front of a pale pink three-story building. A sign that reads THE BOOK GARDEN hangs above the street-level door. When a pigeon stops to peck its edge then flies off, I follow its ascent, noticing that the curtains are closed on the upper two floors. Shriveled flowers droop from the window boxes. It hardly looks real, any of it. The scene is something that might have been torn from the pages of a beloved old novel, as opposed to the reality of my own disconnected life.

“This must be it,” I say, paying the fare as the driver unloads my suitcases onto the curb.

“Welcome home,” he says.

“But I never said this was—”

“I think you’re going to like it here,” he interjects. “You’ll see.”

I turn around to take in this unfamiliar place, the setting of my mother’s life, the one she led without me. A long-haired cat is sunning himself in the window seat. Through the glass, I can almost hear his purr, as if to beckon me inside. But when I reach for the door handle, it’s locked. My inner clock is off, and I’d momentarily forgotten that it’s quite early on Sunday morning—much too early for a neighborhood bookstore to be open for business.

I walk around the building to a narrow pathway that leads to another entrance and fumble inside my bag until I find the building keys Bevins and Associates mailed me. As I unlock the door, the hinges screech open as if stretching after a long nap. I wrangle my suitcases inside the little foyer. No sense lugging them upstairs when I’ve already booked a room at a nearby hotel.

The stairs creak and groan beneath my feet as I make my way up to the first-floor flat, where I knock on the door to introduce myself to the tenant.

A woman about my age, in her mid-to-late thirties, answers with a cellphone pressed to her right ear; her striking dark curls frame her face like a halo as she fans away a plume of smoke in the air, then motions me inside. “For Christ’s sake,” she whispers. “Give me a hand, will you?”

She hands me two oven mitts and points to the oven, where I quickly pull out a pan and its unrecognizable culinary remains. Clearly, Sunday brunch has been ruined.

I cough, fanning a billow of smoke from my face as she mouths the words, “Thank you.” I look around the eclectic flat with bohemian furniture and colorful pillows scattered about. Vibrant framed artwork lines the walls and dozens of houseplants burst out of their pots as if they were in a rain forest and not a borough of London. By the window a yellow parakeet chirps from a bamboo cage.

“Yes, sir, absolutely, sir,” she says into the phone. “Right. I’ll make it happen. Consider it done. Goodbye, sir.” She ends the call and groans, tossing her phone onto the sofa as if it were a guilty accomplice in the unfortunate chain of events leading up to this moment.

“That was my boss,” she says. “He’s a certified asshole.” She throws her arms into the air. “He’ll be here in an hour,” she cries. “Now what am I going to do about brunch?”

“Your boss?”

“No,” she says, looking at me as if I were born yesterday. “Jeremy.”

I nod, feeling another wave of jet lag settle in. “Jeremy.”

“My date!”

“Right,” I say.

“He thinks he’s getting a five-star brunch,” she says. “He thinks I’m a gourmet chef!”

I glance at the charred pan. “And I take it that you might have fibbed a little?”

She sighs. “I mean, who would publish a frittata recipe on a food blog and not say how long to bake it?”

I try very hard not to laugh. Rest in peace, dear frittata.

“Well, so much for that. Now what am I going to do?”

I like her immediately. “There’s always…takeout?”

She shakes her head. “No, no, no! This is the third date. You never do takeout on a third date!”

“Oh,” I say, noticing even more potted plants in the kitchen, all of them a healthy green. “You can’t cook, but you’re definitely a plant whisperer.”

“It does seem that way,” she says with a sigh.