The Family Remains(18)
I pause for lunch at a brunch restaurant with a vaulted ceiling hung with silk wisteria blossom and I order a Salvadorian quesadilla, a masala chai and a turmeric and saffron sparkler. I find I have a hearty appetite after feeling a little queasy earlier and scrape my plate clean. Halfway through, a boy with peroxide hair asks me how my breakfast is tasting. I tell him it is tasting very good and he looks delighted for me.
And then I am back pounding the streets, a sheen of sweat beginning to bloom on my skin. I feel so far from home. I’ve never before been further afield than the Canary Islands. But Chicago feels pleasantly European, and I can pretend that I’m in a cool corner of Paris maybe, or Berlin.
By 4 p.m. my phone tells me that I have walked nearly eighteen thousand steps since awaking. I sit on a bench with a bottle of water and take stock. How long can I keep this up for? How many more steps can I take? I’m starting to look bedraggled and slightly alarming. I really should head back to my hotel and take a shower. But I’ve invested so much time and energy into my search today, I can’t stop now. I take my phone from my pocket to check my email and see that I’ve missed a call. I do not understand how I’ve missed a call, but then I notice that I’ve had my phone on silent all day. I call up voicemail messages.
‘Er, hi. This is Lyle. We met last night? You were looking for a guy named Finn? Well, I don’t know if this means anything to you, but I have a friend named Joe who rents an apartment from a guy named Finn who lives in Africa? I described the guy in your photo and he said it sounds like him? I can give you his number? If you like? Call me.’
I blink. A huge smile is trying to break out all over my slightly sunburned face, but I rein it in.
I find Lyle’s number in my missed calls, and I press it.
17
Lucy’s phone rings while she’s cleaning Henry’s kitchen the following morning. Her heart stops and starts again at the thought that it might be Henry. But it’s a St Albans prefix and it’s not Libby, so it must be an estate agent. She replies slightly breathlessly. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi! It’s Max Blackwood, from Raymond & Cobb. Have you got a minute?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes. I do.’
‘Well, I’ve been going back and forth a bit with the vendors and they have said that if you can stick another fifty K on the end of your offer, they will take it off the market for you.’
‘So …’ She can’t arrange the numbers in her head into anything that makes sense.
‘Yes, that’s one million and fifty thousand.’
‘Right. OK.’
It seems crazy to her, how little the extra fifty thousand seems in the context of all those other zeros. She should fight it. She should object. But she wants this house and she doesn’t want to do anything to delay getting this house so she finds herself replying, very quietly, but resolutely, ‘Yes. OK. That’s fine.’
‘So you’re happy for me to say that you’ll accept?’
‘Yes. I am very happy for you to say that. But on the understanding that they will do everything within their power to push this through as quickly as possible. Please.’
‘I will absolutely mention that to them, Lucy. Absolutely. I cannot see any reason for them to drag their feet.’
After the call ends, Lucy rolls her head back on her neck and says a silent prayer to the gods of house buying. Please, she thinks, please after all these years and years and years, give us a home where we can finally be safe. Please.
18
December 2016
Dominique’s party emptied out, as directed, at midnight. Dominique stood at the front door, seeing people into the lift, her high heels long kicked off, yawning theatrically. Rachel leaned into her ear and said, ‘Text me tomorrow.’ Dominique said, ‘I sure will.’ Then they hugged and waved goodbye and Michael and Rachel climbed into an Uber and headed back to Michael’s apartment.
It was a mild night for December, and they asked the driver to drop them by the river. The still surface shone with reflected streetlights. Behind them the tall sash windows of big Victorian houses glittered and glowed with lit-up Christmas trees. Rachel pulled her coat tight around her and nestled herself against Michael’s shoulder as they walked. Her feelings were muddled and strewn in random places, as though she’d been ransacked. She felt intensely that she was in love with Michael, in love with him in a way that she’d never imagined being in love with anyone, let alone a rather cocky older man with baggage and secrets who was leaving the country in three and a half months. All she wanted when she was with Michael was to touch him, smell him, be held by him. In shared spaces she wanted his gaze upon her, his attention, his arm around her, his thoughts consumed by her. She missed him with an ache on the rare occasions when they were not together. If he took too long to pick up a call or reply to a message she fretted over it, convinced that he was having second thoughts about their relationship, that her lustre had dimmed somehow, that their bond was fading. The relief she felt when the text reply came or the call was answered or the flowers were handed to her with a flourish, when his fingers were in her hair, his arms around her waist, his lips against her lips, was so powerful that it sometimes made her gasp.
She would look at herself in a mirror occasionally, after one of these pathetic, desperate interludes, and wonder who she was. Was she still Rachel Gold, the ice princess, the ball-breaker, the statuesque brunette who could never find a man to meet her high ideals? Or was she now somebody completely different? Had there in fact never been one finite version of herself? Had she always contained multitudes? Had Simpering Rachel who clutched men’s arms at parties in order to repel a competitor for his attentions been there all along? How awful, she thought to herself. How absolutely awful.