Chapter 15
15
London
January 2010
When I got back to the flat in Kentish Town, cold and bleary and dragging my bags, Andre had stuck a poster for Chelsea Made on our door. He’d even cut out one of the girls’ perfect blond heads and put in a photo of my face instead. I laughed and hugged him and tried to pretend I was glad to be home.
I’d ended up staying one more week in Saint-Tropez, after New Year’s, working with Pippa till she left for boarding school. I wired Andre the rent and missed my first week of classes. It’d been an easy decision: another week of excellent pay, another week in paradise, another week with Theo.
The strongest aphrodisiac is a ticking clock, and Theo and I both felt it. Not that we needed anything to boost our chemistry, of course—it had only grown, after New Year’s, after we realized that lying in bed every night, tangled in each other and Egyptian cotton, was much more fun than simply flirting. Each night at his hotel, when I was determined to get dressed, go home, be the good houseguest and tutor I should be, he would put his hands on my face and kiss me slow and deep, tug my bottom lip between his teeth, pull me back to bed. Convince me to stay longer, stay for one more, stay the night.
Miserable on the flight home, I’d put aside my coursework and read a few chapters of Sanditon , Austen’s last novel, left unfinished when her health declined. I’d read it before, but this time I felt like I was in the book—like I was the young woman who goes to stay with a privileged family by the sea and gets caught up with them, a bit seduced by their world. It felt romantic, what had happened to me. That feeling didn’t last long in London.
I’d been home for three weeks, finding my way back into routine. I picked up my old tutoring students and a few new ones, plus a ten-week class at a boarding school outside Woking, an hour from London. On the train, and at night, I tried to keep up with my reading for class.
But when I let myself lie back in bed, surrounded by books, it was the nights in Saint-Tropez I thought of. The gloss of wine and newness over everything. The fireworks wheeling over the water, over us, Theo’s hand on my neck, pulling me in at midnight. A reprieve from the whole length of my life, a vacation from myself and the person I’d always been until those few brightly lit weeks.
“Oi,” Andre called, rapping his knuckles on my mostly closed door. “You’ve got post, Cinderella.”
“You’re going to have to stop with that,” I said, crossing to open the door. “My hair is starting to smell of Tom’s dirty socks again. The fairy tale is officially over.”
“Nah, don’t say that!” Andre said, slapping me lightly with the envelope before handing it over. “Prince Charming just hasn’t been round yet. You know, with the shoe.”
I gestured to the stack of Tom’s empty pizza boxes in the kitchen. “I don’t think this is really his scene.”
For work, Theo split his time between three cities: London, Frankfurt, Madrid. Two weeks in each office, typically. I’ll ring you, he’d said.
Andre shrugged. “I guess we can always catch him on the telly. New season starts up soon.”
I laughed and nodded, but my stomach had squeezed into an unhappy knot. Probably Andre was right. Probably the next I’d see of Theo was on-screen. His tall, unmistakable figure in the back of whatever party or fundraiser dinner would be the grand finale of that episode. Maybe he’d have his arm around some waif of a girl with bird ankles and honey highlights. And all would be right with the world, and I would not be part of it.
I pushed some books aside and flopped down on the bed, unfolding the letter from the envelope. It was from Queen Mary: my marks from the two course essays I’d written in Saint-Tropez. I held up the numbers for Andre to see, one hand hiding my face.
“I went all the way to bloody Mile End to deliver those essays for you, and that’s what you get? Absolutely criminal,” he said. Trying to make me laugh.
I could not laugh. Unsophisticated and lacking depth, the essay feedback said. No new ideas. Undergraduate-level work.
How had I let this happen? I’d dashed off the essays, rushed them to get back to the better things—a soak in the hot tub, a gourmet dinner, a day down at the port, exploring. But nothing was more important than getting my degree, my ticket to stay. If I failed, I’d have to go home, and—
My throat tightened around a small sob. I swallowed it down, but Andre saw.
“Anna, it’s okay,” he said. “You’ll have plenty more papers.”
“More undergraduate-level ones, I’m sure,” I said, tugging up the bedsheet to wipe at my eyes. “I’ve never had a bad grade on anything, ever.” I’d never had the things other kids had, growing up. But good grades, that was the one thing I could always count on.
“Hey, these’re still passing grades,” he said, sitting down next to me on the bed. “No real harm, right? As long as you do better on the next ones, you’ll be grand.”
My chest felt tight and hard, like a stone. I still didn’t have a topic for my dissertation, even though our proposals were due at the end of the month.
“C’mon,” Andre said, taking the letter from my hands. “Let’s go out and get a drink. You’re halfway to a master’s degree now, that’s all this letter says. Halfway there.”
I sighed. “Can we get curry chips?”
“We can get curry chips.”
I let him pull me up from the bed and into a tight hug. Over my shoulder he said, “Six weeks with the chef and your Chelsea boy, and you’re soft as a two-minute egg. My mother would shake you till your teeth rattled.”
“What would I do without you, Andre?”
He laughed. “If all Cinderella wished for was curry chips, that fairy godmother job’d be a cinch.”
We were in a booth at the Abbey, just starting our first pints, when I saw a missed call on my phone. Mrs. Wilder.
“Oh no,” I said. “Oh no.”
“What is it?”
I felt heat in my cheeks, and then it was everywhere. Nervous, sweaty dread. “Pippa said she’d be getting her test scores back this week. They’d only call me if they were really awful.”
Andre shoved me a bit. “Don’t be stupid. Go outside and ring them back. You don’t know it’s bad news.”
“They’d’ve just emailed me the results if they were good.”
“Go,” Andre said. “No chips till you come back.”
I left the noisy pub and turned left up Bartholomew, walking toward the health center, until the sounds of Kentish Town Road fell away. I found the missed call and tapped it.
“Anna! There you are,” Mrs. Wilder exclaimed in her singsongy voice. “Pippa’s done it! In the seven hundreds all across the board, ninetieth percentile. Just brilliant.”
“What? Really?”
“You know she likes to play it cool, but I could tell she was really chuffed. You know she’s had her heart set on NYU for years. Chuffed to bits.”
“Those are definitely NYU scores,” I said. The relief was like a deep breath, opening behind my ribs.
“We can’t thank you enough, Anna.”
“She did the work. She studied really hard. Even when she didn’t want to,” I laughed. That had been every day. “I’m so happy for her.”
“We all are. But listen, that’s not the only reason I called. I wanted to ask you something. A sort of favor.”
“A favor?” I couldn’t hide the surprise in my voice.
“Well, you remember the house in Highgate? My sister was staying there, with her kids, but they’ve had to dash off to San Francisco just now, and the place needs looking after. It’s not a lot of house to take care of, Anna—you’d just need to water the indoor plants, check the mail, keep an eye on things. And there should be fish to feed in the koi pond, if the kids haven’t killed them off.”
“Of course,” I said. “I can stop by and check on things. That’s fine. Are there keys somewhere?”
Mrs. Wilder laughed. “No, dear, I’m saying we’d love you to stay there. You know these old houses, I worry about a pipe bursting or something. Saves us paying a service to look after it. I think you’d like it, and we’d like to have you in it. I’ll know the place is in good hands while we’re all scattered to the winds.”
I put my hand out and caught the wrought iron fence next to me.
“Anna, are you still there?”
“I’m here. I’m just—just a bit surprised.”
Mrs. Wilder laughed again. “Oh, don’t be. I think you’ll find it such a nice quiet place for your studies. Faye stayed there when she was in uni, you know. All her friends lived in the neighborhood, and it’s just a quick trot down to King’s Cross.”
“Right,” I said. “That makes sense. I haven’t spent much time in Highgate.” Just across the Heath, but a different world entirely.
“You’ll love it. Probably see some familiar faces .” Mrs. Wilder said this pointedly, with what sounded like a knowing smile. Theo had not escaped her notice. Did he still spend time in Highgate when he was back in London? Did all of them?
“Well, I’ve got to run, Anna, we’ve got tickets to a thing. You’ll let me know?”
I shook myself back to the present, the sidewalk and the fence under my fingers. “I will, absolutely. And I’ll email Pippa, give her my congratulations. Such good news.”
“The best news,” Mrs. Wilder said. “Ta, dear.”