Chapter 27
‘Time for New Year gifts!’ Anneka called from the bathroom, the door wide open.
‘But it’s not even midnight yet!’ I called back.
She pulled the flush and returned to the living room. ‘Yeah, I know, but I’m getting tired. Aren’t you getting tired too, Mum?’
Anneka made a big deal of showing her watch to Mum and tapping its face with one of her long fingernails.
‘Oh! Yes, yes I am,’ Mum said.
I shrugged. ‘Okay, let me just grab your presents from my room.’
The two of them had arrived at my flat at eight-ish and we’d spent the last few hours going through our photos from New York, reliving the funniest bits – which, to be fair to Mum, absolutely included her foraging faux pas and subsequent ambulance ride – while we shared an extra-large sushi platter and slugged cider.
Mum was back to full health, having had the all-clear from the GP a couple of days ago. To her absolute delight, she’d gone semi-viral in her foraging Facebook group after sharing her cautionary Central Park tale, complete with photographs.
‘Right then!’ I said, plonking myself down on the sofa between them and handing them their gifts.
‘Aren’t you guys exchanging gifts this year?’ I asked, looking around with a frown; usually, all our New Year gifts would appear in a simultaneous frenzy.
‘We did it earlier, didn’t we, Anneka?’ Mum said, her voice sounding suspiciously precise.
‘That’s right, yes. I gave Mum a voucher for a new chair burlesque class that’s starting in the pub, and Mum gave me a Ouija board.’
I knew better than to express surprise at either of these gifts, but I couldn’t dismiss a weird sense of unease that was creeping up my spine – there was something odd about the way they were speaking to each other.
Anneka unwrapped her present from me first – a framed photo of the three of us drinking our Manhattan cocktails in the New York bar.
‘This is so perfect, Flo. Thank you.’ She rested her head on my shoulder and I wrapped my arm around her, squeezing her tight. ‘Look, Mum,’ she said, passing the picture frame to her.
‘Gorgeous. Right! My turn.’ Mum tore the wrapping from a very long and very thin rectangular box, before extracting a substantial tree branch from it. ‘Wait! This isn’t…?’
‘No, it’s not your Central Park stick, but it’s the closest match I could find from the park when I went there with Laurie and the kids the other day.’
‘It’s almost identical!’ Mum cried, standing it up and doing a lap of the sofa with it. ‘This is the best gift I could have wished for. I knew you’d come round to foraging in the end! Come here, Flo.’
I stood up and she gave me a hug, squeezing my entire body this time, not just my thumb.
‘Thank you,’ she said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear after she released me. She maintained eye contact with me for a couple of seconds before shaking herself to attention.
‘Right then! Anneka, is it time?’ Mum said, as I collapsed back into the sofa.
Anneka glanced at her watch, before locking eyes with Mum and nodding once, decisively.
My stomach plummeted to my toes – I knew for sure now that mischief was afoot.
‘Umm, what the hell’s going on?’ I asked, looking between them.
‘We know you don’t like surprises…’ Anneka began, causing me to experience the biggest wave of déjà vu in my life.
‘Omigod, please don’t tell me we’re about to jet off to Tokyo or something?’
‘Haha, no. But an aeroplane has been involved in our New Year gift to you. Mum – would you like to do the honours?’
‘Yes, I would,’ Mum said, extracting a plain envelope from her handbag and handing it to me with a manic grin on her face.
Anneka stood up next to Mum so they could both look down at me as I tore it open and removed a piece of card from inside, gasping when I saw what was on the front of it.
It was a cartoon, hand-drawn in Ethan’s unique style.
It depicted an illustrated version of Ethan sitting on an aeroplane, sweating anxiously, next to a giant rasher of bacon. The caption read:
At least it’s not an egg.
I snorted, flipping the postcard over to read the message. But all it said were four words:
star.butter.kind
Midnight?
Wait, what?!
With shaking hands, I inputted the words into my what3words app. The location that appeared made me jump to my feet.
‘He’s here, in Bath?!’
‘Yes!’ they both said, jumping up and down, clutching each other.
I looked at the time – it was eleven minutes to midnight. ‘But, how…? When…? Fuck, I have so many questions!’
‘I’m sure you do, but there’s no time!’ Anneka said, chucking me my coat and kicking my Converse in the vague direction of my feet.
I pulled it all on, briefly inspecting my appearance in the mirror above the mantelpiece – Anneka’s insistence on an impromptu make-up session earlier now made a lot more sense. I looked vaguely decent, thank God.
Is this actually happening?
I turned wordlessly to Mum and Anneka, and they both answered my silent question with encouraging nods. I bundled them both into my arms.
‘Thank you thank you thank you. But I’m going to need a full debrief when I get back on how you made this happen,’ I said into their necks.
‘Hell, no, we won’t be here,’ Mum said, scrunching up her nose. ‘Once we’ve done your washing-up, Anneka’s heading downstairs to Marcie’s and I’m heading back to Scarnbrook – the last thing the pair of you will need is us greeting you when you get back.’ She was still clutching her branch.
‘But how are you going to get home? You’ve been drinking cider all night.’
Mum and Anneka looked at each other conspiratorially before replying in union. ‘It was Appletiser!’
The three of us shrieked with delight while I wrapped a scarf around my neck and they bundled me out of the door.
‘Onwards, not backwards, Flo! Go get him!’ Mum called at the top of her lungs from the top of the staircase as I stepped out into the cold air.
That’s exactly what I intended to do.
I didn’t need to check the map to know where Ethan would be – the three words had pinpointed a glorious spot just outside Bath Abbey, a leisurely ten-minute downhill – and, thankfully, well-lit – stroll from here in regular circumstances.
But these circumstances were highly irregular and I didn’t have ten minutes – I had, shit! , seven.
I upped my pace, breaking into a light jog every so often, at one point nearly slipping on a patch of ice.
Slow down, Flora – it won’t matter if you’re a few minutes late, but it will matter if you break your leg.
But I didn’t want to be late. What I wanted, more than anything, was to get there for midnight. To see him – to kiss him – under the chiming bells of Bath Abbey as they rang in the new year. Cheesy? Yes. But also romantic as hell. And, as it turned out, I was a sucker for romance.
As I reached the foot of the hill, I checked the time, wheezing. It was four minutes to midnight. Fuck, I wasn’t going to make it.
And then fate visited yet again, this time in the form of a taxi, its rooftop light beautifully illuminated in orange.
Hold on for that happy ending.
Jem’s parting words that night in Brooklyn echoed in my mind as I stuck my hand out for the cab and it pulled to a stop.
‘Can you get me to Bath Abbey as quickly as possible, please?’
‘That’s barely a fare, love,’ the driver said, rolling his eyes.
‘Please, I’ll pay anything.’
‘What is this, a pursuit?’
‘Yes! A romantic one!’
‘Ah, what the hell, climb in – this one’s on me.’
It was less than a two-minute drive, and I was out the door before the car had even stopped, screaming ‘Thank you, thank you!’ to the driver as I sprinted the final hundred metres or so.
11:59.
And there he was. He was dressed in the suit he’d worn to his brother’s wedding, as if everything that had happened between that night and this one had been a time blip.
For a split second, we were still in New York – me having never freaked out on that Brooklyn sidewalk, and Mum never having willingly microdosed plant-based poison.
But all of that stuff had needed to happen, hadn’t it?
Mum’s hospital trip had made the three of us closer than we’d ever been.
And me leaving Ethan the way I did had brought him here.
As soon as he caught sight of me, Ethan jogged towards me for the final few metres and scooped me into his arms just as the first bell of midnight struck. And then time, sound and pretty much everything stopped, as if we were cocooned inside our own private noise-cancelled bubble.
‘How are you here?’ I asked, when we finally paused for breath, the bells still chiming, the sky lit up with fireworks.
‘You didn’t get my postcard?’ he murmured, re-wrapping my scarf around my exposed neck that had flapped loose during my desperate dash towards him.
‘Evidently I did,’ I said, removing a pair of gloves from my pockets and putting them on his freezing cold hands. ‘To be honest, the idea of a living, breathing rasher of bacon seems more likely than you getting on a plane.’
‘I made an extremely bold exception thanks to the intervention of a hypnotherapist. And I may be slightly high on edibles right now.’
‘Ethan!’
‘Worth it. Y’see, I actually got a cab to JFK that day you flew out, but this stupid brain of mine wouldn’t let me make it through the door. I’m sorry.’
‘Your brain isn’t stupid,’ I said, removing his tapping fingertip from his temple.
‘No?’
‘No. It’s just… yours.’ I brushed his floppy fringe away from his eyes and gazed into them.
He’s here. And I have so much I want to say to him.
In that instant, I remembered the speech I’d spent the last few days writing to untangle everything I was feeling, prompted by Anneka’s suggestion. The latest version was sitting in my email drafts – I’d been on the verge of sending it to Ethan yesterday, but I’d decided to wait until the new year.
Well, it’s the new year, now.
With shaking hands, I removed my phone from my pocket and opened up the draft email in question.
‘Are you okay, Flora?’
‘Umm, I have something I’d like to read to you if that’s okay?’
‘Flora Bell, are you about to… give a speech?’
‘Yeah, kinda.’
‘Oh, Flor, you don’t have—’
‘Please – I want to,’ I said, interrupting him.
‘Okay.’ He squeezed my shoulders before dropping his hands, sliding them into his pockets and looking at me, shyly but expectantly.
I took a small pace backwards, away from him, so my words would have the space they needed. It made me feel more powerful and more vulnerable at the same time. And then I began to speak.
‘Once upon a time, I was dragged to New York by my chaotic yet well-meaning mum and sister. I’d always dreamed of visiting New York at Christmas, but going to New York that Christmas was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
It had been the worst year of my life and I was perfectly happy to spend the season rotting on the sofa with an orange cat.
But, as soon as I arrived in the city, something inside me started to shift. And then I met you.
‘You didn’t know I’d been brought to the city you called home against my will. You thought I was a confident, put-together woman who’d flown across the Atlantic alone for a solo trip.’
Ethan opened his mouth to speak – no doubt to remind me about all the croissant crumbs – but I shot him a look and he closed it.
‘But the more time I spent with you, the more I began to feel like the woman I was pretending to be. Being with you felt easy. More than that, actually. Being with you finally made me feel… free.’
I paused for a moment, taking another gulp of air.
‘But then I freaked out. When you told me about what happened between you and your ex, I did my usual thing and automatically jumped to the worst possible conclusion. I took the wrong turn from that pavement – that sidewalk – in Brooklyn. I know that now.
‘Ethan.’ I took the tiniest step towards him.
‘The truth is this: I was lying when I said it would be easiest if we didn’t see each other again.
Because it’s not easy at all. I want to see you every single day.
I don’t regret a second of the time we spent together, even if – in a different version of this story – it could have ended much more happily.
‘But life isn’t a fairy tale. I’ve spent most of my career trying to write so-called “perfect” speeches – landing “key messages” within stories that have a clear beginning, middle and end.
This approach has worked pretty well for me over the years – after all, a “perfect” speech is practically guaranteed to elicit certain feelings, emotions and actions.
‘But, for the first time in my life, I’m writing a speech – this one – with absolutely no plan for what the ending might be. And… that’s okay. Because sometimes the words that need to be said are imperfect. And sometimes, three words alone can capture it all.
‘No, not those ones. Yet. These ones: Giving. Alive. Artist. Because that’s where our story started. I might not have any idea where it’ll end, or whether we’ll have a “happily-ever-after”, but there is an important question I need to ask you: Ethan, will you be my “happy for now”?’
Before the question was even fully out of my mouth, Ethan had closed the gap between us and taken me into his arms. ‘I will,’ he said into my hair. ‘The middle part of the story is always the best bit, anyway.’
I tugged him towards me for another kiss. A group of rowdy men who’d tumbled out of the nearest pub gave a chorus of ‘wahey!’s as they walked past us, and I waved one of my hands above my head to acknowledge them, without coming up for air.
‘Flora?’ Ethan asked after about a minute.
‘Mmm?’
‘Can we head indoors? I’m fucking freezing.’
‘Shit, yes! Let’s go back to mine.’
We walked back towards the main road. No sooner had I thought the word ‘taxi’ than one appeared in front of us, seemingly out of nowhere.
‘Hello again,’ the driver said – it was the same one who’d dropped me off minutes earlier, as if his cab was my personal carriage that had once been a pumpkin. ‘It all worked out, then?’ he asked. I grinned and nodded in response.
‘You know this guy?’ Ethan asked, confused, as we climbed into the back.
‘Welcome to England, where everyone knows everyone,’ I said, with a wink.
I gave the driver my address and settled in next to Ethan.
‘You dashed to the airport for me?’ I said, resting my head on his shoulder.
‘Ha, yeah, I did.’
‘You got on a plane? For me?’
‘Yup, I landed this morning. Your mum and sister – and your sister’s hypnotherapist friend – met me at Heathrow.’
‘WHAT?’
‘Yeah, I have a lot to catch you up on.’
‘I need to hear it all. How were you even in touch with them?’
‘I can’t believe I’m about to say these words, but a few days ago your sister reached out to me on LinkedIn…’