Chapter 27
When I arrived at Amelie and Zack’s Chelsea apartment building, still almost hyperventilating with shock and anger, a woman was just leaving, a small white dog that looked like a series of cotton-wool balls joined together under her arm. She gave me a half-recognising smile and held the door open for me, so I smiled back and slipped into the lobby.
From a surprise point of view, good: I was going to see my sister for the first time at her door, rather than over the security video. From a time point of view, bad: I’d missed out on valuable seconds that I could have spent not having broken the news yet.
But I was here now and there was no point in delaying further. I stepped up to the elevator and pressed the up button, and the doors opened immediately (bad), so I stepped in and pressed the button for the fifth floor. Seconds later, I was in front of the apartment, a blank, glossy teal-coloured door with a brushed steel number screwed onto its surface.
I took a deep breath and knocked, and waited.
There was total silence for a few moments. The corridor was quiet and somehow sterile – there were no cooking smells, I couldn’t hear any TVs playing or voices laughing. It was like being on a stage set waiting for the curtain to rise.
Then the door opened and Amelie stood there, a look of blank enquiry on her face that was immediately replaced by surprise and then delight.
She squealed and hopped and flung her arms round me and hugged me so tight I almost dropped the coffees. She smelled different – presumably some fancy new American shampoo she’d starting using. She felt thinner than usual, her shoulders almost frail under the free hand I used to return her hug.
‘Oh my God. Lucy. It’s actually you. Is this real?’
I said, ‘I thought I’d surprise you.’
‘You have. Oh my God, it’s the best surprise ever. How did you find out the address? Did you ask Zack?’
Shit.I wasn’t ready to tell her I’d just seen her husband – not yet.‘I asked Mum. I didn’t want him to know I was here, either.’
That at least was true. But her excitement made me feel like the biggest fraud ever.
‘Come in. Let me show you our flat.’
She let me go, then changed her mind and hugged me again before letting go properly, turning round and leading me into the hallway. She was wearing stone-coloured yoga pants and a cropped cream jumper with over-long sleeves that almost covered her hands. In the gap between the trousers and the top I could see the knobbly ridge of her spine. Her hair was damp, piled on her head with a scrunchie, and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. Her skin was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes.
Still, she shone with pleasure at seeing me. I wondered how long that would last.
‘So here’s the kitchen,’ she said. ‘It’s just one end of the lounge, really, like you saw in the photos. Come on and I’ll show you the rest.’
The blinds were closed so the apartment was shadowy, but Amelie did something with a remote control and they whooshed up, revealing a view of another glass building opposite and the black, skeletal shapes of trees against the navy blue sky.
‘They’re all the same, imagine,’ she said. ‘I mean, not down to the cushions and things like that, but essentially, it’s like a filing cabinet for expats. Like being in Married at First Sight. Here’s the bathroom – all the towels and everything were here when we moved in, it was so weird. And that’s the bedroom but I can’t show you because it’s a total pigsty. But took at the amazing storage in the hallway – all the cleaning stuff and the ironing board and everything just vanishes behind these sliding doors, and that’s where you keep your coats and things in winter, isn’t it genius?’
‘Amazing,’ I enthused, my stomach feeling heavier and heavier by the minute.
‘Have you eaten? I had a salad earlier and I’ve got nothing in. But there’s wine? Or water?’
‘Water would be great.’
She poured two glasses from a filter jug and handed me one. Then we sat down next to each other on the sofa, and I realised that now I had no choice but to tell her why I was there.
‘So how are things?’ I began. ‘You look–’ she looked tired, drawn and too thin, and I was worried. But I wasn’t going to jump right in and say that. ‘You look like you’ve really settled in here. Tell me all about everything.’
Amelie shrugged, taking a sip from her water glass.
‘There was nothing to do really,’ she said. ‘I mean, I was all excited about going to Crate, Bath and Barrel or whatever it’s called and picking stuff for the flat and making it all homey, and even having some our things taken out of storage and shipped over, but it was all here. Literally every last pillowcase. So it’s been a bit of a let-down on that front.’
‘But what about the other fronts?’ I pressed. ‘How’s Zack? What’s being married like?’
‘Honestly, it’s pretty much the same as not being.’ She returned her glass to the coffee table and gnawed at a ragged cuticle for a second. ‘Only we see even less of each other. Zack only ever gets home at stupid o’clock and after the first week I gave up waiting for him and started going to bed. I’ve been so fucking tired. But he says that’s what it’s like here, everyone works long hours and if you don’t you look like a slacker, so…’
Yeah, Zack, I thought, a slacker’s exactly what you looked like earlier, snogging your colleague in a bar. A sleazy, cheating, rat-faced slacker.
‘Why’ve you been so knackered?’ I asked. ‘Are you over that stomach bug thing you had?’
She looked down at her hands and half-shrugged. ‘Kind of. Mostly. But tell me about you, come on, Lucy. What made you decide to come out here on your own? I can’t believe you did. Who’s looking after Astro?’
‘Ro— A colleague. He lives really close by so it’s so bother for him.’
‘Are you sure he works in online journalism and isn’t actually a fully qualified vet?’ Amelie teased. ‘You must really rate the guy to trust him with your cat. But anyway, how’s work going? How’s being Adam? Do you know absolutely everything about the male psyche now?’
Here it was – the opening I’d been searching for. I needed to take it, right now, otherwise my sister and I would still me making chitchat about bed linen and cat-sitters in half an hour, and I wouldn’t have told her what was going on or found out what was wrong with her.
‘So here’s the thing, Am,’ I took a big gulp of water. ‘The Adam column’s been going really well. I’ve discovered this amazing hack, which I’ll tell you all about some other time. But Adam got – I got – an email last week that was kind of different from all the others.’
‘Different how? Did it say, “I’ve realised I’ve been a dick to women all my life and that’s why I can’t sustain a satisfying and meaningful relationship. Tell me how to be better.”?’
I laughed. ‘Nope, haven’t had that one yet. But it was weird, and I think you’ll get why I thought so. Hold on, I’m going to read it to you.’
Amelie watched, her face curious but unconcerned, as I rummaged in my bag for my phone and then rummaged through my phone until I found the letter from Adam’s anonymous correspondent and started reading it aloud.
When I got to the bit about Porsche, a little smile flickered on her face – That’s the same car as Zack’s got. Then the smile disappeared at the mention of moving to a city his wife didn’t know well, and was replaced by a frown when I read the words ‘putting in the hours’. When I reached the bit about the wife being clingy and needy, Amelie had started gnawing her cuticle again, so I stopped reading.
She tilted her had like she was waiting for me to go on, then when I didn’t, she said slowly, ‘So let me get this straight. You had a letter from a guy who sounded a bit like Zack, and he thinks his marriage might might be going tits up, so you came out here to tell me I need to get my shit together or Zack’s going to get fed up with me?’
’No!’ I was appalled at how badly how she’d misunderstood – how badly I’d handled things so far. ‘It’s not that. It’s… The thing is, Am – and I don’t want to read you the next bit so please don’t make me – he goes on to say he’s back in touch with an ex-girlfriend at work and he thinks he might still have feelings for her, and I really didn’t want that to happen to you.’
Her face had gone all still now. ‘So you came out here to tell me to get my shit together or Zack’ll fuck another woman?’
‘Amelie, no. Honestly. I… By the time I’d finished reading that, I was about ninety nine per cent sure that the guy writing the letter was Zack. And I was really really worried. Not that you were doing anything wrong, because you’re not, but that he was – or was about to. So I – I mean, the advice Adam gave was to support you, so here I am. And also to find out whether my suspicions about what he was getting up to were correct or not, and I thought that the best way to do that was to come over and see, you, yeah, you know, here I am.’
‘I see.’ I saw, too – I saw that this wasn’t landing a bit well. I wished I knew how to backtrack and explain properly, but I didn’t. ‘So you thought you’d come and ask me if I think my husband’s having an affair?’
’No, I—’ Don’t mention the bloody sleuthing, Lucy. Not now. ‘Well, do you, Am? I mean, if you think about what that guy wrote to Adam, does that sound to you like something Zack might write?’
Her face was still all stony and her voice was cold. She didn’t even look – or sound – like my sister at that point. ‘Zack has many colleagues he works closely with. Some of them he’s worked closely with in the past. He’s probably dated at least one of them. So circumstantially, if you wanted to make the fact fit your pet theory, you probably could.’
I really, really wished I could turn this around – or, even better, turn around myself, walk out of the door and go downstairs and press the buzzer and try again from the beginning.
As gently as I could, I said, ‘Am, I’m so sorry. I’m messing this up. I love you. I came here because I love you and I was worried about you. And now I know I was right to worry. It’s not just about Zack – what he is or isn’t doing. It’s about you. You seem sad. You said you were homesick. You’ve lost weight. If there’s something wrong, please talk to me. Forget about Adam. I’m your sister and I’ll do absolutely anything to make you feel better.’
At last, the rigid mask that Amelie’s face had become seemed to crack, then dissolve. She made a sound that started out as a croak and turned into a wail and then buried her head in her hands and burst into tears. I scooted across the sofa and hugged her tight, stroking her back and shushing her until the first flood of sobs started to ease off, and then I dashed into the bathroom and brought back a fancy gold-foiled cube of tissues and put them on the sofa between us, and held one of her hands while she mopped her eyes with the other.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Please tell me. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.’
Amelie looked at me, her eyes all red and damp and her mouth turned down like the sad face emoji. ‘I’m having a baby.’
My heart soared and then immediately plummeted again. This was the best news – but it had come at the worst possible time.
‘Am! You’re pregnant! No way! I mean, that’s… you do want to be, right? You’ve always wanted babies.’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘Like, yeah, I’ve always wanted kids. But maybe not right now. Not here. God, Luce, I’ve been so fucking sick you wouldn’t believe. I’ve been puking twenty four-seven. That’s why I’ve hardly left the apartment. And I’ve been so lonely. And I haven’t told Zack yet because I wanted telling him to be a happy thing, and right now I feel so awful I don’t know if I even want to keep it. I mean, if I feel as sick as this, does it mean there’s something wrong?’
‘Of course it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong! I’m not a fricking midwife, but come on. Look at the Princess of Wales – sick as a dog all through her pregnancies and her kids are fine. Have you seen anyone?’
She shook her head. ‘Our health insurance is through Zack’s work and I haven’t got the details and I didn’t want to ask him because – you know.’
‘But you were being sick the whole time! Surely he’d want you to see a doctor? In case you’d picked up some rare tropical disease on honeymoon or something.’
‘I’m not so bad when he’s here. It’s in the mornings mostly and he’s already left for work. And the afternoons, if I’m honest. And by the time he gets in at night, like I said, I’m in bed already. That’s the only time it stops. So he knows I haven’t been well but he doesn’t know it’s been this bad.’
‘Do you know how far along you are?’
‘I think it must’ve happened on honeymoon, so what – three months? I wanted to tell him properly, with like balloons or something, and make it all special. But how could I do that, when I’m feeling so vile and wishing it wasn’t happening?’
Shit. Shit shit shit. How on earth, knowing this, could I tell her the full extent of what I knew about Zack?
I said, ‘I really think you need to get checked out. Tell Zack about the spewing – you don’t have to tell him about the baby, although if he’s got any sense he’ll work it out. Ask for you health insurance card or whatever you need. Find out who you need to see. I’ll come with you, if you want. It’ll be okay.’
And then we can work out what to do about Brooke bloody MacIntryre.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I do need to talk to him. I’ve honestly just been feeling so awful and sad I haven’t been able to think straight. I’ll ask him tonight and I’ll Google how you get to see a doctor here, and we can go tomorrow.’
‘That sounds like a great plan. And maybe you and I can go out tomorrow, if you’re feeling up for it, just for a bit of a walk or whatever.’
Amelie was feeling stronger – more herself. We had a plan. That was what mattered – the rest could all wait. Relief washed through me – I’d done the right thing, coming here. I was here for my sister. And then it all went pear-shaped.
Amelie said, ‘Hang on. You said, back then, about your suspicions being correct. What suspicions, exactly?’
‘Just – you know. The letter. The colleague. It doesn’t matter really.’
‘It does matter. When did you get to New York? What’ve you been doing?’
‘Um… Couple of days ago. Just sightseeing, really.’
‘Luce. You’ve been here a couple of days and you only came to see me today? Why?’
My tongue felt like it was tying itself in knots. Lying to Mum to get Amelie’s address (I’d told her I wanted to send her flowers) had been bad enough – lying to Amelie was impossible. I was right when I’d observed that she was more herself – the take-no-prisoners Amelie was, if not back, a whole lot nearer to the surface than she’d been when I arrived at the apartment.
‘I… you know. What the advice said, about seeing if it was true, what the letter said. If it was Zack who wrote it. But it wasn’t, obviously.’
‘Why obviously?’
‘Because you trust him. He’s your husband. And you’re having a?—’
‘Lucy. Me being pregnant changes the future, but it doesn’t change the past. If Zack was cheating on me, me being up the duff wouldn’t make him uncheat. And besides, that’s not what you said when you walked in here. You came out to New York to find out if what you were worried about was true, didn’t you? Not just to see me.’
‘Well, I…’
‘And it took you two days to get in touch. Therefore, you were busy doing other stuff. Like stalking Zack. Weren’t you?’
I felt like a specimen in Biology class, pinned between two sheets of glass, a microscope trained on me. Amelie’s pregnancy was a surprise – a surprise I wanted to welcome, but wasn’t sure I could. It changed things, but it also made me realise how totally ill prepared I’d been for this encounter with her. I’d imagined coming to the flat, all guns blazing with righteous indignation, breaking the news of Zack’s infidelity to Amelie and then – what?
Now that I was actually here, I could barely recall what I’d expected to happen. That she’d react with gratitude towards me and fury towards Zack, and I’d whisk her away, rescuing her from a future with a liar and a cheat who she couldn’t possibly still love now that she knew the truth.
But now, I realised that what I wanted – perhaps even my duty, as her sister – was to protect her from the truth. Except she wasn’t going to let me do that.
‘What did you do?’ Amelie pressed remorselessly on. ‘Did you hack his phone or something?’
‘No, of course I didn’t.’ It was a denial, and an honest one – but as soon as I said it, I realised it was an admission of something else.
‘So you followed him. You figured it out, like one of your lateral thinking puzzles. My sister, the clever one. Let me guess – you went to his work and you couldn’t get in, because the security’s so tight. So you looked on his social media to see where he’d be going after work, and you went there. The Campbell, right? That’s where he’s been the past couple of Thursday nights.’
Amelie’s voice wasn’t raised, but I could see she was blazing angry. I felt helpless, ashamed and afraid – what had I started? Why the hell hadn’t I thought this through? Why hadn’t I stayed in London with my cat and left Amelie to work out for herself what was going on, and been there to pick up the pieces afterwards? Then, at least, her anger would have been directed at Zack instead of misdirected at me.
She was going to get the full story out of me, whether I liked it or not. So, I figured, at least I could try and tell it my way – try and minimise the fall-out.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re right. That’s exactly what I did. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but it was what Adam said to do and I didn’t have a better plan. I went there and I waited for him and eventually he turned up.’
‘He turned up with a woman?’
I nodded miserably.
‘Who? Don’t tell me you don’t know, because you do.’
‘Brooke MacIntyre,’ I muttered.
‘Right. And what happened?’
‘Nothing,’ I lied desperately. ‘Well, hardly anything. They had a couple of drinks. They looked like they were friends. Having a good time, you know? I watched them for a bit then I left.’
Amelie shook her head and folded her arms, her hands buried deep in the sleeves of her jumper. ‘Does not compute. They kissed, didn’t they? Or she was all over him like a rash. Or they left together, or something. If you hadn’t seen anything, you wouldn’t be giving me chapter and verse of this letter that whoever it was wrote to Adam.’
‘Okay. They kissed. I saw them. Amelie, it was probably nothing. It was probably just?—’
‘And what’s this about following Adam’s advice, anyway? You are Adam. You decide what advice he gives. It was you telling yourself that the right thing to do was come out here and stalk my husband.’
‘It wasn’t!’ I blurted out. ‘It was the bot. The AI Adam.’
‘The what?’
‘I’ve been using one of those generative chat things to help with problems when I’m stuck,’ I said. ‘Just to give me ideas. Because I kind of understand men a bit now, but sometimes I think I still don’t understand them at all. So I don’t always know how to answer their questions. You know that. That’s why I needed your help. But then when you couldn’t help any more, I had to find another way, and that was it.’
‘So let’s get this straight.’ Amelie fixed me with her clear, hazel stare. Her eyes were still red from crying and it made the irises look brighter, almost green by contrast. I could feel my own eyes beginning to sting with tears, and I wondered if they looked a different colour from usual, too. ‘You’re just blown my marriage apart on the basis of some AI-generated nonsense. You’re telling me I need to leave the father of my child because of fucking GenBot. Nice work, Lucy.’
‘I’m not telling you you need to leave him,’ I protested. But it was hopeless. There was no point trying to justify what I’d done, or convince Amelie that she needed to focus her anger on Zack, or Brooke, or anyone but me.
‘Damn right, you don’t understand men,’ she went on. ‘Or you’d know that this stuff happens. It doesn’t mean anything. Once I tell him about the baby, he’ll kick this Brooke to the kerb so fast she won’t know what’s hit her. I’ll see to that. I might never forget it, but I’ll probably forgive him, if he begs hard enough.’
‘But what about…?’
‘You?’ she shrugged, a weary movement of her thin shoulders under the cream cashmere. ‘I don’t know, Lucy. You’ve done enough damage for the time being, don’t you think? You should probably go.’
‘Amelie, please. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to damage anything. Forget I ever came. Forget I ever saw anything.’
She looked at me coldly and got to her feet. ‘Don’t be stupid. How can I ever forget this?’
I stood, too, desperately reaching out to hug her, but she shifted away like she was made of smoke, and my arms closed around nothing.
‘Goodbye, Luce,’ she said.
Blinded by tears, I turned and left the apartment. By the time I made it out into the street, I was sobbing so hard it felt like I’d never stop.