Twenty-Three
“Bienvenue, Mademoiselle Cooke, Monsieur. Welcome to the Carlton.” The manager is so solicitous, I half expect him to bow
as he leads us to the elevators that whisk us noiselessly up to our room. “I think you will be very happy with the accommodations.
We have put you in the Grace Kelly suite, which is one of our most popular.”
I catch Jerome’s eye in the elevator, and grin. A suite! And the Grace Kelly suite, no less! Even the private jet we took to get here feels surreal. From the minute we settled in, champagne
in hand before take-off, it has felt as if we are in a movie. I can’t stop grinning. Suddenly, I don’t feel sidelined and
shipped off to Europe, I feel lucky. And grateful.
The manager opens the door to the suite and steps aside as I try and wipe the grin off my face, try to appear as if this kind
of over-the-top luxury is normal. The living room is huge, champagne-colored, with a wood-paneled window nook and oval window
that looks out over the ocean, like being on a boat. A polished mahogany dining table comfortably seats six, with a low glass
bowl filled with orchids on the table. I spy a silver ice bucket with a champagne flute next to what looks like a large box
of gourmet chocolates.
The manager excuses himself, telling us to get in touch if we need anything. As soon as he’s gone, I fall on the bed, arms outstretched, giggling.
“Anyone would think you’d never stayed in a hotel like this in your life!” Jerome seems to be taking it in his stride.
“I haven’t often!” I sit up and look at the confusion on Jerome’s face. “You keep forgetting that although my father came
back into my life when I was five, and yes, I saw him when he was in the right mood, I was raised by a mother who had nothing,
thanks to him. It’s not that I haven’t been to luxury hotels, but not enough for me to ever have grown accustomed to them.”
I think back to when my father took me to Parrot Cay. I was so excited, I couldn’t believe that I had been invited on holiday
with him, and not just that, it was during the school year so my father was taking me out of school.
The kids in my class had always presumed I was privileged, despite me turning up to school in ratty clothes from flea markets
or seconds that stores were selling off cheap: cotton tops with fraying necklines, pants with different length legs, shoes
where the stitching had come undone. They thought I was deliberately playing down my wealth, not realizing that my father
paid for almost nothing, and my mother and I were always living on a shoestring.
My father didn’t pay the child support he was obligated to pay. He used money as a tool, withholding it when my mother screamed
at him, providing it for me directly when he felt magnanimous, but never for her. There was no rhyme or reason to when or
what he would pay; it felt whimsical, and unpredictable. And it kept us dancing on our toes just for him. It kept my mother
miserable, and that seemed to make my father happy. That was his cruel side, a side that I didn’t want to see, but when he
made my mother suffer, it was hard to ignore.
My school friends didn’t know that. It was enough for them that my father created ipryy, enough that when he came to pick me up from school, he ignored the long lines of SUVs patiently waiting for their children to come out, creeping forward inch by inch as cars slowly took off, one by one.
My father zoomed past them all in his midnight blue Porsche, screeching to a halt right in front.
I wanted the other kids to see me climbing into a Porsche, wanted them to see my father, the rule breaker.
I would take my time walking over to the car, aware that everyone was staring.
I would open the door and slowly, carefully, slip the fraying straps of my backpack off my shoulders, taking as long as possible so as many people as possible could see me.
I often felt ashamed that I couldn’t live up to my reputation, that most of the time I didn’t have the money to eat in the
cafeteria. I lied and said I had strange tastes, that I preferred to bring my own food from home. I’d look at their plates
and sneer, asking them how they could eat it as I unpacked my paper bag. Inside was a sandwich I cobbled together that morning,
sometimes sliced boiled eggs, usually butter and bologna, occasionally an orange swiped from one of the trees on our street.
I pretended this food was my choice, that I hated the cafeteria’s chicken fingers and pizza, didn’t like the sloppy Joe’s
and mozzarella sticks, but if anyone left some on their plate, I would wolf it down, barely tasting the crunchy orange coating
on the mozzarella, not noticing that the pizza left a sheen of slick orange grease on my fingers. No one questioned it, no
one asked why I was eating it if I didn’t like it. I demolished it all as if I was ravenous.
I was ravenous.
When my father wrote to the school to inform them he was taking me on an educational trip, I made sure everyone knew.
We weren’t just going on an educational trip (I never was entirely sure what the education was supposed to be, although I came back having learned all the yoga poses), we were staying at a luxury resort where Bruce Willis had a house!
We were flying private! The only downside, as far as I could tell, was that his friend Aurelie was coming, with her son, Caspar.
I had met Aurelie a few times. She seemed nice enough, but Caspar was a handful. I had babysat him one night when my father
took Aurelie out for dinner, and Caspar had refused to go to bed. When I insisted, he threw himself on the floor and screamed,
banging his fists on the floor as I tried to placate him with toys, then offers of watching television. Eventually, I silenced
him by handing over the Hershey bar in my purse, which he smeared all over my father’s furniture. He was five years old, and
no one had ever said no to him. I remember being astonished at how much power he had. If Aurelie tried to deny him something,
he would simply throw a tantrum and she would cave. If he was rude, calling my dad “a poopyhead,” Aurelie would laugh, her
giggle light and tinkling, as my father scowled.
Aurelie was, as most of the women who flocked around my father seemed to be, both blonde, and beautiful. She was also vegan,
a yoga teacher who read the I Ching and pulled tarot cards. She would regularly quote from self-help books, which infuriated my father. I wanted to tell her
that if she was serious about him, she should stop with the woo-woo quotes, but I also wanted to get rid of her, so I said
nothing.
The flight to Parrot Cay was a disaster. Casper kept running into the cockpit, trying to press buttons. The pilot sat him
on his lap for a while, but Casper wriggled away and kept tearing around the cabin.
My father and Aurelie disappeared for a “nap.” I turned on the television, loudly, to drown out any sounds I wouldn’t want
to hear, including Caspar. I should have known, as soon as they disappeared, that the reason for bringing me was to have me
babysit.
We had a private villa on the beach, which looked like three conjoined wooden huts with huge sliding doors in each section.
My bedroom had a four-poster bed, draped in sheer white muslin, steps from a large swimming pool set into a wooden deck in the beach.
There was a cabana beyond, with a large daybed.
It was the most tranquil and beautiful place I had ever seen.
My dad and Aurelie were in the bedroom on one side, I was on the other, and Caspar was in the third, although he crawled into
bed with Aurelie in the middle of the night. Every night. My father was horrified.
While my father and Aurelie went off to the spa, I watched over Caspar. When they curled up on the Balinese daybeds in the
restaurant at night, sipping cocktails and eating fresh fish, so artfully arranged on the simple white plates it seemed a
crime to eat it, I stayed in the house and watched over Caspar. I learned that the promise of ice cream often got him under
control, until the resulting sugar high from the ice cream.
The only time I got to myself was during yoga. My father did it with me every morning while Aurelie spent time with Caspar,
then he did another class with Aurelie in the afternoon. I wasn’t resentful. I felt lucky. And grateful. My mother was alone,
at home, in bed, and I was in this tropical paradise, albeit with Caspar attached to my hip.
These kinds of trips were few and far between. When they did happen, there was usually an ulterior motive. My father looking
at real estate, or dumping a child on me so he could have a romantic break. This, a luxury hotel in the South of France, just
me and my boyfriend, albeit for a tech conference, feels entirely different.
I look at Jerome and stretch out a hand to his waistband, and pulling him toward me on the bed.
“Get over here, big boy. Let’s get this trip started properly.”
After that, neither of us says anything at all.
We have a chauffeur-driven car that belongs to the hotel drive us up to the medieval village of Eze.
We are dropped off at the bottom of a hill, and make our way up winding narrow streets lined with old stone walls, shutters flung open and washing hung up to dry, small children tearing through the streets, chasing each other, disappearing around corners as we walk until we reach the Hotel Eza.
Jerome has booked a table on the terrace, with views across the hills, the sea sparkling in the early-evening sunlight. It
is impossibly romantic, tiny lights glistening all over the hills as dusk falls and the French Riviera lights up.
“If you were going to propose—” I toast Jerome with my rosé “—this would be the perfect place to do it.”
Jerome looks aghast.
“Oh my God! I’m joking!” I sip my drink, wondering if I should be more upset at the look of horror on his face, before wondering
why I even made that joke.
“I . . . I don’t know what to say. You know I love you, Missy, and you know I’m definitely thinking long-term. You may have
been joking, but when things settle down a bit, when your father has recovered, that’s when I want us to really start talking
about marriage.”
I stare at him like a bunny caught in the headlights. I have never thought about marrying Jerome. Not seriously. When I hear
other people describing wanting to grow old with their partners, I try to imagine Jerome and me old together, imagining that
cliché of rocking on a porch somewhere together. Each time I turn my head to look at my husband, I have never been able to
picture Jerome, just the body of an elderly man, his face blank, as if someone had used their fingers to blur it out on a
tablet.
“Marriage,” I repeat stupidly.
“I didn’t realize this was even something you were ready to talk about.” He smiles. “I’m glad you brought it up. I can see
us together, I just want to table the discussion for now.”
I nod, words escaping me, instead finding myself suppressing a small giggle, which I think must be nerves.
I don’t want to talk about marriage with Jerome.
Certainly not now, and possibly not ever.
I am so fond of him, I think. I do love him—of course I love him—but I haven’t considered marriage.
We haven’t even been together a year. Do I say this?
Do I tell him he should relax, that this isn’t something that has even crossed my mind?
His face is so earnest, so concerned that he may have upset me. I lean over and kiss him gently.
“There is no pressure from me to talk about marriage,” I reassure him. “Let’s not bring it up again on this trip.”
I sense him relax, and feel my own body unclench as a result.
“How are you feeling about the conference?” he asks, as relieved as I am to move on to other, more comfortable subjects.
We talk about Inferno, about my vision for the company, for the philanthropic work I hope to do. I am gratified that Jerome
seems as invested as I, that he agrees with my vision, and I think about the power couple we would make if we were married,
how we could go on to become the next philanthropic power couple; how we could change the world.
A small voice whispers that I don’t need Jerome to change the world. That it is entirely possible I can change the world all
by myself.