From Notting Hill to New York . . . Actually

by Ali McNamara

  ‘Sorry, yes, yes we do. Two Cosmopolitans, please.’ I turn back to Jamie. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Not one of those, that’s for sure. I’ll just take a beer – Bud if you have it.’

  The barman nods and goes off to make the cocktails.

  ‘Sex and the City?’ Jamie asks.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Your drinks; are you ordering them because of the show? I had a friend once who was mad on it.’

  ‘Yes, my friend is too. That’s why I’m getting them. He’s so excited to be here tonight too because of the show.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Oscar – he’s gay,’ I say, as though this explains everything.

  ‘I see. Well, I don’t see, really. What’s that got to do with the TV show?’

  I explain to him the about the Anchors Away! episode.

  ‘I must have been fortunate enough to miss that one,’ Jamie says, grimacing.

  I laugh. ‘No, it doesn’t really seem like your sort of show. I have to say, I haven’t watched that many episodes either. It’s Oscar who’s the fan; we’re even supposed to be going on a tour while we’re here of the Sex and the City hot spots.’

  ‘I’ve heard about that, sounds horrendous.’

  ‘Again, Oscar’s idea. But it keeps him happy, so I don’t mind.’

  ‘What keeps you happy, then, when you’re not investigating antique brooches?’ Jamie asks, his dark brown eyes looking directly into mine.

  ‘Two Cosmos and a Bud!’ the barman calls from behind us.

  ‘No, my shout,’ Jamie says, reaching for his wallet as I delve into my bag. He hands over a note and then passes me the two cocktail glasses. ‘Shall we see if we can find a seat amid all this madness?’ he asks. ‘Or is a boring TV reporter cramping your style, compared to these sailor boys?’

  ‘No, not at all. Again, I only came here tonight for Oscar.’

  We wind our way across the bar and eventually find a high table and two stools tucked in a corner slightly away from the partying going on in the rest of the bar. I send Oscar a quick text to let him know where his drink is, but I don’t hold out much hope of him picking it up. I predict he’ll be far too busy with whatever poor sailor he’s set his sights on.

  ‘I think I might be able to help you with your brooch,’ Jamie says when we’ve got ourselves settled at the table.

  I’m trying to sit as elegantly as I can in my dress, perched on top of a high stool, but it’s not easy. The dress keeps gaping open, and I try desperately to keep it together to maintain a shred of decency about myself and to conceal the colour of my knickers.

  Jamie tries to be polite and force his eyes away from my dilemma, but they do keep darting back to my exposed legs.

  ‘You can?’ I ask, gripping the two pieces of red fabric tightly in one hand while, with the other, I casually try to sip my cocktail.

  ‘Yes; if you’re free sometime in the next couple of days, my friend from the US Roadshow will take a look at your dad’s brooch for you.’

  ‘Really? That would be fantastic, thanks!’

  ‘No worries. They work at the Met when they’re not doing the show. The Metropolitan Museum of Art?’

  ‘Yes, I know what the Met is. I’m thinking of visiting it while I’m here.’

  ‘Really?’ Jamie looks surprised. ‘I didn’t think it would be your sort of thing.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He shrugs. ‘Don’t know really, you just don’t strike me as the art museum type.’

  ‘There’s an art museum type?’ I tease, taking a sip of my drink. ‘And what do they look like, then? Studious, bead-wearing types in glasses and sandals?’

  ‘Hmm, she thinks she’s a comedian.’ Jamie takes a swig of his beer. ‘Certainly not sexy English women wearing dresses slit up to the thigh, that’s for sure.’

  I blush and take another sip of my cocktail, and find to my surprise that it’s finished. I pick up Oscar’s. It’s not like he’ll be needing it any time soon.

  ‘I have a boyfriend,’ I murmur, intensely studying the contents of the glass as I stir the liquid around with the little plastic cocktail stick.

  ‘Ah,’ Jamie nods. ‘I thought you might have. Where is he then, this boyfriend?’

  ‘He’s back in London, working.’

  ‘Didn’t he want to come with you on your trip?’

  ‘No; we thought it was best for me to have some time away for a while.’

  ‘We?’

  I look up at Jamie now. ‘Yes, we. Sean’s been to New York loads of times, and this trip was supposed to be about me seeing my dad as well as the city. That’s why my friend Oscar is here with me; his sister lives here.’

  ‘Right,’ Jamie says, nodding, but he doesn’t look very convinced. ‘So is that how you were getting rid of all the sailors earlier, by telling them you had a boyfriend?’

  ‘Oh no, when they offered to buy me and my friend a drink, I just mentioned my friend’s name and it soon got rid of most of them when I told them he was gay.’

  ‘Most?’

  ‘The ones it didn’t I sent in his direction.’

  Jamie laughs. It’s a big, bold, warm laugh that instantly makes me want to laugh along with him.

  ‘You’re a bit mad, you, eh?’ Jamie says, grinning at me now.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so. But in a good way.’

  ‘I’m glad it’s in a good way.’

  ‘Whoa! Look at that,’ Jamie exclaims at something over my shoulder. ‘Now that is a story in itself walking across the floor. Imagine coming into a room full of sailors dressed like that. He only needs a hat. Oh wait, he’s wearing one now.’

  I don’t even need to turn around.

  ‘That will be Oscar,’ I say unblinkingly.

  ‘That’s your friend?’

  I do turn around now, and see Oscar walking towards us with his arms draped around not one, but two sailors. He’s wearing one of their hats at a jaunty angle and has also managed to collect a series of lipstick kisses over both his cheeks.

  ‘Scarlett, darling!’ he coos as he reaches my side. ‘This is where you’ve got to. Meet Lewis and Dawson – they really float my boat, don’t you, boys!’

  The sailors give little nods of their heads.

  ‘And who might this be?’ Oscar raises his neatly plucked eyebrows at Jamie.

  ‘This is Jamie. I told you about him, remember? He’s here looking for a story.’

  Jamie kicks me under the table.

  ‘A-about bars. About bars, that’s right. New York bars, and how they overcharge tourists.’

  ‘So you’re the infamous Jamie?’ Oscar loosens his grip on his two bodyguards and folds his arms across his chest. He tilts his head to one side as he gives Jamie the once-over. ‘Where’s your partner in crime tonight then, what’s his name – Mac?’

  ‘I assume you’re referring to my cameraman, Max?’ Jamie regards Oscar equally coolly. ‘He’s probably at home watching a movie or playing on his Xbox, if I know Max. We’re not glued at the hip.’

  Oscar’s hands rest on his hips now as he strikes a confrontational pose. ‘So why are you here tonight, then, if you’re supposed to be working and he’s not?’

  ‘Because I source the stories, and Max just comes along when we need to film them. Look, what is all this?’ Jamie turns towards me. ‘Why am I getting the third degree?’

  ‘Oscar’s just a little protective of me, that’s all.’ I turn my attention back to Oscar. ‘Oscar, stop it. I just bumped into Jamie when I was at the bar, and he saved me from all the sailors that were bothering me.’

  Oscar narrows his eyes for a moment, stares hard at me and then at Jamie, and then he grins. ‘And that was a bad thing? I’ve been trying to get sailors to bother me all night!’

  The rest of the evening passes without too much incident, unless you count Oscar dancing the lambada on a tabletop with one sailor, then singing the theme tune to An Officer and a Gentleman with a chief
petty officer on a makeshift karaoke as incidents. With Oscar, I just counted them as part of everyday life.

  ‘You won’t use this in your report, will you?’ I ask Jamie at one point, while we watch Oscar being helped down off a table.

  ‘Are you kidding me? No one would believe it!’ He smiles. ‘Have you had enough of this floor show yet? It’s a bit over the top in here for me now. Do you want to get out of here, go somewhere a bit quieter?’

  I hesitate.

  ‘It’s OK, you’re safe with me. Now I know you have a boyfriend back in London, I wouldn’t dare put a foot wrong.’ He winks. ‘It’s fine; honestly. I’m only trying to wind you up.’

  ‘Oh, go on, why not?’ It is getting a bit hot and claustrophobic in here now, and even though we’ve been in a small group for over an hour, we all keep being hit on by different sailors. Which is actually starting to be rather tiresome. Well, it is for some of us. Not for others …

  ‘Oscar,’ I call over to him in the middle of a group of young seamen. ‘I’m going to head back to the hotel. Jamie will see me there safely. I’ll catch up with you in the morning.’

  ‘Sure, darling!’ Oscar waves his red neckerchief in the air with a flourish as a departing gesture. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!’

  Was there anything?

  Jamie and I exit the club and gladly breathe in the fresh air of the New York evening once again.

  ‘Do you want to get a taxi, or take a walk?’ he asks.

  ‘Depends where we’re walking to.’

  ‘Hmm … funny. Have you been down to the Hudson River yet? It’s beautiful at night.’

  We walk across town through Chelsea, and Jamie is right about two things: he doesn’t put a foot wrong, and he is the perfect night-time tour guide as we walk along the lamplit streets. As we reach the piers and gaze out at the view from Manhattan over towards New Jersey and down towards the point where the Hudson meets the East River, I get my first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. Although tiny from where we are standing, she still glows like a welcoming beacon from her viewing point in the water, dominating the New York skyline that she watches over and protects.

  ‘I see you’ve spotted Lady Liberty,’ Jamie says, looking over at me silently watching the statue in awe. ‘She’s quite something, eh? Even at this distance.’

  ‘Yes, I can’t wait to visit her properly. Oscar and I are hoping to go in the next couple of days.’

  ‘Make sure you get off the boat at Ellis Island, too. A lot of tourists only go to the statue; it’s such a waste. Ellis Island is really interesting, even if you haven’t got American roots to trace.’

  ‘That’s the place where all the immigrants had to come through originally, wasn’t it, to get into New York?’

  ‘That’s right. Some of their stories are fascinating.’

  ‘Fascinating as long as you don’t find out your relative is a mass murderer like Eva Mendes does when Will Smith takes her there.’

  Jamie looks at me quizzically.

  ‘In the film Hitch, that’s where Will Smith, the Hitch character, takes Eva on their first date to impress her, but it all goes horribly wrong when they find out that her ancestor is a serial killer.’

  ‘I know,’ Jamie nods. ‘I have seen the movie.’

  ‘Have you? Sorry.’ I’ve spent too much time with Sean. Sean hardly ever watched romcoms, or any other movies for that matter. ‘I thought you didn’t know it.’

  ‘It’s a good film. Just wondered why you used a movie to describe the place.’

  I give him a wry smile. ‘I do that a lot; you’ll get used to it.’

  ‘Will I, now?’

  ‘So,’ I hurriedly change the subject, ‘why did you go over there? Did you film a report?’

  ‘No, I actually went over to try to trace my family.’

  ‘Do you have American roots, then?’

  ‘My mother’s family have American roots, but I didn’t find anything out when I went over to Ellis.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  Jamie shrugs. ‘Never knew him.’

  ‘That’s sad.’ I pause for a moment, wondering whether I should tell him my tale about finding my mother after years of not knowing her. ‘I never knew my mother either, until last year.’

  Jamie turns towards me. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a really long story though, if you want to hear it. Shall we find somewhere to go and I’ll tell you if you like?’

  We find a little coffee shop that’s still open, and both decide to order milkshakes rather than coffee. Surprisingly, we both opt for banana.

  ‘Wow, that’s some tale,’ Jamie says when I tell him all about how I went to Notting Hill to house-sit for a month and ended up not only leaving my then fiancé, David, but meeting Sean and finding my mother again after over twenty years.

  ‘Yes, it was a pretty huge turning point in my life. But Mum and I are very close now.’

  ‘How is your dad with it?’

  ‘He was difficult at first, which is understandable. But now it’s all fine. I don’t think Mum and Dad will ever be best buddies, but they tolerate each other for my sake. No, that’s not fair; they get on slightly better than that. It somehow works when we’re all together, which isn’t too often of late since Dad’s come over to New York.’

  Jamie takes a long slow sip through his straw. ‘You were quite lucky in the end, finding your mum like that.’

  ‘We did a fair bit of chasing around first, and finding her wasn’t just down to luck. Remember what I told you about Sean, and how he helped?’

  ‘Yeah, he sounds like quite a guy.’

  ‘He is.’

  We both drink from our milkshakes.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be that lucky,’ Jamie says. ‘With finding my own dad, I mean.’

  ‘Doesn’t your mum have any idea where he is?’

  ‘Not now. Apparently he was some actor with a fake name, you know, one of those they change to get an Equity card. That’s why I can’t trace him. Mum got pregnant with me, and by the time she realised, the guy was long gone.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’

  Jamie shrugs. ‘It’s no big deal. I’ve lived with it most of my life, why should I let it start bothering me now?’

  ‘I felt like that until I started looking for my mum. But don’t you feel as though there’s something not quite right all the time?’

  Jamie nods. ‘I guess. It feels a bit like—’

  ‘A piece of the jigsaw is missing,’ we both say at the same time.

  ‘That’s exactly it!’ I say, excitedly pointing my finger at Jamie. ‘That’s how I’d felt my whole life, and then when I found her it was like it all fitted together.’

  Jamie sits backs resignedly in his seat. ‘You’re one of the lucky ones then, aren’t you? That sort of thing doesn’t happen for me, or the many other thousands of people trying to trace lost relatives.’

  I feel a strange sensation pulling around my heart. For a moment I can almost liken it to the feeling I used to have when I first met Sean. I used to say it felt like gymnasts leaping all over my heart doing backflips and somersaults. But this is odd, this feels like … oh, what does it feel like? It’s just different, somehow.

  ‘Anyway, on to happier topics,’ Jamie says, keen to change the subject. ‘When do you want me to arrange a meeting with Harry about your brooch?’

  ‘Any time. I don’t have any definite plans while I’m here. Oscar and I were going to Central Park tomorrow. But I’m really keen to visit the Statue of Liberty now I’ve seen her all lit up.’

  ‘By the look of your friend when we left the bar, I don’t think he’ll be in any sort of state to get up early tomorrow to board a boat to Liberty Island, do you?’

  ‘Good point. Maybe a nice quiet day in Central Park might be just what the hangover doctor ordered.’

  Jamie smiles.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Scarlett, I’ve only known you five minutes, and it appe
ars to me that a day spent with you is never going to turn out to be a “nice quiet day”.’

  Thirteen

  It turns out Jamie is right: Oscar is in no state when I knock on his door at eight a.m., our usual meeting time for breakfast, to be heading off to the Statue of Liberty ferry down at Battery Park.

  ‘Unnhhh,’ he grunts, standing in front of me in his black and white silk polka-dot pyjamas with a pink fluffy sleep mask pushed up onto his forehead. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s breakfast time, Oscar,’ I reply brightly.

  ‘Don’t even mention that word to me.’ He waves his hand in my face and staggers back into his room. I follow him and close the door.

  ‘What time did you get in last night?’ I ask, picking up a pair of abandoned braces off the carpet. I’m almost expecting to see a half-naked sailor come staggering out of the bathroom, but it seems Oscar is alone.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, three, maybe four …’ Oscar sits on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands.

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Er … no.’

  ‘So where …?’ I look around the room: in addition to the braces, the rest of Oscar’s clothes from last night are strewn all over the floor too, so I know he must have been pretty worse for wear when he came in. He’s always so fastidious about hanging and folding things.

  ‘They have a curfew on the ship. Got to be back by morning. He didn’t stay long.’ Oscar manages to look up at me and wink. ‘Long enough, though.’

  ‘Oscar!’ I screw my face up. ‘Please, I don’t wish to know the details, thanks. Look, are you getting up now, or what? I need to get breakfast even if you don’t.’

  ‘Oscar just needs a little bit more beauty sleep and then he’ll be raring to do whatever you see fit for us today, darling.’ Oscar’s whole body tips to the side in one swift movement and he’s back under the duvet with his mask down over his eyes before I can blink. ‘Come back and wake me when you’ve had your lovely breakfast …’

  ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll be back. You’re not letting me down again today, Oscar St James!’

  After I’ve breakfasted alone and passed a few more minutes on my daily phone call to Sean, I’m about to head up to see Oscar again when my phone rings.