Atlantic Shift

by Emily Barr

  Alexis claps his hands. ‘OK, ladies and gentlemen. Might I make a suggestion? I know there are a lot of people out there waiting to meet our dear Evie. I propose we leave her to change and sort herself out, while we reconvene in the bar and then on to Café Des Artistes, just over on West Sixty-seventh.’

  He looks to me, and I smile and nod. At Alexis’s suggestion, I brought a short purple dress from Calvin Klein with me for this express purpose, despite the fact that I was utterly unable to imagine a time when the concert might be over. When I did think about it, I could only think about slinking away to JFK and waiting for the next flight home. Megan and I bought the dress yesterday. We made sure it was the same colour as the concert dress so I didn’t have to buy new shoes to go with it.

  They file out slowly. Howard doubles back from the door and gives me a second huge hug.

  ‘I’m very proud of my little girl,’ he tells me, his words muffled against my hair. ‘I’m calling your mother right now.’

  ‘Thanks, Howard,’ I tell him. ‘Knowing there were so many friends out there made it happen.’

  He kisses me on the cheek - a scratchy, beardy kiss - and leaves the room. I move the ice bucket, which is already half water, half ice, from my chair, and sit down. There is so much to do, and already I am exhausted. I force myself to be sensible for a moment and make a mental list, because I know that, otherwise, Alexis will come back in an hour and find me sitting right here. Sort out hair, tone down make-up, change into new dress, put shoes back on, pack up bag and cello, and take everything to the bar. It’s manageable.

  I have just got myself into my new dress, and am admiring its sleek contours, when there is another knock on the door. It is a gentle, female knock. It cannot be Jack. I am thrilled at the idea that Kate or Megan has doubled back to help me. Apart from anything else, I need to ask them whether he’s here.

  ‘Hi!’ I call.

  The handle twists, the door opens, and a woman stands hesitantly on the threshold. I look at her, surprised that she is neither of the people I was expecting. I don’t know this woman. She has shoulder-length black hair, expensively cut, and is wearing an immaculate grey trouser suit with high-heeled boots. Her body is slender and toned, the body of someone who exercises with a personal trainer every day, even on Sundays. She is perfectly made-up and manicured, a Manhattan career woman in every respect, until she opens her mouth.

  ‘Hello, Evie,’ she says, and her smile is sudden and familiar. ‘Long time no see.’

  I grip the back of the chair and look down at my white fingernails.

  ‘Louise?’ I ask. The word is barely audible.

  ‘I hoped you’d remember me. Congratulations on your performance. It was stunning.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I meet her eyes, and, unable to read them, look away again. Even though she has come to me at the most triumphant moment of my life to date, I am instantly feeling awkward, inferior, embarrassed. For the past eight years I have hoped that Louise has been watching, and today she was. I should be happy that she witnessed my triumph. But for all these years I have also been hoping that she’s a miserable failure. She is clearly not, in material terms at least.

  ‘When I saw your name on the programme I had to come along,’ she adds, looking around the room. ‘I’m a member of My Lincoln Center, you see, so I get the programmes emailed to me in advance. Your name jumped off the screen.’

  ‘You live in New York?’ All this time I have been looking for my daughter, when the person who was coming to my concert was Louise.

  ‘Yes, I’ve been here for years now. I was headhunted from London about six years back. And once you get here, believe me, it’s hard to get away. I wouldn’t want to.’

  ‘No, it’s a good place to be.’

  ‘It’s been a long time, Evie. I’ve seen you on telly a thousand times. How are you getting on?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘Are you heading for the bar? I saw your friends leaving the room about ten minutes ago.’

  ‘You’ve been watching?’

  ‘I wanted to say hello, but I didn’t want to intrude while you had guests.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  I pack up all my things. I don’t want Louise to see anything personal. I start to take down the good-luck cards from the dressing table. As my hand moves towards them, Louise picks one up and looks at it.

  ‘ “All our love and thoughts from Mum, Phil, Taylor and Tessa”!’ she exclaims. ‘How are your mum and Phil? And Taylor too, he was only about five last time I saw him. What is he now, eighteen or something? Who’s Tessa?’

  I see her looking at me, intrigued. She thinks, I realise, that Tessa is my daughter, that I reversed the adoption and took her home.

  ‘Mum and Phil had a baby when I was eighteen,’ I tell her coldly, taking the card from her and putting it in my bag. ‘She’s twelve now.’ I say it firmly, and leave her to do the maths, but I’m sure she won’t believe me. She will be wondering, now, whether Tessa is actually nearly fifteen. Whether she is Elizabeth. ‘Taylor’s twenty,’ I add. ‘He’s all grown up.’

  I pick up my bag and sling my cello over my back, hang the dress in its cover over the crook of my elbow, and motion to Louise to open the door.

  ‘Let me take something,’ she offers, reaching for my bag. I keep tight hold of it.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m balanced like this, and I’m used to lugging a cello around.’ I don’t want her touching any more of my things.

  We walk down corridors side by side. I am amazed by the strength of my hatred. She has been nothing but bland in the past five minutes, but I detest her. I feel physically ill at breathing the same air as her, and her presence at my concert has deflated the achievement in retrospect. If I’d known she was there at the time, I would probably have gone to pieces.

  Ron, Howard and Sonia know what she did to me. Nobody else has the slightest idea. I don’t want to introduce her to Kate or Megan. She could tell them, and I know she would. Louise is my nemesis, and she has found me. There is no way I’m allowing her to accompany me to the bar.

  chapter nineteen

  Late April

  Nobody could call this apartment grand. If I were a pop star, if I sold millions of records, if I was as successful as Dan is optimistically attempting to be, then I might have got a Central Park palace. As a humble classical musician I am allocated a studio in Turtle Bay, which is a district I had never heard of, a few blocks south of the Upper East Side, not far from Howard’s old place. At first the area is full of pregnancy memories, but I push them aside and begin to enjoy myself.

  The whole apartment is the size of our living room in Notting Hill. Meg and I share a double sofa bed, which in the day, through necessity, is a sofa. It is the one piece of comfortable furniture in the flat. We have a smeared window which overlooks the street, but as we’re on the fifth floor we can’t see it, and a rickety door on to the fire escape. This is where we sit on warm evenings. Other than that, our home contains a galley kitchen, comprising two cupboards, two gas rings and a couple of electric sockets, and a bathroom with a shower, a loo, and a tiny window which opens into a dark space punctuated only by other people’s bathroom windows. It is minuscule, a negligible piece of Manhattan real estate, and I adore it. For the first time, I can really pretend I live here.

  I like having Megan around too, in a funny kind of way. She keeps me from my terrors. I could never have moved in here without Megan as a flatmate. I realise, now, that I am a long way from being ready to live on my own. When one of us wakes up in the morning, the other is bound to join her, because it’s impossible to be quiet. I have tried, almost every morning since we moved in, to creep out of bed, to tiptoe to the bathroom, putting a pan of water on a gas ring on the way, and to have a quiet shower, but it never works. If I don’t swear at the eccentric gas ignition, I flush the toilet, and once that happens, the noisy plumbing begins its screeching and wailing for the day, a situation which is exacerbated by my
subsequent use of the shower. When I step back into the main room, Megan is either sitting up in bed rubbing her eyes, or at the stove, making us cups of weak tea. The teabags here are different from the ones at home, and we have failed to make our tea anything other than watery.

  I don’t mind having her around. In fact, for the first time, I find I quite like her. I liked living with her in London, but I know that was only because she was awestruck by me and the sort of life she thought I led. We weren’t friends: I was basking in her adoration. Now Megan knows me a bit better, and she realises that I am selfish and unkind and that my image is built on lies. This seems to be a better basis for friendship. I don’t understand it, but she doesn’t seem to mind seeing all my flaws.

  Megan hasn’t judged me over my treatment of Jack. Kate and Ian were bitterly disappointed in me, and Ian has not said a single word to me since the rainy afternoon in the park. I can see our friendship slipping away. I will be distraught to lose Kate, but Jack is their relative, and he has been wronged, so I suppose it is logical that their allegiance is with him. It makes me feel empty; and it makes me determined to build a real friendship with Meg. I am coming perilously close to having no friends at all.

  I worry that I will never form a meaningful relationship with anyone. I worry about Elizabeth. Meg worries about her parents, she worries about Guy, and she worries about my stalker. I have put the letters from my mind, for now. I worry more about whatever Guy is up to. We are a pair of neurotics, and we need each other.

  She talks about her parents more each day.

  ‘I used to be able to block it out,’ she says, out of the blue, one morning. ‘Then I couldn’t any more. It is a huge denial. Looking back, I can’t believe I managed, for about fifteen years, to pretend it wasn’t happening. Home, you know? One minute it’s all calm and normal and slightly boring, and then suddenly everything blows up. When the only home you have becomes violent and loud and absolutely petrifying, where do you go?’

  ‘You get out,’ I tell her, ‘and you get your mum out too.’

  ‘That’s why I went travelling as soon as I could. But when you’re eleven?’

  I don’t know what to say to her. ‘No child should have to experience that,’ I tell her, lamely.

  ‘I know. But it happens all the time, even in “respectable” homes. I have to get Mum out of there. Do you think your mum and Phil would help?’

  I sigh. ‘Meg, I’m so glad you’ve asked. Of course. I’ll call Mum and explain the situation.’

  She smiles at me, and I return the smile. It feels good, and unusual, to be genuinely trying to help someone. I am not used to having no ulterior motives.

  ‘You know when you worked in banking?’ I ask her when she emerges from the shower, wrapped in my white towel, with her hair casting drips over the thin beige carpet.

  ‘I do,’ she confirms.

  ‘What did you actually do? I never even asked you about it because I couldn’t imagine I’d understand a word of it.’

  ‘I quite enjoyed it, actually. In a funny kind of way. I prefer not working, like everyone, but there’s something quite reassuring about dressing up in a suit and wearing proper shoes and going to work. I used to like myself as a worker. I didn’t do anything high-powered. Talked to people on the phone, mainly, about money. Did things on my computer. You’d definitely have understood it.’ I hand her a cup of tea. Megan has always liked it weak, so she drinks it gratefully. ‘I used to do the filing half the time. I’m not exactly trained in finance.’

  ‘But isn’t that incredibly different from taking photos in Cambodia? Weren’t you frustrated?’

  She sits down on the bed. ‘Not really. I don’t think you have to be doing the thing you love best all the time. I don’t think to do that does most people any good. It’s different for you because you’ve made a career out of it, and it works for you, but I would hate the pressure. If I was out on assignment taking photos of something I’d been ordered to photograph, I wouldn’t be enjoying myself. It’s because you’ve never had a job, isn’t it? That’s why you don’t get it.’

  I consider this. ‘Of course it is. Maybe I should get a job, just for the experience. Work in a bar or a hotel or something. I know my musical career isn’t going to last for ever. But I couldn’t possibly do anything else. No one would employ me.’

  ‘They would.’

  ‘Not to do anything halfway interesting.’

  ‘You’d be fine.’

  I think about it for a bit. I can’t imagine that I would be fine. Everyone else seems to manage it, but I can’t picture myself working for someone else, nine to five. I like being the centre of attention too much. I like organising my days to suit myself. I am profoundly self-obsessed; and I would be a dreadful employee.

  ‘Evie?’ says Megan, towelling her wet hair dry. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I think I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Oh?’ I say, absently. ‘Go where?’

  ‘Home.’

  I sit up. ‘Really? When? Why?’

  She strokes my arm. ‘This has been exactly what I needed to do,’ she says, ‘and I really appreciate you taking me in like you have. But being away from home has made me realise that I have to go back. I stayed around to see your concert, but now there’s too much going on at home for me to carry on swanning around New York pretending I live here. It’s lovely of you to share your bed with me, but I know it’s an imposition.’

  I begin to panic. ‘You’re not imposing!’ I tell her angrily. ‘You’re allowed to stay ninety days! And you haven’t even been here a month.’

  ‘I know, but I’ve got to go and sort my mum out. Haven’t I?’

  ‘My mum’s a deputy head. She’s brilliant at sorting things out.’

  ‘I know. But Mum needs me as well. When she was most scared, she called me. I was the person she thought of and I haven’t been there for her.’ She pushes her hair back from her face. ‘Christ. I can’t tell you how odd it is to be talking like this about my own mother. She’s supposed to take care of me, but I suppose she has done, as far as she could. I’m grown up now, and much as I would love her to be someone who would be a rock for me for ever, life’s not always like that. She needs a rock of her own, and I’m going to go back to Somerset and I’m going to be it.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘What about him? I suppose ideally I’d get him to leave, but he won’t, I know he won’t. I can’t see him leaving his beloved country manor and losing face with his friends. So I guess I’ll get Mum to somewhere safe, maybe with your mum’s help, and we’ll leave him to stew. Then I suppose I’ll go back to London. Not to Bedford Gardens, though. If I had enough money saved up I’d go travelling.’ She breaks off and looks at me, a smile spreading across her face. ‘Why don’t we, Evie? We can both save some money and go off, have six months or a year away from it all.’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘That’s what modern women are supposed to do when they see off their husbands, I believe.’

  I try to imagine myself travelling. ‘I can’t,’ I tell her. ‘I couldn’t take a break like that and hold on to my career. It would be disastrous. I’d have to come back and retrain as a primary school teacher or something.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be so terrible.’

  I shudder. ‘It would for me. You’d be better off taking your mum. When are you going?’

  ‘Guy booked my return flight for about two weeks’ time - I can’t believe I let him be so bossy - but I’ve decided to change it. I’ll see what’s available.’ She looks at me, big-eyed and more like a china doll than ever. ‘Do you mind if I ring him? I’ll pay for the call.’

  I gesture to the phone. ‘Go right ahead. Why don’t I go down and get our breakfast, so you can have some privacy?’

  I dress quickly in jeans and a pink top, and run my fingers through my hair. The deli is on the corner, and we always have the same in the morning. Two large skinny lattes, one cinnamon and raisin bagel, toasted, with butter and jelly, one banana muffin, and
two random pieces of fruit. Plus a newspaper. It is all efficiently packed into a brown paper bag. I loiter a little before going back in the clanking lift up to our tiny home. I want Megan to have the chance for a proper conversation. I am nervous on her behalf, and on mine.

  I don’t want to live on my own. I’m not used to it, and I’m not brave enough. I would much rather be in Howard’s study, or in a hotel where I could lift the phone and summon instant help if I needed to.

  As usual, I scan the paper for news of Anneka. Sometimes there is a brief paragraph, essentially saying that nothing has changed. Today there is nothing.

  I sit on our front step in the sunshine for a few minutes. A few neighbours smile as they pass me, so I can’t look too much like a vagrant. A small headline jumps out at me. Brit singer extends tour, it reads. Next to it is an extremely smudged photograph of Dan. Dan Donovan, I read, has played to packed audiences. His song is in the Billboard top ten. He is about to start touring the States. I smile to myself. It is early days, but my eager young lover might be doing it after all. He must be in this city, and for a moment I consider seeking him out. His success would reflect well on me, and mine might even help him a little. On the other hand, I would only cramp his style.

  Two teenage girls pass by on the other side of the street. One is popping gum. Both are wearing tight trousers and brightly coloured T-shirts. One girl is clearly not my Elizabeth, as she is black, but the other could be her. Her hair is highlighted, and she’s a bit shorter than I am. She’s pretty and confident. I would be proud to get to know her.

  They notice me watching them and nudge each other and laugh. I’m too far away to hear what they say, and I stand up and go slowly into my building.

  Megan is doing the washing-up when I get in.

  ‘That was quick,’ I say, trying to judge her mood.

  ‘I know.’ She doesn’t look particularly happy.

  ‘How was Guy?’

  She rinses a cup. ‘He was all right. I don’t know.’ She sighs and reaches for the brown bag. ‘I thought I was finishing with him but he didn’t seem to get it. He wasn’t really interested. He was just distracted. How does he expect me to be his girlfriend when he never rings me and when the way he talks to me makes me feel like I’m his secretary? He can’t even let me finish with him properly, because he doesn’t care enough.’