by Emma Jackson
‘Do you think you’ll be able to make time in your busy schedule for drinks with the team later?’ She crossed her legs towards me as I stood up and rolled my chair back to tuck it under my desk, keeping it as a barrier between us.
‘I should think so.’ I’d probably be in need of a stiff drink, and it was better to be in company than sitting on my own in my apartment, dwelling on whatever the outcome of finding my father was.
‘Excellent. Get Patrick to send you the details of the bar we’re heading to. I look forward to seeing you later.’ She swiped a non-existent bit of lint off my shoulder as she walked back to her office.
Patrick, the trader I was taking over from shortly, raised his head over the partition between his desk and mine, his receding hair disarrayed from how often he’d run his hands through it. ‘Are you sure you want to come to the bar later?’
‘Of course. It’s a good opportunity to get to know everyone away from the office.’
‘Some people might want to know you a bit better than others.’ He tipped his head subtly towards Georgina’s office.
I made no comment. Was he really concerned for me or simply didn’t want me courting any favouritism with his boss while he was gone?
Patrick gave the impression of being a decent sort. He was often distracted and needed nudging when it came to some aspects of the handover, but I assumed he was edgy about the imminent arrival of his twins. He spent a lot of time on the phone to his wife and seemed to steer clear of the office politics, but I had to be careful not to tread on his toes or give him any ammunition to use against me. If he felt threatened by my performance in his role, it was entirely possible his good nature would evaporate. I’d seen it happen more than once.
He sighed and shook his head. ‘On your own head, be it. I’ll send you a pin with the address. We should all be there at about 8pm.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Let me know if you want to make an excuse.’
‘I’ll see you there.’ I grabbed my suit jacket and laptop case and bee-lined for the lifts. A couple of the traders looked up to wish me a good weekend, but most were occupied on the phone, or studying the markets on their screens at close of play.
The lift doors closed, and I wiped my hand quickly down my face, fastening my gaze on my shiny black shoes. Despite working on the eighteenth floor of the high-rise building, the height didn’t bother me throughout the day on the whole. I had a solid floor beneath my feet and my desk was far enough away from the windows that it was nothing but a pleasant panoramic view of the New York skyline.
But the lifts had glass walls and when they began moving it took a lot of willpower not to start freaking out, as we dropped through the floors, over and over at what felt like a gathering speed. As more people got on at each floor, I found it easier to breathe, despite the crush and when we finally reached the ground floor, I was able to cut through the crowd and exit the lobby with my heart rate virtually back to normal.
The heat hit me from all directions as I stepped onto Wall Street, a wave in the face like I’d opened a sauna door. It bounced off all the windows and white stone to lance down on my head and shoulders.
People had told me it would be hot in New York in the summer, but dictators had nothing on this kind of oppression. I’d considered taking up religion just so I could thank God for the air conditioning in the office and my apartment when I first arrived. I took a shallow breath of dry air and walked briskly towards the subway.
I might’ve considered jumping in a yellow cab to avoid the suffocation of the underground but who knew how long I’d be captive in the back should the driver decide to take me the longest route while the meter ticked on and on. I didn’t want to make small talk either.
I was nervous. I was not a nervous person. Fear of heights aside, it was not an emotion I felt with any frequency. I found things exciting; I found things a challenge. If there was a lot resting on something, a person’s opinion or a desired outcome that needed to be met, I got a buzz. It’s why I was good at my job. Without wanting to sound too much like a Martin Scorsese film, it was all about calculated risks, knowing when to jump in, knowing when to pull out – it was gambling with other people’s money and heads rolled if you got it wrong, but I loved it.
But tracking down a long-lost relative was not something I loved even though I had no reason to feel nervous. What did I care if my biological father slammed the door in my face? I didn’t need him and never had. I wasn’t a teenager trying to figure out ‘who I was’ or a kid, missing out on playing football with a father figure. David, my stepfather, had more than fulfilled that role for me while he was alive.
No. I was only doing this because my mum had left my biological father an oddly specific sum of money in her will. When the solicitor had read it, we’d had no clue where to find him. No one had heard anything from or about him since he left. Or so we believed. Then, when we’d been clearing out the family house ready to sell it, I found a large Jiffy bag with his name and address on it – here in New York – sealed up in the corner of the top shelf of Mum’s wardrobe.
I didn’t know how old the envelope was. The writing on it was faded but the slashing black ink of my mum’s handwriting was sharp enough to stab me through the chest. I can’t explain why finding things like that hurt so much – whether it was because it was unexpected or unfamiliar – but it was like discovering a new piece of her, a part of her coming to life again, and therefore I had to experience losing her all over again too…
The point was, it was the only clue we had, so I told the rest of the family I’d take care of it. He was my wastrel of a father after all, not my brother Nick’s and nothing whatsoever to do with my nan, who was David’s mother. The summer-long business trip to New York had already been floated in my direction at work, so I took them up on it and put it to the back of my mind throughout the beginning of the year, much the same way the envelope was tucked at the back of my mum’s wardrobe.
But now the envelope was in my laptop case, resting safely under my arm as I threaded my way through the crowds. Wall Street was packed with tourists, taking photographs and sitting on the benches or the steps outside the buildings and generally getting underfoot of the workers who were in a hurry. This part of New York was a lot like the square mile in London; with the stately, historic architecture mixed alongside the glass skyscrapers. But it was bigger. Everything was on a larger scale here. More columns, more flags hanging slack in the stilted air, more windows stretching up, high, high overhead despite the relatively narrow roads. I didn’t like looking up for too long; it made me dizzy.
I trotted down the steps into the Broad Street subway. It was a toss-up whether I’d have become more dehydrated by walking for half an hour to Little Italy or spending half that time on the subway deep in the bowels of the earth, breathing in everyone else’s sweat and carbon dioxide. At least the subway cars were more spacious than the older tubes back in London, even if it was just as busy.
It was only three stops to Canal Street and I came out in a neighbourhood with a completely different atmosphere to that of the financial district. I’d hardly seen anything of New York other than my apartment near the Brooklyn Bridge, my office, and a couple of bars that I’d been to with my new work colleagues. I followed the directions from my phone, deeper into streets with smaller red-bricked buildings, fire escapes zigzagging up the sides of them. There were market stores on every corner and dozens of Italian restaurants, their striped awnings pulled out over small tables and chairs crammed onto the pavement. The smell of tomato sauce and basil drifted out, but my stomach was a knot and my mouth dry from more than lack of water.
I had little more than a reconstructed idea of what my father looked like from a couple of photos my mum reluctantly showed me as a child – one of which was back at my Airbnb apartment – alongside the faint memory of his motorbike and the smell of petrol. I could have walked past him countless times and never even realised.
I found Baxter Street quickly; a short road in
comparison to other streets that went on for eight blocks or more. There were trees along one side and shops with a polished look that spoke of recent renovation. Every so often there was a gap for an entrance to the apartments above the shops and I checked each one over and over but couldn’t find the correct building or number to match the address on my envelope. The heat was travelling up through the leather soles of my shoes and sweat beaded on the back of my neck. I squinted up at the signs and the numbers, wishing I’d brought my sunglasses as the sun glared back at me from metal signage.
Finally, I stopped outside a small entrance to a parking lot, which I presumed was where the apartment building should have been.
So, either the apartments were gone, replaced by the parking lot – or my father had lied when he left a forwarding address with my mum. I knew which one I thought was most likely, but it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that he wasn’t here.
And I didn’t know where to start looking for him.
Chapter Two
I didn’t stand on the street staring at the parking lot entrance for long. When the skin on my forehead began to tighten under the relentless sun, I knew it was time to move. I was only half certain of where I was going to return to my apartment, but I still moved swiftly, striding through the streets, keeping an eye out for the blue signs pointing me in the right direction for my neighbourhood and little else. Somehow, I made it back without being mown down by a taxi.
Inside it was cool and the instant temperature change made me aware of the throbbing at my temples. I placed my jacket and laptop case on the sofa and went into the kitchen for some water. After I finished a whole glass, I slammed it down on the kitchen island and gripped the edge of the counter.
How dare that man inconvenience me by not being there. I needed to do this for my mum. It was something that she had obviously wanted, some niggle she’d needed crossed off a list. She hadn’t gotten around to it – her time abruptly and cruelly cut short – and now that responsibility was mine. I had to do this for her, and I would.
I took a deep breath and filled up my glass again, allowing the calm and the quiet of my apartment to wash over me. There weren’t a great number of rooms, but they were a good size. The living room and kitchen were separated by an island. My bedroom was on a mezzanine floor with a generous en-suite and it gave the living room extra height. I could have survived without the spiral staircase, which was stylish but made me dizzy when I was at the top, and the Juliet balcony facing the East River, which was never going to get any real use, but it was light and airy.
The digital clock on the cooker showed me I had plenty of time to eat and have a shower before I left for drinks at the bar. Just as well – I needed to get my game face back on before I spent time with my new work colleagues.
I didn’t intend to spend twenty minutes under the lukewarm stream of water, but that’s what ended up happening. My brain wandered off down paths I didn’t want it to go, wondering things I had been adamant for a long time were none of my concern. Like what my father had been doing these past thirty years that had meant he never felt the urge to get in contact and find me? Why did my mum have that address for him? When had he moved to New York? Before that building was even there I supposed.
I grabbed the mint shower gel off the shelf and scrubbed the afternoon sweat off, leaving my skin tingling and my mind clearer.
None of that stuff mattered. All that mattered was where the man was now. And how I was going to find out. Social media was probably the easiest place to start. Most people were on it, even if it was just an account they’d set up years ago and then allowed to lie dormant like mine did. I didn’t have the time to post witty remarks or photos of what I was having for breakfast and I doubted the world was a worse place for their absence.
Wrapping a towel around my waist I went to check what food I had left in the fridge. Not much. I’d have to do some grocery shopping tomorrow morning. I peeled a banana and picked up my phone to check the details for the bar.
Wonderful. A rooftop bar on Fifth Avenue. Of course it was. Everyone was obsessed with being up in the air. No matter, I’d work around it, I always did – and a couple of drinks would help take the edge off. Of everything.
First thing tomorrow I’d log on and look for him in the virtual world, since finding him in the real world had been a failure.
When I left, the lanes were packed full of cars moving in and out of the city on Friday night but my Uber driver assured me taking FDR Drive and winding our way along the island up to the Upper East Side, beside the river, was the quickest option. The water was a deep indigo expanse, dotted with shimmering lights, and the dark giants of the bridges stretched up beside the roads as we drove under viaducts and alongside the piers.
The city was always alive but in the heat of the day there was a grudging kind of bustle, a stubbornness to get through with the business of the nine-to-five, which permeated the heavy air. Now the sun was setting, taking a break from beating down on everyone, the liveliness, the edge of excitement, was returning.
I had wondered at my firm wanting to have drinks so far away from the financial district…until I arrived. Fifth Avenue was everything I’d ever pictured about New York. The classy old architecture, the views of the Empire State Building and the Met, the lush expanse of Central Park. The hotel where the bar was belonged in a classic film my nan would watch, all sophisticated glamour and old money. After navigating the labyrinth of the lobby on the ground floor, I found the right lift to take me up to the bar.
I stepped out into a dark wooden interior, varnish gleaming softly in the ambient lighting, and a breeze. Through the foliage of numerous potted ferns and brown leather seating areas, liberally peppered with cushions printed with Chinese Dragons, I could make out the perimeter walls to the terrace. They were not tall. A wave of dizziness threatened me, and my pulse beat hard in my throat.
I walked slowly, parallel to the bar, seeking a gap to slide into and order a drink, whilst also scanning for familiar faces. I’d already spotted a large group of my work colleagues seated on a corner sofa at the far end of the roof, but at that moment, a million pounds in cash waiting wrapped up for me with the keys to a Lamborghini on top wouldn’t have enticed me over. I kept scanning and walking and then – jackpot – I recognised Logan, an analyst, waiting for his turn at the bar.
‘Evening,’ I said, turning away from the views and focusing on him, the solidity of the glossy bar, the rows of glittering bottles behind it. I willed myself to ignore the exposed feeling at my back, the sensation that the floor was going to crumble away like something in a computer game and send me plummeting downwards…
‘You made it. We were wondering where you’d gotten to.’ He held up his hand, elbow resting on the bar in a pseudo arm-wrestling stance, his overworked bicep bulging in his shirtsleeves. I obliged and clapped my hand into his as a greeting. He tried to squeeze my bones to mush for a few seconds, but I kept smiling and waiting for his need to feel dominant to pass. I was glad he’d not noticed how clammy my palm was.
‘The night is young yet,’ I said as he released my hand.
‘Sure, but with the strength of these cocktails? It doesn’t take long for most of the guys to hit the deck, y’know?’
‘Perfect. Do they serve food here?’ A solitary banana was not an adequate dinner and if I ordered food it gave me an excuse to wait around at the bar longer.
‘Just snacks. You worried you’ll need to soak up the alcohol or you’ll make a fool of yourself.’ He nudged me in the chest with one of his massive guns again and I wondered how much he’d had to drink already. Perhaps I hadn’t exactly hit the jackpot finding him at the bar. More like a lucky-dip school fete prize. A moment of excitement followed by inevitable disappointment.
‘I didn’t have a chance to grab dinner.’
‘Oh yeah, what’ve you been up to?’
‘Just errands.’
‘You been wearing your pinny and getting your feath
er duster out eh?’ He laughed uproariously at his own joke.
A familiar sense of annoyance with myself gripped me at having to hang around him because of my fear of heights. I wished I could just get over it. I knew that simply because I was high up, it didn’t mean I was going to fall and end up in agony, my brains smeared across the pavement…
Thankfully, the bartender came over with his order and rescued me from having to respond to Logan. I took the opportunity to ask for a menu and by the time I’d received it and he’d taken a big swig of his drink and was ready to move on with the conversation.
‘That looks promising.’
‘Sorry, what does?’ I flicked a quick glance at him, then returned to scanning the menu. My stomach was on the edge of nausea, but I knew it would settle down once I got used to the safe zones in the bar.
‘Hot ladies at eleven o’clock.’ He’d spun on his bar stool. ‘Take a look.’
I obliged him, despite the feeling of grim inevitably building again. Perhaps I would’ve been better off taking Patrick’s offer and staying at home if the only person I was going to get to know better on this night out was an obnoxious caveman.
A tall woman with short curly black hair was taking a seat at a bar-height table tucked in beneath a low slanted skylight. Her companion was facing away from me, just the cascade of her red hair and a pleasingly rounded bottom visible as she bent over, fiddling with the buckle on one of her high-heeled sandals. The glass of the window continued right down to the skirting board as a backdrop behind them. I took a shallow breath and made an ambiguous noise to Logan, turning away from the reminder of how high up we were.
‘Hey, what say you stick with me and be my wingman tonight? I could teach you a few things about American women.’
‘Is that so?’ I raised my eyebrow at him, my patience – exacerbated by my frayed nerves – was beginning to wear thin.
