Girl Friday

by Unknown

  And now he is on the home stretch. His editor will be thrilled, his agent delighted, and he will be able to move on to the next book, the storyline of which is already brewing, the notepad he carries everywhere already starting to fill with scribbled notes as more and more of the story, more pieces of the puzzle start to come together in the most obscure of places.

  Standing in line waiting for a taxi in New York City, an image comes to his head. He grabs a pen and writes it down. The villain’s early life starts unfolding as he’s sitting in a tiny, claustrophic stockroom, waiting to sign stock at a bookstore in Cherry Hill.

  The motivation behind the hero coming back appears as he’s sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for Tracy to finish getting ready.

  Tracy. Yet another reason for his happiness. Her relative youth, her beauty and her care of him are consistently delightful.

  Robert never thought of himself as a lonely man, and he never thought he would allow himself to fall in love with anyone again, not after Penelope.

  But love changes as you get older. In his twenties it was mad passion, lust, excitement. And now, in his sixties, as well as the unexpectedly satisfying physical relationship, love is about companionship. It’s about having someone by your side as you enter your golden years.

  And Tracy is turning out to be a perfect companion. Her feistiness, the anger that so reminded him of Penelope, the passion in her he found so attractive, has given way to something far quieter, almost deferential.

  She isn’t who he thought she was. And he finds he quite likes this new Tracy. This is an easier Tracy. This is someone who would look after him, whom he could mould.

  It hasn’t been long, but he hasn’t been this happy in years. Everyone is commenting on it. His agent. His publisher. He is sure Kit will notice, except she, poor woman, seems to be distracted and pale these days.

  Perhaps a celebration is in order. Something exciting for Kit to organize. Perhaps he should make an honest woman out of Tracy at the same time. Solidify their growing commitment.

  It doesn’t need to be billed as an engagement party; this is the holiday season, after all.

  It has been years since the house on Dune Road hosted a holiday party. A true holiday party, for friends, neighbours, colleagues. Almost like the Grand House of the village hosting fairs for the villagers. He could do something similar here: Robert and Tracy as the grand benefactors.

  They could have, as they had when he and Penelope were married, a huge Christmas tree in the hall, swags and garlands festooning the staircase, presents for the children under the tree.

  Perhaps Santa could even come – wouldn’t that be fun? Santa and reindeer outside.

  Robert is astonished that he feels a buzz of excitement at planning a party.

  It is this book.

  It has freed him. Has allowed him to come out of his shell.

  29

  ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ Kit is embarrassed even as she says this, those immortal words she never thought would come from her lips.

  ‘But I thought things were going so well.’

  ‘I think you’re a great guy,’ Kit says earnestly, wishing this would just be over. God. She hasn’t had to break up with anyone in over twenty years, and she was never that good at it back then. ‘It’s just that I’m not ready for a relationship. I thought I was over my divorce, but I’m not ready for anything serious.’

  Steve stands for a while, looking at her, then smiles and shrugs, and Kit feels relief. He will take it well.

  ‘I could do a million times better than you anyway,’ he says, and Kit’s mouth falls open in shock.

  ‘What?’ she manages, as he turns to the front door.

  ‘Oh please. You think I was in it because you’re so great? This was out of pity, honey. I felt sorry for you. Middle-aged, divorced, no hope of anyone else. I thought it might be fun.’ And he walks out through the front door, leaving Kit gasping in pain.

  ‘Fucker!’ Charlie spits with rage. ‘What’s his address? I want to go over there and kill him.’

  ‘Great. So I dump my boyfriend, who turns out to be a psycho bastard from hell, and then my best friend kills him and spends the rest of her life in prison.’

  ‘But I can’t believe it. I hate him. What a fucker.’

  ‘Edie was right.’

  ‘She never liked him, did she?’

  ‘Nope, and she was right. It was like talking to a different person. I swear to God, he actually sneered at me. I’ve never seen such disdain in my life. It was horrible.’

  ‘Oh Kit. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I mean, yes, I’ve been feeling totally shitty about myself for the last few hours, but I was ending our relationship. I guess I just never expected him to be so vicious.’

  ‘At least you’ve got something to take your mind off things.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The party! Oh Kit. This is the perfect thing to stop you thinking about…’

  ‘What? How shitty and empty my life is?’

  ‘Oh darling. At least you haven’t lost everything and have to move in with your in-laws.’

  ‘You’re right. Thank you for proving it could be worse.’

  ‘So tell me about the party. How’s it all going? Have you been able to breathe?’

  ‘Of course you can do this,’ Robert McClore said, seeing her face fall when he first told her of his plan. ‘You have enormous style and you’re my Girl Friday. You can do anything, Kit.’

  ‘Girl Friday!’ Edie smiled when Kit came home and told her. ‘That’s what he used to call me.’

  But it is true, Kit can do anything she puts her mind to, and as overwhelmed as she was, surveying the list of things that needed to be done, she has needed the distraction now more than ever.

  She has needed it so as not to think about Adam. She has needed it so as not to think about Steve. She has needed it so as not to think about Annabel. She has needed it not to think about the mess her life has become: unsettled, unsure, filled with anxiety, and then, with Annabel and Steve both out of the picture, empty, lonely and sad.

  Thank God she has a party to organize.

  And what a party. Lights have been strung in all the trees along Dune Road, culminating at the house, where large Christmas trees, covered in tiny white lights, stand on all the porches.

  Wreaths in every window, and a single candle, burning bright.

  And inside, garlands of bay leaves snake their way up the banisters of the sweeping staircase in the grand hall, the mantelpieces are filled with small galvanized-steel pots of paperwhite narcissi, white ribbons and glittered silver balls.

  Silver balls, crystal icicles and clear glass ornaments hang from every chandelier, every sconce in the living room, giving the effect, even inside, of having entered the Snow Queen’s Palace.

  It is Kit’s idea, one she gleaned from a magazine she was flicking through while sitting in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. It has never occurred to her to do anything different for Christmas, just red, green and gold as she has always done, nutcracker dolls around the fireplace, popcorn strung in the tree.

  But flicking through the magazine, she came upon page after page of colour-themed Christmas decorations. Blue and white rooms, glistening icily, still managed to convey, with beauty and elegance, the Christmas spirit. There were silver rooms, gold, pink, purple rooms.

  Some were, admittedly, extreme. She laughed when she turned the page to find the interior of a decorator’s home, beautifully done for Christmas in a style which included covering the many hundreds of books on her bookshelves in silver paper.

  A little too too, perhaps.

  But it gave her an idea.

  In the entryway there would be a hint of traditional given a modern twist: garlands of gorgeous-smelling bay leaves twining round the doorways and stairs, large red ribbons, a huge tree in the corner with red and green balls, strings of popcorn, pretty wooden ornaments made by a local business in town – tiny hand-
painted trees, steam engines, boats, jack-in-the-boxes, Raggedy Ann dolls – everything a child would love, all made of local wood, all delighting every child to see them.

  And through to the formal living room, with the silver and crystal theme; then a different blue and white theme in the library.

  She has done it herself, she really has done it on her own, and she turns up to work every day, walking through and gazing at the rooms with pleasure, unable to believe she did it all herself.

  She could have brought in a designer, but Robert would have quibbled over the unnecessary expense, and honestly, once she got used to the idea of organizing the party, she enjoyed tackling every part of the project and welcomed the distraction. Poring over menus, choosing the food, working out the bar, booking extra staff to help serve; buying presents for all the local children, finding a Santa with an authentic, natural long white beard, rather than one with a wad of cottonwool; sourcing the gifts and decorations – which involved hours Googling wholesale feather boas, silver-ball wreaths; shopping at HomeGoods, Wal-Mart, where every bargain, every reduction, every finding of something that she knew was a fortune somewhere else, lifted Kit’s spirits, gave her a sense of achievement, took her mind off the rest of her life.

  And now 22 December, the night of the party, is finally here, and she is feeling excited. Everyone she knows is coming. Almost, it seems, the entire town. The mayor, the entire staff of the Highfield Public Library, most of the police force and firemen, all the people who run businesses that Robert has anything to do with: bookstores, restaurants, pharmacies, liquor stores. Robert’s doctors, lawyers, friends, acquaintances.

  And naturally, friends and family of Kit’s must be invited, he said. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Charlie and Keith. Alice and Harry. Tory and Buckley. Kit’s charming mother, and of course her mother’s fiancé must come, particularly as he’s flying in this afternoon. And that nice ex-husband of Kit’s, who she still clearly gets on so well with? Adam? He’s a good egg. Invite him.

  She has, even though she and Adam have barely spoken since the Annabel fiasco. Adam waits for the children in the car, and the couple of times Kit has come to the door, he has just waved and smiled, and there has been nothing to say.

  Instead of phoning one another, they send texts, short and to the point, or emails, but not, as they had been, long and chatty, funny and warm, but asking what time the children’s dental appointment is, or is it okay if he drops them an hour later.

  For the first time ever, Kit feels divorced.

  Charlie walks out of her house and looks up at the sky. It is a dull white, and a few flakes are starting to swirl, but not like the brief flurry they had the other week. This is supposed to be the first big storm of the season, six to eight inches.

  If this were any other party, no one would show up, but too many people are excited about seeing the inside of the house on Dune Road, Charlie included, and she suspects everyone will be coming, even if they have to shovel the roads themselves.

  Charlie has kissed the children goodbye and left them in the care of her in-laws, who are babysitting. One of the unexpected pleasures of having in-laws in the same town is that you almost have built-in babysitters, but this presumes you want to go out with your husband, and while Charlie loves going out, she’s still struggling to get on with Keith.

  It is not made easier by the fact that he is now around most of the time. Luckily, Charlie still has her business, and although it is deathly quiet she has thrown herself into it with renewed vigour, attempting to drum up new business, posting ads online, offering discounted arrangements, donating flowers for parties as silent-auction items.

  Why not? It gives her something to dwell on other than how much she hates her husband. And it may be all they have. The odd thing is, business isn’t nearly as flat as you would expect from reading the New York Times, listening to all the reports on the news; but she knows it’s going to get worse. Much, much worse.

  Thousands of foreclosures are expected, but today Charlie only knows of a handful of people, herself included, who are being forced out. There have to be more. She knows there will be more. But people are clinging on, praying that there will be an upswing, hoping that their house will sell, that they will be okay in the end.

  January would normally be bonus time, but not this January. And so many of the ‘wealthy’ families she knows live off their pay cheques and bonuses.

  The pay cheques pay their bills, their mortgages, their car leases and school fees. The bonuses pay for their Birkins. Their diamond eternity rings. Their holidays in Great Exuma.

  For many of those families it is, she knows, only a matter of time.

  Spring will be telling; they are likely to see tons of houses coming on the market then. People are waiting for January, hoping that something will change and bonuses will come through. And although Charlie knows that for so many of them things won’t change and their bonuses won’t come through, none of this helps her forgive Keith.

  Keith is going to the party tonight, but meeting Charlie there, later. He has been in New York this afternoon, going to see headhunters, looking at what he can do.

  Everyone is saying the same things: the future is dismal; it is going to get worse before it gets better; the financial world will never be the same; the jobs just aren’t there – everyone is laying off and no one is recruiting.

  A new president brings new hope, and never has there been as much hope as with President Obama, but there is no such thing as an instant fix, and the economy is in such dire straits it will take a long time. The Stimulus Plan isn’t looking quite as stimulating as many had hoped.

  Keith is hearing the same advice from every single person he is talking to: if there is another business you could be doing, something totally unrelated to finance, now is the time to do it.

  But what can he possibly do? At forty-five, all he has ever known is the world of finance. He went into it upon graduation, because that’s what everyone did; that was the only way to make the serious bucks.

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I work in finance.’

  What else can he possibly say to fit in, to have a hope of achieving millionaire, or billionaire, status, before the age of forty? To be, in short, like everybody else.

  There is nothing else he has ever done, ever thought of doing. He has heard horror stories of men who worked on Wall Street, now working in Starbucks. He shivers with fear when he hears that. How can he possibly do that? Even if it were to cover health insurance for the entire family. How?

  What are his loves, he was asked the other day by someone, a headhunter, who was telling him, just like all the others, to find something else.

  His loves? His family. Shopping. Fast cars. Business – although the only business he has ever known is the business of money. Nothing that could translate into a new career.

  He feels utterly lost. His work life, the thing that defined him for over twenty years, has been destroyed, and now he feels his marriage slipping away from him as well, and he doesn’t know how to save it, doesn’t think that he has the energy, for it’s all he can do to get out of bed in the morning and make the pretence of looking for another job.

  Right now, that’s all he can do, and without Charlie’s support, without her partnership, her friendship, he’s not even sure how much longer he can do that.

  ‘Oh my God! That dress is gorgeous!’ Kit fingers the grey shift dress, trimmed with silver sequins, that Charlie is wearing for the party.

  ‘I know. A remnant from my old life.’

  ‘I thought you’d sold everything.’

  ‘Most. The Consignment Store is stuffed with my clothes. It’s so depressing. And I swear I saw Marianna Miller walking down Main Street the other day in my coat.’

  ‘Why did you think it was yours?’

  ‘How many people in Highfield had that exact Oscar de la Renta coat? I didn’t get that at Rakers, I got it at Bergdorfs, and I don’t believe Ma
rianna happened to be in the city during that particular season, buying that particular coat.’ Charlie sighs. ‘So, most has gone, but I’ve kept a handful of key things, and the clothes that really won’t get anything in consignment. This one –’ she pulls the plastic bag up over the hanger completely – ‘has a stain under one arm so it would be a reject.’

  ‘Good job. I love it.’

  ‘I know. Thank you.’

  Kit peers at her friend closely. ‘So how are you? Any offers on the house?’

  Charlie snorts. ‘I wish. Lots of people looking, but there’s so much to choose from, why, it seems, would ours stand out? I keep telling the realtor they have to bring in more creative types who will appreciate the barn, or people who run a small business from home.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I think the realtors are just as desperate as us.’

  ‘So you’re definitely moving out?’

  ‘Yup. In with the in-laws in three weeks, and I have to say they’ve been extraordinary.’

  ‘So there has been something of a silver lining?’

  ‘Yes. If it counts. It’s just so frightening. And the business. How can I carry on the business without a space? My in-laws have offered their garage, but it’s unheated, and not set up for anything.’

  ‘Could you buy a space heater?’

  ‘At the moment, I may have to.’

  ‘And things with Keith?’ Kit doesn’t know whether she should ask.

  Charlie shrugs. ‘I’m working on forgiveness. I’m also reading the Kübler-Ross book on grief, on the advice of my old therapist.’

  ‘You had a therapist?’

  ‘Course. Didn’t everyone?’

  Kit laughs. ‘No! I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, I did, and I phoned her. She said I was going through the grieving process for my old life, and I had to work through all the stages before reaching acceptance. She said reading the book would help me understand.’