Was Marianne really a nurse? Had there ever been a doctor?
She had no answers. Only the question: Why had she been lied to over and over again?
No use asking Pierre Barton, whose easy charm had been woven from a tissue of lies. She couldn’t trust anyone at BarPharm; she wasn’t sure she could trust anyone at all.
Anna made Chas and Becca jump through hoops Monday morning. As long as she was here and they were working hard for her, she owed it to them to help them be better at their craft. She was in her element. She didn’t have Richard Myerson behind her or his hive of worker bees in front of her, but she didn’t need them now that the heavy lifting was done. She was content with her team of two, who’d turned out to be both sharper and nicer than she’d first thought.
In the afternoon, she met with Pierre and Hugh, the nominal VP of marketing, to go over the Madame X rollout, scheduled for March in high-end department stores as well as upscale chains like Space NK. She had detailed memos: lists of store publicists and press, packaging deadlines, ad deadlines, possible October dates for the press launch.
She hung around after Hugh left to thank Barton for inviting her to The Ivy. “Believe it or not, I’ve never been there.”
“You’ll like it, I think. Very good food and a comfortably unstuffy atmosphere.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” She started for the door, then turned around. “Oh, and I was wondering if the woman who was here before me who died—Olga?—might have filed any materials regarding the UK market for Madame X.”
Barton’s mouth hung open for a moment before he said, “Olga Novrosky? No, she had nothing to do with Coscom. If anything was filed, it would have been your own materials for the US.”
“Maybe there’s something,” she persisted. “I’m really trying to get a handle on the UK marketplace, and—”
“Do your own research. I’m paying you enough,” he said sharply.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize it was a sensitive subject, Mr. Barton.”
“Pierre,” he corrected her automatically. “And it’s not sensitive. It’s just always disturbing when a young woman takes her own life.”
“And she was young? Genuinely young?”
She could practically see the icicles hanging off his words. “Yes. She was. A tragedy.”
“Of course,” she agreed soberly.
He nodded dismissively. “If I don’t see you before, the booking is for eight o’clock Friday. Dress as you like, but not down. Got it?”
She nodded meekly and let herself out.
She went through anything in her office that wasn’t part of the furnishings, from drugstore magazines to old binders of press clips. She found nothing of Olga Novrosky. It was as if she’d never existed. Or had existed only for a brief period of employment at Barton Pharmaceuticals.
Wednesday, David texted her iPhone to suggest meeting in Soho at four Saturday afternoon. Drink, decide on film, dinner after? She replied in the affirmative, though the thrill she felt seeing his name on a text warned her she was entering a high-risk zone.
That night, she stood naked in front of the mirror. Even if she was in good shape physically, her reflection made her think of a funhouse mirror, Tanya’s glowing skin and firm facial contours stuck together with someone else’s slightly sagging belly, gently drooping breasts, loose thighs. She collapsed in sobs after she pulled on her nightgown, no longer able to hide the truth from herself. How had she imagined in her wildest dreams that Tanya would end up with David? Even if he didn’t look upon her now as someone who might be his daughter, she couldn’t let him see what an outlandish mutant she was! No more mirrors, she vowed when her tears had stopped. If she kept this up, she’d soon be carving “freak” on her midriff with a razor blade. As for David Wainwright, she needed to give up, however tenuous, the fantasy that they could be together. Or give him up altogether.
Though she had never dined at The Ivy, Anna knew a lot about the venerable theater district restaurant because Richard made sure he and his partner, Max, ate there whenever they visited London and always returned with tales of stars spotted in the dining room.
To banish the memory of that full-length mirror, she needed to feel young and sexy. So she wiggled into her little black dress with sheer stockings and the peep-toe shoes that were really too high for her, praying she’d make it to the table without a pratfall.
With her hair pomaded like Allie’s and eyes smoky with kohl, she was very Sally Bowles. She’d hammily blown herself a kiss in the hall mirror before going out the door. “You’re money, and you know it!”
Now she was seated at one of the coveted—she knew from Richard—banquettes in The Ivy’s main room, trying not to stare at Hugh Grant here and Stephen Fry there and one of the stars from Absolutely Fabulous arriving. In front of her was her third glass of a heady Bordeaux and the remains of what had to be the world’s most elegant shepherd’s pie—a freestanding stack of wine-rich meat and mashed potatoes.
Not only was she sated, she was enjoying herself. Marina had thawed slightly, and turned out to be, like Anna, a John le Carré fan. “But only the good ones, the older ones with Karla,” she’d said severely. Anna had suppressed a laugh; even when it came to secret agents, Marina preferred the Russians. Her brother Dmitri was her antithesis, charming and chatty, more international than Marina, openly gay.
“Moscow is an exciting city, and it is seeing a rebirth. But it is not cosmopolitan. It is cold and in many ways behind the time, isolated by weather, geography, and provincialism. My friend and I have a small property in Ponza, near Naples. You know this island? Very hot in summer. We are beach boys. Well, we are older, so perhaps more Death in Venice than Blue Hawaii.”
Dmitri laughed. Anna laughed. She couldn’t have said why his comment struck her funny bone so hard. Perhaps it was Marina’s lips tightening as if she were considering rapping her younger brother across the knuckles with the cutlery. Maybe just those three glasses of wine. But Anna and Dmitri dissolved in laughter.
And then it happened.
She felt someone materialize next to her. She looked up, and there was Jan Berger, swaying and red faced. “Anna! My God, what have you done to yourself?”
Her laughter died on her lips. She managed to smile apologetically. “Sorry, I think you have me mixed up with—”
“I have you mixed up with nobody, so don’t lie to me, you stuck-up bitch. After almost forty years, I’d recognize that laugh anywhere. And I want to know what you’ve done to yourself. Sitting here like a fucking princess looking twenty years old and acting too good for your real friends. You fraud!”
“Lady, if you’re someone’s real friend, I’d hate to see their enemies, but I don’t know you.”
“We’ll have her removed, Tanya.” Pierre was on his feet now, signaling to the waiter. Then George was there, his face purple with embarrassment, apologizing, dragging Jan away even as she turned to yell back, “You always thought you were better than me! Just wait. You can change your looks but not your karma.”
Then they were gone. People at the surrounding tables started speaking again. The mâitre d’ appeared. He, too, apologized profusely as he handed Pierre an envelope. “From the gentleman, sir.”
Anna watched in stunned silence while Barton opened it as gingerly as if the small, flat Ivy envelope might contain a letter bomb. Then he laughed wryly. “Man’s a writer. He apologizes for his quote ‘jet-lagged wife’ unquote and invites us to the premiere of his film next Saturday night. If we call him at The Savoy, he’ll put us on the VIP list.”
“As if we are peons?” Marina snorted at the idea that anyone might consider a VIP list a big deal for the Bartons.
“The film?” Dmitri asked.
Pierre shrugged. “Something called Die with Me Again.”
“Oh yes, of this I’ve heard . . .” Marina sneered. “Vampire rubbish.”<
br />
“Fitting, since he seems to have married something out of a horror film,” Barton quipped, refolding the note and slipping it into his pocket. “I think we’ll pass on it, shall we? And now, perhaps an after-dinner drink to cleanse that scene from our palates, if not from our minds.”
When Anna asked for more coffee instead, Dmitri reached over and patted her hand. “You’re not going to let that crazy drunk upset you, I hope,” he said.
Across the table, she felt Pierre and Marina’s eyes boring into her. “No, of course she won’t,” Marina said firmly. “Nothing to do with Tanya, thank goodness. What a shrew!”
Anna was still distressed when she got home. Her first thoughts when she’d calmed down weren’t kind. First, how typical it was of George to apologize to one of the men at the table for Jan’s having attacked her. Second, her old school friend’s filler was more disastrous than Allie had implied. She looked like a lumpy dried-apple doll. But even more shocking was Jan’s venom. Did she deserve the loathing Jan felt?
Sitting over a cup of herbal tea in the living room, cold sober now, she thought back to college when she and Jan first became friends. She’d tried so hard to be sophisticated, to be someone other than the granddaughter of a Polish laundress. Had it been at the cost of her humanity? She didn’t think so. Maybe she had been a snob, but she hadn’t been unkind to Jan.
And in later years? She and Jan didn’t see each other for at least a decade before Anna relocated to California. Jan had trodden a different path—marrying George, becoming a mother, hanging out with other moms.
She’d always thought of herself and Jan as having grown apart, as happens with some college pals. It was different with Allie. She and Allie connected on many levels, intellectually, politically, career-wise, as feminists. The only thing she and Jan shared on their “girls’ nights out” were long rounds of “remember when?” Still, it had never occurred to her that Jan might hate her.
No, she wasn’t responsible. The problem was Jan’s opinion of Jan, not her opinion of Anna. If George wanted to dump her, she’d be better off without him. Whatever happened, it wasn’t Anna’s problem—and after tonight’s display, Jan was never again going to be Anna’s friend, either.
Before going to bed, she texted David to request going to a cinema in Kensington instead of Leicester Square. As long as the Bergers were in the West End, she would go elsewhere. The last thing she needed was David watching some hyaluronic acid-engorged harpy screeching through her pumped-up trout mouth that Tanya Avery was Anna Wallingham.
And she needed to suppress her all-too-distinctive laugh in the future. It could lead to having nothing whatsoever to laugh about.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking to meet here instead,” she told David after they’d found a table at the pub he’d suggested, The Builder’s Arms, which was bustling with Saturday shoppers taking a break.
“Not at all. Now, what would you like to drink? My shout.”
“A half of cider would be super, thank you.”
“Sounds good. Moi, aussi.”
She grinned. So he still did that! They used to do it with each other all the time, adding a stupid little ironic tag in French. She watched him walk to the bar. He was still much the same: tall and slim, with a long upper lip quick to lift in a smile and little frown lines, deeper now, between his eyebrows. He was the same age as she was and looked good for it—other than some gray hairs and glasses, he hadn’t changed.
Just like me, she thought wryly.
They spoke about episodes David had directed for a current series, the storyboarding he’d be doing for a new one, about how London had changed. In the last instance, Anna sat back and pretended she hadn’t been coming here for longer than Tanya would have been alive; it was easy, because she loved watching and listening to him talk.
He’d brought a newspaper, and the film they decided on was just what she’d hoped for, funny and not especially romantic. Afterward, he led her to Kensington Church Street, saying, “I’ve booked us at one of my favorite restaurants. Traditional English food and modern French wines. Good combo.”
At the table, she quickly looked up from the menu. “Fish and chips for me. Yummy.”
“And I’ll have the fish cakes.” He scanned the wines on a blackboard. “How about the Whispering Angel rosé from Provence?”
“Divine. But ooh la la, not cheap.”
“We’re saving by choosing comfort food over haute cuisine. And it’s still my treat. You get to choose the place and pay for our next dinner. Deal?”
“Ah, monsieur, you like ze, how you say, Big Mac?”
It was like the old days. They spoke about inconsequential things, from books recently read to favorite cities. It was as if a quarter of a century had been weeks, except now Anna had to be careful not to reach across the table and take David’s hand. Or to laugh, of course.
She was relaxed being with him as Tanya in a way she hadn’t been as Anna, at least not at the end. She wasn’t fretting that he didn’t consider her talented enough or connected enough or interesting enough. Suddenly, she was no longer so sure about what she had assumed for so long: that David had been the one responsible for making her feel unimportant.
They were drinking coffee when he suddenly stared off into space, then shook his head and turned back to her. “This is so weird. I keep forgetting you’re not Anna, the woman I thought you were when I first bumped into you.”
“Because I look like her?”
He studied her. “It’s not just that. It’s as if she’s been reincarnated. The way you hold your head. The way you pick up your glass. It’s haunting.”
“What happened between you, all those years ago?”
He laughed ruefully. “Beats me. I knew she was unhappy. But I thought it was something she had to sort out on her own. I mean, we all do. We all have disappointments and failures and . . .” He shrugged. “I flew back here for some meetings, and when I returned to New York two weeks later, she’d not only taken the things she kept at my apartment and left her key on the table, she’d also moved out of her own flat.”
“And that was it? Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am?”
“That was pretty much it. I got a letter that week saying she couldn’t do it anymore, that my lack of respect for her was devastating. I didn’t even recognize the man she was describing.” He shrugged. “She was right to some degree. I was too caught up in my own career; I hadn’t been thinking about the future, when my work in New York was over. But I’d never realized it had been eating away at her.
“She asked that I not try to find her or get in touch, so I didn’t. I wanted to, but I felt I had to respect her decision.”
“And then all this time . . . ?”
He sipped his coffee and shrugged. “All this time? Well, I haven’t been Mr. True Romance pining away. I carried on, as one does. I finished the job in the States, came back to London, worked, met women, got married, got divorced, got married, had a kid, got divorced again. I can’t even say I thought about Anna a lot. When I did, it was intense, but months—even years—went by without a thought. People fade in your memory when you haven’t seen them for so long; they grow to be more like fictional characters than flesh-and-blood people.
“And then I bumped into you on a street in the middle of London, and Anna became real to me again, as if she’d been there all along. And I’m—” He stopped, then smiled. “I’m boring even myself. I think that means it’s time to go.”
Outside, he hustled her into a taxi. “I’m in the mood for a bit of a walk,” he said. “And since I’ll be strolling through the past, I should do it on my own.” She leaned toward him, part of her desperately hoping he’d take her in his arms. But he just smiled down at her. “Don’t forget to let me know where you’re taking me for dinner. I’ll text you next week.”
Then he was gone, and she wasn’t Tanya Avery any
more. She was Anna Wallingham, heading south in a black cab. Alone. Very much alone.
Chapter 16
Sunday dawned cold and blustery, a phlegmy North Sea kind of day that made umbrellas useless against its windborne mists. Still, Anna forced herself to get out of the house, having no desire to stay home alone with her thoughts. She’d called Lorrayne on the off chance she was free, but the voice at the other end of the phone sounded more like someone who’d been taking recreational drugs than selling pharmaceuticals. “Can’t move, Tanya. Got a headache big as a Routemaster bus and a drunken hulk sleeping next to me.” Then she giggled. “Uh-oh. I woke the sleeping tiger. Gotta go.”
She’d forgotten what it had been like being in her twenties, separated from Monty, out with a different guy every night, dancing in Village clubs, drinking screwdrivers until her stomach burned, rarely turning down the occasional line of cocaine. If she had a breakup, she simply partied harder.
After she’d split from David, she’d been older and too depressed for debauchery. It was as if she’d had to exact a penance for lacking a thriving career, verifiable talent, a man who loved her. Through a roommate agency, she found a dreary woman who worked as an editorial assistant and pined for a married, unavailable boss. Weekends, the roommate either went to stay with her religious mother in the Bronx for endless rounds of mass or camped out in the bedroom of the small apartment without changing out of the filmy peignoir set she’d undoubtedly bought with hopes of luring the editor into her bed. Anna, who slept on a studio couch in the living room, would wander the streets of Manhattan, yearning for David, alternately thinking she’d been a fool and raging silently at him for having let her down.
She didn’t envy Lorrayne her youth or the young man in her bed now, but she would have then. She’d longed to feel interest in another man, but she was so shrouded in her unrequited love for David, she felt no sparks for several years. Her New York life was all work, and then she had dedicated her LA life to pursuing even more success. Had this been a sort of revenge, becoming the kind of woman David might want? Yet, the feelings he showed when discussing the Anna he had known didn’t seem connected to her being a success or failure, just her essence, and this belated knowledge made her feel a stab of remorse. She had misjudged him and, thinking she was salvaging her self-respect, had destroyed everything they shared.
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