فصل 03

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To: Samfielding1@gmail.com

From: BusyBee@gmail.com

Writing this in haste – Mrs G is having her piano lesson – but I’m going to try and email you every day so that at least I can feel like we’re chatting. I miss you. Please write back. I know you said you hate emails but just for me. Pleeeease. (You have to imagine my pleading face here.) Or, you know, LETTERS! Love you, Lxxxxxx

‘Well, good morning!’

A very large African American man in very tight scarlet Lycra stood in front of me, his hands on his hips. I froze, blinking, in the kitchen doorway in my T-shirt and knickers, wondering if I was dreaming and whether if I closed the door and opened it again he would still be there.

‘You must be Miss Louisa?’ A huge hand reached out and took mine, pumping it so enthusiastically that I bobbed up and down involuntarily. I checked my watch. No, it really was a quarter past six.

‘I’m George. Mrs Gopnik’s trainer. I hear you’re coming out with us. Looking forward to it!’

I had woken after a fitful few hours, struggling to shake off the tangled dreams that had woven themselves through my sleep, and stumbled down the corridor on automatic pilot, a caffeine-seeking zombie.

‘Okay, Louisa! Gotta stay hydrated!’ He picked up two water bottles from the side. And he was gone, jogging lightly down the corridor.

I poured myself a coffee, and as I stood there sipping it, Nathan walked in, dressed and scented with aftershave. He gazed at my bare legs.

‘I just met George,’ I said.

‘Nothing he can’t teach you about glutes. You got your running shoes, right?’

‘Hah!’ I took a sip of my coffee but Nathan was looking at me expectantly. ‘Nathan, nobody said anything about running. I’m not a runner. I mean, I am the anti-sport, the sofa-dweller. You know that.’

Nathan poured himself a black coffee and replaced the jug in the machine.

‘Plus I fell off a building earlier this year. Remember? Lots of bits of me went crack.’ I could joke about that night now when, still grieving Will, I had drunkenly slipped from the parapet of my London home. But the twinges in my hip were a constant reminder.

‘You’re fine. And you’re Mrs G’s assistant. Your job is to be at her side at all times, mate. If she wants you to go running, then you’re running.’ He took a sip of his coffee. ‘Ah, don’t look so panicked. You’ll love it. You’ll be fit as a butcher’s dog within a few weeks. Everyone here does it.’

‘It’s a quarter past six in the morning.’

‘Mr Gopnik starts at five. We’ve just finished his physio. Mrs G likes a bit of a lie-in.’

‘So we run at what time?’

‘Twenty to seven. Meet them in the main hallway. See you later!’ He lifted a hand, and was gone.

Agnes, of course, was one of those women who looked even better in the mornings: naked of face, a little blurred at the edges, but in a sexy Vaseline-on-the-lens way. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail and her fitted top and jogging pants made her seem casual in the same way that off-duty supermodels do. She loped down the corridor, like a Palomino racehorse in sunglasses, and lifted an elegant hand in greeting, as if it were simply too early for speech. I had only a pair of shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt with me, which, I suspected, made me look like a plump labourer. I was slightly anxious that I hadn’t shaved my armpits and clamped my elbows to my sides.

‘Good morning, Mrs G!’ George appeared beside us and handed Agnes a bottle of water. ‘You all set?’

She nodded.

‘You ready, Miss Louisa? We’re just doing the four miles today. Mrs G wants to do extra abdominal work. You’ve done your stretches, right?’

‘Um, I …’ I had no water and no bottle. But we were off.

I had heard the expression ‘hit the ground running’ but until George I had never truly understood what it meant. He set off down the corridor at what felt like forty miles an hour, and just when I thought we would at least slow for the lift, he held open the double doors at the end so that we could sprint down the stairs that took us to the ground floor. We were out through the lobby and past Ashok in a blur, me just able to catch his muffled greeting.

Dear God, but it was too early for this. I followed the two of them, jogging effortlessly like a pair of carriage horses, while I sprinted behind, my shorter stride failing to match theirs, my bones jarring with the impact of each footfall, muttering my apologies as I swerved between the kamikaze pedestrians who walked into my path. Running had been my ex Patrick’s thing. It was like kale – one of those things you know exists and is possibly good for you but, frankly, life is always going to be too short to get stuck in.

Oh, come on, you can do this, I told myself. This is your first say yes! moment. You are jogging in New York! This is a whole new you! For a few glorious strides I almost believed it. The traffic stopped, the crossing light changed, and we paused at the kerbside, George and Agnes bouncing lightly on their toes, me unseen behind them. Then we were across and into Central Park, the path disappearing beneath our feet, the sounds of the traffic fading as we entered the green oasis at the heart of the city.

We were barely a mile in when I realized this was not a good idea. Even though I was now walking as much as running, my breath was already coming in gasps, my hip protesting all-too-recent injuries. The furthest I had run in years was fifteen yards for a slowing bus, and I’d missed that. I glanced up to see that George and Agnes were talking while they jogged. I couldn’t breathe, and they were holding an honest-to-God conversation.

I thought about a friend of Dad’s who had had a heart attack while running. Dad had always used it as a clear illustration of why sport was bad for you. Why had I not explained my injuries? Was I going to cough a lung out right here in the middle of the park?

‘You okay back there, Miss Louisa?’ George turned so that he was jogging backwards.

‘Fine!’ I gave him a cheery thumbs-up.

I had always wanted to see Central Park. But not this way. I wondered what would happen if I keeled over and died on my first day in the job. How would they get my body home? I swerved to avoid a woman with three identical meandering toddlers. Please, God, I willed the two people running effortlessly in front of me, silently. Just one of you fall over. Not to break a leg exactly, just a little sprain. One of those things that lasts twenty-four hours and requires lying on a sofa with your leg up watching daytime telly.

They were pulling away from me now and there was nothing I could do. What kind of park had hills in it? Mr Gopnik would be furious with me for not sticking with his wife. Agnes would realize I was a silly, dumpy Englishwoman, rather than an ally. They would hire someone slim and gorgeous with better running clothes.

It was at this point that the old man jogged past me. He turned his head to glance at me, then consulted his fitness tracker and kept going, nimble on his toes, his headphones plugged into his ears. He must have been seventy-five years old.

‘Oh, come on.’ I watched him speed away from me. And then I caught sight of the horse and carriage. I pushed forward until I was level with the driver. ‘Hey! Hey! Any chance you could just trot up to where those people are running?’

‘What people?’

I pointed to the tiny figures now in the far distance. He peered towards them, then shrugged. I climbed up on the carriage and ducked down behind him while he urged his horse forward with a light slap of the reins. Yet another New York experience that wasn’t quite as planned, I thought, as I crouched behind him. We drew closer, and I tapped him to let me out. It could only have been about five hundred yards but at least it had got me closer to them. I made to jump down.

‘Forty bucks,’ said the driver.

‘What?’

‘Forty bucks.’

‘We only went five hundred yards!’

‘That’s what it costs, lady.’

They were still deep in conversation. I pulled two twenty-dollar notes from my back pocket and hurled them at him, then ducked behind the carriage and started to jog, just in time for George to turn around and spot me. I gave him another cheery thumbs-up as if I’d been there all along.

George finally took pity on me. He spotted me limping and jogged back while Agnes did stretches, her long legs extending like some double-jointed flamingo. ‘Miss Louisa! You okay there?’

At least, I thought it was him. I could no longer see because of the sweat leaking into my eyes. I stopped, my hands resting on my knees, my chest heaving

‘You got a problem? You’re looking a little flushed.’

‘Bit … rusty,’ I gasped. ‘Hip … problem.’

‘You got an injury? You should have said!’

‘Didn’t want to … miss any of it!’ I said, wiping my eyes with my hands. It just made them sting more.

‘Where is it?’

‘Left hip. Fracture. Eight months ago.’

He put his hands on my hip, then moved my left leg backwards and forwards so that he could feel it rotating. I tried not to wince.

‘You know, I don’t think you should do any more today.’

‘But I –’

‘No, you head on back, Miss Louisa.’

‘Oh, if you insist. How disappointing.’

‘We’ll meet you at the apartment.’ He clapped me on the back so vigorously that I nearly fell onto my face. And then, with a cheery wave, they were gone.

‘You have fun, Miss Louisa?’ said Ashok, as I hobbled in forty-five minutes later. Turned out you could get lost in Central Park after all.

I paused to pull my sweat-soaked T-shirt away from my back. ‘Marvellous. Loving it.’

When I got into the apartment I discovered that George and Agnes had returned home a full twenty minutes before me.

Mr Gopnik had told me that Agnes’s schedule was busy. Given his wife didn’t have a job, or any offspring, she was in fact the busiest person I had ever met. We had a half-hour for breakfast after George left (there was a table laid for Agnes with an egg-white omelette, some berries and a silver pot of coffee; I bolted down a muffin that Nathan had left for me in the staff kitchen), then we had half an hour in Mr Gopnik’s study with Mr Gopnik’s assistant, Michael, pencilling in the events Agnes would be attending that week.

Mr Gopnik’s office was an exercise in studied masculinity: all dark panelled wood and loaded bookshelves. We sat in heavily upholstered chairs around a coffee table. Behind us, Mr Gopnik’s oversized desk held a series of phones and bound notepads and periodically Michael begged Ilaria for more of her delicious coffee and she complied, saving her smiles for him alone.

We went over the likely contents of a meeting about the Gopniks’ philanthropic foundation, a charity dinner on Wednesday, a memorial lunch and a cocktail reception on Thursday, an art exhibition and concert at the Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Center on Friday. ‘A quiet week, then,’ said Michael, peering at his iPad.

Today Agnes’s diary showed she had a hair appointment at ten (these occurred three times a week), a dental appointment (routine cleaning) and an appointment with an interior decorator. She had a piano lesson at four (these took place twice a week), a spin class at five thirty, and then she would be out to dinner alone with Mr Gopnik at a restaurant in Midtown. I would finish at six thirty p.m.

The prospect of the day seemed to satisfy Agnes. Or perhaps it was the run. She had changed into indigo jeans and a white shirt, the collar of which revealed a large diamond pendant, and moved in a discreet cloud of perfume. ‘All looks fine,’ she said. ‘Right. I have to make some calls.’ She seemed to expect that I would know where to find her afterwards.

‘If in doubt, wait in the hall,’ whispered Michael, as she left. He smiled, the professional veneer briefly gone. ‘When I started I never knew where to find them. Our job is to pop up when they think they need us. But not, you know, to stalk them all the way to the bathroom.’

He was probably not much older than I was, but he looked like one of those people who came out of the womb handsome, colour-coordinated and with perfectly polished shoes. I wondered if everyone in New York but me was like this. ‘How long have you worked here?’

‘Just over a year. They had to let go their old social secretary because …’ He paused, seeming briefly uncomfortable. ‘Well, fresh start and all that. And then after a while they decided it didn’t work having one assistant for two of them. That’s where you come in. So hello!’ He held out his hand.

I shook it. ‘You like it here?’

‘I love it. I never know who I’m more in love with, him or her.’ He grinned. ‘He’s just the smartest. And so handsome. And she’s a doll.’

‘Do you run with them?’

‘Run? Are you kidding me?’ He shuddered. ‘I don’t do sweating. Apart from with Nathan. Oh, my. I would sweat with him. Isn’t he gorgeous? He offered to do my shoulder and I fell instantly in love. How on earth have you managed to work with him this long without jumping those delicious Antipodean bones?’

‘I –’

‘Don’t tell me. If you’ve been there I don’t want to know. We have to stay friends. Right. I need to get down to Wall Street.’

He gave me a credit card (‘For emergencies – she forgets hers all the time. All statements go straight to him’) and an electronic tablet, then showed me how to set up the pin code. ‘All the contact numbers you need are here. And everything to do with the calendar is on here,’ he said, scrolling down the screen with a forefinger. ‘Each person is colour-coded – you’ll see Mr Gopnik is blue, Mrs Gopnik is red, and Tabitha is yellow. We don’t run her diary any more as she lives away from home but it’s useful to know when she’s likely to be here, and whether there are joint family commitments, like meetings of the trusts or the foundation. I’ve set you up a private email, and if there are changes you and I will communicate them with each other to back up any changes made on the screen. You have to double-check everything. Schedule clashes are the only thing guaranteed to make him mad.’

‘Okay.’

‘So you’ll go through her post every morning, work out what she wants to attend. I’ll cross-check with you, as sometimes there are things she says no to and he overrides her. So don’t throw anything away. Just keep two piles.’

‘How many invites are there?’

‘Oh, you have no idea. The Gopniks are basically top tier. That means they get invited to everything and go to almost none of it. Second tier, you wish you were invited to half and go to everything you’re invited to.’

‘Third tier?’

‘Crashers. Would go to the opening of a burrito truck. You get them even at society events.’ He sighed. ‘So embarrassing.’

I scanned the diary page, zooming in on this week, which to me appeared to be a terrifying rainbow mess of colours. I tried not to look as daunted as I felt.

‘What’s brown?’

‘That’s Felix’s appointments. The cat.’

‘The cat has his own social diary?’

‘It’s just groomers, veterinary appointments, dental hygienists, that sort of thing. Ooh, no, he’s got the behaviourist in this week. He must have been pooping on the Ziegler again.’

‘And purple?’

Michael lowered his voice. ‘The former Mrs Gopnik. If you see a purple block next to an event, that’s because she will also be present.’ He was about to say something else but his phone rang.

‘Yes, Mr Gopnik … Yes. Of course … Yes, I will. Be right there.’ He put his phone back in his bag. ‘Okay. Gotta go. Welcome to the team!’

‘How many of us are there?’ I said, but he was already running out of the door, his coat over his arm.

‘First Big Purple is in two weeks’ time. Okay? I’ll email you. And wear normal clothes when you’re outside! Or you’ll look like you work for Whole Foods.’

The day passed in a blur. Twenty minutes later we walked out of the building and into a waiting car that took us to a glossy salon a few blocks away, me trying desperately to look like the kind of person who spent her whole life getting in and out of large black cars with cream leather interiors. I sat at the edge of the room while Agnes had her hair washed and styled by a woman whose own hair appeared to have been cut with the aid of a ruler, and an hour later the car took us to the dental appointment where, again, I sat in the waiting room. Everywhere we went was hushed and tasteful and a world away from the madness on the street below.

I had worn one of my more sober outfits: a navy blouse with anchors on it and a striped pencil skirt, but I needn’t have worried: at each place I became instantly invisible. It was as if I had ‘STAFF’ tattooed on my forehead. I started to notice the other personal assistants, pacing outside on cell-phones or racing back in with dry-cleaning and speciality coffees in cardboard holders. I wondered if I should be offering Agnes coffee, or officiously ticking things off lists. Most of the time I wasn’t entirely sure why I was there. The whole thing seemed to run like clockwork without me. It was as if I were simply human armour – a portable barrier between Agnes and the rest of the world.

Back in the car, Agnes, meanwhile, was distracted, talking in Polish on her cell-phone or asking me to make notes on my tablet: ‘We need to check with Michael that Leonard’s grey suit was cleaned. And maybe call Mrs Levitsky about my Givenchy dress – I think I have lost a little weight since I last wear it. She maybe can take it in an inch.’ She peered into her oversized Prada handbag, pulling out a plastic strip of pills from which she popped two into her mouth. ‘Water?’

I cast around, finding one in the door pocket. I unscrewed it and handed it to her. The car stopped.

‘Thank you.’

The driver – a middle-aged man with thick dark hair and jowls that wobbled as he moved – stepped out to open her door. When she disappeared into the restaurant, the doorman welcoming her like an old friend, I made to climb out behind her but the driver shut the door. I was left on the back seat.

I sat there for a minute, wondering what I was meant to do.

I checked my phone. I peered through the window, wondering if there were sandwich shops nearby. I tapped my foot. Finally I leant forward through the front seats. ‘My dad used to leave me and my sister in the car when he went to the pub. He’d bring us out a Coke and a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch and that would be us sorted for three hours.’ I tapped my knee with my fingers. ‘You’d probably be done for child abuse now. Mind you, pickled onion Monster Munch was our absolute favourite. Best part of the week.’

The driver said nothing.

I leant forward a bit further, so that my face was inches from his.

‘So. How long does this usually take?’

‘As long as it takes.’ His eyes slid away from mine in the mirror.

‘And you wait here the whole time?’

‘That’s my job.’

I sat for a moment, then put my hand through to the front seat. ‘I’m Louisa. Mrs Gopnik’s new assistant.’

‘Nice to meet you.’

He didn’t turn around. Those were the last words he said to me. He slid a CD into the music system. ‘Estoy perdido,’ said a Spanish woman’s voice. ‘?D?nde est? el ba?o?’

‘Ehs-TOY pehr-DEE-doh. DOHN-deh ehs-TA el BAH-neeo.’ The driver repeated.

‘?Cu?nto cuesta?’

‘KooAN-to KWEHS-ta,’ came his reply.

I spent the next hour sitting in the back of the car staring at the iPad, trying not to listen to the driver’s linguistic exercises and wondering if I should also be doing something useful. I emailed Michael to ask but he simply responded: That’s your lunch break, sweetie. Enjoy! xx

I didn’t like to tell him I had no food. In the warmth of the waiting car, tiredness began to creep over me again, like a tide. I laid my head against the window, telling myself it was normal to feel disjointed, out of my depth. You’re going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. It always does feel strange to be knocked out of your comfort zone. Will’s last letter echoed through me as if from a long distance.

And then nothing.

I woke with a start as the door opened. Agnes was climbing in, her face white, her jaw set.

‘Everything okay?’ I said, scrambling upright, but she didn’t answer.

We drove off in silence, the still air of the interior suddenly heavy with tension.

She turned to me. I scrambled for a bottle of water and held it up to her.

‘Do you have cigarettes?’

‘Uh … no.’

‘Garry, do you have cigarettes?’

‘No, ma’am. But we can get you some.’

Her hand was shaking, I noticed now. She reached into her bag, pulling out a small bottle of pills and I handed over the water. She swigged some down and I noticed tears in her eyes. We pulled up outside a Duane Reade and, after a moment, I realized I was expected to get out. ‘What kind? I mean, what brand?’

‘Marlboro Lights,’ she said, and dabbed her eyes.

I jumped out – well, more of a hobble, really, as my legs were seizing up from the morning’s run – and bought a packet, thinking how odd it was to buy cigarettes from a pharmacy. When I got back into the car she was shouting at somebody in Polish on her cell-phone. She ended the call, then opened the window and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply. She offered one to me. I shook my head.

‘Don’t tell Leonard,’ she said, and her face softened. ‘He hates me smoking.’

We sat there for a few minutes, the engine running, while she smoked the cigarette in short, angry bursts that made me fear for her lungs. Then she stubbed out the last inch, her lips curling over some internal fury, and waved for Garry to drive on.

I was left briefly to my own devices while Agnes had her piano lesson. I retreated to my room where I thought about lying down but was afraid that my stiff legs would mean I couldn’t get up again so instead I sat at the little desk, wrote Sam a quick email and checked the calendar for the next few days.

As I did so, music began to echo through the apartment, first scales, then something melodic and beautiful. I stopped to listen, marvelling at the sound, wondering how it must feel to be able to create something so gorgeous. I closed my eyes, letting it flow through me, remembering the evening when Will had taken me to my first concert and begun to force the world open for me. Live music was so much more three-dimensional than recorded – it short-circuited something deep within. Agnes’s playing seemed to come from some part of her that remained closed in her dealings with the world; something vulnerable and sweet and lovely. He would have enjoyed this, I thought absently. He would have loved being here. At the exact point it swelled into something truly magical, Ilaria started up the vacuum-cleaner, swamping the sound with a roar, the unforgiving bump of machinery into heavy furniture. The music stopped.

My phone buzzed.

Please tell her to stop the vacum!

I climbed off my bed and walked through the apartment until I found Ilaria, who was pushing the vacuum cleaner furiously just outside Agnes’s study door, her head dipped as she wrenched it backwards and forwards. I swallowed. There was something about Ilaria that made you hesitate before confronting her, even though she was one of the few people in this zip code shorter than I was.

‘Ilaria,’ I said.

She didn’t stop.

‘Ilaria!’ I stood in front of her until she was forced to notice. She kicked the off button with her heel and glared at me. ‘Mrs Gopnik has asked if you would mind doing the vacuuming some other time. She can’t hear her music lesson.’

‘When does she think I am meant to clean the apartment?’ Ilaria spat, loud enough to be heard through the door.

‘Um … maybe at any other point during the day apart from this particular forty minutes …?’

She pulled the plug from the socket and dragged the cleaner noisily across the room. She glared at me with such venom that I almost stepped backwards. There was a brief silence and the music started up again.

When Agnes finally emerged, twenty minutes later, she looked sideways at me and smiled.

That first week moved in fits and starts, like the first day, with me watching Agnes for signals in the way that Mum used to watch our old dog when her bladder got leaky. Does she need to go out? What does she want? Where should I be? I jogged with Agnes and George every morning, waving them on from about a mile in and motioning towards my hip before walking slowly back to the building. I spent a lot of time sitting in the hall, studying my iPad intently when anybody walked past, so that I might look as if I knew what I was doing.

Michael came every day and briefed me in whispered bursts. He seemed to spend his life on the run between the apartment and Mr Gopnik’s Wall Street office, one of two cell-phones pressed to his ear, dry-cleaning over his arm, coffee in his hand. He was completely charming and always smiling, and I had absolutely no idea if he liked me at all.

I barely saw Nathan. He seemed to be employed to fit around Mr Gopnik’s schedule. Sometimes he would work with him at five a.m., at others it was seven in the evening, disappearing to the office to help him there if necessary. ‘I’m not employed for what I do,’ Nathan explained. ‘I’m employed for what I can do.’ Occasionally he would vanish and I would discover that he and Mr Gopnik had jetted somewhere overnight – it could be San Francisco or Chicago. Mr Gopnik had a form of arthritis that he worked hard to keep under control so he and Nathan would swim or work out often several times each day to supplement his regime of anti-inflammatories and painkillers.

Alongside Nathan, and George the trainer, who also came every weekday morning, the other people who passed through the apartment that first week were:

– The cleaners. Apparently there was a distinction between what Ilaria did (housekeeping), and actual cleaning. Twice a week a team of three liveried women and one man blitzed their way through the apartment. They did not speak, except to consult briefly with each other. Each carried a large crate of eco-friendly cleaning materials, and they were gone three hours later, leaving Ilaria to sniff the air, and run her fingers along the skirting disapprovingly.

– The florist, who arrived in a van on Monday morning and brought enormous vases of arranged blooms to be placed at strategic intervals in the communal areas of the apartment. Several of the vases were so large that it took two to carry them in. They removed their shoes at the door.

– The gardener. Yes, really. This at first made me slightly hysterical (‘You do realize we’re on the second floor?’) until I discovered that the long balconies at the back of the building were lined with pots of miniature trees and blossoms, which the gardener would water, trim and feed before disappearing again. It did make the balcony look beautiful, but nobody ever went out there except me.

– The pet behaviourist. A tiny, birdlike Japanese woman appeared at ten a.m. on a Friday, watched Felix at a distance for an hour or so, then examined his food, his litter tray, the places he slept, quizzed Ilaria on his behaviour and advised on what toys he needed, or whether his scratching post was sufficiently tall and stable. Felix ignored her for the entire time she was there, breaking off only to wash his bottom with what seemed like almost insulting enthusiasm.

– The grocery team came twice a week and brought with them large green crates of fresh food, which they unpacked under Ilaria’s supervision. I caught sight of the bill one day: it would have fed my family – and possibly half my postcode – for several months.

And that was without the manicurist, the dermatologist, the piano teacher, the man who serviced and cleaned the cars, the handyman who worked for the building and sorted out replacement light bulbs or faulty air-conditioning. There was the stick-thin redheaded woman who brought large shopping bags from Bergdorf Goodman or Saks Fifth Avenue and viewed everything Agnes tried on with a gimlet eye, stating: ‘Nope. Nope. Nope. Oh, that’s perfect, honey. That’s lovely. You want to wear that with the little Prada bag I showed you last week. Now, what are we doing about the Gala?’

There was the wine merchant and the man who hung the pictures and the woman who cleaned the curtains and the man who buffed the parquet floors in the main living room with a thing that looked like a lawnmower, and a few others besides. I simply got used to seeing people I didn’t recognize wandering around. I’m not sure there was a single day in the first two weeks when there were fewer than five people in the apartment at any one time.

It was a family home in name only. It felt like a workspace for me, Nathan, Ilaria, and an endless team of contractors, staff and hangers-on who traipsed through it from dawn until late into the evening. Sometimes after supper a procession of Mr Gopnik’s suited colleagues would stop by, disappear into his study and emerge an hour later muttering about calls to DC or Tokyo. He never really seemed to stop working, other than the time he spent with Nathan. Even at dinner his two phones were on the mahogany table, buzzing discreetly, like trapped wasps, as messages filed in.

I found myself watching Agnes sometimes as she closed the door to her dressing room in the middle of the day – presumably the only place she could disappear – and I would wonder, When was this place ever just a home?

This, I concluded, was why they disappeared at weekends. Unless the country residence had staff too.

‘Nah. That’s the one thing she’s managed to sort her way,’ said Nathan, when I asked him. ‘She told him to give the ex their weekend place. In return she got him to downscale to a modest place on the beach. Three beds. One bathroom. No staff.’ He shook his head. ‘And therefore no Tab. She’s not stupid.’

‘Hey, you.’

Sam was in uniform. I did some mental calculations and worked out he had just finished his shift. He ran his hand through his hair, then leant forward, as if to see me better through the pixellated screen. A little voice said in my head, as it did every time I’d spoken to him since I’d left, What are you doing moving to a different continent from this man?

‘You went in, then?’

‘Yeah.’ He sighed. ‘Not the best first day back.’

‘Why?’

‘Donna quit.’

I couldn’t hide my shock. Donna – straight-talking, funny, calm – was the yin to his yang, his anchor, his voice of sanity at work. It was impossible trying to imagine one without the other. ‘What? Why?’

‘Her dad got cancer. Aggressive. Incurable. She wants to be there for him.’

‘Oh, God. Poor Donna. Poor Donna’s dad.’

‘Yeah. It’s rough. And now I have to wait and see who they’re going to pair me with. I don’t think they’ll put me with a rookie because of the whole disciplinary-issues thing. So I’m guessing it will be someone from another district.’

Sam had been up in front of the disciplinary committee twice since we had been together. I had been responsible for at least one of those and felt the reflexive twinge of guilt. ‘You’ll miss her.’

‘Yup.’ He looked a bit battered. I wanted to reach through the screen and hug him. ‘She saved me,’ he said.

He wasn’t prone to dramatic statements, which somehow made those three words more poignant. I still remembered that night in bursts of terrifying clarity: Sam’s gunshot wound bleeding out over the floor of the ambulance, Donna calm, capable, barking instructions at me, keeping that fragile thread unbroken until the other medics finally arrived. I could still taste fear, visceral and metallic, in my mouth, could still feel the obscene warmth of Sam’s blood on my hands. I shivered, pushing the image aside. I didn’t want Sam in the protection of anyone else. He and Donna were a team. Two people who would never let each other down. And who would probably rib each other mercilessly afterwards.

‘When does she leave?’

‘Next week. She got special dispensation, given her family circumstances.’ He sighed. ‘Still. On the bright side, your mum’s invited me to lunch on Sunday. Apparently we’re having roast beef and all the trimmings. Oh, and your sister asked me round to the flat. Don’t look like that – she asked if I could help her bleed your radiators.’

‘That’s it now. You’re in. My family have you like a Venus flytrap.’

‘It’ll be strange without you.’

‘Maybe I should just come home.’

He tried to raise a smile and failed.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Go on.’

‘I don’t know … Feels like I just lost my two favourite women.’

A lump rose to my throat. The spectre of the third woman he’d lost – his sister, who had died of cancer two years previously – hung between us. ‘Sam, you didn’t lo–’

‘Ignore that. Unfair of me.’

‘I’m still yours. Just at a distance for a while.’

He blew out his cheeks. ‘I didn’t expect to feel it this badly.’

‘I don’t know whether to be pleased or sad now.’

‘I’ll be fine. Just one of those days.’

I sat there for a moment, watching him. ‘Okay. So here’s the plan. First you go and feed your hens. Because you always find watching them soothing. And nature is good for perspective and all that.’

He straightened up a little. ‘Then what?’

‘You make yourself one of those really great bolognese sauces. The ones that take for ever, with the wine and bacon and stuff. Because it’s almost impossible to feel crap after eating a really great spaghetti bolognese.’

‘Hens. Sauce. Okay.’

‘And then you switch on the television and find a really good film. Something you can get lost in. No reality TV. Nothing with ads.’

‘Louisa Clark’s Evening Remedies. I’m liking this.’

‘And then …’ I thought for a moment. ‘… you think about the fact that it’s only a little over three weeks until we see each other. And that means this! Ta-daa!’ I pulled my top up to my neck.

With hindsight, it was a pity that Ilaria chose that exact moment to open my door and walk in with the laundry. She stood there, a pile of towels under one arm, and froze as she took in my exposed bosom, the man’s face on the screen. Then she closed the door quickly, muttering something under her breath. I scrambled to cover myself up.

‘What?’ Sam was grinning, trying to peer to the right of the screen. ‘What’s going on?’

‘The housekeeper,’ I said, straightening my top. ‘Oh, God.’

Sam had fallen back in his chair. He was properly laughing now, one hand clutching his stomach, where he still got a little protective about his scar.

‘You don’t understand. She hates me.’

‘And now you’re Madam Webcam.’ He was still laughing.

‘My name will be mud in the housekeeping community from here to Palm Springs.’ I wailed a bit longer, then started to giggle. Seeing Sam laugh so much it was hard not to.

He grinned at me. ‘Well, Lou, you did it. You cheered me up.’

‘The downside for you is that’s the first and last time I show you my lady-bits over WiFi.’

Sam leant forward and blew me a kiss. ‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘I guess we should just be grateful it wasn’t the other way around.’

Ilaria didn’t talk to me for two whole days after the webcam incident. She would turn away when I walked into a room, immediately finding something with which to busy herself, as if by merely catching her eye I might somehow contaminate her with my penchant for salacious boob exposure.

Nathan asked what had gone down between us, after she pushed my coffee towards me with an actual spatula, but I couldn’t explain it without it sounding somehow worse than it was, so I muttered something about laundry and why we should have locks on our doors, and hoped that he would let it go.