Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe? (35 page)

Ellie shook her head. For the first time in her life she hated herself. Every spiteful, petty, self-absorbed bit. All this time she had been convinced that this was her love story when really there had been a bigger, more heartbreaking tale underneath.

And now she knew what had put that big plate of glass between Jack and any normal emotions.

She tried to get on to her feet but couldn’t. So she sat there opposite Bryan in silence, thinking of the last time she had seen Jack and wishing that she could unsay all those terrible things she had said to him about Helen and hold him in her arms.

Ellie stood in the queue for a cab and swallowed over and over again, trying to get rid of the pain in her ears. The queue shuffled forward and the man behind her rammed the back of her legs with his luggage trolley. She was going to turn round and give him her best disapproving face when it occurred to her that he might be armed. Everyone in New York was armed, weren’t they?

She went back to trying to unblock her ears. Still, at least she was on solid ground at last, not circling above JFK Airport for twenty ear-popping minutes waiting for a landing slot. And she hadn’t had to stand in the huge queue to retrieve her luggage. She didn’t have any – just a handbag crammed with a clean pair of knickers, some paracetamol and a toothbrush.

One ear cleared, the queue moved forward, and the late-summer heat wrapped itself around her. She was weary from the journey, but most of all she was exhausted from thinking about what she would say to Jack when she
found him. It had been madness to come here, but adrenalin had got her this far. Now, standing amid the mayhem and building work that was JFK Airport, she was beginning to lose heart.

A cab drew up and the big, sweating man organising the taxis bellowed at two Japanese people to get a move on.

Jack was out there somewhere, perhaps standing on a sidewalk feeling the same heat. All she had to do was find him. Not that difficult, then. Simply hunt him down in a city of nearly eight and a half million people and then apologise for calling his dead wife a slut and try to win him back. Easy-peasy. She closed her eyes and tried to go back over the haphazard plan she had been brewing in her head ever since Bryan North had dropped that bombshell about Helen.

Get a taxi to Bar Bootle, talk her way in, find Jack, get down on her knees and apologise. Happy ending.

The person in front of her was suddenly whisked off into a cab and the big, sweating guy was bellowing at her, ‘You wanna ride or what? Come on. Where you goin’?’

‘Roosevelt Hotel,’ Ellie shouted back.

‘OK, then,’ he said, and shouted her destination at the driver.

Ellie pulled open the door of the cab and a smell of exotic spices hit her, swiftly followed by the pulse of Arabic music.

‘Hello,’ she said, but the driver didn’t even turn his head.

Ellie took in the multitude of little charms and pendants hanging from the rear-view mirror. She sat behind the partition and grille separating the driver from the backseat passengers and felt like she was in a tank.

‘Which way you wanna go?’ the driver said, not turning his head.

‘Um … the quick way?’ Ellie guessed.

The driver nodded and set off with a lurch. Then he started saying something and laughed uproariously.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ellie shouted, ‘I didn’t catch that.’

It was only after he carried on talking and laughing that she understood he was chatting to someone else on his radio. Feeling very naïve and very lost, she sat back in her seat. Of all the stupid ideas she’d ever had, this was perhaps the stupidest. What did she think she was doing? This wasn’t a Richard Curtis film. Jack wasn’t going to run towards her with his arms out when he saw her, touched by the fact she’d come all the way to New York to find him.

She decided to try to stop thinking for a while and let the sights and sounds wash over her.

Everything here was like London and nothing was like London. Except for the traffic jams. They came to a halt and then started to inch their way down the express-way. She looked out at the billboards and low wooden
houses and frustration and anger welled up inside her. She just wanted to find Jack and try to put right the damage that her big mouth and her small brain had done. She didn’t need this.

She went back to thinking about her plan. It stank. Sure, she knew where the agency was, but it was already after 7 p.m. What if he’d gone home? She had no idea where he lived and trying to worm it out of anyone at work would have alerted them to why she wanted it in the first place. So then what? Spend a sleepless night in her hotel and try again tomorrow?

She realised she had been chewing the skin along the side of her thumbnail again. If she went on like this, she’d have eaten herself completely by Christmas.

She took her thumb away from her mouth but couldn’t get her mind off her plan, or lack of it. What if she couldn’t actually get into his office? What if he’d told people a madwoman called Ellie Somerset was never to be allowed in? She had one evening and one day to find him and then she had to go home. It was hopeless.

Then she thought of the look of pain on Jack’s face when she had said those things about Helen, and knew she had no choice. She had to find him.

A few more minutes and she had moved on to berating her own stupidity. How could she, Ellie Somerset, have cocked things up so badly? She had a reputation for researching the far end of a fart when it came to her work.
It was unbelievable that she’d confronted Jack with only half of his story.

She thought back to him accusing her of acting like a sick cat when Sam had left her and felt deep, deep shame. Of course it had made him angry when he had been through such real pain.

She was gnawing her thumb again. She sat on her hands and then realised the driver was talking to her. ‘Rush-hour,’ he said in a tone that suggested she must be mad trying to get into New York at this time of day. He waved his hand at the road ahead. ‘This road is called the LIE, the Long Island Expressway, but it’s a
lie
because it’s not express at all.’ He started to laugh. ‘You get it?
Lie
because you can’t go fast … express lane … fast …’ He was slapping his thigh now with the hilarity of it.

Ellie ripped the boarding pass she was still holding into as many tiny pieces as she could.

When he’d stopped laughing, he turned his head slightly. ‘You should have come into LaGuardia Airport. You’d have been there one and one half, maybe two hours ago.’ He smiled at her in the rear-view mirror as if he had been incredibly helpful.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said politely. ‘I’ll make sure that I remember that for next time.’

Why couldn’t he shut up? Why did she have to wade through all this when the only thing she wanted was to find Jack?

Slowly, slowly they moved towards New York, along the Grand Central Parkway and then across the Triborough Bridge. Halfway across, there was a little sign saying, ‘Welcome to Manhattan.’

‘Are we really in Manhattan now?’ Ellie asked like a little girl, feeling excitement despite all the other emotions weighing her down. It looked so familiar, like a film set.

The driver caught her eye. ‘Good, eh? Anything you want, anything you want, it’s out there. The good and the bad. All there. You come here for something special?’

‘Yes,’ Ellie said, lowering her head to try to see to the top of the buildings they were driving past. ‘I’ve come to find the man I love. I’m going to apologise for calling his dead wife a two-faced slapper and then explain that I understand why he keeps running away from commitment and that I want to make it all better for him for the rest of his life. And hopefully when I’ve done all that, he’ll say, “OK, Ellie,” and come home with me.’ She had started to laugh even before she saw the expression on the driver’s face. It was probably the start of jet lag or post-flight hysteria, but once she’d started, she couldn’t stop and she sat back in the seat and let it happen, watching the buildings flick by and wondering whether the driver would charge her extra for being a mad Englishwoman.

Later, after checking into her hotel, Ellie walked out into a hot, sticky Manhattan evening. She wandered along
the street for a while and then stuck out her hand for a cab. Her little stash of ready cash was fast disappearing, but what the hell. She’d already cleared out her bank account to buy the plane ticket. Hard to believe she was actually standing on a New York street. Two days ago she had been in Scarsdove. No wonder her arms and legs felt like lead.

A yellow cab drew up and she went to open the door when another hand reached out for it too.

‘Oh,’ she said, and automatically stepped back. The other hand belonged to a man in a suit. A really attractive man in a suit.

‘Which way you goin’?’ he said, hauling open the door.

‘Um … Midtown?’

‘You wanna share?’

‘Share?’

‘Yeah, I’m goin’ that way too.’ He gave her a look. ‘Tourist, huh?’ He didn’t wait for her to nod. ‘It’s OK,’ he rattled on. ‘It’s a New York thing.’ He held up the hand that wasn’t carrying a briefcase. ‘See, I’m not armed … It’s just that it’s hard as hell to get a cab down here.’ He gave her a large smile. Good teeth.

‘You two gonna get in or dance on the sidewalk?’ the driver said.

‘After you,’ the man in the suit said, and so, against her better judgement, Ellie got in.

She studied the man as he settled himself next to her.
He really was very good-looking. Psychopaths probably weren’t that handsome. The man stared right back.

‘So, you here on your own?’

‘No,’ Ellie said rather too quickly, ‘with a huge group. Judo experts. Well, all martial arts really.’

‘Oh yeah? Or you sayin’ that because you think I’m a psycho?’

‘Because I think you’re a psychopath.’

The man chuckled and held out his hand. ‘Steve Martin.’

‘But not
the
Steve Martin?’ she said, giving the hand a quick shake.

‘If I had a dollar for every time—’

‘Sorry. I’m Ellie, Ellie Somerset.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Ellie. So, here on vacation?’

‘Short trip,’ Ellie said, and felt Steve’s thigh connect with hers.

‘OK. Need someone to show you the sights?’

‘Um. No.’

‘Shame. I was gonna offer.’ His arm came along the back of the seat.

Ellie tried subtly to pull her dress down to cover her knees. ‘You’re quite direct, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘In fact, everyone here seems quite direct. I thought New York was meant to be …’ She was going to say ‘unfriendly’ and then thought better of it. She didn’t want to be rude and she didn’t want to give Steve an excuse to show her how friendly he could be.

He seemed unperturbed. ‘Hey, we’re all in a rush. Busy, busy. We got no time for the slow build.’ He brought his thigh into even closer contact with hers. ‘This is only a short cab ride, so I gotta move fast. And it’s not every day you get to share it with a beautiful Englishwoman.’

Ellie felt herself blush. There wasn’t much room in the back of the cab and now there didn’t seem to be much air either.

‘Actually, I’m here to meet my boyfriend.’ It felt nice to describe Jack like that, even if it was a total lie.

Steve removed his arm from the back of the seat.

Ellie decided to change the subject, ‘So, you going home?’

‘Nah. Back into work. Need to check on somethin’.’

‘Right. And what do you do? As a job?’

‘Account director. Advertising firm – Schneider & Linklan. You know it?’

Ellie was wide-eyed. ‘No. But that’s amazing. I work in advertising too.’

‘Yeah? Cool coincidence. Well, we gotta pitch tomorrow and I’m goin’ back in to check on the creatives, lazy sons of bitches. If you don’t watch ’em, they’ll louse up and go off to the bar. Whaddya do? Account director too?’

‘I’m a copywriter,’ Ellie said, and watched with some satisfaction as Steve’s face crumpled in embarrassment.

‘Do you have that expression “puttin’ your foot in your mouth” in England?’ he asked.

Ellie reached out and patted him on the arm. ‘You are speaking to a master of the art.’

When the cab had dropped them both off, they walked a little way along the street together until they arrived at Steve’s building. Ellie could see it was only a few doors down from Bar Bootle. ‘So there are a lot of agencies round here?’ she said.

‘Yup. All sizes. Some on the way up, some on the way down.’

‘What about that one?’ Ellie indicated Bar Bootle.

Steve laughed. ‘Well, it was on the way down. Big time. But now, who knows? Been bought by some English agency and they’ve got some fierce bastard in. One of your fellow countrymen. British accent, but not like yours. Now he’s got them falling over themselves to show who can work the hardest.’

Ellie imagined Jack striding through the office sizing everyone up and picking off the weakest.

‘OK,’ Steve said, ‘I’m goin’. But, hey, take this.’ He handed her a card. ‘If you get bored with that boyfriend, gimme a call.’

Ellie watched him walk away. Why couldn’t the pigs in suits back home look anything like that? She put the card in her bag and walked along the street to peer through the smoked-glass window of Bar Bootle. She could see the receptionist’s desk and a wall of art, but nothing else. Even though she had expected it to be closed at this hour,
it was still a crushing disappointment. The thought of having to wait another whole night with that apology burning in her brain was depressing and she turned away from the agency and began to walk. She could smell the excitement on the streets here, just like in London, but somehow more dangerous.

She walked for a couple of hours, clocking up the sights. She looked in the windows of the Fifth Avenue shops and chatted to a man outside St Patrick’s Cathedral who gave her a leaflet and tried to convince her that Charlemagne was the rightful king of America. She got moved on by a security guard when she tried to sit on a wall at the Rockefeller Center. As she explored, the conversations she overheard made her feel like she was in a Woody Allen film – ‘Well, I said to her, “You’re just gonna walk away from this. I’m the one with the therapy bills”’ – and sometimes like a Martin Scorsese one – ‘Yeah, he gave me that look, you know, the baseball-bat one.’ Everything was frantically alive.