thing we’ll change,” Bea said, marching to the door. “Any idiot can pick one of these locks.”
She jammed it into the keyhole and wiggled. It wouldn’t turn. Gaz hurried over to help, leaving Cilla and me to circle each other. She didn’t seem angry, but my five-foot firebrand of a friend was holding herself unusually reserved, so I kept my arms to myself.
“You look terrific,” I said. “I love your hair like that.”
She touched her new side-swept bangs. “I felt a bit cliché going blond, but they say it’s more fun, and I needed fun.”
Gaz pushed open the door with a holler of triumph.
“Get in here, you lot,” he called.
Cilla and I started up the steps, but the crunch of tires stopped me. I turned around to see a coupe I didn’t recognize creep past the arch toward the entrance to Freddie and Nick’s current apartment. The driver appeared to be a woman, and by the way she was working her accelerator—which is to say, barely—it seemed as if she was afraid that anything above a crawl would get her in trouble. She paused and squinted at us before looking down at a paper in her hand.
Her tone was way too casual. “Is he seeing someone?” I asked.
Cilla gazed into the middle distance, as if doing math. “Seeing someone can mean one thing to one person…”
“Another party planner?” I asked, glancing again at the archway. The woman had apparently read her map correctly and was gone. “Good to know Freddie is back on his game.”
Gaz interrupted by tromping down the stairs. “What’s the holdup? Aren’t you the least bit curious what Great-Auntie Georgina’s got in her foyer?”
“Cilla was telling me about Freddie’s latest,” I said. “Or not telling me.”
Gaz brightened. “Hannah? She’s a peach. Loved my vindaloo aaaaah,” he said, wringing a hand that Cilla clearly had just pinched. “But, I have no idea who you’re talking about. Fancy a crumpet? I wonder if Georgie Girl’s toaster still works.”
“I wonder if her dishes are even clean,” Cilla said, following him.
I lingered. I’d never known Freddie to be a model of discretion. Had he asked Cilla and Gaz to keep their mouths shut? Does that mean this is serious? That’s kind of soon, right?
I knew Freddie wasn’t mine; I’d chosen Nick, and I loved Nick. But what I had not chosen was this new world in which I knew nothing about the inner life of a person who meant so much to me. It had begun to feel like we’d crossed a bridge away from him that had started to crumble and might not hold up long enough for us to get back across.
I shook my head as if to evict the thought and walked into the house. My house.
I’d like to say I was instantly captivated by the enchanted, opulent majesty of Apartment 1A. (My unofficial biographer Aurelia Maupassant would’ve written exactly that, if she hadn’t hung up her pen after my recent behavior all but invalidated her slavishly inaccurate prose salad The Bexicon.) In reality, the first thing that greeted me was a stale, musty odor. Georgina had died about a decade ago, and obviously no meaningful efforts had been made to open a window.
“I can still smell her last cigarette,” Bea said, scrunching her nose.
Cilla wrestled open a heavy drapery and, with a grunt, got it back under the control of the gold rope whose job it had once been to restrain it. Daylight coursed into the rectangular foyer, illuminating a hallway to my right, and a grand, curving wooden staircase in the far corner of the room. It was shabby—the deep forest-green wallpaper was peeling in places, the checked marble floor was scuffed and dirty—but it was undeniably impressive, from the two gilded cherub sculptures flanking the carved double doors directly ahead of me, to the sweeping crystal chandelier hanging perilously over our heads like the Phantom of the Opera’s would-be murder weapon. It was centered over Georgina’s monogram, set in gold in the floor, sullied only by a moderate coating of dust.
“I don’t understand,” Gaz said, poking at the cherubs.
“You’re telling me,” carped Bea. “Who wallpapers a room one color? Just paint it.” She whipped out a notebook and started jotting down ideas. “That will be the first to go, after that ghastly logo in the floor.”
“Who hired you?” Gaz asked.
Bea shot him a withering look.
I took a fuzzy leopard-print coat out of a front hall