just issued us a ticket and told us to get moving.
I lay down in the back seat of the car. I covered my head with my coat and closed my eyes. I couldn’t stop trembling, my teeth were chattering in my head, but I wasn’t cold.
‘Do you want to call Alex now?’ Dom asked me. ‘Nicole?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe you should.’
‘I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Not now.’
I stayed like that, covered up on the back seat, all the way back to London.
Chapter Seventeen
30 December 2011
I’M WALKING THE streets of Manhattan, alone. Dom is in the hotel, working. He was asleep when I got back last night, so he doesn’t know about Alex. I will tell him, I just didn’t want to do it this morning. He was in a good mood (sex followed by breakfast in bed always does the trick) and I didn’t want to spoil it.
I’m walking up Madison, on my way to Barney’s. The weather’s changed overnight, the sky no longer bright and crisp, it’s dirty grey and ominous. You can smell the snow in the air. The thought of a snowstorm puts an inch or two of extra spring in my step. Dom and I have made plans to meet up later: he’s going to work until mid-afternoon, then we’re going to meet up at the Met for culture followed by cocktails. Maybe after that we can go ice skating at the Rockefeller Center, or take a walk in Central Park. I’ll tell him about Alex then.
I can’t afford anything in Barney’s. Well, maybe a scarf or a pair of sunglasses, but even that would be pushing it and I can’t really turn up to Karl’s party in sunglasses and a scarf.
Plus, everyone in Barney’s is scarily attractive – it’s as though a pack of models has been let loose on those cool white marble floors. Even in my skinniest jeans and my rocking Jimmy Choo biker boots, I feel dowdy and out of place. I scuttle out and continue along Madison Avenue, past Calvin Klein, Cartier, Chanel and Chloé. I am too afraid to enter any of these places, but the sight of the cerulean crêpe de Chine dress in the window of Giorgio Armani is too much for me to resist. I overcome my fear (I’ve been to Iraq, for Christ’s sake, how can I be intimidated by shop assistants?), suck in my stomach, straighten my back and in I go.
The shop assistants are delightful. They are unfailingly polite, they ooh and ah when I put on the dress, they recommend shoes and jewellery to go with it. The dress is gorgeous and it looks fantastic on: it hangs beautifully, it clings in the right places, it’s flattering and elegant. Perfect. And just a shade under a thousand dollars. I don’t give myself time to back out, I just slide my credit card over the counter and bite my lip: Dom is going to bloody kill me. I just won’t tell him what it cost.
I leave the shop feeling dizzy and guilty and delighted. I love the dress. I’ll wear it a hundred times. That way it only cost ten dollars per wear. Less in fact. A bargain. Hell, at least I didn’t get the heels they were suggesting to go with it which cost $400. It could have been a lot worse.
I’m walking quickly, not looking in the shop windows – I don’t want to spot something I like even more for half the price, I don’t think I could bear it. I need to get off Madison Avenue. I turn right and walk up a block, cross over Park and onto Lexington Avenue. I’m at the corner of Lexington and East 70th, an address which rings a bell for some reason. I’ve seen it somewhere recently, only I can’t think where. It takes me a few moments to figure it out, and then it comes to me: it was on the letterhead at the top of an email I received. The offices of Zeitgeist Productions are at the corner of Lexington and East 71st – one block up. Aidan works one block away from where I am standing. I can’t help myself, I have to go and just have a look.
Butterflies fluttering in my stomach, I walk past the glass doors to number 502. I stop for a moment to examine the list of names engraved into a chrome plate on the side of the building: