A Perfect Proposal (8 page)

‘Of course we’ll still pay for your return ticket and
everything as we dragged you over here,’ the woman went on. ‘We have your bank details, we can just transfer the money.’ She paused. ‘Have you got somewhere else you can stay? If you need money for a hotel …’

‘Yes. I mean I have got somewhere to stay. I don’t need money for a hotel.’ Milly would help her out, surely. ‘I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I’ll go now.’ What she really wanted to say was, ‘Could you transfer the money right now?’

She had a choice. She could have a panic attack and then ring Milly for help, or she could just ring Milly for help. Although it was fairly scary being alone in a big airport in a strange country she did at least speak the language, sort of, and panic was not constructive. She rang Milly’s mobile.

Milly cursed in quite an Anglo-Saxon way when she heard Sophie’s news but she didn’t prevaricate. ‘Get a taxi to my apartment. Don’t pay more than forty dollars.’ She paused. ‘Have you got forty dollars?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, but you’ll need to tip him. It’ll take you about an hour. I’ll be waiting, but then I’ll have to come back here. I’m at work.’

‘But it’s nearly ten o’clock at night! And it’s Saturday!’ Sophie felt another surge of panic.

‘I know, but we’ve got our preview tomorrow and there’s loads to do. I think I told you.’

Sophie remembered. Milly had a dream job, working for an artist who was not only famous for the amount of money his work sold for and his generous wages, but for the lavish parties he gave. But his employees worked hard for their money. ‘Oh yes, you did.’

It was only when she was in the taxi she realised that not for a second had she thought about going straight home. How would she have faced her family? How could she have
got so near to Milly and not even seen her, and how could she waste an air fare to New York? Besides, she had a mission, and now she’d have more time to pursue it.

Sure she was doing the right thing, Sophie’s spirits began to lift. She was in New York, about to see her friend, and just being here was practically the same as being Sarah Jessica Parker!

She looked out of the window eager to spot landmarks and famous sights, but then she realised that the airport was quite a way away from the city itself and so she sat back and closed her eyes. She wanted to open them again and actually be in Manhattan.

The blaring of a horn wakened her from her doze. She sat up and looked out of the window, amazed at how familiar everything seemed and how different. Streetlights and billboards glittered and flashed, pulsating with life. Every song lyric or scrap of dialogue about New York she’d ever heard floated through her head, mostly in the voice of Frank Sinatra: ‘The city that never sleeps’; ‘So good they named it twice’; ‘I like to be in America’.

She loved the Americanness of everything: the traffic lights suspended over the multilane highway; the yellow taxis; the bustle. As a child she’d spent quite a lot of time watching her older sister’s video tapes and DVDs and sometimes she felt that she lived her life through the movies. Now she was actually here and it felt just like being in a film, not just being an observer.

What surprised her most was that the streets were wide, and although the buildings were immensely tall, they didn’t loom over narrow streets in the way they seemed to do in films. ‘Too much
Superman
,’ Sophie muttered to herself, excitement replacing jet lag and anxiety about having no job.

Even the buildings that weren’t skyscrapers seemed much taller than similar buildings would have been in London.

How wonderful it would be to live here, she thought, or be like Milly and work here.

Milly’s so jammy to have such an interesting job so young, she decided. She’s only a couple of years older than me but she’s got all that responsibility, working in a brilliant place at a job she loves, and look at me. Can’t even get a job as a nanny!

Then she reflected that she’d been a very successful nanny and her lack of a job now was nothing to do with her shortcomings. And while it was a complete pain that her employers had pulled out like that, they were going to pay her air fare, and even if they didn’t – especially if they didn’t, in a way – she couldn’t waste it. She had to make the most of every minute, follow her quest, track down her ancient relation and go home victorious. And even if it didn’t make anyone a millionaire it would be something to have found out more about it. Uncle Eric would be impressed, anyway.

The taxi drew up outside Milly’s building. They were in what Milly described as the Upper West Side, near Central Park, in a quieter street, and the building was ‘a brownstone’ (just like Carrie’s in
Sex and the City
, Milly had told Sophie and Amanda when she first got her apartment). There was a long flight of steps up to the door and Sophie could see fire escapes marching diagonally down nearby properties; even at night, the place felt full of promise.

Sophie handed over some of her precious dollars, dragged her rucksack up the steps behind her and pressed the bell next to Milly’s name. While she waited she looked up at the layers of red bricks divided by lines of white. The whole building seemed like the background for a film or television drama. Milly had told her that people quite often lived over their offices so residential and commercial properties were more mixed up than they were in most towns in England.

A few moments after she’d pressed the bell they were sharing an ecstatic hug, jumping up and down and screaming with excitement. ‘Welcome to New York!’ said Milly, and Sophie felt they were the most exciting words she’d ever heard.

Milly insisted on carrying Sophie’s bag up the several flights of stairs to her apartment. ‘I do warn you, it’s tiny, but you can have it to yourself for a bit. I’m afraid I do have to go back to work. There’s still loads to do before the show tomorrow. Here we are!’

She flung open the door on to what amounted to a bedsit with a small kitchen area up one end. There was a sofabed, a little table with two chairs and a row of bright raffia baskets full of clothes. ‘It is a bit small,’ said Milly, seeing it through Sophie’s eyes.

‘It’s sweet,’ said Sophie automatically, thinking that while it
was
tiny, far smaller than any of those in the television programmes, it would be so much fun to be with Milly. ‘Size doesn’t matter,’ she said, and meant it. ‘But it’s so late! Do you really have to go back to work?’ Sophie’s spirits, made volatile by long-distance travel, took a dive. Suddenly she felt desperately tired – it was about five o’clock in the morning for her and the prospect of being abandoned so soon after her arrival was a bit depressing.

‘I know, but it’s the opening tomorrow,’ Milly repeated before carrying on with the guided tour. ‘This is where it all happens: eating, sleeping, watching TV,’ she said, ‘and here’s the kitchen.’ She indicated an area of the room with a microwave, sink and fridge in it. ‘Here is the bathroom. Only a shower, I’m afraid, but it works OK. Now, I’ve got to rush. Help yourself to anything you want.’ She kissed Sophie again and opened the door to leave. Then she wheeled round. ‘Oh, the bed’s the settee. You have to pull it out. Can you manage?’

Sophie nodded.

‘There’s beer in the fridge,’ said Milly, possibly picking up on Sophie’s feeling of desolation. ‘Help yourself. I’ll sneak in when I come back, so as not to disturb you. You don’t mind sharing a bed, do you? We did it hundreds of times when we were kids. We’re going to have a great time!’

Sophie did feel a bit more cheerful once she’d been to the loo and washed her hands. Then she considered her options. Staying with Milly for more than the minimum amount of time didn’t seem like one of them. Milly was right when she said they’d shared a bed, or rather a mattress on the floor, lots of times, but only ever for one night at a time. It wasn’t going to work for more than a couple of days.

She found a beer and decided to drink it from the bottle. She needed to stretch out and sleep. She would work out how to turn the sofa into a bed and when she woke up, she’d make a plan. One thing she was absolutely certain of, she was not going to go back home to England without having achieved something worthwhile. If she did that, her family would never let her hear the end of it. Not only would she be a flibbertigibbet who’d spent a lot of money going after a job that didn’t exist, but a gallivanting one as well. Her family were very fond of long words and liked to apply them to Sophie as often as possible.

As Milly set out for work again the following morning, having heaved a sleeping Sophie off the sofa and turned it into a bed in the early hours, she said, ‘Why don’t you come to the opening tonight? There’ll be so many people no one would notice an extra bod.’

‘I can’t go to a posh gallery opening!’ Sophie was shocked at the suggestion. She hadn’t really got back to sleep after Milly got home and felt a wreck. ‘People will think I’m a waitress and I’ll develop a complex about it.’

Milly widened her eyes. ‘Not if you don’t dress like one! I’ll lend you something. Now I’ve got to go. Have a nice day!’

Sophie waggled her fingers back at her friend, copying her ironic manner and wondering how to make the most of her time in New York. Job-hunting, she decided, she would leave until tomorrow. Today, she would explore.

Milly had given her a map, some instructions about the subway system that Sophie had forgotten, and pointed with her hand the way to the centre of town. Sophie decided to walk, especially as it was one of those glorious crisp-but-sunny autumn days.

Wrapped up against the chill, she managed to get herself to Central Park before she needed to get out the map. It seemed amazing to be in this huge, rural space, in which squirrels bounded about, people jogged and juggled, and yet still be within one of the biggest cities in the world. They had parks in London, of course, but for some reason that didn’t seem so strange.

She had barely got her map unfolded when two separate people converged on her. ‘Can I help? Are you lost?’

Sophie jumped. She’d been told, mostly by her family, that New Yorkers were brusque and unfriendly, and in Central Park you were almost sure to get mugged. ‘Not really lost – just checking—’

‘Oh, you’re English! What a cute accent! Where are you going? What are you planning to see?’

A second later she realised that neither of the two people, one a middle-aged woman, the other an older man in a suit, were in the least interested in mugging her and genuinely wanted to help.

‘I just want to see as much of New York as I can, on foot,’ explained Sophie.

‘Shopping?’ asked the woman.

‘Window-shopping. I don’t want to spend any money,’ said Sophie firmly.

‘Then I won’t tell you where the discount stores are.’

‘Let’s get that map the right way up,’ put in the man.

‘You can have a great time in New York during the day, and not spend a cent,’ said the woman.

‘You can even go on a ferry ride,’ the man agreed. ‘The Staten Island ferry?’

‘The one in
Working Girl
? Sorry, all my knowledge about New York is from films and television.’

‘That’s how I know about London,’ agreed the woman, laughing. ‘Never been there, but I know it well!’

By the time the pair of them had set Sophie on her way she no longer felt alone in a big city, she felt she was having an adventure; she loved it.

She had walked through the park and had arrived at the shops. She walked past the designer names, not daring to enter but just looking in the windows, wishing she was Carrie Bradshaw and could actually walk in heels that high, when she looked up and found she was outside Bloomingdale’s. ‘Bloomie’s’, home the of Little Brown Bag. With a little skip of excitement, she went in.

Almost instantly a beautiful young black woman stopped and asked her if she’d like to try some new perfume. Sophie hesitated and the young woman said, ‘Would you like to come over to the counter? My colleague would be happy to help if there’s something else you need.’

Sophie looked towards where the young woman was pointing. She saw an empty chair. She had walked a long way that morning. She went across.

‘Hi!’ said another beautiful woman, Hispanic this time. ‘What can I help you with today?’

‘Well, to be honest, I’m not going to be buying anything, but I’d love to—’

‘Would you like me to put some make-up on you?’ asked the woman. ‘You have really lovely skin but I think we could bring out the colour of your eyes a little. Have a seat. Are you English?’

Half an hour later Sophie walked out of Bloomingdale’s wearing twice as much make-up as she ever had before and with a clutch of samples that would keep her going for weeks. She had bought Milly a little something – a handbag-sized selection of make-up in a lovely purse – and herself some tights and was very happy to have two Little Brown Bags to swing. If she was careful the make-up would last until the opening that night.

The rest of the day was spent looking at New York. She found her way to the Empire State Building, went up in the ‘elevator’ with hundreds of other tourists and then discovered she really preferred the view with her back pressed against the building. Going down again she got chatting to a woman who told her she worked there, had done for years, and she didn’t like heights either! She watched ice skaters at the Rockefeller Center, half wanting to join them, half glad to stop for a while.

She wanted to go everywhere on foot, partly to save money and partly because the thought of a strange subway system was daunting on her first day. She got lost a few times and got her map out to find out where she was. Every time the same thing happened: people flocked to her, eager to help her on her way. She found Forty-Second Street and wanted to break into a tap dance, on Broadway she felt she ought to sing and, having got as far as Greenwich Village, she found the Magnolia Bakery, the shop where Carrie bought cupcakes. There was a queue of Japanese tourists outside it but she decided not to join them.