We had a kind of pact. It wasn’t an overt, spoken pact; more of an understanding. She got to live her fun life and in return I expected complete and unwavering loyalty. I demanded it. If there was ever an issue – a debate, an accusation, a question of taste – I expected her to back me up. Unconditional support. I have to say, in KT’s defence, she always did. We were a team, until fourteen months ago. We were a great team.
The sandwich arrives and the amount of pastrami in between the bread slices is astonishing. I take a bite and the salt from the meat makes my mouth water almost before it hits my tongue.
KT and I always lived in the same part of the same place. Not always in the same building, I never expected that level of connection. I always knew she’d marry and have a couple of carefree kids, but at least she’d be close by, two stops on the tube max. I told her that. When I worked my admin assistant job in London she studied at King’s College and all was well. I knew she was there. If I needed her, or I needed a kidney due to some horrific road traffic accident, I could rely on her, and equally she could rely on me. And then, fourteen months ago, without telling me, she accepted a place at Columbia over the place she told me about at UCL. She had applied in secret. She had accepted the offer in secret. She had found a scholarship in secret. And then she told me.
I demanded she reconsider. I continued to demand it months after her starting the course. She wouldn’t. She distanced herself from me.
I get another text from Mum. A photo of KT’s bed in our childhood bedroom, her side of the room covered with One Direction posters and photo-collages of her friends, mine with encyclopaedias and reference books. She’s checking up on me just as she has done all my life. Making sure I’m coping. She told me once she worries about me more than she does about Dad and KT combined. Ten times as much. I reply with another heart emoji.
When KT confessed she was leaving me I couldn’t talk for a whole minute. It was my worst possible nightmare realised. If she’d said she was studying at Edinburgh I could have found a job up there, or travelled by train every weekend. Even if she’d studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, I could have managed the ferry – never the Eurostar, but I could have used the ferry, we could have made it work. I told her all this. But New York? I pleaded with her. I begged her. And when that didn’t work, I told her in no uncertain terms that I would kill myself.
In a way, I did.
The sandwich is incredible but it’s way too big so the guy kindly offers to give me a doggy bag. I can have the rest for dinner in my room.
She flew out the following week, early September last year, to start her two-year masters course. A part of me died that day. Withered. And the very next afternoon I began researching how I could fix the problem, and effectively right all the wrongs.
And then I went to work.
Chapter 25
Accommodation isn’t easy in New York City. It isn’t easy in London either, but here it’s a joke. If you’re KT, and you were born charming, then you might get a handsome apartment, fully paid for, on the border of the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights. That might happen. But everyone else has to struggle to make rent or live in an overcrowded dorm room. I’ve been staying in a seventy-dollar-a-night hostel, and now I have to halve that expenditure. Which is fine if you’re the kind of person who’s prepared to sleep in a converted shed Airbnb in Staten Island, but I am not that kind of person.
After thorough research I find my new home: the YMCA right next to Central Park on the Upper West Side. I can walk there in fifteen minutes. I’ve been outside the building so I know the area a little, and I can base myself there, sharing a quadruple room, which isn’t ideal, for thirty-five dollars a night. I’ve already made the reservation.
I check out with my bags. I managed to consume all the bottled water and convenience store food I stored on the tarp under my bed, so now the only unwieldy item is my baseball bat. I stick it in my backpack and it feels like a samurai sword resting behind my head. I pass Jimmy’s cart and head up Eighth Avenue towards the Museum of Arts and Design.
My thoughts are clear and positive. A new life for at least one week. A life where I get to live the dorm experience I missed out on. Four young women in a room. Like a pack. I’m a little nervous about the lack of personal space but at thirty-five bucks a night you have to sacrifice something. This way we’ll have safety in numbers, me and my new roomies. And no risk of me mistakenly bludgeoning an innocent cleaner with a baseball bat thinking she’s trying to break through the door. That kind of thing would result in a mess and it would have ruined my plans. With four of us in a room we can look out for each other. We can defend ourselves.