Chapter 33
I take a different route back to the Harrison train station. I maintain my old lady posture and appearance. But it is difficult to suppress my joy. Revenge, retribution, punishment, karma, whatever you label it: rebalancing a wrongful act is a powerful sensation. Groot wronged KT. An eye for an eye. He wronged her. And now he is to be punished for it.
The train will arrive in fifteen minutes. I spend that time in the ladies’ toilet, or restroom as they call it here. I am resting, I suppose. Resting well away from security cameras. I need to be completely invisible. KT used to walk around with her head held high, making eye-contact, smiling. People noticed her. I don’t smile or make eye contact. I don’t want to be noticed.
The train arrives.
My ticket is stamped.
There’s a woman sitting opposite and she must be thirty. She keeps staring at me. She’s trying not to seem too obvious, staring while her eyes are swivelled round in their sockets, her face pointing out of the window, but she is focused on my appearance. Perhaps on my wig and the way it doesn’t give me a natural hairline. Or how my facial collagen is too young-looking for my skirt length or shoe choice. This woman is trying to work out my back story. But she’ll never get close.
The Suburban dropped me off in Manhattan that day, five or six blocks from KT’s apartment, in the northernmost part of the Upper West Side. It was my first time in New York City. My first time outside of the UK.
A family boards the train and sits opposite, the eldest child trying, and failing, to master her yo-yo.
KT’s building was a sculpted brownstone with heavy, ornate steps. There were shrubs growing outside her windows, and her blinds were finished at the hem with a line of small fabric spheres on pieces of string, like a line of soft ping pong balls.
I checked that nobody was watching. And then I buzzed her.
A message pings on the phone of the woman opposite and she stops staring at me. She’s not a cop, there’s no way, I’ve been too careful. She’s just inquisitive. Some people are not good at hiding their stares, that’s all. It’ll be OK. I believe wholeheartedly in this role, in this disguise, and so will she. Maybe it’s weird to see someone, anyone, on a train these days who isn’t looking at their smartphone. Perhaps that’s why she’s staring.
KT opened her door. I expected a look of horror on her face for some reason, an expression of mortal fear, but she burst into tears and smiled and led me inside.
‘What the fuck, Moll? How are you even here? Oh, my God, this is amazing. Did Mum and Dad organise it?’ She looked behind me. ‘Are they here? Did you come by cruise ship? Is this a surprise?’
‘They don’t know I’m here,’ I said. ‘It is a surprise. I’ve been saving up.’
We didn’t hug. We didn’t even shake hands. We never really touched each other. No affectionate punching of shoulders or brushing each other’s hair. None of that. Never. We’re too similar. It’d seem weird.
‘I cannot believe you are here – you’re such a bitch not letting me know, God, I would’ve tidied up or something. Fuck. You’re staying here with me, right? How long are you in New York? Oh, my God, you’re really here, Molly!’
And then we made a pot of tea and sat down and got to talking. No phones or distractions. We talked and we covered so much. How she was coping in New York. Her new boyfriend and the awkward affair with her tutor that he ended despite all the promises that he loved KT and that he was going to separate from his wife and buy his own duplex apartment by Morningside Park. I told her about my job, how my mid-year assessment went, the movies I’d seen on Netflix, the new fire safe I’d invested in. She told me about Violet Roseberry. How they had drifted apart a little after Violet started acting strange, but they still hung out after class or in the library. I asked about how Mum and Dad were enjoying New York. She told me Dad loved it and Mum was worried about the family business, how they were probably going bankrupt and this was Dad’s last splurge; one of many, and how she didn’t know how they would manage after the court had dealt with them.
The train slows for a stop and the kid with the family does a half-decent yo-yo and her mum gives her a big cheerful hug to congratulate her.
KT started talking about the dinner we’d have with Mum and Dad that night at her favourite Italian place close to her apartment, and it was then that I told her exactly how I’d got here, how I had found out about the foundation that was sponsoring her and that I met James Kandee and persuaded him to fly me here secretly in his Gulfstream. I told her that I was going back in a few hours, I didn’t even have a passport with me so I couldn’t be here officially, but I’d just wanted so badly to see her, to make things right between us. And then we opened up about how we both felt. Finally. How we really felt. We worked our way through two full pots of tea and a packet of digestive biscuits. I tried to explain the betrayal I felt, her leaving me alone in London. She opened up about how suffocated she was and how she needed two years just to be herself. How Mum and Dad were so focused on me they pretty much ignored her. We didn’t cry but we talked and talked. We were exhausted. So I suggested we do what we did as children, as young teens even. I suggested we take a power nap before dinner with our parents.