The bags aren’t on the carousel yet so I choose a position, my back to a wall, to wait for my suitcase to show up. People stare at my red eyes. I still can’t comprehend that she’s gone. Permanently gone. Not around for me to call on a Sunday, or play Monopoly with at our parents’ house outside Nottingham each New Year’s Day. I’ll never discuss Dolly Parton songs or Shirley MacLaine movies with her again, nor share the small everyday irrelevancies of life.
In a way, in many ways, this city came between us.
I compose myself and take a deep breath, and then I walk calmly through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ channel.
When I pass through I’m greeted by emotional strangers with their arms held out wide. One man’s in front of me holding a red balloon and a rose. He’s almost crying. There’s a family of six waiting for an elderly relative, all of them sporting home-made name placards.
I break into a run.
People stare.
I run outside and continue jogging towards the cab rank, and my bag twists on the kerb, and my wrist turns the wrong way. I correct my grip and a black Suburban SUV drives past so close the wing mirror grazes my shoulder. ‘Uber?’ he shouts. I retreat and join the queue for an official yellow cab.
No New York skyline out here. No Brooklyn Bridge. No sign of the Empire State Building.
Drizzle and a cool, gentle breeze.
A friendly guy with a scar on his cheek beckons me over to his taxi and places my suitcase in his trunk. I opt to keep my hand baggage with me in the back seat.
‘Could you take me to the corner of West 44th Street and the Avenue of the Americas, please?’
‘44th and Sixth, yeah, no problem.’
‘No, the Avenue of the Americas, please,’ I repeat firmly.
He ignores me and starts talking to someone on his phone through an earpiece and mic. I think he’s Senegalese because there’s a miniature Senegal flag hanging from his rear-view mirror, along with a Black Sabbath album cover and a Greenpeace placard. He’s laughing and chuckling on the phone as he drives out of JFK. I’d rather he focused on the traffic but I don’t say anything.
This is nothing like I expected it to be. I check my phone and the GPS map tells me I’m in Queens. Low-built houses with small yards and barking dogs. Homes stuffed into small lots; American equivalents of the family house where my sister and I grew up. I drive past one place with a tarp secured over its porch roof.
The driver cackles in the front seat and I study the map some more. We are heading in the right direction. I am comforted by my GPS. I reference it at every turn, every intersection.
‘Could we take a bridge to Manhattan Island instead of an underground tunnel, please?’
He checks me in his rear-view mirror. ‘What is it, lady?’
‘Bridge, please. I don’t like tunnels.’
‘Sure, no problem. Queensboro. First time in New York, yeah?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘First time. Thank you.’
He returns to his call and I see the beginnings of a skyline. It’s part-eclipsed by industrial terminals and warehouses but I can see the tips of skyscrapers and the reflection of the East River. My heart is beating so hard in my chest and I cannot believe I am here in New York City on the saddest week of my life.
We cross over to Roosevelt Island and Manhattan reveals itself. My goodness. It looks exactly like a movie. Low sun streaming through grids of buildings; headlights shining like fallen stars. The city is pulsing. London has a rhythm all of its own, but this place is something else.
My twin sister lies somewhere in all this. Cold. Lifeless, in a stainless steel drawer or on a slab. She travelled to this city, this epicentre, and now she is dead. It’s perverse, but I can’t shake from my head the notion that I am somehow replacing her. I’m not, of course, not in any sense, but our base DNA is one hundred per cent identical. It’s almost as if this city lost that specific DNA and now that loss has been corrected. The deoxyribonucleic acid, each miraculous double helix, has been replaced by a clone. A perfect spare. On a cosmic level there is something beautiful and monstrous about that. It’s as if I shouldn’t be here at all.
The Chrysler Building. The UN. The Empire State Building. We drive closer to Grand Central Station and I ask the driver, ‘Are we about ten minutes away?’ and he replies with a shake of his hand.
I frown at this and he says, ‘This time of day.’
I call Dad and let it ring three rings and then end the call. He calls back almost immediately, three rings, and then ends the call. That’s how my family communicates. Free of charge.