1 Fairytale of New York
Monday 21 November
Christmas lights twinkle in the rain as I duck down Fifth Avenue – red, greens and golds glimmering in reflections on puddles and glass as I dodge along the busy sidewalk, my phone pressed tight to my ear.
‘And the good news is, it’s looking like we’re going to hit the million-copy selling mark by the end of this week! We did it, Harry!’ my literary agent, Louisa, cheers on the phone, her voice as warm and close as if she were bundled up against the cold beside me in the sharp New York City chill. I try not to think of the three and a half thousand miles of distance between New York and London – between me and my old home and its soft, damp greyness – but every now and then the pangs of homesickness awaken and stretch just beneath the surface of my new life. It’s been four months since I left England and the pull of home is somehow stronger now that winter is setting in. New York can be cold in so many ways.
‘To all intents and purposes,’ she continues with glee, ‘here’s me saying you are now officially “a million-copy bestselling author”。’ I can’t help but yelp with joy – a surreptitious half-skip in the street. The news is incredible. My first novel, a runaway bestseller, in the charts since publication, but this new milestone isn’t something I could ever have dreamed of until now. New York swallows my ebullient energy greedily. I could probably lie down on the sidewalk and start screaming and the festive shoppers would probably just weave around me, unfazed. It’s an oddly terrifying and yet reassuring thought.
‘We’ll be getting another royalty payout from the publisher at the end of the quarter,’ Louisa continues. ‘So, Merry Christmas, everyone!’
It’s funny, it’s only November and yet it does feels like Christmas here already. I look up to the halos of light hanging above me, Holiday decorations, sparkling from shop windows, strung in great swathes high over the main drag of Fifth. Everything seems to be moving so fast this year; a whirlwind, a whirlpool.
‘How’s it going over there?’ Louisa asks, snapping me back to reality. ‘Settled? Happy? Are you living love’s young dream?’
I let out a laugh of surprise because yes, as smug and as self-satisfised as it may sound, I really am. After so many years alone, after pushing relationships away, perhaps I’ve paid in full for my mistakes and I can put them to bed. Maybe I’m finally allowed a little happiness.
I shake off the dark thought and grasp back onto my new life with both hands. ‘Well, we’ve got furniture now at least. Not sure I’ve quite worked out the subway yet but I guess I’ll get there in the end. Or I guess I won’t,’ I add jokingly.
The truth is, while I know I am beginning to get a feeling for New York City, I realize I am trying to settle into a city that does not settle itself. The crowds, noises, faces, people, that frenetic fight-or-flight energy. I suppose it’s only been four months – I know it can take a lifetime to become part of a city, to find your place. And the world I’ve landed into here, with Edward, the new circles I find myself moving in, his rarefied life, that is something else again.
‘And how is your dreamboat? How is Ed?’ she asks, as if reading my thoughts. I slip past a gaggle of tourists in front of St Patrick’s Cathedral, its bells tolling anachronistically alongside towering glass and steel.
Louisa was with me the night I met Edward; I shiver at the memory of the look she gave me when I first brought him over to meet her. That silent swell of pride I felt to have my arm hooked through his – the pride anglers must feel cradling their outsized shimmering catches. Though I can only credit chance and timing with my iridescent prize. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to say Edward plucked me from the stream than the other way around.
I would be lying if I said Edward’s background, his habits, his rituals – so alien to me – hadn’t lent him a strange additional attraction. His world is different to mine, everything he does invested with the subtle shimmer of something gilded. Not that I knew who he was when he first spoke to me.