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The Family Game(45)

Author:Catherine Steadman

We stop at a hut selling gluhwein, glogg and hot chocolates. The vendor clearly recognizes Lila and becomes mildly awkward. In the short time we’ve been together I have already noticed a few roving eyes and open mouths.

‘You ever had glogg?’ she asks me.

‘I don’t think so. What is it?

‘It’s like gluhwein but much better. It’s Swedish,’ she grins. ‘It’ll warm you up from the insides.’

That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, and I politely decline and settle instead for a fully loaded hot chocolate with marshmallows and a crumbly chocolate stick valiantly wedged into its creamy summit.

We wander on sipping our hot drinks and I steel myself to ask a question I’ve been longing to ask since Thanksgiving. ‘Did you know all about Bobby?’ Lila’s focus turns to me, an eyebrow raised.

‘Of course. I know they are very sensitive about it. The whole family. You didn’t know?’ she asks, interested by this new information.

I shake my head and after a moment’s thought she pats my arm in sympathy.

‘Well, Stuart talks a lot. I blame AA. He’s an open book. But Edward, he’s different. More like Robert, I think. A tougher nut to crack. I think you’re a good match though. Me, on the other hand,’ she adds with an impish smile, ‘my nutcracking days are over. I like to keep it simple.’

The market complete, Lila flags us a taxi downtown. In the sheltered warmth of the cab, she turns to me excitedly with a question. ‘Are you scared of heights?’

I only fully understand the question when we’re deposited outside One Vanderbilt and I look up at the jutting steel and glass towering skyward above us. I’ve read about it. It’s been closed most of this year while they changed the internal exhibits.

Lila pulls two lanyards from her bag and they jostle in the wind. ‘It officially reopens on Friday night; social posts are embargoed till then, but we can get content anytime. VIP passes.’ She slips one over my head and for the second time today I remember she’s a celebrity. It’s odd to think how one can forget that so quickly in the context of the Holbecks. Even fame like Lila’s seems to fade in significance beside the reach of that family.

We’re fast-tracked, up to the 91st floor, our ears popping at the speed of the elevator’s assent as a guide straps an electrical bracelet to both our wrists.

When the doors open, I see the relevance of Lila’s question. The entire cavernous 91st floor of Summit Vanderbilt is made of glass and mirrors suspended a thousand feet over Madison Avenue, reflecting everything in it back ad infinitum. Lila steps out of the elevator first, her wristband light blinking as the sound of birds and the ocean fill the space.

‘The bracelets map each wearer’s vital signs,’ the guide tells me, gesturing for me to step out of the elevator too. ‘The space responds to the people that fill it. Think of the building as a massive mood ring. Different types of stimuli, reflecting you back to you.’

A sensory hall of mirrors. The idea is a terrifying one for a person like me who fears truly being seen, but I have little choice but to follow Lila as our guide disappears.

I feel my wrist vibrate gently and the sound of fire crackles to life around us. Lila spins to face me, a Cheshire cat grin blossoming. The sounds I am unwittingly producing, so unexpectedly telling, that it sends a hot flush of fear up my throat and into my cheeks.

‘Harry, that’s you. The sound of you. It’s beautiful,’ she beams. I feel my pulse raise at the intensity of her focus, but force myself to stay calm, to centre. I cannot let the sound, or the memories associated with it, overwhelm me.

As the fire’s roar settles into the low crackle of a campfire, I follow Lila across to the building’s glass floor to the full-height windows and the panoramic view of the city beyond.

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