London and, if this cab driver didn’t start taking corners with a less cavalier attitude, the last place I would ever see. Fifteen minutes later, we reached the tip of the island and pulled up outside the South Ferry Terminal.
‘We’re going on a ferry?’ I asked. Jenny had been enigmatically and uncharacteristically silent on the journey downtown and I’d been too busy taking in the city and counting the Starbucks to worry about it.
‘You’re so not ready for Staten Island,’ she laughed, passing the driver a twenty and hopping out, taking several of my bags with her. I crawled out with my other bags and trailed behind her. ‘But you’re totally ready to see this.’
We marched along the pavement and down into a busy park, I was so consumed with checking out the various sculptures and lines of people chatting, laughing, eating ice cream, I was almost at the fence before I saw it. When I did, I stopped dead. There it was. The clearest, truest symbol of New York, of America, standing proud and keeping guard across the bay. The Statue of Liberty.
Jenny turned around to look for me, holding her hand over her eyes. ‘Pretty great, huh?’
I nodded, without anything to say and walked slowly towards her. We dropped our bags and leaned over the railings. It was beautiful, my very own movie moment.
‘I was thinking where we should go when you were trying on clothes,’ Jenny said softly. ‘And I figured where better than the first place thousands of people first experienced New York. Cheesy maybe, but who better to officially welcome you to the city than Lady Liberty.’
‘It’s so weird,’ I said, still staring out across the river. ‘I’ve seen it a thousand times on TV and stuff but to actually see it, there, real. Wow.’
‘Yeah,’ Jenny agreed. ‘I remember the first time I saw her, it was the first thing I did when I moved to the city. We never, ever came down here as kids, my mom hates it. But she’s here to look after everyone. New York is made up of millions of different people, Angie, and they all come here looking for something, just like you.’
‘Please, you’re giving me too much credit. I wasn’t looking for something,’ I said, looking across at what I guessed to be Ellis Island. ‘I was running away.’
‘No, you’re not giving yourself enough,’ Jenny said, turning to me. ‘Yeah, so maybe not everyone puts an ocean between themselves and their ex but you’ve got a lot to work through. And that’s not psychobabble, that’s genuine life experience talking. When my ex left me, I fell apart and I mean it. Fell. Apart. And I had no excuse to be so incredibly pathetic, it was all totally my fault and I had the most amazing friends to look after me. If you didn’t feel like your support system was strong enough, then getting yourself out of the situation was the best thing to do. And New York is a great place to do that. It’s a city of new beginnings. People go to LA to “find themselves,” they come to New York to become someone new.’
‘I suppose,’ I said, thinking about everything that had happened. Was it weird that Mark hadn’t even crossed my mind since the Chanel counter? ‘It all just seems so strange and unreal. I feel like I ought to be, I don’t know, feeling more.’
‘So you’re still in shock,’ Jenny said, turning back towards the bay. ‘There are worse places to be in shock than in Bloomingdale’s. Seriously though, you’ve suffered a huge personal trauma, a break-up is the closest thing to a bereavement, you know.’
‘I do feel kind of like that,’ I admitted. I really didn’t want to dwell on it in such a public place. I was English after all, we’re not public criers. ‘One minute I’m like, it’s over, I’m not even going to think about any of it and then the next, I just can’t believe what’s happened. I think I’m doing the right thing by being here at the moment though.’
Before Jenny could back me up or shoot me down, a loud ringing interrupted us. My phone. I pulled it out of my bag, ready to remind my mum how expensive international calls were on a mobile when I saw who it was.
Mark.
I looked at the flashing screen for a split second and wondered what he could possibly be ringing for after our last conversation. Had he changed his mind? Was he feeling awful? Was Tim’s hand so badly damaged he was having it amputated?
Ring ring. Answer me. Answer me.
Without another thought, I threw my phone, as hard as I could over the railings and into the water. And it felt really, really good.
‘Sorry,’ I said, inhaling deeply. Had I really just done that?
‘This city is a good place to deal with trauma, honey, we’ve been through a lot ourselves and we’ve come out of it just fine.’ Jenny pulled a pack of tissues out of her handbag and passed them over as a precautionary measure, completely ignoring the phone missile I’d just launched.
‘God, I know,’ I said quickly, taking the tissues. ‘I suppose when you think what everyone has been through here, what they survived, it puts a break-up into perspective.’
‘True, but that’s not what I meant, sweetie,’ Jenny said. ‘I meant that you’ve come to the right place to pull yourself through something that’s difficult and hard and tears your insides out. Whatever that something is, is different for everyone. For me, Century 21 reopening five months after 9/11 was my epiphany. I knew I’d be brave enough to get through anything if they could open their doors and sell me designer shoes at a seventy per cent discount.’ She took my hand. ‘Now I’ve got to get to my evening shift. And you must be completely wiped. Want to head back to the hotel?’
I took one last look out at the statue. Wowsers. I was in New York.
And I was so incredibly tired.
‘Yes please.’
We gathered up all of our bags and flagged down yet another cab. Hmm, a new friend, a new wardrobe and a new city. Compared to Saturday, this hadn’t been a bad day.
After a nap, a shower and several false starts at international dialling from the hotel room phone I finally did what I had to do.
‘Annette Clark speaking.’
‘Mum, it’s me.’
‘Oh, Angela, thank goodness. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day,’ she breathed out in an overly dramatic gesture. This was going to be quick and easy, then.
‘Well, my phone doesn’t work over here.’ We generally found it easier to rely on white lies, a much healthier mother/daughter relationship, than telling the truth, and I wasn’t ready to have my mental state questioned. Again. ‘I just wanted to let you know I’m safe and I’ve got somewhere to stay and I’ll give you another call when I know what I’m doing.’
‘Somewhere to stay?’ she repeated.
‘Yes, with a friend,’ I said, keen to get off the phone before the conversation turned to a subject I just didn’t want to deal with. ‘Now, can you do me a favour and pick up my stuff from the house? He knows—’
‘Angela, slow down,’ Mum said. I could see her, cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear, rubbing her cheeks with her palms,
