going to be a hard enough sell, but, seriously, Richard, a golf course? It’s winter there for eight months of the year, and it’s all moss and wonky trees. You have no idea. Those cliffs are a death trap. You know the locals call it The Rock? There’s a reason for that.’
Her boss waves his hand as if he’s swatting an annoying fly. ‘They play golf in Scotland, don’t they? My God, they haven’t seen the sun there for centuries. I got dragged around St Andrews last June with that obnoxious TV guy, pitching for his hotel job in a bloody parka. Couldn’t feel my fingers for hours. Bloody June! I could see my breath! Newfoundland can’t be any worse than that.’
‘Yes, but, you know, the locals in Tippy’s Tickle … I mean, don’t you think it’s better to get the locals on board rather than buying them out? It could be a wonderful employment opportunity for them. They’ve been having a hard time up there since the cod fishery shut down. There are a lot of talented people—’
Richard’s fleshy face folds into in a frown. ‘That’s another thing. Tippy’s Tickle? What kind of a name is that? That’ll have to go.’ He pushes his glasses down his large nose and peers at her over the top of the frames. ‘All you need to do is secure the land, Sophie. Everyone has a price and the treasure chest is full. We need hotel staff with experience, not some local yokels. Get them to sell up, and I’ll make you the lead architect on the project.’
Sophie sits back in the black leather chair. ‘The lead architect?’
‘Absolutely.’
This was a turn-up for the books. No matter the awards she’d brought to the practice, the front-cover features in Architectural Digest, the hard graft on the front line as the project architect, she’d never been made lead architect. That was a job for the big boys. Richard Niven, Tony Mason and Baxter T. Randall. The Triumvirate.
She frowns. ‘I’m not sure, Richard.’
A thick black eyebrow twitches above his glasses. ‘You’re not sure?’
‘I want you to make me a partner in the firm.’
Richard’s eyebrows shoot upwards like two birds taking flight. ‘Partner? You know I can’t promise that. I have to speak to the other partners. It has to be a unanimous decision, which is … well. I’m sure you understand.’
Yeah, sure I understand. She could almost feel the glass ceiling bang against her head. ‘You’re the controlling partner. I’m sure you can sway the others.’ She stands and straightens the jacket of her Armani suit. ‘Think of the consortium, Richard. Think of all the awards the firm will win. Think of the publicity. Richard Niven & Associates Architects will be up there with Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.’
Richard fixes her with a stare, his eyes like two green marbles flecked with orange. ‘Fine. A partner, then.’ He presses the intercom on his desk. ‘Jackie, get Sophie on the next flight to Newfoundland.’ He glances over at Sophie. ‘Book economy.’
Over the Atlantic Ocean – 11 September 2011
Sophie leans over the armrest and squints through the greasy fingerprints streaking the aeroplane’s window. The late summer sky is vivid blue above the clouds drifting like wads of tissue over the inky water far below. The afternoon sun throws a sharp streak of light across her lap. Pulling down the shutter, she glances at her watch. Three forty-five. She could have done without the 4am dash to LaGuardia and the tedious layovers in Toronto and Halifax. Halifax airport, the most boring airport in the world. Not even a Starbucks. Almost eight bloody hours to Gander since she stepped on the plane in New York. Getting Jackie to book her on the milk run had to be Richard’s idea of a joke.
Sophie rubs her temples. The aeroplane rattles with the excited chatter of “plane people” heading back to Newfoundland for a ten-year reunion. Ten years already since those thirty-eight international planes had been diverted to Newfoundland on 9/11. She is a plane person too. But she isn’t here for a reunion party. A party is the last thing on her mind.
She squints as a face materialises in the murk of her mind’s eye. Will he still be in Tippy’s Tickle? No, no, no. It’s over, Sophie! It’s been ten years. Get a life, woman. She erases the face, like she’s wiping away a chalk image on a blackboard.
She stuffs in her iPod earbuds and switches on her chill-out playlist, slumping back into the lumpy seat with a yawn. Her body feels so heavy, like she’s wrapped in a duvet. If only she could just do that – burrow under a duvet and block out the phone calls and the emails and the meetings, meetings, meetings. She swore her skin had looked grey this morning when she’d staggered into the bathroom at three-thirty, drenched in sweat. Bloody New York humidity. She had to do something about that fluorescent light, though. No woman over twenty-five, let alone a forty-eight-year-old, should have to deal with fluorescent light. It was the light of the devil.
Still, this time the prize is worth it. Partner in Richard Niven’s architecture practice. Everything she’s ever wanted. Everything her late mother, Dottie, had always wanted for her. Success. Independence. Freedom. Queen of the hill. Top of the heap. New York. New York.
Well done her. She’d held her nerve with Richard. Refused to back down. Just like her mother had taught her. Dottie would be so proud.
She rubs her eyes. So why has she been feeling so bloody … empty? If only she didn’t feel like the air was constantly pressing her into the ground, like she was a lump of mozzarella having the water pressed out. If she could wake up for once without the empty-stomached anxiety that had been plaguing her for months. Everything was just so … just so nothing.
She shakes her head impatiently and closes her eyes as Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ wafts into her ears. She’s just tired. The break from the office will do her good.
It’d been ten years since she’d stepped foot on The Rock. Stranded there for five days in the middle of nowhere after all the air traffic was grounded, while the world fell apart on 9/11. At least this time she was coming to Newfoundland voluntarily. Well, almost voluntarily. She never should have shown Richard the photos she’d taken in the outport village of Tippy’s Tickle back in September 2001. Of Ellie and Florie’s general store, of the whales spouting off the coast, of her aunt Ellie’s handsome Victorian merchant house, Kittiwake, standing like a colourful sentinel on the cliff above the village. On the same cliff where the consortium wanted to build the hotel.
What would her mother have said about turfing Ellie off her property? Sophie grunts. That wasn’t hard. ‘Keep your eye on the prize, Sophie. Don’t let anyone keep you from fulfilling your potential, least of all your aunt. She squandered everything God gave her on a man. She made her bed, now she has to lie in it. You don’t owe Ellie anything.’
She could hear her mother’s clipped English accent over Adele’s honeyed voice. ‘Do your best, Sophie. Get up early. Stay up late. Work those weekends and holidays. Show everyone that you’re somebody. Show them. Show them all. Don’t let anyone stand in your way or distract you. Don’t make my mistake, Sophie. Don’t regret the person you could have been.’
Oh, she’d been a good student. She’d worked hard and now had everything she’d ever wanted – an imminent partnership at an international architectural
