Page 11 of Meet Me In Central Park

I hadn’t expected to see Auntie Dottie again that day. Usually when she had a date with Brian, for a neck and shoulder massage, or anything else for that matter, she didn’t make a reappearance. So, when I saw a flash of orange hair as she came back into the shop, just as I was finishing closing up, I was almost as surprised as I’d been about how many items from the fall line I’d managed to sell to our French customers in the end.

‘Oh hello, I didn’t think you be back in again today. Is everything okay?’ I looked at my great aunt, who had an uncharacteristically serious expression on her face.

‘Where’s Madison? I need to tell you something.’ Aunt Dottie scanned the room, as if she expected Madison to suddenly jump out from behind one of the display racks, and panic rose in my throat. If something had happened to my grandparents… My breath was coming in short rasps and my chest had gone tight, but somehow I managed to get two words out.

‘Gone home.’

‘Good.’ Auntie Dottie’s expression immediately relaxed and it felt as if all the air had left my body. ‘Are you okay, kid? You’ve gone a real funny colour.’

‘I’m fine, I just thought when you said you needed to tell me something, that maybe there’d been another…’ I couldn’t finish the sentence, but my aunt seemed to understand.

‘Oh honey, I’m so sorry, I should have thought. It’s okay, it’s nothing bad.’ Aunt Dottie enveloped me in a hug and I could have stayed there forever, because if felt so much like one of Nan’s cuddles. She even smelled the same, with the scent of lily of the valley clinging to her even more closely than I was. If the traces of Youth Dew on the dressing gown belonged to her, she certainly wasn’t wearing that perfume now.

‘No, it’s me. I’m just being silly. My mind always seems to go to the worst-case scenario these days. I wish it didn’t, but it does.’ I gave her a watery smile as I pulled away. ‘I told Maddison to go when most of the closing up was done; I was just finishing up and you’ll be pleased to hear we’ve now sold 90 per cent of the fall stock. I think there are still a few online orders to process, too. Rush delivery as well, so you can charge extra.’

‘Now you’re talking my kind of language!’ Aunt Dottie winked and I felt a strange sensation, as if I’d found the place where I truly belonged. It was quickly followed by a rush of guilt. I couldn’t possibly feel like I belonged in New York when my grandparents were in Canterbury, with my parents’ ashes buried in the churchyard just a few minutes’ walk from their house.

‘I knew you’d be pleased,’ I said, internally shaking myself and forcing my thoughts back to the matter at hand. ‘Now, what was it you wanted to tell me?’ I was holding my breath again, but this time it was for a very different reason. Crossing my fingers over one another, I was just hoping that whatever my aunt wanted to confide, it wouldn’t have anything to do with Brian or his alleged ability to give the best massage in Manhattan.

‘I wanted to tell you that it’s okay to be happy again.’ Aunt Dottie’s eyes never left my face. ‘I recognise that look you get when you catch yourself smiling. I saw you do it this morning.’

‘Do what?’

‘Stop in the middle of something that makes you happy and then wait until the smile has slid right off your face.’ She grabbed hold of my hand. ‘You don’t have to deny yourself that. I understand how hard it is to lose someone you love, but the last thing your parents would want is for you to be unhappy.’

I shook my head. ‘I know you and Nan lost your dad when you were really young and that must have been tough, but it wasn’t the same. You couldn’t have done anything about that.’ Until I met Harry, I’d never admitted to anyone that part of me blamed myself for Mum and Dad’s accident, but now I didn’t seem able to stop admitting it.

‘And you think there’s something you could have done to prevent their accident?’ Aunt Dottie raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re going to have to tell me how the hell you came up with that, when it was all down to that waste of air they locked up for it.’

I could have told Aunt Dottie the same things I’d said to Harry, about feeling guilty because it was my choice of flight time that had put them in Grant Bailey’s path. Or how things might have been different if I’d taken a day off work to drive them to the airport, so it was me behind the wheel when the accident happened. But it wasn’t even about that any more. Since I’d spoken to Harry, some of the guilt about those things finally seemed to have eased. I knew no one in their right mind could really blame me for the accident, not even me, but feeling better about that made me feel even worse about not getting my parents the justice they deserved. Their accident was the fault of a man whose name my aunt couldn’t even bear to use, but I’d let him get away with it.

‘It’s not just the accident, it’s the fact I didn’t fight hard enough to make sure Grant Bailey got the sentence he should have done.’

‘From what I heard, you barely ate or slept trying to make that happen, but sometimes life isn’t fair. In fact, sometimes it sucks.’

She wasn’t wrong. After the accident, I’d researched every case I could, convinced it would help determine the outcome of Bailey’s trial, but it didn’t make a shred of difference in the end. ‘I can’t help thinking that if I’d just tried a bit harder, things might not have worked out the way they did.’

She shook her head. ‘This is what Ruby was most scared of, that you’d end up living to get revenge on that scumbag, knowing that no sentence would ever take away the emptiness you felt. You need to find something else to fill that space. That’s why she wanted you to come here.’

‘I know.’ Nan was a wise woman and I’d started to lose some of that hollowed out feeling since I’d arrived in New York, but it wouldn’t last forever. ‘It’s just I can’t help thinking when I go home it’ll all—’

‘One step at a time.’ Aunt Dottie cut me off. ‘Let this city show you what life has to offer and then you can start worrying about how you hold on to that feeling once you’re home. That’s why I came back here, to take you out.’

‘You’re taking me out?’

‘You betcha and we’ve got to be there in twenty minutes.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘That would be telling.’ Dottie tapped the side of her nose. ‘But if you’re not already wearing pants with some give at the waist, you might want to think about changing.’

‘I need to wear bigger pants?’ My eyes widened and Aunt Dottie laughed.

‘I forget these days that you call them trousers.’ Aunt Dottie dropped the perfect wink. ‘Come on then, you’ve got ten minutes before the cab gets here and by the time we’re done, you’ll forget what it’s like to be a Brit too!’

* * *

True to her word, Dottie had found a way to immerse me in all that New York had to offer and she’d been spot on about the need for a loose waistband too. All the arrangements had been made so that her mobility issues didn’t curtail the plans and I’d never seen the inside of so many taxi cabs in a single night. If I’d needed a reminder of how many people chose to start a new life in New York, just chatting to some of the drivers would have been an education in itself. Dottie’s beloved city was the home of fresh starts, and I was about to discover parts of it I’d almost certainly never have seen without her.

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