Page 5 of Meet Me In Central Park

‘Sounds good.’ I watched them leave, slightly bemused by their whirlwind of a visit, but feeling a little lighter somehow. Maybe Nan had been right about me needing a Christmas away from home. In New York I could be anyone. I didn’t have to be the tragic girl who’d lost both her parents in a car crash. And maybe I could even forget, just for a few weeks, that the man who was responsible for all of that would soon be going home.

3

In the end, I decided to get my first night’s dinner from Ray’s Famous Pizza, a couple of blocks up from Candy Cane Lane. Aunt Dottie had invited me for dinner with her and Brian, but I’d taken a rain check. I was tired and in need of comfort food, and nothing hit the spot like pepperoni pizza. She’d also let it slip that they were celebrating their six-month anniversary, and I didn’t feel like playing gooseberry to my great aunt and her toy boy. It must have been the right thing to do, because she’d given me the next day off. Betty and Madison were both booked in to work, anyway, and Dottie had suddenly mentioned the possibility of jetlag. I had a feeling I’d been right about her reasons for setting me to work straight away: she’d known I needed the distraction to help me get settled in and try to forget about everything I’d left behind back at home.

Aunt Dottie had been an all-too-infrequent visitor to the UK when I was growing up, but she’d always made a big impression. Mum had been obsessed with New York for as long as I could remember, watching as many movies and TV series set there as she could get her hands on. I think she knew every line in every episode of Friends off by heart. And she lit up like a Christmas tree every time Dottie came home for a visit. She’d been planning a trip to New York for as long as I could remember, too. But something always seemed to get in the way – usually money, or the lack of it. Mum had found out she was expecting me when my parents were barely out of their teens, and they’d been playing catch-up ever since.

They’d scrimped and saved throughout my childhood to make sure I’d never miss out on opportunities, even helping to pay my way through university when the time came. And just after I graduated, Dad got made redundant. He found a new job eventually, but they were back to playing catch-up with their debts again by then, and desperately saving to be in a position to start their own business. In the meantime, I’d got a well-paid job in corporate law for a firm that had offices in several countries. It meant I jumped ahead of Mum and got a couple of all-expenses-paid business trips to New York. She was thrilled for me, but I could tell it made her want to visit even more. It was what I wanted for her, too, and my mum’s fiftieth birthday seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. I had the money to treat them and, after all they’d done for me, it felt so good to finally be doing something to pay them back, just a tiny bit. It was meant to be the trip of a lifetime, but they never even made it to the airport.

Waking up on my first full day in New York, my parents were on my mind – just as they would have been if I’d woken up in the little single bed in my grandparents’ spare room above the micro-pub in Kent. For the first few months after they’d died, I was obsessed with counting the days and weeks since they’d set off on their trip. It got easier to stop doing that after a year of firsts – my first birthday without them there for Mum to bake one of her cakes with the consistency of a rubber ball, the first Mothering Sunday, and Father’s Day. And, worst of all, the first Christmas. But they were never far from my thoughts, whatever day it was.

I was up early despite not setting an alarm, an exhausting day of travelling, and getting to grips with the systems in the shop. But my body didn’t seem to want to rest. I peered out of the gap in the open window and on to Seventh Avenue. The sidewalks were already busy, despite how early it was. People in business suits, who looked like nothing could stop them until they reached their destination, jostled for space with others who were carrying bags, looking ready to hit the shops as soon as they opened. Then there were the tourists who thought nothing of blocking the sidewalk altogether, as they stopped to snap pictures of the most famous city in the world on their mobile phones. All human life was here, just as Mum had known it would be. She’d have liked nothing better than people watching and, if she’d been with me, we’d have been playing the game we often played – trying to guess people’s jobs and backgrounds, where they came from and what they were doing here. It was like giving everyone we saw a fictional life story and I had kept telling Mum she should write a book.

‘One day.’ She’d said that far too often, always thinking there was plenty of time left for all of that, but it had run out before any of us had believed possible.

‘I hope we get snow while we’re here.’ I was still talking to Mum as if she was in the room with me. If anyone else had heard, they’d probably have decided that I’d finally lost the plot, but I needed to find a way to cope with being here. I’d decided on the flight, when all I could think about was how excited Mum would have been the moment we took off, that while I was here, I’d pretend she could see everything that I could. I didn’t know how long I could keep it up, but for now it was helping.

‘It’s way too early for anything like that yet, but it feels colder than yesterday already.’ It was the first of November and the weather seemed to have realised that another month had been flipped over on the calendar, because there was definitely more of a nip in the air. ‘I might even have to borrow Aunt Dottie’s dressing gown.’

Pulling the window shut, I turned towards where the dressing gown, which had scared the life out of me the day before, was hanging. Unhooking it, I breathed in, inhaling a scent that made it feel more than ever as if my mother was right by my side. Like Nan, Mum had had a favourite perfume she’d always worn: Youth Dew. It was her one indulgence, even when money was tight. I’d given her a bottle the Christmas before she’d died, and Mum had acted as if it was a lovely, unexpected surprise, the way she always did, despite the fact I’d bought her a bottle for Christmas ever since I could remember. Even before I was earning my own money, Dad used to get one and let me write the label, as if it was from me.

‘Look inside the box.’ I’d smiled, barely able to contain my excitement, waiting for her to open the gift set to discover the plane tickets and hotel booking I’d made in my parents’ names. ‘There’s a little something extra in there for you.’

It had taken her a moment or two to find the envelope and take in what the contents meant, but then she’d reacted exactly as I’d known she would. ‘Oh my God, Libs, really?’

There’d been happy tears and laughter and so much excitement that day, and a bit of panic from Mum about how they could get everything organised to leave in less than three weeks’ time. It was one of the reasons why I’d cleared it all with my dad first and made sure he could request leave from work for him and Mum, and sort out things like visas. I’d been so thrilled with how perfectly I’d planned it, making sure that nothing could possibly go wrong, but then Grant Bailey had smashed into their car and my whole world had gone more horribly wrong than I could ever have imagined it going.

‘If you’re here, Mum, just give me a sign.’ The goosepimples and the hairs standing up on my arms had nothing to do with the drop in temperature, because when I pressed the dressing gown against my face, it was like someone had liberally sprayed it with Youth Dew just seconds before.

‘Mum? Are you here?’ I waited again, but there was nothing. Just an old dressing gown, a lingering scent in the air that Aunt Dottie had probably been wearing the last time she’d had the dressing gown on, and far too much imagination. Just because I wanted Mum to be here with me, it didn’t mean she was.

‘I think I need some air.’ This time I really was talking to myself. I had no idea why, but what I did know was that I had to clear my head and get out and walk. It was a coping mechanism I’d used a lot since the accident, and I must have walked every street in Canterbury a hundred times. But with Central Park just a few blocks away from the shop, I now had a whole new place to escape to.

I’d never got round to visiting Central Park on any of my business trips, but it had been number one on Mum’s wish list. If she couldn’t do it, I was just going to have to do it for her.

As soon as I stepped onto the first path, I sensed that I’d been there before. I knew I hadn’t, of course, but it felt so much like I had. The knot between my shoulder blades seemed to undo. Maybe it was the oasis of calm it provided in such a frenetic city, but I fell in love with the park from the start. There were huge office blocks and apartment buildings all around, and it was like being dropped into a piece of woodland amongst all of that. A few dog walkers and joggers were around, but it was unexpectedly quiet, and to my surprise there were even parts of the walk where I felt as if I was completely alone. I’d never have imagined finding such peace and solitude just moments away from the throng of the crowds, but this felt like the corner of New York I was always meant to find.

Most of the trees were still clinging on to their leaves, and the colours were as beautiful as I’d always thought they’d be: rusty orange, earthy browns, deep reds and shades of yellow. Mum would have been picking up leaves from the ground and stuffing them in her bag ‘for later’.

‘We’re not just making memories, we’re taking memories, aren’t we Libs?’ It was what she’d always said when she was filling her bag with pebbles or shells from a visit to the beach, even though she knew she wasn’t really supposed to, or taking home ticket stubs from a trip to the movies. She’d had about ten memory boxes and even more scrapbooks, which had all been packed into the loft at my grandparents’ place after my parents had died.

‘Are you sure you aren’t just saying that as an excuse to hoard all kinds of rubbish?’ Dad would tease her about collecting so much stuff and she’d always say the same thing about that too.

‘Just as well for you that I don’t mind holding on to old things for decades, isn’t it!’ I could see them now, laughing together, before Dad pulled her into his arms and told her just how grateful he was that she’d decided to keep hold of him for all these years. They’d have been having that same old exchange as they strolled through Central Park, I was certain of it. And suddenly it wasn’t just Mum I could almost feel walking by my side. It was stupid, but I felt closer to Mum and Dad, standing in that park, than I ever had in their old house after they were gone. I’d wanted so badly to believe the well-meaning words of comfort, after they’d first died – they’ll always be with you – but I could never feel it. Not until I’d arrived in New York. Maybe the jetlag really was getting to me after all, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hold on to the sensation of my parents walking alongside me for as long as I possibly could, so I kept going. I went all the way from the south end of the park to the north end, and back again, climbing up to Belvedere Castle to look at the view.

‘It feels like I’m on the set of a film.’ I hadn’t intended to say the words out loud, but I must have done, because someone answered me.

‘I’m sorry, were you talking to me?’ Looking up, I locked eyes with a tall man giving me a quizzical look and heat flushed from my collarbone, all the way up my neck to my cheeks.

‘Oh, no, sorry. I was just thinking out loud.’ He was wearing a park ranger’s uniform, so he’d probably seen it all: flashers, tourists jumping into the fountains, and plenty of people, like me, talking to themselves. But, for some reason, I didn’t want him to think I was weird. Although why on earth it mattered to me what this complete stranger thought, I’ll never know. ‘I just recognise so much of this place, even though I’ve never been here before, and I’m sure I’ve seen this castle in a film?’

‘Well, it was Gargamel’s headquarters in the Smurf movie.’ The man laughed. ‘Although it’s been in much better movies than that, too.’

‘What would you say if I admitted it was the Smurf movie I remembered it from?’ I looked at him properly for the first time, and got that same sense of déjà vu I’d had when I came into the park. As though I’d met him before somewhere.

‘I wouldn’t judge you; everyone’s got their eccentricities.’ He laughed again, and there was another jolt of recognition. I must have met him before, but I had no idea where.

‘So, do you work here? In the park, I mean?’ I should probably just have made my excuses and left – he already thought I talked to myself, and that my favourite movie was The Smurfs – but I had to find out where I knew him from, or it was going to drive me mad.

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