‘Rachel, Rachel Conti. Yes, yes, of course, I’ll be right there . . .’
Changing only her shoes (into a pair of flats so she could get around faster), and wrapping up in a warm coat, Rachel managed to make it to the hospital in under forty-five minutes, which wasn’t bad for a cab ride on Christmas Eve. It didn’t take her long to find directions to Gary’s room and she soon collared a nearby nurse to get all of the details.
‘He suffered a few bruised ribs in the blow, and then a laceration to the head and subsequent concussion from the fall,’ said the woman, reading from the chart. ‘Twisted ankle too. Apparently some Good Samaritan stepped in and kept the crowd back, cleaned him up a bit and kept the wolves from carrying off his packages. Stuff’s right there,’ she said, pointing to a pile of colourful bags on the chair beside Gary’s bed.
‘Will he be OK?’ Rachel asked nervously.
‘He’ll be fine, but don’t expect him to come round properly till morning. He woke about half an hour before you got here, but we sedated him to keep him still and resting. Feel free to stay for a while, but you may as well take the bags and head back to get some rest yourself. He’s not going anywhere for at least a couple of days, maybe three. Oh, and happy holidays,’ she finished.
Rachel barely raised a hand to acknowledge her as she leaned over Gary to gently kiss his forehead and stroke his arm.
‘Bloody gobshite . . .’ he mumbled almost imperceptibly.
The nurse looked enquiringly at Rachel. ‘He’s been mumbling stuff like that all evening. Any idea what he means?’
Rachel actually felt the hint of an unexpected smile. ‘It’s just an Irish expression.’
‘Ah, I see,’ the woman said, nodding quickly as if this explained everything. ‘I guess I don’t blame the poor guy. Have a great evening.’
‘Thanks, you too.’ Then Rachel turned back to Gary. She lifted his hand and held it in her own. ‘Poor baby, look at you . . . always pushing it,’ she whispered, holding back tears as she moved to caress his forehead. ‘I hope this didn’t happen because you were rushing back for me.’
Rachel sat there with him for an hour or so, trying to discern the extent of his injuries and wondering if there was anything the nurse hadn’t told her.
Apart from the bruises and head wound, he seemed OK, although she would have much preferred him to be awake and able to speak to her.
Eventually, when there were no further signs of him stirring, Rachel decided to take the woman’s advice and head back to the hotel. It was late, visiting hours were long over, and there wasn’t a whole lot she could do here, not when he was so heavily sedated. She gathered up his bags, deciding it was probably safer to take them back to the hotel rather than leave them out in the open.
Just as she was leaving, an orderly met her with yet another bag, this one containing Gary’s clothes and other personal effects.
Heavily laden, Rachel turned to look at her injured boyfriend one more time. ‘I love you, Gary. Merry Christmas,’ she whispered, pausing for a moment before leaving the hospital mere minutes before Christmas Eve gave way to Christmas Day.
‘A little late to be finishing up Christmas shopping, ain’t it, lady?’ the cab driver joked as Rachel piled in with all of Gary’s bags and boxes.
‘I wish,’ she replied, her tone short, before calling out her hotel’s address. ‘Please,’ she added then, somewhat more gently. After all, it wasn’t
this
cab driver’s fault that poor Gary’s Christmas had been ruined.
Back at the hotel, she plopped herself down on the couch, letting the packages fall around her feet. She felt tired and defeated, and while she was sure Gary was in good hands, she couldn’t help but worry.
In addition, the twinkling Christmas lights from the streets, glowing faintly through the window, seemed to be mocking her now, and all Rachel could think about was the poor thing lying there in the hospital.
Should she contact his mother? She didn’t know Mrs Knowles at all, they’d never met, but her number would surely be programmed into Gary’s mobile. She bit her lip. Perhaps better to wait until morning when she’d spoken to the doctors and knew more. If she phoned Mrs Knowles out of the blue now, the woman’s Christmas would be ruined with worry too, and she didn’t want that.
Getting up to pour a glass of wine seemed like a much better idea, so that’s exactly what she did. Then, tossing her red dress on the bed and slipping into the hotel’s fluffy robe (instead of the sexy little negligee placed neatly on Gary’s pillow) she remembered Gary’s bag of clothes and decided she should make sure everything was in order.
It might be weird, but she just didn’t like the way everything was bundled away like that in a bag on the floor; it almost made it seem like he was dead or something. No, much better to tidy everything up and have all his clothes washed and ready for him when he got back.
Rachel picked up the plastic hospital bag and settled back on the bed. Taking everything out, she set Gary’s wallet on a nearby bureau. His jacket was dirty and bloodstained from the head wound, as were his jeans, so they needed to go to the laundry. Rachel checked the pockets of each for receipts, or anything else that might be destroyed in the wash. From his jeans pocket, she pulled out a list, which, judging by what was scribbled on it, must be her boyfriend’s Christmas shopping list.
In true Gary fashion, Rachel thought, smiling as she read through it, there was one column for names and one column for corresponding stores, presumably where he’d either bought or intended to buy the gifts. Hmm . . . where was he planning to buy her Christmas present, she couldn’t help but wonder. Gary was somewhat evasive when it came to his family, and she was interested to try and figure out his relationship with various family members by the kind of gifts he was buying for them. Then, immediately conscious that she was prying, she set the list down on the nightstand beside her. Switching on the TV, she turned off the bedside lamp and took another taste of her wine, this time with something more akin to a swig than a sip.
She glanced towards the list again, her interest also piqued about what Gary had in mind for her. Oh what the hell, she reasoned, reaching for it, it was a list of stores, not actual gifts. So what could it hurt?
Before Rachel knew it, the list was back in her hands and she had clicked the lamp on to have a better look. At first glance, she didn’t see her name written down anywhere. At a second more careful look, she still didn’t see it. Frowning, she put down the list.
Then it hit her. What was wrong with her? Of
course
her name wasn’t on the list. Gary would no doubt have known exactly what he wanted to get her for Christmas, so why would he have written it down?
With that, Rachel poured herself a second glass, and it was a bit more of a generous helping than before. It was essential really; she was, after all, alone and worried in a New York hotel room on Christmas Eve.
Going back to the bed, she climbed under the covers this time, then gently, one by one, plopped the gifts she’d bought for Gary onto the floor next to the bed. First went the negligee, next went the heavy box with the leather motorbike trousers in it, and third went the handcrafted wallet monogrammed with his initials. And then went her mind, inevitably back to wondering what Gary had got for her.
Her gaze moved to the pile of bags not more than five feet away from her. Inside one of those was her gift, unwrapped.
Rachel knew Gary must have bought it today because she’d already searched the room and his empty suitcase in the hope of finding some clue of what she should expect to get from him. It was silly and she hated herself for it, but she just couldn’t help it.
‘No, I’m not going to look,’ she said out loud, grabbing the television remote and starting to click through the channels. Cinemax, MoreMAX, Pay-Per-View . . . some of the show titles looked rather intriguing. ‘Yikes, who watches skin-flicks on Christmas Eve?’ she asked herself rhetorically and kept clicking until she came upon
It’s a Wonderful Life
right around mid-point.
Just perfect.
By the time George was hearing bells ringing and starting to believe, Rachel had the empty wine bottle in one hand and Gary’s list in the other. With tears streaming down her face (as they did every time she watched that film), she headed without a second thought to the couch, where she promptly started matching gift bags with the names and stores on the list.
With each matching set she found, she moved the corresponding bag to a pile. By the time she’d come to the end of the list there was one bag from Bergdorf Goodman, with men’s clothes and some expensive-looking cufflinks in it (for Gary’s brother perhaps?), and, conspicuously, one small but gloriously familiar blue gift bag.
‘Oh my goodness . . . Tiffany’s!’ she cried aloud. Her heart pounding in her chest, she checked the list again, turning the paper over and over in her hand. Nothing.
Could this be hers? Had Gary
really
bought her something from Tiffany’s?
He must have!
Rachel’s eyes sparkled even brighter than the festive lights outside. Checking her watch, she swallowed hard.
Well, it
was
officially Christmas now, wasn’t it? Holding her breath, she peeked inside the bag.
Only to find the world-famous little blue box.
Chapter 4
Unable to sleep any longer, Ethan got up at dawn, and was standing at the window watching the sun come up over Central Park and the surrounding buildings. In fact he was up before Daisy on Christmas morning for the first time since she’d been old enough to be excited about it. Snow was gently falling, and, thanks to the Plaza’s in-room facilities, he was sipping freshly made coffee. It was a picture-perfect New York Christmas morning, even if he was yawning after tossing and turning all night.
Ethan thought again about Daisy’s mother and smiled a little as the coffee aroma took him back in time. Jane wasn’t enamoured of his habit and had always insisted that if he
had
to drink coffee, it should be organic or nothing. In turn all Daisy’s baby food had been home-made and, yes, organic too. Jane had been an amazing mum, he thought, and he had a healthy, happy daughter because of her.
Happy? His train of thought halted at the word. Sure, Daisy was generally a happy child, but it still seemed to him that there was so much missing, so much he wasn’t giving her. Ethan ran a hand through his thick brown hair and felt his eyes fall gently shut as he thought about the three years he had spent alone, and how many nights he had sat with Daisy and cuddled her until she could fall asleep, her last words always about missing her mummy. Those instances had become less frequent as the months passed, but still there was nothing Ethan wanted more than to be a family again.
It was best for Daisy. Not to mention that he really did love Vanessa. Yes, he had been hesitant in the early days, but over the course of the last year they had grown especially close, and now he was certain she was the perfect person to turn their little unit into a real family.
He’d met her at a book fair, of all places. His good friend Brian, a former work colleague at the university at which Ethan lectured, was now a highly successful and well-respected novelist. Just over a year ago, after much coaxing and cajoling, Brian had convinced Ethan that leaving Daisy with her grandparents for three days while they made the trip to Frankfurt did not make him a neglectful parent.
‘After all, mate, it’s basically a business trip,’ Brian reassured him. ‘We’re going to talk about my book this time, but we’ll be going for yours next year. Maybe this’ll inspire you to get your arse in gear and start writing that Great British Novel,’ he teased, referring to Ethan’s latent ambitions. ‘Not as great as my own, mind, but I’m sure there’s room for us both on the Booker shortlist.’
Ethan couldn’t really argue with this (the reason for the trip, that is; he had no illusions about getting anywhere near any list, Booker or otherwise), so in the end he decided to go along.
And then on day two of the fair he saw her: the not classically beautiful, but poised and immaculately groomed blonde who was heading their way.
Ethan had caught her eye a couple of times as he and Brian browsed through the stands, and found himself intrigued by her calm self-possession. When she first approached them, Ethan suspected she might be one of Brian’s many literary ‘groupies’, but gathered from the polite yet familiar conversation that ensued that she and Brian had crossed paths before at publishing events. It turned out that she too worked in publishing and was senior editor of a literary imprint at a major London publishing house. The next thing Ethan knew, the three of them were having lunch, and he discovered that Vanessa lived in the vicinity of Teddington, not far from his home in Richmond. And not long after that, just the two of them were having dinner, at first there in Frankfurt and then back in London. He enjoyed her company and lively conversation; they had a shared appreciation of great literature and the arts, and he also admired the single-minded determination with which she ran her professional life, having worked her way up in a highly competitive field. And still her ambition didn’t end there. Vanessa wanted the most respected and accomplished literary authors for her list, and laughingly informed Ethan that her original intention in approaching them at the fair was to see about poaching Brian from his existing publishing house.