Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe? (36 page)

An old man dressed in a tuxedo was doing a soft-shoe shuffle on the sidewalk, his dog barking along to the music. Ellie thought of Edith and how, if she had been with her, she would have walked forward and joined him. It made Ellie feel very alone and very far from home.

She pushed on to Times Square and burst out laughing. It was the naked cowboy, not quite naked but wearing a pair of pants and a cowboy hat and serenading people
with his guitar. She’d travelled three thousand miles and here they were: the singing knickers.

The evening got hotter. She gawked at the advertising signs; she bought a huge pretzel and a soda; she ignored the couples walking together with arms entwined. Sirens wailed, and steam really did come up through the manhole covers.

Finally she headed for Grand Central Terminal, her feet throbbing, and worked her way into the middle of the concourse and stared up. There were constellations of stars on the ceiling and impulsively she made a wish on one of them. When she brought her gaze back down, everything had gone blurry.

Eventually she pushed through the milling people to find the passageway leading back to her hotel. She was alone in a big foreign city, but Jack was here too. Whoever he was with tonight, tomorrow she would see him. What happened after that would be down to fate.

And you had to have hope, didn’t you?

‘Oh, what a shame, you’ve just missed him,’ the receptionist at Bar Bootle said, and Ellie tried not to show the disembowelling disappointment that she felt. ‘Mr Wolfe will be so sorry. We know all about you, Mrs MacEndry.’ The woman smiled a smile that was all perfect teeth and carefully applied lipstick. ‘Mr Wolfe always says he’s looking for another one of you over here to keep him organised.’

Ellie tried to look flattered.

‘Do you want to see Rosa? She’s normally on the desk here. You talked with her a couple of times on the phone, I think?’

Noooooooo
.

‘No, no, don’t bother her—’

‘It’s funny,’ the girl cut in, frowning, ‘I had the idea you were much older. Mr Wolfe said you’d retired.’

Ellie did her surprised face. ‘Did he? Well, he calls it retirement – it’s his little joke. No, I’m taking a break. I’ve
worked for Jack … Mr Wolfe since leaving school and now he’s gone, it’s time for me to have a rethink.’

The woman nodded. ‘Constant reassessment is essential,’ she said earnestly.

‘Quite. Anyway, this New York trip, bit last minute. Thought while I was here, I’d drop in and surprise him.’ Ellie heard her own voice sounding clipped and upper class, like some pastiche of a frightfully posh British matron. She wasn’t certain how that had happened, but it appeared to be doing the trick: the receptionist seemed satisfied and the lovely smile came back. Ellie wondered how much it had cost or if all American people were born with perfect teeth.

‘So,’ she said, rushing on before Miss Colgate could ask her any more questions, ‘Mr Wolfe’s not here?’

‘No, I’m sorry. He was going back to his apartment and then he was meeting … well … he was …’ Ellie sensed the woman was reticent to discuss what else Jack was doing that day.

‘He’s out with some woman, I expect?’ Ellie said in a chortling ‘Isn’t he a lad?’ voice.

It seemed to be the prompt the receptionist needed. ‘Well, yes, yes, he is. One of the models from a catalogue shoot we’ve completed. I think Mr Wolfe is taking her out to lunch.’

‘Quite a one for the ladies, our Jack,’ Ellie said, laughing over the top of a black wave of despair seeping into her.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Oh well, you better tell him he missed me.’ Ellie turned to go and then, as if she had just had a brainwave, she turned back. ‘Or … if I rush, I might catch him at that apartment of his. I’ve got the piece of paper with the address on somewhere here.’ She scrabbled in her bag, careful to keep her left hand out of sight and then dropped the bag deliberately on the floor. The receptionist was round the desk in a shot helping her scoop everything back up.

‘Sorry,’ Ellie said, ‘jet lag.’

The receptionist retrieved Ellie’s pen from where it had rolled under a chair and handed it back to her. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Mrs MacEndry. Here, let me write it down for you.’ She jotted the address on some paper and handed it to Ellie.

Ellie was out of the door calling her goodbyes over her shoulder before the receptionist got suspicious. She felt mean and shabby about the deceit and hoped the receptionist didn’t ring Jack and tip him off, but hell, all was fair in love and war, and fortune favoured the brave.

She was on her way.

Ellie arrived at Jack’s apartment block to find he wasn’t there. Or so the doorman told her. He was an old guy with medals on his chest and she guessed that he was used to protecting the residents in the building from unannounced callers. She tried to engage him in conversation, but he
wasn’t having any of it. And the longer she stood there, the more attention she was getting from people passing through the lobby.

She made a move to go to the lift and he told her politely but firmly that she couldn’t go up. Mr Wolfe was not at home. He didn’t know when he was expected back. She could leave a message, but it was a waste of time remaining there.

And then Ellie felt the atmosphere in the lobby shift and she turned round to see Jack. She needed all of her self-control not to run across the marble floor and throw herself at him. Instead she waited for him to see her. Please God let him look pleased.

Jack looked utterly horrified. He stood completely still and stared at her before walking somewhat unsteadily over to the doorman.

‘It’s one of those Velcro women I told you about, Lou,’ she heard him say. ‘Hard to prise off, you know?’

Ellie felt physical pain at the words. ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘listen to me—’

‘No,’ he said. He didn’t look at her, but the doorman was watching her as if she were some kind of lunatic.

‘Can you deal with this?’ Jack asked him, placing a hand on his arm.

‘No problem,’ the doorman said, almost standing to attention. ‘You carry on, Mr Wolfe.’

Jack started to move towards the lifts and Ellie tried to
get to him, but the doorman simply positioned himself in the way. Short of pushing him over, she couldn’t do anything.

‘Jack, please,’ she called, but the lift doors were already shutting.

There was quite a little scene after that where Ellie refused to go and the doorman told her what would happen to her if she didn’t. As it involved calling the police and being put on the first available flight back to London, Ellie slunk out of the building and went and stood round the corner.

Now the skirmish was over, she realised that she was shaking. She hadn’t expected Jack to welcome her with open arms, but what she’d just witnessed was … She couldn’t think of the word. Callous? Cruel? He’d more or less had her chucked out. The man who had kissed every part of her body had brushed her off like some kind of insect. Ellie sat down on the kerb. She was tired, she was hungry, but most of all she wanted to give up.

Only the thought of flying back to England without having talked to Jack made her stand up again. She took a deep gulp of air and tried to think what to do next.

Plan B.

If only she had a Plan B.

She walked back round to the front of the building as the door opened and Jack emerged, looking neither to left nor right and striding determinedly towards the cab that
was waiting at the kerb. Ellie ignored the doorman advancing towards her and only had time to shout out the words ‘Wait, listen!’ before Jack slammed the car door behind him and the taxi sped off.

The doorman kept on coming and Ellie had a surge of inspiration. She raced out of his reach down the road and then jabbed out a hand.

It was probably the only time in her life she was ever going to say, ‘Follow that cab,’ and so she made the most of it, even though the cab driver looked bored to tears when she said it.

The lunchtime traffic was vile and at one point they lost sight of Jack’s cab, but Ellie waved a fifty-dollar bill at her driver and promised him it was his if he caught up with Jack. In response he jumped a red light and dropped her round the corner from the restaurant as Jack walked in through the front door.

Ellie followed him at a distance. Catching sight of her reflection in a window, she paused to twist her hair up and secure it with a clip from her bag. She smoothed down her clothes as best she could and bit her lips and pinched her cheeks. Now all she needed was the British matron’s voice.

‘Jack honey, tell her to go away – she’s starting to bore me.’ The blonde woman with the pneumatic breasts put her hand on Jack’s arm. Ellie could see that under the
restaurant table Miss Plastic Tits’ foot was slowly rubbing Jack’s ankle.

The urge to grab hold of the woman by her perfectly cut hair was nearly overwhelming.

‘What the bloody hell are you hoping to achieve here?’ Jack said to Ellie. ‘I thought I made it clear at my apartment block that I didn’t want to speak to you. Stop making a fool of yourself and go home.’

Ellie ignored the glowering Jack in front of her and tried to focus on the one she had known back in London. The funny Jack, the one who was kind to Edith, the one who had talked to her through the bathroom door and then cradled her in his arms.

‘Jack, I came all the way here to talk to you. I’m not going to be put off. I can’t go home without telling you what I have to say. You must see that?’

In reply Jack swore loudly and slammed the menu he had been holding down on the table.

The other diners were pretending not to take any notice. But cool New Yorkers or not, Ellie could see the looks surreptitiously darting her way, the heads turned slightly. She tried to pour all the love she felt for Jack into her eyes so that he would know that he should leave the blonde by his side and come home with her. But the adrenalin pumping through her body was making her feel shaky, and her close proximity to Jack was having the usual effect on her body. She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t get
beyond wanting to sit herself in his lap and feel his arms come round her.

‘Jack, please. I am trying to apologise for being so horrible about Helen. I’m trying to explain that I got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I didn’t know the full story until I talked to Bryan at the paper. If I could take back those things I said about her, believe me I would.’

‘And I have told you that I’m not interested in apologies or anything else from you,’ Jack shot back. ‘We had a fling, it was OKish and it’s over.’

That ‘OKish’ rammed into Ellie’s chest and she had to get hold of the table to stop herself from giving in and sliding under it. The blonde woman giggled and Ellie felt her hands twitch as if they had decided quite independently of her that they wanted to be round the woman’s neck.

Ellie tried again. ‘Jack, please listen to me—’

Jack slammed his hand down on the table. ‘No, I have told you before. I am not listening to you. Everything we had to say to each other we said in London. You’re being pathetic chasing me across the Atlantic like this.’

Ellie could see the other diners openly staring now. There was a general murmuring. No doubt they had her down as a pathetic stalker, a pathetic scruffy English stalker in their nice, cream-coloured restaurant. She was interrupting their lunches and talking over the jazz track. Ellie saw the blonde pneumatic woman yawn elaborately.

She stumbled on. ‘I am so sorry about Helen, Jack. I cannot begin to understand the pain you have been through. I wish I could take every piece of it away from you. I love you, Jack.’

‘Right, that does it.’ Jack rose abruptly to his feet. ‘You’ve got a choice here, Ellie. You either stop making a tit of yourself and go, or I get you chucked out.’

Ellie saw the blonde woman run her hand up the back of Jack’s thigh. She smiled at Ellie like a cat that had all the cream and wasn’t handing it over anytime soon.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t go, Jack. Not until I’ve said everything I have to say. Stop fighting me and listen. If you listen, I’ll go, I promise, but listen.’

Jack folded his arms. ‘Go on, then. Amaze me.’

Ellie glanced round at all the faces looking at her. This scene wasn’t meant to go like this; she was meant to be talking to Jack somewhere private, just the two of them. She felt like she was some kind of freak in a show. She took a deep breath. ‘I got it wrong, Jack, but so have you. All this’ – Ellie waved in the blonde woman’s direction – ‘it’s not you. It’s not who you used to be when you were happy.’

Jack laughed. ‘Well, bugger me. You’re not only a copywriter, you’re a psychologist too.’

‘Jack, please … I … I think that you’ve got stuck somehow at the point you were at when Helen died. I think you’re scared to move on, to really work at a
relationship in case you find someone you love as much as Helen. It would make you feel like you’d forgotten her, like you were being disloyal. If anybody gets close to you, you run.’

Jack snorted. ‘Oh, I get it. You think that you were getting too close, so I ran away?’ He looked down his nose at her and then leaned forward. ‘Perhaps when you’ve had more experience of men, you won’t take a little fling like we had so much to heart.’

Ellie gripped the edge of the table more tightly and made one last effort. ‘I wanted you to forgive me for what I said, Jack, but if you won’t forgive me, please at least think about what you’re doing with your life. I can’t bear to think of you carrying on like this, being permanently lonely and going from one mindless fling to the next.’

‘Gee, thanks,’ said the blonde woman.

‘I know I’ve blown my chances, Jack, but please, please find someone who will look after you and love you and … and give you a family and security and everything you deserve.’ It was a great speech and she managed to get to the end of it without faltering. But hearing herself say she had blown her chances finally brought it home to her that she had.

Jack’s face was stony, empty. ‘Go home and stop humiliating yourself, Ellie. You’re hardly qualified to lecture anyone on relationships. Didn’t your last boyfriend have an affair for months without you even noticing?’