‘They picked up the dresses and the wedding is this Saturday,’ Evie explained. ‘Fingers crossed I won’t ever have to see them again. They were demanding, to say the least.’ The Fitz family were born and bred on money and didn’t mind who knew it, or saw it. From the moment they’d had that first consultation, the bride-to-be, Zara, had been difficult. Evie wondered how many tantrums she’d had as an adult if her behaviour when it came to choosing the dress was anything to go by. She’d huffed and puffed her way in and out of the ball gown style that did nothing for her, she’d become angry when Evie brought out a bigger size in the A-line dress after seeing Zara struggling to get the other dress on, and then all hell had broken lose when she’d received a phone call during a fitting to inform her that her maid-of-honour was already four months pregnant. The poor girl hadn’t realised and it meant major alterations to her dress. Evie had done her best to diffuse the delicate situation, and she and Bonnie had been smiles and understanding looks and comments all round until the day the Fitz’s had picked up the dresses and they’d shut the door to the apartment block with enormous sighs of relief.
‘Let’s hope you don’t get too many of those.’ Nicole popped another piece of gnocchi in her mouth.
‘Amen to that. So tell me, how was your day?’
‘I worked at the shelter this afternoon after I’d finished with Mrs Mack.’ No longer a housekeeper, Nicole shared her time between being a home help for Mrs Mack, an elderly lady who lived in the apartment on the ground floor, and helping at the homeless shelter a few blocks from where she lived on the Upper East Side.
‘And how is she?’
‘Not getting any younger, so she tells me every day.’ Nicole smiled. ‘She’s a lovely little thing though. Gave me another coffee cake which won’t do much for my waistline.’ She patted her midriff, but at fifty-seven Nicole looked much younger than her years. Her Sicilian descent had graced her with olive skin and curves in all the right places, her bouncing corkscrew curls made her look younger still, and she had an air of vitality with her joie de vivre and her inability to sit around doing nothing.
‘Nonsense, enjoy it.’
‘It is good,’ she admitted. ‘We’ll have some tomorrow for brunch if you’d like to come over.’
Evie smiled. Nicole liked to keep her close but she needn’t worry. Manhattan was her home now, and the only reason she’d ever run again would be if her past caught up with her. And she had no intention of letting that happen.
‘I’d love to. It’s supposed to be sunny tomorrow too, so we could have our coffee cake and then walk through Central Park to the shelter. I’m doing the afternoon shift.’
Nicole pushed her cutlery together on her plate. ‘Actually, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve got Doris to fill in for you tomorrow so you can help me collect up any bags donated for the coat drive.’
‘Of course, sounds good to me. And anyway, it’ll burn off more coffee cake. We could even have two slices.’ Evie pushed the last morsel of sausage onto her fork.
‘Now you’re talking.’ Nicole grinned mischievously.
‘People have been incredibly generous this year with the coats. We’ve quite a collection already.’ Not everyone was as lucky as she was, and Evie hoped she’d never again have to know what it was like to spend a night on the streets, to be huddled in doorways shivering with cold worrying about where her next meal was coming from. And with winter almost upon them, there was plenty of use for old coats that would be thrown out for the latest label, or because the colour wasn’t right or the owner had grown out of them. She and Nicole had leaflet-dropped a week ago, and with each leaflet was a garbage bag with instructions to leave unwanted coats in the bags on appointed days, ready for collection.
They linked arms when they left the café, bracing themselves against the wind chill that lowered the temperature by at least ten degrees. But despite the frosty temperatures, Evie was happier than she’d been in years. She hoped her past would stay buried so that her life wouldn’t have to fall apart again, just when she’d just finished putting it back together.
One mistake she’d made. Surely she’d finished paying for it by now.
Nicole
Nicole greeted the doorman at her apartment block in the city. Reggie had been working there ever since she bought the place eleven years ago and he was one of the friendliest New Yorkers she’d ever met. He always smiled, always had something nice to say to everyone and his manners meant he was well respected.
She opened the door to Apartment Twenty-One, dropped her keys on the side table in the hall and breathed deeply into the silence. Three years ago when she’d brought home a stray, as her late mother would’ve said, the apartment had been instantly filled with warmth and love. She’d stopped feeling lost in a past impossible to change. But since Evie moved out a year ago, the apartment had gone back to being unnaturally quiet and it had marked the first time Nicole had really been alone in fifteen years. She’d been with the Churchills for thirteen of those, and then Evie had brought light into her life for another two.
She hung her coat on the coat stand and looped her scarf on another hook. She went into the kitchen first, then the living room, and turned on lights and lamps. She switched on the television and went back to the kitchen to make a mug of hot chocolate. She liked noise, it kept her company. Of course Evie came over a lot, but she was an independent young thing and Nicole knew she needed to stop babying her as though she were her own, let her make her own way in life. At first she’d worried Evie would take off into the night and she’d never see her again. Experience told her how painful that would be. But gradually she was beginning to trust this wouldn’t happen.
With her hot chocolate topped with a few naughty sprinkles from a block of seventy per cent dark chocolate, Nicole took her hot drink into the living room where she set it on a coaster, a habit she’d gotten used to after her time with the Churchills. Kent Churchill was a stickler for having everything just so and had never allowed a drink to be set down without something to protect the expensive furniture.
She bent down to switch on the electric fireplace that did a good job of mimicking the real thing, and then she sat back in the armchair while the pebbles became illuminated with imitation flames behind them. The Portland-stone effect blended in well in the living room filled with soft furnishings of taupe and cream with the occasional mocha-coloured scatter cushion. She watched the flickering orange and her body began to relax. Already she was looking forward to seeing Evie tomorrow for brunch and trudging around the city collecting donated coats. The coat drive had been something she and a few others who helped out at the homeless shelter had come up with. When she’d first met Evie and seen her shivering in a doorway, her thin coat at least a season too early, she’d given her the blanket Kent Churchill had told her to throw away, and it had started her thinking about all the things the affluent discarded without a single thought. She knew she’d been guilty of it on plenty of occasions … shoes barely worn when fashions changed, trousers that were perfectly tailored but weren’t a colour she felt suited her any more. Old blankets and coats weren’t much to people who had money, but to someone living on the streets, it could mean the difference between life and death. It could mean everything.
Evie had only been staying with Nicole for a week when she’d told her about the coat drive idea and Evie was quick to leap at the chance to help. Evie hadn’t divulged much about why she’d been living on the streets, but Nicole hadn’t needed to know. All she knew was that Evie had a heart of gold and wouldn’t accept any help if she couldn’t do something in return. Together, they’d designed flyers and taken them to be printed, put them through doors, covering as wide a spread of Manhattan as they could, pinned them up where they were allowed. More people than she’d thought had been generous and put their old coats into the garbage bags they’d supplied. Nicole had taken charge of their haul and filled the third bedroom in the apartment with them, and slowly they’d washed every single coat and Evie had fixed them up: coats with broken zippers—she’d replaced them all; coats with buttons missing—they’d bought a new set; anything with a tear and Evie had sewn them so you’d never even know. Nicole had ended up buying a sewing machine without telling Evie and pretended she’d had it all the time. The girl was a whiz with the machine, and hand sewing, and eventually her skills had led to securing a job with Nicole’s friend, Bonnie.
Nicole stared into the flames. Having Evie nearby eased her pain. It didn’t get rid of it all together, but it eased her loneliness, her sense of loss. She thought about the Churchills, something she didn’t do so much of these days since Evie had come in to her life, but the coat drive had started her wondering about the family whose blanket she still had, washed and pressed and put away in the linen cupboard. Now and again, on really cold nights, even though the apartment was warm and the fire added cosiness, Evie would visit and they’d sit beneath the red blanket and watch movies:Miracle on 34thStreet(Evie’s favourite),It’s a Wonderful Life(Nicole’s). And each time she stroked the soft, woollen material, she thought of Kent and of Jackson and wondered whether they’d ever regretted anything, like she did. She regretted not making more of a stand, finding out why Kent had reacted the way he did and fired her from the job she’d held for thirteen years. She regretted never telling the truth about herself, her life’s journey and all the pain she had endured. But most of all she regretted that she had never been enough for anyone—for Evie to stay, for the Churchills to keep her close, and most of all for the son who’d walked away and never come home.
