Sunrise in New York
HELEN COX

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2017

Copyright © Helen Cox 2017

Cover design © Becky Glibbery 2018

Cover illustration © Shutterstock

Helen Cox asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008197018

Version 2018-03-13

For everybody who has chased a dream, even when somebody told you not to.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

Across the decades, people from all over the world have found a home in New York City. The same can be said about the Starlight Diner, a 1950s-themed eatery not far from where East Houston Street meets Clinton. Its blue neon signage lights up the sky on grey days and dark nights. All day, every day, between eight in the morning and midnight, the diner doors are open. A fact regulars from the East Village can count upon, and so many of them do.

Of course, when your doors are open, anyone can walk into your life – someone besides the local cops on their lunch break or the old lady who always asks for the corner table and orders ice cream in December and soup in August. The next person could just as easy be a stranger with a story you’ll never get to hear and secrets best left untold.

No matter who walks through the doors at the Starlight Diner, no matter how far they’ve travelled or how they’re feeling about their life just then, they’re all welcomed with the same warmth. All of them are invited to sink into the soft, red leather of the booths, smile along to the fifties ditties playing out on the jukebox and order themselves a milkshake.

But it’s the folks who work there and eat there that make the Starlight Diner really special. They may not always want you to know it, but they’ve got good hearts. Big hearts, too. And when you’re surrounded by people like that, it’s impossible not to feel at home.

Chapter One

New York, 26 December 1990

The sultry notes of ‘Earth Angel’ by Marvin Berry and the Starlighters floated all around me as I pushed open the door of the diner. The song oozed out of a Wurlitzer jukebox standing in the far corner and a warm rush of relief swept through me as I realised I’d made it.

To New York.

To the Starlight Diner.

To Esther.

Before stepping inside, I glanced one last time over my shoulder, just to be sure nobody was out there. Watching or waiting.

Snowflakes danced in the pale glow of street lamps and steam blew out of the subway vents, but people were few, and hurrying home out of the cold. The coast seemed to be clear.

For now.

I didn’t know what kind of reception I’d get from Esther, not after what had happened between us. When she found out what was going on, the parts it was safe to tell, I’d at least be subjected to a tut and an eyebrow raise. That much was certain. Both were almost patented gestures for her. Still, I needed a friendly face and she was the closest thing I had.

‘Hi there, honey,’ said a soft, inviting voice, which was accompanied by the rich flurry of the saxophone playing in the background. Turning, I saw who had spoken: a waitress standing just behind the counter.

Looking at her, my shoulders tightened. They were already sore from three days and two nights sleeping on buses and hostel beds and I winced at the sting.

It wasn’t Esther.

God damn it, where was she? Why couldn’t she have just put her home address on those letters she sent? Well, I had my suspicions about why. But I couldn’t think about that. Esther was pretty much the only person I had to turn to and the only lead I had on her was this restaurant.

‘Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll be right with you,’ said the waitress. I was still holding the door half-open, letting in the wintry darkness.

Nodding, I shuffled in, past some guy sitting at the end of the counter. I didn’t look right at the fella but I could feel him staring. More than likely he was eyeing up my hair, which I’d dyed blue with a three-dollar rinse and hacked off just above the shoulder with a pair of kitchen scissors on my way out of Atlantic City. I still wasn’t quite used to the attention it got me. Being a brunette was a lot less conspicuous but, after what had happened, looking anything like myself could be lethal.

Deciding on the seat furthest from the doorway – and the bitter chill – I set down my guitar and suitcase on the red and white chequered lino and sat up at the counter. Only then, when I’d stopped shivering, did I pause to properly size up my surroundings.

This wasn’t your average diner, that much was for sure. It was one of those fifties-themed restaurants built to preserve the good times gone by. That explained the Marvin Berry and the Starlighters record, and something came back to me then from one of Esther’s letters, about the diner having a retro twist.

That was no understatement.

The place was painted a blinding shade of red and had vintage signs hanging around the walls advertising sodas and milkshakes, each one complete with some sickly-sweet slogan like ‘Put a cherry on top of your day’. The smells left behind from the cooking of hot dogs, omelettes, grilled cheese sandwiches and French fries all lingered, creating their own unique, sweaty perfume. Yep, the place was just how Esther had described it alright. Well, according to the parts of her letters I could understand. Truth be told, she was a bit of a walking dictionary. Even with a college education, I only understood eight out of every ten words she said.

‘What can I get for you, honey?’ The waitress, who according to her name tag was called Mona, leaned on the counter with her notebook in hand. She looked weary, as would anyone who was still at work past eleven the day after Christmas, and was wearing quite a bit of make-up to cover up the fact she was beat. She’d glazed her lips with a cherry-coloured lip gloss and lightning bolts of silver powder zigzagged across her eyelids in sharp contrast to her black skin.

I opened my mouth to place an order but then hesitated. I had about seven dollars left in the world. No point ordering big if Esther wasn’t even around.

‘Matter of fact, I’m looking for Esther Knight. She still work here?’ My question came out casual enough, which was a miracle considering how desperate I was.

‘Oh, you’re a friend of Esther’s?’ said Mona.

Neat. How do I answer that one honestly?

Am I a friend of Esther’s?

I think so. I think she forgave me for what I did. It was months ago now and she’d written me a couple of letters like she promised so she couldn’t be that sore about it.

‘Uh, yeah,’ I said.

Oh, nice going, Bonnie. Just spectacular. A commendation to you on delivering the least convincing declaration of friendship ever.

‘Well, she’s over in England, visiting her mom for Christmas. Not back till late tomorrow,’ the waitress explained.

‘Oh.’ I heard the crack in my voice but Mona didn’t seem to notice. Hearing that news was like being shot through the heart. Esther really wasn’t here. Not even in this country, let alone the city. I had no money, no place to go and it was glacial outside. What the hell was I going to do? Ride the subway all night? That seemed to be about my only option. It was that or freeze to death on a park bench.

‘Want something to drink while you’re here?’ asked Mona.

‘I’ll get a cuppa coffee. Thanks,’ I said, trying to ignore the empty churn of my stomach. I had to save what money I could. Tomorrow, people would be out shopping again and I could busk for a few more bucks. Probably scrape together enough for a decent-sized pizza and a night in a cheap motel in case things didn’t work out with Esther.

‘Not a problem, just gotta run out back and get a fresh pack of beans. Won’t be a minute, honey,’ Mona said. I was going to say something polite. That she should take as much time as she wanted, I wasn’t in any rush to be back out in the cold, that kind of thing. But at the idea of being outside, alone in New York, all the words caught at the back of my throat. So I just did a little shrug and smiled as best I could.

The second she pushed through the swing doors out to the kitchen however, it happened. Tears, thick and salty, forced their way out. My whole body shook with the might of them and I covered my eyes and mouth with my hands in an attempt to block out the world. To forget the fact that I was howling like a kid in a downtown diner, all to the tune of ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’, which had followed up ‘Earth Angel’ on the Wurlitzer.

‘Hey, you alright?’ a man’s voice said. I jumped at the sound. The guy at the counter with the staring problem. I’d forgotten about him. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse. Thanks to my dad accusing me of ‘turning on the waterworks’ whenever I’d wept as a child, I hated to cry under any circumstances, but it was always worse when you had a witness.

And now what was I supposed to say to this guy?

I sucked in as much oxygen as I could, dropped my hands to the counter and turned. Twisting my lips into something that resembled a smile, I tried to stem the flow of my tears. I hadn’t really got a good look at the man before. He had a sharpness to his eyes. They were a deep brown and pretty intense, to the point that he seemed almost angry about something. His hair fell in blonde waves around his face and he might’ve been cute if he only learned to smile instead of leer, and if he halved the amount of cologne he wore. The musty smell caught at the back of my throat even from this distance; I didn’t want to know how it was up close. What did he do, shower in that junk?

His eyes hadn’t left mine. He was still waiting on an answer to his question.

Was I alright?

People were asking me all the hard questions tonight. Not wanting to lie right to his face, I turned away and nodded at the coffee machine behind the counter. The gesture was far too quick to fool anyone, even myself.

‘I’m fine. I’m just…’ I swallowed back more tears. ‘I’m just real tired is all.’

‘Well, if you’re tired, maybe you should be in bed.’

I glanced over again to see the guy was trying to smile. It was still coming across as a leer.

‘I wish I was.’

‘Here we go, hon—’ Mona came breezing back through from the kitchen but stopped mid-sentence when she saw the state I was in. She looked from me to the man at the end of the counter. ‘Oh Lord, what you do to her? I was only gone a minute.’ The waitress put her hands on her hips and glared in his direction.

‘I didn’t do nothing,’ the guy protested.

‘Don’t give me that, you’ve been causin’ trouble, again,’ said Mona, pointing a finger at him.

‘Feel free to step in and defend me any time you like,’ said the man, aiming his words at me. There was a noticeable sting to his voice.

‘He didn’t do anything,’ I said to Mona, realising he was right. It would’ve been polite to jump in sooner than I had to make that clear. Course, Mona must have her reasons for suspecting he’d done something to me. Maybe this guy didn’t deserve to be defended.

‘You sure?’ Mona squinted.

I looked at the guy, his face darkened by the false allegations.

‘Yeah.’ I bit my lower lip, trying to think of a believable cover story for my breakdown. ‘I’m just real tired and it’s cold out and I was really hoping to see Esther tonight, you know. Haven’t seen her in a long time and it all just got a bit much for a minute,’ I said, unsure if this explanation made my howling sound in any way reasonable or if I was coming across as an absolute nutjob to these people.

‘Well, if you’re sure that’s all it is.’ Mona looked from me back to the guy, her eyes still narrow.

‘I’m sure I’ll feel better after a coffee. Once I’ve warmed up,’ I said. It was the truth but also it’d be best for everyone if the conversation moved on. The less they knew about what it was that had me running around New York, trying to find a waitress I hadn’t spoken to in ten months, the better.

‘And I’ll get right on that, honey,’ Mona said, turning to pour the beans into the coffee machine.

‘Hey, Blue, mind if I join you down that end?’ The guy called down the length of the counter.

‘Sure,’ I shrugged. ‘But my name’s not Blue. It’s Bonnie.’

‘Well, you look like a Blue to me.’ He shoved his plate with a half-eaten burger on it down towards me. I was going to protest about his unimaginative nickname but the food suddenly thrust in front of me was far more distracting. I looked at the meat, cooked medium rare so it was pink and juicy in the middle, topped with crisp lettuce and fresh tomato. Mona had her back to me, fiddling with the coffee machine. The guy was turned back towards the stool he’d been sitting on, retrieving his coat and satchel. I saw my chance, took a huge bite of his burger and stuffed three French fries in my mouth, turning my head towards the kitchen doors and making out like I was admiring the decor, so I had time to chew and swallow.

When I turned back the guy was sitting in the stool next to me, grinning.

‘Hungry?’ he asked, pushing his plate towards me as if suggesting I should help myself. Oh God, he’d seen me steal from his plate. It was official. I couldn’t sink any lower.

‘Uh, no, thanks, I just ate,’ I said.

The guy looked at me hard and long, and an almost unbearable blush started creeping up the back of my neck. Then Mona came over and set down my coffee, breaking whatever weird little moment we were having.

‘There you go, honey,’ said the waitress.

‘I’m Jimmy, by the way. Jimmy Boyle,’ said the guy, shovelling in one of the remaining French fries. He chewed with his mouth open and I looked down into the black depths of my coffee so I didn’t have to watch him eat. It wasn’t pretty. I’d been right about the cologne too. Up close it was so strong it was almost difficult to breathe.

‘Like I said, Bonnie.’

‘That accent from the Midwest somewhere?’ asked Jimmy.

‘Yeah, Detroit. Born and raised.’ I cleared my throat, trying to get rid of the taste of his cologne, but somehow that only made it worse.

‘Like the Journey song?’ he said, leering again.

‘Well, that’s South Detroit but close enough, sure.’ As I answered, I turned my head to him out of politeness to find him examining my face. I looked him up and down in return, uneasy and shuffling in my seat.

‘And how do you know Esther?’ Mona asked. Pulling my eyes away from Jimmy, I poured some cream into my coffee and pondered how to answer that question.

‘We worked at the same casino out in Atlantic City.’

Before she left.

It was only partly because of what I did, I think. Esther never liked Atlantic City as much as she thought she would. Called it a ‘city of excess’, and it was that alright. Modesty was a stranger in that town. Order at any bar, and a rum and coke would become a double without you even asking. Wine wasn’t served in glasses but in vase-sized urns. The drunker you got, the greater the chances were of you shoving coins into slots, and that’s all the casino bosses were interested in. No, Esther never felt at home there, and I guess I didn’t either. But that wasn’t so surprising. I’d never felt at home anywhere, not even in the house I grew up in.

‘Oh yeah, Esther did mention something about frying omelettes on the coast for a season,’ said Mona.

‘That must’ve been somewhere between the timely death of her first husband and hooking up with her new actor boy toy,’ Jimmy sneered.

‘What?’ My head swerved in Jimmy’s direction. Esther had been married? She’d mentioned Jack Faber in her letters, an actor she’d met at the diner and fallen head over heels for, but a husband? That’d never come up.

Actually, she’d never revealed anything much about her life back in England, not in the whole time I’d known her. I guess if she’d lost a husband there, that was probably why. Being a young widow isn’t exactly what a woman dreams about when she walks down the aisle. God, poor Esther.

Mona glared at Jimmy, but when she spoke, she kept her voice very cool and calm. ‘You want to talk about Esther like that? You can go elsewhere, you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.’

‘I know a lot more than you think I know,’ said Jimmy, digging his fork into a slice of tomato on his plate so the seeds and juices oozed everywhere.

‘Huh.’ Mona shook her head at him. ‘You only think you know, fool. And I’m a fool too for letting you back in here after what you did to her.’

Jimmy frowned at Mona. His breathing was heavier than it had been but he didn’t argue back.

‘What…what did you do?’ I asked, wondering if whatever he’d done to Esther was as bad as what I’d done.

‘Buy me dinner sometime, maybe I’ll tell you the story,’ he replied, his voice sharp.

Looking at his hardened face, the lines of bitterness etched deep around his eyes, I really didn’t know what to think of Jimmy. But Mona must’ve been mad at him for a reason and she was the one I needed on side. Right then, she was my only link to Esther.

‘Is this guy for real?’ I asked Mona.

‘Haven’t really figured that out yet,’ she replied.

‘Oh, I see. Go right ahead. Blame Jimmy. That’s convenient. The fact that Esther’s boyfriend beat me to a pulp. That don’t figure in this, right? I mean, that’s just an alright thing to do to a guy?’

‘And I suppose you were the innocent party?’ Mona folded her arms. ‘You did absolutely nothing to provoke him?’

‘I didn’t hit first. That I can say.’

Mona rolled her eyes. Arguing with Jimmy did seem like a dead-end pursuit. He turned then, fixing his stare back on me.

‘Are you a waitress like Esther? Because frankly, in my experience, waitresses are a whole lot more trouble than they’re worth.’

‘Keep it up, Boyle. That’s strike two. One more and you’re out that door,’ Mona hissed. Jimmy raised his hands in mock surrender.

‘You know many waitresses that carry a guitar around with them?’ I said. ‘I’m a musician.’

‘Is that code for unemployed?’ said Jimmy, and gave a short, breathy laugh.

‘Well, up until recently I sang lead vocals in a band. But now I’m solo.’

Yep, so-low alright.

‘What band, will I have heard of ’em?’ asked Mona.

‘Oh, no. It was just a tribute act in a casino. The Sexties,’ I said.

Jimmy, who was taking a drink, spat out his soda at this.

‘The what? The Sexties?’ he said, looking me up and down. Oh great. This fella was obviously what me and the other band members used to call a ‘suggestible’ – a guy who heard the word ‘sex’ in our band name and then couldn’t think about nothing else.

‘Yeah.’ The back of my neck felt all hot again, but it always did when people asked what I did. It wasn’t the sex thing. You can’t sing in a band like the Sexties and be coy. But being a member of a Sixties tribute act in Atlantic City wasn’t exactly the New York Philharmonic, and most people weren’t quick to let you forget that. ‘It was dumb really. You know casino events managers. Not exactly known for their sense of subtlety. But the tourists loved us. The Sexties sang the sexiest songs of the Sixties.’

‘Bet you wore cute little outfits too,’ Jimmy said, his eyes on my body rather than my face.

‘Actually, we did.’ I gave Mona a quick wink to signal I was about to have some fun here. Christmas had been miserable and ten minutes ago I’d been crying my heart out. Winding up a sleaze like Jimmy Boyle seemed like a sure way of cheering myself up. ‘We wore little red halter tops with ‘The Sexties’ written across the chest in shimmering, gold print. Denim hot pants and black stiletto heels.’ Jimmy’s jaw hung loose at my description. I would’ve taken more pleasure in this if I’d been exaggerating, but that’s exactly what we had worn. Night after night, and it was damn uncomfortable.

‘You don’t say.’ The words drifted out of Jimmy’s mouth. He was lost in a vague daydream now. Mona put her hand across her face to hide a giggle. But the fun wasn’t over yet.

‘Yeah, course my halter top and hot pants had to be cut a little larger than the other girls to accommodate my shape. As you can see, I don’t exactly live off salad.’ I moved my hands down the sides of my purple sweater dress, pressing the material flat against me to illustrate how my body bulged out at the top, tapered in at the waist and curved out at the hips.

Jimmy’s eyes were wide now, and I swear I saw him gulp.

‘Where’d you say you were stayin’ tonight?’ he asked, still half in a daze. Mona laughed at him and shook her head. I joined in and would’ve laughed harder except where I was staying was a bit of a touchy subject.

‘Uh, actually I got a room booked in some fancy hotel,’ I lied.

‘Oh yeah, which one?’ asked Jimmy, snapping out of his trance.

‘That’s privileged information, I’m afraid.’ I smiled and then took a sip of my coffee. ‘Not really the kind of thing you go round blabbin’ to strangers.’

Jimmy looked at my suitcase and then back up at me. He was doing some figuring but exactly what he was working out about me, I couldn’t tell.

‘Why’d you say you were in town?’ His eyes were narrowed at me now.

‘You always ask this many questions?’ I teased, biding a bit of time.

‘Force of habit. I’m a reporter for The Chronicle. So, just naturally curious, you know,’ he explained.

‘Well, I’m just passing through.’ I took another gulp of coffee, shielding my face with the large mug. I was a terrible liar, which is why, if I could avoid it, I never did it. I had a feeling, though, that it was a skill I was going to have to work on if I wanted to stay alive.

‘From where to where?’ Jimmy pushed. I kept drinking my coffee. Pretending I was thirsty when really I just needed thinking time… and the warmth to get me through the cold night ahead.

‘New Jersey to Grosse Pointe.’ Another lie. ‘On my way home to see the folks. Missed them over the holidays with one thing and another.’

Mona nodded along, seemingly swallowing my story, but Jimmy just stared straight at me. He didn’t believe a word of it, I could feel it.

At that moment, the doorbell chimed, closely followed by the words ‘Evening jelly bean, how ’bout some coffee?’

‘Will you excuse me?’ said Mona. ‘That’s my husband.’

I turned to look at him. He was a tall, black man with a hairline that suggested he was somewhere in his late thirties. He had a trimmed beard and calm, steady eyes. Oh, and he was wearing a police uniform.

Neat. A cop. Just what I needed.

I diverted my eyes back to the counter real quick, my shoulders tensing. Out of the corner of my eye, I felt Jimmy looking at me but tried to pretend like I didn’t realise. Glancing back at the glass frontage of the diner, I could see it was still snowing outside. I didn’t want to go back out there but this Jimmy fella wasn’t going to let up with his questions, and hanging out with a cop wasn’t a smart idea just now. Besides, if I told any more lies I might have to account for some of them when Esther got back.

I looked at my Swatch and feigned surprise at the hour.

‘Wow. I’d better go and check in. Mind if I pay up?’ I called down to Mona.

‘Sure thing, honey,’ the waitress said, placing a saucer on the counter with my check. I looked at the amount and paused. I couldn’t really afford to tip but I’d just told Mona and Jimmy I had a swanky hotel lined up so I couldn’t very well not tip. God damn it, Bonnie, why do you have to open your big yap? Inwardly, I called myself names I’d never dare say in front of my mama and doled out two of the seven dollar bills I had left in the world.

The tears that I’d managed to squash by taunting Jimmy started to swell again. I had to get out of this place before I made my second scene of the evening. The last thing I needed was to start bawling in front of a police officer who may or may not be in the pocket of the very man I was trying to escape.

‘Thanks for the coffee.’ I pulled my leather jacket back on and managed to smile at Mona, though it was a fragile smile, likely to break any second. ‘I’ll swing by later tomorrow and catch up with Esther.’ I did a good job of making it sound like no big deal either way, when really my life depended on it.

‘It was… interesting meeting you,’ I said to Jimmy, picking up my guitar and my suitcase. He’d gone very quiet but was still staring at me.

‘Yeah. Interesting is the word I’d choose,’ he said without a smile.

Looking towards the door, I took a deep breath, lowered my head as I passed the cop and walked away.

I braced myself for the brutality of New York in a blizzard.

Chapter Two

Outside the diner, ankle-deep in snow again, I watched my breath smoke up into the icy air and shuddered. It was nearing midnight. Besides a Chinese takeaway joint on the corner, the buildings out on East Houston were silent and shuttered. Here, I was the only soul walking the streets. Well, who would be out at this time of night in the cold? The day after Christmas. Even in New York, a city that had a reputation for never really slowing up. Only folk with nowhere else to go would be out on a night like this.

Trudging back to the subway station at 2nd Avenue in my green Doc Martin boots, tears threatened again. God damn it. I had to pull myself together if I was going to get through this. Alright, so the last four days had been among the worst of my life. So I had nobody and nowhere to turn to. Fine. But I got out of Atlantic City alive. What else mattered?

Tonight would be lonely.

Tonight would be cold.

But the next day Esther would be back and things would be better. I’d make her laugh, like I used to, on those gin-fuelled nights backstage at the Crystal Coast Casino. That’d be enough to win back the heart of a one-time friend. It just had to be.

I’d almost reached the mouth of the subway entrance and was debating whether to pay to ride a train or just leap over the turnstile so I might hold on to my last five bucks when I felt it. A heavy hand on my left shoulder, gripping me tight from behind.

Oh God no… They’d found me

I sucked in a deep breath and held onto it.

My eyes widened.

My jaw stiffened.

But that’s all there was time for. Taking more than a second to react might mean I wouldn’t see New Year.

Before fear or doubt could paralyse me completely, I dropped my luggage. Cringing at the imagined dent in my Fender Jazzmaster guitar, I clenched my fist and swung around as hard as I could, punching my assailant across the cheek and letting out a bass grunt as my fist knocked hard against flesh and bone.

‘Jeeesus!’ The guy cried out and put a hand to his face while I was wringing my hand and gasping at the sting. I’d forgotten how much it hurt to sock a person, but I had my other fist raised ready to strike again when a vaguely familiar voice asked, ‘What you do that for?’

‘Shhhooot.’

It was Jimmy Boyle.

I’d just punched Jimmy Boyle in the face.

He wasn’t bleeding, but there’d probably be a pretty big bruise there in the morning.

‘Damn it, what the hell did you creep up on me for?’ I yelled, anger rising over the shock he’d given me. ‘You can’t just sneak up on a woman in New York at midnight. Saying that, I’m surprised I didn’t smell your cologne first. You must be downwind.’

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. Just let me get this straight. First you punch me in the face’ he said, giving his cheek a gentle prod where I’d hit him. ‘Now, you’re telling me I smell bad?’

Those were two God-awful things to do to a person, especially one right after the other. But probably out of relief that Frankie’s guys hadn’t in fact caught up with me – out of relief I wasn’t going to die, at least not right that second – the urge to laugh bubbled up inside. I clamped both hands over my mouth to contain it, but still, a small chuckle escaped.

‘Oh, I see, this is funny, is it? You think this is funny?’ Jimmy ranted, but his annoyance only made me want to laugh harder and eventually the edges of his mouth gave in to the infectiousness of it and slanted upward. Just enough for the expression to be classified as a smile.

‘Here, let me see,’ I said, choking back another giggle. I put a quivering hand up to his chin and turned his head to the left, so it was illuminated by the yellow beam of a nearby street light. He already looked a little dark along the cheekbone. I cringed, bit my lower lip and moved my eyes from the brewing bruise to the brown of his eyes. They were so intense, like they saw more than most. Or maybe, had seen more than most.

‘You’re shivering,’ he said. His breathing was deep and erratic, as well it might be after being socked in the face without warning.

‘It’s cold, genius,’ I said, telling myself again it was the weather that was making me shake, not the fact I thought my number was up just minutes ago, or that the air between me and the reporter seemed suddenly charged with something unspoken.

Though they had more reason to now than before, Jimmy’s eyes didn’t look angry like they had back at the restaurant. He stood stock-still, staring at me, while I ran my fingertip along his cheek, as if that could magic away the pain I’d caused him. ‘I’m so sorry for hitting you, but you scared the hell outta me. You gonna be OK?’

‘I’ll live. Won’t be the first time I go into the office with my face all beat up.’

‘You make a habit outta gettin’ punched in the face?’ I said, shuffling my hand back into the warmth of my pocket.

‘Let’s just say I’m no stranger to the ice pack.’ Jimmy almost growled these words.

‘Bit of a weird way to get your boss’s attention. Don’t most people impress their boss by inviting them to a summer barbeque or something?’

‘Well, I guess I ain’t most people,’ he said, opening and shutting his jaw a couple of times, flinching as he did so. ‘Where’d you learn to punch like that?’

‘I grew up on the outskirts of Detroit. Where do you think I learned to punch like that?’

Jimmy summoned a smile, though it was clear from the crinkling of the skin near his eyes that it hurt when he did.

‘My dad paid for a few self-defence classes after I came home from school one day with a broken nose. I wasn’t a popular kid. The rest I learned sorta ad hoc on the walks to and from the schoolyard.’

‘Wish I’d known all that before I approached you from behind, in the dark,’ Jimmy said, looking down at me in such a way that his blond waves fell into his face.

‘Well, I’ll consider wearing some kind of sign around my neck.’ I gave him a goofy grin and the smile returned to his lips.

Snowflakes swirled around us, catching in Jimmy’s hair and no doubt mine. ‘Look, I’m real sorry about your face,’ I said, peering up into the sky. ‘But I really gotta get inside. It’s freezing out here.’

Jimmy stared at me for a moment and I leaned my head in the direction of the subway entrance. The gesture was to make it clear we were parting ways here but, it seemed, Jimmy had other ideas.

‘Right. I’ll walk you down.’

‘But… oh.’

Before I had time to argue, he’d picked up my guitar case and suitcase and hurried down into the relative warmth of the subway station. Looking around, still conscious that someone might be on my tail, I sighed and followed after him, the scent of stale nicotine growing stronger with every step downward.

‘So where’s this swish hotel of yours?’ Jimmy asked when I reached the bottom of the stairs.

God damn it.

What with the fright I’d had and punching a complete stranger in the face, I’d forgotten about that. This is why I didn’t tell lies. The effort required to keep a lie going was incredible. Nothing’s worth that much effort. Nothing.

‘Uh, I need to check the subway map actually,’ I said, walking over to the wall to take a look at one that was framed behind some glass. Jimmy followed, placed my luggage on the floor and looked on, massaging his cheek now and then to take the sting out of the blow I’d dealt him.

Staring at the multi-coloured lines leading to Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, I felt that blush creeping up my neck again just as it had back in the diner. With my hair cut just below my jaw, it was more visible than it used to be, and boy did I ever feel it right then. The vulnerability of my bare neck on display. Turning crimson with the knowledge that this was all pretend. After a minute of false calculations and running my finger along various sections of the map, Jimmy put his hand flat against the glass in front of my eyes. I looked at it and then along the sleeve of his brown, sheepskin coat until I reached his face, or more specifically his eyes, which searched mine for answers I didn’t want to give.

‘There is no hotel, is there?’ he said. His voice gentle. His expression level. I looked to the ground and scratched just above my right eyebrow, debating which lie I should tell next. But something, I still don’t know what, stopped me. I looked at him, swallowed hard and shook my head.

‘How’d you know?’ Though concealed beneath my blue hair, the heat from my blush burned around my ears.

‘As a reporter you get to read people pretty well. But in your case, you’re just a lousy liar.’ He shook his head at me. ‘You got anywhere to stay? Anywhere at all?’

‘I was just gonna ride the subway till daybreak.’ I shrugged. Pretending it was no big deal. Like I wasn’t terrified of being mugged and beaten by a stranger – or worse, by someone who knew exactly who I was. By someone who was looking for me.

‘Blue…’ He half laughed. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘My name’s Bonnie, alright? Didn’t anybody ever warn you not to name a stray? Once you name a stray, you want to keep it.’ I said. A lame attempt to get off the subject but the cold seemed to have spread to my brain so it was the best I could do.

‘Yeah well, you stay out in the cold all night and Blue’s gonna be a more appropriate nickname for you than you’d like. News just this mornin’ was about some guy who died of hypothermia. Froze to death on his own driveway, shovelling snow.’

‘For real?’ I looked at Jimmy sidelong. ‘Wait, how old was this guy?’

‘Well, you know, not young – but the point is it’s cold out. Too cold to be riding around on the subway all night. I mean what are you? Twenty-five? Young girl, out on her own all night. That ain’t right,’ he said.

Actually, I was twenty-seven, but Mama always told me not to correct men when they thought you were younger than you were.

Jimmy sighed and scratched the side of his jaw. ‘You got no money at all?’

‘Sorta spent the last of it on the Greyhound to New York. I thought Esther’d be here. Thought I’d stay with her.’

‘Maybe you shoulda called first.’ Jimmy’s mean leer reared its head again.

‘You’re right. That was dumb,’ I said, leaning one shoulder against the framed subway map.

Except I couldn’t call first. I couldn’t risk Esther suggesting I go back home to my folks or finding some other friend to bail me out. You could put the phone down on a person real easy but turning them away face to face was a lot more difficult. At least, that’s what I’d been counting on when I came to New York to find Esther.

‘No family in the area? No second cousin living out in Williamsburg?’

‘No. No family. I’m kind of a loner,’ I said, and at this Jimmy’s leer dissolved.

It was quite a journey back to Grosse Point and I wagered I was pretty much the last person my old man wanted to see right then. His biggest disappointment. That’s what he’d called me last New Year’s Eve. The last time we spoke to one another.

That fight had been a long time coming. I’d got sick of the sly digs over the dinner table and my Dad handing me the employment section of the local newspaper, before he even said hello to me, whenever I came to visit. Not once did anyone in that family ask about my job or how it was going. Probably because they were still sore about the fact I was making a decent living at it. That I didn’t come crawling back home with my tail between my legs after a couple of weeks of trying to make it in the music business. Explaining that their Princeton-educated daughter played at a scuzzy Atlantic City casino every night was more embarrassment than the folks could handle during holiday get-togethers with the neighbours. So why go ruining the 1990 Brooks family Christmas when they didn’t give a damn about me anyway? Though I’ll admit to listening to ‘So Doggone Lonesome’ on my Johnny Cash cassette more in the last year than I ever had before, I was better off without them. They didn’t understand me or my dream. Never had.

Jimmy rubbed his chin with the flat of his left hand, thinking.

‘Look, I can’t just go home tonight, knowing you have nowhere to go. There’s a sofa at mine that’s perfectly comfortable. You should just stay there tonight.’ He said that last part quick, perhaps in the hope I wouldn’t notice how bold a suggestion it was.

‘I can’t do that. I can’t.’ I looked up into his eyes. It was my own stupid fault I couldn’t accept what was unto itself a kind invitation. If I hadn’t teased him back at the diner about the outfit I used to wear in the Sexties, I probably could’ve just said yes to him and not had to worry. But no. I had to have my fun, and now this guy was probably expecting me to do more than just sing for my supper if I followed him home. I’d sunk pretty low already but prostitution was not on my agenda. No sir.

‘Well, I know it’s a little weird but these are desperate times here,’ said Jimmy.

‘I can’t.’

‘Alright. I’ve known you about two minutes and even I can see you want to accept but something’s buggin’ you about it. Why? Why can’t you just accept the offer?’

A mind reader was about the last thing I needed in my life right now and, again, I thought about feeding him a lie but there was no dodging around this guy. Besides, he was being kind to me, when he really had no reason to be. Lying to him wouldn’t have been right.

‘I can’t accept because… I can’t go home with a guy I don’t know. You can understand that, can’t you? I don’t know you. Or what…’ I looked from his eyes down to the grey, concrete floor of the subway station. It was littered with cigarette ends and sticky, empty Coke cans, pushed along by the biting breeze drifting down from street level.

‘Or what?’ Jimmy asked with a frown.

‘Or, what you want from me.’

Jimmy snorted, at last understanding my reluctance.

‘Relax, Blue, I prefer brunettes.’

‘I am a brunette,’ I said. ‘Usually.’

‘Well, I prefer full-time brunettes then, if we’re going to get all technical about it. Look, we can stand here arguing about it till daybreak but we both know you don’t want to spend the night riding the subway, and I don’t wanna spend the night thinkin’ about you riding the subway when I got a sofa just sitting there. So, for God’s sakes, accept the offer. So we can go home and go to sleep. I’ve got a dog to feed and an early start in the morning.’

‘So, you’re helping me out the goodness of your heart? Just like that?’ I said, wondering how long it’d been since anyone had done that. Esther was probably the last person, and I hadn’t seen her in ten months.

‘Let’s just say, I’ve got a little bit of experience in this area.’ Jimmy’s eyes darted downwards. ‘Of spending the night out in the city with no place to go. And trust me when I say you don’t wanna do that.’

I looked at him and thought about the cold weather that awaited above. Easily six inches of snow and more was falling this very minute. I’d already had more than my fill of the cold while hunting for the diner. Must’ve taken me damn near two hours to find the place from Penn Station. I spent the whole time shaking in my black leather jacket, glancing behind me at every street corner to be sure nobody was tracking me, hovering over the grills where warmth wafted up from the subway tunnels and, whenever I could handle it, pulling my hands, raw with the chill, out of my pockets to read the street map. The idea of facing that again in the early hours of the morning, alone, on no sleep, wasn’t a tempting proposition.

And then something else hit me. There was little point deliberating over these pretty insignificant decisions. Not right now. The horrible truth was, I probably wasn’t gonna last much longer anyway. If I really thought about it, if I was really honest with myself, it was only a matter of time before one of Frankie’s guys caught up with me, and when they did, that’d be that. Sure, I could fight off Jimmy if I had to – I probably outweighed him by at least ten pounds – but when it came to Frankie’s guys, well, they’d be experts. They’d be big and strong and the one or two moves I still remembered from the self-defence classes my old man paid for before I left Grosse Point for the East Coast wouldn’t be enough.

Though Jimmy was pretty much a total stranger, I was probably safer at his place than out on the streets.

At long last, I let out a meek ‘Alright, thank you.’ I didn’t really know what else to say to a guy who’d known me less than an hour of my life and in that time had shown me more kindness than my own family had in the last year.

Jimmy didn’t say any more either. He just nodded, picked up my luggage again, walked over to the turnstile and threw a couple of subway tokens into the machine for us.

I followed after him, trotting down the steps to the platform. Waiting for him to show me the way.

Chapter Three

A woman was screaming.

No. Strike that.

I was screaming, and somebody had hold of my arms. Gripping tight. Shaking me.

‘Bonnie!’ a voice said, over and over. ‘Bonnie. Bonnie. Bonnie.’ I started to struggle against the grip of whoever held me. My eyes jolted open, looking first into a set of brown eyes before darting around the unfamiliar room.

To the right was a bulky TV set, standing in front of a long window hung with drapes in a sort of muted orange colour. To the left, a tall silver lamp stood in the corner, the bulb weak, leaving most of the room in shadow. On the wall up in front was a large framed map of New York State. Somewhere, far away, sirens sounded out, and a faint scent of damp hung in the air.

It was then I noticed a little grey terrier that was panting, whining and nudging to get closer and see what all the fuss was about. Its fur hung heavy around the eyebrows and snout, giving him the look of an old man with a big bushy moustache.

That was Jimmy’s dog, Louie.

Jimmy was the man I was struggling against.

Pushing out a long, slow breath, I steadied myself. My eyes flitted down to the strip of brown hair on his bare chest and back up again. He was only half-dressed, wearing a pair of Levis he’d no doubt yanked on after hearing me holler out in the middle of the night.

I’d been having a dream. Well, a nightmare.

Even in my sleep I wasn’t safe from those vacant eyes, the colour of copper. Once again, they had stared at me out of the darkness, all the memories and hopes sieved out of them. Drained out of the bullet hole punched through his right temple.

I whimpered and my body slackened in Jimmy’s grasp. My heart was still hammering at the thought of what I’d just relived.

What I’d witnessed four nights ago.

Even now, the gunshot still echoed in my ears.

‘I’m so sorry,’ was all I could think of to say to Jimmy, who was crouching in front of me, his hands still resting on my arms.

‘For what?’ he shook his head.

‘Just, everything,’ I croaked. ‘For waking you up. For being a wreck. God…’ I put a hand over my mouth to hold in the disturbing truth loitering on the tip of my tongue.

‘I’ve seen worse.’ A soft smile displaced the hard lines on Jimmy’s face. I took in a deep breath, and then another, realising there was a hint of mandarin in the atmosphere and that it was coming from Jimmy. He’d showered off all of that musty cologne before going to bed. Now he just smelled fruity. And soapy.

‘You gonna tell me what’s goin’ on here?’ Jimmy stared at me.

I swallowed hard. But didn’t say anything. If I did, it could mean his life.

‘Nowhere to go. Nightmares. A makeover from the beauty school of Cyndi Lauper. You’re clearly in some kinda trouble. Don’t need to be good at reading people to see that.’ Jimmy scratched his head. ‘Maybe I can help… Who’s Frankie?’

I started and looked back into his brown eyes. Neat. I couldn’t even keep my trap shut while I was asleep. He moved from his crouching position and sat on the arm of the sofa I’d been sleeping on. It was upholstered in fabric the shade of chewy caramel, but wasn’t nearly as soft as it promised to be. Still, it was better than the sidewalk or a park bench, which is right where I’d be without Jimmy.

I sat up properly, but kept my feet covered with the yellow sheets and stared up again at the map of New York State hanging on his wall.

Perhaps confiding in Jimmy would make me feel better. He was a reporter. He probably had connections. But what if he told me to go to the cops about my situation? I’d already tried that back in Atlantic City, and had nearly died doing it. If I didn’t go to the police myself, maybe Jimmy would and I didn’t know for sure how far Frankie’s influence stretched. It could be limited to Atlantic City, but I doubted it. He’d been around long enough. I had to assume he had informants on this side of the Hudson.

Peeling my eyes away from Jimmy’s wall art, I looked over at him.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way or nothing, but I can’t tell you what’s going on. There is somethin’, obviously, but I really can’t say what it is,’ I said, running my fingers through my hair and straightening out a knot I found in the back. Flattening it down as best I could.

‘You don’t trust me.’ Jimmy lowered his gaze down to the lime-green carpet, which seemed to line the floors of every room in the whole apartment, save the kitchen area behind the sofa where he’d had wood-effect lino fitted.

‘It’s not that. If I tell you, it could be dangerous. It’s better you don’t know.’

‘Maybe you oughta let me worry about myself,’ he said, staring back at me.

‘I can’t. If anything happened to someone else because of me, well, I just can’t risk it.’ I shook my head and looked down at my fingernails. They were painted with black nail polish that was chipped to hell from strumming my guitar.

For once Jimmy didn’t have some wisecrack to make but I heard him sigh and could see him shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.

I had to get him off this subject quick.

‘You got a record player?’ I asked, tilting my head to one side. He paused, frowning at the question.

‘Yeah I got a record player, I’m not a caveman.’ He reached a hand down to Louie who’d been whining off and on and gave the short fur on his head a ruffle.

‘Mind if I play a record or two?’

Jimmy squinted his eyes just enough at the corners to let me know he was well aware I was trying to throw him off the scent. Then he looked at his watch, which I guess never left his wrist since he’d just jumped out of bed. ‘It’s three in the morning.’

‘Music always makes me feel better,’ I said, with a small pout to my lips. Something about the way I did it must’ve amused Jimmy because a smug-looking smile came over his lips.

‘Alright,’ he replied.

Pushing aside the sheets, I stood in my purple plaid nightshirt and walked barefoot over to the corner with the lamp where I’d left my suitcase about three hours ago. Louie scampered over to join me and I gave him a quick pat whilst kneeling to open the clasp on my luggage. Lifting the lid, I pushed aside the sweater dresses and T-shirts I’d thrown in before bolting for Atlantic City bus station. Underneath my toothbrush and my notebook, where I wrote down all the song lyrics I never shared with anyone, was a small pile of 45s. A modest selection of the best records from the last three decades.

I felt the heat of Jimmy’s breath on my neck as he squatted down near me. He was looking over my right shoulder and goosebumps pushed up through my skin at the thought of him being that close. It’d been too long since I’d had a guy that close to me. For the last few years my major concern had been making enough money to pay rent. But showing my parents I could make it on my own had been harder than I’d thought it would be and, as a result my love life, had been sort of on the back-burner.

‘That’s what you choose to pack in an emergency? Records?’ said Jimmy, waving a hand at my suitcase.

‘Yeah, just the essentials,’ I said, turning in his direction and trying again to look at his face rather than his chest.

‘Any good ones?’

‘Only the best ones.’ I made a show of looking insulted.

‘Alright, let’s hear one.’

‘Hmm. This one.’ I passed him a record in an orange sleeve. He took it and held it close to his face to read in the dim light.

‘“Concrete & Clay” by Unit 4 + 2.’ He shook his head at me. ‘Never heard of it.’

‘Then you’ve never heard really great music.’ I smiled. ‘Play it.’

With a shrug, Jimmy walked over to a small nook near the TV I hadn’t spotted before. It was stacked up high with old, folded newspapers but once they were lifted away a small music centre appeared underneath, complete with a record deck on top. Jimmy blew the dust off it and set the record in place. I walked over to the window and drew back the orange curtains, gazing down to the empty Brooklyn street four storeys below. Tinged yellow by the streetlamps, from this angle the world outside was a jigsaw of fire escape ladders, blacked out windows and water hydrants.

There was nobody out there. Not that I could see, anyway.

The scratch of the record sounded out, followed by the metallic chime of a cymbal right before the sprightly rhythm kicked in. I turned back to face the room and leaned with my back against the wall, running my fingertips over the cheap woodchip. Closing my eyes, I let the music surround me and at the sound of Tommy Moeller’s rich, smooth voice, my shoulders loosened, the tension bleeding out of me.

As the first chorus played out, Jimmy said, ‘That is a good record.’

I opened my eyes. Jimmy stood a few paces away at the record player. Still shirtless, and apparently confident enough about his body not to think about it. Still, he looked, to me, somehow vulnerable in his part-unclothed state. So much softer than I’d first thought him in the diner, when he was making suggestive comments and ogling everything south of my chin.

‘Actually, Esther is the one who got me onto these guys. They’re a British band from the sixties. I was feelin’ kinda low about singing in the Sexties one day. It’s not exactly a dream job, musically speaking, and she said I should hunt out this record. Said it was one her dad used to play before he died, and it was impossible to listen to it without smiling.’

‘I didn’t know, about her dad. But, I guess I’ve gotta give her credit for her taste in music, even if I don’t rate her taste in men,’ he said, while fussing Louie who was play-tearing at Jimmy’s trouser leg with his teeth.

What was this guy’s deal? Why did he have so much to say about who Esther was seeing, and how the hell had he got on the wrong side of her? She was nothing short of reasonable with me, even after the way I treated her. He must’ve really struck a nerve for relations to still be awkward between them.

And yet, this guy, the same guy that had somehow mortally offended Esther, had taken me in without any real reason to trust me, and definitely without any benefit to himself. My own parents would’ve kicked up more of a fuss about inviting me in out of the cold than he had. Something about him just didn’t add up. I guess we had that in common.

What was it he’d said back at the subway station? Something about him knowing what it was like, not having anywhere to go. It seemed out of line to ask what that experience was, especially since I’d told him nothing about my own predicament, but I couldn’t help but wonder. What’d happened to this man to cause him to take in a stray like me so easy? Someone who was so difficult to love.

Oh God damn it. No, please no. Don’t think about that again.

Too late.

Two nights ago on Christmas Eve, I’d found refuge in a church in Philadelphia for the night and sat through their All Souls service. Philadelphia was where the first bus out of Atlantic City was headed, and I hadn’t yet figured out that Esther was my best bet of staying safe for a while. I just needed to get out of town. In that church, I’d somehow managed to sing my way through ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ without breaking down into a blubbering wreck. I’d even pitched out that unsettling question in the last verse with a clear voice: ‘What can I give Him, poor as I am?’ a fact I’d chalked up as a win, and then the priest went and said it.

‘Let us pray for all those we love, and for all those we find it difficult to love.’

It was then I’d felt the lump in my throat, my face growing red with the strain of holding back the tears, because I knew that was me.

He was talking about me: the girl who was difficult to love.

The lump I’d swallowed down two nights previously regurgitated from the pit of my stomach and lodged itself at the back of my throat again. There, it bloated out, feeding off the shame I dared not speak about. Jimmy looked back at me, and I at him. The record came to an end and the needle scratched over and over. I hopped across to the record player, hooked the needle back on its stand and in doing so moved nearer to Jimmy. He was standing just to my left. I looked at him.

‘Probably should let you get back to sleep,’ I said, half smiling.

‘Uh, yeah. I guess. I gotta go into work tomorrow,’ he said, rubbing his eyes.

‘Mmm. Maybe I’ll play this record one more time before I turn out the light.’ I said, placing the needle on vinyl once more.

‘Alright, knock yourself out. Goodnight, Blue.’ He turned to walk away and as he did so, revealed a tattoo on his right shoulder blade. It was a compass, like any other, apart from one odd detail. It had the initials for all the directions etched around it, except north. There was no N for north. Just an empty patch of skin, which had a natural tan to it.

It was weird, but something about the look of it made my stomach turn over. His back was more muscular than I would’ve expected and even though I’d been brought up to believe tattoos were trashy, Jimmy’s didn’t seem cheap or nasty at all. To me, it looked like a work of fine art on his bare canvas.

‘Jimmy…’

He turned back to face me, eyebrows raised.

‘I know I’ve said it maybe a hundred times already, but I really appreciate you taking me in.’

‘It’s alright. I’ve been there,’ he said and then pressed his lips together tight, unwilling to say any another word even though there had to be more to that story.

‘Well, I’m grateful. I just want you to know that.’ And with those words I pushed up on my tiptoes, which lent me just enough height to peck him on the cheek. Though I couldn’t see his expression, I heard his breathing get heavier. It was a sound that gave me more pleasure than I would’ve imagined; I let my breathing deepen so it could keep time with his.

The right thing was to withdraw then.

That was proper.

But temptation held me in position, with my lips still close to his cheek, and I wasn’t the only statue. We were both frozen in the moment. Our chests the only things moving, closer, puffing out with every intake of breath, and then shrinking away again as we exhaled together. Slowly, so slowly, I dropped to the balls of my feet and moved my lips an inch down Jimmy’s cheek, an inch closer to his mouth. I kissed again. His face was smooth and freshly shaven. Jimmy began to turn his head towards me while Tommy Moeller sang about lovers embracing in the purple shadows of some perfect evening. Our mouths were aligned then, though not touching. His breath warmed my lips. I could smell the mint from his toothpaste. He didn’t advance but he didn’t pull away either.

The last few days had been so scary, so lonely, what harm could it do? Just for a minute to feel the warmth of someone else. It was only a kiss, after all.

Just a kiss…

Looking up into his eyes, I leaned forward and touched my lips against his. At first, he was hesitant but after a moment his mouth dropped open just that bit wider and my mouth copied. I pushed harder against him and he gasped, possibly in realisation that this moment was actually happening. No longer content with standing still, he traced his fingertips up my neck, pushing back against the force of my kiss. His lips were firm but also had a softness to them that made the contact much more dizzying than I’d expected. A low moan escaped my lips as his grip tightened around the back of my neck and, to my surprise, Jimmy moaned into my mouth in return. The bass vibration of it seemed to pulse right through me, shaking me to my core. My heart thundered in my chest with the need to be closer to him and he, it seemed, had the same idea.

Locking his arms around me tight, he pulled me into his body. I weaved my arms under his so I could press my hands flat against his back and cling on to his shoulder blades to keep myself steady. Our tongues brushed up against one another, triggering a heat inside I couldn’t control and didn’t want to. Jimmy held me even tighter, but somehow still not quite close enough. Our mouths crushed hard together and I sighed in relief at being touched with that much urgency. At feeling strangely lost and found all in the same moment.

The record came to an end. The needle started scratching. Our lips parted and I took the opportunity to catch my breath. For a moment Jimmy’s face held on to the dreaminess that’d washed over it, but in the next instant all that disintegrated.

He frowned and dropped his arms to his sides.

‘Why’d you do that?’ Jimmy’s eyes had narrowed so much they didn’t look like the ones that had stared into mine just minutes ago.

‘I’m… I’m sorry I just…’

I wanted to. I should just go ahead and tell him. Admit that I’ve been so lonely I’ve been praying for a stranger to kiss me, just so I might feel wanted. Or so I could tell myself that somebody might miss me if I weren’t around. Maybe I should even confess the worst truth, since he’d asked. That I’d got to the point that I didn’t even care who it was, so long as they had nice hair and straight teeth.

‘You know, I don’t need your pity,’ Jimmy said out of nowhere, tearing me out of my thoughts.

‘Who mentioned pity?’ I shook my head. ‘You’re the one who took pity on me and gave me somewhere to stay. I’m the pitied one. Not the person dishing it out.’ I crossed my arms. ‘Anyway, that’s not my style. I haven’t kissed a boy outta pity since 1984.’

Jimmy didn’t laugh as I hoped he might. He didn’t even smirk.

An emptiness began to fill my stomach. God damn it, Bonnie, always doing the stupid thing. I had to do something to diffuse this situation quick; getting turfed out was not an option.

‘I’m sorry if I offended you. Don’t mind what I do. I do dumb things sometimes. I meant no harm. I’ll just go to sleep and I’ll be gone in the morning. I promise.’ My eyes had widened at the thought of losing my bed for what remained of the night over yet another dumbass decision. If there were two choices in any given situation, I’d choose the wrong one. Guaranteed.

I swung round to the record player and hurried to put the record back in its sleeve. Turning off the music system, I scuttled over to my suitcase to stow my record back where it belonged. If I got under the sheets on the sofa quick enough he’d probably think it was more trouble than it was worth trying to get me to leave. There really wasn’t much of the night left anyway. Technically, it was morning, but I’d still rather wait till the sun was up before venturing back out there again. An hour out in the cold at this time of year could feel like a month.

When I turned to head back to the sofa, Jimmy was standing in front of me. He didn’t look me in the eye. He seemed to be fascinated by my toes, the nails painted black to match my fingernails.

God damn it, he was going to tell me to leave. I could see it in his face – he was trying to find the words.

‘Night then,’ I said, a little too loud, before sidestepping round him and piling myself back on the sofa, pulling up the sheets and snuggling my head into his spare pillow. It was lumpy, but who cared? It was a bed for the night. ‘Oh, could you turn out the lamp?’ I scrunched my eyes shut. I was practically asleep. It’d be downright rude to try and move somebody once their eyes were closed. I was pretty sure this was a universal, unwritten law – and if it wasn’t, it should be.

‘Alright. Goodnight, Blue,’ said Jimmy, hushed and subdued.

‘Goodnight,’ I said. Even with my eyes closed, I sensed the room darken. The light thud of Jimmy’s footsteps sounded out, fading as they neared his bedroom, followed by the excitable scamper of Louie’s paws.

After that, silence.

I thought about getting up again – pulling aside the drapes, and looking down into the street to see if they had caught up with me – but exhaustion was taking hold and I’m sure I would’ve noticed if someone had followed me to Jimmy’s.

No. They still hadn’t caught up with me.

Yet.

I’d live to fight another day, whatever that was worth.

Chapter Four

The next evening I stood outside the Starlight Diner, looking in. Watching Esther Knight through the glass frontage, and plucking up the courage to open the door. She looked just the same as she had back in Atlantic City. Her long blonde hair trailed down her back and she was wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses, but they took nothing away from those polar blue eyes of hers that’d so often narrowed in my direction back when we worked at the Crystal Coast Casino. Esther took herself so seriously; I was never able to resist teasing her. On the whole she took it well enough, but if she squinted at me that was a warning sign not to push the joke any further.

Judging by Esther’s lack of uniform, and the fact that she was ignoring the customers sitting at the booths and tables behind her, she wasn’t on shift. She was instead sitting at the counter, wearing a pair of acid-wash jeans and a blue checked shirt that looked about five sizes too big for her, chatting away to a small circle of friends. The girl sitting next to Esther was real catalogue-model material – long, brown hair and slender – and the guy sitting on the other side of her was athletic with a mischievous grin. The catalogue model and her buffed companion were holding hands so I figured they were a couple. To Esther’s right sat a tall, dark-haired man who, after a minute, I recognised as Jack Faber, the actor. He’d grown a beard, which he hadn’t had on screen, but it was definitely him. Like almost everyone else last summer I’d caught his big Hollywood debut in the hit movie Without You. The guy could act, there was no disputing that, but the film itself was garbage. Probably an opinion I should keep to myself if I wanted a bed for the night.

I took a deep breath and stared at them all. I couldn’t hang around in the cold anymore.

It was time.

Pushing the door with my shoulder, I shuffled my suitcase and guitar into the diner. Mona, who was on shift, looked over, tapped Esther on the arm and leaned her head in my direction.

At first, Esther frowned at me. I stood just a few steps in, shaking – partly from the cold and partly out of nervousness over what would happen next.

‘Bonnie?’ Esther slipped off her stool, stood on the red and white chequered lino and adjusted her glasses so they sat a bit further up the bridge of her nose. ‘Is that you?’ I’d forgotten about her prim British accent. She could sound stern without even meaning to, and when she did mean to, boy did you know it.

‘Yeah, it’s me,’ I said, my chest tightening.

‘What happened to your hair? You look like a character from Jem and the Holograms.’

Was that Esther’s version of a compliment?

‘Oh, just fancied a change,’ I lied. I didn’t want to deceive her again, really I didn’t, but for her sake it was the right thing to do just then. ‘You know musicians. Always doing something nutty with their hair.’

‘Well, it’s good to see you. Come here.’ She held out her arms to me. I put my bags down and walked over, accepting the embrace and holding on to her perhaps a little longer than was proper. She still smelled of rose oil, an ingredient in whatever fragrance she wore. I took in a deep breath of it and then pulled back to look at her, the mist of rising tears fuzzing up my vision.

‘I’m so glad you’re back in New York, I really… I really needed to see you,’ I said. Her head tilted to the side and she frowned at me. She always was sharp, and it was clear that she knew then: this wasn’t just a social visit.

‘Why don’t you come sit up at the counter and we’ll catch up,’ Esther said, gesturing at Jack. He shuffled down into the next seat along so Esther and me could sit next to each other. I picked up my luggage, dragged it over to the stool next to hers and sat up as she suggested.

‘You’ve met Mona, I believe.’

I nodded at the waitress who was standing behind the counter, just as she had been last night, and smiled.

‘And this is Angela.’ Esther pointed to the catalogue model, who pushed a section of her crimped brown hair out of her eyes with one hand and waved to me with the other.

‘This is Ryan.’ She waved at the athletic fella who, reaching a long arm across the ladies and Jack, gave my hand a firm shake.

‘Didn’t know Esther had any other friends,’ he said, and I was surprised to hear he also had a British accent. I chuckled at Ryan’s comment while Esther shot him the patented withering look I’d seen her use on a customer or two back at the casino buffet. The managers there generally insisted on service with a smile but, when they weren’t looking, Esther wasn’t afraid to let a customer know if they were testing her patience.

‘And this is Jack.’ Esther waved a hand at the actor. I smiled at him and did what I could to keep my expression relaxed. I’m not really one to be impressed by celebrity but it was weird, and even a little bit exciting, being up close to a movie star. ‘Jack’s my, er…’ Esther looked at him, thinking hard about her next words, then looked back at me. ‘Well, he’s my…’

‘Boyfriend,’ Jack finished. ‘I’m her boyfriend. But she seems to have a bit of difficulty with the word.’ He smiled, running a hand through Esther’s hair. She raised an eyebrow at him but it was obvious to anyone she was trying not to smile.

Like Ryan and Esther, Jack also had a British accent. I’m not sure I’d ever been in the same room as this many people from merry old England before, but their accents were so cute, I could listen to them all day.

‘You’re pushing forty,’ Esther said to Jack. ‘I’m not sure the term “boyfriend” is all that appropriate. Are you?’

‘Life partner?’ Jack tried.

Esther’s face crinkled up in disgust.

‘Significant other? Sweetie pie?’

The rest of us laughed as Esther’s expression became more disgruntled with each suggestion.

‘Life partner? You’re getting far too ahead of yourself, Faber.’ Esther gave his nearest cheek a tap with the flat of her hand.

‘Oh, don’t mind me, I just own the place,’ a voice called down from the end of the counter, interrupting the fun. I swivelled on my stool to see a dumpy-looking fella in a pink polo shirt and a loose-fitting pair of jeans. Though he hadn’t yet greyed, judging by how little hair he had left I guessed the guy must be at least forty. He had a plate of mac and cheese in front of him and was about halfway through eating it.

‘That’s Bernie,’ said Esther. ‘You’ve caught him in one of his better moods.’

‘I just love your diner, Bernie,’ I called down the counter to him, hoping the compliment might raise a smile. He looked like he hadn’t smiled in a long time, and his face was fixed in a chronic state of disappointment. ‘Never seen another one quite like it.’

‘Oh.’ Bernie’s grimace loosened. ‘Well, nice of you to say so.’

‘Can I get you somethin’ to eat or drink, honey?’ Mona asked.

‘Yeah, I’ve been outside all day, busking. Could use a grilled cheese and a coffee.’

‘Sure thing, honey,’ she said grabbing a cup from next to the coffee machine and pouring out my drink. ‘You start warming up with that and your food’ll be out in a snap.’

Smiling at her, I poured some cream into my coffee and emptied a sugar packet into it too. When I looked up, Angela, Ryan, Jack and Esther were all staring at me, watching. Waiting. Esther was the first to speak.

‘So, what brings you to New York?’

OK. Straight down to business. I can do that. I’ve rehearsed my little speech. It’ll sound natural enough, it’s pretty much the truth. Like ninety-eight per cent of it, so I’m not telling any out-and-out lies.

I just need to breathe, and talk.

‘Thing is, something happened back in Atlantic City, and I’m in over my head. Way over my head.’ I looked towards the kitchen doors. Mona was still on the other side of them, which was perfect. She may not be in on anything, but her husband was a cop, so I couldn’t trust him or what she might accidentally relay to him through innocent pillow talk.

‘What happened?’ Esther asked.

Going into detail was too dangerous, but she wasn’t one to be shrugged off. I had to give her something.

‘It’s… it’s really difficult to talk about right now. But I had to get outta town pretty quick and I can’t go back to my parents. You know what they think of me and my career. So, I really need a place to stay for a few days and wondered if you’d mind me, maybe, crashing on your sofa? I know it’s a lot to ask…’

‘Yes, it is.’ There was a sting to Esther’s voice. Both Jack and Ryan noticed it and looked at her face for a clue but she was giving nothing away. I was grateful to her for not blurting out to the whole crowd exactly why I wasn’t in a position to ask her for a favour, but still felt the blush skulking its way up the back of my neck anyway.

‘It’s just until I can busk and get some money together and figure out how I’m gonna – I mean, what to do next.’ I tried to explain.

‘Why’d you leave the casino?’ asked Esther, as the other three watched on, quiet.

‘You know how you always said trouble had a tendency of finding me?’

Esther glanced down at the lino. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, some pretty big trouble found me this time. You’re really better off not knowing the whys and wherefores but I promise I won’t stay a second longer than I need to. It’s just so I can regroup, you know?’ I opened my eyes as wide as I could in the hopes of looking persuasive.

Esther pressed her lips together and gazed into my eyes.

God damn it.

So this was my comeuppance for what I’d done to her. If I’d been on the level the whole time we were in Atlantic City, she wouldn’t think twice about taking me in. But I hadn’t been. I’d broken her trust early on and though I’d tried really hard, I was never sure if I’d rebuilt it before she left for New York.

‘Esther?’ Jack nudged the side of her face with his nose and murmured, only just loud enough for me to hear, ‘You OK? It’s fine if your friend wants to stay at the flat. It may be technically mine but I think of it as ours, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘No?’ I repeated, my insides hollowing out.

‘Esther?’ said Jack. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘Nothing, I just…’ She looked at me out the corner of her eye. It was the same uncertain look she’d given me that rotten night back at the casino when she’d caught me red-handed. Going through her things. Without her permission. ‘I’m sorry, Bonnie, you can’t stay with us.’

‘Esther, please.’ I put a hand on her arm. ‘I’m begging you, I’ve got nowhere else to go, everyone else I know is in Atlantic City and I really just need somewhere to put my head down for a few days and figure out what I’m going to do. Some place safe. You think I’d ask you for a favour unless I was desperate? Haven’t you ever been desperate in your life?’

Esther took in a deep breath. Her eyes filled with tears and she closed them, battling with something in her mind. Probably the easiest way of telling me she couldn’t take me in, no matter how desperate I was. She opened her eyes again, she was about to speak, but a second later her stare moved past me. Her jaw dropped wide and her eyes narrowed. Jack looked in the same direction, and his expression also changed. His brow weighed heavy with a frown.

‘No way,’ said Angela, shaking her head.

‘What, what is it?’ I asked, turning. Jimmy stood just inside the doorway in his sheepskin jacket and a pair of jeans. His right cheek was still a little puffy from where I’d socked him a good one outside the subway station last night and his hair was damp from the snow that had been drifting down for the best part of the day. He unwound a scarf striped green and black from around his neck and began walking towards the counter. I could tell by the look on his face he’d noticed the others gawping at him but he fixed his eyes on me until he reached where I was sitting.

‘Now then, honey, here’s your grilled chee— Uh-oh.’ Mona had reappeared from the kitchen. The air in the room thinned out, making it hard to breathe all of a sudden. Jimmy Boyle wasn’t popular in these parts – I’d known that, but I hadn’t quite expected this reaction. I looked at him, wondering what he’d done to these people and why the hell he’d come back here when Mona had made it pretty clear just yesterday he wasn’t all that welcome.

‘What’s he doing here?’ Jack growled out the question I’d been pondering. I jumped in surprise at the shift in his voice. When he had spoken before, his register had been nothing short of mellow.

‘Long as I’m standing right here you can address any questions to me direct,’ said Jimmy, his voice of equal roughness to Jack’s. ‘I won’t be here long, just came to return this.’ Jimmy held up my brown leather notebook, which I used for writing down my song lyrics.

‘Oh,’ I said, frowning. ‘I’m sorry, I was in such a rush this morning because I overslept. Probably through sheer exhaustion. I must not have picked it up or maybe I dropped it, I don’t know, but thank you so much for bringing it back to me. It…’ I trailed off. Jimmy had a smug look on his face and on seeing it I snatched the book out of his hands. ‘You didn’t… read this, did you?’

The self-satisfied leer on Jimmy’s face melted away and he clenched his jaw.

‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ he said. ‘If that’s the thanks I get for coming out of my way after a long day at the office, next time I won’t bother.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… It’s just, it’s very private.’ I’d written one or two half-baked lines down this morning about the kiss I’d shared with Jimmy and the thought that he might have read them was mortifying.

‘Hold on a minute, you two know each other?’ Esther asked, looking between me and Jimmy.

That felt like a bit of a complicated question to answer after what’d happened the night before. Just for an instant, I once more felt Jimmy’s arms tight around mine and the force of our lips pressed together.

Pull it together, Bonnie, this is not the time.

‘We met here,’ I said, and then did what I always did when I got nervous. I started to jabber on like a total lamebrain. ‘Late last night I was lookin’ for you but you weren’t here and I had nowhere else to go because I spent my money on the Greyhound from Philly and somehow Jimmy knew I didn’t have no place to go and he let me stay at his for the night so I wouldn’t be shut out in the cold.’

‘Weren’t you on shift last night?’ Esther turned on Mona. Esther’s skin was usually ghostly white but it had reddened and I could see she was working herself up by the way she was breathing, all deep and huffy.

‘Now, honey, come on. You know it’s our job to serve customers, even him.’ Mona put a hand on her hip.

‘Why’d you even come here in the first place Boyle? You know you’re not wanted,’ Esther said, turning back to Jimmy.

‘Well,’ Jimmy said, scratching his left temple. ‘I’d read in Jessie Marble’s showbiz column a week back that Jack Faber and his new girlfriend were spending the holidays in England, so I reckoned it wouldn’t do no harm.’

‘Fact is, buddy, you caused my waitresses a whole lotta grief last summer,’ Bernie chipped in. ‘And when the waitresses suffer, I suffer. It’s inevitable. And I don’t like sufferin’. I’ve never had to outright bar a customer from the Starlight Diner, but if you’re here to make more trouble you can beat it.’

‘Come on,’ said Jimmy. ‘You ain’t trying to say I’m to blame for everything that happened last summer?’ He looked from Esther to Jack, to Angela, to Ryan and rested his eyes on Mona.

‘You didn’t help. Like when you physically assaulted me on our first meeting and then wrote several poisonous articles about me,’ said Esther.

‘Or reunited me with my murderous ex live on TV,’ said Jack.

‘Or phoned me saying you were Esther’s shrink to manipulate me into divulging things I otherwise wouldn’t have divulged,’ Ryan said.

‘You didn’t do anything to me outright. But hurting three of the people I care about is reason enough for me to take against you,’ Angela finished.

I turned to Jimmy and stared at him, shaking my head. He looked from Angela to me and started at the look on my face. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t in a position to judge anybody, but I didn’t walk around like I was either. Jimmy, however, had been nothing short of snide about Jack and Esther. If everything Esther and her friends said was true, why did he feel entitled to be cruel about them?

‘You didn’t really do all those things, did you, Jimmy?’ I asked, feeling real hot all of a sudden. He opened his mouth to say something, before closing it again. There was an ache in his eyes I couldn’t make sense of, and bit by bit his stare lowered to the floor. I looked over to Esther; she’d crossed her arms and her face was cemented in a frown that matched her lover’s.

‘You know what, that’s just fine,’ Jimmy said. I turned to see him with his arms part raised in surrender. ‘Believe what you want to believe about me, everyone else does.’ He started winding his scarf back around his neck and as I watched him my heart started beating faster. The thought of him leaving on these terms after all he’d done for me the night before was nothing short of sickening. He’d not only taken me in from the cold, he’d soothed me after my nightmare and had even offered to help me, even though he had no idea what he could be getting into. I had to find some way of showing him that, whatever he’d done before we met, I was still grateful for the kindness he’d shown me.

‘I want to believe you’re a good person,’ I said, in the gentlest voice I could, trying to draw out some of the tenderness I’d seen in him the night before. Whatever he’d done to Esther, this guy had a heart. I’d seen it, and was willing him to remember it.

‘Well it looks like you’re the only one,’ he said, looking back up at me. ‘Good luck, Blue.’ Without another word he turned and strode towards the doorway.

‘Jimmy!’ I called after him, but he didn’t even glance back. He pushed out into the snow, while I watched on, helpless to stop him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bernie looking at me, his forehead puckered, like he was trying to figure something out. I was trying to figure something out too: why the hell I felt so empty over Jimmy leaving like that. So I’d never see the guy again, so what? I’d kissed him once and had known him for less than twenty-four hours. I needed to get a grip. To say I had bigger problems was putting it mildly.

‘Well,’ said Esther from somewhere behind me. ‘If you resorted to sleeping on Boyle’s sofa last night you must really be desperate.’

I turned back to face her, teary-eyed in spite of myself.

‘I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t need your help,’ I managed to say.

‘Alright. You can stay with us. Until New Year,’ Esther said, her features softening again now that Jimmy was out of the mix.

‘Until New Year,’ I said, a smile flickering at the corners of my mouth as relief flooded through my veins.

Chapter Five

About a half hour later, we bundled through the door of Jack and Esther’s apartment. It was on Ludlow Street, just a few blocks down from the diner, and was a lot more swish than Jimmy’s place, that much I noticed right away. Jack said he’d moved in over the summer but six months later there wasn’t much sign it’d been lived in. The place had laminate floors, a faux fireplace in the centre of the sitting room, and bookshelves, heaving with paperbacks, lined the surrounding walls, which had been painted a shade of off-white. It was bright without feeling too much like a showroom, and the whole place had a warmth to it.

‘There we are.’ Jack laid my guitar and suitcase down on the sheepskin rug, which stretched out just in front of the fireplace. ‘I’ve never used it myself, but I think this settee actually doubles up as a bed.’ He started yanking cushions off the sofa, pulled at the base and unfolded a mattress. ‘Not sure how comfortable it’ll be.’

‘Oh, trust me, it’s a big step up from where I’ve been sleeping the last few nights,’ I said, and smiled. He did a sort of awkward half-smile that told me he understood. He couldn’t, of course. He had no idea what I’d been through. But I got the impression that he was the kind of guy who wanted to understand, even if that was beyond him. Esther was lucky, having a fella like that to take care of her. Not that she showed any outward sign of appreciation in front of other people, though I got the feeling things might be different when the two of them were alone.

‘Jack,’ she called, a touchy note in her voice. She’d scurried straight into the kitchen to make me something to eat, even though I’d just had a grilled cheese at the diner and had told her there was no need. Jack sauntered towards the kitchen and leaned on the inside of the doorway. ‘Why are the cupboards bare?’

‘Because we were going away over Christmas and you said we had to empty the cupboards. Don’t you remember that unforgettable dessert you made the night before the flight? The one that masterfully blended what was left of the breakfast cereal with those satsumas that were about to go off?’

‘Don’t get funny, Faber,’ came Esther’s sharp response. Sitting down on the edge of the sofa bed, I put my hand over my mouth, giggling at their little routine. ‘We’re not at all in a fit state to receive guests. You’ll have to go to the shop,’ Esther added.

‘Alright.’ Though I couldn’t see his expression I could hear a rich amusement flooding through Jack’s voice over the fuss Esther was kicking up. ‘I’ll go to the shop, but I don’t think you’re ever allowed to get at your mother again for her overzealous hospitality.’

‘Jack!’ Esther almost shrieked but her next words were muffled.

He’d moved towards her.

He was kissing her.

From my vantage point in the living room, on account of the fact the kitchen didn’t have a door to it, I saw him stooping over her. Her hands, clenched into fists at first, relaxed and ran up and down the length of his arms. I lowered my eyes and turned away. Peeling off my leather jacket, I pulled my suitcase up onto the bed and rifled through it for the notebook Jimmy had returned to me. Opening it up to the last page I’d written on, I read:

There’s no other thought or sight or sound.

The moment you kiss and you’re lost and you’re found.

I re-read the words and sighed down at them.

Jimmy.

Why couldn’t I get him out of my head? He’d done all those things to Esther and Jack and Ryan. But he’d also helped me even though he didn’t know me at all. Even though he knew I was a friend of Esther’s and she had no time for him.

And, that kiss…

I couldn’t forget the power of it, the desperation not just from me but from him too. I’d never been kissed like that before, that was for sure. I’d dated a few guys over the years, naturally, and pretty much all of them were guys I’d met at the bars and clubs I’d sung in. When you sing like an angel, people think you might be one for real and ask you out to dinner. Things roll along well enough until one day, often quite unexpectedly, they turn around and tell you it’s over. Nothing personal, they always say, it’s just that the relationship has run its course, that’s all. In every case, within eighteen months of me hearing it was ‘nothing personal’ the guy was engaged to some level-headed lawyer type or worse, an over-limber gym instructor who never stopped giggling. Like being happy all the time made you more attractive or something.

In either case, I always got to wondering what the hell they were dating me for if that’s who they were looking to wind up with. I was strong, sure, but I wasn’t going to win any awards for my athleticism, and as for being level-headed… Right, musicians are so well known for that.

‘It seems I’m going to the shop.’ Jack was back in the sitting room now and Esther was standing just behind him in the kitchen doorway with a vague, dreamy smile on her face. ‘I’ve been given a fairly comprehensive list of what to buy…’ Jack trailed off and grinned at Esther, and she used both hands to give him a playful shove. He responded to this by wrapping a big arm around her and pulling her close to him. She didn’t resist. ‘But is there anything in particular you want?’ he finished.

‘I’m good thanks, Esther already picked up the essentials on the walk here,’ I smiled, referring to the pack of Double Stuf Oreos she’d bought for me at a small shop on the corner run by an Armenian family. I was amazed she remembered they were my favourite cookie, but she was always really thoughtful like that. Shame I hadn’t shown her the same courtesy; things could’ve been very different if I had.

‘Right, back in a bit.’ Jack, with a touch of reluctance, unhooked his arm from Esther’s shoulder, pulled on a long navy parka jacket hanging by the front door and set off on his mission into the building blizzard outside.

Esther watched after Jack for a moment and then looked back at me. Still leaning in the doorway of the kitchen, she folded her arms across her chest.

‘So, you didn’t want to say anything in front of the whole diner crowd, I understand that more than most. But don’t I deserve to know what’s going on here?’

I sighed. She was almost as difficult to dodge on this subject as Jimmy had been. But it was for her own good. It was for everybody’s good.

‘You know that if I could tell you, I would. You know better than anyone what a terrible liar I am. But it’s not safe. I’m frightened to tell you. It might put you in danger,’ I said. From my position on the sofa bed, I pulled my knees up into my chest one at a time, rested my chin on them and looked up at her.

‘In that case, isn’t it dangerous even having you here in the house?’ she said, doing that pouty thing with her mouth that meant she wasn’t happy about something.

‘I… Well, to be honest, I guess it might put you in danger. But I don’t think so. If I thought there was a real risk of that, I wouldn’t be here. It’s me they…’ I paused just long enough to think about what they would do to me when they found me, before correcting myself. ‘So long as you don’t know anything, everything will be fine. All I need to do is get my head together and busk for some money and then I’ll figure out where I go from here.’

‘You still not talking to your family then?’ Esther said, pressing her lips hard against one another.

‘Nope.’ I looked down at my knees, wondering if my parents had even called my old apartment back in Atlantic City on Christmas Day. ‘I don’t understand why they can’t just accept what I want to do with my life. Alright, so playing a casino isn’t the most prestigious of jobs but it’s a way of playing music and paying bills.’

Esther shrugged. ‘Parents can be funny about stuff like that. I was a teacher once upon a time and saw it a lot with the kids I taught.’

‘I didn’t know you were a teacher. But now you say it I can imagine it. You have that stony, unimpressed glare perfected,’ I said with a small smile.

‘Thank you for noticing,’ Esther said, with a flicker of her left eyebrow. ‘It takes precious time to perfect something like that.’ She took in a deep breath and straightened out her mouth, which just a second ago had been hitching up into a smirk. ‘Where’d you spend Christmas?’

My chest clenched at that question. ‘In a church, mostly.’

‘Alone?’

I nodded.

Esther lifted her head up off the doorframe before sighing, walking over and sitting next to me on the bed.

‘I didn’t tell you before, but when you went back to your parents’ last Christmas, I spent it alone in Atlantic City,’ Esther said, looking at me, her eyes watery and gleaming; two topaz stones catching the light.

‘But you said you had friends you were spending it with in New York?’

‘I lied. I wanted to be alone and I didn’t want anyone to know why.’ Esther shook her head. ‘Unlike you, I can lie, and I did. For a long time, I lied about so much.’

‘Why?’ The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it.

Esther sighed again. ‘It’s… painful to talk about. But Mum spent Christmas 1989 alone too, back in England, and I still feel awful about it. Who knows how many Christmases she’s got left. And there’s no harder time to be alone. This time of year is supposed to be all about togetherness, and when you spend it watching all the other families go into their cosy homes, standing on the outside of the circle, hearing them on the inside laughing and arguing and taking each other for granted, knowing they’re part of something you’re not, well, that’s hell.’ Esther was caught in a daydream, or something worse: the grip of a tragic memory.

‘Makes you feel like you got no family,’ I agreed.

‘I’m sorry I hesitated about taking you in, that was wrong,’ she said, looking me right in the eye as she spoke.

‘It’s no less than I deserved.’ Somehow, I don’t know how, I managed to shrug.

‘Don’t say that. Nobody deserves to be turned away when they’re desperate like that,’ Esther said. She moved a stray strand of blue hair out of my eyes. The temperature in the room seemed to be rising by the second. There were no mirrors in the sitting room but I could feel the redness in my face and a lone tear stole down my cheek.

‘Bonnie, hey, come on,’ said Esther, putting a hand on each of my shoulders. It wasn’t exactly an invitation for an embrace but I threw my arms around Esther anyway and, without hesitation, she pulled my head into her chest and stroked my hair. Did she know, by some magical instinct, that that’s what Mama used to do when I was a kid? Until one day, without a word as to why, she just stopped. Maybe because she thought I’d grown too old. Or maybe because it had finally sunk in that her first-born daughter wasn’t going to be the perfect little princess she’d hoped for. She was going to drink beer and stay up late and play music she didn’t approve of.

I missed those hugs so much.

For all that’d happened between me and Esther in Atlantic City, she was the closest thing I had to family right then. A woman I hadn’t seen for almost a year. A woman I’d tried to rip off in a moment of hopelessness. They were always so difficult to undo, the things you did in moments like that.

‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what I did to you. I never should’ve done it,’ I said, my voice muffled by the fabric of the checked shirt she was wearing.

‘Shh. It’s alright. It’s alright,’ Esther soothed.

‘It’s not alright. It never is. You’re good to me when I don’t deserve it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know who I am or what to do. I’m not supposed to be here. I should have things figured out. I should have a real job and a family and a house and a cat or something dumb like that but I haven’t got any of those things. I just… I don’t fit. I don’t belong. I don’t know why.’ I took in a sharp breath, trying to fill my lungs again after my pathetic blathering, which had all the makings of a country song if only I could make it all rhyme.

‘Bonnie, you’ve got to listen to me. Listen.’ Esther wrapped her arms tighter around me, holding me steady against the force of my tears and the exhaustion and all I was running from. ‘Nobody has the right to tell you who you should be or what you should do.’ I closed my eyes and tried to zone in on her voice. It had a steadiness and certainty to it I didn’t remember noticing before. ‘You’ve got to figure that out for yourself. I built a whole other life on “shoulds”. A woman should get married. A woman should keep a tidy, proper house. A woman should please her husband.’

I pulled my head away from her chest and dried my eyes on the sleeve of my sweater dress.

‘You were married?’ Even though Jimmy had already let this slip last night in the diner, I thought it best to look surprised. If Esther found out Jimmy had been talking about her private life behind her back it’d only upset her and that’s the last thing I wanted.

‘To a bad guy,’ Esther said. ‘On the surface, he seemed to be everything a good husband should be. But when nobody was looking he did unspeakable things. To me and to himself.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I rubbed her right arm at the elbow.

‘It’s alright, I’m alright– or, at least, I’m on my way to alright. But what I’m saying is, I’ve lived a life of “shoulds”. In fact, in a weird way, that’s something Michael – my late husband – and I had in common. And it’s not a guaranteed route to happiness. In fact, often it’s quite the opposite.’

I offered a limp smile. ‘Are you saying Jack isn’t the kinda fella who gets too hung up on what he should be doing?’

Esther shook her head and after a minute smiled too. She always had a war with herself over raising a grin. I never did understand that about her.

‘Jack’s impulsive and unpredictable and has a complicated history, if we’re going to be polite about it, but he’s not alone on that score, and he makes me happy. Not everything about our life as a couple is certain, but it doesn’t matter because we’re together and to us that’s all that really matters,’ she explained.

‘So all I gotta do is find true love? That it?’ I smirked at the idea. True love was some far-off, mythical figment right then. She might as well have told me to go off and hunt for a unicorn.

‘No.’ Esther chuckled. ‘You have to decide what you want, that’s it. A relationship with someone else might play a part in that someday but your relationship with yourself is more important. In fact, it’s by far the most important thing.’

‘Difficult to have a relationship with someone you barely know,’ I said, scraping both hands through my hair.

‘Maybe this is your chance to find out who you are.’ Esther raised both eyebrows. ‘Maybe this is a chance to become who you want to be. Rather than some sexed-up persona on the casino stage in Atlantic City.’

Esther had heard me talk so many times, after too many beers, of how I felt I was hiding behind the words and truths of other people. Put me on a stage, give me a song to sing, and I could be somebody. Not myself, but somebody. But take me out of my costume, let me come up with my own words, and I didn’t know who I was or what to say. Off stage, I wasn’t anybody at all. Other than a person nobody really wanted around.

‘Don’t remember you dishing out these philosophical nuggets when you were frying omelettes at the Crystal Cavern Buffet. When did you get so wise?’ I eyed Esther in mock suspicion.

‘Only about two months ago,’ she said. ‘Oh, and please, don’t remind me about that buffet job. People used to waste so much food, and dangle lengths of bacon into their mouths as if they were starving mongrels. Used to make me sick.’

‘People can be pretty disgusting. Especially in a place like Atlantic City,’ I said with a little shiver. Though ‘disgusting’ didn’t even come close to what I saw that night.

‘Hmm,’ Esther agreed, and then shifted her voice back into the business-like tone she’d used with Jack earlier when she was instructing him on what to buy at the store. ‘Right, Jack’s clearly gone shopping to Timbuktu. How anyone strings out a trip to a shop less than a block from the flat the way he does, I’ll never know. Why don’t you get a hot shower whilst you’re waiting? You can borrow my dressing gown and by the time you’ve got yourself sorted I’ll probably have a cup of hot chocolate ready for you. Assuming Faber hasn’t frozen outside in the blizzard.’

‘That all sounds incredible,’ I said, swooning at the very thought of feeling warm inside and out. ‘Except the part about Jack freezing to death, of course.’

Just then, Esther held out her hand. It was such a small gesture. She couldn’t have known what it meant to me. Looking at her hand, I noticed a scar I’d never seen before, just on the inside of the palm where the thumb and the forefinger meet. A dull, red line that marked out some past pain I didn’t know about. Tact may not have been my most obvious quality but I knew better than to ask about it. Instead, I put my hand in hers and she gave it a squeeze. The lower half of my face wobbled but I managed to keep it together this time. I’d cried a lifetime’s worth of tears in the last few days. Enough was enough.

‘Alright.’ Esther jumped up off the mattress, scuttled into the bedroom and returned with a cotton bathrobe in cornflower blue and the softest-looking towels I’d ever seen in my life. ‘Go and relax in the shower, and in the meantime I’ll hunt out some spare bedding for this thing,’ she said, tutting at the way Jack had arranged the cushions and reorganising them into what would, I had to admit, be a far more comfortable formation.

‘Thanks,’ I said, a little smile creeping across my face at how much Esther was enjoying the mothering aspect of this scenario. She smiled in return and rubbed my right arm.

Scooping up the yellow towels and the robe, I headed off to the shower, locked the door behind me and started when I caught my reflection in the mirror.

‘God damn it,’ I said, putting a hand on my heart as if to push it back into the correct position. Would I ever stop seeing a stranger with a blue bob in the mirror? It’s not that it didn’t suit me – it actually looked kinda cute, even if I did say so myself – but I’d had almost twenty-eight years of looking into a mirror and seeing a face framed with flowing brown locks. Before all this I was almost sensible-looking, when I wasn’t on stage. But since – what had Jimmy called it? – my makeover from the Cyndi Lauper school of beauty, I looked a lot more like the wacky idiot I probably was deep down.

I rested my hands either side of the sink and looked my reflection dead in the eye, trying to see past my weird disguise down to the person I really was. A pair of wary green eyes stared back at me. They had an emptiness to them, a despair.

I turned to the shower for a moment, switched on the faucet and sighed at the soft pattering sound the water made. A sound that meant refreshment and relief. That gentle burbling banished the awkward silence that’d been growing between me and my reflection.

I kicked off my shoes and was about to pull my sweater dress over my head when I paused and sighed again. This time, not out of relief. Lowering my arms, I turned, leaned on the sink and looked into the glass.

‘I’m real sorry for gettin’ you into this,’ I said to the woman in the mirror. ‘I’m sorry for so much that I’ve done to you. I haven’t exactly treated you right the last twenty-seven years. Fact is, all I’ve done is hurt you. By being ashamed of you.’ The woman’s eyes came over all watery. ‘But I’m going to change that,’ I said to her, quick as I could, before she turned on the waterworks. ‘It is going to change, Bonnie.’ The woman in the mirror flinched at the sound of me speaking her name out loud. ‘Something has to. You deserve better than what you’ve had.’

I put my hand over my mouth to smother a weak chuckle and I shook my head.

Neat. Talking to yourself in the mirror. That’s always a sign of spectacular mental health.

I looked down into the endless blackness of the plughole and then back up at my reflection, searching for something, any clue to who I really was and what my next step should be.

But the woman in the mirror was giving away nothing.

Maybe Esther was right. That somehow this was an opportunity disguised as a disaster, a wake-up call. Oh boy, it’d been that alright.

I could never go back to my old life in Atlantic City, and I wasn’t wanted back in Detroit. What I was meant to do now, I had no idea.

Chapter Six

The next day at sundown I headed straight to the Starlight Diner as per Esther’s military instructions. She’d made it clear that straggling around Manhattan on your own after dark wasn’t a safe thing to be doing. Said she’d even been mugged once in broad daylight not three streets away from the diner. She’d no idea that I had bigger problems than being ambushed by some two-bit crook after the change in my pocket, but she meant well and, in spite of everything, it was sort of comforting to know she was looking out for me as best she could with the information I’d given her.

Though it was still cold, the snow had stopped falling long enough for me to busk under Washington Square Arch for the best part of the day. There, families had gathered to build snowmen and throw snowballs at each other. I’ll admit, given my own family circumstances, watching loving fathers roll around in the snow with their fresh-faced, moon-eyed daughters was about the last thing I needed. Still, it had been quite a lucrative session in terms of dollars in my guitar case, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. There are certain songs you can play in cities like New York that are bona fide crowd-pleasers, guaranteed to make people stump up a few more bucks for you. ‘Downtown’ by Petula Clark was one of them and ‘Tom’s Diner’ by Suzanne Vega was another. Anything that glorified the urban ant farm they had going on here was sure to boost donations to the Bonnie Brooks Reinvention Fund. I sang my heart out, on and off, for eight hours and made just shy of seventy bucks. Not too shabby for a day’s work.

By the time I reached the diner, it was nearing half past five. Esther’s shift didn’t finish till seven and Jack was in rehearsals for his next movie, some bubblegum action flick called Nowhere Left to Hide. The shoot was mostly happening in a studio lot, somewhere on the Upper East Side, instead of a studio in LA like I would’ve expected, but according to Jack rehearsals often overran and he couldn’t promise what time he’d get home. Thanks to a key shortage, I’d been directed to wait for Esther to finish her shift and walk back to the apartment with her.

The dinnertime rush was in full flow when I walked in. Man, was it ever noisy in there at busy times. I could barely hear the tinny wail of ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ playing out over the jukebox for all the chattering and cackling of customers having a jolly old time. Esther was buzzing around the joint with arms full of plates while Jean, a waitress with a halo of black curls and a nose speckled with pale freckles, was permitted to carry only one item at a time. This, Bernie had discovered, was the only way of making sure Jean didn’t drop whatever she was carrying before it reached the table. According to Esther, Jean had been on ‘probation’ longer than any server in the history of the Starlight Diner but Bernie didn’t have the heart to fire her.

Despite the rush, Bernie was sitting at the end of the counter near another older gentleman who was engrossed in a copy of the New York Times. To my surprise, the diner owner waved me over. I traipsed across the lino to see what he wanted, lugging my guitar behind me.

‘Bonnie, right?’ said Bernie, his eyes staring just to my left rather than straight at me. They were brown eyes, the colour of hazel, but they didn’t catch the light the way some people’s eyes did. Quite the reverse. There was a dullness about them that was too depressing to look at head on.

‘Right.’ I smiled at Bernie but he didn’t smile back.

‘Esther tells me you’re trying to get a few bucks together and that you know how to play good music.’

‘Yeah, well, I like to think so,’ I put my hands in my jeans pockets and swung my hips round from side to side, not sure why – coyness I guess. Esther liked me to sing to her but she’d always had a glass of gin or two before asking so I’d never been sure if she really took pleasure in what she heard or if it was just a fun distraction after a couple of drinks. Truth be told, she wasn’t that hot at handling liquor.

‘Esther said you play sixties tunes?’ Bernie squinted at me.

‘Well I can play a lotta things. But yeah, I played sixties tunes back in Atlantic City.’

‘Swell. What’re you doing New Year’s Eve?’

‘Uh, probably being evicted from Esther’s apartment for outstaying my welcome, why d’you ask?’ I smiled again, hoping this was funny enough to make a crack in Bernie’s face of stone, but his lips remained level and showed no signs of budging. Was smiling against this guy’s religion or something?

‘Well, we have a little get together at New Year, for staff and regulars only, you understand. Beats going up to Times Square and getting caught up in the crowds. And I… Well, it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.’

I looked at him and nodded, hinting that I understood what he was getting at there. New York, it seemed, was a city built to house the lonely. I’d visited the city a few times during my studies at Princeton, but the place had a different feel to it when you were busy partying with college buddies, blowing the savings your Dad had squirreled away for books and equipment on cocktails and clothes. Beyond the parties and the nightlife there was a different side to this place. For reasons I couldn’t figure out, it was like a magnet for lost souls. And I was one of them.

‘Anyhow,’ Bernie continued, recognising I didn’t really know how to respond to his last comment. ‘I thought it might be a nice touch to have some live music at the party, if you fancy playing a couple of sets. Sixties music would be a change of pace for us all. The staff get sick of hearing the same songs coming out of the jukebox, they make a point of telling me that every chance they get. Do you think you could play for us?’

‘Sure, sounds like fun.’ I shrugged.

‘How much?’ Bernie’s eyes narrowed for a second time.

‘What?’

‘How much will it cost?’

‘Oh, uh, well obviously I’d give you the friends and family rate. Seventy-five bucks?’ I would take fifty but best to start the haggling high.

‘Seems reasonable,’ Bernie said, though his tone made it seem as though he didn’t think the terms were reasonable at all.

‘Well, alright, great. You got some particular songs in mind?’

‘I’ll write a list and pass it on to Esther tomorrow. That’ll give you about three days to practise before the party. That enough time?’ he asked.

‘It should be plenty, I probably know them anyway. Any I don’t know, I’ll practise them when I’m out busking.’ Though he didn’t invite me to do so, I didn’t have anyone else to sit with and decided to take the seat next to his.

As I did, the other older gentleman to my left piped up. ‘Excuse me, did I just hear you’re a musician?’

‘Uh, yeah,’ I said, shaking off my leather jacket.

‘Bonnie, Walt, Walt, Bonnie,’ said Esther, who’d come over, notebook in hand, probably to find out what I wanted to eat.

‘Can you tell me the answer to this crossword question I couldn’t get this morning?’ said Walt, looking at me over the top of his spectacles. ‘It’s about music.’

‘Well, I can try.’ I smiled, wondering if the guy started all his conversations this way. He moved a veiny hand over to his paper and his finger hovered over the words as he read.

‘Debut single by The Police released 1978. Seven letters.’

‘One word?’

‘Yup.’

‘Well, that’ll be “Roxanne”.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Esther said, and stared hard at Walt. ‘You ask me the book questions and Bonnie the music questions. Do you do any of that crossword by yourself?

‘Sure I do. The sports.’ Walt chuckled whilst carefully filling in the word ‘Roxanne’ in neat block capitals.

Esther rolled her eyes and shook her head at the same time. This was her ultimate non-verbal put-down, but Walt seemed unfazed by it and she soon turned her attentions back to me. ‘You want something to eat? Lucia’s nearly on top of all the orders we’ve got and I can get yours in the queue.’

‘Yeah, I’ll get a hamburger with a side of fries.’ I said, thinking about how good it had tasted to sink my teeth into Jimmy’s burger the first night I came here. And then a little collage of images flickered through my mind, replaying my time back at his apartment. In particular, the moment he pulled my body so tight against his…

‘Are you alright?’ Esther asked, raising an eyebrow at me. ‘You look very red in the face.’

‘Do I?’ I said, pressing my knuckles flat against my cheeks to check my temperature. Oh God. So now just thinking about Jimmy made me go traffic-light red? Life really wasn’t being fair to me lately. ‘That’s weird, I don’t exactly feel overheated after a day out in the snow.’

‘I hope you’re not coming down with something,’ said Esther, a hint of suspicion still lingering in her voice.

‘Oh, I’m sure I’m not,’ I said, and although I wouldn’t have thought it was possible I could feel myself getting redder. ‘I just need a hot drink to warm up properly. Could I get a coffee too?’

‘Alright, anything for you two?’ Esther looked between Bernie and Walt but they both shook their heads so she trooped off back towards the kitchen.

Bernie looked at me a moment and then stared down at the counter. He shuffled in his seat and fidgeted with a ballpoint pen. Alright. Looked like I was going to have to do the heavy lifting when it came to conversation around here.

‘So Bernie, how long have you had this place?’ I asked, starting with something simple.

‘Opened her up in sixty-four,’ he said and then zipped up his mouth again.

Boy, this was going to be hard work. Still, I had some time to kill. Esther’s shift didn’t finish for another hour and a quarter.

‘Fifties places must have been something of a rarity in the sixties,’ I said, frowning at the idea. Something about it seemed a little screwy. But then, something about this guy seemed a little screwy too.

‘Oh yeah, a few people thought I was nuts opening a fifties joint not even five years into the next decade,’ he shrugged.

‘But you did it anyway,’ I said, looking around at the rows of milkshake glasses sparkling on the shelves and the refrigerator stocked high with pies.

‘Yeah, well, the early sixties was what you might call a turbulent time, and I just got a feeling, the way a guy gets sometimes, that things weren’t gonna get any better. And for the most part I was right. Looking back sure is a lot easier than looking forward.’

‘Both seem equally painful to me.’ I said, without even thinking about it. My shoulders stiffened. I looked at Bernie out of the corner of my eye. He was staring at me, hard. Damn it, Bonnie, couldn’t you just talk about something light, like how bad the Lions were faring this season?

‘Esther says you’re from Detroit,’ Bernie said, the way so many people did. It was no secret that the golden age of Motor City was well and truly in the past. The city’s reputation for violence was second to none, which made people a bit wary when talking about it. They never offered an opinion on the place, as it was likely to cause offence.

‘Born and raised.’ I issued my standard response, shaking a second sugar packet, ripping at the seal and pouring it into my drink. I wouldn’t normally take so much sugar but it had been sub-zero outside and I needed some kind of energy boost.

‘You not got any folks out there?’

‘Oh yeah, they’re out there.’ I took a sip of my coffee even though it was still too hot to drink and winced at the sting.

‘You didn’t wanna spend the holidays with them?’

Alright, this was getting real personal, real fast. How’d that happen? I turned my head to look at Bernie square on. His brown eyes shifted from side to side; it was like he didn’t want to be seen. I could relate to that well enough and looked away, staring at an old tin advert for an ice-cream float telling me to ‘add some flavour to my day’.

‘It’s not that I don’t want to be there.’ I pressed my index finger to the top of the coffee cup and followed the edge right around until my hand had travelled a full circle. ‘It’s more that I’m not exactly welcome at the moment. My old man ain’t too keen on having a failing musician as a daughter.’

‘Who does he want? Madonna?’

‘No.’ I chuckled without expecting to, but then the whole area around my mouth tightened. How did I make this sound casual? That I’ve never really quite been the person my Dad hoped I’d be. Not even close. ‘My little sister, Karen, she’s a pharmacist,’ I started, trying to find a way into the topic and hold myself together. ‘Draws a regular wage. Married a grocer by the time she was twenty-four as though it was the easiest thing in the world. She just slots right in without even thinking about it. Guess lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same family.’ I squeezed my lips hard against one another, desperate to make sure the talk about why I couldn’t run home to my family didn’t turn into talk about what I was running from.

It was at Karen’s wedding the summer before last that I started to realise just how much of an outsider I was, even in a room filled with my own blood relatives. I’d always felt it on some level, of course, but that day it was made explicit. My own mama asked me to lie to people about what I did for a living. Asked me to tell folk I was a music teacher, not singing in some seedy casino bar every night. It was then I realised that the thing I was most afraid of in the whole world was actually true: my own family were ashamed of me. It wasn’t at all what they had planned for me when they packed me off to Princeton to study music. They were embarrassed by their own daughter, and last December I’d finally had the guts to confront them over it. That was the last conversation I’d had with them and right now it felt like the last conversation I would ever have with them.

‘Well, I don’t know much about family, kid. Not in the blood sense of the word anyways,’ said Bernie.

‘Your parents not around anymore?’ This was a pretty personal question, but I’d given this guy quite a lot. Certainly more than he’d given me. His whole face tensed and for the first time since the conversation started, he looked at me straight. Level. No darting eyes or fidgeting with his pen.

‘Papi died in Korea. Mami didn’t live to see the seventies. She did live to see me get married but me and Rita ain’t together no more.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I.’

‘You didn’t have any kids?’

‘Naw, never got a chance.’ I looked at Bernie out of the corner of my eye. He gulped and his face was clouded with whatever he was thinking about.

‘Tell me to mind my own business, anytime. I won’t take it to heart. I seem to be an expert at saying the wrong thing, but… I’ve never really been sure about marriage, though I’ve never really been in a position to wonder about it. Are you glad you got married?’

Bernie turned and looked at me again, and then his eyes were back on his pen. ‘I don’t regret it, if that’s what you’re asking. It was the right thing to do.’

‘How did you know it was right?’

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