The Endless Beach Read online

“Awful,” she said honestly.

  “Good,” he said. “I should have warned you about American drinks. Although on the other hand, you probably shouldn’t have three cocktails in half an hour anywhere.”

  “They don’t do a lot of cocktails at the Harbor’s Rest,” muttered Flora.

  “They don’t,” said Joel. He took a breath. “Anyway . . . tonight. Would you like . . . ? There are some people I’d like you to meet.”

  Flora straightened up. It must be the lady who rang.

  “I’ll check my schedule,” she said, and Joel laughed.

  * * *

  Flora then spent most of the afternoon in something of a panic, looking up and down and around Fifth Avenue—completely paralyzed by the sheer choice and range of things on offer—to find something appropriate to wear. She got lost in Saks, wandered through Bloomingdale’s far too overwhelmed to even approach anything, got shoe blindness, and realized that in her life she had rarely needed to buy summer apparel and didn’t appear to have the knack.

  Joel stared at the phone. Stared at the laptop. Thought about what Marsha would say that night, then swore mightily and went to meet Flora.

  He worried briefly about what Marsha and Mark would think, but they’d never met any of his girlfriends before; they rarely lasted long enough, and even so he seldom had the slightest bit of interest in sharing his upbringing. He hated—despised—the tilted-head look girls had often given when they heard about his past, as if they immediately saw him as some wounded bird only they could heal, so often he didn’t mention it at all. It had been different with Flora; she was so wounded by her own mother dying that it felt they were sharing in something they both understood. Even though she couldn’t understand it, not really. Losing a mother you had loved was not at all the same as never having known one.

  But Marsha and Mark . . . There was no hiding there. Mark had read all his childhood files; Marsha, he surmised, had intuited the rest.

  He hoped they’d like Flora. He hoped they’d think he was good enough for her.

  He came across her panicking in Zara on Fifth, carting large amounts of clothes into the changing rooms. She looked hot and red-faced—sunny days didn’t exactly suit her—and her hair was hanging damply from a ponytail. She had a huge pile of colored dresses in her arms, none of which, he could tell, would suit her.

  “Having fun?” he said mildly.

  “Not really,” said Flora crossly. “American sizes are weird and everything makes me look pale.”

  “That’s because you’re translucent.”

  “And nothing suits me and absolutely everyone else looks amazing in these colors and I just look like a peely-wally washout.”

  Joel wasn’t sure what this was but guessed it wasn’t good. He glanced around. There was no doubt about it: Joel was good at clothes, Flora reflected. He wore suits every day, that was what he did, but they were subtly different—better—than other people’s suits: the slim lines of them, the positions of the buttons, the crisp shirts. He wasn’t a dandy; he just got it effortlessly right. That life he used to have . . . Everyone dressed well. She wouldn’t have dared buy him so much as a tie. She sighed. Now he was eyeing her, frowning.

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure this is the right place for you,” he said. “Zara is Spanish. It’s designed for beautiful tanned señoritas who don’t eat till eleven P.M. each night. Come with me.”

  She followed him out and he guided her expertly to a very quiet corner of Bergdorf’s, up on the fourth floor. She eyed him suspiciously.

  “What?” he said. “I dated a lot of models.”

  “Well, that makes me feel better,” she said.

  “They’re very, very boring. Do we need to go through this again?”

  Flora looked at the shop assistant, who had skin as pale as her own, but topped with a severe black bob and bright orange lipstick. “No,” she said.

  “Okay.” A smile played on Joel’s lips. “Let me do this.”

  And Flora watched in mild amazement as he quickly blew through the racks, picking out some clothes, eyeing her, and putting most of them back. Finally he came up with three.

  There was a deconstructed dress in the palest of millennial pinks, with a soft Lycra top and a parachute silk skirt in softest teal that looked far too floaty and strange for anything Flora would ever have picked up. It swirled with her as she walked and made her look, with her pale hair and white shoulders, like a mermaid.

  There was a very pale silver see-through dress with tiny, almost invisible sprigs of flowers embroidered on the outer layer. The inner layer was a heavenly comfortable silk sheath, and the outer layer hung to the floor. From the second Flora put it on she found herself walking differently; it made her willowy and elegant, rather than slightly too tall and Viking-ish—it was a vision of a different type of person than she thought she could be, particularly as Joel came over and untied her hair carefully until it fanned out over her shoulders.

  “Now you’re a sprite,” he said.

  The final dress was of palest green, in grosgrain, off the shoulder, slightly tighter, and designed to be worn with heels. It was definitely a sexy dress.

  “Oh yes,” said Joel appreciatively. He was sitting in a large armchair leafing through a magazine and glanced up as she left the changing room.

  “Really?” said Flora, turning around. She blushed bright pink and Joel got an enormous jolt simply watching it happen. How he loved to raise that color in her. He looked around to check how private the changing rooms were. The snotty-looking shop assistant immediately looked up as if she could sense what he had in mind.

  “Let’s go,” said Joel in a hurry, glancing at his watch. “You’ve got time to go home and change.”

  Flora checked the price tag. It was astronomical. “Ah,” she said. Joel waved his hand.

  “Stop it, please,” he said. “All of them,” he said over his shoulder to the assistant.

  “No, Joel, don’t.”

  He shook his head. “I want to.” He pulled her close. “You are literally the only woman I’ve ever met who hasn’t asked for a thing.”

  Flora swallowed. She knew he was complimenting her. But it felt like he was warning her too.

  She shook that thought out of her head as she got changed, and the shop assistant bagged everything up for her, all wrapped in tissue, and they ran through the crowds as quickly as they were able. Joel started kissing her before they were even in the elevator, and Flora looked around guiltily, then realized of course she didn’t know anyone here so who cared, and she kissed him back with abandon and he practically carried her into the elevator and they were completely oblivious, even as the receptionist watched them jealously.

  * * *

  Marsha and Mark lived uptown. Flora and Joel were still rather giggly when they turned up, a little late, Flora with her hair still wet at the ends but glowing in her silver dress. Joel made a mental note to buy her some earrings to go with it.

  The Philippoussises lived in a fancy apartment building with a doorman on the Upper East Side, and Flora was intensely impressed by the old oak elevator and the beautiful parquet flooring, as well as the views of the park.

  Marsha answered the door, and Flora liked her immediately. She was tiny, with short brown hair and a round figure dressed in something obviously expensive. There were large jars of lilies in the hallway and soft lighting all around. She had dark, beady eyes that took in everything—including the fact that the poor girl, she thought to herself, was obviously wearing a new dress. She wondered if Joel was up to his old tricks again, trying to control every environment he was in.

  Joel leaned forward and kissed Marsha lightly, but he didn’t get away in time as she stretched her arms up and insisted on giving him a hug.

  “I swear you are still growing,” she said.

  “Marsha, I’m thirty-five years old.”

  “Yes, well, even so.”

  Mark came through, holding a wooden spoon with a tea towe
l over his shoulder. Flora felt Joel relax beside her.

  “Hello, sir,” said Joel respectfully.

  “Come in, come in,” said Mark, beaming. He had a trimmed gray beard and his eyes twinkled. Flora immediately felt their warmth and intelligence and felt envious of them both. “You must be Flora, our Scottish friend.”

  He did not attempt a shot at the accent, as many Americans did, for which Flora was grateful.

  “You look lovely,” said Marsha. Flora wasn’t at all what she’d expected. She’d assumed she would be another of Joel’s favored willowy blondes. Although she had always suspected that it wasn’t that Joel had a type as such, just that those kinds of girls were considered by the culture to be particularly desirable, so he had made his choice in the same way he chose his watch or his apartment or anything else: by what appeared to be the best available to him at the time.

  But this girl wasn’t like that. She didn’t look like anyone else Marsha had ever seen, and she lived in New York where eventually you saw everyone, more or less. Her pale hair; her skin was practically albino; those strange silvery blue-green eyes . . . You didn’t quite notice her at first glance; she was average . . . then you took a closer look and she was extremely striking. Her voice when she spoke wasn’t always easy to understand, but it sounded to Marsha like music. Please, she thought to herself. Let her be kind. But not too kind.

  “So, how are you finding New York?”

  “Amazing,” said Flora. “It’s weird—it feels like I know it already. And also: hot.”

  Marsha looked puzzled. “Oh, I think it’s quite a cool spring.”

  “It’s hot compared to where I’m from.”

  “Well, don’t come back in July . . . Would you like a martini?”

  “A small one, please,” said Flora, as Joel smirked. “Stop it!” she whispered to him, as they followed through into the large kitchen–dining room with its extraordinary city views. “This is amazing,” said Flora as they moved out to the terrace. Joel had stopped in the kitchen, where Mark was making a moussaka, and was updating him on his new job. Mark was nodding solemnly.

  “So,” said Marsha, drawing her in. Flora remembered what she’d heard about Americans: that they were perfectly upfront in asking direct questions. “You’re the one.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Flora, although she was thrilled by the statement, secretly—especially while sipping her martini, which was incredibly strong but also rather delicious. She watched the long lines of the lights of cars, up and down the park.

  “You’re the only person he’s ever brought to meet us,” said Marsha. “And we’ve known him since he was eleven years old.”

  Flora kept staring out. “What was he like then?”

  Marsha thought back. “Clever. Sad. So tightly closed in on himself, you couldn’t have peeled him open any which way. I’m not sure anyone ever has.” She left the unspoken question in the air.

  “What happened . . . I mean, he told me he was raised in foster care. Why? What happened? He’s never said and it felt a bit strange to ask.”

  Marsha shrugged. “I haven’t seen the files, of course. So I don’t know. I will tell you this. With other wards, when they turn eighteen, Mark legally asks them if they want to be reunited with their birth family.” She sipped her drink. “In this case, never.”

  “And he never got adopted? Did no family want to keep him?”

  Marsha shook her head. “The system doesn’t always work, alas.”

  “What about . . . do you have children?”

  “Yes,” said Marsha. “Of course, we couldn’t have adopted Joel. Professionally, it’s unconscionable. And our own children were too young at that time. But we . . . we tried to do what we could for him.”

  “He is very grateful,” said Flora.

  Marsha grimaced. “I don’t want him to be grateful. I’d really like him to take us totally for granted, fling his laundry down, and turn up whenever he feels like it. I’d love a world in which we don’t have to beg to see him.” She looked up.

  “But, Flora,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to be asking me. You know that, don’t you?”

  Flora nodded.

  “That’s all love is, you know. To know someone: to be fully known.”

  And Flora couldn’t speak as they headed back into the kitchen, where Joel and Mark were deep in a discussion of the intricacies of potential impeachment trials which, both the women intuited immediately, was their way of telling each other how much they loved each other. The evening passed pleasantly as Mark and Marsha talked about a disastrous trip to Italy that appeared to include a tour of the country’s craziest hotels; about how Mark was refusing to retire, pointing out that half the people he saw were miserable because they had done so and had lost their purpose in life, plus he loved what he did; Marsha talked about her interior design course and the awfulness of the women who were in it; Joel did not talk much, as usual, but he laughed in the right places; and neither of their hosts did the thing Flora had been most excited about while also dreading: asking the couple what their plans were or where they were headed.

  At 10:30, Flora let out an involuntary jet-lag yawn and Mark jumped up to get the coats. Joel went to the bathroom and they left, both thinking that it had gone as well as could be expected. Flora fell asleep against Joel in the car, Marsha’s words ringing in her ears. As she nodded off, she swore to herself she would do it—she would know him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Flora tried to act nonchalant but she was fundamentally terrible at it. She sat on the huge bed, still staring out at the sensational view—she wondered if the people who lived here ever got tired of it, even as she wondered whether Paul Macbeth’s lambs had been born yet and hoping she didn’t miss their first days of bouncing cheerfully about. She was looking forward to going home tomorrow. She wished Joel was coming with her. She watched him untie his tie and he looked so alone, suddenly, standing in the dim light of the bedroom, and she walked up to him and put her arms around him.

  “So they knew you as a child,” she said. “What were you like?”

  Joel shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s the problem with psychiatrists. They never give you an end-of-year report.”

  “Did you like being a child?”

  He stiffened. “Not terribly,” he said. Then he pulled her round swiftly and hard up against him and looked straight at her, his hands locked on to her back in that way that made her gasp.

  “Last night in New York,” he said. “Let’s make it count.”

  * * *

  He was up early on Sunday morning and she sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees, watching him. She told him about Saif’s children coming back, and was gratified by his happiness at the news, and concern for how they would be. She lay back, faux casually.

  “So was it mostly in New York you were brought up?”

  Joel eyed her. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m interested,” said Flora. “It’s quite a normal thing to want to know, isn’t it?”

  Joel shrugged. “Well. Here and there.”

  “You said that before.”

  Joel looked at her, his dark eyes unblinking. “I told you about my childhood.”

  “You didn’t,” said Flora, hating herself for sounding like she was nagging him. “You told me you grew up in foster care. You didn’t tell me anything else about it.”

  “There’s nothing else to tell,” said Joel, glancing at his watch. “I was fostered. I moved around families. Then I escaped and went to boarding school. Right, I have to shoot.”

  “Do you . . . do you know what happened to your parents?” said Flora gently. Joel’s face closed up tightly.

  “I have to go,” he said again.

  Flora looked around in dismay. “You can’t have brunch or anything before I go? It’s Sunday.”

  “Colton doesn’t recognize Sundays. It’s the big meeting today. For which I am not remotely prepared, thanks to being distracted by you
. And the faster I’m done, the faster I can leave this place!”

  And he kissed her and left, and that was that.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  In truth, although he’d tried to shake it off, Flora’s visit had bothered Joel far more than he could bring himself to say. That he’d had a message from Marsha saying how much they’d liked her made matters worse. It felt like she was a cop, moving closer and closer to the truth about him. And he couldn’t bear that. He wanted the soft-skinned girl who sat in the firelight, whose presence soothed his tortured soul, who acted as a balm to his troubled mind.

  Not someone else like all the others—like all the legions of others whose hands he had passed through, who had wanted a full history, who had wanted to hear the whole story again and again and again, and you would think it would lose its power but it didn’t. And the one decent thing he had in his life . . .

  He had had to leave the hotel room as quickly as he could in the faint hopes that this would not be spoiled too.

  He was under no illusions that she hadn’t noticed.

  Had the meeting with Colton gone well, then he might have been able to smooth it over, deflect it. The meeting did not go well.

  The room was closed and private. There was nobody else there. This was very unusual. When Colton did business, he usually had a massive entourage around him, even if they were just there to laugh at his jokes. No Fintan, which was rarely a good sign. Fintan had done Colton Rogers nothing but good. He had toned down his abrasive side and made him laugh.

  But here, in this huge conference room on the eighty-sixth floor of a midtown skyscraper mostly owned by Colton, was nothing but a vast table, a pot of coffee, and the two men.

  Joel took out the paperwork. “I just . . . I realize it’s not for me to question your decisions. But consolidating absolutely everything . . . I mean, what does Ike say?”

  Ike was one of Colton’s local money men.

  Colton waved his hand. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. He pulled out a sheaf of paperwork from his hip backpack. Joel furrowed his brow; this was new.