13 Little Blue Envelopes (4 page)

Ginny was passing in and out of thoughtful consciousness on the tube. They were stuck in the morning rush, forced to stand.

The rhythm of the train lulled her. It look a lot of effort not to give in to her wobbling knees and slump into Richard.

Richard was obviously trying to make conversation, pointing out things that could be seen at each of the various stops—

anything from the major (Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park) to the minor (his dentist, “a really good Thai takeaway”). His words were dribbling into the ebbing sensory mess that surrounded her. British voices swirled around her head. Her eyes flicked over the advertisements that ran along the top of the car. Though the language was the same, the meaning of many of the posters was lost on her. It seemed like every one of them was some kind of inside joke.

“You look a lot like Peg,” he said, catching her attention.

This was somewhat true. They had similar hair, at least—

31

long and deep chocolate brown. Aunt Peg was shorter. She had a slender build and a regal bearing that made strangers assume she was a dancer. Her features were very delicate. Ginny was taller, curvier. Bigger, generally. Less delicate.

“I guess,” she said.

“No. You really do. It’s extraordinary. . . .” He was hanging on to an overhead strap and looking down at her with an intense stare. Something about his look managed to penetrate Ginny’s exhaustion, and she found herself staring back with equal intensity. This move startled them both, and they looked away at the same time. Richard didn’t speak again until they reached the next stop and informed Ginny that this was Knightsbridge. This was their stop.

They emerged onto a pulsing London street. The road was completely jammed with red buses, black cabs, tiny cars, motorcycles. . . . The sidewalks were crammed to capacity.

Though her brain was still cloudy, Ginny felt a shock of energy run through her body at the sight of it all.

Richard directed her around a corner to a building that seemed to stretch on forever. It was a solid wall of golden red brick, with decorative cornices and a dome on the roof. Green awnings stretched above dozens of huge windows, each opulently displaying clothes, perfume, cosmetics, stuffed animals, even a car. Each one of these awnings was printed with the word
Harrods
in a mustard-gold script. Richard led Ginny past the windows, past the front doors and the doorman, and around to an unobtrusive nook by a large trash bin.

“This is it,” Richard said, indicating the side of the building and a door marked STAFF ONLY. “We’re going in through a side 32

entrance. It gets a bit mad in here. Harrods is a big tourist destination. We get thousands and thousands of people a day.”

They entered a stark white hallway with a bank of elevators.

A sign on the wall next to the door listed various departments and floors. Ginny wondered if she was misreading them: Air Harrods helicopter services, Air Harrods jet aircraft, tennis racquet restringing, piano tuning, saddlery, dog coat fitting. . . .

“I just have to take care of a few things,” he said. “Maybe you can walk around, have a look at the store, and meet me here in an hour or so? That door leads to the ground floor. Plenty of things to look at in Harrods.”

Ginny was still stuck on “dog coat fitting.”

“If you get lost,” he said, “have someone call Special Services and ask for me, all right? My last name’s Murphy, by the way.

Ask for Mr. Murphy.”

“Okay.”

He punched a code into a small number pad and the door clicked open.

“It’s good to have you here,” he said, smiling widely. “See you in an hour.”

Ginny poked her head through the doorway. A display case there featured a miniature speedboat, only big enough for a small child. It was colored olive green and had the name
Harrods
printed over the bow. The sign said: FULLY OPERATIONAL.

£20,000.

And then there were people. Massive, scary throngs of people pouring in through the doors, lining up at the display cases. She stepped tentatively into the crowd and was immediately absorbed into the flow of humanity, which sucked 33

her along. She was pushed past the cigarette lighter repair desk, through a Princess Diana memorial, into a Starbucks, and then dropped on an escalator entirely decorated in Egyptian artifacts (or really good copies, anyway).

She went up through the hieroglyphics and the statues until the river of people unloaded her into some kind of children’s theater room with a Punch and Judy show. She managed to get through that room pretty much on her own, but the crowd got her again as she passed through the door into a room filled with tuxedos for babies.

Departments that made no sense were strung together in a series of large and small rooms. Every offshoot led to something weirder, and nothing appeared to be an exit. There was always just
more
. She went from a room displaying colorful kitchen appliances into a room entirely filled with pianos. From there, she was swept up by the crowd into a room of exotic pet supplies. Then a room devoted solely to women’s accessories, but only ones colored light blue—purses, silk scarves, wallets, shoes.

Even the walls were light blue. The crowd snagged her again—

now she was in a bookstore—now back on the Egyptian escalator.

She rode all the way down and stepped off into some kind of food palace that stretched on for room after massive room devoted to every kind of food, organized as an ever–Mary Poppin-izing array of displays, great arches of peacock-patterned stained glass and sparkling brass. Decorative carts stacked with pyramids of perfect fruit. Marble counters loaded down with bricks of chocolate.

Her eyes started to water. The voices around her thrummed 34

in her head. The bolt of energy she’d gotten on the street had been rubbed away by all the people, burned out by all the colors. She found herself fantasizing about all the places she could rest. Under the fake wagon that held the parmesan cheese display. On the floor next to the shelves full of cocoa.

Maybe here, right in the middle of everything. Maybe people would just step over her.

She managed to pull out of the crowd and get to a chocolate counter. A young woman with a short and taut blond ponytail came over to her.

“Excuse me,” Ginny said, “could you call Mr. Murphy?”

“Who?” the woman asked.

“Richard Murphy?”

The woman looked highly skeptical, but she still politely took out what looked like a thousand pages of names and numbers and systematically flipped through them.

“Charles Murphy in special orders?”

“
Richard
Murphy.”

Several hundred more pages. Ginny felt herself gripping the counter.

“Ah . . . here he is. Richard Murphy. And what is it I need to tell him?”

“Can you tell him it’s Ginny?” she said. “Can you tell him that I need to go?”

35

Good Morning, England

The small alarm clock read 8:06. She was in bed, still in her clothes. It was cool, and the sky outside was a pearly gray.

She vaguely recalled Richard putting her in one of those black cabs in front of Harrods. Arriving at his house. Fumbling with keys and what seemed like six locks on the door. Getting up the stairs. Falling onto the quilt fully dressed, with her ankles hanging off the side so that her sneakers didn’t get on it.

She kicked her feet. They were still hanging there off the edge of the bed.

She looked around the room. It was strange to be waking up here—not only in a different country (different country . . .

everyone an entire ocean away . . . she was
not
going to panic).

No, it wasn’t just that. This room really felt like a moment from her past, like Aunt Peg had just walked through the room, covered in blotches of paint, humming under her breath. (Aunt Peg hummed a lot. It was kind of annoying.) 37

When she emerged into the hallway and peered into the kitchen, she found that Richard had changed his clothes. Now he was wearing running pants and a T-shirt.

“Morning,” he said.

This made no sense.

“Morning?” she repeated.

“It’s morning,” he said. “You must have been exhausted. Jet lag. I shouldn’t have dragged you off to Harrods yesterday, not when you were so tired.”

Yesterday.
Now her brain was catching up. Eight a.m. She’d lost an
entire day
.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m really sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. Bath’s all yours.”

She went back to the bedroom and gathered up her things. Though the letter had told her not to bring any guidebooks, it didn’t say she couldn’t look at them before she left. So she had, and she’d packed exactly the way they told her to pack. Her bag was full of “neutral basics” that didn’t require ironing, could be layered, and wouldn’t offend anyone, anywhere. Jeans. Cargo shorts. Practical shoes. One black skirt that she didn’t like. She picked out a pair of jeans and a shirt.

Once she had filled her arms with all the necessary items, Ginny suddenly felt self-conscious about being seen going into the bathroom. She poked her head out of the bedroom and, seeing that Richard had his back turned, dashed across the hall and quickly shut the door.

It was in the bathroom that Ginny fully realized that she was in a guy’s house. A man’s house. A kind of messy English man’s 38

house. At home, the bathrooms were crammed full of country-crafty wicker wall ornaments, and seashells, and potpourri that smelled like the Hallmark store. This room was stark blue with blue carpet and dark blue towels. No decorations. Just a little shelf full of shaving cream (unknown brand in a vaguely futuristic-looking container), a razor, a few men’s Body Shop items (all tan or amber colored and serious looking—she could tell they all smelled like tree or something suitably manly).

All of her toiletries were carefully sealed up in a plastic bag, which she set on the carpet. (Wall-to-wall—plush but worn flat.

Who carpeted a bathroom?) Her stuff was all pink—had she meant to buy so much pink? Pink soap, pink miniature shampoo bottle, little pink razor. Why? Why was she so pink?

She took a second to close the blind on the large bathroom window. Then she turned to the tub. She looked at the wall, then up at the ceiling.

There was no showerhead. That must be what Richard meant by “the bath” was all hers, which she had thought was just some Britishism. But it was all too real. There was a Y-shaped rubber tube. There were open suction cups on each tip of the Y

part, and there was a handle on the end of the stem that looked a lot like a phone. After examining the tub and this device, Ginny determined that the Y tips were supposed to go over the two spigots, and water would come out of the phone, and some shower-like action would result.

She gave this a try.

Water shot up toward the ceiling. She quickly pointed the shower phone into the tub and jumped in. But it proved impossible to try to wash herself and juggle the shower phone, 39

and she gave up and filled the tub. She hadn’t taken a bath since she was little and felt a little stupid sitting in the water. Also, the bath was amazingly loud—every movement produced a sloshing noise that echoed embarrassingly. She tried to make her movements as conservative as possible as she washed up, but the effort was lost as soon as she had to submerge herself to wash her hair. She was pretty sure that ocean liners could be lowered into the sea and make less noise than she did.

When the drama of the bath was over, she realized that she had another, totally unexpected problem. Her hair was soaked, and she had no way of drying it. She hadn’t brought a blow dryer since it wouldn’t work here anyway. There was no alternative, it seemed, but to quickly bind it up in braids.

When she emerged, she found Richard all suited up in what appeared to be the same suit and tie he had on the day before.

“Hope you were all right in there,” he said apologetically. “I don’t have a shower.”

He’d probably heard her sloshing around all the way in the kitchen.

Richard started opening cabinet doors and pointing out things that might be considered breakfast-worthy. He was clearly unprepared for her visit, as the best he could offer was a bit of leftover bread, a little jar of brown stuff called Marmite, an apple, and “whatever is in the refrigerator.”

“I’ve got some Ribena here, if you want that,” he added, taking a bottle of some kind of grape juice and setting it in front of Ginny as well. He excused himself for a moment. Ginny got a glass and poured herself some of the juice. It was warm and 40

incredibly thick. She took a sip and gagged slightly as the intense, overly sweet syrup coated her throat.

“You’re . . .” Richard was in the kitchen doorway now, watching this with an embarrassed expression. “You’re supposed to mix that with water. I should have told you.”

“Oh,” Ginny said, swallowing hard.

“I’ve got to be off now,” he said. “I’m sorry . . . there’s been no time to talk at all. Why don’t you meet me at Harrods for lunch?

Let’s meet at Mo’s Diner at noon. If you ever get locked out, I leave a spare key wedged in the crack in the step.”

He carefully walked her through the tube journey from the house to Harrods and made her repeat it back to him, then walked her through all the bus options, which was just a big jumble of numbers. Then he was gone, and Ginny was at the table alone, with her glass of syrup. She gazed at it sourly, still stung by the expression on Richard’s face when he’d seen her drinking it. She picked up the bottle and examined it to see if there was any warning, any indication that it was anything but normal juice, anything that would make her behavior less freakish.

To her relief, there was nothing on the bottle that could have helped her. It said that it was something called “blackcurrant squash.” It was “only 89p!” It was made in the United Kingdom.

Which is where she was. She was in a kingdom far, far from home.

And who was this Richard, anyway, aside from a guy in a suit who worked in a big store? Looking around his kitchen, she decided he was definitely single. There were relatively few groceries—just things like this warm instant juice stuff. There were some clothes on the chairs nearest to the wall and a few scattered crumbs and coffee granules on the table.