On weekends, if he could spare the time, they shared a simple meal and a bottle of wine.
One weekend, when they’d planned to take a short trip upstate, he said regretfully, ‘I’m sorry, honey, but I can’t make it after all. I have commitments both Saturday and Sunday.’
Faced with yet another lonely weekend, she protested, ‘Why do you have to put in such long hours?’
He answered carefully, ‘The real estate and property development business is a very demanding one.’
‘But surely no one normally works every evening and weekends as well?’
‘A great deal of my business is done socially rather than over a desk, and prospective clients expect me to be available for them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.’
Taking her hand, he gave it a squeeze. ‘It won’t always be like this, I promise you. But at the moment I have no choice.’
Sighing, she accepted the inevitable and, with her usual good sense, agreed, ‘Then, I’ll just have to make the best of it.’
The following Saturday morning, he appeared unexpectedly at her door. Sounding jubilant, he said, ‘You know I’ve been having talks with your boss?’
Sera nodded. He’d mentioned the fact to her and, one day, she’d actually caught a glimpse of him disappearing into Martin Rothwell’s office.
‘Well, Rothwell has finally agreed to provide the rest of the financial backing I need to go ahead with a big, new development on Broadway.
‘On the strength of that, I’ve decided to play hookey for once. Let’s go and have some fun!’ He seized her hand.
‘B-but I need to get changed, and do something with my hair,’ she stammered.
His eyes running over her grey and white striped button-through dress, her flat-heeled sandals, and the black, silky hair tumbling round her shoulders, he said, ‘What you’ve got on will do fine. And I like your hair loose.’
‘Where are we going?’ she asked as he swept her down the stairs like a prairie wind.
‘We’re taking the subway to Coney Island.’
Though somewhat run-down and a mere ghost of its former self, colourful Coney Island, with its amusement arcades and fairground rides, was still amazingly alive and vibrant.
To Sera’s unjaded palate, the simple seaside pleasures it offered, and the sight of so many people having fun, were all she could have asked.
Eating hot dogs and sharing a big bag of fries and a can of cola, she and Keir strolled along the boardwalk enjoying the sunshine, the music, the smells and the ambience.
Noticing her sparkling eyes, he asked, ‘Does this kind of thing take you back to your childhood?’
Sera shook her head. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything quite like this,’ she admitted.
His level black brows drew together in a frown. ‘Tell me about yourself… Apart from the fact that you work for Rothwell, your mother comes from Boston, and you were brought up in England, I know very little about you.’
Never one for talking about herself, she said, a touch awkwardly, ‘There’s not much to know. I’ve led a very dull life.’
‘Then, tell me all the dull bits, and I’ll try not to yawn.’
‘I’m sure you won’t be interested.’
‘And I’m sure I will,’ he disagreed firmly. ‘You’re an odd mixture of shyness and courage, of warmth and reticence. You like people, yet you tend to leave them alone. I can’t imagine you’re the sort to make bosom friends and confide in them…’
When, made even more uncomfortable by that shrewd summing up, she said nothing, he went on, ‘You have a great deal of quiet pride and, while you fail to condemn others, you’re very moral.’
‘You make me sound terribly stuffy,’ she protested.
‘Not at all. You’re exactly the sort of woman I’d always hoped to find…’
Her heart swelling, she caught her breath as he added, ‘And I want to know what made you that way. So, tell me about your childhood. Where were you brought up?’
‘In Sussex.’
‘What were your mother and father like?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I never really knew them. They died when I was only two.’
‘Tough,’ he said simply. ‘How did it happen?’
‘They left me with my paternal grandmother while they went to France on a skiing holiday. It was to have been a second honeymoon. They were killed in an avalanche the first day there.
‘Both my parents had been only children and, apart from my father’s mother, neither of them had any close relatives.’
‘So who brought you up?’
‘My grandmother. She didn’t want to be saddled with a child at her age, but she was a woman of strong principles and an even stronger sense of duty.
‘Nan had been widowed the previous year and there was very little money, so we lived in a kind of genteel poverty.
‘Though she was careful never to say so, I knew, in the way that children do know, that I was a burden to her.
‘She preferred her own company to that of a child, so I was always left very much to my own devices.’
‘But you had school friends?’
Her voice matter-of-fact, Sera said, ‘I wasn’t encouraged to make friends. Nan had always “kept herself to herself” as she put it, and didn’t see why I shouldn’t do the same.’
‘It must have been very lonely for you.’
‘I had some imaginary friends and, thanks to a kindergarten teacher who took an interest in me, I learnt to read at a very early age…’
Seeing the bleak look on Keir’s face and worried in case she’d given the wrong impression, Sera added hastily, ‘I don’t mean Nan was ever unkind to me, and she did everything she was able to do. She insisted on me going to university and, though I lived at home to save money, it was still a struggle to find the fares to travel.
‘When I graduated with a first class honours degree and went to work for Anglo American, she was as proud as a peacock and declared the struggle had been well worth it.’
‘What did she think of you coming to the States?’
‘She never knew. Nan was getting very old and infirm, and she died last winter. Otherwise I wouldn’t have left her.
‘Her death was one of the reasons I took the chance of a year in New York. The lease on the house was up, and there was nothing to keep me in England…’
For a while they walked in silence, each busy with their thoughts, while music and laughter, the noise of the amusements, and the shrill voices of children, flowed around them.
Then, their casual meal finished, they paused to wipe their greasy fingers on paper napkins, which they disposed of in the nearest litter bin, before strolling on.
Tucking her hand companionably through his arm, Keir asked, ‘Now which shall we sample first? The fairground or the aquarium?’
Just happy to be with him, she said, ‘I don’t mind in the slightest. It’s up to you.’
‘In that case, let’s go for all the fun of the fair.’
As though