‘How far do you think you can walk before you pass out?’ Jenny asked, nudging me out of my daydream.
‘Maybe fifteen minutes?’ I wasn’t sure if it was really a question or a challenge. I really, really didn’t feel like walking.
‘Then we should do as much of this on foot as we can.’ She nodded to the crossing and threw herself into the traffic. ‘Come on, Angie!’
We marched across the road and then down the block, across another road, straight over Park Avenue and ever onwards, crossing Madison. Dragging my precious bags behind me, my fifteen minutes of walking time were quickly wasting away.
‘I just wanted to make it to Fifth,’ Jenny yelled, holding out her arm, as we crossed for the last time. ‘Let’s get a cab.’
If it was humanly possible, the cab ride through Manhattan was even more exciting than the ride into the city. We cruised down Fifth Avenue, whizzing for five blocks then crashing to a stop at a red light, with my bags, my head and my stomach crashing into the partition between us and the driver more than once. Every time we stopped it was outside another landmark. St Patrick’s Cathedral rose up amongst all the shops, so totally out of place, like putting a Brownie hut next to Harvey Nicks, but here in New York, it just seemed to make perfect sense. I couldn’t help but think, as we passed the lions roaring out in front of the huge public library, that if all libraries had giant lions outside, people might read more. Or at least rock up to have their picture taken on their backs.
‘Hey, do you see the Empire State Building?’ Jenny pointed out of my window to an inconspicuous looking building by the side of us. I couldn’t see anything but a huge queue of people, even when I pressed my head right up against the window of the cab and recoiling only when I saw the nasty, greasy marks left by a previous passenger.
‘Oh bugger, I really wanted to see that,’ I said, leaning in slightly and trying not to think about any other stains that might be around.
‘Pretty sure it’ll still be there tomorrow,’ Jenny said as I leaned into the back window, watching the tower go on and on into the sky as we moved further away. Until we came to a sudden halt again and I smashed my chin against the back seat. ‘We’re coming up to the Flatiron in a moment, that’s way cooler.’
She wasn’t wrong, the Flatiron building was incredible, all triangular and pointy but everything we passed was cool. Gorgeous, organized, New Yorky and cool. So incredibly different to London and, if this cab driver didn’t start taking corners with a less cavalier attitude, the last place I would ever see. Fifteen minutes later, we reached the tip of the island and pulled up outside the South Ferry Terminal.
‘We’re going on a ferry?’ I asked. Jenny had been enigmatically and uncharacteristically silent on the journey downtown and I’d been too busy taking in the city and counting the Starbucks to worry about it.
‘You’re so not ready for Staten Island,’ she laughed, passing the driver a twenty and hopping out, taking several of my bags with her. I crawled out with my other bags and trailed behind her. ‘But you’re totally ready to see this.’
We marched along the pavement and down into a busy park, I was so consumed with checking out the various sculptures and lines of people chatting, laughing, eating ice cream, I was almost at the fence before I saw it. When I did, I stopped dead. There it was. The clearest, truest symbol of New York, of America, standing proud and keeping guard across the bay. The Statue of Liberty.
Jenny turned around to look for me, holding her hand over her eyes. ‘Pretty great, huh?’
I nodded, without anything to say and walked slowly towards her. We dropped our bags and leaned over the railings. It was beautiful, my very own movie moment.
‘I was thinking where we should go when you were trying on clothes,’ Jenny said softly. ‘And I figured where better than the first place thousands of people first experienced New York. Cheesy maybe, but who better to officially welcome you to the city than Lady Liberty.’
‘It’s so weird,’ I said, still staring out across the river. ‘I’ve seen it a thousand times on TV and stuff but to actually see it, there, real. Wow.’
‘Yeah,’ Jenny agreed. ‘I remember the first time I saw her, it was the first thing I did when I moved to the city. We never, ever came down here as kids, my mom hates it. But she’s here to look after everyone. New York is made up of millions of different people, Angie, and they all come here looking for something, just like you.’
‘Please, you’re giving me too much credit. I wasn’t looking for something,’ I said, looking across at what I guessed to be Ellis Island. ‘I was running away.’
‘No, you’re not giving yourself enough,’ Jenny said, turning to me. ‘Yeah, so maybe not everyone puts an ocean between themselves and their ex but you’ve got a lot to work through. And that’s not psychobabble, that’s genuine life experience talking. When my ex left me, I fell apart and I mean it. Fell. Apart. And I had no excuse to be so incredibly pathetic, it was all totally my fault and I had the most amazing friends to look after me. If you didn’t feel like your support system was strong enough, then getting yourself out of the situation was the best thing to do. And New York is a great place to do that. It’s a city of new beginnings. People go to LA to “find themselves”, they come to New York to become someone new.’
‘I suppose,’ I said, thinking about everything that had happened. Was it weird that Mark hadn’t even crossed my mind since the Chanel counter? ‘It all just seems so strange and unreal. I feel like I ought to be, I don’t know, feeling more.’
‘So you’re still in shock,’ Jenny said, turning back towards the bay. ‘There are worse places to be in shock than in Bloomingdale’s. Seriously though, you’ve suffered a huge personal trauma, a break-up is the closest thing to a bereavement, you know.’
‘I do feel kind of like that,’ I admitted. I really didn’t want to dwell on it in such a public place. I was English after all, we’re not public criers. ‘One minute I’m like, it’s over, I’m not even going to think about any of it and then the next, I just can’t believe what’s happened. I think I’m doing the right thing by being here at the moment though.’
Before Jenny could back me up or shoot me down, a loud ringing interrupted us. My phone. I pulled it out of my bag, ready to remind my mum how expensive international calls were on a mobile when I saw who it was.
Mark.
I looked at the flashing screen for a split second and wondered what he could possibly be ringing for after our last conversation. Had he changed his mind? Was he feeling awful? Was Tim’s hand so badly damaged he was having it amputated?
Ring ring. Answer me. Answer me.
Without another thought, I threw my phone, as hard as I could over the railings and into the water. And it felt really, really good.
‘Sorry,’ I said, inhaling deeply. Had I really just done that?
‘This city is a good place to deal with trauma, honey, we’ve been through a lot ourselves and we’ve come out of it just fine.’ Jenny pulled a pack of tissues out of her handbag and passed them over as a precautionary measure, completely ignoring the phone missile I’d just launched.
‘God, I know,’ I said quickly, taking the tissues. ‘I suppose when you think what everyone has been through here, what they survived, it puts a break-up into perspective.’
‘True, but that’s not what I meant, sweetie,’