Page 124 of Falling for You

‘Right,’ I say, taking a deep breath and forcing myself to remain professional and not start laying out all the decorations in height order so I can send them to my mum and we can both fangirl over how great they are. ‘I’ve got you, Pam. I will put this all up around the office for you.’

Pam points her pen at me and I jump. ‘Not that singing pumpkin shit,’ she says. ‘That can go in the bin.’

‘It can’t go in the bin!’ I squeal, holding the pumpkin tomy chest like it’s my first-born child. ‘There are two of them! They belong together.’

Pam looks up at me, and I see a smile quiver on her thin lips. ‘Fine. Take them home with you.’

I beam. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, seeing as you ordered it all anyway.’

I feel my face fall and I’m about to gush an apology when I notice Pam smirking at me.

‘You’re the boss,’ I say, doing a fake curtsy. I’m about to turn and walk into the kitchen when I spot Pam’s computer screen, filled with pictures of India.

‘Oh!’ I say. ‘What are you looking at?’

She snaps her browser shut and goes back to her emails. ‘Don’t be nosy.’

‘Was it India? Are you thinking of travelling?’

‘Rodneyis,’ she says pointedly. ‘He’s got this mad idea about us taking a year off and travelling around the world together. He thinks we both work too hard.’

‘You do work too hard.’ I raise my eyebrows at her but she clicks her tongue at me, laughing.

‘Do you want a coffee?’ I call over my shoulder as I walk into the kitchen.

There are six of us who work here now, but for the first hour of the morning it’s usually just me and Pam, and to be honest, that’s when I like it best. I mean, sure, she doesn’t want to engage in any small talk whatsoever and some days she doesn’t even look at me from over her computer, but I quite like it. It’s always the same, and there is something quite calming about that.

‘Go on, then,’ Pam says. ‘But a normal one, none of your pumpkin shit.’

I laugh, rolling my eyes as I pull our two mugs down from the cupboard.

Like I’d waste my pumpkin spice syrup on Pam. She doesn’t even know who Morticia Addams is.

CHAPTER TWO

Nate

London seduced me. There, I said it. And like any great seduction, it did it so slowly that I didn’t even notice until I was slap bang in love with it.

It’s my brother, Stevie’s, fault. He moved here from our childhood home in New York when he was nineteen, right when I’d finished college. I was supposed to be the exciting, adventurous one. But there I was, moving back in with our parents while he hopped across the pond to attend the Royal Ballet School. At first Stevie stayed with our Aunt Tell, but now he’s in Camden in a small, two-bed flat above a record shop. I never really understood why he moved out, but he always brushes it off when I ask him. We got pictures of all the landmarks at first, the novelty of the first subway (or ‘tube’ as he called it), the first pillar-box-red bus, the first selfie with the guards standing to attention at Buckingham Palace – but then it evolved as Stevie did. As he sank comfortably into London life, we started getting pictures of nights out in Soho, his ‘dinner’ in Chinatown at 3 a.m., the sparkling River Thames as he walked to dance rehearsals every morning. It always looked so exciting and, well, inviting.

Then there was the second layer of seduction: all the British TV shows.Made in Chelsea, where it’s always bright blue skies and crisp sunlight,Sherlockwith the clipped, precise accents andLine of Dutywith the camaraderie of an English country pub. Mom and I even got into the British Christmas films, and spent each year watchingThe Holiday,Love ActuallyandNativity. Everything about it was so picturesque, so rosy-cheeked, and just so … perfect.

But the thing is, although I had this secret love affair with London, I never actually wanted to go. It felt like the exciting, eclectic cousin of New York. Over the years, friends of mine would flit off, hopping over the pond under the guise of a ‘gap year’, but then they’d fall in love with the city, or another person, and never come back. If I’m honest, I couldn’t fully trust in myself that I wouldn’t do the same thing. I mean, Stevie had as good as moved over permanently, and if I did then Mom would be left in New York without either of us. I couldn’t do that to her.

But then things changed. Mom started to get a bit … Well, worse. Everything got a bit worse, actually. Dad lost the sparkle behind his eyes. I felt if one more person added even the smallest feather to my cart, I’d kick it all over like a flailing buckaroo and pelt off into the distance, never to be seen again. Stevie didn’t understand, really. I’d tried speaking to Dad, but he shrugged it off, saying he was fine. Though he never tried to claim Mom was fine. I didn’t know how I could help her, and there was no point speaking to Mom about it. You don’t want to tell a sick person how scared you are of them being sick. So I just sat back, doing whatever I could butultimately feeling pretty helpless. Until one day she dropped a name into conversation like a little piece of gold dust, and I realised how I could help.

Her sister. My Aunt Thelma. Or Tell, as Mom calls her.

I hadn’t heard Mom mention my Aunt Tell for years. They spoke on the phone at Christmas and on birthdays, and we’d occasionally get some form of ridiculous newsletter through the post, stuffed full of updates about her fabulous single life in London and what she’d been up to. But that was it, and I thought Mom was fine with it. Until a few weeks ago, when she was having a particularly bad couple of days, and said five words that flicked a switch inside me:

I wish Tell was here.

And there it was. My catalyst, propelling me into London. I tried to call Aunt Tell, I messaged her, I even wrote her a letter since she seemed to enjoy the post so much. I told her about Mom, how she’d been asking for her, how she wasn’t well, how great it would be if she came back to New York to visit. But she didn’t answer.

Some people might take this as a sign to shelve Aunt Tell, to tell Mom that she wasn’t around and then just move on with life. I, however, saw this as a challenge. Go to London, find Aunt Tell, bring her back to New York. Make Mom happy, make everything that little bit better.