Elaine held up her hands. ‘No, no. I’m like your husband, I like surprises too. I didn’t know what either of my kids was going to be until they were born.’
‘I guess I prefer to plan everything in advance. He’s more the make-it-up-as-you-go type.’
‘So how have things been between you since you learned you were pregnant? Has he been showing any tension, or . . .’
‘No, no.’ Nina shook her head. ‘He’s been great – he’s absolutely thrilled at the prospect of having a kid, and he’s been doing everything he can to help me. No, it’s . . . it’s me.’ She sighed. ‘I’m angry, I’m depressed, I’m confused – I’m a hundred and one negative things, and I’m taking all of them out on him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there isn’t anyone else. Since I left the IHA, it’s just been me and him. I’ve been horrible, and I know it, but . . . but I can’t help it.’
A sympathetic nod. ‘Pregnancy hormones can really affect your mood. It’s often a lot harder with a first pregnancy, because you don’t know what to expect. It’s good that he’s been so supportive.’
‘Maybe, but . . .’ A lengthy pause as she struggled to make a terrible admission. ‘I can’t help thinking that he’s putting up with it for the baby rather than for me.’
‘But do you really believe that, Nina? Deep down, I mean?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I believe about anything right now.’ She stared back at the marks on the carpet.
The psychiatrist made more notes before speaking again. ‘I don’t know your husband, but from what you’ve told me, it certainly seems that he loves you. He wants to help you, but you’re reluctant to allow it. That’s understandable – you’ve been through a traumatic experience, and you’ve put up barriers to protect yourself from further harm. The problem is that you’re not letting anyone through them, even the person who cares about you the most.’
Nina managed a sarcastic grin. ‘Well, duh. I didn’t need a psychiatrist to figure that out. I need one to tell me how to deal with it.’
‘I can’t tell you to do anything, Nina. I can suggest, and advise, but in the end only you can come up with the answer. Although one thing I would suggest is couples therapy. If you both came in together, we could address some of these issues.’
Another mocking little smile. ‘Eddie seeing a shrink? I can’t imagine that ever happening. He has his own ways of dealing with things . . .’
The helicopter dived towards the Statue of Liberty. Eddie Chase gripped the controls, trying to regain height—
‘Little advice, Eddie? Remember that thing I showed you called the stick? You might wanna pull it back.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’ Grimacing, Eddie brought the cyclic control joystick towards him. The Bell 206L LongRanger’s nose came up, and the aircraft unsteadily levelled out. ‘That okay?’
‘You didn’t crash into Lady Liberty’s face, so yeah. But we oughta go back out over open water. I’m havin’ some bad flashbacks to when I first met you!’ Harvey Zampelli took the controls, bringing the red, white and blue helicopter around across the great expanse of New York Bay. The spires of Manhattan rolled into view as he notified air traffic control of his course.
‘Well, it’s only my second lesson,’ said the stocky, balding Yorkshireman once the exchange in his headphones had concluded. ‘And I haven’t crashed it yet, so I’m not doing too bad.’
Harvey quickly touched the cross hanging from his neck on a chunky gold chain. ‘Jeez, don’t say things like that! It’s bad luck.’
Eddie decided not to tell him how many plane crashes he’d been involved in. ‘Thanks again for letting me do this,’ he said instead. ‘I’ve been meaning to learn to fly for ages.’
‘Hey, no problem,’ the black-haired pilot replied. ‘I mean, jeez, you saved my life! That’s gotta be worth the price of some avgas. I sure as hell hope so, anyway! Right? Right?’ He laughed, then added, with a hint of insecurity: ‘Right?’
‘Right,’ Eddie told him with a grin that revealed the gap between his front teeth. ‘But it’s not a problem for you, is it? Doing this in the middle of the day, I mean.’
‘Nah, I had an empty slot, and if there ain’t any paying customers, I gotta leave her sitting on the pad with the engine running anyway.’ The LongRanger’s flight had begun from the heliport at Manhattan’s southern tip; Harvey’s aircraft was one of the many offering tourist tours around New York.
‘Isn’t that expensive?’
‘Not as expensive as having to do a full check every time I shut down and restart the engine. Quicker, too. Besides, I’m a pilot. Any chance to fly, I’m gonna take it!’ He laughed again, then surveyed the surrounding airspace. ‘Okay, take the controls. Remember what I told you – keep the cyclic tipped forward to maintain airspeed, but don’t push it too far or we’ll lose height. We wanna stay between a thousand and fifteen hundred feet. Got it?’
Eddie checked the altimeter, then closed his hands around the two control sticks. ‘Yeah.’
Harvey raised his own hands. ‘Okay, all yours.’
The Englishman gingerly edged the cyclic forward. He had flown as a passenger in numerous helicopters during his military career with the elite Special Air Service, and in many more since, but his only attempts to fly an aircraft himself had been when the pilot was incapacitated, or dead. Which, he mused, had happened alarmingly often.
Today, though, nobody was trying to kill him. Operating a chopper even in peaceful conditions was still tricky, however. The Bell twitched and squirmed with every shift in the wind, and the fuselage felt as if it were swinging from the rotor hub like a hanging basket. But he held it steady, making slight adjustments to balance the airspeed indicator and altimeter.
‘You’re doing fine,’ said Harvey. ‘Okay, we’re gonna follow the land.’ He indicated the shores of New Jersey and Staten Island. ‘Use the pedals like I showed you before, real easy.’
Eddie carefully depressed one of the anti-torque pedals, adjusting the power being fed to the tail rotor. The helicopter slowly turned. ‘That okay?’
‘Yeah, that’s great – whoa, hold on.’ A new voice came through Eddie’s headphones: one of the heliport’s staff, telling Harvey that he had a phone call. ‘Eddie, I gotta take this. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’
The Englishman gave him an okay as the call came through. ‘Lena, hey hey!’ said Harvey, his Bronx accent becoming even more rapid-fire. ‘How you doin’? Great night last night, huh?’
Eddie tried not to be distracted by what very quickly became a personal conversation, concentrating on following the shoreline. The huge jetties of the New Jersey container terminal rolled by. He glanced down at them, only to realise with alarm when he looked back at the instruments that the altimeter was falling towards the thousand-foot mark. He moved the cyclic, but the descent continued. ‘Oh bollocks.’
‘Babe, I gotta call you back,’ said Harvey over the headset. ‘I got a slight altitude deficiency situation here.’ He laughed, then ended the call. ‘All right, man, I got this.’ He retook the controls, bringing the LongRanger back into a climb. ‘Sorry ’bout that. Women, huh? Gotta love ’em, but . . .’ He briefly took one hand off the throttle to mime a duck quacking. ‘Damn, that reminds me, I gotta make another call.’
There was a cellphone connected to the cabin’s communication system by a cable; he thumbed through its contacts list. ‘Lana, hey, it’s Harv,’ he said after connecting. Eddie was again an unwilling eavesdropper. ‘Yeah, sorry about last night. I had to stay late at the hangar to deal with some FAA paperwork. How ’bout I make it up to you tonight, huh? Yeah, that place on Leland. Nina o’clock? Epic. See you then. Bye, babe.’
‘Lena and Lana, eh?’ said Eddie.
Harvey nodded. ‘Yeah. I gotta be so careful not to get their names mixed up! That might cause problems.’
A sardonic smile. ‘You’re not kidding.’
‘You ever been a juggler like that?’
&nbs
p; Eddie shook his head. ‘Not me. One woman’s always been enough for me. More than enough sometimes.’
‘You’ve had problems?’
‘Well, my first wife wanted to kill me. And I mean she literally tried to murder me.’
Harvey made a face. ‘Yow!’
‘Yeah. Nina . . . well, at the moment it sometimes seems like she wants to as well.’
‘You want my advice? First hint of bunny-boiling, run, run, run! Life’s too short to be dealing with psychos.’
Eddie chuckled. ‘It’s nothing like that. It’s just . . .’ He became more serious. ‘She’s been pretty hard to get through to lately. And when I try, she . . .’
‘Bites your head off?’
‘Actually, yeah. She’s a redhead; I’m used to a bit of mardiness, but this is different.’
Harvey gave him a quizzical glance. ‘Mardiness? I guess that’s British slang?’
‘Yeah. Use it in conversation with Lana – or Lena – and she’ll think you’re all cultured and refined, just like me.’
‘No offence, man, but your accent? Not even slightly Downton Abbey.’ The pilot grinned, then nodded at the duplicate controls in front of Eddie. ‘Okay, you’re on the stick. Take us around the Narrows, then back towards the city.’
The LongRanger was now cruising parallel to the shoreline of Staten Island, the great span of the Verrazano–Narrows Bridge straddling the mouth of the bay ahead. Eddie pushed the pedal again, and the helicopter swung into a lazy turn across the water. Brooklyn spread out before them, Manhattan coming back into view beyond. ‘Doin’ good,’ Harvey assured him, before checking his watch and making another call to air traffic control. ‘Okay, gotta start heading back now. My next tour group’ll be waiting.’
‘Damn, and I was just starting to get the hang of this,’ Eddie replied. He still felt as if he were trying to balance a carton of eggs on a fingertip, but at least now he could maintain a constant height and speed.
‘Stick with me and you’ll be an expert in no time. I told you I’m a licensed instructor, right?’
‘Several times,’ said Eddie, grinning. ‘How long can I stay in control?’
‘Until we get to Governors Island. I’ll take over when we’re in the East River VFR corridor.’
‘The what?’
‘Something you’ll have to know about if you wanna be a proper pilot! Visual flight rules – basically, flying by eye. If you’re in a ’copter, you don’t need to tell ATC what you’re doing in the Hudson and East River corridors, although it’s kinda good sense to let ’em know. Although they’ll be making the East River into controlled airspace soon for some UN summit. Pain in the ass.’
‘Yeah, I know what it’s like dealing with the UN,’ Eddie told him with amusement.
He continued flying until the flat pear of Governors Island loomed ahead. ‘I got it from here,’ said Harvey as he took control once more. He reported to ATC that he was returning to the heliport, then pointed to the right, up the East River. ‘You seen that?’
‘It’s a bit hard to miss,’ said Eddie. The object of their attention was a huge Airlander airship, slowly cruising down the length of the waterway. The enormous twin-lobed craft, dwarfing even the largest airliner, was a new addition to New York’s long list of tourist attractions, having arrived a month earlier to act as a mammoth advertising billboard. With the Airlander presently head-on to them, though, the commercials on its flanks were invisible. ‘It looks like a massive arse from the front.’
‘I always thought it looked like boobs myself. Whatever turns you on, man!’ Harvey snickered. ‘I’ll be glad when it’s gone – it’s a pain in the butt. Even in VFR, you’re supposed to maintain spacing with other aircraft, but that damn thing moves so slow, you’ve gotta go wide to keep clear of it. Airships, jeez.’ He shook his head. ‘What is this, the 1930s?’
‘Oh, the humanity,’ Eddie joked. He sat back to watch the skyscrapers of Manhattan’s financial district grow larger as the helicopter descended. ‘Thanks for the flight.’
‘No trouble,’ said Harvey, guiding the LongRanger towards the jetty where the helipads were located. ‘Like I said, any time you want a lesson, I’ll tell you when my next free slot is. Hopefully there won’t be too many – if I’m not carrying passengers, I’m not making money! – but I owe you.’
He brought the aircraft in to land at a vacant pad. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Eddie told him as he removed his headphones. ‘Try to remember which girlfriend’s which!’
Harvey smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. A member of the heliport’s ground crew opened the cabin door, and Eddie hopped down, keeping his head low as he moved away from the chopper. Another guide waited nearby with the next passengers, who were led aboard as soon as he was clear.
The first man took him back to the terminal building. He walked through it and emerged on South Street. Heading along the waterfront, he took out his phone and found Nina’s number. ‘Okay, brace yourself . . .’ he muttered as he made the call.
Behind him, unnoticed, a man who had been waiting outside the terminal followed at a discreet distance, making a call of his own.
2
Nina looked up as her iPhone buzzed. Her laptop was open, her notes and manuscript on the screen . . . but the cursor had remained in the same spot for twenty minutes. She checked the phone: Eddie. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi, love,’ came the gruff reply. ‘You back from the shrink’s?’
‘Yeah, about a half-hour ago.’
‘How was it?’
‘I think it helped,’ she said, not even certain if she was being truthful. ‘Did you do your helicopter thing?’
‘Just landed. Good fun – we went around the harbour, buzzed the Statue of Liberty. I flew it for about ten minutes. Didn’t crash once!’
Nina tried to inject some enthusiasm, however ersatz, into her voice. ‘That’s great.’
She knew at once that she had failed. ‘Is everything okay?’ her husband asked cautiously.
‘Fine,’ she said flatly. ‘Where are you?’
‘South Street, on my way to the subway.’
‘Can you stop off at the Soupman’s and get me that jambalaya soup I like?’
‘What? That’s all the way over by Eighth Avenue – it’s a bit out of my way.’
‘I’m pregnant, I get to decide what I eat and where it comes from!’ She had meant it as a joke, but it came out more shrill than intended.
‘Soup for you, then,’ said Eddie. ‘You want anything else?’
Was there a hint of sullenness? ‘No, that’s okay. Although, wait – you could get me my favourite sandwich.’
‘The ones from Aldo’s deli back across in the East Village?’ That was definitely tinged with exasperation.
‘Okay, forget the sandwich,’ she sighed. ‘Just the soup.’
‘Just the soup. No problem.’
‘Thanks, Eddie.’ Silence on the line. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he replied, still sounding downcast before suddenly becoming more enthusiastic – forcedly so, she couldn’t help but think. ‘Oh, I came up with some more baby names!’
Considering his past suggestions, that immediately put her on alert. ‘Go on . . .’
‘For a girl, I’m thinking Pandemonium. For a boy, Arbuthnot. Pandemonium Chase, that works, doesn’t it?’
‘Arbuthnot,’ she repeated. ‘That’s not even a real name.’
‘Yeah, it is! It’s a good, honest Yorkshire name. You can’t go into a pub where I grew up without meeting a couple of Arbuthnots.’
Nina knew that in other circumstances she would have been amused, but right now even Eddie’s best efforts were failing to breach her prison of gloom. ‘I think we need to keep thinking.’
‘It’ll be hard to top Arbuthnot.’
Something snapped. ‘Stop saying Arbuthnot! That’s the most stupid name I’ve ever heard. God! If you can’t even take seriously something as simple as choosing a name, how are you going to mana
ge being a father?’
The silence that followed was broken only by her own exasperated breathing. Finally he spoke. ‘I’ll figure it out when it happens. I’ll get your soup, then.’
‘Eddie, I—’ But he had disconnected. ‘God damn it,’ she muttered, already annoyed at herself. He was, as always, just trying to help – in his own unique, occasionally infuriating way – and she had overreacted and blown her top. She glowered down at her stomach. ‘This is all your fault,’ she told the unseen foetus. ‘You and your frickin’ hormones.’
She headed to the kitchen for a drink. Along the way she passed a shelf of memories. Beside her husband’s hideous pottery cigar holder in the shape of a caricatured Fidel Castro, that she had by now despairingly accepted she would never find a believable excuse to smash, was a collection of photographs. The majority were Eddie’s, pictures of himself with friends now gone: his SAS mentor Jim ‘Mac’ McCrimmon, Belgian military comrade Hugo Castille, and others she knew only from stories.
But Nina had her memorials too. Macy in one, dressed up as Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider video games for a magazine photo shoot; and in another, her own parents.
Henry and Laura Wilde beamed at her from the picture, a quarter-century-younger version of herself between them. She remembered the time and place: an archaeological dig near Celsus in Turkey. It had been a hot, dry day, making their descent into the partially excavated Roman tombs both a relief and a thrill. The memory made her smile . . .
It froze on her face.
Her parents were gone, killed by their obsession, which their daughter had then taken on herself. The question she had posed at the therapist’s office returned: had everything she’d achieved been worth it?
Another question from the session joined it. Was it right to bring a baby into her world? She knew herself well enough to be fully aware that her own obsession, her need to uncover the past, would never be sated. Was it fair to subject her own child to that same mania, to continue the cycle?
What kind of mother would she be?