New York

Charlie was greeted in the arrivals hall at JFK Airport by a driver dressed in a black suit holding a small white sign displaying his name as Charles E. Sutton. On reclining in the back of the limo, Charlie asked to borrow the driver’s mobile (needing a network sim card to use his own). He dialled Johnny to check in, and also discretely checked whether he needed to sort the driver out. Johnny said it was all taken care of, and the driver knew where he was going. Before hanging up, Johnny also made three requests of Charlie for the duration of his stay in his family’s apartment, “No food, no shoes and you have to take the pillows on my parents’ bed and store them in the linen cupboard.”

The driver turned up the radio and Charlie asked for the name of the song. “It’s Blink 182 I miss you, it’s just out.”

At Park Avenue, Charlie had some small trouble getting the pompous doorman to let him up to the apartment, who whined to Charlie, “I don’t have permission in writing to hand over the keys.” Charlie got Johnny on the concierge phone to resolve the issue. The doorman nodded on the call and he was then extra helpful. Charlie graciously thanked the doorman and padded down the oak-panelled hallway towards the elevator doors.

Johnny’s family apartment was on the 27th floor of the building with a direct view of the Empire State Building, mid and downtown skyline. Charlie had it to himself. It had large ornate windows, vintage bookshelves lining the halls of the main corridor and living room, and well-placed coffee table books including Slim Aarons, Once Upon A Time, which Charlie noticed on a side table. Lucinda had given him the same at Christmas.

Breathe, pace, breathe. Charlie paced up and down the ornate hallway. The newly released Blink 182 ‘I miss you’ in his head. It was the rhythm of the song that kept him from hyperventilating. He kept breathing deeper and deeper, thinking that’s the only way to stop the pacing, his mind was racing. Thoughts of Lucinda, the Russians, John Gatt-Taylor, his exit from Australia all flicking past. He felt claustrophobic.

Realising he hadn’t eaten since LA Charlie thought better of not adhering to Johnny’s first request and quickly showered and changed into jeans and a bomber type jacket, heading down the lifts and back out to the rolling taxis and limos of Park Avenue. He grabbed some spring rolls, cigarettes and McDonald’s fries on Madison – it was hard to break his boarding school exeat weekend habits. He called Johnny’s number from a payphone with the intention of arranging to head out, and was quietly relieved he didn’t answer. On returning to the 27th floor, he adhered to the rule of no shoes before collapsing on a wide beige sofa thinking back and forth between his experience with Lucinda and that of other women, a conflicting emotion of contemplating a past characterised by the need for team with a present draw to the pursuit of fun. He couldn’t sleep.

His mind was fixated on images of Lucinda entering a room with a beaming smile. Her dimples lit up like a spark. It made people sit up, Charlie was no exception. She would speak to him in her soft tone, he had felt like the only person on earth.

On Friday morning, looking across a vacant king-sized bed, Charlie’s first thought was a comment Lucinda made over tea in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne as they discussed their wedding location. He recalled her dimpled smile was instead a quivering lip. She had felt “terrified, guilty and impossibly sad” on the thought of letting Charlie down. At the time he had interpreted it as her wanting to hold the wedding at her estate over his, yet now grasped it had been about the relationship itself.

Charlie took the deepest breath he could muster and the six downtown to Union Square. He headed to The Coffee Shop. Walking into the back room, a whiff of syrup and spiced apple reminded Charlie of his visit a few years before. He and his brother Harry, both incredibly hungover, had climbed into one of those booths on a Sunday morning and found themselves plastered on Bloody Mary’s and against the humid stick of faux red leather seats. Today, Charlie grabbed a copy of the New York Post and sat at a table, reading about the horrific train bombing terrorist massacre in Madrid likely to have killed a couple of hundred people and injured a few thousand more. It sent shivers down his spine. He was almost overcome with a feeling of empathy and disempowerment staring at the images of traumatised bloodied faces…