“Is everything all right? You took ages to answer.”

Audrey nodded, trying to look reassuring. “I was just enjoying the view. I didn’t realize we’d be quite so high up. How’s your room?”

“It’s absolutely amazing. Thank you so much.”

Jess pulled her into an embrace and breathed a kiss into her hair before walking into Audrey’s room toward the two armchairs by the window overlooking Central Park.

“So what’s on our itinerary this afternoon, Mum? We could try getting up the Empire State Building or Top of the Rock? Though maybe we should do those early one morning when they’re less busy. I know you want to walk the High Line but it’s a bit of a schlep from here and we might be pushed for time. Is there anything you’re really desperate to do? It is our first afternoon, after all.”

Audrey fought the desire to close her eyes, to let her chin rest on her chest, to sink into whatever temporary oblivion her body was craving. Out of the window, cars circled the park and in the shadow of skyscrapers people scurried through the streets like ants in a colony, keeping the city moving. This was a city teeming with life. And that was why she’d wanted to come: to drink its elixir the way others might swallow holy water from Lourdes.

“The park. Let’s go to the park. It seems silly not to when we’re so close and it’s such a glorious afternoon. At least there’ll be shade.”

At least, Audrey thought, there’ll be benches.

As she leaned forward to pull on her shoes, another surge of pain jabbed at her shoulder: fiercer, sharper, more insistent than before. Audrey ground her teeth, pulled her body up straight, and hauled herself to her feet.

Chapter 53

Lily

On the steps of Daniel’s apartment block, Lily’s husband was staring at her, waiting for her to speak. There had been a question but Lily couldn’t remember now what it had been. The only thing she could remember was the sight of Daniel with his arm around the young redhead, who was now standing at his shoulder, frowning. “What . . . I don’t . . . What’s going on, Daniel?” Lily’s voice felt small, as though her lungs had been pierced and all the air she breathed in leaked straight out again.

“Sweetheart, could you give us a few minutes?”

Lily looked up at Daniel, wondering where he meant her to wait, what he expected her to do. But Daniel wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the redhead. He was looking at the redhead and calling her sweetheart and directing her back upstairs to his apartment.

Something crumpled in her chest, her breath trapped beneath the rubble. Her legs, as she turned and ran back down the stone steps, felt weak as though her bones had been removed and only some strange force of momentum was keeping the muscles and the flesh moving.

“Lily! Wait! For God’s sake, just wait!”