Amy sipped her coffee.
‘You sound disappointed.’
‘In you? You kidding me? Never.’
‘Seriously? I haven’t exactly got my name in lights.’
‘Amy, nobody worked harder than you to get outta Queens and make something of themselves. You’ve been all over the world doing what you love – you know how rare that is? Sure, I’d rather you were closer, but that’s just a dad being selfish. Truth? Every time any of the guys at Dempsey’s asks after my little girl, I feel ten feet tall.’
Amy wasn’t sure she was going to get away without crying.
‘You just say the word and you can come home. I can paint your old room, you can stay there until you find someplace new. We can help you with money. Your old dad hasn’t done too bad. Just say the word.’
Amy looked at him, sorely tempted. After all, what was there for her in London? Daniel was gone, she’d had one audition in six months and she was barely managing to eat on her wages from the Forge. But she couldn’t let her family down. She remembered them waving her off at Newark – even Uncle Chuck had been crying, but they had all told her a dozen times that it was worth it if she could build a better life for herself outside of Queens. They’d had such faith in her, such cast-iron belief that she was going to dance her way to stardom and find herself a handsome British prince at the same time – her mom had seriously suggested she get a job in the Buckingham Palace gift shop, so convinced was she that Prince Harry would fall in love with her if only their paths would cross – that she couldn’t come crawling back now, no job, no boyfriend, nothing to show for her two years in exotic Europe. What would her dad say to the guys in Dempsey’s then? What would Candice tell her friends at Miss Josephine’s?
‘I miss you guys like crazy. But I have a life in London. I like it. I’ve got friends and I can’t come running home just because I’m not dancing,’ she said, determined not to let the cracks show.
‘It’s Daniel, isn’t it?’ He smiled. ‘Home is where the heart is, I guess.’ A look of such pride settled on his face that she knew it was not the right time to tell him her relationship had ended. Not on Christmas Eve.
Billy walked in rubbing his hands.
‘Fenies is open. What say we all go down and toast Santa?’
Amy shook her head.
‘I’ve had enough to drink and I’ve got a long flight on Wednesday.’
‘Which is two whole days away,’ he said, throwing over her coat. ‘Come on. All the old gang will be down there.’
Fenies was an Irish pub, but it was a world away from the ones you could find in Finsbury Park. There were none of the grand Victorian mouldings and high ceilings of the British tradition, just a long low room with a wooden bar at one side a
nd beer served in bottles. Even so, it was heaving. Christmas Eve, I guess, thought Amy, glad she had changed into a pair of her mom’s trainers; she had been wearing her new shoes and it would have been heartbreaking to have them ruined by spilt Miller and trampling toes.
‘It’s busy,’ she said, as Billy elbowed his way towards the bar, a twenty held up between three fingers like a shark’s fin.
‘Two Bud,’ said her brother and handed one to Amy. Behind the bar there were hundreds of photos from parties held here over the years. She scanned them, wondering if she was in any of them. Fenies was like a youth club to her high-school year; no one was ever carded here.
As she sipped her cold beer, listening to the good-natured rabble around her, she felt a pang of affection for her home town. The little part of Queens she had grown up in – just a mile from the Atlantic seaboard – was not really the New York you saw in the movies. It lacked the glamour of Manhattan, the beatnik cool of certain pockets of Brooklyn, and for a place with such a stately name, it was pretty unremarkable. But this was where people lived, real people: the local high street was still full of delis and bagel shops, funeral parlours and hardware stores, all the things you really needed.
‘No way! Amy goddam Carrell!’
Amy turned, her mouth open.
‘Suzie?’ she gasped. ‘It is you!’
She threw her arms around her friend and squeezed.
‘I don’t believe it! I haven’t seen you in – what is it? Two years?’
‘Well, a lot’s changed since then,’ said Suzie, holding up her hand to show off a diamond ring.
‘You’re engaged?’
Suzie darted into the crowd and grabbed a burly man with dark close-cropped hair.
‘Brian, meet Amy Carrell,’ she said, planting a kiss on his neck. ‘Amy is my oldest, best friend from kindergarten. She’s a dancer in London.’
Amy saw the same pride in Suzie’s face as had been in her dad’s expression. Maybe she hadn’t been such a failure after all.