I had to admire her nerve. It was beyond gutsy of her to pick up and go after her errant husband like that. Raw indignation had seethed through every line of that last letter, from her terse account of her husband's departure to the punctures in the paper where she had dotted her I's with piercing precision. Would I have had that sort of nerve in a similar situation? Probably not, when I couldn't even bring myself to call Colin. I would have sat alone at home and called it pride—much as I was doing now.
Tomorrow, I promised myself, dodging around a crowd of teenagers, I would type "Alsdale" into the computers at the British Library and see what came up. With any luck, there might be something from Letty's sojourn in Ireland, something I could use to track the movements of Jane and Geoff without having to resort to the Selwicks. And if my search for the apocryphal Mrs. Alsdale yielded nothing…Well, I'd have to think of something else. Maybe even a trip to the archives in Dublin, in the hopes that something might turn up there. But I would not, not, not call Colin. I thought about it and added another "not," just in case the previous three had seemed insufficiently resolute. He had made it quite clear that he didn't want to speak to me, and if he didn't want to speak to me, I didn't want to speak to him. So there.
Ducking around the big Christmas tree that was already up in the middle of the mall, I skirted the booth selling sheepskin slippers and made straight for the Marks & Spencer at the far end of the mall. Above me, the PA system was already blasting out Christmas music, and the front display of Whittard's tea shop boasted a wide array of winter-themed items, from little mulling packets for wine to tins of cocoa decorated with stylized snowflakes and happy skaters. The front of Marks & Spencer was piled high with tinned plum pudding and dispirited-looking miniature fir trees in gold foil–covered pots. If they looked brown around the edges now, I couldn't imagine how they would survive till December, much less Christmas. It was only mid-November now, hardly late enough in the season to start buying Christmas trees.
At home, it would be nearly Thanksgiving.
Pammy would be having a Thanksgiving dinner for expats and assorted hangers-on at her mother's house in South Kensington next week, but it just wasn't the same. There wouldn't be my little sister dangling bits of Aunt Ally's organic pumpkin bread to the dog under the table, or any of the hundreds of other unspoken traditions that made Thanksgiving more than just another dinner party. Picking up a black plastic shopping basket from the pile in the front of the store, I wandered dispiritedly past the rows of preprepared sandwiches, unable to get excited about the wonders of egg and cress or chicken and stuffing, all in triangular little packages. It wasn't the right kind of stuffing. Stuffing wasn't supposed to be crammed into sandwiches and sold in plastic wedges. Stuffing wasn't stuffing without gobs of turkey fat clinging to the mushrooms and a large, bickering family digging into the gooey mess, scattering bits of corn bread across the tablecloth. Here, they ate stuffing in sandwiches and turkey for Christmas.
I was sick of here.
Everything that had seemed quaint when I first arrived in London had become alien and irritating. Those tiny little bottles of shampoo that cost as much as a full-sized one back home. The way the coffee shops all inexplicably closed by eight. The strange way street names had of changing halfway down a block. The fact that I couldn't get a tub of American peanut butter and no one seemed to sell skirt hangers. I wanted to go home. I missed my little apartment in Cambridge where the sink leaked and the closet door wouldn't close. I missed the rutted brick streets of Harvard Square, where my heels stuck between the stones and my boots slid out from under me in slushy weather. I missed the musty, charred smell of Peet's Coffee that clung to my hair and wouldn't wash out of my sweaters. The thought of the microfilm readers at Widener made me weak with nostalgic sorrow.
With my plastic basket hanging from the crook of my arm, I stared through blurry eyes at the array of preprepared foods. Instead of Lancashire hotpot and chicken tikka masala, I saw the weeks spreading out before me in an endless row of fruitless research and dinners for one. Same old library, same old dinners, same old rainy gray sky. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, world without end, amen, with only the occasional outing with Pammy to enliven the gloom, and no chance of home till Christmas.
Only the buzz of the phone in my pocket stopped me from dropping my head into the frozen foods section and bawling.
Resting the edge of my basket on the shelf, I dug into the pocket of my quilted jacket, where I had stuck the phone for easy access during my incessant phone-checking stage. It would probably be Pammy again, I thought listlessly, tugging the phone clear of a fold in the lining. If it was, I'd have to hit ignore and pretend to have left my phone at home. I'd been avoiding Pammy, who tended to regard relations with men as though she were Napoleon and they an opposing army. She mustered her artillery, chose her position, and attacked. Over the past week, we had proceeded from "I don't see why you don't just call him already," to "You could find out where he lives and just buzz and see if he's home," to "If you're not going to call him, I will."
"No, you won't," I informed the buzzing phone.
Only, it wasn't Pammy's number on the screen. In my confusion, my grip loosened, and I had to do a little juggling act with the phone to keep it from plummeting into a pile of prawn sandwiches. It wasn't a London number at all, which ruled out Pammy, nor was it an American number, which ruled out my parents, my siblings, college roommates, and, of course, Grandma.
My withered spirits flamed to life with a surge that sent the blood rushing clear down to the tips of my fingers and up to my hairline. Sussex! I didn't know what the area code for Sussex was, but this was an English area code, and one that decidedly wasn't London.
I jammed down on the receive button so hard that I nearly broke a nail.
"Hello?" I demanded breathlessly.
"Hello, Eloise?" It was a male voice on the other end, but not the male voice I'd been hoping for. It was a nice enough voice, deep and wellmodulated, but it wasn't Colin's. Even across the uncertain cell connection—my cell wasn't terribly fond of the Whiteley's shopping center—his accent was decidedly American.
"Hello?" the voice repeated, as I stood there, disappointment seeping through me along with the chill of the freezer case.
"Oh, hi. Yes, this is Eloise," I replied belatedly, getting a grip on my emotions and my phone. If it was an American calling from somewhere in England, it had to be someone I knew. He certainly seemed to know me, if he was calling and asking for me by my first name. Maybe that Duke grad student I had met at the Institute of Historical Research? "How are you doing?" I gushed, to cover my confusion.
"I'm fine." The voice at the other end of the line sounded mildly perplexed, but game. "How are you?"
"Um, I'm okay. Just on my way home from the library," I provided cheerfully and unnecessarily, playing for time. It was no use. I was still drawing a complete blank in my attempt to determine the caller's identity. I gave up. "Who is this?"