Writers and artists had always flocked to Chelsea. And musicians, Emma
mused. Mick Jagger had a home here. Or he'd had one. It hardly
mattered to Emma whether he and the Stones were still in residence.
There was only one person she'd come to see.
Perhaps it was the contrasts that appealed to Jane. Chelsea was punk,
and domestic. It was relaxed and frenetic. And it cost the earth to
live in one of the stylish homes. Or perhaps Jane's reason had
something to do with the fact that Bev had established herself in the
same district.
That too hardly mattered.
She stopped, clenching and unclenching her hand on the strap of her bag
while the snow drifted and clung to her hair and shoulders. The house
was a long way from the tiny walk-up flat where she had lived with Jane.
It pretended to be old, but the fussy copy of a Victorian row house
missed the mark by inches. Someone had decided to add cupolas and tall,
narrow windows. It might have been charming, in its way, but curtains
were drawn tight and the walk had yet to be shoveled or swept. No one
had bothered to hang a wreath or a string of lights.
It made her think wistfully of the Kesselring home. There had been no
seasonal snow in California, but the house had offered the warmth and
cheer that meant Christmas. Then again, Emma thought, she wasn't coming
home for Christmas. She wasn't coming home at all.
Taking a deep breath, Emma pushed through the gate and waded through the
snow to the front door. There was a knocker against the ornately carved
wood. She stared at it, half expecting the brass lion's head to
dissolve and re-form into the battered countenance of Jacob Marley.
Perhaps it was the season, or the ghosts of her childhood that made her
fanciful.
With hands icy inside her fur-lined gloves, she lifted it, just an old
brass lion's head, and let it fall against the wood.
When there was no response, she knocked again, hoping there was
no one to hear. If no one answered, could she tell herself she'd done
her best to erase Jane and the need to see her from her mind and her
heart? She desperately wanted to run away, from the house that
pretended to be something it wasn't, from the brass lion's head, from
the woman who never seemed to be completely out of her life. As she
stood, ready to turn away in relief, the door swung open.
She couldn't speak, could only stare at the woman in the red silk robe
that dipped carelessly over one shoulder, strained over hips that had
spread beyond lush. Her hair was a blond tangle around a wide, doughy
face. A stranger's face. It was the eyes Emma recognized and
remembered. The narrowed, angry eyes, reddened now from drink or drugs
or lack of sleep.
"Well?" In deference to the cold air, Jane hitched the robe up. There
was the glitter of diamonds on her fingers, and to Emma's horror, the
stink of stale gin. "Look, lovey, I got better things to do on a
Saturday afternoon than stand in the doorway."
"Who the hell is it?" The annoyed male roar came from the second floor.
Jane cast a bored glance olver her shoulder.
"Hang on, will you?" she shouted back. "Well?" She turned back to Emma.