I gave him a big smile. “I’m so glad to see you,” I said. “I’m just so, so glad.”
As I went in for another hug, tears springing to my eyes, he handed me my champagne flute.
“I thought we just decided you were going to hold it together,” he said. “Let’s go ahead and stick to the plan.”
That night, wine gift in hand, Peter and I went to a cocktail party in South Kensington at the house of my new boss, Melinda Beckett Martin.
Peter had told me only a few details about Melinda, which was why I wasn’t sure what to expect upon meeting her. She was just your typical, major success: in her midthirties, married to an Oxford professor, and an integral part of Beckett Media, as Peter explained, having run television programming for the company in Australia and Asia, and sending profits through the roof in both places.
But even if Peter had provided all possible details about Melinda, I’m not sure it would have adequately prepared me for what was waiting when we approached her beautiful, doublefronted Victorian home. When the door opened, Melinda herself was standing there to greet us. I reached out to hand her the bottle of wine that we’d brought.
This was my first mistake. I narrowly avoided jamming her right in the boobs with it.
I looked up—all the way up—to see a six-foot-five-inch woman, dressed in a fashionable burnt orange polka-dot skirt and white ballet slippers. Wearing just about the warmest smile I’d ever seen.
“Mr. Shepherd!” she said to Peter, in a ravishing Australian accent. “Welcome! Welcome!”
She was carrying a tray of mixed hors d’oeuvres, which she immediately moved out of the way in order to lean down and double-cheek kiss him.
Then she turned to me.
“And you must be the divine Ms. Adams that I’ve heard so much about?”
“That would be me,” I said. “It is nice to meet . . .”
But before I could even say you, she was double-kissing me too and wrapping her arm around my shoulder, like we were the oldest of friends.
“We have so much to talk about,” she said.
And then she was leading us through a central tiled hall into her home—a lived-in home, to use a Britishism: decorated with an enormous farmer’s table, and photographs everywhere (wedding photos and family photos, photos of her husband and her traveling, photos from their respective childhoods), and the type of warm, playful furniture and artwork that made a home feel filled with people and music and laughter, even when it wasn’t.
Now it was filled to the brim with all three. As Peter situated himself with an old friend of his from university, right by the open bar, Melinda took me around and introduced me to seemingly every single person there: my future colleagues and their drunk significant others; Melinda’s neighbors and favorite friends; her future nanny.
She kept feeding me the delicious appetizers from her tray as we moved along through the crowd. And by the time we curled into two purple velvet chairs in the corner of the living room, the model-tall Melinda managing to do so far more gracefully than me—curling her lanky body beneath her, wrapping her hand behind her neck in rest position—I kind of loved her a little.
“So,” she said, “let me start by saying thank you for that.”
“For what?” I said.
“Saving me from having to think about what on earth to talk to all those people about, all on my own,” she said. Then she leaned in closer, and gave me a wink. “I dread cocktail parties.”
“I’m with you,” I said.
“Well, we will begin with the work stuff tomorrow, but I just wanted to welcome you into the fold officially,” she said. “I hear my cousin Caleb has been less than welcoming, officially or otherwise.”
I shook my head. “No, I wouldn’t say that,” I said. “I just . . . haven’t spoken to him yet.”
“Well, with any luck, we’ll figure out how to keep it that way for a while,” she said. “He is one of those people who thinks he has all the answers. So just to piss him off, I send him e-mails marked urgent at least twice a day, asking him impossible questions, like, what is the price of a quart of milk in Adyar, India?”
I started to laugh, just as someone called Melinda’s name.
“The problem is,” she said, “he always knows the answer. What is worse than that?”
“Very little,” I said.
She pointed at the name-caller to give her a minute. And gave me a kind look.
“I’m so sorry to leave you. But I think I have to put out a fire in the southwest corner.” She circled her hands around her mouth, making a clock. “Three o’clock.”