She hands me two oven mitts and points to the oven, where I quickly pull out a pan and its unrecognizable culinary remains. Clearly, Sunday brunch has been ruined.
I cough, fanning a billow of smoke from my face as she mouths the words, “Thank you.” I look around the eclectic flat with bohemian furniture and colorful pillows scattered about. Vibrant framed artwork lines the walls and dozens of houseplants burst out of their pots as if they were in a rain forest and not a borough of London. By the window a yellow parakeet chirps from a bamboo cage.
“Yes, sir, absolutely, sir,” she says into the phone. “Right. I’ll make it happen. Consider it done. Goodbye, sir.” She ends the call and groans, tossing her phone onto the sofa as if it were a guilty accomplice in the unfortunate chain of events leading up to this moment.
“That was my boss,” she says. “He’s a certified asshole.” She throws her arms into the air. “He’ll be here in an hour,” she cries. “Now what am I going to do about brunch?”
“Your boss?”
“No,” she says, looking at me as if I were born yesterday. “Jeremy.”
I nod, feeling another wave of jet lag settle in. “Jeremy.”
“My date!”
“Right,” I say.
“He thinks he’s getting a five-star brunch,” she says. “He thinks I’m a gourmet chef!”
I glance at the charred pan. “And I take it that you might have fibbed a little?”
She sighs. “I mean, who would publish a frittata recipe on a food blog and not say how long to bake it?”
I try very hard not to laugh. Rest in peace, dear frittata.
“Well, so much for that. Now what am I going to do?”
I like her immediately. “There’s always…takeout?”
She shakes her head. “No, no, no! This is the third date. You never do takeout on a third date!”
“Oh,” I say, noticing even more potted plants in the kitchen, all of them a healthy green. “You can’t cook, but you’re definitely a plant whisperer.”
“It does seem that way,” she says with a sigh.
I extend my hand. “I’m Valentina Baker.”
The corners of her mouth turn upward as she connects the dots. “Oh! You’re Eloise’s daughter!”
“Yes, well…yes.”
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
“I…was getting to that. And you were on the phone.”
“Right,” she says, brushing a stray curl from her forehead. “I’m so sorry about your mum. I really loved her.” She studies me for a long moment. “You know, I don’t see the resemblance. You must take after your dad?”
“Yeah, I…guess so.”
“I do, too,” she says wistfully. “My dad has his good traits, though.” She places her right hand on her hip. “I mean, I did inherit his legs.”
I smile to myself as she kicks one in the air, Rockettes style.
“Wait,” she says, cocking her head to the right. “I see it now. Your eyes—there’s something about the shape of them. They’re just like—”
“Listen,” I say, clearing my throat. “I don’t want to keep you. I was just…hoping we could speak about…your flat.”
She nods. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not the type to bail on rent or anything. Besides, I really love it here. I mean, it’s not Buckingham Palace, and it’s drafty as hell in the winter, but you know what?” She pauses to glance around her eclectic space. “I’ve never lived anywhere I loved this much. In fact, I may never leave!”
“Okay, right,” I say, a bit crestfallen. If I had any hope of selling the building, it would be harder than I anticipated.
“I’m Liza,” she continues, extending her hand. “Hey, if you’re free tomorrow afternoon, I’d be happy to show you around the neighborhood.”
“Oh, wow,” I say. “Thank you. That would be…nice.”
Her momentary calm disappears in a flash. “Good Lord, I have to get ready. What the hell am I going to wear?” She runs to the bedroom and returns holding two dresses on hangers—one pink with bright orange flowers, the other solid blue with a tie waist. “What do you think? Is the pink one too much?”
I shake my head, smiling. “No, definitely go with the pink. It’s very you.”
“Really?” she says, immediately slipping out of her sweats and T-shirt and stepping into the dress. When she struggles with the zipper, I offer to help.
She shrugs, eyeing herself in the full-length mirror against the wall. “My New Year’s resolution was to lose ten pounds, but I gained twelve.”
I grin. “You look great, I promise.”
“Okay,” she says with a sigh. “Now if I can just order takeaway in time to dish it up and hide the evidence!”
“Good luck,” I say, letting myself out.
As I close the door behind me, I hear a dish break, and Liza screaming, “Bloody hell!”
I smile to myself as I walk up to the second floor, where my mother apparently lived for so many years—without me. I pause when I reach the door—her door—remembering how I once longed for this very moment—to be near to her again.
Why did she leave? Why didn’t she ever write or respond to my letters? I press the key into the lock, feeling a pang of emotion. All these years later, the pain of my childhood feels just as raw, just as real.
As a girl, I fantasized about running away to London, where I’d show up on her doorstep and everything would be okay. But as time passed, that familiar yearning morphed into something else—resentment, anger, and by the time I left for college, I was no longer interested in reuniting with the woman who’d abandoned me. She became dead to me.
And now she was.
I take a deep breath as I open the door, feeling like a firefighter arriving at a house after it has already burned to the ground. Too little, too late.
I step over the threshold. The air is stagnant and foreign. But as I part the drapes and open one of the old windows, I can’t help but notice a faint but familiar scent. It takes a few moments to register, but then it hits me. Her perfume. Her rose perfume. A part of me quivers, deep down, as memories begin to bubble up. At once, I am a child in that big, sunny bathroom in Santa Monica. She’s in her long, pink satin robe, seated in front of the mirror.
“Mummy, can I wear your lipstick?”
“When you’re older, sweet one.”
I watch her meticulously layer on three coats of mascara before she offers me a spritz of perfume on the inside of my wrist. I hold it up to my nose and breathe in the thick, velvety scent of roses.
Down on the street, a red double-decker tourist bus lumbers by, pulling me back to the present. I run my hand along the soft, pink velvet sofa. A low table is lined with framed photos of unfamiliar people and places.
Suddenly, my heart seizes. Apart from the rest, in a gilded frame, stands a photo of…me.
It was Christmas morning, the year I got the dollhouse, when I was seven, maybe eight. My mother spent all morning setting up the rooms with me. The memory is distant, and yet, I can still smell the spicy musk of the cedar walls and the new plastic of my dolls’ shiny hair. I can feel the chalkiness of the little porcelain bathtub, with its four claw feet. I’d placed the miniature sofa on the second floor, but Mummy moved it to the first, near a side window “with a better view of the garden.”