When I was a child,he wrote,I always liked strawberry. My father hated that. He said pink was a girl’s colour and strawberry a girl’s flavour. So, whenever I was with him, he made me have vanilla. Plain, simple and inoffensive. A man’s flavour.
But when I went to sign for his body at the hospice, the nurses informed me that in the few days before he died, when he could stomach food, all he asked for was strawberry ice cream.
River’s questionnaire ended with a simple statement.
Tuesday, then?
Tuesday.He nodded emphatically as he wrote.This Tuesday, next Tuesday and every Tuesday after that. For as long as you’ll have me, River.
And he smiled, a smile of hope, as well as a smile of rue.
Because next Tuesday couldn’t come fast enough.
Chapter Five
Jaded Green Tea
The week that followed brought two surprising revelations into Cohen’s life.
The first was that he felt, for the first time in a long time, a sense of ease and well-being. It wasn’t the all-encompassing feeling of peace he’d always imagined or envied in others, it wasn’t zen-like. He didn’t wake in the morning and feel a sudden urge to do yoga by the river with flowers in his hair. But he did wake without the urge to drown his emotions in work and black coffee. He woke and was able to look at himself in the mirror, without hating the dark hair he inherited from his mother, or the brown eyes he knew he’d received from his father. He stood tall, his back straight, and was able to nod at the reflection that stared back at him.
It was odd and unfamiliar andliberating all at once.
The second was that Andrew Canning, current CEO of Roberts-Canning LLC, had decided to retire, taking his platinum silk suits and withered expression into tax haven exile. Cohen barely had time to ponder this email, or to think more than ‘Good luck, Panama, you’ll need every bit of it with that vicious reprobate in your country’,when a second, more worrying, email dropped into his inbox.
Canning wanted Cohen to take over his position.
While I fervently believe this decision to be a massive error on the part of our current, beloved CEO,Fowler wrote in his scathing email detailing the news,Mr Canning is most insistent on your taking the leadership position. He truly (though mistakenly, in my opinion) thinks you can take this company forwards into the future.
Fowler ended the email with the usual empty words: a letter had been sent with the details of this decision, a meeting with the board had been arranged for January, the company was looking forward to his forthcoming return, etc, etc. Each sentence dripped with condescending and ill-concealed disdain, and Cohen closed the email with a quick tap of his finger.
Another email from Fowler popped up, the subject box empty, with just one line crossing the screen.
You better not mess this up, Ford.
Well, indeed.
Cohen knew he shouldn’t be surprised by this turn of events. Canning had been grooming him for leadership for about ten years, ever since he’d persuaded Cohen to leave his fulfilling internship at the Sedler Foundation, swapping it for a less fulfilling role at Roberts-Canning, where the benefits (more money, bigger office and zero presence of his mother) outweighed the negatives (Canning, a less-than-ethical business practice and Tarquin freaking Fowler).
He shouldn’t be surprised. He’d worked hard for this moment. He’d put in the hours, made the right connections, put Roberts-Canning above anything and everything else in his life.
And it’d been easy. Too easy.
Too easy to put the company above Christine and the little soirées she held in their penthouse. God knew that, compared to eating vegan, low-carb and organic canapés with Christine and her vapid friends, the office was actually preferable.
Too easy to miss Christmas or Easter with his mother ... again. Too easy to lay claim to a faith in which he’d long since lost faith as a reason for his absence.
We’re Jewish, we don’t even celebrate Christmas. I don’t know why you’re so upset,he’d normally text Esther at some point in October.
Well, I never see you during Hanukkah or on your birthday any more,she’d instantly text back.So, I might as well see you on the birthday of a man who could turn water into wine. God knows that’s a skill worth celebrating. Besides, I’m ordering chow mein and Uncle Israel’s bringing fruitcake.
And joy to the world and ding dong merrily on high ifthatwasn’t reason enough for Cohen to stay away.
And it had been far, far too easy to put back another meeting with his father. Too easy to leave yet another tense voicemail indicating that ‘sorry Dad, but work, you know how it is’,even though Jim, the shiftiest king of the shiftless, had no idea what a real day of work ever entailed.
Roberts-Canning had always come first for Cohen. Of that there had never been any doubt.
Until today, that was.
