Public Secrets

side, but hardly a one was still.
When she grew tired of that, she just listened to the voices. She heard a group of girls arguing nearby. As teenagers, they had Emma’s immediate envy.
“Stevie Nimmons is the cutest,” one of the girls insisted. “He’s got big brown eyes and that groovy moustache.”
“Brian McAvoy,” another corrected. “He’s really fab.” To prove her point, she took a photo, cut from a fan magazine, out of her madras purse. A communal sigh went up as the girls crowded around it. “Every time I look at it, I just about die.”
They squealed, were glared at, then muffled giggles with their hands.
Both pleased and baffled, Emma looked up at Bev. “Those girls are talking about Da.”
“Ssh.” Bev was amused enough to want to relay the story to Brian, but she was also aware that she was wearing the wig and sunglasses for a reason. “I know they are, but we have to keep who we are a secret.”
“Why?”

“I’ll explain later,” she said, relieved when their turn at the elevators arrived.
Emma’s eyes widened when her ears popped as they had on the airplane. For a moment she was terrified that she would be sick again. She bit her lip, closed her eyes, and wished desperately for her da.
She wished she hadn’t come. She wished she’d brought Charlie for comfort. And she prayed, as fervently as a three-year-old could, that she wouldn’t lose her wonderful breakfast all over her shiny new shoes.
Then the doors opened, and the dreadful swaying motion stopped. Everyone was laughing and talking and crowding out. Obeying Bev’s tug on her hand, she kept close to her while still fighting the nausea.
There was a big stand with shelves of bright souvenirs, and wide, wide windows where she could see the sky and the spread of buildings that was Manhattan. Dumbfounded, she stood still while people swarmed around them. Sickness passed into wonder.
“It’s something to see, isn’t it, Emma?”
“Is it the world?”
Though she was as amazed as Emma, she laughed. “No. Only a small part of it. Come on then, let’s go out.”
The wind barreled over them, sending Emma’s skirts flying up as she staggered back. But the sensation excited rather than frightened as Bev, laughing again, plucked her up.
“We’re on top of the world, Emma.”
As they looked over the high wall, Emma felt her stomach do playful little leaps and bounces. It was all spread out below, the crisscross of streets in the canyons made by the buildings, the tiny cars and buses that looked like toys. Everything ran so straight and true.
When Bev put a coin in a box, she looked through the telescope, but she preferred her own view, through her own eyes.
“Can we live here?”
Bev fiddled with the telescope until she focused on the Statue of Liberty. “Here, in New York?”
“Here. On top.”
“No one lives here, Emma.”
“Why not?”

“Because it’s a tourist attraction,” she answered absently. “And one of the wonders of the world, I think. You can’t live in a wonder.”
But Emma looked out over the high wall and thought that she could.

T HE TELEVISION STUDIO didn’t impress Emma. It didn’t look as pretty or as big as it did onscreen. The people were ordinary. She did like the cameras, though. They were big and bulky, and the people behind them seemed important. She wondered if looking through one of the cameras was like looking through the telescope on the Empire Sute Building.
Before she could ask Bev, a skinny man began talking in a loud voice. It was the oddest American accent she’d heard yet. She couldn’t understand half of what he said, but she caught the word “Devastation.” Then came the explosion of screams.
After the first shock, Emma stopped cringing into Bev’s skirts and leaned out. Though she didn’t understand the screaming, she realized it wasn’t a bad sound. It was a good, young noise that bulleted off the walls and slammed off the ceilings. It made her grin, though Bev’s hand trembled lightly in hers.
She liked the way her father moved across the stage, prancing and strutting as his voice, strong and clear, merged with Johnno’s, then Stevie’s. His hair glowed gold under the bright lights. She was a child, and easily recognized magic.
As long as she lived she would hold this picture in her mind, and her heart, of four young men standing onstage, drenched in light, in luck, and in music.

T HREE THOUSAND MILES away, Jane sat in her new flat. There was a pint of Gilbey’s