Can't Let Go by Jane Hill

joking, then she was just taking pity on me
after my outburst. I looked at her face, all lean and
cheekboney. She seemed serious. 'Really?' I asked.
    'Yes, really. Now, we'd better get back to see what
ghastly clothes my god-daughter has chosen for her
going-away outfit.'

Eleven
    Something was off from the moment I arrived in San
Francisco. Joanna wasn't there to meet me at the
airport. That's odd, isn't it? Y o u tell your mother's
oldest friend, your sister's godmother, what time your
flight arrives, you expect her to be there to meet you. It's
part of the job. I rang her number. She answered,
sounding like she barely remembered who I was, and told
me to catch the airport bus.
    The 'airport bus' was a minibus, driven by an ageing
hippie. Six or seven of us – some Japanese students, two
men who I assumed were gay, a pair of German tourists and
me – gave him addresses and directions and he wove his
way around the city, dropping us off in turn. I tried to take
up as little room as possible as I stared out of the window
and took in the scenery. Restaurants and fast-food places –
ugly buildings in the middle of big car parks. Petrol
stations. Here and there a small shopping mall. Random
outcrops of luxury houses. Then the city began. Slummy
streets, homeless men in doorways. Cars, buses. A glimpse
up a vertiginous side street. Big Victorian mansions. Up
and down hills, unexpected glimpses of the sea. A
skyscraper like a skinny pyramid or a needle pointing
towards the sky. Pocket-handkerchief parks. Apartment
blocks next to tiny wooden houses like something out of a
fairy tale. Corner grocery stores – Italian, Indian, Korean.
A stretch of main road where suddenly everything was
Chinese: the street signs, the names on the shops. Shop
windows full of embroidered silk slippers and bright red
chicken carcasses. And, everywhere, hills. A switchback
ride. The sun low in the sky, glinting off the sea and off
windows. A city of beautiful, brief peep-show views.
    Joanna's home was a picture-book Victorian wooden
house painted blue and white, with steps up from the
street, a wooden porch wrapped around one side, a
profusion of bay windows and a turret with what I learned
was called a widow's walk – a high circular balcony with
a wonderful view of the city. Everywhere the house was
decorated: intricate lacy woodcarvings edging windows,
balconies and the porch. The minibus driver hauled my
case out of the back of the bus and set it down on the
pavement next to me. I stared up at the house for a few
moments, taking it all in. Then I lugged my suitcase up to
the big square porch and rang the doorbell.
    Joanna stood there, cigarette in hand. She didn't smile,
she didn't hug me, she didn't ask me about my journey.
She looked at me and her expression said it all: annoyance,
disappointment, regret. She didn't want me there. She
wished she'd never invited me. She'd invited a passionate
actress, a blossom in an appalling frock. And when I
arrived at her doorstep she realised she'd got a scared
eighteen-year-old small-town girl in cheap tarty clothes
from Top Shop.
    Joanna's house was full of things: pottery and paintings,
stained-glass hangings, bits of tapestry and embroidery
on the walls. My room was in the attic, an airy, sloped roof
room with a double bed that took up almost all the
floor space and with my own little bathroom tucked under
the eaves. Next to my bed was an elaborate Victorian
planter containing a nearly dead dusty ivy.
    The heart of the house was the kitchen, a huge room in
the basement, four floors down from my room. Joanna
held court there, and in the evenings people came round
for dinner and there was wine. There was also conversation
that flew over my head. Sometimes a young man
would appear, some guy in his late teens or early twenties,
perhaps; often the son of someone else sitting around the
table. 'Elliot's studying at Berkeley,' or 'Jonas is a very
talented photographer,' Joanna would tell me; and always
she