We didn’t have much access to American movies or TV in 1970s Mallorca—Franco wasn’t exactly a fan of imported joy—but the American influence still seeped through. There were plenty of American kids at school, and I vividly remember visiting an aircraft carrier when it docked in Palma. I was probably seven or eight. We were given grape Kool-Aid, Pepsi and bubble gum by grinning sailors, it was heavenly.
So when my mum announced in 1977 that we’d be flying to America to visit my Auntie Val in New York, I lost my tiny mind. Auntie Val was my mum’s youngest sister by eight years. She’d actually been born in Chicago in 1929, back when my grandfather was setting up the Linatex concession in the U.S. My mum had vivid memories of that era—being at school when the market crashed in 1929, classmates losing their fathers to suicide. Light family anecdotes, you know.
But before we even left Mallorca, things got weird. My mum, in an act of Olympic-level poor judgment, asked me to go to my dad and get him to promise he wouldn’t see Kirsten while we were away. Imagine that—sending your kid to get a fidelity oath from your husband’s mistress-happy heart. I did it, of course. And of course, it was pointless. But more on that later.
We flew to New York, and I still remember stepping into Manhattan for the first time. The buildings just kept going up, and up, and up. I was in awe. My aunt immediately told my mum to turn her diamond rings inward—crime was rampant in 1970s New York, and you didn’t flash your wealth unless you were planning to donate it.
Auntie Val lived in Greenwich Village in what I can only describe as a single room stacked wall-to-wall with clutter. It wasn’t a studio apartment—it was a storage unit with plumbing. She had decided to get her driver’s license for the summer and by the time we arrived she had actually got it, how though will forever remain a mystery, as we were about to find out.
She’d bought a yellow Honda Civic, and at some point Briony joined us with little Natasha, who must have been around two or three. One of my most vivid memories is riding in the back of that Civic on the New York Turnpike, five lanes of chaos, when Aunt Val realised she’d missed her exit and—without hesitation—did a U-turn. On the Turnpike. It was less a driving maneuver and more of a live-action suicide. Briony and I were in the back seat staring at one another in disbelief.
We somehow survived and arrived at the house Aunt Val had rented in Sea Cliff, Long Island. A classic old wooden American home filled with knick-knacks and dust. Every day she’d commute back to the city for work, leaving us with the TV and strict instructions not to breathe near the house-hold ornaments, I remember my mom muttering "this place is like a mausoleum" but of course I had no idea what that word meant at the time. I was still jet-lagged, so I’d wake up before dawn and watch The Addams Family in black and white, surrounded by dusty figurines and the looming threat of Aunt Val’s wrath.
I quickly made friends with a local kid who had a ten-speed bicycle—basically a Ferrari in my eyes—and he took me down to the harbour where we fished for mackerel with spinners, pulling them out on almost every cast. I was in heaven.
Then my mum arranged a fishing trip to Montauk. A proper deep-sea charter. We dropped our lines over the side—big lead weights disappearing into what felt like the center of the Earth—and I hooked something. It didn’t fight like a fish. It was just dead weight. Slowly I reeled it in, and eventually, up came a massive Maine lobster, tangled in the liner.
The captain laughed, the other punters offered to buy it off us, but we took it home. And yes, my mum boiled it alive. I remember watching it go into the pot, claws flailing. People say the screaming is just the shell reacting to the heat. Either way, it stuck with me, not in a good way.
Then there was Natasha locking herself in the upstairs bathroom. She was too young to understand how to unlock the door she had managed to lock, so we stood outside coaching her: “Do you see the key, darling? Can you turn it?” Silence. Then a small voice: “I’m dancing.” At which point we knew it was time to call the fire department.
Less that 10 minutes later, what felt like the entire Sea Cliff brigade Fire Brigade descended on the house like they were responding to a six-alarm inferno. Engines, ladders, lights—the works. After a full deployment and an aerial window rescue, the fire chief turned to Briony, shaking his head and muttering, “You’re lucky you’re pretty. This better not be a habit..” It wasn’t so much a compliment as it was a billable shrug from a man who’d just wasted half the town’s emergency budget retrieving a toddler from a second-floor bathroom.
When we returned to Mallorca, we discovered that not only had my dad not kept his ridiculous promise—Kirsten had actually been living in the house while we were gone. The betrayal stung, even if, by then, it wasn’t surprising.
But that first trip to America stuck with me. Manhattan, Long Island, 10 speed bikes, lobster screams, and narrow escapes on major highways—it all felt like stepping into a technicolor world where the volume was turned way up.