LINDSEY KELK
I Heart London

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2012

Lindsey Kelk asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is a work of fiction.

The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EBook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007383733

Version: 2017-08-10

Della, Beth, Sarah, Jacqueline, Ryan, Emma and Rachael.

People always ask me who my Jenny is and I tell them I’m lucky because I don’t actually have one, I have all of you … I would absolutely take your diaphragm out if I had to.

Not you, Ryan.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Acknowledgements

Angela’s Guide to London

About the Author

Also by Lindsey Kelk

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ I babbled as I ran into the Gloss magazine office, unbuttoning my top as I pushed the door open with my arse. ‘I had a Jenny emergency and lost my shoes and couldn’t get a cab, and how come it’s so hot today? Oh and my shirt is covered in crap but I think I left a T-shirt here so—’

‘Ms Clark.’

My blouse was halfway over my head and my arms were tangled upwards in a dying swan when I heard someone who most certainly was not Delia Spencer say my name. The reason I knew it was not my colleague and friend Delia Spencer was because it was a man’s voice. And it was one I had heard before.

‘Mr Spencer?’ I peeped through a buttonhole to see Delia’s grandfather, owner of Spencer Media and ultimately my boss, leaning against Delia’s desk with a very grim look on his face. Behind him, Delia sat in her squishy leather chair biting her lip and trying not to laugh. Neither of them seemed terribly impressed by my bra. It wasn’t one of my best.

‘How lovely to see you,’ I said, trying to pull my shirt back down over my head as casually as possible before offering Mr Spencer a handshake and a dazzling smile. ‘I’m very sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. Then he stood up, ignoring my hand, and walked straight into our tiny meeting room. ‘I understand you had an emergency and are covered in crap.’

‘And I lost my shoes,’ I whispered to Delia with a wince.

‘Happy Monday,’ she whispered back, following her grandfather into the meeting room. ‘Jenny emergency? What threat level are we on there?’

‘Orange? Maybe even a lovely reddish coral. She’s losing it. I had to intervene.’

‘As long as she’s OK now,’ Delia gave me a sympathetic look and opened the door to the meeting room. ‘There’s a spare sweater on my chair. It doesn’t have any crap on it.’

Delia had enjoyed my BFF, Jenny’s downward spiral as much as anyone over the last few months. It had been six months since she’d broken up with her ex-ex and since then she’d been doing a fine job of ruining her life. That or she was auditioning for a role on the next Jersey Shore. I hoped that was it, she was definitely going to need a new job soon if she didn’t sort herself out.

‘Perfect,’ I muttered to myself, hurriedly changing shirts and checking out my blouse for permanent damage. ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’

‘So the launch phase will take place in Q three so we can be out for fashion week, with Gloss on limited availability in New York,’ I said, as confidently as I could. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Delia nodding confirmation. Directly in front of me, Mr Spencer, my boss, formerly known as Bob, was not nodding. He was sipping coffee and fixing me with a gaze so steely I was fairly certain it could cut through a tin can. I concealed a tiny squeak and clicked onto the final slide of my PowerPoint presentation. Oh yes, I was a PowerPoint person now. ‘Once we’re out there and have established a solid audience, we’ll launch on the West Coast in Q four, and then, Q one, we go nationwide with a long-term view to international expansion in Q three the following year.’

I was incredibly proud of myself. After a less than promising beginning, I’d got through all my slides without cocking up and I hadn’t spilled a single thing down Delia’s jumper. Things were looking up. Now all we needed was Mr Spencer’s go-ahead and we were quite literally in business. I attempted my best Wheel of Fortune pose in front of the drop-down screen and gave my audience of two a dazzling smile. I was ninety-nine percent certain I looked deranged, but still, Bob was pulling his concentrated face and Delia hadn’t kicked me yet, so I took that as a win.

‘Interesting,’ Mr Spencer said. ‘Very interesting.’

Once upon a time, Mr Spencer and I had been best buds – he had brunched with me at Pastis, offered me dream jobs in Paris. We were total besties − but then I might or might not have accidentally called his granddaughter and Delia’s identical twin sister, Cici, several very colourful and slightly unflattering names in an email and, well, punched her in the face at Christmas. After that, we sort of drifted apart. He’d given Delia and me a chance to get Gloss going, we had a small office in the Spencer Media building and some office equipment, and he had reluctantly agreed to support my visa application, but that was where it ended. There was no free ride in the Spencer family. Not if you saddled yourself with a foul-mouthed British girl who knocked out a member of your family at a Christmas party while dressed like a slutty Santa. It was a long story, but Cici totally had it coming. Delia agreed. Often. I didn’t have a sister but if I did, I’d want one like Delia. Kind, thoughtful and cleverer than anyone who had ever been on The Apprentice. I did not want one like Cici. She was the Ursula to her Ariel, the coffee cream to her hazelnut whirl. Pure evil. But she was out of the picture. At least she hadn’t actively tried to ruin my life for the last couple of months so that was nice. It was just as well, I had been busy.

At last, we were ready to go. We had a killer dummy issue, we had a business plan that made sense, we had writers on standby, we even had a retailer lined up to distribute for us. We just needed advertisers. And to get advertisers, we had to get Grandpa Bob to include us in the annual Spencer Media sales conference. Delia was convinced it was a lock, but I wasn’t so sure. Yes, he’d stayed all the way through our presentation without nipping out to the loo or anything. And he’d only picked up his iPhone once; and there was no way he’d been on it long enough to be playing Fruit Ninja. Unless he was very good. Which he probably was.

‘So you have a retailer on board?’ he asked Delia.

‘Trinity,’ she confirmed. ‘As you know, the second largest women’s fashion retailer in the US.’

‘And you’ll be distributing through them directly?’ he asked Delia again.

‘We will,’ she nodded.

‘And is she actually barefoot?’ He cocked his head in my direction.

Ohhhh.

‘She is,’ Delia confirmed. ‘But she’s also a very good writer, a fantastic creative planner and an absolute asset to your company.’

I tried not to blush. Shucks.

‘Even if she is a little eccentric.’

I couldn’t really argue with that. Even if it did take the edge off her original compliment.

‘I know I’m going to regret asking,’ Bob said finally, turning to face me, ‘but what did happen to your shoes?’

‘Well, I was at my friend Jenny’s house −’ As soon as I opened my mouth I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop − ‘and I’d been borrowing her shoes, but she was just a big drunken weeping mess and she made me take them off—’

‘You don’t have shoes of your own?’ Bob interrupted. ‘I don’t follow …’

‘Maybe if we just deal with questions about the magazine right now?’ Delia suggested. ‘And let Angela’s shoe situation resolve itself. Do you have any questions about the business plan?’

Bob looked at Delia, at me, and then his phone. ‘No. It was very clear and concise.’

Delia beamed. ‘Any questions about the creative?’

‘None at all. You know more about that market than I do.’

‘So any questions at all?’ She straightened the collar on her sky-blue shirtdress. ‘Now’s the time to ask them, Grandpa.’

The stately, grey-haired media magnate leaned forward and rested his elbows on our glass conference table. ‘In all honesty, Delia, I just really want to know why she isn’t wearing shoes.’

Delia sat back, rubbed her forehead and gave me a quick, sharp nod.

‘So …’

‘That wasn’t scary at all,’ I said, spinning round and round in my office chair after Bob had left the office. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘It’s fine.’ Delia stretched her yoga-toned arms high above her head. ‘He’s going to say yes. There’s no reason for him not to. I have a good feeling.’

‘I’m glad someone has,’ I said grimly. I didn’t have any good feelings. I only felt like I had dirty feet and a craving for bacon. ‘Then why didn’t he just say yes?’

‘Don’t panic, Angela − I know my grandpa,’ she said. Her confidence was somewhat reassuring. ‘He never says yes on the spot. He likes to think about things, weigh up his options, but we’ve given him every reason to say yes. Besides, I know he wants me on the magazine side of the business. It’s not like Cici is proving herself heir apparent to the business when he retires.’

Despite a lifelong ambition to work in publishing, Delia had avoided Spencer Media until we started working on Gloss due to her batshit mental sister already working at The Look magazine. But while Cici’s ambitions only reached as far as stealing from the fashion cupboard and ruining the lives of British freelancers (cough − me − cough), Delia actually wanted to succeed. On the surface she was a blonde, Upper-East-Side WASP princess, but underneath she was a fiercely ambitious uber-genius. She was basically Serena van der Woodsen with the brain of Rupert Murdoch, and she had enough self-confidence to make Lady Gaga look like she was a bit down on herself. God help anyone who got in her way.

‘I just can’t cope with the idea of this not working out.’ I laid my head on the cool desk and peered at my iPhone. Ooh, some peas needed harvesting in my Smurf Village. ‘If he doesn’t go for it, then the last six months have been for nothing.’

‘Not going to happen,’ Delia said, enunciating each word with a clarity and confidence I couldn’t even try to feel. ‘Look, why don’t you take the afternoon off? There’s really nothing we can do now until he gets back to us.’

‘I was going to try to talk to Mary about some new features ideas,’ I said, twisting the emerald ring around my finger. Mary Stein, once we were officially off the ground, was going to be our editor. I was sort of surprised she’d agreed to it if I was being entirely honest. Mary and I had worked together on my blog when I’d moved to New York and I’d been nothing but trouble but I had a feeling she was itching to get off the blog and back onto a real magazine. That said, until we had full funding, she was still working on TheLook.com, but she made plenty of time to bitch out my ideas as often as possible. I loved her dearly. ‘And I could do with looking at the website plans again.’

Delia smiled at me across the office. ‘Do you realize you always do that when you’re nervous about something? Twist your engagement ring?’

‘I do?’ I looked down at my diamond and emerald sparkler and felt my frown turn upside down. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘It’s cute,’ she grinned. ‘When you’re stressed, that calms you down. Bodes well for the future, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose.’ It was a nice thought. ‘I’m probably just terrified of losing it, though.’

‘Speaking of engagement rings, I have something for you.’ She pulled a thick glossy magazine out from her beautiful Hermès Birkin and tossed it across to my desk. It landed with a pleasing thud and spilled open on a page full of amazing wedding dresses.

‘What is this?’ I said, turning to the front cover. ‘How do I not have this? I have all the magazines.’ I did. There were so many stacks of glossies in my apartment, I’d started using them as coffee tables. It was all part of my wedding-planning procrastination. If I had the magazines, at least I was sort of trying.

‘It’s actually British,’ Delia explained. ‘I wore some of the designer’s pieces when she did regular couture, but now she’s doing bridal. They’re amazing. I put a Post-it on the page you should look at.’

Regular couture. As if there were such a thing. I opened the magazine randomly to a painfully beautiful spread of painfully beautiful models wearing painfully beautiful wedding dresses. I ran my fingers over the glossy paper and tried to pretend I wasn’t barefoot and wearing a borrowed jumper because I’d effed-up one shirt already today. How was I ever going to manage in a wedding dress?

‘I marked the page with her dresses. Let me know if you want to talk to her − I’m sure she’d love to help.’ Delia’s eyes were bright and shining. It warmed my heart a little bit to remember that people could be lovely sometimes, especially after the morning I’d had. ‘And if you need any help with a venue, just say. I have so many contacts. Although I’m sure you’re fine. But really, just say the word.’

‘I will,’ I said, wiping some melting mascara away from under my eyes and added ‘wedding venue’ to the never-ending list of things I needed to worry about at some point in the future. Then delved right back into the bridal porn. Oh, the gloves … The vintage lace elbow-length gloves … ‘We haven’t got anywhere with planning yet. So far, all I know is what we don’t want.’

‘Which is?’

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the pretty pictures. ‘Agadoo. Any sort of live animal. Our parents.’

‘I don’t know what an “Agadoo” is. I’m with you on the live animals, but I really don’t know how you’re going to get away with leaving your folks out of the proceedings.’

‘Well, if I never tell them, they’ll never know,’ I pouted. ‘Sometimes I think we should have got married in Vegas.’

‘You know you don’t mean that,’ Delia said with a shudder. ‘Vegas weddings are very 2008. How is Alex?’

‘Recording.’ I gave her a small smile. ‘Always recording.’

Everyone I met thought it was super-cool to be engaged to a boy in a band. They saw nothing but gallons of champagne, midnight rock-and-roll adventures and sweaty on-stage serenades. The reality was far less romantic. We were more cider than champers, and the most adventurous I got pre-dawn was deciding whether or not I could be bothered to get up for a wee in the night. And as for the sweaty serenades, well, I couldn’t lie. There was something wonderful about hearing a song written just for you; but the actual process of pulling that song out of Alex’s head and recording it so thousands of other girls could pretend it was written just for them was an incredibly painful process.

At the beginning of January, a glazed look had come into Alex’s eyes and overnight he’d turned into a nocturnal creature. From the first deep freeze of the winter until the frost broke and the sun started shining in April, he’d been working on songs all night long and sleeping through the daylight hours. All of them. Now it was May and he was still at it. Every evening he’d emerge from the bedroom, confused and dishevelled, as the sun went down, only managing to focus when he picked up a guitar, a cup of coffee or the keys to the studio. It had been cute at first, but after the third time I’d had to take the rubbish out by myself, I’d been forced to slap him round the back of the head.

‘Seriously, go home,’ Delia commanded. ‘I’m ordering you to take the afternoon off. Go home, see your fiancé, read your wedding magazines. And don’t come back until you’ve got a colour scheme.’

‘A colour scheme?’

‘Go!’ she ordered. ‘You did really great this morning. You showed my grandpa your bra, you gave a very convincing PowerPoint presentation barefoot, and you handled an international Jenny Lopez crisis all before lunch. You get the afternoon off.’

When she put it like that, it did seem fairly reasonable.

The apartment was silent when I got home. Even though I’d been given the afternoon off by my kind of partner, kind of boss, I still felt like I had won something. Was there any better feeling than being at home when you were supposed to be in the office?

‘Hello?’ I called out, only to hear my voice echo back at me. No answer from Alex. Our place wasn’t huge, but it was airy − floor-to-ceiling windows, open-plan rooms, wooden floors. It would be beautiful if it weren’t such a shit-tip. There were takeout boxes everywhere, piles of magazines doubling as coffee tables and half-full, half-empty glasses resting on every surface. We were animals.

The answerphone flashed two messages which I purposely ignored; instead I went to wash my poor feet. The only people on earth who called the landline were my mother, because she was scared Skype was going to steal her soul, and telemarketers, because they had no soul to begin with. I was in the mood for neither.

Feet de-hobbited, I looked around the living room. The place really was a mess. When all I’d had to do in this world was write a blog, there had been hours upon hours to spend horizontal on the sofa, occasionally cleaning and watching the world go by. I’d spent days wandering through the city, dreaming about my next adventure, lost countless weekends on the Lower East Side with Jenny and our friend, Erin, and one too many cocktails. Now, with a few sacred spare hours, I was trying to shake the obligation to do the dishes while Erin sat at home with swollen ankles and Jenny, who had been dumped twice by the love of her life, was going off the rails faster than an underage X Factor contestant. I stared out of the window in the general direction of her apartment, wondering if she’d made it into the office. The Empire State Building winked back at me in the sunlight. It was such a tease.

A loud yawn emanating from the bedroom made me jump. Alex was home. I turned the AC all the way up and turned my back on the dishes. It was hot already, too hot for late spring, and all I wanted to do was hop into bed beside Alex and snuggle up under a blanket, but it was hard to snuggle under a blanket when you were sweating like a horse. Opening the bedroom door slowly and quietly, I smiled at the sight of my comatose boyfriend sprawled flat on his back, right across the bed. His dark hair slipped off his forehead as he stirred and his pale skin looked practically translucent from his self-enforced seclusion. The T-shirt he had passed out in had twisted up around his body, and his legs were caught up in our crisp white sheets. It was adorable. And hot. The good kind of hot.

Part of me really didn’t want to wake him. He looked so peaceful, and it was nice just to take two minutes out to stare at him without making him feel uncomfortable or making me feel like a pervert. Unfortunately, I was a clumsy cow who could only take off a pencil skirt by twisting the fastening round to the front, and sometimes, when that pencil skirt is stuck to your skin, twisting it round to the front is harder than you’d think. After wrestling with the hook and eye for too many seconds, I yanked it as hard as I could and triumphantly knocked myself right into the nightstand. My lotions and potions scattered and rolled around the room, crashing and clattering as they went. I froze, clutching the table and waiting for my pot of Crème de la Mer, a Christmas gift from Erin, to come to a silent standstill by the wardrobe.

‘Morning, Angela,’ Alex muttered without moving.

This was the problem with wearing lady clothes, as I had discovered. Taking them on and off again was hazardous to my health.

The bed was cool and the sheets were soft as I crawled in beside Alex. For a skinny boy, he was a great cuddle buddy. Broad shoulders and strong arms opened up and wrapped me up inside them as I sank into the bed.

‘Hey.’ He pressed his lips against my hair and yawned again. ‘You’re in bed.’

‘I took the afternoon off,’ I replied, pressing backwards against him, shivering with a happy. ‘Thought it might be nice to see your face.’

‘My face likes your face,’ he whispered. ‘Wait, it’s the afternoon?’

Bless his sleepy, confused heart.

‘You didn’t come to bed until five a.m.,’ I pointed out. ‘So I suppose technically it’s still the middle of the night to you.’

‘You had a meeting today,’ he murmured, reaching for my hand and entwining his fingers through mine. ‘How’d it go?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ I admitted. One of the terms of our engagement was full disclosure at all times, which I had a feeling Alex was starting to regret. ‘Delia says it will be OK, though. How’s the record going?’

Alex fumbled for an iPod resting on the nightstand on his side of the bed and pressed it into my hand. ‘Done.’

I rolled over quickly and kissed him square on the lips. ‘That’s amazing!’ I said, kissing him again. Because I could. ‘You’re really all finished?’

‘You know I wouldn’t let you listen to it if I wasn’t,’ he replied. ‘I’m done.’

‘Well done you.’ I pushed my far-too-long-and-desperately-in-need-of-a-trim hair out of my eyes to get a better look at him. So pretty. ‘I’ve missed you. What happens now?’

‘Now I sleep,’ he said, planting a kiss on the tip of my nose. ‘For a really long time.’

‘Sounds fair.’ I helped myself to one more kiss. Delicious. ‘And what happens after that?’

I really hoped he wasn’t going to say touring, because I was very concerned I would be forced to tie him to the bed and never let him leave. No one brought out my inner crazy like that man.

‘I was thinking …’ His bright green eyes flickered open and the lazy smile I’d heard in his words found its way to his lips. I was such a smitten kitten. ‘I might marry my girl.’

I pressed my forehead against his, completely incapable of keeping the biggest, brightest smile ever from my face. ‘Well, that sounds nice,’ I said. ‘Do you have any sort of plan for that?’

Alex kicked the covers away to wrap his bare legs around mine and drew me closer. ‘I have been putting a lot of thought into the honeymoon,’ he said, rolling over until his warm body covered mine. This was the kind of hot and sweaty I was perfectly OK with. ‘There’s some stuff I kinda need to test out.’

It had been so long since we had used our bed for anything other than sleeping, snacking and the occasional True Blood marathon that I felt a mild panic come over me. I couldn’t actually remember the last time we’d both been conscious and coital. I was so nervous, it was like the first time all over again. I was holding my breath and second-guessing my touches, but as I gave myself over to the melting feeling in my chest and the tingling in my lips, I forgot that it was daylight outside, I forgot that my underwear didn’t match, and suddenly, without even trying, it was like the first time all over again.

Amazing.

CHAPTER TWO

I was half awake and completely naked when I heard my phone buzzing in my bag from the living room a couple of hours later. Alex had slipped back into unconsciousness − I chose to believe that my supreme sexual prowess had knocked him out − and so, nosy old mare that I am, I rolled out of bed and into my pants, grabbed my phone and crawled into the kitchen to avoid flashing the neighbours.

Naturally the phone stopped ringing as soon as it was in my sweaty paws, but straightaway I saw a terrifying number of messages and missed calls from Louisa, my oldest, dearest friend in the UK. I swiped my phone screen to open them, refusing to entertain all the horrible thoughts that were running through my head. Of course someone had died while I was at home blowing out work for an afternoon quickie; what else could possibly have happened? Louisa’s texts didn’t really give me a lot of information, just repeated the demand that I call her as soon as I could, and that only worried me more. Louisa and I Skyped once a week as well as texted as often as her baby schedule would allow, and I knew I hadn’t missed a phone date. Since she had given birth to Grace a couple of months ago, we hadn’t been quite as chatty as normal, so seven ‘call me now’ texts at what had to be ten-ish in the evening UK-time couldn’t be good news. I fannied about with my iPhone contacts, trying to get it to call her back, but was cut off by an incoming call.

From my mother.

Someone was definitely dead.

Or someone was about to be.

With a very unpleasant feeling in my stomach, I reluctantly answered the phone.

‘Mum?’ I grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen counter and wrapped it around my chest. It just didn’t seem right to be topless while on the phone to my mother. Thank goodness I’d put on pants. ‘Is everything OK?’

The last time she’d put in an impromptu call was when my dad was in hospital after enjoying a recreational batch of space cakes at my auntie’s house. Ever since, I’d been waiting for the call to say he was leaving her for the milkman or that he had defaulted on the mortgage to fund his crack habit. It was impossible to say which was more likely.

‘Angela Clark, do you have something to tell me?’

The quiet fury in my mother’s voice suggested that my dad wasn’t in trouble but that I certainly was. And I was almost certain I knew why. Louisa’s texts suddenly made a terrifying kind of sense as I put two and two together to come up with a big fat shiny emerald-coloured four.

‘Um, I don’t think so?’ I answered sweetly. Because playing dumb had worked so well when I’d ‘borrowed’ her car in the middle of the night when I was eighteen, only to return it with three exciting new dents. I thought they added character. She thought they added to the insurance premium.

‘Are you or are you not −’ she paused and took a very deep, very dramatic breath − ‘engaged to that musician?’

Sodding bollocky bollocks.

It wasn’t like I’d planned on keeping my engagement a secret from my parents, but circumstances had conspired against me. And by circumstances, of course I meant stone cold terror. I’d called on Christmas Day to deliver the happy news, but my mum had been so mad that I hadn’t come home for dry turkey and seething resentment, and so mad that I was choosing to stay in ‘that country’ with ‘that musician’, that I couldn’t seem to find the right way to tell her I had just accepted a proposal from ‘that musician’ to stay in ‘that country’ for the foreseeable. Then, as the weeks passed by, the more I replayed the conversation over in my mind, the less I felt like casually mentioning my betrothal.

‘Am I engaged?’

‘Yes.’

‘To Alex?’

‘Yes Angela. To Alex. Or at least one hopes so.’

She used the special voice to pronounce my fiance’s name that she usually saved to refer to Sandra next door and Eamonn Holmes. And she hated Sandra next door and Eamonn Holmes.

‘Well, at least I’m not going to end up a barren spinster.’ Yes, dangling a grandchild-shaped carrot in front of her was a low blow, but needs must when the devil shits in your teapot. ‘Surely?’

‘Oh dear God, Angela, are you pregnant?’ she shrieked directly into the receiver before bellowing at the top of her voice in the other direction, ‘David! She’s pregnant!’

‘I’m not pregnant,’ I said, resting my head on my knees. I might be sitting half-naked on a dirty kitchen floor with a slightly grubby tea towel over my boobs, but I wasn’t pregnant. As far as I knew. ‘Seriously.’

‘Oh Lord, I should have known,’ she wittered on regardless. ‘Moving in with that musician, never calling, never visiting. How far gone are you?’

‘I’m not pregnant,’ I repeated with as much conviction as I could muster while simultaneously trying to remember if I had taken my pill that morning. ‘Mum, I’m not.’

‘How far gone is she?’ I heard my dad puffing his way down to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Is it that musician’s? Is that why she’s engaged?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Even though they couldn’t see me, I couldn’t resist an eye roll and emphatic wave of the hand. ‘I’m genuinely not pregnant. Alex did not propose because I’m up the stick. To the best of my knowledge, it’s because he actually wants to marry me.’

‘Right,’ she replied with a very subtle scoffing tone.

‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘Shall I book a flight? Do I need to go and get her?’ Dad was practically out the door already. ‘I’ll have to go to the post office and get some dollars.’

‘The post office,’ Mum seethed. Another of her arch enemies. ‘Go back upstairs. She says she’s not pregnant.’

‘She’d better bloody not be,’ he said, just loud enough for me to hear. ‘She’s not too old to go over my knee. That musician of hers as well.’

I fought the urge to remind him I’d only gone ‘over his knee’ once, when I was five and had purposely gone into his room, walked into the garden and thrown his best leather driving gloves into the pond so we wouldn’t have to go to my aunt Sheila’s. I was a petulant little madam. But he had apologized when I was twenty-five and told me I was right to have done it because my aunt Sheila was a − quote-unquote − right pain in the arse.

‘I can’t imagine why else you would think the best way for a mother to find out her daughter is engaged − to a musician, no less − that she has never met and who lives ten thousand miles away is to hear it from the village gossip on the Waitrose cheese aisle.’

I had to admit she had a point there.

The thing was, ever since my seasonal no-show, the subtle digs at Alex and his choice of profession had become out-and-out abuse. By the end of January she had written him off as Hitler and Mick Jagger’s love child. To most people, a musician was someone who played an instrument. To my mother, they had to be a lying, cheating drug addict whose only ambition in life was to knock up her poor, stupid daughter and then leave her destitute in a motel on the side of a highway with an arm full of track marks. It was a bit of a stretch. Alex didn’t even like to take Advil for a headache.

‘You told Louisa before your own family?’

Oh, Louisa, I thought to myself. Baby or no baby, you are dead.

‘Look, I wasn’t not telling you,’ I said, deciding to take a different tack. And to get off the kitchen floor because my bum was completely numb. ‘I just didn’t want to tell you over the phone. It didn’t seem right.’

Check me out − the dutiful daughter. For a spur-of-the-moment excuse, I thought it was pretty good. I tiptoed over to the sofa and replaced the tea towel with a blanket. Very chic.

‘Well, that’s probably because it isn’t right,’ she said, still sounding grumpy, but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be disinherited. This time. ‘We haven’t even met this Alex character. It’s not right.’

‘He’s not a character, he’s a person.’ I took a deep breath, imagining the cold day in hell when Alex would sit down for afternoon tea with my mum and dad. ‘And you will meet him and you’ll love him.’

‘When?’

Oh cock.

‘Soon?’ I managed to make the word so high-pitched I swear the dogs next door started whining.

‘Bring him home for my birthday.’

And it wasn’t a question.

‘We’re having a bit of a do − nothing fancy, just something in the garden for the family,’ she went on. ‘And I want you there. And if he thinks he’s going to be part of this family, he’d better be there too.’

I put my mum on speakerphone and opened my calendar. Her birthday was in three weeks. Three very short, very unavoidable weeks. It wasn’t that I had forgotten, it’s just that until Facebook reminds me someone has been born, it just doesn’t register.

‘It’s a bit soon, Mum,’ I said slowly. ‘And the flights will be expensive …’

‘Your dad and I will pay.’

There was blood in the water, and Annette Clark never gave up until she got her kill.

‘For both of you. As an engagement present.’

‘Right.’ I felt very, very sick. Home. London. England. Mark. Everything I’d left behind.

‘And you’ll stay here.’ She was really enjoying herself now. ‘With your dad and me. Oh, Angela, you’ve made my birthday. David, get on Expedia, she’s coming home!’

And at that moment, I knew two things only. The first was that I was going to kill Louisa. The second was that I was going to have to go to London.

‘I didn’t tell her,’ Louisa whined into the phone as I hopped into a cab the next morning. The subway was down and I was already late for the office, having spent most of the previous evening drinking homemade margaritas while Alex stroked my hair and tried to talk me off the ledge. ‘It was Tim. It was a mistake.’

‘How did Tim manage to tell my mother I’m engaged?’ I fumbled in my satchel for a pair of sunglasses. The sun was too bright and my hangover was too sharp. ‘Is this because I broke his hand?’

Which I did. Almost accidentally. On their wedding day. I wasn’t sure if he’d forgiven me in the two years since I’d fled.

‘No.’ Louisa sounded tired. I had heard that was one of the side effects of having a baby, and according to my mother I’d know all about that. ‘He was in the supermarket and Mark’s mum was in there and going on about how Mark was going to New York for some conference—’

‘Mark?’ I suddenly felt very sweaty. And sick. And violent. ‘Mark Mark?’

‘Yes, Angela, Mark. You do recall? You were engaged to him for a million years?’

‘So Mark then?’ I said. ‘I just wanted to clarify that we were talking about the same scumbag.’

‘Yes, Mark.’ The word had lost all meaning. ‘So he was supposed to be going to New York for this conference because he’s just so important, and obviously Tim mentioned you were in New York, and obviously she couldn’t help having a dig, and so he casually dropped in that you were engaged. He didn’t mean to, honestly, and he had no idea she’d tell your mum. I mean, he didn’t know your mum was in there as well, did he?’

‘My mum is always in the supermarket,’ I replied, watching Williamsburg rush by, giving way to the Polish shop signs of Greenpoint and assorted acid-washed denim ensembles. ‘She lives and dies for Waitrose. I’m amazed they haven’t given her a job yet.’

‘Well, I just wanted you to know it wasn’t on purpose. Really, he was trying to do you a favour,’ Louisa bellowed over the Top Gear theme tune. ‘He’s totally Team Angela.’

‘But getting back to the important things, Mark is coming to New York?’ I didn’t need to see my reflection to know I had no colour left in my face. ‘When? Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ Louisa sighed. ‘He didn’t get the details. He is only a man, babe. And you know they don’t talk at all any more. It’s not like you’re going to bump into him, though, is it?’

‘No.’ I breathed out hard. My ex in my city. How dare he? Wasn’t there a law against cheating ex-boyfriends coming within five thousand miles of you? ‘It’s just sod’s law, isn’t it? I’ll be walking into work with my skirt tucked into my knickers and he’ll just appear.’

‘No he won’t, don’t be silly.’ Louisa had a fantastic telling-off voice already. She was going to be a great mother. ‘And even if he did, you’d just walk straight past him with your head held high.’

‘Or scream like a banshee and kick him in the bollocks?’ I suggested.

‘Sounds perfectly reasonable to me,’ she replied. ‘God knows, I’ve thought about it.’

‘It’s a good job he cheated on me before I discovered my violent side,’ I said, not even slightly meaning it. ‘Louisa, why on earth are you watching Top Gear on a Tuesday afternoon?’

Louisa’s voice strained as she hoisted up something heavy. I assumed it was the baby. ‘I’m sorry, it’s the only thing that stops her crying. I sometimes wonder what I’m raising.’

‘A tiny female Jeremy Clarkson?’ I shuddered. The idea of Louisa having a baby terrified me, let alone the idea of a baby that could only be placated by watching grown men with bad hair drive a Ford Mondeo into a caravan. ‘You should see someone about that.’

‘Top Gear and The Only Way Is Essex,’ she sighed. ‘Three months old and she’s already a fake-tanned boy racer with a vajazzle.’

‘I don’t understand at least half of what you just said,’ I remonstrated. The shop fronts slid into warehouses and the warehouses into the expressway before I finally saw the bridge and my beloved Manhattan in front of me. My blood pressure dropped just enough to make me sure I wasn’t going to die in the car. Good news − they charged fifty dollars if you puked; I had no idea how much a stroke would set me back. ‘And I don’t think I want to.’

Louisa laughed. Which made the baby cry. Which made Louisa sob.

‘Well, I know it’s selfish, but I can’t wait to see you,’ she said. ‘It’s time you met this little girl of mine. It’s been too long, Clark.’

‘I know, I want to see her face.’ I traced the Empire State Building against the window as we hurtled over the bridge. ‘I just feel so weird about coming back.’

‘That’s natural,’ she shouted. ‘It’s been a while, but, you know, you’ve got your visa now, you’ve got Alex − it’s not like they’re going to hold you at customs and never let you go.’

‘Yes, I have Alex now, but he hasn’t met my mum yet,’ I replied grimly. ‘And there’s every chance my dad is going to tie me up with a hosepipe and lock me in the shed.’

‘Yeah, he might do that,’ she admitted. ‘Or I might. I miss you so much.’

‘I miss you too,’ I said, feeling incredibly guilty for not meaning it nearly enough.

I did miss Louisa, I really did, but I missed the old Louisa. I missed our Friday-night wine dates and calling her during Downton Abbey to get a running commentary on the episodes that hadn’t aired in America yet. No one took apart a period drama like Louisa. But things had changed. She had an actual live baby, and the way life raced around me now, it was hard to find five minutes to really indulge in a good sulk about days gone by. Between work, not planning the wedding, trying to stop Jenny from drinking New York dry and attempting to dress like a grown-up every day, I struggled to find time to miss anything other than sleep.

And I definitely wasn’t in a baby place. I couldn’t even see the baby place from where I was. Now that Louisa had Grace, things felt a bit strained. Sometimes she was all we talked about. Of course I knew it was the most important thing that had ever happened to her, but I felt stupid complaining about being a bit hungover and the cost of handbags when Louisa now had to keep a tiny human being alive. I couldn’t even look after a handbag, I thought, stroking my beloved and nigh on destroyed Marc Jacobs satchel with every ounce of tenderness I would show my firstborn child. Which, as far as I was concerned, it was.

‘It’ll be fine, you know,’ Louisa promised. ‘Obviously your mum’s going to be an arse for the first couple of days, but your dad will be so happy to see you. And I want you to meet Grace. And I want to meet Alex. Honestly, Ange, it’ll be great.’

‘I suppose,’ I said, trying to adopt her positive attitude. ‘It’s just been so long, you know? I feel like it’ll be weird. Things are so different.’

‘No they aren’t,’ she argued. ‘Bruce is still doing Strictly, everyone’s still obsessed with Percy Pigs and the world still stops for X Factor. Things are, in fact, exactly the same.’

I smiled. She was trying. And it didn’t really make a lot of difference. I was going whether I liked it or not.

‘It’s not just that, though − there’s work as well,’ I said. Hopefully there was work. We still hadn’t heard back from Bob. ‘I’m working twelve hours a day. I don’t know how I’m just supposed to take a week off.’

‘People manage,’ Lou replied. ‘And you bloody should take some time off. It’s not healthy to work as hard as you have been.’

I didn’t like to say it might not be healthy but it was entirely necessary. When she had told me she was thinking about packing in work to be a full-time mum, I couldn’t speak to her for a week. Not because I didn’t agree with it as an option; it was just so far removed from the Louisa I knew. My career was important to me, but she was keen to tell me I couldn’t possibly understand anything ‘until I had a baby’. Grr.

‘Do you promise to make me lots and lots of tea?’ I asked solemnly.

‘I do,’ she replied with equal gravity.

‘And to be nice to Alex?’

‘You’ll be lucky if I don’t try to run off with him.’

‘And that you’ll be my alibi in case I accidentally murder my mother?’

‘I’ll do it for you,’ she swore. ‘Just get your arse home, Clark. There’s a chav-obsessed shit machine here that’s desperate for your influence.’

‘I’m pretty sure you should stick with Grace,’ I suggested. ‘It’s much more flattering.’

‘Just get on a plane and call me as soon as you land,’ Louisa replied. ‘I’ll pick you up from the airport.’

‘Yes, you bloody will,’ I said. ‘Yes, you bloody well will.’

CHAPTER THREE

Tuesday and Wednesday were no better than Monday. No word from Mr Spencer on Gloss. No word from Jenny from the dubious liaison that had led to last week’s meltdown. Lots of word from my mother on times and dates of flights back to the UK. Finally, after a very long day of spreadsheets and feature ideas and willing the phone to ring with good news from Bob, I fell through the door sometime after nine and noticed right away that all the lights were out. No Alex.

I buried my disappointment in a hastily downed glass of white and went to run a bath, shedding my Splendid T-shirt dress and French Sole flats as I went. While the bath filled with lovely lemon-and-sage-scented Bliss bubbles, I pulled my hair back from my face, scrubbed away the day and stared at myself in the mirror. It was two years since this face had been in England. Two years since I’d walked in on my fiancé shagging his mistress in the back of our car. Two years since I’d cried myself to sleep in a hotel room. Two years since I’d jumped on a flight away from it all and found myself here. Home. I frowned. Was I allowed to call New York home? I mean, I had grown up in England − my family was there, my GCSE certificates and Buffy DVDs were there. Come Dine with Me was there. Didn’t home mean family and familiarity and M&S?

I washed my face, hoping to uncover a happier expression, but just uncovered a couple of fine lines around my eyes and a hint of sunburn across my cheeks. Hmm. Running my fingers lightly over my skin, I stared myself out, looking for something new. Same blue eyes, same cheekbones, same hair, if a little longer and blonder. Same Angela. But still not a flicker. For the want of an answer that would settle the butterflies in my stomach, I got into the tub. There were so few things you could rely on in life, but bubble baths, kittens and a quick game of Buckaroo were three things that would never let you down. Sadly, we were kittenless and there was no one home to play Buckaroo with.

Deep in the warm, soapy water, I closed my eyes and rested my toes on the taps. Heaven. Nothing could go wrong when you were in the bath. Until the day they invented waterproof iPhones, anyway. I spun my engagement ring around my finger with my thumb, rhythmically clinking it against the side of the tub. The magazine was good. Yes, we needed to get Bob’s blessing, but like Delia said, there was no reason why we wouldn’t. OK, so Jenny had gone slightly mad, but who could blame her? She would be fine when she’d had some time and I’d be there for her. And I was engaged. I was engaged, for real, to someone I loved. Someone who loved me. That was a pretty good thing. And as for going back to England, well. Hmm. I screwed up my face and sighed, eyes tightly closed.

‘Man, what is that face for?’

I jumped a mile out of my skin, splashing white, frothy bubbles all over the bathroom floor and slipping back under the water in surprise.

‘Alex,’ I gasped, re-emerging with wet hair and a considerably shortened lifespan. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ My fiancé stretched in the doorway and peeled off his leather jacket, throwing it on the floor on top of my dress. We were a right pair of scruffy bastards. Thank God we had found each other. ‘You looked like you were trying to solve one of life’s great mysteries. Were you trying to work out what I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter is made from again?’

‘That was only once,’ I grumbled, adjusting my bubble coverage. ‘And you admitted you didn’t know either.’

‘No, I admitted I didn’t care.’ He corrected me with a smile and folded himself into a sitting position beside the bath. ‘So what’s up? Tough day at the office?’

‘Actually no.’ I leaned my head over to accept my hello kiss and resisted the urge to splash him. It was a very strong urge. ‘Still just waiting to hear if Bob’s going to let Delia present at the advertisers’ thing. It’s next month, I think, so he’s going to have to make his mind up fairly quickly.’

‘He’s gonna say yes,’ Alex assured me with a gentle stroke of my hair. ‘You guys have put so much work in. He would be crazy to turn it down.’

‘I know,’ I purred. Stroking was nice. ‘I just want it confirmed, you know?’

‘I do know,’ he nodded. ‘So what was that face all about when I came in?’

Sometimes I hated our full disclosure agreement. Sometimes a girl wanted to sit in the bath and wallow like a mardy, hungry hippo. Now I was going to have to tell him all my ridiculous concerns and let him make me feel better. Stupid, clever, pretty boy.

‘Just thinking about this whole going back thing,’ I said, wiggling my toes at myself. ‘Just stressing myself out.’

‘Huh.’ He rested his chin on the side of the bath and looked at me with bright green eyes. ‘You know you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I feel like it’s getting to be a thing. What’s up with you and your mom? What’s with the big freak-out?’

Now there was a question. I thought about it for a moment, waiting for words to come out of my mouth. But they didn’t. For the first time in my entire life.

‘I mean, it’s not like I don’t have parental issues of my own,’ Alex went on, filling in the silence for me. ‘But you’re gonna have to help me out. You don’t want to go home or you just don’t want to see her?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. It didn’t help, but it was honest.

‘You guys don’t get along?’

‘We actually used to be all right,’ I said, remembering all the Sunday dinners in front of the EastEnders omnibus. ‘I mean, she’s my mum. She’s a pain in the arse, but I just − I just feel bad.’

Alex resumed the hair-stroking. ‘Because?’

‘Because I came here. I left her. And I know that, for all her moaning, she misses me, and I feel guilty. As much as she’s a pain in the arse, my mum’s always been there for me.’ I couldn’t help but think about Louisa’s wedding. Who else would put you to bed and tell you everything was going to be all right immediately after you’d split up a ten-year relationship, made something of a scene and broken the groom’s hand with a stiletto? Only your mother.

‘The day you don’t feel guilty about your parents will be the day the world stops turning,’ Alex said. ‘I think going back to visit is a good thing. Maybe it’ll remind her you’re still here. You’re not on the moon, you’re just a plane ride away. Maybe she’ll stop guilt-tripping you so much.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ And maybe I’ll wake up to find a bacon sandwich winging its way past the window. Silly Alex. ‘It just feels so strange. Like, I won’t be welcome.’

‘Well, that’s dumb,’ he laughed, pulling on my ponytail. ‘I didn’t want to say anything, but I’ve already had two emails from Louisa and a Facebook friend request from your dad. They can’t wait to see you.’

‘Parents really shouldn’t be allowed on Facebook,’ I said, making a face and trying to smile. ‘Please feel free to ignore it. I know they’re excited to see me. And I’m excited to see them.’

‘But?’

I looked around the bathroom. At the towels on the heated rail, at all my products loaded on the windowsill, at my boyfriend on the floor, and imagined my life for a moment without any of it.

‘But I still don’t want to go,’ I said eventually.

‘Because?’

‘Because I left,’ I said with a deep breath. ‘And I’m scared that if I go back home to England, I’ll have to give up my home in New York.’

Alex breathed out with a whistle. ‘Wow.’

I turned my head to the side to face him properly and did not enjoy his expression.

‘You realize that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said?’ Alex asked. ‘And you know, between you and me, you’ve said some pretty dumb shit over the years. It’s not an either/or sitch.’

‘I know,’ I whined, dropping my toes back into the bath and flipping the bubbles around my feet. ‘But you don’t get it. When I came here, everything changed. I met Jenny, I started writing, I met you. I changed. I didn’t like myself before. Before, I would just sit in my pyjamas and watch Sex and the City and wait for something to happen.’

‘Angela, what did you do last night?’

‘I sat on the settee in my pyjamas and watched Sex and the City, but that’s not the point,’ I replied. ‘It’s different. I’m different.’

‘I do get what you’re saying,’ he started carefully, choosing his words, presumably to minimize the chances that I would pull him face first into the bath. He was treading a very fine line. ‘But just listen to what you’re saying. You are different now. Even if you get back and they’re all the same. I know things weren’t awesome for you before you moved here − people don’t usually get on a plane and move to another country without notice if they’re super-happy with life − but what you have here, what you’ve achieved, no one can take away from you.’

I bit my lip and nodded.

‘No one can take me away from you.’ He reached into the bath water and pulled out my left hand, holding my ring up to the light. ‘And no one is going to take you away from me.’

I felt myself blush from head to toe. Sometimes I still didn’t quite believe it.

‘We’re going to go to London, you’re gonna show everyone this ring, and I’m gonna knock your mom’s socks off. By the time I’m done, she’s going to love me so much, she’ll be pushing you back on that plane. Back to New York, back to the magazine, back to all your friends and, like it or not, I’m going to marry your ass.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ I said, trying to maintain my grumpy face, but it was hard when he was sitting there making sense and being adorable.

‘So, list of reasons to be cheerful?’ He squeezed my hand tightly. ‘You’re gonna see your mom and stop beating yourself up. You get to see Louisa and the baby. You get to see me being adorable with a baby. Your magazine is gonna kick ass and we get to go on a trip to London. I think that’s pretty cool. I’m excited.’

There were a million good reasons to marry Alex Reid, but one of the best was his ability to talk sense and put a smile on my face when I couldn’t see the lovely wood for the shitty trees.

‘And if you don’t tell me you’re excited, I’m going to drag you out of that bath and throw you into the East River,’ he declared.

‘You’re all talk, Reid.’ I shuffled further into the bath, further under the bubbles.

‘Is that right?’ He leapt to his feet, all six-foot-something in skintight jeans and a battered old black T-shirt. ‘You’re asking for trouble now.’

‘Fuck off and put the kettle on,’ I yawned. ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’

‘That does it. Get your ass out the bath and put the kettle on yourself.’

Without warning, he leaned over into the bath and picked me up. I reached up and grabbed around his neck instinctively, half the bath water following me out.

‘Alex, put me down,’ I squealed, dripping wet and completely and utterly naked. ‘Put me back in the bath!’

‘No way.’ He held me tightly, so much stronger than he had any right to be, and ducked my flailing, sodden limbs. ‘That’s enough sulking in the bath for one day. It’s time you made my dinner, woman.’

I couldn’t argue for laughing, and, despite slipperiness, couldn’t seem to wriggle away, so I let him carry me out of the bathroom, water dripping behind us, and throw me down on the bed.

‘So we’re agreed?’ Alex asked, peeling off his piss-wet T-shirt and tossing it at me. ‘You’re going to stop being a dumbass?’

‘Only if you get that bloody kettle on and clean up the bathroom floor,’ I retaliated, finally getting my breath back.

‘I knew marrying you was going to be a mistake.’ He flipped me his middle finger and walked out of the bedroom. I sat on the bed, holding his T-shirt, then heard the kitchen tap followed by the click of the kettle. I smiled.

Things were probably going to be OK.

Over the next couple of days, due to Alex’s enthusiasm and in spite of my mother’s, I started to get excited about the idea of going home. In between frantic spreadsheet sessions in the office, I’d find myself fantasizing about sausage rolls or imagining a crazed rampage through the Marks & Spencer lingerie department. No one made knickers like M&S. And the more I thought about it, the more excited I was to take Alex with me. He was going to be my good-luck charm. After all, he was right − I had changed, and it wasn’t like I would regress in the space of a couple of days to the same old mousey, housebound Angela whose idea of an exciting night out was a turn round Asda. We would go to London, I would parade him around like the show pony that he was and then we would come home. With enough bags of Monster Munch to warrant the purchase of a new suitcase. Or two.

When Saturday morning rolled around, I finally felt like myself again. There was a bounce in my step and considerably less need for Touche Éclat as I prepared for brunch with the girls. Jenny had been quiet all week, ignoring texts and emails, but according to Erin she’d got her shit together in the office, at least. Every day this week, she’d been on time, awake, seemingly sober and, most importantly of all, appropriately attired. Not only could no one see her underwear, but said underwear was covered by designer clothing befitting a label whore of Jenny’s standing. I was relieved. I wasn’t ecstatic that she was dodging my calls, but I was happy that she was at least functioning. And as a reward, today we were going to sit down with her in a public place, feed her full of scrambled eggs and suggest she get help moving on from Jeff. And hope she didn’t punch me in the face.

I’d chosen a heavily patterned Marc by Marc Jacobs shift dress just in case she decided to launch her Eggs Benedict in my direction and had kept my make-up to a minimum. Nothing that couldn’t be patched up while sobbing in a public bathroom. With one last deep breath and a quick practice of my resolved face in the mirror, I kissed a sleeping Alex goodbye and headed out to the train. Before we could stage our Lopez arse-kicking, Sadie and Erin had asked me to meet them all up town for my ‘surprise’. I wasn’t super-excited, mainly because it added thirty minutes to my journey and that meant thirty minutes’ less sleep on a weekend morning. Plus, while I always told people I loved surprises, what I really loved was someone planning a surprise and then me finding out what it was before it happened. I was something of a spoilsport.

The entire week had been warmer than it needed to be and my deodorant was being sorely tested by the time I emerged on 77th and Lex. I was hungry. I was stressed. I was ready for brunch. What I was not ready for was two giddy blondes, one tall and skinny, the other short and round, humming with excitement outside a big, boring corporate building. The second Sadie spotted me, she started leaping up and down and squealing. This, in my experience, was never a good sign. She was either drunk or high or drunk and high, and I wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with any of those things without a belly full of bacon. Sadie was Jenny’s roommate. My replacement. My six foot, blonde, beautiful, genuinely had her photo taken for money model replacement. But that fact didn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that Jenny wasn’t with her.

‘Morning,’ I frowned, looking to Erin for some sense. I got nothing. Instead I was bundled into a giant hug, made a little difficult by the bump, but this was one hell of a committed hug. ‘What are we celebrating? Is Jenny sober?’

‘Jenny isn’t here yet.’ Erin broke the hug and brushed my hair behind my ears. ‘But she’s on her way.’

‘We have to go in before we’re late,’ Sadie said, giving me a smile so wide and bright I had to take a step back. I hated models. ‘I am so freaking excited.’

‘Excited about what?’ I looked around, trying to work out what had them so dizzy. If I didn’t find something that would stop my stomach from rumbling in the next seven seconds, I would be snatching a bagel out of the hand of the very next passer-by.

‘Oh, honey, we have a surprise for you.’ Erin took hold of my arm and led me through the doors of the office building and straight into a lift. ‘Sadie and I were talking, and we think it’s high time you got your mind set on this wedding of yours.’

I didn’t know what alarmed me more − the thought of Sadie and Erin having a meeting of minds or the fact that there had apparently been an Angela Clark Wedding Summit without Angela Clark.

‘So we decided to hurry you up a little.’ Her eyes sparkled brighter than my engagement ring.

‘Just to give you a little inspiration.’ Sadie dug her hands into her jeans pockets and tossed her honey-coloured ponytail over one shoulder.

The lift doors opened before I could wonder any longer and I was greeted with three words that simultaneously made my heart swell with joy and put the fear of God into my soul. Vera Wang Bridal.

‘Oh no,’ I whispered.

‘Hell yes,’ Sadie responded, pushing me out of the lift. ‘Now, let’s get your ass into a wedding dress.’

And suddenly I was incredibly thankful for the fact I hadn’t had breakfast.

Ten minutes later, the three of us were perched on silk-covered clouds, masquerading as overstuffed sofas, in a giant dressing room while a very smiley, very enthusiastic assistant named Charise brought in dress after dress after dress. Except that ‘dress’ really wasn’t an adequate word for anything in front of me. They were frothy concoctions of silk, tulle and the souls of unicorns, sewn together by kittens and carried here by a family of bunnies. They were amazing. They were a fantasy. I sat on my hands to keep from poking them. Didn’t seem like the done thing.

‘Sorry we kept it a surprise,’ Erin whispered in an appropriately reverential tone. ‘It was Jenny’s idea. We know you’ve been so crazy busy that you haven’t even started thinking about the wedding, so, you know, this just seemed like a good way to kick-start things.’

I nodded slowly. This was the second time in a week someone had tried to ‘kick-start’ my wedding planning with the lure of pretty dresses. I wondered if Alex’s friends were tempting him out of the house with the promise of delicious meals only to bombard him with designer tuxedos. Probably not.

‘We are still having brunch though, aren’t we?’ My priorities were poker straight.

‘Believe me, I know how stressful wedding planning is,’ Erin said, holding up both hands to emphasize her point while Sadie listened intently. Both ignored my question. ‘And these are the fun parts. Honestly, by the day of the wedding, you’re going to wish you’d just eloped.’

‘I had a friend who got married. She was a model,’ Sadie added entirely unnecessarily. All of her friends who weren’t in this room were models. ‘And she cried the whole time. Everyone thought it was because she was so happy, but it wasn’t. She, like, totally freaked out. I had to talk her out of ditching him in the bathroom.’

‘Sounds like my first wedding,’ Erin agreed. ‘I had to watch the video afterwards to actually see what happened. I was just panicking the whole time.’

Thanks to the massive number of mirrors in the dressing room, it wasn’t just the girls who had the pleasure of my expression. If my eyebrows could get this high this quickly, I would never need Botox.

‘But you’ll be fine,’ Erin said quickly. ‘That’s why we need to start planning now. Dresses first, then the venue and the catering, and then you only need to worry about the guest list. And you’ve got for ever, right? What are you thinking? Next summer? Next autumn?’

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Guest lists. Venues. Dresses.

‘Oh, you need at least eighteen months,’ Sadie declared. Unmarried, twenty-three-year-old, single Sadie. ‘At least. You won’t get any decent venue with less notice than eighteen months.’

‘Unless you do a Friday.’ Erin shrugged and made a face. ‘But you can’t do a Friday.’

‘Tacky,’ Sadie confirmed. ‘So what are you thinking?’

And that was the first time since getting engaged that I realized I wasn’t just wearing this ring for a laugh. I was actually getting married. I was going to be a bride. I was going to put on a great big dress and mince down an aisle and make promises to Alex in front of lots of people, then eat a painstakingly selected meal that I would endeavour not to spill down one of these incredibly expensive dresses. I was getting married. To a boy. For ever and ever and ever. Gulp.

‘Can I get you ladies some champagne?’ Charise asked, hanging a fourth dress and glowing in our general direction.

‘Yes please,’ we answered in unison.

‘I’ll be right back,’ she replied, backing out of the room. Obviously she could tell something was wrong because instead of cooing over the dresses and having a little cry like we should be, we were sitting in stony silence.

‘Where is Jenny?’ I pulled out my phone and jabbed at the screen. No messages, no missed calls.

‘I knew I shouldn’t have left without her.’ Sadie rubbed her bare arm and frowned. ‘But she’s been OK the last couple of days and she was excited.’

‘And she said she was coming?’ Erin asked, dialling Jenny’s number, hanging up and dialling again. And again. And again. ‘You spoke to her?’

‘I knocked on her door, I told her we needed to leave, she stuck her head out.’ Sadie paused to reinforce her statement through the medium of mime. ‘And said she’d be here, like, ten minutes after us. Now can someone please, for the love of Wang, start trying on dresses?’

‘I can’t try them on without Jenny here,’ I said, reaching out to touch a puff of organza. I prodded it lightly with a fingernail in case it popped and disappeared. ‘I can’t.’

There was silence in the room while Sadie vibrated with impatience.

‘I’ll go and get her,’ Erin said after a long, lustful look at an ivory satin bodice. ‘You get started on the dresses and I’ll go and get her.’

‘No, don’t be stupid.’ I jumped to my feet. ‘You’re the size of seven hippos. I’ll go.’

‘But you have to try on dresses!’ Sadie actually stamped her foot. It was like having a six-foot-two three-year-old in the room throwing a tantrum. ‘Someone has to try on a dress.’

‘So you try one on for me,’ I said, tossing my satchel over my shoulder and heading out of the door. ‘I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Twenty tops. Don’t drink all the champagne.’

Before Erin could heave herself out of her chair I was up and on my way out of the door, and I didn’t breathe again until I felt the sun on my skin. I breathed in and out as deeply as I could as I stuck my arm out for a cab. The bridal salon had a soft, powdery perfume that had started to make me feel sick. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to try on the dresses. I was only a girl, after all, and what girl could resist wedding dresses? And these weren’t just any wedding dresses, they were Wang. These were hardcore, triple-X bridal crack, enough to go to any girl’s head. But it was the surprise element that was too much for me. A girl needed to build up to something like this; you couldn’t just go in cold on Wang, for God’s sake. I needed an hour or so with some magazines, a visit to the Bloomingdale’s bridal floor, enough notice to make sure my underwear matched, that kind of thing.

I could still see each of the four dresses Charise had picked out dancing around in my head when I jumped into a taxi and gave them Jenny’s address. There was the ivory one with the black ribbon waist that flowed down to the ground like a pile of very elegant used tissues. Maybe not for me. And then the one with the sparkly embroidered bodice that whispered Kim Kardashian a little too loudly for my liking. I didn’t really want to celebrate my special day looking like someone whose last marriage lasted a whole seventy-two days. The whitest one looked a little bit like a very beautifully draped towel, and then there was the prettiest dress I had ever seen. Not the most mind-blowing, not the biggest, brightest or boldest, nothing that would change the world, but definitely the prettiest. I closed my eyes, wound down the window and took a moment to imagine myself waltzing around a candlelit ballroom wearing the delicately peach-hued mermaid dress, roses of tulle floating around my feet, wisps of silk brushing against my skin. It was beautiful and I could see it. But it just didn’t feel like me. And it definitely didn’t feel like Alex. I pressed my fingers against my forehead and nibbled on a thumbnail. It struck me this whole wedding malarkey was going to be harder than I’d thought, now I realized I hadn’t really thought about it at all.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Jenny?’

I had decided against ringing the buzzer and let myself straight into the apartment with the key I had never bothered to give back − I wasn’t about to stand on the pavement like a spare part if she had just decided she didn’t fancy company. It was about time we got this intervention-slash-arse-kicking on the road.

Things had changed since I’d lived on the corner of 39th and Lex. Every surface in the apartment was now bright white, courtesy of Sadie and her Mariah Carey addiction to blinding surfaces. Unfortunately, that addiction didn’t run as far as actual cleaning or hiring a housekeeper. If possible, their flat was a worse shit-hole than mine. Used-up cartons of coconut water (Sadie’s) and empty pyramids of Coronas (Jenny’s) lined the kitchenette, and the living room was artfully decorated with more clothes than you could find in your average Help the Aged. A cashmere sweater here, an Abercrombie hoodie there, seven Victoria’s Secret thongs adding colour to the couch and an eye-wateringly beautiful Jason Wu dress being used as a rug. It hurt my heart to look at it on the floor, just begging to be picked up, nicked and then never, ever worn, given that it was at least three sizes too small for me. Sadie’s and Jenny’s wardrobes tended to bring out my inner klepto.

‘If you’re not here,’ I called out, tiptoeing around a lovely-looking pair of YSL Tributes in, ooh, my size, ‘I’ll just help myself to that box of Godiva truffles you keep hidden on top of the cupboards.’

I stood outside her bedroom door, barely breathing, just to make sure I could in fact hear shuffling around. Unbelievable. She was in bed.

‘Right, I’ll put the kettle on as well,’ I shouted, slamming the kitchen cupboards and bashing the kettle around. ‘Nice cup of tea and an entire box of chocolates. Probably just throw them straight up. Every single one.’

Now I was annoyed. She knew what we were doing today. She knew Sadie and Erin were taking me to try on wedding dresses, and she had decided to get an extra couple of hours’ kip. What a bastard. I clambered up onto the kitchen counter, skirt up around my knickers, shoes kicked onto the floor, and grabbed around for a golden box tied in black ribbon on top of the cereal cupboard. It was dusty enough to suggest it had been up there for a couple of months, but it wasn’t off-putting enough to stop me from tearing off the ribbon, chucking the lid on the floor and shovelling the chocolates into my mouth three at a time.

‘Bloody hell, Jenny,’ I yelled through the gooey chocolatey goodness. ‘These are amazing. You should get your lazy arse out of bed before I eat them all.’

I contorted myself around to mash my tea, twisting over the sink to reach the kettle, and made a mental note to take up yoga classes soon. Again. And then stuffed another fistful of chocolates into my gob while trying unsuccessfully to pull my skirt over my knickers.

‘Any left for me?’

If hearing a distinctly masculine voice wasn’t enough to topple me from my countertop perch, spinning around to see a half-naked man grinning at me was. But that grin didn’t last long. As soon as he recognized me.

Tyler.

I slapped a hand over my chocolate-filled mouth and inadvertently propelled myself over the kitchen counter and onto the living-room floor.

‘Holy shit.’ It took him half a second to compose himself before running around to help me up. I coughed, choking down a particularly chewy caramel. ‘Bad spill. Did you break anything?’

For a couple of seconds I lay on the floor, dazed, wondering if I’d been hit by a taxi or fallen downstairs and woken up in a coma. Or purgatory. Or out-and-out fire and brimstone, seventh circle of hell. But no, here I was on the floor of Jenny’s apartment, chocolate smeared all over my face and my less than best underwear on display, while my former boyfriend − no, that was too strong a word; former fling − loomed over me in his very best underwear with nothing on his face but a shit-eating grin.

‘Annie?’

Oh, now that was just rude.

Tyler stroked his abs with an absent-minded hand and looked around the apartment with new eyes. ‘I thought this place seemed familiar.’

‘It’s Angela.’ I pushed myself upright and did the best I could to put everything where it was supposed to be. Skirt over knickers, chocolate off face, hair − well, the best I could do was on head. ‘I need to speak to Jenny.’

‘Right, right. English chick. So this is weird, huh?’ he shrugged, still smiling. Actually smiling broader and brighter if possible. What a wanker. ‘She’s in bed.’

I stared hard, willing him to vanish. Willing this not to be happening. Willing myself not to be true to my word and throw up all those chocolates.

‘I guess I’ll jump in the shower,’ he said. His eyes twinkled in a way that, once upon a time, I had found incredibly attractive. At that moment it was all I could do to hold onto my New Year’s resolution to punch fewer people. ‘See you later, Annie.’

As Tyler sauntered off into the bathroom, I was frozen to the spot. My brain was a screaming mess of confusion and, for some reason, I really wanted a wee. But with the bathroom out of action, there was only one thing to do.

‘Get up!’ I ran into Jenny’s room, spotted her sitting on the edge of the bed half dressed, and saw red. I picked up a pillow, flew at my best friend like a Britney scorned and proceeded to bash her about the head with it. ‘Get up. Get out of bed. Get up now.’

‘What? Angela, what the fuck?’ She held her hands up over her face against my sad little assault. I was both weak and feeble. It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds for Jenny to overpower me, grab the pillow and shove me across the bed. ‘Why aren’t you at Vera Wang?’

‘I was at Vera Wang but everyone was so worried about you,’ I howled from the floor beside the bed. ‘I said I’d come and get you. But clearly there was no reason to be worried because nothing was wrong, you were just too busy shagging my ex to be there with me while I tried on wedding dresses.’

‘What?’ Even from my position on the floor, which badly needed hoovering, I saw the colour drain from her face.

‘Worst. Bridesmaid. Ever,’ I shouted.

‘Seriously, what are you talking about?’ Jenny reached down and pulled me up onto the bed. ‘I was on my way, I swear.’

‘Tyler.’ Suddenly remembering there was someone else in the apartment, I lowered my voice to a hiss and stood up, too angry to sit beside Jenny on the bed. ‘You slept with Tyler?’

‘Uh, the blond guy?’ All the colour she had lost came back in a bright red flush. ‘You know him?’

‘The blond …?’ I went from being incredibly angry to incredibly worried in a heartbeat. With a side portion of pissed-off still hanging around for good measure. ‘Jenny, I used to date him. Remember when I first moved here? Tall? Blond? Sleazy bastard?’

Jenny’s eyes widened to the point where she made Disney heroines look a bit squinty.

‘You?’ I could see her searching for recollection. ‘Tyler. You dated a Tyler. He bought you Tiffany.’

And then I saw her weighing up her options.

‘And he was an asshole.’ Jenny pressed her hands against her face and groaned. ‘I met him in the bar last night. He seemed OK − he was funny. He was hot. I can’t believe it’s your Tyler.’

‘Yeah.’ My nervous energy ran out and I collapsed on the bed beside her. Then remembered what had happened in that bed and jumped back up. ‘Jenny, this is really, really disgusting. As in, I want to have a shower disgusting. Only I can’t because the man we’ve both had sex with is in the shower.’

‘Oh, man.’ She doubled up, dropping her head to her knees. ‘I’m gonna puke. I didn’t know. How could I know?’

‘I suppose you couldn’t,’ I admitted. ‘But when you’ve shagged enough people to accidentally get around to the only other person in the city I’ve slept with aside from Alex, I reckon you’ve probably shagged too many.’

She rested her hands on her thighs, which I noticed were covered in jeans. And she had one sock on. And a tank top. And her phone, on the nightstand, showed the location of Vera Wang on Google Maps. So she really was on her way to meet me. After she’d finished shagging my ex.

‘Angela?’ she said in a soft, quiet voice I hadn’t heard in a long time. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what to do.’

Taking a deep breath and trying very hard not to think about bed-based high jinks, I sat down next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Most of the time Jenny seemed like an Amazon to me, all long legs, shiny hair and glamour, but sometimes, when you took away the high heels and confidence, you remembered how tiny she really was. Right now, without so much as a swipe of mascara or an ounce of confidence, she looked like any other little lost girl with a broken heart.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ I promised, pressing my lips into her hair and not even knowing whether or not it was true. ‘I know things are hard, I know it hurts, but it will get better.’

‘I want it to stop hurting so much.’ Her voice broke with tears as she spoke and it made my heart hurt for her. ‘It’s been so long and it doesn’t change. I thought dating other people would help.’

‘It just takes time,’ I replied, hugging her a little tighter and letting her cry it out on my shoulder. ‘There’s no other answer. I wish there was. And I don’t think rebound dating works. I know. I tried. With the man in the bathroom.’

This wasn’t the time to point out that trolling bars for slut-bags wasn’t the same as dating.

‘Some days I just can’t function,’ Jenny snuffled into my arm. ‘I wake up and it hits me that he doesn’t want me, that he married someone else, and I just cannot get out of bed but I have to, you know? I have to, so I’m just a zombie. I just switch off. And I hate it. I want my life back.’

‘Well, just don’t do what I did and run away to another country.’

All at once, the snuffling stopped and she jolted upright in my arms. Her wet, snotty face was overcome with a lightning strike of an idea I already knew I wasn’t going to like.

‘That’s it,’ she announced, arms out wide. ‘You are so smart!’

‘Thank you?’ I said carefully. I always found that kind of compliment was nice to hear but came at a price. ‘What exactly did I do?’

‘I’m coming to London with you,’ she announced, downgrading my level of intelligence with every syllable. ‘It’s perfect. I need to get away from the city, you need protecting from your mom, your mom loves me, therefore I’m coming to London. With you.’

Now, it was true that my mum loved Jenny. When we were living together, the two of them spent a lot longer talking on the phone than I did. For some reason, suburban mother-of-one, Su Doku-lover, Marks & Spencer acolyte and lifelong subscriber to Take a Break magazine had found a soul mate in the Vogue-reading, Agent Provocateur-wearing, Angry Birds-loving Jenny Lopez. She was the daughter she had always intended to have. While my mum and I got along just fine, she had always been a bit disappointed that I wasn’t more of a girly girl. I’d never wanted ballet lessons, to play the flute or play with prams, pushchairs and baby dolls, even though they were forced upon me. I’d wanted to ride horses and learn guitar and read The Secret Garden until my eyes were sore, not sit and drink tea nicely with the Avon lady. She’d always adored ladylike Louisa and hoped she might influence my ways, and I genuinely believed the main reason she hadn’t flown directly to New York and marched me straight onto a plane two years ago was because she was hoping some of Jenny’s feminine super-powers would rub off on me. And they kind of had. I could walk in heels and not fall down (most of the time), I knew how to apply eyeliner without looking like a tranny or a member of Kiss, I could tell anyone why a Chanel 2.55 handbag was called a 2.55, and I had an uncontrollable, burning desire to possess one. I was quite the success as a woman these days, and a lot of that was due to Ms Jenny Lopez.

So it all worked aside from the fact Jenny’s plan had one major flaw.

Alex.

Jenny and Alex were the two most important people in my life − my New York family − and while they were friendly when their paths happened to cross, I had learned my lesson and tried to keep them away from too much one-on-one time or unnecessarily intense situations. I loved them both and they both loved me, but each other? Love might be slightly too strong a word. It was one of the few things that fell outside our overshare pact, but I knew for a fact that Alex thought Jenny was a drama queen who brought most of her misery on herself. And Jenny, as my best friend and ultimate defender, kept Alex on a short leash just in case he ever, ever did anything to hurt me. It was a time-honoured relationship between boyfriend and bestie and we handled it just fine. But bringing Jenny along on a trip that already promised to be more painful than a girl’s first bikini wax?

‘It’ll be awesome.’ Jenny wiped her tears away on the back of her arm and offered me the beginnings of a smile. ‘You can show me London, I can meet Louisa, I’ll totally take all the pressure off the parentals so you and Alex can take time to hang out. It’ll be so great.’

Not for the first time, I was completely lost for words. And not for the first time, I was completely unable to disguise the fear on my face.

‘Angie, honey.’ Just like that, Jenny was back. Her face shone and her eyes sparkled with conviction. ‘I won’t be any hassle and it’s what I need. An escape, you know? Space. Time. Just a few days to breathe and empty my head.’

I sighed and nodded. How was I supposed to say no when she’d pulled me out of exactly the same situation two years ago? Besides, it was impossible to look at those big brown Lopez eyes and not give in. I often worried about what would happen if Jenny ever decided to use her powers for evil.

‘Oh my God, I love you.’ She bounced up onto her knees and pushed me backwards, showering me in kisses. ‘I love you so much.’

‘Am I interrupting?’ Tyler’s voice rang out across the room, causing one sick feeling in my stomach to make way for another. I looked over to see him leaning against the door frame, a towel wrapped low around his hips. Given that my sexual CV was incredibly brief, I’d never been in a situation where I’d been in the same room as someone I’d boffed and broken up with and so I had no idea how I was supposed to be feeling. All I knew for sure was that I really, really wanted him to be gone. Preferably with a black eye. And a ruptured scrotum.

‘So, is this a private party or can anyone get in on this?’ he asked with a raised eyebrow, arms folded across his ridiculously hot body. Arsehole. How dare he stand there with his abs out. ‘This is weird, right?’

‘It’s weird,’ Jenny and I replied in unison.

‘So would it be more weird or less weird −’ he started to move towards the bed − ‘if the three of us, you know …’

I had no words. Literally no words. But Jenny, luckily for me, was full of them.

‘I don’t know.’ She stood up and pulled Tyler’s trousers out of the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. ‘But I do know you’re not putting these on right now.’

Jenny smiled. Tyler grinned. I grimaced. And then Jenny walked over to the window, opened it up and threw his trousers out into the street. ‘Hey, Angie, toss me his shorts.’

It was hard to say who was more shocked. Tyler’s jaw dropped at exactly the same moment as his towel, but now his nudity wasn’t nearly as entertaining as the fact that Jenny was very busy throwing all of his clothes out onto 39th Street. You had to laugh. So I did. Long and loud and hard.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he demanded when he finally found his voice. ‘Are you fucking crazy?’

Jenny dangled a very expensive leather loafer over the sill and cocked her head to one side. ‘Wanna find out?’

Out went the shoe.

‘Jesus.’ Tyler looked at me, grabbed his towel and shook his head. ‘You’re both insane.’ And with that, he ran out of the bedroom and out of the apartment.

By the time he made it onto the street, a homeless guy had already claimed his shirt and shoes, but fortunately, given the New York City decency laws, his underwear and jeans were still a crumpled mess on the sidewalk. Jenny and I leaned out of the window and waved down at him as he shuffled into them, flashing his backside to passers-by. Elbows on the windowsill, Jenny and I turned to look at each other.

‘So − London then?’ I smiled.

‘London,’ she replied with a grin.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘I’m here, I’m here.’ I threw myself through the glass doors of the Gloss office the following Friday, late as usual. For some reason, I’d decided not to waste money I didn’t have on a taxi and had taken the subway, despite the fact that I had two suitcases and the world’s biggest carry-on bag. Well, maybe not the world’s biggest, but definitely not one of the smallest. I could easily steal Beyoncé’s baby and carry it off in this bag. Which I totally would.

‘Did I miss anything?’

‘Just the coffee run.’ Mr Spencer was sitting in my leather chair, a small smile on his face. It had been so long since I’d seen that smile that I actually shrieked in surprise. Bollocks. Yes, I was late into the office, but I wasn’t late for the meeting. Why was he early? Who was ever early? Arses. ‘I hear you’re off to London, Ms Clark?’

‘I am,’ I nodded, attempting to regain my composure. And failing. ‘It’s my mum’s sixtieth.’

He stood up and gestured for me to sit down. Which was nice of him, given that he was in my seat in the first place.

‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you, ladies,’ he said, striding across our tiny office in two steps and settling himself on the edge of Delia’s desk. For an older gent, Bob Spencer was still well put together, like he’d reached a certain age and decided he was just going to stick with that. He always reminded me a little bit of Ken Barlow, but less evil. ‘Things are very busy right now, as I’m sure you can appreciate. The industry is going through a very difficult time.’

I settled into my chair, suddenly aware that I shouldn’t get too comfortable. Where was Delia? Why was he talking to me when she wasn’t here? There was only one possible reason – he was here to shut us down and she was crying in the toilets.

‘I’m sure you remember I was a big fan of your work, Angela.’ He smiled at me and I waited for the blow. Why had she gone to cry in the toilets without me? Selfish mare. ‘You did some wonderful writing for The Look, and what you did with James Jacobs was really very good.’

Through the mediums of eyebrow raising and telepathy I tried to communicate to the boy dropping off our mail that Bob was talking about an article I had written about the actor James Jacobs coming out of the closet and Nothing Else. He replied with widened eyes with a very loud and clear ‘Whatever, lady’.

‘Thank you?’ I brushed the floor with my toes and turned the chair very slightly from side to side.

‘And Delia assures me my first impressions about you were correct,’ he went on, continuing to stare me down. I took it all back − Ken Barlow would never be so rude. ‘And that, possibly, Cecelia didn’t exactly cover herself in glory when working with you.’

I took that as his very, very diplomatic way of saying that Cici was a batshit, cray-cray mental who should be locked up, but instead of correcting him, I made a small scoffing noise and concentrated on pressing the hem of my striped American Apparel T-shirt between my thumb and forefinger.

‘So I have to be honest with you − I thought the presentation the two of you gave me last week was a little lacking.’

Finally we were getting to it. I felt tears prickle in the backs of my eyes and fought to keep them down. I have always tried so hard to keep tears out of the workplace. It was a very smart woman who said, ‘If you have to cry, go outside.’ Or a very intolerant one. Either way. But this was too awful. We’d worked so long and so hard on Gloss, and the feeling that it was just going to go away was almost as disappointing as thinking you had a packet of chocolate Hobnobs in the cupboard only to find nothing but two Rich Teas.

‘There was a distinct lack of vision.’ Mr Spencer raised his voice a little, presumably to ensure every word of his carefully put together ‘fuck off and die’ speech hit home. ‘You weren’t looking at the bigger picture. But that’s what I’m here for. I am the bigger picture.’

Bigger knob, I thought to myself with a sniffle, but managed to keep the words to myself. Just.

‘If we’re going to launch a new print magazine in this climate, we need to make some noise,’ he said. ‘And you make noise by going global. Or at least transatlantic. Simultaneous US and UK launch. So what do you think, Angela? Up to the challenge?’

Huh. So I’d got it a bit wrong. As I desperately fought both disbelief and the urge to reply with the words ‘fuck’ and ‘off’, Delia pushed the door open with her tiny bottom and beamed at me, hands full of giant Starbucks cups.

‘You’re here.’ She turned her back to her grandfather and gave me the biggest smile I’d ever seen on her face. ‘Has Grandpa filled you in?’

‘He has,’ Mr Spencer answered for me. ‘But Angela hasn’t actually reacted in any way other than to gape at me like a goldfish.’

‘I, um, I’m sorry.’ Second attempt to gain composure in one day. Second failure. Delia set a large cup down in front of me and passed the second to her grandfather, gulping down the third as if someone was going to take it off her. ‘I’m just sort of surprised. What exactly are you saying?’

‘I’m saying I need you to sell this idea to the London office,’ he said. ‘And if you can get them on board, and you can get the exec team on board, you’ve got yourself a magazine. And not just a magazine but a franchise.’

‘Oh. Right then.’

‘You don’t think you can do it?’ Bob mistook my shock for terror. It was reasonable.

‘Of course we can do it,’ Delia replied. Life really was so much easier when people answered all of your questions for you. ‘Angela means it’s a pleasant surprise.’

‘I do,’ I said, remembering myself and nodding eagerly at Delia and then at Bob. ‘That’s exactly what I meant. We can absolutely pull off a transatlantic launch.’ I felt like we were back in a Bob place now. Probably.

‘Perfect.’ Bob stood up, took one sip of his coffee, made a face and set it back on Delia’s desk. ‘I’ll make an appointment for Angela to meet with the publishing team in London, and Delia, I’ll send you the information about Paris. Ladies.’

And with a nod, he was gone.

Delia waited a slow three seconds before running round to my side of the office, knocking my coffee across the room and wrapping me up in a very tight, very excited hug. I squeezed back, even though I was still in a complete state of shock. The magazine was happening! There were Hobnobs in the cupboard after all! I needed to clean up that coffee.

‘Holy shit, Angela,’ Delia shouted as loud as her WASP-y lungs would allow, which wasn’t really all that loud, and let go of my shoulders to do a little dance in the middle of the office. ‘We have a magazine. We have two magazines. We’re global, Angie!’

‘I know.’ I breathed out hard. ‘I can’t believe it. I mean, we’ve been planning it for so long, I can’t believe it’s actually going to come to life. We’re going to print a magazine and people are going to be reading it. Fingers crossed.’

It was all a bit much. It had taken me six days to recover from the shock that I wasn’t just walking around wearing a very pretty ring but was actually going to have to have a wedding and get married, and now I had to adjust to the idea that we really were going to have to write and publish a magazine, not just talk about it and put together pretty PowerPoint presentations.

‘So I talked to Grandpa before you came in and the plan is that you’ll meet with the London Spencer Media publishing team next week while you’re over there, and I’ll take the advertisers’ conference in Paris.’ She paused, took in the look of abject horror on my face, and recovered herself. ‘Unless you want to do Paris and I’ll do London?’

‘Paris?’ Not bloody likely, I thought to myself. ‘You can take Paris. But, um, wouldn’t you like to come to London too?’

‘Love to,’ Delia laughed, calming down slightly and settling into her desk chair. ‘But the advertisers’ conference is next Friday and I need to get everything together for that. Grandpa is going to schedule your meeting for Wednesday, maybe Tuesday? Keep it clear of your mom’s party on Saturday.’

I nursed my coffee as though it were the Holy Grail. As long as I had coffee, this would all be OK. ‘Tuesday?’ I tried not to cry. Again. ‘As in four days from now?’

‘You’re going to be totally fine,’ she soothed from across the office. ‘All you have to do is go in and give the presentation you’ve already given a thousand times to, what, three people? This is a formality. This is a hoop for us to jump through.’

I pouted. So she went on.

‘People are already predisposed to be nice to you because their boss has told them to be.’ I could tell she’d already switched into business mode and that meant she had no time to pander to my insecurities. When Delia turned on her monitor and started tapping away at her keyboard, she was almost never on Facebook. ‘You’re going to be amazing. You’ve been amazing so far, haven’t you?’

In all honesty, I thought, so far I had been a liability. Sure, I could sing my own praises with regards to the creative side of things. I was happy enough to say I was a good writer, I had good contacts and great ideas and was perfectly capable of stringing together an attractive sentence. But in meetings? Not so much. First, there was my uncontrollable tendency to be massively overfamiliar with everyone I met. Within fifteen minutes of our first meeting with Trinity’s global marketing director, I was merrily telling him about my adventures with my junior school’s guinea pig, Alex’s terrible haircut and my intense love for Les Misérables. He’d only asked if I’d had a nice weekend. My mouth had a tendency to run away with itself. And that was before we took into consideration turning up to meetings barefoot, outing celebrities, almost blogging myself out of the love of my life and getting into catfights on stage at music festivals in France.

I had enjoyed quite the career.

‘You’re doing it, Angela.’ Delia closed the conversation with her final say-so. ‘And besides, this will give you a day away from your parents. That’s got to be good news, hasn’t it?’

She really was a very bright girl.

The rest of the day was spent obsessively reading over the Gloss publishing presentation, making to-do lists and ignoring text messages from my mother. I was booked on the 9.25 p.m. flight back to London. Alone. For all Jenny and Alex’s promises of supporting me through my family reunion, neither of them was able to fly in with me. Jenny, having remembered that she actually had a job, had to manage an event for Erin and was flying out tomorrow. Alex had studio time booked to record live sessions for iTunes or B sides or something else band-related that I couldn’t quite remember and was coming on Monday.

To be fair, I was struggling with everything I’d been told for the last five days because the only thing I could think about was London. One minute, I’d be super-excited about going. Share Topshop with Jenny, hug my dad, sniff Louisa’s baby, generally show Alex off like a shiny new toy. But then I’d remember the flipside. For every trip to Topshop, there would be a cup of stewed tea with Aunt Sheila. For every dad hug, there would be a passive-aggressive dig from my mum. For every sniff of the baby, there would be a shitty nappy, and it was going to be very hard to show Alex off if my mother poisoned him five minutes after he’d entered the house. And given her cooking skills, she might not even do it on purpose. Of course, there was a chance everyone would just be happy to see me, and my mum would hand me the biscuit tin and forget that I hadn’t been home in two years. There was just as much chance that the house would be picked up in a tornado during the night and dropped on top of a witch in the wonderful world of Oz.

As the office clock ticked towards five, I kept looking at my phone, waiting for the car service to buzz. So far I’d had five texts from Louisa detailing how very excited she was that I would be back on British soil in twenty-four hours, three texts from Jenny asking whether or not she should pack her Jimmy Choo over-the-knee boots, and one from my mum and dad confirming that it was supposed to rain so I should bring a coat. And if I didn’t have a coat, I should get a coat.

I was looking longingly out of our twenty-fifth-storey window at the bright spring sunshine when my phone buzzed into life. The car was here. The end was nigh.

‘Want a hand with your bags?’ Delia piped up from her corner. I looked up and considered throwing myself on her mercy, begging her not to let me go, but it was no use. Not only had Delia been very vocal on the subject of me ‘reconciling’ with my mother all week, but she was now one hundred percent committed to me giving this presentation in London. I’d have more chance appealing to her twin sister’s good nature.

‘I’ve got them.’ I closed down my laptop, heaved myself up out of my chair, grabbed my notepad off the desk and tossed them both into my satchel. It groaned with the weight, echoing my sentiments.

‘What exactly do you have in there anyways?’ she asked as she stood up, offering a hug in commiseration. ‘It looks like you’re packed for a month.’

‘I have every item of clothing I own,’ I explained, heaving the bags along the plush carpeting. ‘And as many bags of peanut-butter M&Ms as I could pack. And a shit-ton of Tide pens for my mum. I feel like she’ll like Tide pens.’

‘Good call,’ she said, hugging me quickly and shoving me towards the door. ‘Even my mom loves Tide pens, and she hasn’t as much as looked at laundry her entire life.’

I bit my lip and shook my hair out from behind my ears. ‘It’ll be OK, won’t it?’ I asked.

‘You can call me any time,’ Delia assured me, arms folded in front of her. ‘You’re going to kill at the presentation.’

‘Weirdly, I’m not so worried about the presentation any more,’ I muttered. I wanted to get changed. I shouldn’t be wearing jeans. My mum hated it when I wore jeans. And I should have tied my hair up, she never liked it down. And all in the space of ten seconds, I’d regressed ten years.

‘Your mom is just going to be happy to see you,’ she replied, holding open the door while I shuffled through. ‘You’re going to be surprised.’

I pressed the glowing grey button to call the lift and looked back over my shoulder. ‘Well, yes,’ I nodded. ‘That’s pretty much a given.’

Obviously, my taxi did not get stuck in traffic and my flight was not delayed. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when I got to JFK airport I discovered Alex had upgraded my flight. What a bastard. Before I could even think to tell someone I had a bomb in my shoe or fake a panic attack, I was on the plane and downing tiny glasses of champagne like they were going out of fashion. I swiped at the screen of my iPhone and reread Alex’s last text. ‘Be calm, be cool, don’t punch anyone and I’ll see you Monday. Love you.’ I closed down the screen and closed my eyes. Easier said than done, Reid.

‘Is there anything I can get for you?’ A tall, blonde flight attendant in a smart red suit smiled at me in the dim cabin lighting.

‘Oh, no, thank you,’ I hiccupped. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Just let me know if there’s anything at all.’ She rested her hand on my shoulder very briefly and then disappeared, presumably to tell the rest of the crew it was OK, I wasn’t going to drink them dry.

I had planned on sleeping through the flight, but I already knew I was too restless. Every time I closed my eyes, something started niggling. I’d spent the first couple of hours going over and over and over my presentation for Gloss. I’d spent the next hour eating peanuts. And then I’d gone over the presentation again. And I couldn’t quite get my head round how much had changed since I’d flown the other way, out of Heathrow. I was proud of myself, I was. Two years ago, I’d been scared and alone and entirely directionless. Now I was so close to realizing so many dreams. Which didn’t stop me being scared. The more you have, the more you have to lose.

And then there was the wedding. The non-existent wedding. Thanks to Delia, Erin and Sadie, I was really starting to worry about my lack of preparation. Maybe watching Breaking Dawn was a bad idea. Edward and Bella were making me feel bad. I switched off the screen and pulled out my notepad, along with the wedding magazine Delia had given me. Maybe if I made a list. Maybe if I had an idea of what needed doing, I’d be able to get my head round how to make it work for me. Dress. Guest list. Venue. Catering. Dog and pony. Bleurgh.

Where was that stewardess? Why had I said no to more champagne?

Number one, I needed a dress. Flipping to the pages Delia had marked for me to look at, my eyes popped. I had imprinted. Suddenly, life had new meaning for me. On the page in front of me was a light, frothy concoction of sheer beauty. Layers and layers of ivory skirts floated around the model, making it look like she was walking through a cloud, and a high slit up the front revealed a hint of leg, giving the dress an edgy look without seeming slutty. Up top, a delicate bodice gave her boobs that she quite clearly did not have. Models did not have boobs. I did not have boobs. It was simple. It didn’t look like I would have to starve myself for six months to get into it. The slit led me to believe I might not trip.

This was the dress. I closed my eyes and imagined myself wearing it, getting married in it, and it was easy. I could feel sunshine on my skin, I could see Alex smiling at me, and in that moment, all I wanted to do was jump off the plane, grab Alex and march him down the aisle. Now I really wasn’t going to be able to sleep.

Full of wedding beans, I picked up my pen, turned the glittery vampire wedding back on and started on the guest list. How come there wasn’t a magical page in a magazine that would make this easy for me? Obviously Jenny, Erin and, I supposed, Sadie. Probably my friend Vanessa. Definitely Delia. Mary, if she would come. And Louisa and Tim would have to come over. And I assumed my dad would insist on bringing my mum. Alex’s side was even easier to whittle down than mine. I drew a line down the middle of my notepad and added all my people to one side, then added Alex’s band members Graham and Craig, his parents, his brother, his manager, and his slightly creepy old roommate who came over once every couple of months, brought himself two cans of beer and peed sitting down. I knew this because he left the door open when he did so.

So that was the dress and the guest list sorted. Who knew I would turn out to be a wedding planner extraordinaire?

I tapped the pen against the tray table, incredibly pleased with my progress. My seat neighbour, however, was not so pleased with the tapping. He raised his eye mask and gave me the frowning of a lifetime until I pursed my lips and carefully laid the pen down on the table. How dare he not care that I had just solved two-thirds of the world’s most pressing problem? Global economic crisis be damned, I had a wedding to plan. So if I could pick a dress and sort out my guest list without slashing my wrists, where was all the drama coming from with other people’s weddings? Perhaps I was just supernaturally talented. I considered the likelihood of this while quietly judging Bella’s wedding dress. My main thought was that it was very tight. Maybe incredible event-organizing skills would be my vampire talent. It must take a lot of organization to be a vampire these days. After a few minutes, I felt my eyelids getting heavy and began to doze pleasantly, losing myself in a dream where Alex’s skin sparkled and my ex, Mark, crashed our wedding, howling at the moon. Although he was considerably less Taylor Lautner and considerably more Home Counties Werewolf in New York.

Hmm. I felt my earbuds slip out of my ears as I nodded off. No doubt about it, I was Team Alex all the way.

CHAPTER SIX

When I woke up, I’d missed the breakfast service and my several tiny glasses of champagne had added up to one big headache. Between my dehydrated skin and crumpled clothes, I was far from my most fabulous self and there was very little I could do about it between getting off an aeroplane and getting into a car. Louisa’s car, I reminded myself, a little thrill of excitement splitting through my headache for a moment.

I pushed up the shade and looked out of the window. There it was, that green and pleasant land. OK, so it looked a bit grey and murky from the air, but that was probably just the drizzle I’d been warned about. Drizzle. A word I hadn’t used in two years. It had never occurred to me before, but we didn’t really have drizzle in New York; we had light rain, heavy rain or fuck-me-is-the-world-ending rain. But never drizzle. It was perfect really. Now I would have frizzy hair to match my grey, bloated face and scruffy clothes, and my mum could be entirely certain that I had spent two years peddling crack under a bridge and definitely not eating vegetables.

And then it appeared. The opening titles of EastEnders rolled out underneath me, the ribbon of river curling up and stretching out across the landscape, punctuated by large patches of green. My stomach slipped when I spotted the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye. I’d grown up a little less than an hour outside London, less if I managed to catch the fast train (I never did), but it always felt like a million miles away. Louisa and I used to sneak off on Saturdays and get the train to Waterloo, just to wander up and down the South Bank before buying chocolate and riding straight back home. (Nights out in the big smoke were verboten.) I’d always got a kick when the train rolled into Waterloo, even as an adult. The city always made me feel like a little girl. It was so much older and more serious than I could ever be. New York was a little more encouraging. Fewer men in suits stroking their beards and more women running around in high heels. Clearly it was the media’s fault. London was defined by books and poems and centuries of words written by men. NYC had been culturally claimed by skinny-jean bands, cocktails and four ladies into Manolo Blahniks, brunch and Mr Big.

Passport control was painless and, thanks to a bargain I made with the devil for the soul of my firstborn child, my suitcases all came off the carousel intact and unexploded. Forty minutes after we touched down, I was wheeling my bags through the exit and out into the wild. The first thing I saw was a Marks & Spencer Simply Food. The second thing I saw was my mother. Without exerting any control over my own feet, I stopped stock-still and wondered whether or not I had time to duck into M&S and grab a bag of Percy Pigs before she spotted me. It was only after I’d considered this gummy treat that I realized my mother was in the airport and Louisa was not.

‘Angela!’

Whatever time I’d had to recover myself was gone. I had been seen. And now my mother was waving like a loon, shouting my name and hitting my father on the arm. ‘Angela Clark! We’re over here! Angela!’

Wow. There they were. Not a hair on my mum’s head had moved since Louisa’s wedding or, to be more specific, since 1997. As much as I had prayed to find out I was adopted as a teenager, there was no denying she was my mum. We had the same blue eyes, the same dark-blonde hair – or at least we did when I didn’t highlight the shit out of it – and the same tendency to go a bit pear-shaped when we got lazy. Which we both did. All the time. At her side, my dad was wearing the same old Next cardigan that he kept in the car in case it got a bit chilly. On one hand, it was sort of reassuring. On the other, bizarre.

‘Are you deaf?’ My mum marched towards me, handbag on her shoulder, arms outstretched. For one scary moment I thought she was going to hug me, but instead she reached out and rubbed a tough finger on my cheek. ‘You’ve got mascara all under your eyes.’

‘All right, Mum,’ I said, nodding at her and wishing I’d put on more lip balm. ‘Nice to see you, Mum.’

‘Hmm.’ She looked me up and down quickly. ‘New bag?’

‘Well, not really.’ I looked down at my Marc Jacobs satchel and thought back to when it was new. ‘But new to you.’

‘I don’t even want to know what it cost,’ she said, turning on her sensible heel and taking off across the arrivals lounge. ‘Come on − the car park costs a bloody fortune.’

‘Yes, Mum.’ I looked down at my handbag and, not for the first time, wished it could talk. It would have been lovely to get a quick reminder that I’d actually spent the last two years in New York and that they weren’t picking me up from my first semester at uni.

‘All right, love?’ Dad patted my shoulder and took the handle of one of my suitcases. ‘Flight all right?’

‘Not bad,’ I replied. ‘Although I do appear to have flown into the Twilight Zone.’

‘Eh?’ Dad trundled after my mum, leaving me behind. ‘Twilight? Your mum was reading that. Nonsense, if you ask me. I watched the film. Not my cup of tea but it passed an evening. Come on − I’m gasping for a coffee and she won’t let me buy one at Costa now I’ve got a Gaggia at home.’

Not ready to discuss my mother’s progressive choice of reading material or my dad’s new espresso machine, I played the dutiful daughter, stuck out my bottom lip and did as I was told.

Home, sweet home.

‘News, news, news.’ My mum looked over her shoulder from the passenger seat to make sure I hadn’t bolted out the back of dad’s Volvo. Fat chance, since Dad had activated the child locks. ‘You know Vera from the library?’

‘Yes?’ I was clutching my phone so tightly my knuckles were white. I didn’t have a blind clue who Vera from the library was.

‘Dead,’ Mum announced. ‘Cancer.’

And now it seemed I never would.

‘Brian as well, from the butchers,’ she continued, looking to the heavens as though more dead people I’d never met were going to wave down and remind her they’d carked it. ‘Who else? Well, Eileen, but you didn’t know Eileen. Oh! Do you remember Mr Wilson?’

I shook my head.

‘Yes you do,’ she encouraged. ‘He used to walk his dog past our house. Every day!’

‘Ohhh,’ I exclaimed dramatically. ‘That Mr Wilson.’

‘Dead,’ she declared. ‘He didn’t have cancer, though. Something wrong with his pancreas, I think.’

‘It was pancreatic cancer,’ my dad said, snapping his fingers. ‘Went like that.’

‘Patrick Swayze, Steve Jobs and Mr Wilson who walked his dog past our house.’ I stared out of the window. ‘Pancreatic cancer certainly has claimed some of the greats.’

I was fairly certain I heard my dad turn a laugh into a cough, but it was covered up by my mother’s continuing list of obituaries. To take the edge off it, I swiped my phone into life and checked for messages. Nothing. Nothing from Jenny to say she was on her way, nothing from Alex to say he’d lain awake all night sobbing into my vacant pillow, and, most importantly, nothing from Louisa to apologize for leaving me at the mercy of my parents.

‘And her from the post office had another baby,’ my mum carried on. We’d exhausted the funeral roll call and moved on to who had had a baby and whether that baby was in or out of wedlock. ‘And Briony, who you went to school with − she’s on her third. Third! Two different dads, though. And of course there’s Louisa’s little Grace. What a beauty.’

‘Speaking of Louisa …’ I leaned forward to rest my chin on my mum’s seat. ‘Where is she?’

‘Oh, Grace was a bit colicky this morning and she couldn’t leave her,’ she replied as though my best friend abandoning me was no big deal. ‘Your priorities change when you have a baby, Angela, as you will find out. You’re not the centre of the universe, you know. Louisa has a husband and a baby and they always come first.’

That was my cue for major sulking. Mostly because while part of me knew she was right, another much larger part of me still thought Louisa should have let said husband take care of said baby, seeing it was a Saturday, and be at Heathrow as promised. Sinking back into the back seat of the car, I turned my gaze out of the window again and watched the motorway whizz by. It felt strange to be on the wrong side of the road. It felt strange not to see any yellow taxis. It felt strange to hear my mum and dad’s voices and Radio 4. It felt strange to be in England. Every second we sped closer to home, we sped further away from New York. It was like it was all falling away, as though it had never happened. And that was a thought I did not want to even entertain.

‘First things first − kettle on,’ my mum stated, dropping her handbag onto the table like she always did while my dad went into the living room and turned on the TV like he always did.

I stood in the middle of the kitchen, clutching my handbag to my body, trying not to cry. That had definitely happened before, but it wasn’t standard behaviour. I didn’t know what exactly I was expecting from my parents’ house, but nothing had changed. Not a single thing. The bright yellow wall clock was still running five minutes ahead. A box of PG Tips sat open next to the kettle, as always, even though the tea caddy was completely empty. The spare keys still sat in the hot pink ashtray I had made out of Fimo when I was twelve. The sun shone through the window, right into my eyes, reminding me to move.

‘Are you going to stand there all day?’ my mum said, turning to me and filling the kettle from the filter jug as she spoke. ‘Are you tired?’

‘Not really,’ I lied. I was completely exhausted, but it was more that this was all too much to take in. I was suffering complete sensory overload and I was worried that if I went up to my room and found the Boyzone posters on the walls, I might lose it completely. ‘Might have a lie-down in a bit.’

‘Well then, we’d better hear the story,’ she said, settling the kettle in its cradle and sitting down at the kitchen table, an expectant look on her face. ‘Let’s see it.’

For a moment, I thought she meant my end-of-term report, but then I realized she meant my engagement ring. Because I was engaged. To a boy. In America. I stayed frozen still in the middle of the room and held out my hand, fingers spread, eyes wide.

‘I haven’t got my binoculars, Angela,’ she sighed. ‘Come here.’

Reluctantly, I dropped my bag and moved over to the worn, wooden table. Same place mats, same salt and pepper shakers, same artificial sunflowers in the centre. Before I even sat down, my mum grabbed my hand and yanked it across the table. My dad bounded over like an overexcited teenager.

‘Ooh,’ he cooed. ‘It’s very nice.’

‘It is, actually,’ Mum agreed, sounding surprised. ‘Shame he didn’t bother to ask your father’s permission, but still. At least it’s tasteful.’

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ I asked. Mistake.

‘Well, who knows what an American thinks is an appropriate engagement ring. You could have ended up with God knows what on your finger, couldn’t you? Unless you chose it. Did you choose it?’

She almost sounded hopeful.

‘I’m not marrying Liberace, Mother,’ I pointed out. ‘Alex chose it. All on his own. And it’s beautiful. I couldn’t have picked anything I’d love more.’

‘I said it was nice.’ She pursed her lips and brushed her grey-blonde hair behind her ears. ‘And should I bother to ask when and where you’re planning on getting married? Or are you going to tell me you’ve already run off to Vegas?’

A coughing fit was not what you wanted when you already felt post-plane pukey, but I managed to get over it and keep the conversation going and headed off any difficult questions. ‘Early days,’ I spluttered. ‘But it’ll be very low-key. Town hall, dinner, small party, that kind of thing. Don’t bother booking St Paul’s or St Patrick’s.’

‘What’s St Patrick’s?’

‘The cathedral in New York.’ I waved a dismissive hand. ‘I just don’t want all the drama. Something nice with all the important people and lots and lots of boo—’

It was scary how many of my own expressions I could see on my mum’s face. This particular visage suggested she was not amused.

‘Lots and lots of beautiful flowers.’ I corrected. Too late.

‘You’re telling me your wedding is going to be a piss-up in a brewery. In a New York brewery.’

‘I never mentioned a brewery.’ This was true.

‘But you want to get married in New York?’

‘Not necessarily.’ This was not entirely true.

‘Angela.’ Mum showed me the same face I pulled at our local Mexican place when they told me they had no guacamole.

‘We haven’t made any decisions. And it’s not like you’re on the no-fly list, is it?’

She looked down at her fingernails for a moment.

‘Is it?’

Finally, she looked up and turned her blue eyes on me. ‘So. This Alex.’

‘Don’t talk like I’ve just dragged him home out of the bins behind the supermarket,’ I said. ‘You’ve spoken to him on the phone, you’ve seen pictures, I’ve told you everything.’ Obviously not everything. ‘I’ve known him nearly two years.’

‘And you knew Mark for nearly ten,’ she replied, holding up a hand to cut me off. Just as well I was tired or I would have swung for her. ‘I’m just saying, before he gets here, that you need to be careful. You’ve been away over there and I’m sure your head’s been turned, but you’re home now and I want you to think very, very carefully before you make any rash decisions.’

‘This is about as rash as it gets,’ I said, holding up my ring again. ‘Mum, there’s nothing to worry about. Alex is lovely. You’re going to meet him and you’re going to praise the day I met that man.’

‘We’ll just see about that,’ she said, her lips pursed almost as tightly as my dad’s. Clearly it wasn’t just my mum who had a problem with me marrying ‘an American’. Although, to be fair, my dad had never been that keen on Mark either. Or anything else with a penis that came within fifteen feet of his little girl. Bless him. ‘And what’s this about Jenny coming to stay as well?’

‘She just needed a bit of a break,’ I said, trying to suppress a yawn as the kettle rumbled to a boil across the kitchen. Dad got up to mash the tea without waiting to be told, just like Alex. These were the real signs of true and lasting love. ‘There was this bloke and he was messing her around and …’

I paused, looked up and saw my mother’s lips disappear altogether. ‘And she was just desperate to meet you,’ I continued, pulling a one-eighty and trying to get her back on side. ‘As soon as I told her I was coming home to see you, she insisted on coming with me. Wouldn’t hear of me coming without her. She totally loves you.’

‘She totally loves me, does she?’ She shook her head. ‘Totally?’

Smiling, I pulled my hair behind my head, slipped the ponytail holder off my wrist and tied it up high. ‘Totally.’

‘You cut your hair.’ Mum took her mug from my dad and placed it to her lips, steaming hot. Asbestos mouth, she always said. ‘And it’s blonder.’

‘I thought it was quite long at the minute,’ I frowned, flipping the length through my fingers. ‘But yeah, I got highlights. I wanted it to look nice for the presentation. And your party.’

‘I think we probably need to talk about this presentation, don’t we?’ she said. ‘We don’t know exactly what it is you’re doing, you know.’

At last. A topic on which I couldn’t fail to impress.

‘It’s a new magazine,’ I started. ‘Me and my partner Delia came up with the concept, and the publisher liked it so much they want us to launch it in New York and London at the same time.’

‘Hmm.’ Mum stared out of the window.

Not the reaction I’d been looking for.

‘Bit risky, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you think, what with you getting married to a musician, that you really ought to stop playing around and think about a proper job?’

Oh. Wow.

‘One of you should have something steady, surely?’

I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t have anything.

‘So you don’t like my hair then?’ I asked. ‘Bit too much of a change?’

I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as I’d said it. Aside from one other term of endearment starting with a ‘c’, change was the filthiest word in the English language in my mother’s house.

‘It’s shorter than when I last saw you,’ she pointed out, reluctantly going with the subject. ‘And I’d have thought you’d have had enough changes of late without messing about with your hair.’

‘I think it looks nice,’ my dad said, placing my cup in front of me. My Creme Egg mug that had come with an Easter egg fifteen years earlier. ‘Very “ladies in the city”.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’

I sipped my tea carefully and felt every muscle in my body relax. Louisa had sent tons of teabags to me in New York, so I couldn’t tell if it was the mug, if it was the water or if it was just sitting in my mum’s kitchen being talked down to by my parents, but this was the best cup of tea I’d had in two years.

‘Get that tea down you, we haven’t got all day,’ Mum bossed, necking her scalding-hot cuppa as though she was doing an impression of Jenny with a Martini five minutes before the end of happy hour. ‘Do you need to use the loo or can I go?’

‘Why haven’t we got all day?’ I was confused. What was going on? Why wasn’t I getting a beautiful, emotional family reunion? Why weren’t there cakes? I thought I could count on at least a KitKat. At least. ‘Why do I need to use the loo?’

‘It’s Saturday.’ She stood up and looked at me like I’d gone mad. ‘Just because you’re here, the world hasn’t stopped turning. Now, are you going to have a lie-down or are you coming with us?’

Every single atom of my being said have a lie-down. Everything I had learned in twenty-eight years of life said go upstairs and go to sleep. So obviously I picked up my handbag, waited for my mum to come out of the loo and followed her out of the front door.

‘So I said to Janet, I’m not disputing the fact that you’ve been here since half nine,’ my mum said, carefully weighing the difference between two courgettes, narrowing her eyes and placing the bigger one in a little plastic bag. ‘I’m just saying I finished at three and I’ve got things to do. Why should I hang around late because she wants to leave early?’

‘You shouldn’t, love,’ Dad confirmed, passing her a bag of King Edwards for approval. ‘Do we need onions?’

‘Get one big one,’ she replied. ‘I might do a spag bol tomorrow. For the American girl.’

It turned out my mother’s idea of an emotional family reunion was a quick turn around Waitrose. At midday on a Saturday.

‘I need to get some milk,’ I said, walking away from the trolley without proper approval. This was tantamount to going AWOL − my mother looked like she was ready to court martial me right up the arse.

‘I’ve got milk,’ she said, waving her list at me. ‘Why do you need more milk?’

Twisting my engagement ring round and round and round, I shrugged. ‘I’m going to see if they’ve got any lactose-free stuff. Alex is lactose intolerant.’

Both my mum and dad froze on the spot. My dad looked like he might cry.

‘It’s not catching,’ I said. ‘He just can’t digest milk easily.’

Mum pressed a palm to her chest and visibly paled, while my dad hung his head, presumably seeing visions of feeble lactose-intolerant grandchildren failing to return the football he had just kicked to them.

‘The woman who did my colonic says I’m a bit intolerant too,’ I added, waiting for a reaction. But there was none. There was only silence. Picking the list out of my mum’s hand, I scanned it and popped it back between her thumb and forefinger. ‘So we make a good pair. I’ll get the stuff for the pasta.’

‘Angela,’ she said in her kindest, most pleading voice. ‘You didn’t really have a colonic did you?’

Sometimes, I thought to myself, it’s kinder to lie.

‘Yes, I did, Mum,’ I replied. ‘In fact, I’ve had two.’

And sometimes, I just couldn’t be bothered.

If I wasn’t disorientated enough from the overwhelming jet lag that kept threatening to take my legs out from under me, roaming around Waitrose looking for tinned tomatoes and spaghetti just about pushed me over the edge. The only thing that kept me moving was the lure of the Mini Cheddars I’d promised myself. I moved through the aisles of the supermarket like they were full of treacle, my legs heavy and tired. Dodging trolleys and pushchairs and what seemed like dozens of sixteen-year-olds in green uniforms with cages full of Old El Paso fajita dinner kits, I was on autopilot. Maybe I wasn’t home after all. Maybe the plane had crashed and I was in purgatory. There couldn’t be any other explanation for the way I was feeling, the way nothing had changed in the slightest.

Well, nothing had changed but me. I looked like shit. I stopped by one of the freezer cabinets to be quietly appalled at the price of Ben & Jerry’s and caught sight of my reflection. Transatlantic travel did no one any favours. Even following Jenny’s advice hadn’t helped me; sometimes you can drink two litres of water, spend the entire flight getting up and down to go to the loo, smother yourself in Beauty Flash Balm and still deplane looking like you’ve flown in directly from a two-week vacation with the crypt keeper. My skin looked crap, my hair was greasy, and whatever long-lasting, no-smudge mascara I had been wearing was either missing or smudged. Because cosmetics companies were liars. Why couldn’t we all just agree that bruise-like swipes of grey and black etched into the fine lines around your eyes were sexy? Why did we make life hard for ourselves? Maybe I could put it in Gloss as a trend. Maybe I could put it out of business before the first issue even got out.

‘Angela?’

Oh no. I bit down hard on my dry, chapped lips and closed my eyes. Maybe if I didn’t open them again, the voice would go away.

‘Angela, is … is that you?’

How could this be happening? I’d been in England for less than three hours, I hadn’t even had time to change my pants, and yet this − this − was happening? Holding my shopping out as my last defence, I turned round, offering absolutely everything I owned to every deity ever conceived if they would open up a hole in the ground for me to jump into.

‘It is you.’ Mark, my ex-fiancé, stood in front of me, smiling. ‘Wow.’

No disappearing hole. Just an arsehole. Five foot ten of cheating scumbag shithead gurning like the total bell end he was, holding onto a trolley as though he was going to charge me with it. How come he got a weapon and I didn’t? I quickly looked around, trying to find something deadly. It was like The Hunger Games meets MasterChef.

‘Hi,’ I said. Thanks to my bushel of cheesy snacks I couldn’t even put a hand through my hair, couldn’t try to wipe away some of my errant eyeliner. ‘Well.’

‘Well.’ He rapped his fingers on the handle of his trolley, keeping it ever so slightly mobile. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

‘Fancy,’ I replied. This was unfair in every way. I needed to have a very serious conversation with whoever was in charge about how incredibly shit my day had been going so far.

‘Um, so this isn’t New York?’ He had always had a talent for stating the obvious.

Mark, like everything else I’d come across so far, hadn’t changed a bit. His hair was still ever so slightly too long, his jeans were still ever so slightly too big, and he looked almost as uncomfortable as he had the last time I’d laid eyes on him. At least he didn’t have a skinny blonde wrapped around his waist this time, so I suppose I should have been counting my blessings.

‘I heard you were still there.’

‘I am,’ I said quickly, shuffling my shopping in my arms. ‘I mean, not now, obviously. I’m back for Mum’s birthday.’

‘Of course,’ he nodded, every moment growing more awkward than the last. ‘I was supposed to be going this week, but the deal fell through and, well, you know how work is.’

It pissed me off that I did know. It pissed me off that he still existed.

‘Yeah, I heard,’ I said. And immediately regretted saying it. He smirked a little and shifted his weight from foot to foot.

‘Jungle drums,’ he commented and tried a laugh. It didn’t take. When I didn’t respond in any way, shape or form, he gave me his most earnest expression and leaned over the handle of his trolley. He was winning. ‘It’s good to see you.’

Unfortunately for Mark, I already knew he was a liar.

‘Hmm.’ It was all I could manage. I should have got changed. Here he was, all sparkly Saturday clean, and here I was in baggy jeans, a rumpled T-shirt and Converse. I wanted to run home, wash my hair, pull out my tightest dress and my highest heels and come back with my heaviest handbag, fill it with tins of tuna and smack him really, really hard around the head with it. Instead, I utched my shopping further up my body, trying to cover my face and failing.

‘Well, it would be lovely to catch up, if you’ve got time?’ he said unconvincingly, looking anywhere but at me. I squeezed my great big bag of Mini Cheddars so hard that the plastic bag popped open with the sigh I was trying to keep inside. ‘This is weird, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a bit weird,’ I agreed. ‘But it would be weird if it wasn’t, wouldn’t it?’

‘Fair point,’ he replied, shuffling backwards in his knackered old tennis shoes. ‘It really would be good to catch up. I’m still on the same number. Text me or something.’

Tennis shoes. He played tennis. That’s where he met her.

‘Yeah,’ I nodded, trying to get my hair to move. Why couldn’t I think of anything to say? Where was my witty comeback? At least I had my hands full so I couldn’t swing for the bastard. For every second we stood there, his patronizing smile getting smaller and smaller, I got angrier and angrier until I was at full capacity. And then I remembered pissing in his shaving bag and getting on the next plane to New York. Suddenly I didn’t feel quite as bad. ‘I’ve got to go. My dad’s waiting.’

I think the last time I’d used that line on him, we were seventeen and snogging outside Karisma at three in the morning. How time flies.

‘OK.’ He reached out one very rigid hand and placed it on my shoulder for half a heartbeat before snatching it back. My eyes widened to the size of saucers and I jumped back involuntarily. ‘Anyway, give us a call.’

Refusing to respond, I staggered backwards into the freezer door, dropping my shopping and sprinting for the nearest aisle.

‘I thought you’d gone back to New York.’ My dad’s voice interrupted my heavy breathing as I peered round a rack of Kettle Chips, watching Mark standing there with his trolley, clearly embarrassed by the pile of abandoned shopping. ‘Good God, girl, you’ve been gone for ever. Where’s the pasta? Your mum’s at the till.’

I turned to face my dad, and his blue eyes softened from a crinkled smile to a wary frown. ‘Angela, what’s wrong?’

‘Can I have the car keys, please?’ I asked quietly. I was not going to cry in Waitrose. There couldn’t possibly be anything more pathetic than a girl crying in Waitrose.

‘Of course you can,’ he said, fumbling in his pocket and producing a bunch of sparkly silver lifelines. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I couldn’t find the tomatoes,’ I mumbled, wiping at my grubby face with the sleeve of my stripy T-shirt, which was pulled down over the fists I couldn’t seem to relax. ‘Or the Mini Cheddars. Or the pasta.’ The fact that we were standing in front of about twenty-five bags of Mini Cheddars dented my credibility somewhat. My dad looked at me, looked at the snack aisle and then stepped to the side to look past me. I couldn’t bring myself to see if he was still there, but my dad’s angry bear growl confirmed that he was.

‘Sod’s law,’ he said, pressing the car keys into my hand. ‘Get yourself back to the car. I’ll get your mum’s things. Do you want anything?’

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

All I wanted was to go home. And that did not mean back to my parents’ house.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Almost an hour after I’d slumped up the stairs and wrapped myself up in my childhood sheets, I was still wide awake. Cocking jet lag. I couldn’t remember when I had been more tired, but every time I closed my eyes, I just saw Mark grinning at me and that cow trying to get a good look through the car window from behind him.

For the want of something better to do, I sat up, huffed, puffed, opened my laptop and re-read the Gloss presentation. Again. After fifteen minutes of soothing stats, facts and numbers, I quickly flicked through all the other important things online − personal email, work email, Facebook, Perez Hilton, Bloomingdales.com … I was halfway through the purchase of a half-priced Theory shift dress when it all became a bit too much and a tidal wave of jet lag swept me under. As I slipped backwards against the pillows, I caught one last look at myself reflected in the screen and prayed I would wake up looking less like Jabba the Hutt on an off day.

‘Get out of bed, you lazy mare.’

My ears engaged before I could even attempt to open my eyes. Reaching out for Alex, all I felt was a cold, hard wall. The pillows felt wrong. And someone was eating pickled onion Monster Munch. I rolled over and pried open one eye to see Louisa leaning against my bedroom door in boyfriend jeans and a sky-blue T-shirt with her hair high on top of her head in a ponytail. In the blink of an eye, I was fifteen again.

‘Fuck off, I’m tired,’ I said with happiness in my voice, rolling back towards the wall. ‘Leave the crisps. I’m also starving.’

‘Good job I brought you some, then. You look shit.’

A crinkly packet landed square on my head and it was all the incentive I needed to force myself awake.

‘Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the airport.’ Louisa bounded onto my bed like a golden Labrador and wrapped her arms round my neck. ‘Grace hasn’t been well and I couldn’t leave her with Tim. He’s such a wimp when she cries.’

‘And where is she now?’ I asked, returning the hug with such strength I was worried I might break her. At last, something good to come out of this trip. ‘You didn’t leave her in the car, did you? Because that’s really bad parenting.’

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