I Heart London

‘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.