I Heart London

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”.’