A Girl’s Best Friend

‘That’s not going to be a regular occurrence, is it?’ I asked, genuinely at a loss. I came from a world where you worked hard and you got ahead. Or at least, I thought I did. It turned out I’d been very naïve. ‘I mean, tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’

‘That’s more like it.’ She sucked her second cigarette into nothing, grinding it out in her ashtray with what I supposed passed for a smile. ‘I want you to go home, put your big boy trousers on and go back on set tomorrow and kick Simon Derrick’s arse. That doesn’t mean you have to take his shit: that means you stand up for yourself and be amazing. Yes?’

‘What else can I do?’ I asked, trying to change the subject before she knocked me out with a single punch. ‘I’ll do anything, really, I’m not afraid of hard work.’

‘How about you take some fucking photos?’ she suggested. ‘Cocking revolutionary idea, I know. I can’t carry you much longer, Brookes, not when you’re not booking jobs. I don’t have the time to spend pulling assisting gigs that pay a pittance out of my wonderful arse.’

‘I’ll give that a try then,’ I said, grabbing my bag from the floor. It didn’t seem like the time to mention that she still took 15 per cent of that pittance. ‘Thanks for the advice, I won’t let you down.’

Before I could open the door, a tennis ball thwacked the wall, right next to my head. Bending down slowly, my heart in my mouth, I turned around to see Agent Veronica staring at me.

‘You dropped this?’ I picked up the ball and held it in the air, heart pounding.

She clapped for me to chuck it back. With a feeble underhand throw, I tossed it across the office, missing Veronica by a good two feet and knocking a massive stack of invoices off the desk.

‘I’m not really a thrower,’ I explained as they fluttered to the floor.

‘Do your research.’ She spoke to me without acknowledging the piles and piles of paper all over her floor. ‘Never have that camera out of your hands, shoot everyone and everything and make the most of every opportunity that comes your way. If you want this, you’re going to have to fight for it. It’s not going to be handed to you on a plate.’

‘I can fight,’ I replied, clenching my hands into fists. ‘I want this. I really want this.’

‘If you don’t book something in the next month, I’m going to have to drop you and then you’ll see how hard this really is. I want to see those balls, Brookes,’ she barked. ‘Show everyone who you are. You’re not Tess the shitty, sad office girl any more, you’re Tess Brookes, photographer, and a photographer should have something to say, should have a message. Show me what that is, who you are. Got it?’

‘Got it,’ I confirmed as I closed the door behind me. ‘Swing my balls around and show everyone who I am.’

It sounded easy. Only … I wasn’t entirely sure who I was any more.

CHAPTER THREE

‘And then Veronica said she was going to drop me if I didn’t start booking jobs,’ I said, shovelling salt and vinegar Pringles into my mouth by the handful. Damn Tesco and their seasonal three-for-two offers. Damn the woman on the checkout who asked if I was going to a party. There was absolutely nothing wrong with a twenty-seven-year-old woman eating two tubs of Pringles for dinner and saving one for dessert.

‘No way!’ Amy bellowed, the speakers on my laptop crackling with outrage during our daily Skype call. ‘She did not? She can’t do that, can she? She can’t fire you?’

‘She can,’ I replied, exhausted, glancing down at all the pieces of paper and empty Pringle tubs around me. ‘And she might. Looking at it from a business perspective, she probably should. She’s investing a lot of time in me and I’m not bringing much money in. My ROI is terrible and—’

Amy clapped her hands together and I snapped back to the camera.

‘Tess, please tell me you haven’t worked out the return on investment on yourself.’

‘No,’ I replied, slowly pushing my pad and calculator out of view of the webcam. ‘Of course not.’

‘She can’t drop you, you’re just starting out,’ she said, glancing away at her phone for a second. ‘You’re hardly going to be David Bailey overnight, are you? It’s not fair.’

‘It’s not about fair,’ I told her. ‘It’s about what’s best for business. Also, there’s a small chance I did think I would be David Bailey overnight. I suppose things don’t work out like that though, do they? I just don’t want her to give up on me.’

‘I don’t want you to give up on you,’ Amy corrected. ‘It’s a minor setback, that’s all. You’re killing it. You’re better than David Bailey. Fitter than him anyway … although I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen one of his photos. Or a photo of him. Is he fit?’

‘I appreciate that but it would be a massive setback,’ I said. ‘I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing, I wouldn’t even know where to start.’

But I was trying. The bed was covered in magazines and newspapers, every publication I could get my hands on lay open on top of the duvet, the name of every art director, picture desk and photo editor in London highlighted with neon-yellow marker pen. I was down but I was not out. Not yet.

‘You’ll work it out,’ Amy replied, her attention drifting. ‘You always do.’

‘Is everything all right? Do you need to go?’ I asked as she frowned at her phone again. ‘It’s OK if you do.’

‘Sorry.’ She threw her phone backwards onto the bed behind her and I winced as it bounced twice and then hit the floor. ‘I am listening, I’ve just got loads of emails coming in. This presentation is going to kill me.’

Amy was in New York to launch Al’s brand-new fashion line, AJB, and, from what I could gather, it was going to be quite the event.

‘If Kekipi doesn’t first,’ I replied. ‘How are you going to grow your hair to waterfall-plait length in the next three weeks?’

Amy, Paige and I had received emails in the middle of the night, detailing our mandatory bridesmaid prep regime. I loved that man like a brother, but there was no way on God’s green earth that I was booking myself in for a full body wax prior to my dress fitting. Yes, my legs needed shaving, but it wasn’t like I was rocking a full tache, I thought, absently stroking my face.

‘He’s taking me to get fitted for extensions tomorrow,’ she said, fingering her messy black pixie cut. ‘Or at least he thinks he is. Anyway, less about Kekipi Kardashian and more about this job you’re on. You didn’t get a facial and the photographer is a sexist wankpaddle who isn’t fit to wipe his arse with your negatives. What happened then?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about it, it doesn’t matter, I should let you go.’

As much as I missed Amy, I was keen to get back to my project. I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I’d found the contact details of every possible person who could hire me and worked out how to bribe them into hiring me. I had to show Agent Veronica I was a good bet. ‘I haven’t had dinner or anything yet, I’m starving to death.’

‘There should be some spaghetti hoops in the kitchen cupboard,’ she said with a nostalgic smile. ‘God, I’d take your arm off for some hoops on toast right now. Bread here is shit. What’s that all about?’

‘Where are you going for dinner tonight?’ I asked, hoping to distract her. I’d been living in her house for six weeks. The hoops were long gone. ‘Somewhere amazing?’

‘Everywhere here is amazing.’ She puffed out her cheeks and slapped her belly. ‘I’ve put on about a stone. Honestly, Tess, the food in New York – I want to eat everything. I am eating everything. You might as well burn all my clothes because they’re going to have to roll me home when I’m done.’

‘Sounds awful,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Speaking of home, any idea when you’ll be back? Still looking at flying on Christmas Eve?’

Amy scrunched up her face and shook her head.

‘Not sure,’ she said. ‘We’re here until the presentation on the twenty-third obvs and then Al said something about going to Hawaii to work on some new concepts before we go to Milan. He wants to go through some of Jane’s notebooks he’s got back at the house. I’d probably have to go with him – the time difference between London and Hawaii is mental and we’d never get anything approved in time.’

Al, AKA Bertie Bennett, AKA fashion industry legend, Amy’s new boss and one of my favourite people in the world, lived in Hawaii, which was where he and I had met. It was also where I had met another person who, for the time being, would remain nameless, lest I felt the urge to carve out my heart with a rusty spoon.

‘Hawaii is amazing,’ I mooned, eyes full of pineapples and palm trees. ‘You’ll love it, Aims.’

‘I know, I really want to go,’ Amy said, gurning like a mad woman. ‘And imagine Hawaii at Christmas. Wouldn’t that be amazing? I wonder if they still have Christmas trees. Shit, what if they don’t have Brussels sprouts? I hate them, obviously, but you’ve got to have them.’

Wuh?

‘You’re going for Christmas?’ I squeaked far too quickly, finally understanding what she was saying. ‘You’re not coming home?’

The last few months had been hard work but every time I’d walked past a shop window full of brightly wrapped presents I couldn’t afford or attempted to ignore drunk people wearing reindeer antlers on the Tube, I remembered that soon Amy would be home for Christmas and everything would be OK.

‘I want to come home,’ she replied, not quite quickly enough. ‘I probably will. But I may not be able to, Tess, and I know you of all people understand how sometimes work has to come first, even if I can’t quite believe I’m saying that.’

I hated it when my dedication to a cause came back to bite me in the arse.

‘Of course I do,’ I said, trying not to pout. Amy hadn’t held down a job for more than weeks at a time in years and working for Al was an incredible opportunity. I was so happy for her. And only the tiniest possible bit envious. ‘I miss you, that’s all. I can’t believe you’re in New York and I’m stuck here. I’m so jealous. But don’t worry about it, it’s fine.’

I couldn’t imagine getting through Christmas Day without my best friend. We’d spent it together every year for as long as I could remember, from being tiny tots skipping down to church with our families, right through to sneaking out while everyone was in a post-turkey coma and necking Baileys out of the bottle by the village pond. That tradition had lasted much longer than going to church ever did.

‘Christmas is still ages away,’ Amy added when I didn’t paste on my fake smile fast enough. ‘We’ll work something out.’

There wasn’t a woman alive who didn’t know that ‘fine’ never really meant ‘fine’. A man, maybe, but a woman? No way.

‘It’s only nine days away,’ I said, checking my half-eaten chocolate advent calendar as the terrifying prospect of having to spend the day alone with my family reared its ugly head. Nope, not worth thinking about.

‘Loads can happen in nine days, Tess,’ she replied, messing with her hair again. It had got so much longer since I’d left Milan that her shaggy fringe hung low over her big blue eyes. She looked gorgeous. ‘Don’t stress about it.’

‘I won’t stress about it,’ I echoed, stressing. ‘So, you’re busy even today then?’

‘I am. I’m busy every day. It’s mental,’ she said, eyes flicking up towards the top of my screen. ‘Cockmonkeys, is that really the time? Tess, I’ve got to go, I’m late.’

‘You’re always late,’ I reminded her. ‘It’s one of those wonderful annoying things I’ve come to love about you.’

‘I’m only late, like, half the time now,’ she said proudly. ‘I am the all-new and improved Amy Smith. Well, 50 per cent improved. Call you tomorrow?’

‘Of course,’ I said, giving her a swift salute. ‘Now, go on, before you’re any later.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Amy brushed at her hair one last time and blew a kiss into the camera. ‘Love you, skankface.’

‘Love you too,’ I said, waving before my best friend disappeared and the screen went blue.

My cheery smile faded. The suggestion that Amy wouldn’t be home for Christmas was worse news than the prospect of getting dropped by Agent Veronica. It was worse than my black-and-blue backside and Paige not telling me what was going on with her love life and never talking to Charlie any more, and it was almost worse than the fact I hadn’t heard from Nick Miller in nearly five months.

‘I’m pleased for her, I am,’ I said, stepping into the not-really-hot-enough bathwater fifteen minutes later. ‘It’s amazing, she deserves it.’

The rubber duck sat on the edge of the bath and eyed me with suspicion.

‘Don’t look at me like that.’ I shuffled around until I was somewhere near comfortable and tried not to knock a crusty looking bottle of Head & Shoulders off the side of the bath with my massive copper-coloured topknot. ‘She does deserve it.’

He still didn’t say anything.

‘I mean, yeah, I suppose if I really tried, I could be a bit annoyed that she’s never kept a job for more than three months and now she’s running all over the world with Al.’ I shrugged. ‘And she’s having this amazing adventure while I’m making tea and holding lights and letting a man pretend to ejaculate on my face but, you know, whatever.’

The duck wrinkled his rubber bill and I knocked him into the bath.

‘I hate you,’ I said, holding my breath and sinking underneath the bubbles, but there he was, all judgemental painted-on eyes, when I re-emerged.

‘I’m not jealous,’ I told him/myself. ‘She’s had so many shit jobs, this is amazing for her.’

‘Remember that time she got fired from the dog walking service for bringing the wrong dog back from the park?’ he asked.

‘I do,’ I admitted.

‘She took a Great Dane out and brought a Labrador home.’

‘She did,’ I admitted. ‘The owners weren’t that happy.’

And now she was more or less running the show at Bertie Bennett’s new label. My friend, Amy, working for my friend, Al. He was fashion royalty and she was a woman who couldn’t get a second interview at Topshop because she laughed when they told her she’d have to work Saturdays and every other Sunday.

The duck still looked sceptical.

‘She likes to have her weekends free,’ I mumbled. ‘But I think it’s nice that she’s finally found something she loves.’

Silence.

‘Maybe we could brainstorm some ideas that would help me, that might be more productive?’ I suggested, poking my toes up out of the water.

‘One, you could assume your flatmate’s identity and run away to Hawaii to shoot a feature for a fashion magazine,’ he suggested.

I gave him a level stare and said nothing.

‘Oh right,’ he said. ‘You’ve done that already. Two, go to Milan and shoot a retrospective of Bertie Bennett’s fashion archives and document the creation of his first designer collection.’

‘Come to think of it, that sounds familiar as well,’ I said. ‘What do you want me to say? Stop sulking, accept the photography isn’t working out, be a grown-up and get a proper job?’

The duck gave me the beady eye.

‘Or four,’ I finished. ‘Drop a little rubber duck into the toilet and wait for one of Amy’s flatmates to flush him?’

Before he could reply, the handle on the bathroom door began to jerk up and down.

‘There’s someone in here!’ I yelled, sloshing around in the bath water. The door was only held shut with one rusty old bolt and I wasn’t convinced it would hold.

‘What?’ a male voice shouted on the other side.

‘I said there’s someone in here!’ I shouted back.

Why would you keep trying the door when someone was clearly inside? Amy lived with idiots. Correction, Amy lived with Al and Kekipi in amazing houses and hotels all over the world. I lived with idiots.

‘Are you going to be long?’ the voice called.

‘As long as it takes for the hot water to come back on,’ I called back, trying the tap with my toe. Still freezing. ‘I need to wash my hair.’

And washing my ridiculous mop required enough water to cause a hosepipe ban in the Home Counties.

A loud sigh rattled through the wooden door. ‘I’ll have to have a shit downstairs then.’

I made a sour face at the duck and waited for the disgruntled footsteps to fade away.

‘I’m so glad I decided to take Amy up on her offer of a place to stay,’ I said to the duck. ‘I’m having such a wonderful time here.’

The duck sailed past my kneecap with a quirk of his little plastic eyebrows that suggested I could have come up with other options.

‘Maybe we could pack up and go and stay with Charlie?’ I suggested.

The duck gave me a death stare. He and Amy both had Charlie Wilder at the top of their shitlists.

‘Oh, wait. We can’t, he hates me.’ I paused. ‘So you can stop looking at me like that or we’re off up north to live with my mother.’

As much as I missed Amy, I knew she had to come home sooner or later. It was nothing compared to how much of a gaping hole Charlie had left in my life. He was the third member of our squad but even I had to admit I could understand why he wasn’t busting my door down to be best friends forever.

I’d been nursing a crush on Charlie Wilder since the first day of university and when it seemed as though we had finally found a way to be together, we managed to cock it all up. Him by sleeping with my former flatmate behind my back and me by falling in love with the worst man alive. And the more I thought about it, the less sense it made.

The duck gave a reassuring quack and floated back down towards the taps.

The hardest part was having absolutely no idea what was going on in his life. We used to talk or see each other almost every day, but after an ill-fated trip to Italy earlier this year, when Amy and I were out there with Al, he had blocked the pair of us from all forms of social media. No status updates, no tweets, no Instagrams, Snapchats, Vibers, WhatsApps or even so much as a Periscope update to give me a clue as to what was going on in his life. When someone declares their undying love and then you declare your undying love to someone else, a freeze out is to be expected. I’d stopped trying to talk to him after thirty-six unanswered text messages.

I missed Charlie. I missed Amy. I missed the certainties and straightforwardness of my old life.

The handle jerked into life again, the bathroom door rattling on its hinges.

‘I’m still in here!’ I yelled. ‘I’m in the bath!’

I missed being able to have a bloody bath in peace.

‘There’s no bog roll downstairs,’ the man’s voice bellowed through the door. ‘Can you chuck us some out?’

I looked over to see one sad piece of toilet paper fluttering from the draft that blew in around the warped wooden bathroom window frame.

‘There’s none in here, either,’ I shouted back. ‘Sorry.’

‘F’king hell,’ the voice grumbled outside the door. ‘What am I supposed to do, wipe my arse with my hand?’

I gave the duck a desperate look.

‘First things first,’ I muttered. ‘Let’s get out of here ASAP.’

The duck’s buoyant bob seemed to suggest he agreed. As soon as possible. If not sooner.

An hour later, I was safely wrapped up in Amy’s giant bed, in Amy’s tiny bedroom, holding a letter in my wrinkled fingers. It was one hundred and thirty-six days since I had been given this note. One hundred and thirty-six days since I had opened the envelope and seen his handwriting for the first time. It was something I’d never thought about before, his handwriting. Between emails and texts, I hardly ever saw anything written down these days, but as soon as I saw this, I knew it was from him.

My handwriting had always been flagged as an area for improvement in school, and now that I hardly ever so much as picked up a pen, it was a disgrace. Nick’s handwriting was perfect, of course. Elegant, joined up, and entirely sure of itself. His beautiful, heartbreaking words, etched into a page he had torn from the expensive leatherbound notebook he carried around with him and then hidden away in my passport for one hundred and thirty-six days.

Dear Tess,

I told you I didn’t know if I could do this and it turns out that I can’t.

I’ve been thinking about it all week and I just can’t see another way. Even if you hadn’t left, I still would have been on a plane to New York in the morning – you gave me a coward’s way out. Don’t think this is your fault.

I’d been fooling myself into thinking this was fun and easy and that I could do it but there’s nothing fun and easy about the way I feel. Everything you said last night was incredible. I love you so much, my bones ache. You, Tess, are spectacular and everyone should be so lucky to have you in their corner but I’m not ready for you and it’s not fair.

I could stay and we could keep playing this game but eventually, I’d hurt you one too many times and you would put up with so much before that happened, so I’m saving us both the heartache by leaving now, before I turn you into me.

You deserve better. I want to be better.

All my love,

Nick

Given how fast and how fiercely I had fallen in love with him, I only realized after he left that I really didn’t know all that much about Nick Miller.

The fact I’d never seen his handwriting until he wrote this letter should have been the least of my worries but, looking at it now, it was all I could think of. Before the tears could start, I folded the note along its one crease, once sharp, now so soft I worried it would tear in two from being opened and closed so very many times, and tucked it back inside my passport, back underneath my pillow.

Maybe I didn’t know that much about him but what I did know was how much I missed him. I missed the sound of his voice when he laughed and when he said my name. I missed the little growling noise he made before he ate. I missed the way he would kiss the top of my head before I fell asleep and how he let me put my cold feet on his warm legs in bed and how he always laughed at his own terrible jokes and how he made me feel brave and proud and utterly myself. Ever since he’d called things off, it was as though someone had taken all of that away and no matter how hard I looked, how determined I was to work these things out for myself, I could not find the answers. I didn’t want to need him like this but I did want him to need me. It was all so confusing.

It turned out I could lie to myself about a lot of things if I thought they were for the greater good. I could tell myself that Charlie would forgive me and that we would be friends again. I was happy to pretend I wasn’t at all jealous of Amy’s sudden success and I almost believed it when I told people I didn’t regret walking away from a career in advertising to make cups of tea and sweep up studios but I couldn’t keep telling myself stories about Nick any more.

We had spent two weeks together and one hundred and thirty-six days apart. He hadn’t called, he hadn’t written, but then neither had I. Every time I opened my inbox, I looked for his name; every time my phone rang, the split second before I saw who was calling, I hoped it would be him. The fact he hadn’t even tried to speak to me since he left me in Milan was the reason I found it so hard to fall asleep every night but the thought of calling him and having him tell me he didn’t want me and never really loved me? That was the thing that woke me up in a cold sweat. I wasn’t lying when I told Paige I hadn’t contacted Nick because I wanted to concentrate on work but I wasn’t telling the whole truth either. I’d lost Charlie’s trust and friendship, my career was in shambles, Amy was thousands of miles away and only moving further from me, but with Nick’s letter safely under my pillow, and the tiniest spark of hope that we could still be together one day, that I could get back the things I had lost, I got to keep something.

When anxiety woke me in the middle of the night, it was the memories that lulled me back to sleep. I let myself remember the time we walked through Milan, hand in hand. The time we kissed in the square in front of the opera house. The look on his face when I told him that I loved him. I indulged in our days in Hawaii, swimming in the waterfall, sitting on the beach at sunset. The memories I kept locked away, day in and day out because, in the middle of the night, they felt like a warm blanket pulled right up to my chin on the coldest of nights but in the daytime, they were blinding. A constant reminder of what I no longer had.