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‘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.
It was easy to believe in dreams at night but the tiny spark of hope that I carried around all day was starting to burn my fingers. Something was going to have to change.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_72f8ed16-4164-5c7e-a44d-940bf3a627d4)
‘You sound a lot happier today,’ Amy said. ‘Way less like you’re going to kill someone.’
‘I do feel a bit less homicidal,’ I replied, running to the underground station to avoid the sudden shower that had started the second I left the studio. ‘Today is definitely an improvement.’
‘I can’t believe you’re working on a Sunday,’ she clucked, disgusted. ‘You know how I feel about that.’
‘I do but lots of people work weekends and the world doesn’t end. Actually, it would be more likely to end if they didn’t. Anyway, I’ve only got today and Monday left with the lovely Ess, I think I can manage that.’
I thought I could, I wasn’t absolutely certain.
‘Then I ought to get this out the way while you’re in what passes for a good mood,’ Amy said. ‘I’m definitely not going to be home for Christmas.’
‘Oh.’
‘Obviously it would have been better if Kekipi wasn’t dead set on this bloody New Year’s Eve wedding but he’s been such a bridezilla about the whole thing and Domenico was insistent that they had to get married in Italy and we could only get the Park Avenue Armory on the twenty-third so we were kind of stuck with all the dates.’
‘Oh.’
‘Between the presentation on the twenty-third and flying to Milan for the New Year’s wedding, going anywhere else in between is just impossible – I’ll have so much to clear up on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. You know they only take Christmas Day as holiday here?’
‘Makes sense.’
I wondered whether or not I still had the receipt for her Christmas present so I could take it back and swap it for a sackful of coal.
‘I completely understand.’
‘But here’s what I was thinking …’ Amy was still talking, the strain in her voice breaking into a familiar giddiness. ‘You should come here!’
‘To New York?’
‘To New York!’ Amy confirmed. ‘It would be amazing. I miss you so much and Al and Kekipi would love for you to be here at Christmas. God knows how I’ve managed this long without you, so please come? I need you!’
‘No you don’t,’ I replied. ‘You’ve done everything by yourself so far. You’re going to be fine.’
I looked up at a snowman hanging from the telephone pole above me. His big white bum shone yellow in the smog but the bulbs had gone in his top half and nobody had bothered to replace them. His cheery grin and corncob pipe were lost in the drizzle and the whole effect was really rather sad.
‘All right, I might not need you but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t come,’ she replied. ‘I want you there. I want you to see the presentation – we’re using your photos and I know you got an invitation – and take me for drinks when I’m crowing on about how amazing I am to anyone who will listen. Tess, Christmas in New York – you know you want to.’
I did. Amy knew I’d always wanted to go to New York but I’d never had the time, Amy could never afford it and Charlie hated to fly, so year after year, it had passed me by. But New York for Christmas … I had a sudden vision of myself, wrapped up in a cosy coat, mitten in mitten with Amy, buzzed on good cocktails, laughing with Kekipi and getting a grandfatherly hug from Al.
God, it was tempting. It would definitely be better than curling up on the settee with my family, drinking five cups of tea and putting away an entire box of half-price Christmas chocolates. Well, the chocolate part didn’t sound that bad but the rest of it sounded incredibly depressing. And all too familiar.
‘Well?’ Amy was as impatient as ever. ‘Unless you’ve been stunned into silence by my genius, this is the part where you’re supposed to make agreeing noises. Wow, Amy! What a good idea, Amy! I’m on my way, Amy!’
‘I want to come,’ I said, having already talked myself out of it. It was way too expensive, it was way too far, I didn’t even have any mittens – and what if Veronica got me more work? ‘But I’m saving for somewhere to live. And you’re supposed to be working, aren’t you? I know it’s going to come as a shock to you but you’re expected to do it nearly every day.’
‘You can put it on your credit card and I will be working,’ she protested. ‘I have had this job for over four months now, titface, surely that calls for a celebration?’
‘New record,’ I said with a heap of approval. ‘I’m proud.’
‘I’m good at it,’ she replied simply. ‘Come on, Tess, it would be awesome. I hate being here without you, it feels weird. I had my knickers on inside out all day yesterday and I didn’t have anyone to tell. I need you.’
I smiled in spite of myself.
‘And what would I do with myself while you’re swanning around New York being the world’s most amazing … you?’ I asked, all my features pinching together as I tried to remember what her job title was supposed to be.
Amy cackled triumphantly.
‘I’m the Vice President of Special Projects,’ she said. ‘Can you even effing believe it? Kekipi came up with it, he’s amazing. It was that or Head Bitch in Charge and he said I couldn’t have that title because that was him.’
It was impressive. The most special project Amy had worked on before now was the time she tried to work out if you could make toast with an iron.
Amy made a huffing sound down the line. ‘And if I’m not enough to tempt you, there’s at least one other really good reason for you to come over here.’
My ears prickled and I felt my entire body tense up. She didn’t even need to say his name, I only had to think it.
‘Unless you’re about to say “hot dogs” I don’t want to hear it, Amy,’ I warned her.
‘OK, don’t be mad at me,’ she began, knowing I would immediately get mad. ‘But I did a bit of internet stalking and, you know, as luck would have it, someone else is in New York as well.’
‘Is it Michael Fassbender?’ I asked, refusing to play along.
‘I know you’re going to say you don’t care but we both know you do and what harm could it do to say hello if you’re in the same city coincidentally and don’t tell me you’re over it because you’re not and it’s horrible and I hate it.’ She barely broke for breath, afraid I would cut her off. ‘You should call him. What harm can come of saying hello?’
So much harm, I thought.
