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‘Your Christmas present is in Park Slope,’ Alex repeated, nodding his head and pointing with the hand that held mine. ‘This way.’
I was full of questions but Park Slope was a library of a neighbourhood, shushing me before I could speak. Alex and I didn’t hang out this south of Williamsburg often. Or ever actually. Brooklyn was a big borough, full of diversity and adventure, but for the most part, there were three different kinds of neighbourhoods. There was the trendy, hipster part where people rode their bikes everywhere and had ironic moustache tattoos on their fingers, there were the incredibly dodgy bits where I was too scared to get off the subway, and then there were the yummy mummy, super-swanky parts with lots of trees, lots of iPads and lots of odd shops that sold things like artisanal mayonnaise or handcrafted hats. And only two things united all three areas – a fierce love of Beyoncé and men with beards. Park Slope was the epitome of the third type of neighbourhood.
Everywhere I looked, there were attractive couples in their gym clothes pushing elaborate prams and drinking from reusable water bottles, well-groomed women walking expensive-looking dogs and coffee shop after coffee shop after coffee shop. I knew that somewhere nearby there was a huge, beautiful park where Alex’s band, Stills, had played at a festival the summer before and I’d been saying I was going to come back and visit for months on end but, like so many things I was ‘going to do’ in New York, I still hadn’t got around to it. But I did remember that Park Slope in the summer had been beautiful, all sunny skies and green trees, and if it was possible, today it was even more picturesque. The streets we strolled down were orderly and clean, punctuated with stately trees and lined by big brownstones, the kind of houses that made me want to put on my best shoes, sit on my stoop and flag down a yellow cab. Inside, I saw warmly lit trees and menorahs, and almost every other door had a beautiful red-ribboned wreath hanging outside. Even though we were half an hour away from Manhattan, this looked like the New York you saw in the movies and it made my heart sing.
‘You really have no idea where we’re going?’ Alex asked, sheepdogging me down another street, away from the coffee shops and past a church and a synagogue and another church. With its own coffee shop. ‘I can’t believe I’ve actually been able to keep a secret from you.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ I explained, looking up at the street signs and trying to work out what he was talking about. ‘Is it food?’
‘No, it’s not food,’ he sighed. ‘It’s better than food.’
‘Seriously, I got dressed before midday on a Saturday and you’re not even going to feed me?’ What was better than food? ‘Was that Anne Hathaway? She lives here.’
‘You got half dressed,’ he reminded me. His eyes were shining so brightly I couldn’t help but smile. ‘These are the things I worry about when I’m away on tour. And no, I don’t think it was Anne Hathaway.’
‘It might have been.’ I was trying not to be too grumpy but Alex (and anyone who had ever spent more than half a day with me) was well aware that I was difficult when I was hungry. ‘You don’t know.’
‘Yeah, I do know because it was a fourteen-year-old boy.’ He squeezed my hand and stopped short in the middle of the street. ‘We’re here.’
But we weren’t anywhere. We were stood in the middle of 9th Street, right between 8th and 9th Avenues, looking at nothing with no one in sight.
‘Alex?’ The front door to the brownstone in front of us opened and a tall, glossy woman with too much too blonde hair appeared, smiling at my husband.
‘Hey, Karen,’ Alex replied cheerfully, heading up the steps and pulling me along behind him. He pushed me in front of him to shake the woman’s outstretched hand. ‘This is Angela.’
‘Mrs Reid, so nice to meet you at last.’ Karen was older than me – I guessed at least somewhere in her mid-forties, although it was so hard to tell with well-heeled New York women. Either there was some Botox at play or it was a very impressive fake smile she was shining right at me. ‘Alex has told me so much about you.’
‘Um, it’s Angela, please.’ Flummoxed as I was, I’d be buggered if I was going to be called impolite. By a complete stranger. Who appeared to have some sort of close relationship with my husband that I knew nothing about. ‘And it’s Clark. Not Mrs Reid. I didn’t change my name. When we got married. Because of work and … you know.’
Karen’s eyes flitted over to Alex with mild concern. Apparently she did not know.
‘Right,’ she smiled again, although this time more like I was a puppy with three legs, and beckoned us inside. Alex gave me a gentle shove through the front door and a slap on the arse. It did not make up for how incredibly confused I was. ‘Shall we go inside?’
A thousand scenarios were running through my head but none of them seemed quite right. She was an artist and Alex was going to have our portrait painted. She was a chef and Alex had bought me (sorely needed and often referenced) cooking lessons. She was a very unfortunate prostitute and Alex thought it was time to spice things up in the bedroom. Oh God, that was it. She was some sort of sex teacher. We had drunkenly made a ‘no three-way’ sex vow before the wedding but what if my recent sexy bedtime ensemble of a promotional Smirnoff Ice T-shirt and topknot weren’t doing it for him? Things had been a bit quiet in the bedroom of late but I was so tired from long hours at the office and Alex was up all night working on new songs. How had I let things get so bad? I should have been Fifty Shades of Greying the shit out of him every night, I should have—
‘You have to tell me what’s going on in your head right now,’ Alex whispered, ‘because your face is a fucking picture.’
‘Alex, tell me what’s going on right now,’ I replied, having adequately scared myself shitless.
‘So, you’ll be apartment one. The basement and backyard are all yours. Two and three are up the staircase and they have the rooftop.’ Karen gestured absently up a dark, wooden staircase to my right and then unlocked the door on my left. ‘Shall I give the two of you the grand tour or do you want to do the honours yourself?’
‘I’m going to take it from here, if that’s OK,’ Alex said, giving Karen a half-nod and holding his hand out to take the keys from her. ‘We’ll see you outside?’
‘Of course,’ she said, beaming back at the pair of us. ‘Congratulations. It’s a beautiful home. Perfect for a new family.’
‘Thanks.’ Alex waited for Karen to leave and then locked the door behind her. Leaning against it, he smiled awkwardly out from underneath his floppy fringe, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. ‘So, yeah. Merry Christmas.’
Karen was not a sex teacher. She was not going to teach me the art of sensual massage. This was not a well-concealed brothel. This was … well, I still wasn’t sure. I looked up at the tall white tin ceiling. I looked over my shoulder at the huge empty room with its enormous bay windows, elegant fireplace and shiny hardwood floor. I looked back at Alex. He looked completely out of place and so incredibly happy.
‘This?’ I pointed at him, then at myself, then at the floor. ‘You rented this apartment?’
‘I bought this apartment,’ he said, not budging from the doorway. ‘It’s ours.’
I suddenly felt very, very sick.
‘You bought this apartment? It’s ours?’ I couldn’t really make words of my own so I repeated his, trying very hard to keep my voice even and my legs straight. ‘This is our apartment? That you didn’t tell me about? That you bought? Without telling me?’
‘I’m feeling like maybe you’re not as excited as I had hoped you would be.’ He advanced on me slowly, hands held out, either to hug me or hold me off, I wasn’t sure. ‘It was supposed to be romantic. It’s an amazing apartment, babe, let me show you around.’
It was too much. Before he could take another step, I sank to the floor, crossed my legs and rested my head in my palms, hiding behind my hair. Alex had bought an apartment. In Park Slope. Without asking me, without telling me, without even hinting that he was thinking about moving. Usually, I couldn’t get him to order from a new pizza place without having to bribe him with sexual favours. I couldn’t even begin to understand what had possessed him to do this.
‘Don’t freak out, OK?’
I heard my husband outside the safety of my hair but I couldn’t quite look up, not just yet.
‘I was talking to this guy down at the recording studio and he told me he was selling and I came by to take a look and all I could think was how perfect the place is, how much you would love it,’ he explained. ‘Listen, Angela, there’s an office for you, there’s even a soundproofed room downstairs in the basement that I could turn into a studio. The guy used it for practice but it would be perfect for recording. And there are two bedrooms so we could have a place for guests or, you know, maybe a nursery.’
Oh, no.
After a series of deep, calming breaths I remembered from the single yoga class I’d taken three years ago, I parted my hair and peered out at the man I had married. Alex was squatting in front of me, an earnest look on his face that was somewhere between ‘what’s wrong with you?’ and ‘I know I’ve fucked up.’
‘Alex, you bought an apartment without telling me,’ I croaked. ‘What happened to us telling each other everything?’
‘It was supposed to be a surprise.’ he offered with a double thumbs up.
‘A surprise is a Kinder Egg,’ I replied, reminding myself to focus on the matter at hand and not on whether I wanted a Kinder Egg. Which of course I did, I wasn’t made of stone. ‘This is a house.’
Alex bit his lip and reached out to take my hand. ‘Can I show you around?’
Dizzy, I pushed myself up off the floor, ignoring his outstretched hand, and dusted off the back of my shorts. With a sigh, I rolled my eyes at his sad puppy face and allowed him to lead me around the seemingly endless apartment. He was right – it was beautiful, it was perfect, it had everything. Where our current apartment, our home, was brand new and sparkling, this place had character. It was all original features and sympathetic remodelling. The rooms were plain and empty but they were also big and airy and full of light. The bathroom had a roll-top bath – my interior design kryptonite. I was powerless against it. And then there was the garden. Actual grass in an actual outdoor space that was bigger than the average paddling pool. Slowly, I started to see how our lives could fill the space. My desk in the office alongside a big, squishy armchair for reading-slash-online shopping, our bed in the bedroom by the enormous sash window, Alex’s instruments lining the room of his new studio …
Once I’d got over myself, I could see exactly what he could see – this place was made for us. Maybe not the people we were when we met but the people we were now. I couldn’t imagine scared, fresh-off-the-plane Angela rolling up to a leafy Park Slope address with her Marks and Sparks weekend bag, a spare pair of pants and a crumpled bridesmaid dress, but this Angela? Even in my denim shorts and specially-shipped-from-Marks-and-Sparks black tights, I could see it. If I squinted. I was absolutely the sort of woman who lived in a place like this and went out to buy her husband freshly baked bagels on a Saturday morning. Or at least the kind of woman who thought about it, fell asleep again and ended up eating Corn Flakes and illegally streaming Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.
‘Well?’ Alex hadn’t spoken in an age. He looked genuinely worried. ‘What do you think?’
‘Can we afford it?’ I asked. I was my mother’s daughter after all.
‘You can’t,’ he replied, gazing at the fireplace as lovingly as I had ever seen him look at me. ‘Seriously, you make no money for the hours you work, it’s crazy. But, you know, I’ve been saving for this for years and with the advance for the new album …’ He stopped getting it on with the apartment fixtures momentarily and looked back at me. ‘We’ll be flat-ass broke for a while until we let the other place but yeah, we can afford it.’
And that was when I realised. He must have been planning this for ages. While I’d been all late nights at the office and dragging myself through Monday to Friday so I could sleep through the weekend, Alex had been quietly working away and plotting our future. The sneaky, wonderful git.
‘What do you think?’ he asked in a soft voice I loved.
‘I think it’s amazing,’ I said, mentally punching myself in the ovaries for not being appropriately grateful for what a wonderful man I had. ‘I can’t quite believe it but it’s amazing. You’re amazing. Thank you.’
Alex smiled down at me then cupped his hands around my face and kissed me for what felt like a very long time.
‘Just don’t ever, ever do this again,’ I said, actually punching him in the belly. ‘Because I will fucking kill you.’
‘Duly noted,’ he laughed, rubbing his stomach and pushing me away. ‘Not that I can imagine we’ll need to move for a very long time. This is going to be a great place to raise a family.’
I pulled him back to me, pressed my head into his chest, ignoring both his family comment and the fleeting concern as to whether or not I was still getting an actual Christmas present.
‘Eurgh,’ I mumbled into his sweatshirt. ‘I hate moving.’
‘Oh, yeah …’ Alex’s voice wavered slightly. ‘I figured the sooner the better so I kind of started arranging that already.’
Here we go. I held my breath and counted to ten.
‘That’s awesome,’ I said, as positive as possible. ‘So after Christmas, yeah?’
‘Next week.’ I felt him tense up but there was no fun in punching him when he was expecting it. ‘A week from today.’
‘You want us to move house, across Brooklyn, in seven days?’ I shrieked, composure forgotten. So this was what hysteria felt like. ‘Four days before Christmas?’
‘I’ll do everything,’ he replied as quickly as was humanly possible. ‘I’ll hire the movers, I’ll get the new stuff we need, I’ll make sure it’s perfect. I just thought it would be nice to do Christmas in our new home, you know? And you’re taking the week off so you’ll be around to make sure I don’t fuck up.’
‘And we have plans for that week,’ I said. ‘It was supposed to be relaxing.’
‘Really?’ He raised an eyebrow and looked away. ‘Fighting my way around an ice rink in Central Park isn’t really my idea of relaxing.’
‘Well, it was supposed to be fun,’ I clarified. I turned to take a wistful look at the roll-top bath. Roll-top baths made everything better. ‘And I just wanted us to spend some time together.’
‘It’ll all be fine,’ he said with false certainty. ‘You can still go off and do all your holiday stuff while I organise the move.’
I stared up at him, trying not to look disappointed. Disappointment had a terrible tendency to be misread as ungratefulness and that wasn’t what I was feeling. The whole point of taking this week off, the whole reason I was more excited about this Christmas, even more so than any other, was because I was finally going to be able to spend some time with him. And while it was true, moving house did mean spending time together, I had a funny feeling it wouldn’t be quite so romantic as holding hands beneath the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.
‘We’ll figure it out, I suppose,’ I said with sagging shoulders. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’
‘Whatever it is, can you say it outside?’ Alex rubbed the back of his neck and pulled the keys out of his pocket. ‘I just remembered we left Karen out there and she’s probably frozen to death by now.’
On the doorstep, Karen was talking on her phone, shivering against the winter wind that had sprung up while we were inside. Well, at least the frozen face thing made sense now – Karen was an estate agent, she could afford Botox and she faked smiles for a living. I stared back over my shoulder as Alex locked the door. A new house was definitely better than cooking lessons. Or a three-way.
After saying our goodbyes, Alex wrapped a leather-clad arm around my shoulder and began chattering away about home improvements as we hunted for a place to get brunch in our new neighbourhood. As we walked, I tried to ignore the overwhelming feeling of panic that was growing in my stomach. My poor, tiny brain was too confused to process what was going on and so the rest of my body was having to pick up the emotional slack. I knew everything that was happening was incredible. Alex had bought us an actual, honest to Santa, real family home, I had been handed an amazing opportunity at work and I was about ten minutes away from eating several thousand pancakes, but I couldn’t fight the feeling of being completely swallowed up. Somewhere along the line I’d gone from having nothing better to do than take a week off to watch chestnuts roasting on an open fire to taking over the magazine and moving house in a week. Had everyone forgotten who they were dealing with or had I?
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_fb7298c1-16db-5642-876f-4c53a3826544)
I didn’t know anyone who jumped up and down and cheered for Monday mornings but since I’d started at Gloss I’d taken Monday dread to a whole new level. Before, it meant replying to all the emails I’d ignored on Friday, a bit of a telly hangover from Mad Men, Game of Thrones or True Blood, depending on the time of year. Now Monday meant press day, which meant checking, rechecking and re-rechecking every word on every page of the magazine. Gloss might only have been a teeny, tiny weekly but there were still a good deal of stern looks, raised voices and little cries in the toilets. Mostly Mary took care of the stern looks and raised voices while I, admittedly, was the one having a little cry but now, since she was off on the Love Boat, I had the pleasure of being in charge of the whole shebang. There had been a time when I thought working on a proper magazine at a proper publishing company would be all glamorous like The Devil Wears Prada but in reality it was turning out to be very stressful and a lot of hard work. Like in The Devil Wears Prada. And so far Stanley Tucci had yet to appear to cover me in free Chanel, although I was still hopeful. Hopeful or stupid. I needed a fairy godfather to keep me in designer goods and empowering speeches.
For the want of an avuncular gay mentor, I let Delia drag me out for lunch. Even though I really wasn’t supposed to be out of the office on press day, I really needed to update her on Cici’s nervous breakdown. It was only fair.
‘I can’t believe how long it’s been since we went out for lunch.’ Delia speared a piece of lettuce and munched away happily, as though it was real food. ‘Hasn’t it been ages?’
I nodded in agreement, and shovelled a mouthful on quinoa down my throat, wishing I hadn’t ordered quinoa. One day I would learn not to order something just because I’d seen Jamie Oliver going on about it. It was horrible. We’d settled on The Breslin for our powwow which was always a bit more trendy than I wanted it to be. It was the kind of place that said ‘totally come in jeans!’ but then when you came in jeans it raised an eyebrow as if to say ‘oh, you came in jeans.’ But it was far enough away that there wouldn’t be anyone else from the magazine there, yet close enough that I could escape without being missed. Plus, the food was delicious. As long as you didn’t have the quinoa.
‘I’m so glad you were able to sneak away,’ Delia said as the waiter refilled our water glasses with impressive stealth. ‘It’s like we never have time for each other anymore. Hanging out with you was the best thing about Gloss, it really was, not that I’m not really excited about the new role. I’m really excited. But I’ll miss you.’
‘Yeah, I didn’t think I’d see you before the Christmas party,’ I said, eyeing the bar for celebs. There was a man who looked a bit like Michael Fassbender three tables over but when he stood up he was so short that if it was Michael Fassbender, I didn’t want to know. Why kill the dream?
‘Holiday party,’ Delia corrected me. ‘Non-religious.’
I pouted but said nothing, persevering with my grains.
‘But I’ll be there. I’m glad you’re coming. I never know anyone I actually want to hang out with and I have to go because Grandpa would go crazy if he heard I didn’t go, even though he never goes, but still he expects me to go which is complete double standards, you know?’
If my food hadn’t been so bloody awful, I might not have noticed that Delia was rambling. I stopped chewing for a moment and tried not to freak out. Delia was nervous. Delia was never nervous. What was going on?
‘The exec floor is really dull,’ she carried on, sipping water quickly and then punching her fork into yet more lettuce. ‘I don’t think they’re even doing secret Santa. Isn’t that awful? Grandpa says I’ll get used to it but I don’t know … Maybe it is too soon, maybe I don’t have the experience. I suppose we’ll see. How’s your appetiser?’
‘It’s horrible,’ I said, with fear in my heart. Whatever was going on, I really wanted to know before my main course arrived because if I was getting fired, I was changing my order to the burger and getting a cocktail while I still had a company credit card. ‘Delia, what’s wrong?’
‘Why would anything be wrong?’ she asked in a voice so high pitched it hurt my ears. ‘I’m just a little stressed. That’s all it is.’
Now I knew she was lying. Delia Spencer had never been stressed in her entire life. She was so in control, I had wondered more than once if she wasn’t actually some sort of media magnate cyborg, created by her grandfather to take over the family business. The only evidence to the contrary was her sister. Oh. Fuckity fuck. Of course, her sister.
‘Delia,’ I put down my fork. If she was going to say what I thought she was going to say, I was in for enough punishment, I didn’t need to suffer through another mouthful of superfood. ‘Is this about Cici coming in yesterday?’
She pursed her lips, looked down into her lap and nodded.
‘You mean your new assistant, Cici?’ she asked with unwarranted optimism.
‘You can’t mean it?’ I asked. She couldn’t. I hadn’t had a memo about everyone in the world going completely insane so this must just be a very, very late April Fool’s joke.
For a moment, there was an awkward silence at the table that had never existed between me and Delia before. I waited for her to laugh and tell me she was taking the piss and of course she didn’t genuinely expect me to have her clinically insane identical twin working on our magazine, on our baby, that we had fought so hard for, but she didn’t. She just sat there, pushing some sad little leaves around her plate and waiting for me to say something else. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
‘I know everything you’re thinking,’ she said after realising that I wasn’t going to speak. ‘And you’re completely within your rights. I know it seems crazy to even think about having Cici around after, well, after everything.’
‘Can I get you ladies anything?’ An overly chirpy waitress in a shirt and tie appeared behind Delia.
‘Do you have anything that’s like a cosmo?’ I asked, unable to take my eyes off Delia. ‘Doesn’t have to be a cosmo but is definitely as strong as a cosmo?’
‘Uh, sure,’ she replied, with almost as much fear in her eyes as there was in mine. ‘Anything for you?’
‘Whatever you get for her,’ Delia muttered, throwing back her water in preparation for something harder hitting her stomach.
‘Two cosmos then,’ the waitress replied, backing away as fast as she could. Sharp instincts. She’d go far.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm down, but my heart was racing and I had a really bitter taste in my mouth. It could have been the quinoa but I was fairly certain it was just straight-up bile.
‘It’s going to sound dumb,’ Delia said, resting her elbows on the table and wiping her hands over her face, ‘but she really has changed.’
‘Because she spent a month at a spa in India and got a dodgy hair wrap?’
‘Maybe,’ she said, pulling on her ponytail. ‘And maybe because Grandpa threatened to cut her off if she doesn’t get another job.’
‘So make her your assistant if you want her around so badly.’ I was trying, but failing, not to squeak when I spoke. ‘She’ll be putting anthrax in my cappuccino within a week.’
‘Don’t you breathe in anthrax?’ she asked, reaching for her phone to Google it.
