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‘That was fast,’ Mason said with suspicion as I held up a finger, waiting for my breathing to calm down. I really was out of shape. Sometimes, it wasn’t enough for your jeans to fit, I told myself. First thing Saturday morning, I was going to rejoin the gym. Probably.
‘I ran,’ I explained, choosing not to worry as to whether or not Jenny had bought my story. By the time I got back, she’d be three martinis deep into her evening and wouldn’t care in the slightest. ‘Let’s do this.’
‘You’re sure this is the right ring?’ he asked as I sailed through the door with all the confidence of a woman whose friend was about to spend thousands of dollars on diamonds while she excused herself and used their lovely toilets.
‘I could not be more sure,’ I said, guiding him directly to the lifts at the back of the store. This was not the first time I had made this trip. I was fairly certain Jenny had played tapes of exactly what to ask for while I slept back when we had been roommates. The knowledge was just there, as certain as the sky was blue.
‘Which floor for you both this evening?’ The elevator attendant smiled warmly, clearly presuming Mason and I were a couple. I wasn’t sure if it was the massive grin on my face or the light sweat that had broken out on his forehead, but we definitely looked like two people shopping for a massive rock.
‘We’d like the engagement rings, please,’ I said, my tone triumphant. Even though this ring wasn’t for me, I was beyond excited. This was Jenny’s dream and I got to play a part in making it come true.
‘Wonderful,’ he replied, hitting the button for the second floor. ‘Do you know what you’re looking for or is this an adventure?’
‘Oh, we know,’ I replied. I’d never felt so good about buying something that wasn’t for me. ‘We know exactly.’
I threw Mason my biggest grin and he returned it with a shaky smile of his own.
‘Have fun,’ the attendant said as we arrived at our floor with a ping. He added a wink just for me as I stepped out onto the glorious showroom floor. ‘And congratulations.’
For six thirty on a Tuesday night in November, Tiffany & Co. was surprisingly busy. Multiple couples hovered over display cases with wide eyes and feverish expressions. Credit cards hovered in mid-air, and everywhere I looked, bright, white ice sparkled under the specially designed lights.
‘It’s over here.’ I led Mason over to the glass counter that held the Embrace rings. It had been a couple of months since Jenny and I had ‘popped in on our way past’ but the rings hadn’t moved. I imagined the risk of fifty thousand dollars falling into a crack in the floor or half a mill getting hoovered up by the cleaners really wasn’t worth that hassle. ‘This one.’
And there it was.
Jenny’s ring.
Bold, bright, and almost obscenely sparkly, it was La Lopez herself in jewellery form.
‘Good evening.’
A shortish, baldish, pleasant-looking man appeared behind the counter.
‘Is there anything I can show you this evening?’ he asked with an encouraging expression.
‘We’d like to see the half-carat Embrace,’ I said, pointing at the glass but not quite touching. It wouldn’t do to leave fingerprints in Tiffany. ‘Right, Mason?’
‘Yep,’ he squeaked. ‘We would.’
‘A beautiful ring,’ the assistant said as he opened the cabinet and reached inside to gently pull out the display tray. ‘This really is one of my favourites. Such a glamorous option, a truly romantic offering for an elegant woman.’
He stopped to take a breath and consider my plum-coloured corduroy pinafore dress and stripy T-shirt ensemble.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I said, looking down at my own toddler-inspired outfit. ‘It’s not for me.’
‘Quite,’ he replied before placing an almost identical, only slightly larger ring beside the first. ‘Just for size comparison, this is the one-carat version of the same ring. It’s still quite tasteful, perfectly suitable for daily wear. Slightly larger central stone.’
There was nothing slight about it. The new ring looked like something Barbie might have worn around her dream home. Even Elizabeth Taylor would have said it was a bit much.
‘I think we’re fine with the first one,’ Mason gulped.
The assistant nodded. ‘Is there anything else I can show you?’
‘No,’ Mason replied.
‘Yes, please,’ I countered. ‘Have you got anything that’s really massive?’
Mason elbowed me in the ribs as he stared at white diamonds on black velvet.
‘Not for you,’ I replied, eyes glazing over at the pretty things in front of me. ‘While I’m here, I might as well.’
The shortish, baldish assistant amiably opened up neighbouring cabinets and laid several giant rocks out on a separate tray. Mason continued to eyeball Jenny’s ring but made no attempt to touch it. Even though I’d seen it a million times, Jenny had never allowed herself to take the ring out of the cabinet. We only ever looked at it from behind the safety of the glass. Up close, it was even more stunning than I remembered. The central diamond sparkled under the store’s lights while the halo of smaller stones shimmered with a subtlety that belied the fifteen-thousand-dollar price tag.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ I whispered, as I slid a two-carat canary yellow solitaire onto the little finger of my right hand. ‘She’s going to be so happy, Mason.’
I held my breath as, very slowly, a huge smile broke out underneath his beard. He looked at me, and I realized there were tears in his big manly eyes. ‘This is it, this is the ring. It’s Jenny’s ring.’
As soon as he said it, I began to well up.
‘Oh,’ I sniffed, scratching my cheek with an enormous sapphire as I wiped away my own tears. ‘Mason, she’s going to be so happy.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, draping his arm around my shoulders. Given his ridiculous lumberjack build, he had to reach down quite far to give me a half hug but I wrapped my arm around his waist as the assistant gave us one happy nod and silently disappeared to fetch a ring box. ‘Part of me can’t believe I’m actually going to do it, but as soon as I saw the ring, I knew it was right. I want to ask her right now, I don’t even want to wait.’
‘Don’t wait!’ I agreed, tears streaming down my cheeks at the thought of the proposal. ‘Do it right now!’
‘I’m going to call her.’ Mason wiped his eyes with the back of his ringless hand and pulled his phone out of his pocket. ‘Maybe she can meet me for dinner, she’s probably still at work.’
‘No, I know where she is!’ I reached up to snatch the phone out of his hand. ‘She’s right next door, we were having a drink at the King Cole bar before I met you.’
Mason looked at me, confused. ‘I thought you said you were at work?’
‘I did but I lied,’ I said happily. ‘I forgot I was meeting you and I went to meet her but then I told her I had to go to work and – and none of this matters! Let’s go and do it now, her hair looks nice and she’s just had a manicure. She’ll be ecstatic.’
‘OK.’ Mason ran both of his hands through his sandy hair then threw his arms out wide. ‘I’m doing this! I’m going to propose to my girlfriend!’
Before I could object, he grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me off my feet, twirling me around in a circle.
‘Oh, steady on,’ I said, grabbing his shoulder with one hand and clapping the other over my mouth. ‘I’ve been feeling a bit gippy all day.’
Slowly, everyone on the shop floor began to clap.
‘Whoo!’ yelped one overly enthusiastic man in a backwards baseball cap across the way. ‘Congratulations!’
‘Oh no,’ I said, mortified. Whether it was sheer embarrassment or the fact a man was wearing a backwards baseball cap in Tiffany, I couldn’t be sure. ‘Oh, Mason, put me down.’
‘Yeah, Mason, put her down.’
Still holding me hoisted three and a half feet up off the floor, Mason turned to reveal a decidedly unecstatic-looking Jenny Lopez.
‘What the fuck is going on?’
‘Jenny, I—’ Mason, startled, seemed to have completely forgotten what he was doing in the most famous engagement ring shop in the entire history of the world. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Duuuuude, busted.’
Backwards Baseball Cap Man gasped on the other side of the store and I realized everyone in Tiffany & Co. was watching us.
‘What am I doing here? What are you doing here?’ Jenny demanded. Her face was almost the same shade of red as her nails and her hair was wild. She was furious. ‘Angie left her phone on the bar so I was going to take it to the office but when I followed her out, she didn’t go to her office. She came here. To meet you.’
‘You followed me from the bar?’ I scrunched my eyebrows together, perplexed. ‘How did it take you this long to find us?’
‘Because I had to pee on my way up here, OK?’ she yelled, hurling my phone at me. ‘Someone left an entire martini on the bar and I paid seventy-five dollars for three drinks. I knew you were lying to me – tell me what the hell is going on!’
‘Jenny …’ Mason dropped me like a bag of hot dog shit and I stumbled forward into the glass counter. Before she could say anything else, he dropped to one knee and everyone in the shop held their collective breath. ‘I have something I want to ask you.’
Behind him I gestured wildly for her to come closer but she didn’t move. The fury in her eyes began to shift into wide-eyed shock and her red cheeks faded to white.
‘I’ve been thinking about this for the longest time,’ Mason went on, inching closer to his girlfriend, still on one knee. Even kneeling he was almost as tall as I was. He really would be a handy person to have around if you needed something getting down off the top of the wardrobe. She had done well. ‘Since I met you, my life has changed completely. You make the bad days better and you make the good days fantastic – and I need you to know how much I love you.’
‘Oh.’
Jenny looked up at me as she realized what was happening. From my spot at the counter behind Mason, I gave a nod so big I thought my head might drop off.
‘This isn’t exactly how I’d envisioned it,’ Mason said, ‘but you are the most exceptional, intelligent, ridiculous, beautiful and incredible woman I have ever met and I want to spend the rest of my life beside you.’
He really was very good, I thought, tearing up again as I trained my phone’s camera on Jenny’s face. Impressive proposals were one of the upsides to dating a professional writer.
‘Jenny?’ he reached out and fumbled on the counter for the ring. ‘Will you …’
‘Yes?’ she said, manically combing out her hair with one eye on my phone.
Mason opened his mouth to seal the deal but instead of saying ‘Will you marry me?’ he barked like a wounded sea lion and keeled over, huge, rolling sobs shaking his giant shoulders. Jenny looked at me with fear in her dry eyes. There was a chance this wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined this going down.
‘Mason?’ I said, poking him with my toe. ‘You all right there?’
‘I’m just so happy,’ he choked out each word in between a fresh wail. ‘Jenny, I want to ask you, will you … will you?’
Just as I thought he was going to get through the sentence, he rolled over again, tears streaming down his face and getting lost in his beard before they pooled into a stain on the front of his plaid shirt. For the want of a comprehensible sentence, he held out the ring and squealed.
‘I will,’ I mouthed at Jenny over the top of his prone, checked form.
‘I will!’ she said, rushing towards him and skidding to the floor on her knees to plant a kiss on his lips and, most importantly, get the ring on her finger.
‘Congratulations!’ I shouted, circling around them with my phone, still recording the perfectish moment while all the staff and customers breathed a group sigh of relief and began a round of thunderous applause. It was like something out of a very expensive, slightly odd, fairy tale.
‘Dude!’ yelled Backwards Baseball Cap Man. ‘Sweeeeet.’
‘Yes, congratulations,’ the assistant added, while Jenny and Mason continued their celebratory make-out session on the floor of Tiffany & Co. ‘Will sir be paying with cash or credit?’
‘Oh, it’s credit,’ I said, handing him the credit card Mason had left on the counter before slowly removing all my borrowed baubles. Who walked around New York with thousands of dollars in cash on them? And were they currently in the store and looking for a new British friend? ‘Thank you so much for your help.’
‘Not at all,’ he replied, smiling at the newly engaged couple. ‘It looks perfect on her. I’m so glad he decided to go with the one-carat ring, so much more impactful than the half carat.’
I bit down on my lip as my eyes opened up, saucer-wide at the sight of the half-carat ring still on the counter. Down on the floor, Jenny was laughing deliriously, staring at her own left hand. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell he was getting it off her finger now.
‘What’s the price on the one-carat ring?’ I asked as the assistant quickly and carefully put everything away. ‘Just out of interest.’
‘That one is actually 1.18 carats, and will be twenty- one thousand five hundred,’ he replied without looking up from the task at hand. ‘Plus tax.’
There was that nauseous feeling again.
‘Worth every penny,’ I said, snapping another photo. It would be nice to have as many as possible before Mason saw the price tag and had an aneurysm. ‘It’s a fairy tale come true.’
‘Angie!’ Jenny crawled over to me and hauled herself upright. ‘I’m engaged!’
‘I know!’ I replied, watching Mason sign for the ring without reading the slip. Wow, that was going to be a rough day when his credit card bill came in.
‘My wedding is going to be perfect,’ Jenny whispered, glittering eyes locked on her dream ring. ‘Just you wait and see.’
And for some reason, I couldn’t help but think it sounded more like a threat than a promise.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_375bf022-d0d1-5692-b1f6-9c9d265dc535)
When a washing machine crashed through my ceiling a week earlier, it had been somewhat disconcerting. But now I had become oddly used to squeezing past the hunk of Hotpoint determined to get between me and my breakfast cuppa.
Right after they completely destroyed my kitchen, Lorraine and Vi had promised they would have it all sorted out before the weekend, but after a failed attempt at trying to pick it up and drag it out to the street on our own, I’d been living with what could have passed as modern art to some people, and a huge hole in my ceiling, for more than a week. On Sunday morning they’d lowered down a basket of pastries and, after that, it was fair to say I wasn’t nearly as upset about the situation as I could have been.
‘Good morning!’ Vi called through the Hello Hole as we’d christened it. I waved back and grabbed a Tetley teabag out of the pot and tossed it into my travel mug. You could take the girl out of England, etc. ‘Sweet outfit. Big day at the office?’
‘Trying to make a good impression.’ I flipped the ends of the black ribbon I’d tied in a bow around my neck and prayed the white silk shirt wasn’t a mistake. ‘Do I look presentable?’
She squatted down to take a closer look and I gave her a quick twirl.
‘Very nice, the shirt is smart, the skirt is sexy, everything’s working for me,’ she gave me a thumbs-up and I poofed up my little black mini. ‘Great getaway sticks, lady.’
‘And now it’s black tights season again and I don’t have to shave every day, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them,’ I replied, returning her thumbs-up as the kettle boiled.
‘And if all else fails, you can just spill water on your blouse and call it a day,’ Vi suggested. ‘Your boss is a dude, after all.’
‘Note to self, buy water,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m sorry it’s taking so long to get everything figured out.’ She pulled at the hem of her Harvard T-shirt as she folded over to sit on the floor. ‘Lorraine’s brother’s best friend is a builder and he specializes in restoring townhouses and period places. I’m really hoping he can come and take a look tonight.’
I poured boiling water from the kettle into my travel cup and swished the teabag around until the water was more or less brown before removing the bag and tipping in half a pint of milk. My mother would have died if she could see what passed for tea in this house these days.
‘Any chance he’ll be able to clear this out?’ I asked, tapping the washing machine with my black Saint Laurent pointed pump. ‘If I’m honest, a great big washing machine in the middle of a small kitchen is more of a problem than the Hello Hole.’
Naming the gaping chasm in the ceiling had probably been a bad idea. It now felt more like something from a Nineties sitcom than a potential structural disaster.
