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‘Sorry, what?’ I said, tearing my eyes away from the man who had just arrived with a small pig on a leash. ‘No oranges in the office?’
‘No orange,’ she repeated. ‘The colour. I hate it so I banned it.’
Brilliant. Starting her own company definitely hadn’t sent her mad with power.
‘Right. So, is now a good time to discuss my ideas for my site?’ I asked as she started back towards the elevators. ‘I have a name. It’s going to be Recherché dot com, it’s French and it can mean “to search for” or “exquisite”, which I think is perfect, don’t you? And content-wise—’
‘Sounds great, go for it,’ she nodded. ‘Have the design team get started.’
‘How do I get in touch with the design team?’
‘They’re in the directory,’ Cici replied.
‘And where is the directory?’ I asked.
‘On your computer?’ she answered.
‘And where’s my computer?’
‘I have to go to my office,’ Cici said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I have a conference call.’
‘I thought we didn’t have offices,’ I said as she pressed her fingertips against a touch screen to summon a lift.
‘You don’t, I do,’ she replied. ‘If you have any questions, please go talk to corporate culture. Otherwise, get started. I hired you because you’re good at what you do so, like, do it?’
The lift dinged softly and I felt a wave of panic wash over me.
‘But we haven’t actually established what I’m here to do, have we?’
‘You know, I think this whole mom vibe is working for you,’ Cici said as she stepped into the lift. ‘I mean, I get it. Once you have kids, it’s hard to not be lame but you’ve really leaned in to mom-dom, Angela. Maybe you were fighting against this normcore vibe all along.’
Normcore? Did she just call me normcore? Admittedly I wasn’t one hundred percent certain what it meant but I was one hundred percent certain I should be offended. What did this woman want from me? Higher heels? Tighter clothes? Should I have whipped out the Sherbet Dip that lived in the bottom of my handbag and pretended it was a gram?
‘I’m going to go and find a desk,’ I said, smiling politely as the lift doors closed on my smiling CEO. ‘I’m so excited to get started.’
Hell hath no fury like a British woman mildly offended.
‘Right,’ I said, turning my attention back to the sea of desks in the middle of the bright room. Squeezing the strap of my satchel, I steeled myself and entered the fray, looking for an empty desk. Note to self, buy Apple AirPods on the way home. All the cool kids at school had AirPods.
‘Work,’ I corrected myself under my breath. ‘Not school, work.’
Only this felt very reminiscent of my first day in sixth form when absolutely everyone else had Doc Martens and I was wearing Converse and I never, ever lived it down.
Things are different now, Angela, I thought to myself. You’re a married woman. Living in New York. You’ve got a cool job in the media, loads of interesting friends and an actual baby. You are a parent. If you can heave a living being out of your vagina and make it home from the hospital in time to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race, you can certainly make it through your first day back at work.
I smiled, settling on a desk right by a window that looked out over Lower Manhattan. There, wasn’t so hard, was it? And besides, it wasn’t the first time I’d thrown myself head first into a situation with no idea what I was doing and I’d always survived before. Just barely on occasion but I’d always figured it out, one way or another.
‘This is going to be brilliant,’ I said out loud to the city below. ‘Just you wait and see.’
CHAPTER TWO (#u1dc0430f-c533-566f-a4fa-9d38516ec8b5)
‘I’m home, I’m home,’ I wailed as I barrelled through the door, closing it firmly on a day I was keen to leave behind me. ‘Sorry, I totally lost track of time and the subway ran local and I had to stop to buy wine and tell me she’s not asleep already.’
Dropping my satchel on the dresser by the door, I kicked off my boots and looked up to see the most gorgeous man to have ever lived, holding Alice Clark Reid, no hyphen, the best baby in existence, standing in front of me. Admittedly, there was a chance I was a little bit biased on both counts because they were both mine.
‘Hey,’ Alex whispered, handing over the milk-drunk bundle of soft, sleepy wonderment. I met his green eyes as I took my daughter’s weight and felt my day fall away. ‘She’s still kind of with us. I just gave her a bottle and we were just about to go to bed. How did it go?’
‘I’ve no idea what I’m doing, Cici is worse than she’s ever been, I forgot to lock the door of the privacy pod while I was pumping and so the entire office has already seen my tits and I dropped my phone in the toilet before I’d even got into the office,’ I replied, checking Alice still had all ten toes I’d left her with that morning. ‘Does she look bigger to you? She looks bigger to me.’ I rubbed my cheek against her fine baby hair.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘She waited until you were gone this morning and, boom, she shot up half an inch. It was incredible.’
I flashed him a look but it was a look tempered with a smile. I already felt so guilty for leaving her and it was only one day. Christ, the next twenty-one years were just going to fly by, weren’t they?
‘Sounds like you made a good first impression. Did you say you brought us wine?’
‘Yes but Alice has to wait until she’s fifteen, just like Mummy did,’ I replied softly, tilting my head back for a kiss as I continued to stroke Alice’s hair. I still couldn’t quite believe I had made something quite so brilliant. Admittedly she was occasionally revolting, especially after we gave her avocado for the first time, but for the most part, she was incredible.
‘I can’t believe I married a teenage alcoholic,’ Alex said, grabbing the woodwork around the doorframe and stretching his long, lean body. ‘Let’s hope she takes after Daddy and doesn’t start drinking until she’s twenty-one.’
‘Yes, let’s hope she takes after Daddy and runs away to join a band and shag everything on the Eastern Seaboard for a straight decade,’ I muttered, covering Al’s tiny ears. ‘That’ll look good on her college applications.’
Before we met, it was fair to say my husband had sown an entire field full of wild oats but, against all laws of god and man, I really didn’t care. Alex was a vision. Tall and skinny with perfectly square shoulders that were made for vintage T-shirts, beaten-up leather jackets and holding onto when we kissed. His skin was so pale, it was practically luminous, and the contrast of his jet-black hair only made his green eyes shine even brighter. And if that wasn’t enough to get him laid, he had the uncanny ability to make absolutely everyone he met feel like they were the most important person on earth. Also he was a musician. In a band. In Brooklyn. That made money. Honestly, it would have been more worrying if he hadn’t spent a good decade putting it about.
‘Slut-shaming your own husband,’ Alex said with a dramatic sigh as he leaned against the doorframe. ‘Go put that baby to bed. I’m making dinner.’
‘I always knew you’d make an amazing wife one day,’ I called, doing as I was told and carrying Alice through to her bedroom. Was there anything more erotic than a man making you dinner when you were totally knackered? No, I thought not.
Our Park Slope apartment was easily my favourite place in the entire world. Bloomingdale’s, Shake Shack and that random bodega that stocked Jaffa Cakes on 12th Street all ran a close second but, like, home is where the heart is and – more importantly – it was full of the best people and all my snacks.
Our place wasn’t as swanky as Erin’s West Village townhouse or as cool as Jenny’s new Financial District loft but it was my home; all comfy sofas and soft rugs and prints and pictures and things that made me happy. And right in the heart of it all was Alice’s room, a.k.a. the nursery of dreams. Alex had painted it four times before we found the perfect shade of pale pink, something that was harder to find than you might think. Of all the hills to die on, the colour of my daughter’s bedroom had been a fight so many people had chosen to go to war over. Jenny wanted to paint it blue to defy the patriarchy, Delia said it should be green to stimulate intellectual development, and my mother, despite saying she didn’t think it mattered one way or the other, had fourteen litres of Farrow & Ball ‘Middleton Pink’ shipped over from England in an attempt to instil some regal British backbone into her long-distance granddaughter. Unfortunately, when we got it on the walls, it looked a little bit like we’d dipped a brush into a bottle of calamine lotion that had gone bad in 1987 but, as far as Mum was concerned, Alice was absolutely sleeping in a nursery painted in a random shade of pink chosen by someone in marketing who wanted to make a quick buck off the royal family.
But far and away my favourite part of the nursery was Alice’s wardrobe. It turned out almost all designers made baby clothes. Teeny, tiny versions of their adult togs that were so much more affordable than their grown-up counterparts. There was no way I could spend three thousand dollars on a Gucci sweater for myself but two hundred dollars on a romper for the best-dressed baby in town? Um, yes. Al was already a sartorial masterpiece. Even though all she did was throw up on them. Actually, throwing up was best-case scenario. If I’d done what she did while decked out in head-to-toe Stella McCartney, I’d never have been able to look at myself in a mirror again.
‘But it’s OK when it’s you, isn’t it?’ I whispered, pulling back the sheets and laying her down gently. Crouching down at the side of the cot, I stared at her through the wooden bars of her tiny baby prison. Every night I wondered when I would get bored of this but it hadn’t happened yet. Al turned her head to look at me, fixing me with the same green eyes as her daddy. The spit of Alex, people said – his hair, his eyes, his full lips – but every so often, I could see a flash of myself in there. Usually when she was hungry or angry or both. Which made perfect sense, really.
‘So, do you think you’re going to sleep through tonight?’ I asked with the newfound optimism I’d discovered immediately after pushing eight pounds and six ounces of human being out of my body. Would she sleep through the night? Probably not! Would I keep hoping she might? Yes! For all eternity!
When she didn’t reply, just blinked her long lashes at me and gave a sleepy smile, I pulled the covers up over her little legs and thought of all the things I’d learned in the last year that had never even occurred to me before. Like baby pillows. I’d searched high and low. Looked in the shops, I’d checked online, I’d even turned to Etsy, but it turned out babies don’t have pillows, only a mattress. Who knew? And then it was the quilt. Some people said they could have quilts, other people said they couldn’t. Louisa said she used a sleeping bag but Erin said sleeping bags would be too much in my apartment because it got so hot. My mum said I had a home-knitted blanket and I’d been lucky to even have that … Life was a lot easier when the only things I searched for were discount Marc Jacobs handbags and photos of Chris Hemsworth with his top off.
‘She didn’t really nap this afternoon so she should sleep OK,’ Alex said as I tiptoed into the living room once Al was fully asleep. ‘We went for a walk around the park but she would not give it up. I think she was hoping to get a glimpse of Patrick Stewart.’
He smiled at me with heavy-lidded eyes, put a glass of red wine in one of my hands, the TV remote in the other then disappeared back into the kitchen. If that wasn’t my most intense sexual fantasy, I didn’t know what was.
‘Her and me both,’ I said, setting down the remote and following him into the other room. ‘You were all right today, though? I’m sorry I didn’t text as much as I said I would. My phone wouldn’t turn on so I had to text from my laptop and—’
‘You sent thirty-seven texts,’ he replied, taking a sip from his own fingerprint-smudged glass. ‘How many times were you planning on sending?’
I shrugged, peering into a bubbling saucepan. Ooh, pasta. The deal for now was I would go to the office Monday to Thursday and work from home on Fridays. While he wasn’t away on tour, Alex would be home with Al Mondays and Tuesdays and the part-time nanny we shared with Sasha and Banks, a couple from my antenatal group, came by Wednesday and Thursdays so he could, in theory, get on with writing his new album.
In theory.
‘Did Graham come over?’
Alex shook his head and snatched his fingers back from the spitting pan.
‘He and Craig are gonna swing by tomorrow. We’ve gotta figure out the set, make more time to rehearse. It’s creeping up on us real fast, we’ve only got three weeks.’
In an attempt to get themselves back into the creative flow of things, the band had announced a hometown show, their first in more than a year, supposedly to try out new material. Only there was no new material. And the show was in less than three weeks. Unless Alex was planning on rocking out some adult-oriented rock covers of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, he definitely had an uphill struggle in front of him.
‘You look so good today.’ Alex tossed a tea towel over his shoulder and looked back at me. ‘Did you get your hair done or something?’
‘I washed it,’ I whispered brazenly. ‘And then I brushed it.’
‘That is so hot,’ he replied, leaning over to press his mouth against mine in a decadent red wine kiss. ‘You want to blow off dinner and go straight to bed?’
‘What’s for dinner?’ I asked, breathless from the kiss.
‘My celebrated spaghetti in sauce from a jar and pre-shredded cheese.’
It really was a difficult choice.
‘Will you still love me if I say dinner first and then bed?’
Alex took the spaghetti off the stove and dumped it into the colander that waited in the sink.
‘I would love you even more than ever,’ he replied, clearly relieved. ‘I didn’t sleep last night at all and with Al not taking a nap all day, I’m exhausted. I’m so tired I don’t even think I could get it up.’
‘Oh good,’ I muttered as I remembered I hadn’t shaved my legs in over a week. Because we hadn’t had sex in over a week. Or was it two weeks? Maybe more.
‘What’s up?’ Alex asked.
‘Nothing,’ I replied, replacing my frown with a grateful smile. ‘Hey, do you know what normcore means?’
Even though I’d always thought of myself as someone who prized sleep above almost everything else in life, ever since Alice came along, I had found myself awake at two thirty in the morning, right on the dot. Almost every night, I found myself lying in bed wide awake, even when Al slept straight through. Always looking for a silver lining, I tried to fill these weird little moments of me time with useful tasks, like watching YouTube videos and eating.
‘And then she called me normcore,’ I whispered into my headphones as I prowled around the kitchen, looking for snacks.
‘Well, I don’t know what that is but it doesn’t sound very nice,’ Louisa said, her lovely face looming large on my iPhone screen. ‘Tell her to sod off.’
My absolute favourite thing to do with this unwanted gift of useless time was to call one of my best humans in the UK and interrupt her breakfast routine. I watched over Louisa’s shoulder as my six-year-old goddaughter, Grace, merrily poured herself a red Le Creuset mixing bowl full of cereal behind her mother’s back.
‘Do you think my life has got boring?’ I asked, dreading the answer to my question. Louisa had known me forever and she wasn’t terribly good at sugarcoating.
‘If your life is boring, I should take myself down to the glue factory right now,’ she replied. ‘Listen to yourself, woman.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ I opened the fridge and pouted at the miserable contents. I would not be reduced to eating a pouch of pureed baby food. Again. ‘My life is amazing. This is the first week I’ve felt like I’m getting myself back, you know? I actually feel like myself again.’
‘I remember trying to renew my passport when Grace was six months and Tim came home to find me sobbing on the settee,’ Lou replied. ‘I was so broken I couldn’t remember my middle name. You’re definitely doing better than me.’
‘I’m not completely on top of it,’ I admitted. ‘I’m knackered all the time and I can’t get through a full set of adverts without crying and I have to unfasten the top button on my jeans by lunchtime every day, but other than that, yeah, I think I’m there.’
‘I thought you said you’d lost all the baby weight?’
‘This body grew a baby and I will not be fat-shamed by you or anyone,’ I replied, trying to look as indignant as possible for someone who had already eaten three Penguin biscuits before calling. ‘And for your information, I did get rid of all the baby weight but I replaced it with Christmas weight and the pastries-from-the-new-coffee-shop-that-just-opened-round-the-corner weight. Plus, I feel like everything has moved. Pregnancy is rude, why couldn’t it put everything back where it found it?’
‘It’s all a matter of discipline, Ange,’ replied the woman who still weighed exactly the same as she did on her wedding day and tried on her wedding dress once a month, every month, to confirm it. ‘Just eat less and move more. Dead simple.’
I was about to give her my best snappy comeback when Gracie splashed an entire four pints of milk into her mixing bowl.
‘Does Gracie always make her own breakfast?’ I asked innocently.
Louisa glanced over her shoulder then immediately did a double take.
‘Oh, fuck,’ she grunted, dropping her phone on the kitchen table. I smiled happily at her faux gabled ceiling as the wailing started across the room.
‘I’m going to have to call you back,’ Lou said, her face sweeping across the screen. ‘There’s bloody Coco Pops everywhere.’
‘Wait, you said you wanted to ask me something,’ I reminded her. I’d woken up to several WhatsApp messages, which usually required me to find some bizarre toy like a WTF doll or some such shite that was already sold out in England – but such were the responsibilities of Cool Aunt Angela in America.
‘Honestly, I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on,’ Louisa said while Gracie continued to wail in the background. ‘I’m coming to see you!’
‘You are?’ I opened the fridge and grabbed the pouch of baby food. ‘All of you?’
‘No, just me,’ she explained. ‘Tim and I were supposed to be off on a dirty weekend but he’s been pulled into a work conference. Figured I’d abuse his air miles and get some quality BFF time in.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ I replied. ‘Clearly Gracie can be left alone to look after herself.’
‘Grace is going on a pony camp with her friend Lily and her mummy,’ she said loudly. ‘If she behaves and stops crying and eats her breakfast like a good girl.’
‘I h-hate i-i-it,’ I heard Grace stammer through choked sobs. ‘I w-want my Coco Pops.’
‘What have you given her?’ I asked, peering at the tiny, tear-stained face behind my friend.
‘Coco Pops,’ she replied with a sigh. ‘But she wants them in the mixing bowl. Tim put them in there months ago so they could share and now she insists on it every single day. Because some daughters don’t realize there’s seven quids’ worth of cereal and milk in that bowl and some fathers laugh at them every time they do it, which just encourages said daughters.’
‘Which ends up with said mothers going completely bonkers,’ I finished for her. ‘So, I am getting the feeling you could use a weekend away. When were you thinking of coming?’
Louisa’s entire face broke out into a bright, happy smile.
‘Weekend after next,’ she said. ‘I’ve already booked it, had to grab the seat while it was available. I will see you a week on Thursday!’
‘A week on Thursday!’ I forced the corners of my mouth up into a smile while my heart began to beat faster. ‘That is very soon and specific and what were you going to do if we weren’t here?’
‘Where else would you be?’ she scoffed. ‘There’s no running off all over the world these days, Angela. You’ve got a baby now. Even if Alex goes off on tour, you’re going to be at home, aren’t you?’
I sucked in my bottom lip and bit down hard.
‘I’m so looking forward to it. I can’t wait to give Alice a squidge.’ Lou smiled so happily, I couldn’t help but smile back. ‘Some proper quality time with my two favourite girls.’
