I Heart London

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Twisting my engagement ring round and round and round, I shrugged. ‘I’m going to see if they’ve got any lactose-free stuff. Alex is lactose intolerant.’

Both my mum and dad froze on the spot. My dad looked like he might cry.

‘It’s not catching,’ I said. ‘He just can’t digest milk easily.’

Mum pressed a palm to her chest and visibly paled, while my dad hung his head, presumably seeing visions of feeble lactose-intolerant grandchildren failing to return the football he had just kicked to them.

‘The woman who did my colonic says I’m a bit intolerant too,’ I added, waiting for a reaction. But there was none. There was only silence. Picking the list out of my mum’s hand, I scanned it and popped it back between her thumb and forefinger. ‘So we make a good pair. I’ll get the stuff for the pasta.’

‘Angela,’ she said in her kindest, most pleading voice. ‘You didn’t really have a colonic did you?’

Sometimes, I thought to myself, it’s kinder to lie.

‘Yes, I did, Mum,’ I replied. ‘In fact, I’ve had two.’

And sometimes, I just couldn’t be bothered.

If I wasn’t disorientated enough from the overwhelming jet lag that kept threatening to take my legs out from under me, roaming around Waitrose looking for tinned tomatoes and spaghetti just about pushed me over the edge. The only thing that kept me moving was the lure of the Mini Cheddars I’d promised myself. I moved through the aisles of the supermarket like they were full of treacle, my legs heavy and tired. Dodging trolleys and pushchairs and what seemed like dozens of sixteen-year-olds in green uniforms with cages full of Old El Paso fajita dinner kits, I was on autopilot. Maybe I wasn’t home after all. Maybe the plane had crashed and I was in purgatory. There couldn’t be any other explanation for the way I was feeling, the way nothing had changed in the slightest.

Well, nothing had changed but me. I looked like shit. I stopped by one of the freezer cabinets to be quietly appalled at the price of Ben & Jerry’s and caught sight of my reflection. Transatlantic travel did no one any favours. Even following Jenny’s advice hadn’t helped me; sometimes you can drink two litres of water, spend the entire flight getting up and down to go to the loo, smother yourself in Beauty Flash Balm and still deplane looking like you’ve flown in directly from a two-week vacation with the crypt keeper. My skin looked crap, my hair was greasy, and whatever long-lasting, no-smudge mascara I had been wearing was either missing or smudged. Because cosmetics companies were liars. Why couldn’t we all just agree that bruise-like swipes of grey and black etched into the fine lines around your eyes were sexy? Why did we make life hard for ourselves? Maybe I could put it in Gloss as a trend. Maybe I could put it out of business before the first issue even got out.

‘Angela?’

Oh no. I bit down hard on my dry, chapped lips and closed my eyes. Maybe if I didn’t open them again, the voice would go away.

‘Angela, is … is that you?’

How could this be happening? I’d been in England for less than three hours, I hadn’t even had time to change my pants, and yet this − this − was happening? Holding my shopping out as my last defence, I turned round, offering absolutely everything I owned to every deity ever conceived if they would open up a hole in the ground for me to jump into.

‘It is you.’ Mark, my ex-fiancé, stood in front of me, smiling. ‘Wow.’

No disappearing hole. Just an arsehole. Five foot ten of cheating scumbag shithead gurning like the total bell end he was, holding onto a trolley as though he was going to charge me with it. How come he got a weapon and I didn’t? I quickly looked around, trying to find something deadly. It was like The Hunger Games meets MasterChef.

‘Hi,’ I said. Thanks to my bushel of cheesy snacks I couldn’t even put a hand through my hair, couldn’t try to wipe away some of my errant eyeliner. ‘Well.’

‘Well.’ He rapped his fingers on the handle of his trolley, keeping it ever so slightly mobile. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

‘Fancy,’ I replied. This was unfair in every way. I needed to have a very serious conversation with whoever was in charge about how incredibly shit my day had been going so far.

‘Um, so this isn’t New York?’ He had always had a talent for stating the obvious.

Mark, like everything else I’d come across so far, hadn’t changed a bit. His hair was still ever so slightly too long, his jeans were still ever so slightly too big, and he looked almost as uncomfortable as he had the last time I’d laid eyes on him. At least he didn’t have a skinny blonde wrapped around his waist this time, so I suppose I should have been counting my blessings.

‘I heard you were still there.’

‘I am,’ I said quickly, shuffling my shopping in my arms. ‘I mean, not now, obviously. I’m back for Mum’s birthday.’

‘Of course,’ he nodded, every moment growing more awkward than the last. ‘I was supposed to be going this week, but the deal fell through and, well, you know how work is.’

It pissed me off that I did know. It pissed me off that he still existed.

‘Yeah, I heard,’ I said. And immediately regretted saying it. He smirked a little and shifted his weight from foot to foot.

‘Jungle drums,’ he commented and tried a laugh. It didn’t take. When I didn’t respond in any way, shape or form, he gave me his most earnest expression and leaned over the handle of his trolley. He was winning. ‘It’s good to see you.’

Unfortunately for Mark, I already knew he was a liar.

‘Hmm.’ It was all I could manage. I should have got changed. Here he was, all sparkly Saturday clean, and here I was in baggy jeans, a rumpled T-shirt and Converse. I wanted to run home, wash my hair, pull out my tightest dress and my highest heels and come back with my heaviest handbag, fill it with tins of tuna and smack him really, really hard around the head with it. Instead, I utched my shopping further up my body, trying to cover my face and failing.

‘Well, it would be lovely to catch up, if you’ve got time?’ he said unconvincingly, looking anywhere but at me. I squeezed my great big bag of Mini Cheddars so hard that the plastic bag popped open with the sigh I was trying to keep inside. ‘This is weird, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a bit weird,’ I agreed. ‘But it would be weird if it wasn’t, wouldn’t it?’

‘Fair point,’ he replied, shuffling backwards in his knackered old tennis shoes. ‘It really would be good to catch up. I’m still on the same number. Text me or something.’

Tennis shoes. He played tennis. That’s where he met her.

‘Yeah,’ I nodded, trying to get my hair to move. Why couldn’t I think of anything to say? Where was my witty comeback? At least I had my hands full so I couldn’t swing for the bastard. For every second we stood there, his patronizing smile getting smaller and smaller, I got angrier and angrier until I was at full capacity. And then I remembered pissing in his shaving bag and getting on the next plane to New York. Suddenly I didn’t feel quite as bad. ‘I’ve got to go. My dad’s waiting.’

I think the last time I’d used that line on him, we were seventeen and snogging outside Karisma at three in the morning. How time flies.

‘OK.’ He reached out one very rigid hand and placed it on my shoulder for half a heartbeat before snatching it back. My eyes widened to the size of saucers and I jumped back involuntarily. ‘Anyway, give us a call.’

Refusing to respond, I staggered backwards into the freezer door, dropping my shopping and sprinting for the nearest aisle.

‘I thought you’d gone back to New York.’ My dad’s voice interrupted my heavy breathing as I peered round a rack of Kettle Chips, watching Mark standing there with his trolley, clearly embarrassed by the pile of abandoned shopping. ‘Good God, girl, you’ve been gone for ever. Where’s the pasta? Your mum’s at the till.’

I turned to face my dad, and his blue eyes softened from a crinkled smile to a wary frown. ‘Angela, what’s wrong?’

‘Can I have the car keys, please?’ I asked quietly. I was not going to cry in Waitrose. There couldn’t possibly be anything more pathetic than a girl crying in Waitrose.

‘Of course you can,’ he said, fumbling in his pocket and producing a bunch of sparkly silver lifelines. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I couldn’t find the tomatoes,’ I mumbled, wiping at my grubby face with the sleeve of my stripy T-shirt, which was pulled down over the fists I couldn’t seem to relax. ‘Or the Mini Cheddars. Or the pasta.’ The fact that we were standing in front of about twenty-five bags of Mini Cheddars dented my credibility somewhat. My dad looked at me, looked at the snack aisle and then stepped to the side to look past me. I couldn’t bring myself to see if he was still there, but my dad’s angry bear growl confirmed that he was.

‘Sod’s law,’ he said, pressing the car keys into my hand. ‘Get yourself back to the car. I’ll get your mum’s things. Do you want anything?’

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

All I wanted was to go home. And that did not mean back to my parents’ house.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Almost an hour after I’d slumped up the stairs and wrapped myself up in my childhood sheets, I was still wide awake. Cocking jet lag. I couldn’t remember when I had been more tired, but every time I closed my eyes, I just saw Mark grinning at me and that cow trying to get a good look through the car window from behind him.

For the want of something better to do, I sat up, huffed, puffed, opened my laptop and re-read the Gloss presentation. Again. After fifteen minutes of soothing stats, facts and numbers, I quickly flicked through all the other important things online − personal email, work email, Facebook, Perez Hilton, Bloomingdales.com … I was halfway through the purchase of a half-priced Theory shift dress when it all became a bit too much and a tidal wave of jet lag swept me under. As I slipped backwards against the pillows, I caught one last look at myself reflected in the screen and prayed I would wake up looking less like Jabba the Hutt on an off day.

‘Get out of bed, you lazy mare.’

My ears engaged before I could even attempt to open my eyes. Reaching out for Alex, all I felt was a cold, hard wall. The pillows felt wrong. And someone was eating pickled onion Monster Munch. I rolled over and pried open one eye to see Louisa leaning against my bedroom door in boyfriend jeans and a sky-blue T-shirt with her hair high on top of her head in a ponytail. In the blink of an eye, I was fifteen again.

‘Fuck off, I’m tired,’ I said with happiness in my voice, rolling back towards the wall. ‘Leave the crisps. I’m also starving.’

‘Good job I brought you some, then. You look shit.’

A crinkly packet landed square on my head and it was all the incentive I needed to force myself awake.

‘Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the airport.’ Louisa bounded onto my bed like a golden Labrador and wrapped her arms round my neck. ‘Grace hasn’t been well and I couldn’t leave her with Tim. He’s such a wimp when she cries.’

‘And where is she now?’ I asked, returning the hug with such strength I was worried I might break her. At last, something good to come out of this trip. ‘You didn’t leave her in the car, did you? Because that’s really bad parenting.’