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‘If it helps, she’s not there all that often.’ I thought back to all the times I’d got her answering machine when I was calling Mary, our boss. ‘I don’t think Anna Wintour needs to worry about her position.’
‘I know, I just hate competing with her. This is the problem with being the good twin. She’s always going to play dirty to get what she wants, and I can never win.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ I tapped her on the arm and pointed towards the bedroom door. ‘This should be good.’
Jenny emerged first, a smile stretched all the way across her face. She looked like she’d just been for a quickie with Bradley Cooper. But this was much, much better. This was something we could all enjoy. Following her out of the bedroom and into the party was a very proud, very smug, very almost naked Cici Spencer.
‘For the love of God,’ Delia groaned as she made her full entrance.
Once she had worked her way into the middle of the room, I could see that Cici was actually wearing something, and as soon as I laid eyes on it, despite never having seen any of his work before, I knew it was a Thomas. The bum-skimming white silk shift dress draped artfully off one shoulder, rendering a bra unwearable, and the sheer nature of the silk meant that it was a flesh-coloured thong or nothing. Cici had opted for nothing. It was the modern sartorial equivalent of the Emperor’s new clothes, and Cici looked every inch the Empress.
But that wasn’t enough for her. Under Jenny’s instruction, she gave us all a spin, allowing me to spot the real coup de grâce of the ensemble. On the front of the dress was a black and white screen print of a great big cock. Seriously. Cici was wearing, to all intents and purposes, a see-through T-shirt with a picture of a knob on it. Thomas, you are a master. Jenny, you are a genius.
‘Is it me,’ Delia started, ‘or …’
‘It’s not you,’ I stopped her. ‘It’s really not you.’
‘Delia!’ Cici trotted over, proud as punch and not even drunk. ‘You came? You never come.’
‘Thomas is buying one of my condos,’ Delia explained, ignoring the fact that her sister was standing in the middle of a very glamorous Christmas party ninety-nine per cent naked. ‘I thought I’d show my face. Good of you to show everything else.’
I couldn’t help but think it must be something of a strange sensation to see your twin, your identical twin, parading around a formal cocktail party more or less in the buff. It must have been like taking a really annoying funhouse mirror with you everywhere you went. And tonight, it was a bit of a pervy mirror as well. I didn’t want to be staring at her tits, but I had very little choice in the matter. Jenny stood behind her looking like the cat who got the cream. Then spiked the cream with acid and served it to Cici.
‘I know my dress is amazing,’ she said to me. ‘But you could be less obvious while you’re checking me out. What’s wrong? Get bored of turning other people gay?’
‘It’s a very lovely dress,’ I said, trying not to giggle, but half a cackle managed to escape as a squeak. ‘You look charming.’
‘Right.’ She pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow. ‘So, that guy you were seeing? Alan?’
‘Alex.’ I took a couple of deep breaths. It really didn’t matter what she said, this was too good. She was this close to being stark bollock naked and still giving me attitude. There was something faintly admirable about it. Or at least there would be if she weren’t Satan.
‘Yeah, Alex. Did he dump your ass yet or are you still his charity fuck?’
Jenny physically recoiled as though she’d been hit, but before she could strike, I stepped in. I had this.
‘You can’t dump charity at Christmas,’ I said, smiling politely. ‘We’re still together, thanks.’
‘I’m sure he’s going to get tired of you soon enough,’ she shrugged. ‘You should give me his number. I still work in the media. I could help his band.’
‘His band doesn’t need help, and actually, I still work in the media,’ Admittedly it was just barely, but still. Semantics schemantics.
‘Only because I couldn’t get the UK office to fire your ass.’ She looked me up and down. ‘It’s actually kind of amazing how easy it was to get you blocked. Maybe because you suck? I figure it will take me longer to get you banned from whatever this is –’ she paused to wave a horrified hand at my ‘waitressing’ outfit – ‘because I don’t usually hire the help, but give me a couple of days and you’ll be out on your ass. Again.’
‘Blocked?’ I blinked.
‘Maybe it wasn’t me,’ Cici mused. ‘Maybe every publisher in New York canned your ass because you don’t understand simple words.’
So that was the reason no one at Spencer would hire me. Not because I sucked, but because Cici did.
‘Are you for real?’ Her sister spoke up before I regained the power of speech. ‘Seriously, what is wrong with you? Why do you always have to have an enemy?’
‘Eff you, Deals. She threw a coffee at me!’
‘You got me fired!’ I shouted. Inside voices, Angela, inside voices. ‘And blew up my shoes! And you’re a massive cow!’
‘Uh, I’m a massive cow?’ she scoffed. ‘I didn’t know they made fetish outfits in a plus size.’
‘I wasn’t calling you fat, I was …’ A red mist settled over my ability to form a sentence. It was impossible to enjoy shouting at someone if they were too stupid to understand exactly how you were slagging them off. ‘You’re an idiot.’
I looked at Delia. She looked at me. I looked at Jenny. She looked at Cici. Cici looked far too happy with herself. As I saw it, there were two ways this could go. I could be the bigger man, turn around and walk out of the party with my head held high. Or I could slap the mare silly.
‘Sorry, Jenny, I have to go.’ Apologizing, I stepped out of my borrowed shoes and picked them up. There was no such thing as a speedy exit in Louboutins. ‘I’m really sorry to let you down.’
Before Jenny could reply, Cici let out a tiny wicked cackle. ‘Are you sure you can afford to pass up work? And dude, those shoes are clearly not yours. Christian Louboutin would set them on fire before he let you walk around in his shoes.’
Now that was a mistake. Insult me, fire me, but never insult my shoes. Even if they were actually borrowed. Besides, I was never more dangerous than when I had a pair of Louboutins in my mitts, but GBH by way of shoe had been done before and so instead I grabbed a glass of red wine from a passing tray and took aim.
‘Not the dress!’ Jenny yelled, dashing to stand in between me and Cici. ‘Kick her ass, but don’t hurt the dress!’
I paused. On one hand, I really did want to throw the wine at her. On the other, I didn’t want Jenny to get fired.
‘Angela, give me the wine,’ Delia said, taking the glass out of my hand. ‘Just hit her. We all know she deserves it.’
‘Please, she couldn’t hit for shit,’ Cici said, smug and safe behind the outspread arms of Jenny Lopez. ‘No one cares what you think, Delia.’
‘Oi, Cici.’ I waited for Jenny to move, for Delia to stop blushing, for the entire assembled mass of the party to be watching. ‘No one cares about you, full stop.’
And then I punched her in the face.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘And then Jenny had to fire me but it was OK and she said it was OK and then she called me a cab and I don’t think it really hurt that much because her nose didn’t bleed or anything but ohmygod, Alex …’ Pause for breath. ‘I hit her.’
More to make me feel like a big man than anything else, I was seated on our sofa with a freshly purchased bag of frozen peas on my fist, relaying to Alex the tale of how I slayed my second dragon.
‘This punching people thing –’ He held the peas against my knuckles with one hand and stroked the hair back from my forehead with the other. ‘Is this something I should be worried about?’
‘Apparently I’m only into girl-on-girl fighting,’ I replied, flexing my fingers. They didn’t really hurt, but I ouched for good measure. ‘I don’t think you need to be concerned about domestic violence. Yet.’
‘I love that you’re a feminist.’ He planted a kiss on my forehead then went to the fridge to get more beer. Because I needed more beer. ‘And you met her sister? And she wasn’t a bitch?’
‘She wasn’t.’ I shook my head. ‘She was nice, actually. I might friend her on Facebook.’
‘You are a strange girl.’ He stood in front of me, bearing a Corona and staring into my glittering, fevered eyes. ‘And just so it’s clear in my mind, Cici the Satanist was naked during the foxy boxing, and you were wearing … this?’
Of course I was still resplendent in PVC.
‘She wasn’t naked,’ I tutted. ‘Honestly.’
Trust a man to actually find this sexy. If someone had goaded Craig into punching them hard in the face, Alex would have fist-bumped him and then got beers. I suppose I did have a beer.
‘And you’re missing the key points here. Not only did she get me fired, she’s stopping me from getting any other work. Cici is the reason I have to renew my visa. She’s the reason all this shit is happening. She’s the reason there’s a problem.’
‘I thought there wasn’t a problem,’ he said. ‘With the visa.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ I pouted. Now really wasn’t the time, was it? ‘Well, just … I suppose … worst-case scenario stuff …’
‘You’re such a pessimist,’ he said, dropping back down on the sofa and folding me into a very big, very careful hug, avoiding my injuries. ‘Chill. Just wait until after Christmas and then we’ll work it out. No one can deal with stuff like this close to the holidays – their brains are already on vacation.’
I knew all I needed to do was to sit down with my boyfriend and explain exactly what was happening, tell him exactly what the INS had said and have a simple, grown-up conversation. But I was so tired and so mad at Cici and, well, making excuses. I also felt I lacked some integrity in the outfit I was currently wearing, so instead of having an adult conversation with my adult partner about my adult situation, I let him give me a hug and sulked quietly instead. I would talk to him tomorrow. I would start researching options for the visa. I would make everything right. Immediately after I had burned the French maid’s costume.
After a long and involved Saturday of research, googling, watching True Blood and thinking about pizza, I managed to rouse myself to prepare for Jenny’s Christmas party. Or to be more culturally sensitive, holiday party. But I have never been much for cultural sensitivity when it involves a fat man in a red furry suit, so I was getting ready to get my Christmas on. I added Jenny’s borrowed shoes (one more wear couldn’t hurt?) to my red silk Marc by Marc Jacobs dress and attacked my face with blusher. The two-seasons-old (aka ancient) frock was one of the few survivors from my pre-Paris wardrobe, but happily it was perfect for a Christmas party. Ruby red, little puff sleeves and a fitted waist that still allowed for the over-consumption of mince pies. I had made mince pies.
I had also absolutely, one hundred per cent planned to talk to Alex about my visa sitch. I’d even got The Letter out of my handbag to show him, but he’d run out early in the morning (for him) and hadn’t resurfaced until it was time to get ready for the party. Plan scuppered. Now I was going to have to build my nerve all over again tomorrow. And by build my nerve, I meant knock back a couple of white wine spritzers. As much as we’d been through, as much as I knew he loved me, there was still that little voice in my head whispering that he was pleased I was going home. That he was pleased I would leave and he would be free. And that little voice could only be silenced by two things – kissing and booze. And it was very difficult to talk during the kissing.
It was the same voice that said, yes, you do look fat in those jeans and no, wearing red lipstick doesn’t brighten up your face, it makes you look like a tart. I hated that voice. Part your mother, part your year nine Biology teacher and part Jeremy Kyle. Living with Jenny had really helped me put The Voice back in its box where it belonged, but right now it was coming through loud and clear. So I did what any good English girl would do and ignored it completely, pushing it down, down, down until it was just a bad feeling in my stomach instead of a bellowing in my ear. Jenny would tell me the only way to silence it was to address the issues. Jenny was American. I chose to quietly hope it would go away on its own, like a medium-sized spider or a funny rash in a special place. Since there was sod all I could do about the visa on a Saturday night, I decided to stash those concerns all together. May as well give myself an ulcer for lots of problems rather than just one, surely? I would not worry about things for the next twelve hours. There. Done. Sort of.
‘Ready?’ Alex had gone all out for the party. Not only had he washed and brushed his hair, he was wearing a suit, shirt and tie. I had forgotten he owned a suit, shirt and tie. It was silly how good he looked. The suit and tie were black and skinny, the shirt was white and shiny. If he’d been a girl, he would have been doing a spin in his high heels to show off, but since he was a manly man, he was just pushing his feet into his black Converse. Which should not have worked with the outfit, but, irritatingly for someone with her trotters rammed into very pinchy pumps, he looked great.
‘So who’s going to be there tonight?’ Alex asked as we shut the door behind us and I felt the icy sting of the New York winter on my bare cheeks. At least tonight it was just the cheeks on my face. Living by the water was wonderful. We had a beautiful view of Manhattan, and in the summer, sitting on the rooftop with a cold glass of wine and a gentle breeze, it was perfection. But in winter, that gentle breeze became razor blades on your skin with a nice after-splash of TCP to really freshen things up.
‘Big crowd? Intimate gathering?’ He took my hand and squeezed it, pretending he wasn’t terrified of either.
‘It’s Jenny,’ I squeezed back, trying to get the feeling back into my fingers. ‘She’ll have invited everyone she’s ever met. Hopefully they won’t all come at once.’
‘Cool, whatever,’ he replied, fumbling in his pocket for a MetroCard. ‘I haven’t seen her in forever.’
It was cute of him to pretend that wasn’t a relief. I knew full well he was terrified of my best friend, and of crowds in general. Alex could happily entertain thousands of people from the safety of a stage, but parties made him uncomfortable. He would go along, smile, nod, laugh when appropriate, shake his head when required and everyone would love him, but I could tell. Once a high-school music nerd, always a high-school music nerd. Despite everything he’d accomplished by the age of thirty-one, he was always waiting for the popular kids to kick him out of their kegger. He had explained to me what a kegger was. I wouldn’t have been invited to one either. It was funny when you found out that men were exactly like women sometimes.
After scrabbling down the stairs and dodging a platform full of parkas, I managed to throw myself onto the L train and squeeze myself into a seat as soon as the doors opened. Alex stood in front of me, half shouting over the rumble of our journey about the trains he’d taken in Tokyo. Opposite, I could see two girls checking out his backside. I wanted to be offended, but it really was a great arse.
‘See how easy it would be for him to replace you?’ The Voice interrupted Alex’s story to remind me how very attractive my boyfriend was in our neighbourhood. Clearly, he was hot wherever he went, but in Brooklyn, he was like hipster catnip. And I was prepared to bet anything that the two girls in their denim cut-offs over black fishnets finished with scuffed-up DMs hadn’t sat around all afternoon watching gay vampires with toothpaste on their spots. They had probably been making jewellery out of electrical equipment or painting pictures of something very deep and meaningful with hummus.
‘You have to come with me next time,’ Alex said as I tuned out the bad-news bears in my own head. ‘You can’t leave me with Craig and Graham again. You’re gonna love Japan – honestly, everywhere we went I was like, Angie would go crazy for this. I think the guys were kinda sick of me by the end.’
‘Next time,’ I smiled. Hurrah, I had kept my promise not to mention my lack of visa.
‘When you’ve got your visa, we’ll go everywhere.’ He nudged my knee with his and I forced myself not to kick him in the balls.
‘Yep.’ I looked back at the hipster girls behind him. They didn’t need toothpaste spot cream or visas. They did need to learn some manners, though.
The party was wall to wall with people, just as I’d predicted, and most of them were hatefully beautiful. I hadn’t even taken my coat off before Alex had to give me a not-particularly-gentle punch in the shoulder to get me to stop staring at the three perfectly muscled men wearing nothing but red fur-trimmed Speedos.
‘I – it’s Christmas …?’ I said, defending myself. While having another look.
‘Yeah, Santa’s been working out,’ he replied, openly miffed. I kissed him on the cheek and steered my eyes away, but really, it never hurt to see him a little jealous. I was trying to be a grown-up, but I was still a girl.
‘Angie!’ Jenny squealed and jumped up from the sofa as though I was the only suitable kidney donor in all the world and I’d just walked into the hospital to save her life. From the glazed look in her eyes, she’d more likely be looking for a new liver under her tree. She was hammered. ‘You look adorable. Are those my shoes?’
‘They are your shoes,’ I confirmed. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind since you made me wear a PVC maid’s outfit last night.’
‘Did you burn it?’
‘I did.’
‘Good.’
It was nice to be considered adorable, but I couldn’t help but think that sometimes it might be nice to be considered a stone-cold fox like Jenny. If I’d known she was going to be wrapped up in a red Herve Leger bandage dress, I might have worn a different colour, but, like Delia and Cici, though with considerably less vitriol, there was no point in competing with Jenny.
‘There are so many people here.’ I waved a hand at my face, fanning warm air right back at myself. Last winter, I’d spent more than one day wearing a scarf and mittens indoors. Our building suffered from a severe case of knackered boileritis, but the sheer number of bodies in the room was keeping things nice and toasty. And speaking of bodies, I peered around her hair to look for Jenny’s very beautiful boyfriend. ‘Is Sigge around?’
‘Over there.’ Jenny pointed at the trifecta of half-naked men by the window as she gave Alex a kiss on each cheek and a perfunctory hug. He was scared of her for a reason. She insisted on keeping what she referred to as a professional distance with regards to their being friends. According to Jenny, it was her job to keep Alex on his toes, a fact that wasn’t lost on him. He was on his tiptoes whenever Jenny was around. He always tried his best with her, but I could feel he was on edge, hence the suit and tie. I was under no illusion that the dress-up was for me, but the two of them getting along so well gave me a happy.
‘I didn’t recognize his abs,’ I said, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. I wasn’t terribly good at it. ‘It’s so different seeing them in person.’
‘Right?’ Jenny sipped her champagne. It looked like love in her eyes, but it could just have been booze. ‘He thought it would be funny. I tried to explain to him it was a little Zoolander, but that just made it worse. Now they keep flashing each other Blue Steels and giggling like women.’
The three of us looked over at the model playpen across the room. Such sharp cheekbones.
‘That’s my boyfriend,’ Jenny sighed. ‘Can you believe it?’
‘I’d totally date that dude,’ Alex replied. ‘And I know Angela would.’
‘I’m not going to lie – if you weren’t here I would be sitting on Santa’s lap right now,’ I admitted, eventually dragging my eyes away to begin the search for booze. There was no way I would be able to stay at this party for more than fifteen minutes unless I got very drunk, very quickly. I’d been on a bit of a non-drinking kick while Alex had been on tour, but not drinking at one of Jenny’s parties was basically self-harm. It would have been a good idea to have had a couple of drinks at home to take the edge off, but I wasn’t that bright.
‘The apartment looks nice,’ I told Jenny, sending Alex off to the bedroom with our coats and a clear message not to come back without two glasses of something cold and bubbly. As well as whatever he wanted. ‘You’ve painted?’
‘Sadie painted,’ Jenny corrected. ‘I told her we were gonna have a holiday party, and she said she’d get someone in to tidy up a little. I figured she meant a cleaning service, but then I get home from the office and the whole damn place has been covered in White Out. In a day. She couldn’t run the vacuum around?’
‘I can’t imagine someone who gets paid thousands of dollars to stand around in their pants is particularly big on domestic chores,’ I said, ignoring the fact that I wasn’t either. ‘Does she know what a vacuum is?’
‘Sigge changes light bulbs,’ Jenny said, looking doubtful. ‘But he’s not so good with actual appliances. I guess that’s why the house always ends up so gross on America’s Next Top Model.’
‘Tyra isn’t very handy with a can of Pledge,’ I nodded. My feet were starting to hurt. ‘But given how you two met, I’m not too shocked. Where is Sadie, anyway?’
If I had met Sadie the way Jenny had met Sadie, I would have had a restraining order issued, not invited her to move in. Jenny had landed the lucky role of Sadie’s ‘handler’ at one of Erin’s events, and now she was living that role. As far as I was concerned it sounded like a living nightmare, but Jenny thrived on a project. She loved a challenge; she always wanted to fix something. And man alive, was Sadie broken. I’d always laughed when people said models were like racehorses, but she was the most highly-strung race-horse of the modelling world; except that instead of refusing hurdles, she refused common courtesy and basic human compassion. The first time we met, she looked me up and down, asked where I lived, then asked if I knew Agyness Deyn, and then actually answered for me with a massive laugh and ‘of course you don’t’. She was a charmer.
‘She forgot she had an event tonight.’ Jenny made tired-looking air quotes around the ‘forgot’. ‘VS, I think. It’s fine – it’s not like the modelling industry is under-represented.’
She was right. For an at-home Christmas do, there was a disproportionately large number of very pretty people in Jenny’s front room. Not that I would ever describe any of our friends as dogs, but these were the kinds of girls and boys that you wanted to stare at until you could work out exactly what it was that made them so transcendentally beautiful. And then maybe poke them a bit.
‘So did you talk to Alex?’ Jenny asked, pushing some random off the sofa so we could sit down. It was still weird to me that there was someone I’d never laid eyes on sitting on what was very recently my sofa. I didn’t like it.
‘No, I didn’t talk to Alex, and I distinctly remember banning you from mentioning that subject,’ I said, slipping the balls of my feet out of my shoes. Oh, sweet baby Jesus in the manger, that felt good. ‘So shut up. I’m working on it. This time next week, it’ll all be sorted out.’
Jenny leaned her head to one side. ‘How so?’
‘Because I’m due a Christmas miracle,’ I replied with confidence. ‘And I’m cashing in my voucher. Everyone gets one, don’t they?’
