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Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2019
Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2019
Cover design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustrations © Lucy Truman
Lindsey Kelk asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008236854
Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008236878
Version: 2019-05-02
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Q&A with Lindsey
Keep Reading I Heart series
Keep Reading Girl series
About the Author
Also by Lindsey Kelk
About the Publisher
Dedication
For Della.
The Jenny to my Angela, Angela to my Jenny.
Without you, there would be no I Heart. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
PROLOGUE
‘Angela? Are you up?’
I was not up. I had no interest in being up.
‘Come on. You can’t stay in bed all day.’
Slowly, very, very slowly, I prised open one eye as I tried to work out where I was.
The ceiling was too low, the window was in the wrong place and I couldn’t hear a single car horn honking. Not to mention the fact my bed was altogether too small and too empty.
‘Angela.’
Two taps on the door of my childhood bedroom before it opened, my mum’s face popping inside without waiting for an invitation.
‘Why aren’t you dressed? It’s nearly eight.’
Today was the day.
‘I just woke up,’ I croaked in response, raking a hand through the bird’s nest on top of my head. Everything came rushing back: where I was, why I was here, what had to be done today, and the steady thrum of nerves that had been beating in my chest since I got on the plane found its rhythm once again.
‘Well, I know we had a lazy one yesterday but you can’t lie around in bed all day today. The sooner you get up and start getting on with things, the better you’ll feel.’
I pulled the duvet up over my face.
‘Come on,’ she said, her voice softening outside my blanket fort. ‘Kettle’s just boiled. I’ll bring you up a cup of tea.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ I whispered from underneath the covers as the door clicked shut behind her.
From the day you left home, the prospect of waking up in your childhood bedroom was never a welcome one. Best-case scenario, it was Christmas. Worst-case scenario, your life had completely fallen apart. I wondered where my current predicament fell on that scale.
With a groan, I tossed away the duvet and rolled over to stare into the eyes of the Care Bear printed on my pillowcase. It had to have been at least thirty years old but Mum always put it on the bed when I came home, even when it was last minute, even when it wasn’t planned. Pressing my cheek against the cool, soft fabric, I sighed. Poor Tenderheart Bear, he had already seen so much in his many years of service and now, here he was, offering his services as a stand-in for the person who should be lying in bed beside me.
Alex.
I glanced over at my phone, thought about it for just a second and then pushed the idea out of my head. No, not yet.
Save the torn-out pages of the NME I’d left stapled to the walls, my room still looked exactly the same as it did the day I left. Every time Dad redecorated, Mum insisted they keep the colours the same. Maybe there was a different duvet on my double bed but my Care Bear pillow and the crocheted blanket from my grandmother’s house were always there. Same pine wardrobe and chest of drawers. Same dressing table with the same scorch marks from my teenage pyromaniac phase. Terracotta essential oil burner from the Body Shop on the windowsill, pink plastic cassette case sitting beside my incredibly cool zebra-striped ghetto blaster. All this familiarity should have made me feel better but it just made me feel further and further away. Like my years in New York had been a dream. Like I’d imagined Alex and Jenny and James and Delia and Erin and all the rest of it.
As though none of it had ever happened.
‘But it did,’ I whispered, turning my engagement and wedding rings around and around on my finger and waiting for a genie to appear. ‘It did, it did, it did.’
‘Only me.’
The door opened again, all the way this time, as my mum marched in bearing a steaming mug of tea and not one, but two, biscuits.
Oh my. Things really were serious.
‘The sooner you get up, the sooner you can get this day started.’
‘And the sooner I can come back to bed?’ I added hopefully.
‘Oh, Angela,’ she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and smoothing my messy hair down on the top of my head. ‘Don’t overreact, you’re making it worse than it is. Everything is going to be fine. When has your mother ever steered you wrong?’
This didn’t seem like a question that needed answering with a tremendous degree of honesty.
‘Drink your tea, jump in the shower and I’ll have your breakfast waiting. Your dad is raring to go.’
‘Classic Dad,’ I replied as she walked around the bed and tore open all the curtains. This day was coming in whether I liked it or not. ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’
I should have known not to push my luck. The sympathetic lift of her eyebrows folded in on itself until it evolved into its final form; Annette Clark’s trademark glare. I shrank back against the pillow. It worked when I threw a tantrum in Woolworths when I was three and it worked now.
‘Angela Clark, I will not have this attitude,’ Mum declared from the doorway, hands on hips, frown on face. ‘Downstairs in ten minutes. Today is a big day. You need to be up and dressed before everyone gets here. Whatever you’ve convinced yourself of, things aren’t going to go better with you in your bed, are they?’
With one last forceful look, she closed the door and left me alone. I might have left home when I was eighteen but I would know the sound of Mum’s purposeful march down the stairs anywhere with my eyes closed.
And I also knew when she was right.
Stretching my legs, I pushed away my blankets and felt for the floor with my toes.
It was all going to be fine, Mum said.
I put one foot on the floor, followed by the other. There, I was officially standing. The day had officially started. All I had to do was get up, get dressed and meet the day head on.
No turning back now.
CHAPTER ONE
One year earlier …
‘I am a woman who has it all,’ I said quietly, staring at my own face reflected back in the screen of my iPhone. ‘I am a woman who owns her power.’
The version of me looking back rolled her eyes but I went on regardless.
‘I am strong, vital and beautiful.’
And tired, emotional and, according to the tag in the front of my pants, wearing my knickers back to front. Although they were clean, so at least there was that.
The affirmations were my best friend, Jenny’s, idea. Apparently, if I said them out loud, every day, they would all come true. The more I heard myself say these things, the more I would believe them and then the whole world would believe them too. In theory. But the more I stared at my pale complexion and red-rimmed eyes I couldn’t help but think a nice, uninterrupted eighteen-hour nap would be more effective. Also, I wasn’t entirely sure I was supposed be reciting them on the toilet at work but I was fairly sure this was the first time I’d been entirely alone since I’d given birth ten and a half months ago.
I took a deep breath and refocused. My attention span was something else that needed some work, along with my short-term memory and my pelvic floor muscles.
‘There is nothing I cannot accomplish when I put my trust in the universe,’ I said, breathing out.
Jenny said the affirmations would open up my subconscious and allow me to contact my inner goddess, the divine feminine energy, but so far mine was nowhere to be seen. Probably out dicking around with all the other inner goddesses who hadn’t got up five times in the night with a teething baby.
Lifting the phone a little to improve the angle of my selfie, I really looked at myself. Jenny said you had to look yourself in the eye when you were doing it and I didn’t have a mirror on me. Maybe there was something in these affirmations, after all. Sleep deprivation didn’t do much for a girl’s dark circles but my cheekbones looked killer. I tapped the photo-editing app Jenny had also installed on my phone and swiped through until I found my favourite filter, trying to snap a picture to send to Alex. Because nothing says I love you like a selfie taken on the toilet.
‘Hello?’
Three sharp raps on the cubicle door and I jumped out of my skin. My phone slipped out of my hand, fell between my knees and plopped directly in the toilet bowl.
‘Excuse me, do you have any toilet paper in there?’
‘Nooooooo,’ I breathed, momentarily paralysed before grabbing handfuls of toilet paper and waving it under the stall door. Yes, I’d just destroyed a thousand dollars’ worth of technology but I’d be damned if I would let another woman go for a wee without sufficient loo roll.
‘Thanks,’ the voice replied, sounding relieved as the paper disappeared. ‘Appreciate it.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I replied in a bright, tight voice as I gazed at my phone in the bottom of the toilet bowl, only to see myself looking back. And then the screen went black. I nodded and sighed before rolling up my sleeves and reaching in. I was a strong, vital, beautiful woman with her hand down a public toilet.
Brilliant start to a brilliant day.
The first day in a new job is always nerve-racking. Even if you’re in your thirties, even if you’ve done pretty much exactly the same job somewhere else before, unless you’re either Kanye or a complete sociopath, there are bound to be a few first-day jitters. And if you take those jitters and multiply them by the fact you’re coming back to work after having your first baby you’ve got a real, one hundred percent ‘shitting it’ situation on your hands.
With my waterlogged phone in my pocket, I eventually convinced myself to leave the lavs and made my way across the huge reception of my new office building. I smiled at the pleasing tap-tap-tap of my heels against the marble floor. Heels. In the daytime. It had been so long.
‘Hi.’
I beamed at the man seated behind the reception desk. He did not beam back.
‘I’m Angela Clark. I’m starting work at Besson Media today.’
Without raising his eyes to meet mine, the man nodded.
‘Photo ID?’
Slipping my hand into my ancient Marc Jacobs satchel, I pulled out my passport on the first try and handed it over with a brilliant smile. He looked at me, looked at the passport and looked at me again. Still nothing.
‘Fifteenth floor,’ he replied, sliding my passport back across the desk and inclining his head towards the bank of lifts across the cavernous hall. ‘Take elevator six.’
‘Thank you!’ I said, tucking my passport away and making the eighteen thousandth reminder to myself to finally get round to applying for a New York driver’s licence. I’d only been here the best part of a decade, after all.
But in all that time, I’d never seen anything like this. My old office had been a flash, glass, nineties-tastic monster of a skyscraper, slap bang in the middle of Times Square. If you were into flashing neon signs and an ungodly number of tourists, it was heaven, but this? This was something else. Besson Media had set up shop in an architectural icon. A recently renovated sugar refinery on the edge of Williamsburg, perfectly positioned to give Manhattan a good dose of hipper-than-thou side eye. Alongside the landmark building, we also had our own park, our own sculpture garden, different food trucks every single day and our very own beach. I’d read about the building, and I’d seen it when I walked by, but actually being inside felt so very special. Old red-brick walls and old-fashioned arched windows contrasted against the shining steel of the lifts and the touch screens I saw absolutely everywhere. Stopping myself from swiping wildly, I stepped into the lift, clutching my bag against my hip and grinning at strangers as more people joined me.
‘Hi,’ I said to the backs of people’s heads, shuffling backwards into the corner. ‘Hello.’
Ten months at home with a baby was pretty much exactly the same as when someone on a TV show disappears one week and then shows up the next, only to explain they’ve spent a thousand years in another dimension and no longer know who they were. You don’t speak to strangers in lifts, not in New York or anywhere else for that matter. One by one, floor by floor, people piled out until it was just me, all on my lonesome, arriving at floor fifteen.
It was beautiful.
Besson Media was, of course, on the top floor and, unlike the rest of the building, the penthouse level was all glass, giving us a 360-view of New York, Brooklyn and Queens, for as far as the eye could see. Not that anyone’s eyes were concentrating on what was happening outside the windows. Everyone already at work in the open-plan office had their eyes firmly fixed on whatever screen was in front of them, a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, a phone. Without anyone to greet me, and not seeing anyone I recognized, I took an awkward step away from the safety of the lifts and into the hub. Perhaps, if I could find my office, I could get settled and then start from there.
‘Hello,’ I said, waving at a young Japanese woman with green hair who was studying her laptop intently. She peered back at me from behind gold wire-framed glasses with exceptionally large lenses. ‘Um, I’m starting today? I’m Angela Clark. I don’t suppose you know where my office might be?’
‘We don’t have offices,’ she replied. ‘It’s open plan. Hot desk. Set up wherever you like.’
A shiver ran down my spine.
Hot desk? There had been no discussion of hot desks.
‘I’m fairly sure I’m supposed to have an office,’ I told her, subtly nudging my left breast pad back into place with my forearm. ‘I’m going to be running a site—’
‘I run a site,’ the girl replied. ‘I’m Kanako. I run Bias? The fashion site? No one has an office except for the CEO.’
‘Did someone say my name?’
The shiver turned into the cold grip of dread.
‘Angela, you’re here.’
Everyone in the office looked up at once as Cici Spencer, my former assistant, stepped out of the lift. I had to admit it, CEO looked good on her. She strode into her office wearing a sleek Tom Ford jumpsuit with at least twelve grands’ worth of floral embroidered Alexander McQueen blazer casually slung on her shoulders. A pair of crystal-studded Gucci sunglasses perched on her surgically perfected nose, which she lifted up to the top of my head to look me up and down. I shifted my weight from foot to foot. I’d agonized over this outfit for days: Anine Bing booties, brand-new Topshop jeans, my favourite Equipment shirt. I was playing with fire wearing a silk shirt while breastfeeding but I’d done a literal dry run and was wearing two pairs of breast pads so I was certain I could get away with it. My ensemble was comfortable, smart, no bold statements but enough style to let people know I was supposed to be there and hadn’t got lost on my way to the Target in the Atlantic Mall.
I would never get lost on my way to Target. I loved Target.
‘Here I am,’ I said as I twisted my engagement ring around my ring finger.
‘Here you are,’ Cici said finally, lifting the sunglasses out of her silky straight, ice-blonde hair. ‘And it’s OK, we don’t have a dress code.’
I would not rise to her bait. I was the one who had agreed to come and work for my former-nemesis-turned-assistant-turned-sort-of-kind-of-friend and there was no point acting surprised when a leopard showed its spots. Not that Cici would be caught dead in leopard print these days, far too common.
‘I also hear you don’t have offices. What’s that about?’
‘I have an office,’ she shrugged, letting her black Valentino tote bag slide off her shoulder and into the crook of her arm. ‘Everyone else lives here.’ She waved at the mass of desks behind me, randomly placed around the room, some at seated level, some raised to standing. ‘Our director of culture said this was the best way to nurture creativity.’
‘But where will I put all my stuff?’ I asked with a frown. She knew I needed my stuff. It was all essential to my process, from my signed framed photo of Robert Downey Jr to the Hannah Montana Magic 8 Ball I used to make any and all difficult decisions.
‘Besson doesn’t encourage personal artifacts at the work station,’ Kanako recited from an invisible rulebook. ‘A decluttered environment promotes a more efficient workflow.’
I felt a dark look cross my face.
‘If any so much as thinks the words “spark joy” I’m going home.’
She shrugged and turned back to her computer. ‘We all like it this way.’
We. There was a ‘we’ here and I, the new girl, was not a part of it.
‘I’m sure I’ll figure it out,’ I said, my hand never leaving my satchel for fear of my photos of Alex and our daughter leaping out and exposing me to all the world for the hoarder that I was. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘Let me know if you need me to show you around,’ Kanako said without looking back.
It sounded like a nice thing to say but I could tell what she really meant was ‘now go away’.
‘I can give you the tour,’ Cici offered as a short but beautiful man with a shaved head appeared at her side. ‘Do I have time to give her the tour?’
‘You have seventeen minutes until your conference call with the investors,’ he replied, glancing down at a small tablet.
‘Plenty of time,’ she replied, shrugging off her bag and her sunglasses into the man’s waiting arms. From the look on his perfectly symmetrical face, I had to assume he was her assistant. It was the exact same expression last seen on Bambi, right after his mother was killed.
‘I’m Angela,’ I said, holding out a hand to the assistant. He looked down at it, his own hands full of thousands of dollars of designer goods. ‘It’s my first day.’
‘He knows who you are,’ Cici said, already striding off to survey her domain. ‘He’s my assistant, he knows everything.’
I really hoped he knew how to write a CV and find a new job ASAP.
‘Well, it’s nice to meet you …’
‘Don,’ he replied before turning back to Cici. ‘I’ll put these away and prepare for the call.’
‘Thanks, Don,’ she smiled as he scuttled away before sighing and lowering her voice. ‘It’s so hard to find a good assistant. You were so lucky to have me.’
‘Remember that time you had my suitcase blown up at Charles de Gaulle airport?’ I replied, watching as he ran.
‘No.’
It was a blatant lie. That was the kind of memory that kept Cici warm on the cold winter nights.
Before Besson, Cici and I had both worked at Spencer Media, one of the biggest publishers in the world, and a company founded by Cici’s grandfather. When she told me she wanted to strike out on her own, I knew she’d find her feet but I hadn’t realized just how fast she’d do it or how very big her feet would turn out to be. Within six short months, Besson had become a major player in digital media with some of the highest-trafficked sites in the US. While Cici could never claim to have been one of the world’s best executive assistants, she certainly could boast an innate ability to throw her family’s money at the most talented people in the industry, which resulted in absolutely brilliant content that was thriving in a market where everyone else seemed set to struggle.
‘I’m so glad you’re finally here,’ Cici said as we made our way around the open-plan office. ‘How is baby Ellis? Such a cool name. Alex pick it?’
‘Ellis is a cool name but my baby is called Alice,’ I answered, following her away from the hodge-podge of standing and sitting desks. ‘She’s named after my grandmother, actually.’
Fantastic. Now I was not only anxious about my first day at work, I’d also have to spend the rest of the morning wondering whether or not it was too late to change my baby’s name.
‘How old is he now? Like, three?’
‘She is ten and a half months, remember? You were there when I took the pregnancy test. How fast do you think babies age?’
‘Is that all? I guess they do say time flies,’ Cici said with wide eyes. I could tell it was taking an awful lot of energy for her to show this much interest in my personal life and I appreciated it, even if I knew she didn’t really give two shits.
‘They do and it does,’ I replied. ‘But I’m excited to be here, back at work. I’ve been going kind of crazy at home, I can’t wait to get stuck in with my site. I’ve got some really fun ideas—’
‘Yeah, I’m sure they’re great, that’s why I hired you,’ she interrupted. ‘So this is the conference table where we have most of our editorial meetings.’
She paused in front of a giant slab of crystal, propped up on a metal frame. If Coachella made office furniture.
‘The crystal channels your energies and creates a more harmonious working environment,’ Cici explained. ‘And it cost thirty-five thousand dollars.’
‘Bargain.’
‘I got it from an artisan I met at Burning Man.’
‘Of course you did.’
It really was just crying out for a ritual sacrifice with unicorn dip-dyed hair and a flower crown.