Lindsey Kelk
I Heart Vegas

Copyright

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.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

A Paperback Original 2011

I HEART VEGAS. Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 e-books.

Lindsey Kelk asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007345625

EBook Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007383450

Version: 2017-08-10

Dedication

Faster, faster on your feet …

For Ryan

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Hands on hips, I stood in the middle of the…

Chapter Two

Jenny Lopez was, as far as I was concerned, the…

Chapter Three

‘Basically, there’s just no reason to give you a visa.’

Chapter Four

‘Are you shitting me?’

Chapter Five

‘And then Jenny had to fire me but it was…

Chapter Six

When Monday rolled around, I was all business. Being the…

Chapter Seven

Bright and early on Thursday morning, I kissed Alex goodbye…

Chapter Eight

And then things went from bad to worse.

Chapter Nine

‘Oh, honey, what are you wearing?’

Chapter Ten

The next morning I woke up bright and early at…

Chapter Eleven

‘It’s my own fault,’ I slurred into my cocktail. ‘I…

Chapter Twelve

Without a working phone, I hadn’t heard from Alex, but…

Chapter Thirteen

The ride back to the hotel was frustratingly short, but…

Chapter Fourteen

Jenny let me use her phone to call Alex on…

Chapter Fifteen

Everything that happened after leaving the Venetian was a blur.

Chapter Sixteen

Shoeless, bagless, cashless and Alexless. I slouched over to the…

Chapter Seventeen

The first thought that ran through my head was how…

Chapter Eighteen

The huge free-standing mirror was angled right at me when…

Chapter Nineteen

I didn’t tell Jenny about the win until we were…

Chapter Twenty

‘And then what did he say?’

Angela’s Guide to Vegas

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books by Lindsey Kelk

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Hands on hips, I stood in the middle of the living room and surveyed my work. Excellent. The Christmas tree was up, champagne was chilling in the ice bucket and the apartment was, hmm, passable. As long as no one turned the big lights on. Alex would be impressed. Almost as impressed as the random man on Kent Avenue staring up into our window, surveying my pants. Shit. If I was going to insist on walking around the house in my knickers, we were going to have to get curtains. I staggered backwards, trying not to trip over in my borrowed high heels and hit the light switch. Another bright idea, Angela, I mentally slapped myself as I stumbled straight into the kitchen counter, banging my knee hard as I went. Because nothing went as well with black lace lingerie as a purple throbbing bruise, did it? Surely most twenty-eight-year-olds had grown out of being such an incredibly clumsy cow. Surely most twenty-eight-year-olds didn’t wander around in the pitch black wearing four-inch heels. Surely most twenty-eight-year-olds weren’t like me.

There was a reason for my playing peep show. Alex, my lovely boyfriend and quintessential rock god, had been away touring the Far East for exactly forty-three days, and he was due home any minute. Having had far too long to think about how I would welcome him back, I’d let Jenny, my best friend and quintessential sex kitten, talk me into a sultry seduction scenario over one too many afternoon cocktails. Although now I was here, trussed up like a chicken, I couldn’t help but feel he’d have been as happy with beer and a pizza. Served me right for meeting her at the bar at Hotel Delmano on a Wednesday afternoon. I was so weak in the face of peer pressure. And Pinot grigio.

‘Alex gets back tonight, right?’ she had asked.

‘Yep,’ I had replied.

‘Big plans?’

‘Beer. Pizza. Lovely sit down. He’ll have been on a plane for a billion hours.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ Pause. ‘Why?’

‘Dude, if my guy had kept his pants on for an entire month while he was on tour in Japan, where all the groupies live, well, I kinda think he’d be expecting a more exciting welcome home.’

At which point she removed her spike-heeled, black patent leather Louboutins, forced them onto my feet and a plan was born.

‘Too late now, Clark,’ I whispered to myself, rubbing my knee and hobbling over to the sofa to arrange myself in what I hoped would be a sultry fashion. Sexpot was not my natural setting. Not that I wasn’t excited to see him. My ‘ladyboner’, as Jenny would call it, was at Thumper levels. I was twitterpated out of season. Seriously, I was just about ready to knock Alex right off his feet the second he walked through the door, but I still wasn’t convinced spending twenty minutes trying to fasten a pair of suspenders onto seamed stockings (after spending twenty minutes trying to get the seams straight in the first place) was a good use of my time. Not least of all because for most of that twenty minutes, I looked less like Dita Von Teese and more like a very slutty dog chasing its own tail. Why were these things so hard to put on? How was putting your neck out fastening the bastards supposed to put you in the mood? There was also the fact that there were a lot of other things I probably should have been doing with my time. Like Christmas shopping. Like looking for work. Like cleaning the bathroom for the first time in three weeks instead of going in, pulling a face and shutting the door. Lots of things, really.

But now wasn’t the time to worry about that, I told myself as I lowered my arse onto the couch, trying to fan my dark blonde hair out around my head and position myself so as to avoid any and all exposure of cellulite. Which was basically impossible. The clock on the DVD player flashed nine p.m. Alex’s flight was due into JFK at seven-twenty. He would be walking through the door any second. I yawned and tried not to fall off the sofa. It had been a long hard day of procrastination. Any second now he’d be home. Any second …

‘Dude, hit lights?’

Keys jangled in the door. I rubbed my eyes, leaving big black smudges on my fists. Keys? Burglars? Burglars with keys? I noticed the champagne bobbing around in a bucket full of water. What time was it? And why was I semi-naked?

‘Where do you want this?’ The voice again, this time definitely inside the front door. With very little time to make a decision, I decided to stay on the couch and hide. I really wasn’t dressed for vigilantism. Batman hardly ever wore heels, after all.

‘Uh, just drop it anywhere. Angela?’

Angela? That was me! And that voice belonged to Alex! It wasn’t burglars, it was …

‘Woah, dude!’

The living-room lights flickered into life, revealing me on the couch in all my sultry glory. If looking like a very confused, cut-price hooker with messed up eye make-up and a little bit of drool on her pillow was in fact sultry. Judging by the expressions on Alex, Graham and Craig’s faces, it wasn’t. Of course he’d come home with his band mates. And a four-way with my boyfriend, his gay drummer and super slutty guitarist, who I was almost certain must have at least one STD at any given time, really wasn’t in my plans for the evening.

‘Oh, Angela.’ Graham, gay as the wind, turned away immediately. Craig, straight as a die, grinned from ear to ear. ‘Nice rack.’

‘Craig!’ I couldn’t even look at the giggling guitarist. ‘If you want to keep your balls, just stop bloody laughing.’

I pushed myself up, performing a very clumsy fan dance using the sofa cushions before tripping over my own shoes and landing in a graceless pile at the foot of the Christmas tree.

‘Alex?’ I called, face in the floor.

‘Angela?’ he replied. I could tell he was trying not to laugh. Twat.

‘Could you turn the lights out, please?’

‘Absolutely.’

The living-room lights dimmed, and somewhere inside my shame I heard him herding the others out of the apartment. Much to Craig’s dismay. A healthy combination of humiliation and the throbbing pain in my knee kept me face down on the hardwood floor while I waited for the click of the lock. At least my Christmas tree smelled nice. That was something.

‘Hey.’

I opened my eyes to see a pair of knackered Converse by my side, followed by a pair of bright green eyes covered by a floppy black fringe that was considerably longer than the last time I had seen it.

‘Hi.’

‘Nice outfit.’

‘Thanks.’

‘The flight was delayed,’ he explained. ‘I thought you’d be asleep.’

‘Well, I was …’

Lying side by side on the cold floor wasn’t quite how I’d envisaged this welcome working out. Well, sometimes it was, but mostly I’d hoped we’d make it to the bedroom. Or at least stick to the sofa. Alex reached out a hand and wiped away some of my smudged mascara.

‘I missed you,’ he said.

‘I missed you too.’ I really was going to need to ice my knee. ‘Probably should have stuck with the beer-and-pizza welcome-back, shouldn’t I?’

Alex hopped up and reached down to grab my hand. Wobbling to my feet, I let him wrap my arms around his neck before draping his own around my waist, hands resting on my hips. Staring up at him, I couldn’t quite catch my breath. Even after dating him for more than a year, even after living with him for the last few months, it never failed to delight me just how bloody hot Alex Reid actually was. His hair was messy, his bright eyes a little bloodshot from his long flight, but he was still so beautiful. High cheekbones, full lips, pale skin. I wanted to lick him. Sometimes in public. But I didn’t. Mostly. And he was mine.

He leaned forward and rested those lips gently against mine and I felt a shiver all over my body that had nothing to do with standing around in my pants. Well, maybe it was tangentially related, but it didn’t have anything to do with being cold.

‘Now, you know I love pizza,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘But it can wait until tomorrow. I really, really missed you.’

Wrapping me up in another kiss, we staggered towards the bedroom door, Alex shedding clothing as we went, me trying not to let my knee give out. So the evening hadn’t gone quite according to plan, but as long as I was getting the result I was after, who was I to complain?

A few hours later, I was rudely awoken by a throbbing pain in my left kneecap. I bent my leg slowly, wincing through the pain but too tired to get up and take painkillers. When I wasn’t in agony, this was my favourite way to be: not quite awake, not quite asleep, watching Alex dream away on his pillow. It was like watching an extremely attractive puppy take a nap. He stirred in his sleep, turning towards me, hair post-coitally mussed up, and his foot brushed against my bare leg while he made tiny sleeping noises. I’d got so used to having the bed to myself, the thrill of waking to find Alex beside me wouldn’t let me go back to sleep. Instead, I lay and looked at him, fighting the urge to wake him up just so I could see him smile.

These few months had been amazing. At first, the idea of moving in with him terrified me. I’d lived with someone before and that had not gone well, but touch wood, I’d been here for a while now and we were still in a good place: Alex was still putting the toilet seat down and I was still shaving my legs every day. Domestic bliss. I snuggled up against him and sighed happily when he draped a hand over my hip, his warm legs curling up under mine, his bare chest pressed against my back. This was how it was supposed to be. This was how it would be. For ever.

Alex Reid was a heavy sleeper at the best of times, but adding jet lag into the mix? He was going to be out for at least twelve hours. Which gave me almost enough time to clean the apartment. Obviously, my charms had kept him distracted the night before, but in the cold (below freezing, in fact) light of day, I saw my hovel through new eyes. It was amazing what sort of a sty you were prepared to live in when it was just you. When Alex did finally surface, I wanted him to be happy about coming home, not trip up over the pair of tights I’d taken off on the sofa three nights before during a mega Harry Potter movie marathon that ended when I passed out on the sofa at two a.m., too tired to crawl to bed.

I managed to clean the bathroom, sweep the living room and scrub the kitchen before I accepted I was going to have to brave the frigid outdoors. My constant need to have the heating on full blast all of the time meant that leaving bin bags full of rubbish in the apartment was not a possibility. The word ‘fester’ had been bandied about once before, and there was very little a bottle of Febreze could do when you had four-day-old sushi going manky in the corner.

Wrapping Alex’s giant Brooklyn Industries parka over my shorts, T-shirt and ancient cardigan Uggs, I shuffled out of the door and down the hallway with two giant bin bags, trying not to breathe in as I went. Fucking hell it was chilly. I cracked open the front door, chucked the rubbish as close as I could to the kerb without hitting the great big man walking his teeny dog and slammed it shut on the frosty clouds that had been my huffs and puffs. And then opened it again on a very angry-looking postman.

‘Sorry,’ I said, holding my hand out for either the mail or a slap on the wrists. ‘Cold.’

‘You think?’ he said with chattering teeth and a filthy look.

I’d dismissed the idea before, but maybe I could be a postman. I watched him hop back on his bike and pedal furiously away. Obviously I would have a super-cute vintage fixie instead of the regulation red road bike. And possibly a nicer outfit. But it could be good: I’d get some exercise and be a vital member of the community. As long as no one wanted their post delivered between November and March. Or before midday. But as I was holding three envelopes in my hand at ten a.m. in December, that seemed unlikely. I reluctantly added ‘postman’ to the list of unsuitable jobs along with accountant, physicist and barista. Nine times out of ten I couldn’t remember what I’d gone into the kitchen for, let alone how three thousand people a day wanted their Starbucks.

The need for work was becoming pressing. I still had my column in the UK edition of The Look, but that really wasn’t enough to live on and my savings were running dry. I really needed more work here in the States, but I was struggling. At first I’d put it down to a slow summer. And then a hectic autumn. And no one hired at Christmas. Fingers crossed January would bring something exciting, otherwise I was going to be finding out the difference between a venti wet latte and a grande Americano very soon. But still, at least I had post.

Everyone alive knows there is nothing more exciting than post, especially at Christmas. Two of the envelopes had a distinctive Christmas-card vibe to them, one with British stamps. Too impatient-slash-lazy to go back upstairs to open them, I perched on the step, knees pulled up under Alex’s coat, and tore into them. Ahhh, merry Christmas from Louisa, Tim and the Bump. The second was a Christmas card from Bloomingdale’s. What lovely people, I thought happily; must pay them a visit as soon as I find the credit card I begged Alex to hide from me before he went away and have since spent weeks tearing the place apart to find. The third envelope was distinctly less seasonal – white oblong, too thin to bear goodwill – but while I was there, I figured I may as well open it.

And immediately wished I hadn’t.

I scanned the letter quickly, feeling sicker and sicker by the second.

Dear Ms Clark,

We have been informed that your employment status has changed … As such your L-1 visa has been revoked with immediate effect … Thirty days to leave the United States … Please contact the following department with any questions …

Your visa has been revoked.

Thirty days to leave.

Standing up, I floated back up the stairs, my fingers skimming the wall as I went. Was the plaster always this bumpy? Were there always so many steps? Fumbling with my key in the lock, I let myself back into the clean, sparkly apartment. It seemed smaller. The Christmas cards slipped from my hand and clattered lightly onto the hardwood floor as I moved through the rooms. Eventually I came to a standstill in the bathroom before a sharp stabbing pain in my stomach brought me to my knees and, without really knowing what was happening, I threw up, INS letter still in hand. Thirty days to leave.

Minutes or hours could have passed, I wasn’t sure, but eventually the trance subsided and I was left sweaty, tear-stained and broken on the bathroom floor. I read the letter once more, looking for something I hadn’t seen before – a side note, a postscript, anything that didn’t say I had to leave the country in a month’s time. But it wasn’t there. How could such an important, life-changing message be so brief? America was the land of opportunity, of ‘How can I help you?’ and ‘Have a nice day’, not ‘It’s been fun, now piss off’. This wasn’t possible. I left the letter on the cold tiles and pulled myself up, gripping the sink with my clammy hands. A few splashes of water to the face later, I was able to look in the mirror. I did not like what I saw. And apparently neither did America.

‘OK,’ I told myself. ‘This is going to be OK. We’ll sort this.’

Even my reflection didn’t look convinced.

There was only one thing to do. I engaged my last three working brain cells to remember where I’d put my phone and pressed my speed-dial.

‘Angie?’

‘Jenny,’ I whispered. ‘I need you.’

CHAPTER TWO

Jenny Lopez was, as far as I was concerned, the luckiest girl who ever did live. Now, she would tell you that everyone makes their own luck, but after you had nodded sagely and agreed, she would then go on to tell you how she was dating a Swedish male model whom she had initially offended on an epic level by assuming he was gay (I might have suggested it first, to be fair), was living with a female model who shared her shoe size, was never there and was stupid enough to pay three-quarters of the rent, and, if that wasn’t enough, she had lucked into an amazing job organizing events for one of our best friend’s PR firm. I was very proud of her. I was also, on occasion, ever so slightly jealous. A feeling that didn’t exactly go away as the lift doors opened into Erin White PR to display a life-sized black and white photo of a half-naked Sigge, Jenny’s boyfriend, advertising a very scanty pair of pants. English usage. There were some things you never needed to know about your friend’s boyfriend, and as far as I was concerned, the contents of his Calvins was one of them. But it was a bit late for that. Jenny was an oversharer.

I blinked four times at the receptionist, who acknowledged me with a raised eyebrow, then skulked directly over to Jenny’s office, trying not to make eye contact with any of the girls on the floor. I’d never quizzed Erin on her hiring policy, but I was prepared to bet none of these girls had ever seen the inside of a McDonald’s. Everyone was so bright and perky. Why they were called public relations when they bore no relation to the public whatsoever was a mystery to me.

Luckily, I was soon safely inside Jenny’s office, hidden from the judgemental, overly made-up eyes of the office minions. That is to say, Jenny’s corner office. Jenny’s huge, airy, floor-to-ceiling-windows corner office. Ever so slightly mad, accidentally ended up living with a high-class hooker in LA, borderline alcoholic Jenny had it together. Forget earthquakes, hurricanes and the advent of Justin Bieber; if Jenny being a grown-up wasn’t a sign of the apocalypse, I didn’t know what was.

‘Hey.’ I knocked lightly on the door and stuck my head in cautiously. ‘It’s me.’

Jenny leapt up from behind her desk, resplendent in her sexy secretary skyscraper heels, pencil skirt and pussy-bow blouse, masses of hair levered away from her face by several thousand kirby grips. She made Joan from Mad Men look like the office frump.

‘Hey!’ She skittered around her desk to give me a huge hug before holding up her hand for silence and pressing a button on her Star Trek phone. ‘Melissa, could you bring me two Diet Cokes, please?’

She paused, biting her bottom lip with eyes as wide as saucers and pointing at the phone with pantoesque enthusiasm. Like I said, I was so proud.

‘Sure, Ms Lopez,’ a voice chirped over the intercom. ‘Can I get you anything else at all?’

‘That’ll be fine, Melissa,’ Jenny replied. ‘And please stop calling me Ms Lopez – you’re making me feel like I’m your homeroom teacher.’

‘You love being called Ms Lopez, don’t you?’ I asked as she took her finger off the button.

‘First time the bitch calls me Jenny, she’s fired,’ she confirmed, settling back into her chair as a tiny blonde bounced through the door and deposited two icy cans of Coke on the desk in front of us before vanishing in silence. ‘God, I love having an assistant. Now, tell me everything.’

‘I’m getting kicked out.’ I picked up my drink to see it had already been opened. Melissa wouldn’t want Ms Lopez to break a nail. Melissa was a genius. ‘I don’t have a job, which means I don’t have a visa, which means I’m getting kicked out.’

‘You do have a job. You’re my therapist and personal shopper,’ Jenny acknowledged. ‘Actually, scratch that, I’m yours. What is it you do for me?’

‘Generally make you feel better about your life?’ I suggested. ‘Oh, and I get your shoes reheeled.’ I passed her a shoe bag containing the borrowed Louboutins, freshly heeled and shined to perfection by the lovely man on the corner of North Eleventh and Berry.

‘Thanks,’ she said, stashing the shoes under her desk. ‘What did Alex say?’

‘He’s sleeping.’ I shook my head hard, trying to shake away the black and white lines of the letter that had imprinted themselves on my eyelids. ‘I didn’t want to wake him.’

‘Pretty sure he’d want to be woken for this,’ she said, holding her hand out. ‘You must have really rocked his world last night, huh? Give me the letter.’

‘I flashed his friends, fell over, knackered my knee and then rocked his world,’ I said, ticking the order of events off on my hands before pulling the offending piece of paper out of my MJ bag with my thumb and forefinger. I just didn’t even want to touch it. ‘Enjoy.’

‘As long as worlds were rocked,’ she said, eyes trained on the letter. ‘Shit, Angie.’

It was never a good sign when Jenny reacted to something badly. The queen of positive thinking, I’d sort of been hoping she would laugh, ball it up and throw the letter in the bin. Instead, she was putting on her reading glasses.

‘This doesn’t look great. Did Mary tell you they were going to do this?’

‘Nope.’

Mary Stein had been my editor and ally at Spencer Media, but since we’d parted ways, I hadn’t heard a peep out of her. Not totally shocking: Mary was all business and, well, we weren’t in business together any more, but even so, I couldn’t believe she hadn’t given me a heads-up on this. I mean, it wasn’t a slap on the wrists, it was a deportation notice.

‘So, no luck with anything new?’ Jenny gave me her concerned face. ‘You email any other editors?’

‘I’ve emailed everyone I’ve ever met,’ I said. When Alex was first away, I’d spent days contacting every single editor I’d ever met in New York City. People from newspapers, websites, blogs – everything but high-school newsletters. And they were next. I’d even tried setting up my own blog with my fingers crossed for enough ad revenue to keep me in the style to which I had become accustomed, but to date I wasn’t even making enough to keep a gerbil in the style to which it had become accustomed. Those spinning-wheel things are not cheap.

‘But there’s nothing. Not even rejection emails. It doesn’t make any sense. I know I’m not exactly the world’s most renowned journalist, but after the whole James Jacobs thing, I thought I’d definitely be able to find something.’

‘The whole James Jacobs thing’ being the time I accidentally outed an actor when I was just supposed to be interviewing him. Still, as my dad always said, better out than in.

‘OK, I’m scheduling you an appointment with our lawyer,’ Jenny said, tapping away at her keyboard while I pushed my Diet Coke back and forth, leaving a wet trail across her desk. ‘He definitely works on employment visas and stuff. We have an Australian girl here, and he helped with that. You have to go and see him. Can you do this afternoon?’

‘What else do I have to do?’ I asked. This woman was truly a goddess. ‘I’ll be there.’

‘He’s hot.’

‘It won’t help.’

‘It always helps.’

‘Fair enough,’ I accepted. ‘Bad news does sound better coming from a pretty man. I don’t know, I just hate not knowing what’s going to happen.’

‘That’s because I turned you into a super-awesome take-control-of-your-own-destiny proactive ass-kicking wonder-woman,’ Jenny explained before taking a deep breath and a deep draught from her Coke. ‘But now there’s some stuff that’s out of your control and that’s hard to accept. Unless you take the control back.’

‘But how do I do that, oh genius?’

I genuinely couldn’t see a way. Granted, I was still wallowing deep in the mire of imminent deportation, but how was I going to turn it around in thirty days? No one would give me a job, and I was fairly certain the US government wasn’t going to make a special exception for me to stay here just because I asked nicely. There wasn’t even time to sleep on it: thirty days was too soon.

‘I want to take it back,’ I said, trying to sound determined. ‘In fact, I demand it back. Control, I summon thee.’ I slapped the table, making my can jump. ‘I do want to be in control, but I don’t know what to do.’

‘Honey, I am the queen of solving the unsolvable. It’s what I do, it’s what I live for.’ Jenny pulled her thinking face while I thanked my lucky stars for my wonderful friends. She was very good at putting problems into perspective. ‘To help poor unfortunate souls like yourself.’

‘Please don’t quote The Little Mermaid in my time of need,’ I begged. ‘Although, if you can strike a deal to swap my voice for a visa, I’d consider it.’

‘And the world’s karaoke bars would rejoice,’ she murmured. ‘OK, am I right in thinking if you get a job, you can get a visa, or do you need a visa to get a job?’

‘Both.’

‘That’s not going to work, Ange.’ Jenny shook her head. ‘Visa or job? Which comes first?’

‘The chicken?’

‘That doesn’t even make sense …’

Before Jenny could get up out of her chair and throttle me, the door flew open and Erin sailed in. That sealed it: I could never work in PR. Here I was, sitting in this sparkly, shiny office with dirty hair and jeans that hadn’t been washed for so long that they had started cleaning themselves, while Erin’s hair was so shiny, I could actually see how disgusting mine was in its reflective surface. For shame.

‘Angie’s being deported,’ Jenny answered for me. As was the way amongst our people. ‘Her visa got revoked.’

‘Shit.’

We all nodded. It was pretty much the only viable response.

We sat in silence for a moment, Erin pursing her lips in concentration, Jenny staring at her shoes, me thinking that I really should have taken my coat off before now. I was not going to feel the benefit when I got back outside. Massive concern. As was the fact that I had apparently become my mother.

‘You know what?’ Erin kicked off her high, high heels and leaned back in her chair. ‘That’s the easiest problem I’ve had to solve all day. I can’t believe it took me a whole minute to work it out.’

It was?

‘It is?’

‘Sure.’ She looked at me and shrugged. ‘Just marry Alex.’

Huh.

For a moment I felt sick. Then hot. Then cold. Then hot again because I still had my coat on.

Just marry Alex.

Ooh.

‘Oh my God, that makes so much freaking sense,’ Jenny shrieked. It was as though Erin had walked in, put two and two together and miraculously come up with a four when all we’d been getting were fives and threes. ‘You can just marry Alex! Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘Because it’s stupid?’ I suggested.

Because it was. Wasn’t it?

‘Do you think he’d say no?’ Jenny gave me her best sympathetic eyes.

What a bitch. And the second she said it, I was terrified he might.

‘I don’t know what he’d say and I don’t want to know,’ I said quickly, curtly. ‘Next idea, please.’

My brain was completely overloaded. Half of me had heard the words ‘marry Alex’ and already run off down the aisle, drowning out my worries with the ‘Wedding March’. The other half had caught the ‘for a visa’ part and was not happy. It just felt a bit grubby. In that slightly grubby, slightly exciting, but almost definitely it’s-a-bad-idea way. The idea of getting married to stay in the country hadn’t even occurred to me. And now it had been floated, it did not make me feel good about myself. In fact, it made me feel a bit sick. Not because I didn’t want to marry Alex – locking that boy down legally was absolutely on my to-do list; but not like this. A marriage of convenience was not a marriage I was interested in.

‘He would totally do it.’ Erin raised her eyebrows, a picture of innocence. ‘And that would solve all your problems, right? I mean, even if they want to investigate you guys, you get to stay here while they do it. And you’re a real couple – you’d pass.’

‘It’s not like you’re not already living together,’ Jenny added in a hurry. ‘And we’d all give testimonials. I can totally verify Alex’s sex noises.’

‘Thank you.’ I wished all the lucky stars I’d thanked earlier into an early supernova. ‘But seriously. Not happening.’

They looked at me with very different expressions on their faces. Jenny’s was somewhere between pride and optimism with just a dash of ‘what the fuck is she thinking’. Erin clearly thought I was insane.

‘Jenny –’ I decided to take a different tack – ‘how would you feel if Sigge asked you to marry him for a visa?’

‘I would have that shit on lockdown before you could sing “Here comes the bride”,’ she replied, her face completely straight. ‘Have you seen him? The dude is ridonkulous.’

‘You’re probably the wrong person to have this conversation with,’ I said, shaking off my coat. Too little, too late. ‘What I mean is, if he asked you to marry you just for a visa and you said yes, you’d never really know if he loved you, would you? Whether or not he would have asked you to marry him even if there wasn’t a visa involved. Even if you loved the arse off him, you’d never really know whether or not it would have happened out of love. It would always be hanging over you, the reason you got married. It’s like when people meet online, it’s always there. Even if they say it’s not, it is. A marriage of convenience is not a marriage.’

‘Oh, honey.’ Erin laid a perfectly manicured hand on my knee. ‘I keep forgetting this is your first. A marriage of convenience is the perfect starter marriage.’

America was a very strange place sometimes.

‘I know this is going to sound very old-fashioned,’ I said – I was going to give it one last try – ‘but I’m really hoping to just stick to one marriage. I know it’s against the odds, but I really am hoping.’

‘Angie, we’re all hoping.’ Erin held up The Letter. ‘But for real, if it’s the difference between staying in the country or not staying in the country, wouldn’t you rather marry a man you love than hightail it back to the UK?’

Hmm.

‘Back to your old life?’ Jenny added.

Gulp.

‘Back to your mom?’

Shit.

‘Fair point.’ I dropped my head backwards and stared at the ceiling. ‘I really can’t go back.’

‘Oh, Angie.’ Jenny leaned right across her desk, arms outstretched. ‘Please ask him. He’ll totally say yes – the dude still gives you puppy eyes every time you walk into a room. I’ll organize everything, all you’d have to do is show. It’s not really a visa wedding if you’re in love, if we do it properly. Please?’

‘Actually, it could be kind of awesome,’ Erin chipped in. ‘We could get you a venue super easy, dress shouldn’t be a problem, and we’d get an awesome deal on a caterer. How long do you think it would take to put together, operations director?’

I took a Twizzler from the candy dish on Jenny’s desk. Two hours ago I was fishing hair out of a plughole and looking forward to watching a repeat of Elf on the settee. Now I was organizing a quickie wedding to ensure I wouldn’t be dragged kicking and screaming from the country in four weeks’ time.

‘Like, two weeks?’ Jenny stuck out her bottom lip. ‘Ten days if we really pushed things. And if we could get her into a sample-size gown with no alterations, which we totally could if she puts that Twizzler down.’

She put the Twizzler down.

‘Brooklyn’s gonna be the easiest place to get a venue, but we could maybe pull some strings in Manhattan if we could do a Friday. We’d never get a weekend, though. How about the Bell House? Music venue, nice tie-in to the groom’s day job? Or I could pull some strings back at the Union?’

‘I could call the PR at the W,’ Erin mused. ‘Or the Hudson. That’s a little too midtown, though.’

I sat in silence, staring at The Letter, listening to my friends planning my wedding, imagining myself in some super swanky hotel, clad in a ridiculous designer dress, hobbling down the aisle in borrowed shoes. Despite the ridiculousness of the whole thing, the only real problem I had was simple. I couldn’t see Alex in any of it. This wasn’t us.

Just imagining asking him to do this for me made my eyes well up and my heart beat faster, and not in a good way. What if he did say yes? What if we did get married, then he freaked out about being stuck with me because of the visa? I didn’t want my marriage to be an obligation. Even worse, what if I asked and he said no? Maybe he wasn’t ready. He’d ask when he was ready. We’d had this conversation; I didn’t want to push him. He meant too much. He meant everything.

‘Flowers might be tricky.’ Jenny was still planning out loud. ‘We’d need to call in some favours.’

‘We’ve got favours to spare, doll,’ Erin commented. ‘I’m more worried about the lighting design.’

‘Um, ladies?’ My interrupting their creative process was not particularly well received. ‘What if we put all our creative brain-power into working out another way for me to stay in the country? I’m not being difficult, honestly – I just really, really don’t want to do this.’

They both deflated before my eyes. I felt quite bad. There was nothing Jenny loved more than threatening people to get what she wanted. I felt like I’d taken her best toy away.

‘Aside from the fact that I don’t want to bully my boyfriend down the aisle, I want to be here because I deserve to be here.’

Now this is where I was prepared to accept I was being naïve.

‘If I can’t get a visa without getting married, then what’s the point? That will just mean I haven’t achieved anything since I got here. I’ll be right back where I started. I might as well go home, get myself at least seven cats and start referring to myself in the third person while paying for the bus with exact change. And that’s not happening. So can we please apply our not inconsiderable talents to finding another way for me to stay?’

Jenny wiped away a fake tear. ‘My baby is all grown up.’

‘So you can’t get a job without a visa?’ Erin said, accepting defeat and chomping a Twizzler. How come she was allowed one and I wasn’t? I hated the naturally skinny.

‘And I can’t get a visa without a job,’ I confirmed. ‘Basically, I think I’ll need someone to sponsor me like Spencer Media did.’

‘Can we do it?’ She chewed, swallowed and stared at Jenny. ‘You might as well work here. Seems like I’ll take in any damn waif or stray.’

‘I’m the best damn employee you have,’ Jenny cried, slapping her hand on the desk. ‘Kinda. But, yes! You could totally work here. As my bitch.’

‘Thanks.’ Bless her. ‘But you have already got a bitch, and I’m not sure the government will let me stay in the country to be your general dogsbody. I’ll totally ask the lawyer, though. I could always be someone else’s bitch.’

‘So what do you actually need to do?’ she asked. ‘Is there, like, a list? Something we can tick off?’

‘Another question for the lawyer,’ I replied. ‘There must be loads of different visas, right? Loads. I must be eligible for at least one.’

Jenny picked herself up off the desk and bounced back into her chair. ‘Well, I’m not worried,’ she announced. ‘Not at all.’

I was glad someone wasn’t. Erin certainly looked concerned.

‘No, really. You’re super-smart, you’re super-talented,’ she said, ticking off my fantastic attributes on her fingers. ‘You’re ambitious, you’re cute, and it’s not like you’re claiming welfare or anything. You’re a lock. Angela Clark, you are the American dream. There’s just no reason not to give you a visa.’

Well, when you put it like that, what on earth was I worrying about?

CHAPTER THREE

‘Basically, there’s just no reason to give you a visa.’

Oh.

Erin’s lawyer, Lawrence, was indeed hot. Tall, dark, handsome. Looked like he spent all day in the courtroom defending sick orphans before going to the gym to bench-press murderers and sweat out all the injustice in the world before rescuing a puppy on his way home. But it turned out that didn’t make the news any easier to take. In fact, it made me a little bit angry. He looked like he ought to be selling me aftershave, not telling me I’m a pointless mooch who shouldn’t be allowed outside the M25, let alone into America. Possibly I was paraphrasing.

‘I’m a writer,’ I ventured. ‘I only want to stay here and write.’

‘So you say,’ he said, templing his big hands under his chin and giving me a level stare. ‘And if you’re a successful writer, you could apply for an 0-1, which means you’re an alien of extraordinary ability. Are you a successful writer?’

‘Define successful.’

‘The 0–1 visa is a non-immigrant visa available to foreign nationals with extraordinary ability in the field of arts, science, education, business or athletics. The applicant must be experienced in their field and indicate that she or he is among the few individuals who have risen to the very top in their field of endeavour.’

‘You didn’t even need to look in a book,’ I breathed. And there were loads of books in his office. Loads.

Lawrence the Lawyer did not crack a smile. ‘So, are you successful?’

‘It’s possible I might not quite meet that definition.’

‘So, next.’ He didn’t even blink. ‘You’re a journalist, that’s correct?’

‘Sort of.’ I didn’t feel entirely right confirming or denying. I hadn’t done any journalisting for a while. Possibly because I was calling it journalisting.

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Lawrence replied. ‘Which means you could apply for a media visa. That’s actually a considerably simpler process.’

Oh! Things were looking up!

‘Yes,’ I nodded, excited. ‘How do I get that one?’

‘You go back to London, find a media outlet prepared to give you a contract that says they will be paying you to work in America for between one and five years, and then apply at your embassy.’

‘I have a column for a magazine,’ I offered. ‘Would that be enough?’

‘Perhaps.’ He considered his reply. ‘It would need to be enough to financially support you. And you would need to put together a portfolio of work and get several letters of recommendation from peers in your field.’

I was suddenly less excited. What The Look paid me was not enough to financially support a chimp.

‘And then you would need to go back to the UK, interview at the embassy and stay in your home country while your application is processed.’

‘For how long?’ I hoped they had Ferrero Rocher at the embassy.

‘Upwards of ninety days.’

Shit. Three months in the same country as my mother. Not happening.

‘There’s no way of getting it without going back to London?’

‘No.’

‘And I’d have to get all that other stuff?’

‘Yes. The contract, the financial evidence, the letters of recommendation and the portfolio of work.’

I thought for a moment. Maybe I was extraordinary. I’d interviewed a proper celebrity, I’d had a column in a magazine, been sent to Paris for a magazine and managed to get a boy in a band to stop shagging other women. If that wasn’t extraordinary, what was?

‘Tell me about the 0-1 again?’

Lawrence the Lawyer gave me a stern look. ‘Quite honestly, Miss Clark, if you’re questioning your ability to get a media visa, I really wouldn’t even consider wasting your money on applying for the 0-1. An example question from the application would be “have you ever won an Academy Award or equivalent”.’

Damn it, I knew I’d regret not taking drama A level one day.

‘Is a Blue Peter badge an equivalent?’

‘A what?’

‘Never mind.’ I didn’t have a Blue Peter badge anyway. ‘So there are no other relevant visas I could apply for? My friend said I could work at her PR company.’

I looked at the lawyer. The lawyer looked at me. I gave him my best ‘Please don’t kick me out the country’ look. He gave me his best ‘Are you really going to make me say it?’ face.

‘I wouldn’t pursue “the friend” option,’ he said. ‘Obviously, one other option would be if you were to marry a resident, then you could start the spousal application process, but there’s no guarantee it would be granted. The INS don’t look kindly on fraudulent marriages.’

‘INS?’ The bastards who wrote The Letter.

‘Immigration and Naturalization Services,’ he sighed. We were fast approaching ‘wasting my time’ territory. ‘Look, Miss Clark, if I were you, I’d go back to the UK and do some research. And some serious thinking. Maybe now isn’t the right time for you to be applying for a US visa. Maybe you should be concentrating on your career. Working on a reason as to why the US government should want to have you here.’

‘I’m very nice,’ I offered.

‘I’m sure you are.’ Lawrence the Lawyer stood up and gestured towards the door. ‘Unfortunately nice isn’t an extraordinary ability.’

‘Really?’ Bloody well felt like it was at that exact moment.

‘Thank you, Miss Clark,’ he said, sitting back down before I’d even left the office. ‘I hope to see you again soon.’

‘That’s because I just paid two hundred dollars to be told I’m a pointless sack of shit,’ I muttered under my breath on the way to the lift. The next time I wanted to pay to feel horrible about myself, I’d just go to Abercrombie & Fitch to try on jeans.

By the time I got back to Williamsburg, it was already dark and my Christmas tree was all lit up, sparkling happily in a corner. Illuminating the shithole we lived in. My cleaning spree hadn’t been that thorough and it had been cut somewhat short by the whole INS-trying-to-ruin-my-life thing. Besides, there was no point trying to keep the place tidy now – Alex was home. In the space of time it had taken me to go out, meet the girls and see the lawyer, he’d taken over the apartment again. Record sleeves, empty cans of root beer and various items of discarded clothing strewn all over the apartment declared Alex was in the building. The queen put up a flag to let people know she was home; Alex Reid left a half-empty pizza box on the coffee table and a pair of skinny jeans over the back of the settee. But not even knowing he was here could cheer me up. The sight of Alex sparked out on the settee in his pants almost raised a smile, but the thought of having to go back to a country that didn’t have Alex in it, pants or no pants – particularly no pants – wiped that smile right off my face.

‘There’s a way around this,’ I told myself quietly, opening and closing kitchen cupboard doors. Food. Food would make it better. ‘I just don’t know what it is yet.’

‘Don’t know what what is?’ a sleepy voice asked from the other side of the room.

‘What’s for dinner,’ I fudged, not really knowing why. ‘What do you fancy?’

‘Whatever.’ Alex’s head popped up over the back of the sofa. ‘You wanna go out?’

I leaned backwards against the kitchen counter. His hair was pushed all over one side of his face and his eyes were still half closed. No one wore jet lag better. In that moment, everything just became very real. What if I couldn’t get a new visa? What if I had to leave in four weeks? All of a sudden, getting down on my hands and knees and begging the boy to marry me didn’t seem so bad. Definitely better than the alternative. A lifetime of looking at that face, hearing that voice, or fifty-plus years of Dairylea Lunchables, paying the TV licence and arguing with the council over how often they came to empty the wheelie bin.

‘Whatever you want to do,’ I said, turning back to the cupboards and feigning interest in an outdated packet of tortillas to hide the fact that I was this close to bursting into tears. Oh my God, what was I doing? Why was I risking this? Alex was the most amazing man I had ever met. I loved him, and the thought of spending a single day without him made me want to punch a kitten. And I loved kittens.

‘Maybe we should just get a pizza,’ he pondered. ‘I missed pizza. And I missed you. Where have you been hiding all day?’

‘Hmm?’ My voice was too thick and unreliable to answer with actual words. This was ridiculous. The more I thought about leaving, the more I wanted to marry Alex. And it had nothing to do with needing a visa and everything to do with the fact that I loved the arse off that man. Except that now there was a visa issue, any discussion of a wedding would be visa-related. If I asked him, even if he asked me, it would be about the visa, regardless of how I felt. There was no way around this. If I had finished reading Catch-22, I would absolutely without doubt know for sure that this was a catch-22 situation. Cock. ‘I was just doing visa stuff.’

‘Visa stuff?’

‘’S complicated,’ I replied, drifting out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. I ran the cold tap and held my wrists under the water. ‘I, uh, my visa expired so I had to see a lawyer.’

‘But you’re getting the new visa, right?’ He sounded slightly concerned. ‘There’s no problem?’

I took a deep breath in and pushed it out slowly through pursed lips. Crying wasn’t going to help. ‘There are a few different ones I could apply for, but, well, it’s not going to be as easy as I’d hoped it might be.’

‘Oh.’ He appeared at the bathroom door. Half naked and half asleep. Just the way I liked him. ‘Anything I can do?’

Marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me.

I leaned over to give him a light kiss, then turned back to the sink. There was no way I was leaving New York. Just no way.

‘What could you do?’ I asked.

Marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, pushing my hair out of my face and giving it a tug. ‘There was this guy on our lighting crew once and he needed, like, letters of recommendation? I could write a letter.’

‘Recommending me for what exactly?’

He raised an eyebrow and gave me a heart-stopping smile.

‘Pretty sure that won’t count towards me being an “extraordinary alien”,’ I replied. ‘As far as I know.’

‘I think you’re extraordinary.’ Alex took my hand out from under the cold tap. I’d been so preoccupied with looking at his face, I’d forgotten it was there. ‘That’s got to count for something.’

Only if you marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me.

‘Counts for everything with me,’ I replied. ‘Not so much with the INS.’

‘Those sons of bitches.’

For a moment everything froze. Alex looked at me with his big green eyes, suddenly serious. I stared back with my baby blues, hoping they weren’t bloodshot or panda-like. He held my hand tightly and cleared his throat. I held my breath. Oh. My. God.

‘Angela,’ he started slowly. ‘I don’t want you to leave. You know that, don’t you?’

‘I do now,’ I squeezed his hand. ‘And you know I don’t want to leave.’

‘I do now,’ he said. ‘I want you here. With me.’

I nodded, a giant lump in my throat stopping any words from actually escaping. Probably my subconscious trying to stop me cocking this up. Clever subconscious.

‘I love you.’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘This is it for me. You and me, this is it. Everything’s going to be OK, right? With the visa?’

This was it. This was my chance to show him the letter, to tell him I only had four weeks to find a way to stay. Simple as that. Except it wasn’t. My blood pressure soared and then crashed. It was too much pressure. It wasn’t fair. Basically, I was still too scared that he’d run for the hills. Brilliant.

‘Mmm-hmm.’

‘It’ll all be fine.’ He let go of my hand and pulled me into a hug. ‘You’ll find a way.’

I breathed out, gasping for air. He broke the hug and kissed me on the forehead.

‘Now, let me find some pants and we’ll go eat. Sound good?’

‘Sounds bloody brilliant,’ I replied. ‘Pants. Dinner. Done.’

He gave me a self-satisfied smile and sauntered off towards the bedroom.

Bloody hell.

‘And so we had to drag his ass out of there before her dad took his head off with a sword.’ Alex shook his head and inhaled another taco. ‘Seriously, the guy had a sword. After that, Graham didn’t let him out of his sight the whole trip. He was like, grounded for a month.’

‘Oh, Craig.’ I stirred my drink with my fourth straw. I’d already dropped two and snapped one. It was safe to say I was distracted. ‘He really shouldn’t be allowed out on his own, ever.’

‘Yeah, we should have known better than to take him to Japan. The groupies were insane.’ Alex expertly inhaled half a taco in one mouthful.

‘Wow.’

‘And since Graham is gay, I had to deal with all of them,’ he went on. ‘So many groupies. Seriously. I thought it was gonna kill me.’

‘Yeah?’ I stared out of the window of La Esquina, watching Williamsburg walk by, trying to commit it all to memory.

‘Yeah, sometimes there were a hundred a night.’

‘Wow.’

‘You’re just not listening, are you?’

‘What? With the what?’ It was possible that my inability to string a sentence together was going to damage my plan to get a visa based on my talent as a writer.

‘I thought I was the one who was supposed to be out of it,’ Alex said, looking towards my plate and giving me a hopeful look. ‘You gonna eat that?’

I pushed it towards him and leaned back in my chair. Jet lag made him into a complete pig. It was ridiculously cute. But no matter how happy I was to have him home and to be consuming my own body weight in Mexican food, I was distracted. I stuck my hand in my knackered MJ bag to check the time on my phone but instead found a text from Jenny.

‘911, call me!’

I looked over at Alex, who was happily truffling up my leftover fajitas. I had time to make a call.

‘Jenny wants me to ring her – I’ll just be a sec.’ I stood up as Alex nodded, merrily piling as much food as humanly possible into a flour tortilla. Happy as a clam. Not that I could see why stupid clams were so happy. Plucked out of the ocean where they were perfectly happy and dropped in some pasta sauce. Stupid saying. Stupid clams. Anyway, Jenny …

‘Hi, are you OK?’ I stepped outside into the chill night air and watched my breath appear in a bright white puff. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘It’s fine,’ she answered immediately. ‘Jesus, calm down.’

‘You said 911.’ I hugged my arms around myself. Jesus Christ, it was cold. I could actually hear my mum in my head asking where my coat was. Inside. On the back of my chair. As opposed to when I was sweating like a bastard wearing it in Jenny’s office. Sigh. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Yeah, the house isn’t burning down, I just need a favour,’ she said, yawning. ‘I’m running an event tomorrow night, just like a cocktail party for one of our fashion clients, and we’re down a waitress. Bitch I hired quit to go to some shitty audition.’

I pursed my lips. ‘I don’t see how this relates to me.’

‘Because you’re broke as shit?’

I was broke as shit.

‘You want me to waitress for you?’ Was this a brilliant friend doing me a brilliant favour or a new low? I wasn’t sure. ‘At a cocktail party?’

‘Yeah,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘It’ll be great. It’s super-low key, just a couple of hours in an awesome apartment in Tribeca. It won’t even be like work. You’ll just be hanging out with super-cool people including moi for a couple of hours and leaving with a couple of hundred dollars in your back pocket.’

Brilliant favour?

‘And it’s a Christmas party. You love Christmas, right?’

OK, brilliant favour.

‘It’s just handing out champagne when people come in. Literally. That’s it.’

Still a favour, though.

‘And, uh, I have something I need you to wear.’

Ah-ha.

‘It’s cute, though.’

‘What is it, Jenny?’

‘It’s super-cute. Just say you’ll do it. You’ll be saving my life.’

I tried to think back to when I’d seen waitresses in super-cute outfits but kept coming up with blanks. Mostly because I’d never seen a waitress in a super-cute outfit. But Jenny needed my help and I needed the money – there really was no other answer.

‘Of course I’ll do it,’ I said, ignoring her slightly too loud expression of surprise. ‘Just text me the address and I’ll be there.’

‘You’re my favourite,’ she sang down the phone. ‘Tomorrow at six – I’ll send you all the deets. I love you, Angie. Fuck it all, I’ll marry you. After the cocktail party.’

‘Thanks.’ I rubbed my semi-bare arm and stared in through the window of the restaurant. Alex was still chomping away as though he hadn’t seen food in a month. He wasn’t a big sushi fan, and God knows how long he’d lived on ramen before the band made money. Japan must have been a little bit tricky for him. ‘Have you talked to him yet? Has he proposed? Can I book the venue?’

‘Jenny.’ I used my stern voice. ‘Leave it.’

‘I still think it’s worth talking about. How many times are we going to discuss your issues with communication?’

‘How many times are we going to discuss your issues with keeping your nose out?’

Jenny laughed in response. It was almost impossible to piss her off when she was getting her own way, which was always, and therefore massively annoying. ‘OK, lover, we’ll talk tomorrow. I have to go ravish my Viking.’

‘Sigge is from Sweden, not Norway,’ I pointed out. Given that she’d been shagging him for almost four months, you’d think she’d have basics like geography down.

‘There’s a difference?’ she asked. ‘Anyway, got to go. Sigge wants to make dinner. It had better not be freaking fondue.’

‘And that’s Swiss,’ I sighed. ‘Talk tomorrow.’

‘Everything OK?’ Alex asked as I shivered back into my seat. ‘Did she burn the place down yet?’

‘Not yet.’ I pulled my coat around my shoulders. This was my punishment for wearing a T-shirt just because it made my boobs look nice. ‘She wants me to waitress at a party tomorrow night.’

‘Do they make a waitress visa?’ He rubbed his denim clad leg against mine under the table. ‘I’d leave you really great tips.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Wow, I’d managed to go a whole thirty seconds without thinking about the V-word. I bit my lip for a moment, watched him shove in another mouthful of chicken, and then went for it. ‘Jenny says she’s going to marry me. For the visa.’

‘I’ll buy you soundproof headphones as a wedding gift.’ He speared a red pepper and popped it into his mouth. ‘But if it’s the only way for you to stay, I could totally get behind you two hooking up. You marry Jenny? Hilarious.’

I threw back a mouthful of icy water and tried to ignore the brain freeze.

‘So I should marry Jenny, then?’ I asked.

‘Angela, I would drive you down to City Hall myself,’ he replied.

Well, at least I could ride the elephant in the room all the way back to the apartment.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Are you shitting me?’

Jenny stood in front of me with a hopeful smile on her face and a PVC French maid’s costume in her hand.

‘I thought this was supposed to be a fashion party?’ My arms were folded tightly, hugging my satchel to my chest, hoping the holy presence of Marc Jacobs would protect me from the ensemble Jenny was waving at me. ‘Have you got a fluffy tail and a pair of ears to go with that?’

She cocked her head to one side and looked at the outfit as though it were entirely defensible. ‘Would you believe it’s a last minute demand from the designer?’

‘Is this why the other waitress quit?’ I asked, gingerly rubbing the wipe-clean fabric between my thumb and forefinger. As soon as I touched it, Jenny let go. Great. Now it was all mine. My precious.

‘No.’

‘Jenny, I know when you’re lying to me.’

‘Fine. Yes. She said she was an actress, not a whore.’ She flicked her smooth, straightened blow-out over one shoulder. Without her trademark curls, Jenny didn’t look herself, but she did look intensely polished and professional. Something that would be difficult to pull off in a French maid’s costume. A red PVC French maid’s costume. ‘I did try to explain that she’s a waitress, not an actress, but that just seemed to make her even more pissy. It’s the designer – he’s kind of a, um, enormous sleaze. Angie, you have to do this for me. I’ll make it up to you. Please.’

I gave her the look.

‘For Erin?’

I closed my eyes.

‘For Christmas?’

Now that was a low blow. That was practically ‘If you loved me you’d wear it’, and I had no defence against that.

‘If you loved me—’

‘Fine.’ I held out my hands to stop her from talking and looked to the heavens for strength as Jenny wrapped me up in a giant hug. She really was very strong for such a slim girl. And I was very stupid for such a British girl. ‘I cannot believe I’m going to do this. Alex is going to laugh himself sick.’

‘I don’t think there’s a single straight guy in the universe whose initial reaction to seeing their girlfriend wearing this is to laugh,’ Jenny clucked, pulling my bag from my shoulder and hurrying me into getting changed. ‘They’d strike him off the hetero register.’

Shedding my New York winter layers in the bathroom of someone else’s swanky Tribeca duplex, I slithered into the outfit and thanked the Lord that I was wearing decent knickers since everyone and their mother was going to be able to see them for the next three hours. With a gleeful grin, Jenny held out her black patent Louboutins and a pair of fishnet hold-ups.

‘None of the other girls are wearing Louboutins,’ she said as I baulked. ‘Loubous totally class this shit up.’

‘It’s not the shoes so much as the stockings,’ I grumbled, snatching them and sitting on the edge of the bath to put them on. ‘In for a penny … Classy my arse.’

Ooh, bugger me that bath was cold.

‘Who’s actually going to be at this thing?’ I asked. I just needed reassuring that it wasn’t going to be my mum, my ex-boyfriend, every boss I’d ever had and my year nine maths teacher. Because in my head …

‘Just fashion assholes,’ she said, flipping her hand dismissively. ‘Erin is trying to get this guy to give us his account. He runs some online boutique or something, and he said if we pull off his Christmas party, we’ll get his PR business. Between you and me, I think he’s kind of a pervert.’

‘You don’t say.’ I looked down at my outfit. Low at the top, short at the bottom, tight in the everywhere. I wanted to take a photo and text it to Lawrence the Lawyer with the caption ‘extraordinary enough for you?’. Except he’d probably just reply ‘no’.

‘You should wear it home and then ask Alex what he thinks about marrying you,’ Jenny said, carefully rolling my non-hooker wear and stashing it in a garment bag. ‘Pretty sure you’d get the answer you’re looking for.’

‘I thought you were going to marry me?’ I asked, taking a regrettable look in the bathroom mirror. The black eyeliner and cherry-tinted lip gloss I’d put on at home had seemed simple and classic with my jeans. Now I looked like a shop-worn Playboy bunny. Hef would take one look and banish me from the Mansion. Could there be anything more damaging to your self-esteem than being dismissed by a jilted octogenarian?

‘I’d totally hit that,’ Jenny said, leaning her chin on my shoulder and smiling at our reflections. It wasn’t a picture I was comfortable with, Louboutins or no Louboutins.

‘Good, because I’m officially taking the whole visa marriage thing off the table.’ I rested my head on hers. ‘I’m going to find another way. But I’m staying, don’t worry.’

‘I think you need to convince yourself, not me,’ she said, kissing me on the cheek and slapping me on the arse. ‘I believe you.’

It was a good thing one of us did.

With a brave face and a bare arse, I crept out of the bathroom and into the party. People were already starting to arrive, giving me very little time to scoot into the kitchen and surreptitiously neck a glass of champagne. How was I supposed to walk around the room wearing this? Catching a glimpse of my backside in the microwave window only made me feel worse. Not only because it wasn’t the most flattering angle, but also because the only thing reflected in my microwave was the cheese from last night’s pizza. For a split second I considered legging it for the lift before any more people arrived, but I didn’t. Because Jenny actually looked very nervous. Because I’d made a promise. And because I didn’t know where she’d hidden my coat. So instead of dashing for the streets, I picked up a tray of champagne, tried to forget the fact that my mum still served me a half-full cup of tea because ‘I couldn’t be trusted’ and headed for the living room. While I wasn’t quite so keen for them to get a look at me, I was looking forward to seeing what a ‘fashion asshole’ looked like.

‘Oh. My. God.’

One step into the party.

One step straight back into the kitchen.

Apparently ‘fashion assholes’ looked like Cici Spencer.

Tall, blonde and the devil incarnate, this was not good. The last time I’d set eyes on Cici, she was howling with rage and drenched in iced coffee. Because I’d thrown it at her. Cici was the assistant of my former editor at The Look magazine and had made ruining my life her pet project. She hadn’t quite managed total destruction at the time, but she did successfully destroy my entire wardrobe. Oh, and made sure I lost my job, since she was the godforsaken hell spawn of the magazine’s owner. It was ironic that a more appropriate name for Cici also started with a ‘C’, but my mother would never forgive me if I used it in public.

‘Oh my God, Angela.’ Cici tottered over, holding one very skinny hand to her flat chest, laughing with delight as though we were old sorority sisters. ‘Look at you!’

I was frozen to the spot. Yes. Look at me. There she was in a floor-length, one-shouldered red gown, her hair sweeping down the other shoulder in an icy cascade of blonde curls with a slash of dress-matching lipstick on her perfectly porcelain face. And there I was, in my cheap, shiny, wished-it-was-Ann-Summers French maid’s costume with air-dried hair and a dab of L’Oréal lip gloss. Sigh. I really didn’t have anything to say to her.

Luckily, Cici had lots to say to me.

‘This is amazing.’ I felt a very light, very evil hand on my shoulder. ‘I was just thinking about you the other day. I was updating Mary’s holiday card list.’

‘Oh.’

‘I cut you.’

‘Right.’

I assumed she was saying I wasn’t getting a Christmas card, but if she’d meant an actual physical slashing, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

‘Figured you would have left by now. Like, run away back to England or something?’

‘Um-hmm.’

‘Because you don’t have a job?’

‘Gotcha.’

‘Because we fired you?’

Not running away five minutes ago was turning out to be a really bad idea. ‘But look at you,’ Cici gushed. A small crowd of her cronies had gathered around to watch the entertainment. ‘You are working. As a waitress. Dressed like a hooker.’

The best part was, it was all true.

But I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of me going the full Charlie Sheen, even if the idea of throwing an entire tray of Cristal in her face before beating her to death with the tray was very tempting. It was Christmas, after all, and I really didn’t want Jenny to get fired. Or to go to prison. I wasn’t sure if New York had the death penalty or not, let alone whether they served Christmas dinner inside. That said, I would have a good defence. ‘But your honour, she was a massive bitch’ would work, surely? No, I had to take the high ground. I had to be the bigger person. And I hated that.

‘Hi.’ I reset my expression and smiled. If looks could kill, it wouldn’t have even tickled. Butter would’ve actually chilled while I looked at it. ‘Champagne?’

‘What did you do to it?’ She reluctantly took one of my glasses, sniffing it with suspicion.

‘Oh, Cici.’ I attempted to laugh, but it may or may not have come out slightly more like a sob. ‘It’s just champagne. Enjoy your evening.’

Feeling my restraint starting to waver, I turned carefully on my borrowed heel, making sure not to twist my knackered knee, and headed back towards the kitchen, passing another French maid on the way out. She gave me a supportive grimace and I nodded in return. Solidarity, sister.

Once the door was closed and I was safely away from Cici and all of Satan’s little helpers, I let out what I hoped was a relatively controlled screech of rage, kicked a cardboard box across the room and slammed a cupboard door. It actually felt quite good. Not as good as throwing a drink over her, but OK. Just not OK enough. I’d only been moved to violence twice in my life, but I was more than a little bit worried we’d hit the magic number if I went back out there. Fisticuffs were becoming my natural setting.

‘Hey, are you OK?’ Jenny snuck into the kitchen and pushed the innocent cardboard box back into position under the counter. ‘You motored back in here kinda fast.’

‘Remember my friend Cici? From The Look?’ I asked.

‘Cici?’ Jenny’s smooth forehead creased with concern. ‘Your friend? Wasn’t she the one who gave you all that bullshit in Paris?’

‘Yep,’ I confirmed. ‘And had my luggage blown up.’

‘The Balmain …’ Jenny pressed a hand to her heart. It had been a difficult time for both of us.

‘She’s outside. In the red.’

Jenny Lopez was someone who wore her emotions on her face and wasn’t terribly good at camouflaging the way she felt. In the following thirty seconds she was completely silent, but we managed to get through confusion, shock and sadness (for the dearly departed Balmain) before finally settling on intense rage. She stuck her head back through the door and peered outside before turning back even angrier, if possible, than before.

‘Halston?’ she asked. ‘The one in the Halston?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ I loved fashion, but if I couldn’t see the label, I didn’t have a clue. Identifying shoes, on the other hand, was my secret super-power. ‘It’s long and red and one-shouldered.’

‘The Halston,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘Shit, it’s gonna be so hard to do this to a dress like that.’

Alarm bells.

‘Do what?’ I reached out to hold my friend back, but she was quicker than me. ‘Jenny, where are you going?’ I hissed as she slipped back into the party with a wicked grin on her pretty face.

For a moment I stood stock still, frozen to the spot in the kitchen. What on earth was she going to do? I grabbed a small tray of snacks, mostly so that I had something to defend myself with when things got nasty, and went once more into the fray.

Jenny was right in the middle of Cici’s circle and, unlike me, she looked like she belonged there. As much as I hated the world’s most jumped-up secretary, it was hard to deny that her overall presentation was amazing. A product of several generations of excellent Upper East Side breeding, she was tall, slender, blonde and born to wear designer clothing. Unfortunately, that sort of heritage often came both with a flat chest and a chip on the shoulder. Cici’s chip was so big, she’d have struggled to cart it around in an Hermès Birkin. But Jenny … Jenny was a goddess. Blessed with the legs of a prized pony, gorgeous glowing skin and the ability to set absolutely anyone at ease, if I’d had her natural gifts I would have (a) been a complete bitch and (b) married a billionaire at the age of eighteen. But Jenny always used her powers for good. Well, good was relative, wasn’t it? As far as I was concerned she was a white knight, but I had a feeling Cici was about to see what happened when you incurred the wrath of Jennifer Lopez. And I didn’t care whether or not the other Jennifer Lopez was one of the most famous divas on earth, she didn’t have a patch on my girl. I was almost too scared to watch. Almost.

‘We’re so pleased you could come, Cecelia,’ Jenny cooed, her arm wrapped through Cici’s skinny limb. ‘Tonight is such a special night for the designer.’

‘Thomas is one of my favourites,’ Cici crooned, batting her eyelashes in the general direction of a short, very skinny, entirely repellent man with over-dyed black hair in the middle of the room. Thomas, pronounced ‘Toe-Mah’ of course, wasn’t wearing one of his own designs. He was wearing a red PVC Santa costume. With the arse cheeks cut out. I believe trousers such as his are more commonly known in the business as chaps. Father Christmas does not wear chaps; they are not practical in his line of business. I hadn’t laid eyes on him before this moment, but at least I now realized why I was dressed like a very cheap prostitute. And at least I wasn’t the worst-dressed person in the room. Never before had Christmas made me so sad.

‘I’m so glad I could be here – the holidays are just crazy,’ Cici was saying, rolling her eyes at Jenny. ‘All the parties, all the travelling, the shopping – it’s just chaos.’

‘Isn’t it though?’ Jenny nodded sympathetically. ‘The shopping is just the worst.’

‘It sure is. I hate shopping when it’s not for me!’ No one enjoyed Cici as much as Cici enjoyed Cici. ‘I hate Christmas.’

So it was true, she was the devil. I softened the shock of this news with a handful of snack mix from my tray.

‘You’re not supposed to eat those,’ one of the other dead-eyed waitresses said as she sailed by with champagne. I shrugged and went back in for seconds. I had a feeling this job wasn’t going to be a big tipper for me anyway; might as well get my money’s worth.

‘Yeah, it’s just so …’ Jenny waved her hands around to agree as emphatically as possible. And accidentally spilled a glass of red wine right down the front of Cici’s dress. ‘Oh. My. God.’

The shriek that came from Cici’s throat would have sent the virgin Mary into an early labour. There wouldn’t have even been time to get to the stable. The little donkey would have had to act as midwife. I couldn’t believe Jenny Lopez had sacrificed couture to the great girl-vengeance gods. I nibbled on a wasabi pea. This was better than the cinema.

‘This is archive Halston,’ she hissed. ‘I have to return this to the PR.’

‘Sabrina?’ Jenny waved away her concerns. ‘One of my best friends. I’ll call her. Don’t sweat it. In fact, let me make it up to you. I’ve got one of Thomas’s designs from his new collection in the back. I was going to have a model come out in it later, but I don’t suppose I could beg you to wear it for me? I know Thomas would love it. You’ve got such a perfect figure.’

Cici gaped like a guppy. Lovely teeth. And I had to admit, this was a curveball I did not see coming. How exactly was letting Cici wear a beautiful, exclusive designer dress revenge of any kind?

‘Me? Wear a brand new Thomas design?’ She actually gasped. ‘Where do I change?’

Confused-dot-com, I watched as Jenny pointed Cici in the direction of one of the bedrooms, but just before she vanished behind the heavy white door, she flashed me a wicked smile and raised her eyebrows in a silent promise. She would have made a great Bond villain. What was her wicked plan? Maybe she was holding Cici’s head down the toilet and flushing repeatedly while I stood there watching a closed door. I wondered whether or not it was too late to retract my Christmas list and ask for a sopping wet Cici from Father Christmas this year. I wanted it even more than a Mulberry Alexa. No, really.

‘Part of me is convinced she’s going to come out of that door naked,’ a very familiar voice groaned over my shoulder. ‘She’d set a dog on fire for attention if she thought it would work.’

I turned and almost dropped my tray. Right in front of me was Cici’s double. The same long limbs, the same blonde hair, even the same icy blue eyes, but instead of knocking me on my arse with the evil equivalent of a Care Bear stare, her baby blues just looked tired and bored. On closer inspection, this Cici was altogether less frightening. The elaborate hair pleat had been replaced by loose waves, and the show-stopping red gown had given way to a classic black sheath. Still stunning, but in a ‘wow, you look great’ way, not ‘wow, please don’t steal my soul’. It was a subtle difference.

‘I’m Delia.’ She held out her hand and I couldn’t help notice the lack of manicure. Was it possible that this Cici clone actually worked for a living? ‘The living Barbie doll is my sister. Twin sister. For my sins.’

And suddenly it all made sense. Cici’s sister. Why did I know Cici had a sister? Clearly it wasn’t from our cocktail hour heart-to-hearts …

‘I’m Angela.’ I took her hand and shook it, as was traditional amongst humans. ‘Cici and I actually used to work together. Sort of. Because, you know, she doesn’t really work.’

Delia’s eyes flashed with recognition and I readied myself for a slap. It was one thing to slag off your own sibling, but it was quite another to have Krystal the Call Girl-cum-Waitress do it for you. She raised her arm, but before I could duck I was pulled into a huge hug and her dry voice gave way to a glorious laugh.

‘Angela Clark!’ She pushed me away then grabbed my arms. I dropped my tray but managed to stay upright, so I took it as a win. ‘Ohmygod, I love you!’

I froze, wide-eyed, and took the hug.

‘Thank you?’

‘No, really.’ Delia had quite the firm grip. ‘I love you. I used to read your blog all the time. I told Grandpa I was never going to speak to him again when he killed it.’

Grandpa. Delia’s grandpa was Cici’s grandpa. Who was Bob Spencer, the owner of my previous employer, Spencer Media. Who had fired me after reading a particular email that was somewhat peppered with expletives and other colourful expressions describing his little princess. Every single one of which was justified, but still, I imagined very few people would enjoy seeing their pride and joy described as a ‘raving psycho that should be beaten to death with a spoon’, even if it was true.

‘Thank you?’

And again.

‘And I know it probably doesn’t help, but I’m so sorry – I know what a bitch she can be.’ Delia finally let go of my arms. Funnily enough, I still couldn’t really relax. ‘One time, when we were in high school, she pretended to be me to get a date with this guy. I was super-excited to get to school on Monday morning and find out I’d lost my virginity when I thought I’d been in the Hamptons studying.’

‘Woah, really?’ That was genuinely evil. Maybe Jenny had competition in the Bond villain stakes. ‘Who is that evil that young?’

Delia shrugged. ‘She didn’t want to get a reputation, so she gave me one instead. Not the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten. Happy sweet sixteen, Delia. I bought her a Tiffany charm.’

‘And you didn’t kick her arse?’ I would have actually killed her. Actually murdered her.

‘Living well is the best revenge,’ she replied. ‘Or something. And with Cici, that means just ignoring her. There’s no point going to war with someone like that, sister or not. I’d rather just not deal with her.’

‘You’re my hero.’ I pressed my hand against her shoulder. ‘I’ve been having some trouble controlling my rage lately, and I won’t lie, I’m a bit worried about being in the same room with her.’

‘Oh, please, feel free to punch her in the face.’ Delia gave me a beatific smile. ‘After what she did to you? She totally deserves it. So what are you doing now?’

I looked down at my outfit and back at Delia.

‘Right.’

‘Yeah.’

We stood in awkward silence for a moment while I tried to think of something to say that didn’t involve how much I hated her sister. This was the season of goodwill, after all.

‘Christmas, eh?’ I nodded at the black PVC tree in the corner of the room. Obviously Thomas’s tastes ran to the more exotic, but I was always excited by the presence of a Christmas tree. The mini dildo baubles made me blush a little, but still, ’twas the season. Each to his own. ‘Any exciting plans?’

‘Just to actually have Christmas.’ Delia gave me a tired smile. ‘I just can’t believe another year has gone by already. I swore I was going to get myself together before New Year’s, and here I am again. Still working for Granddaddy, still under the thumb.’

‘You work for Bob – I mean, Mr Spencer?’ I corrected myself quickly. We probably weren’t still on ‘Bob and Angie’ terms any more. ‘You’re at Spencer Media too?’

‘Bob, yes,’ she replied. ‘Spender Media, no. He runs a bunch of real estate businesses too – I’ve been there for a few years. I’m overseeing an apartment complex in Brooklyn right now.’

‘I live in Brooklyn!’ I exclaimed. Probably wasn’t any need for me to sound quite so excited about having something so minor in common, but still, common ground. Nice. ‘Do you like it? The real estate thing?’

‘I actually always wanted to work in publishing,’ she admitted. ‘But of course, Cici got there first. Cecelia always gets there first. Once she had a foot in the door, there was no way I could follow, and I wanted to stay on at school, get my masters. She went straight into the office.’

‘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?’

‘Angie, honey –’ She gently rested a hand on my knee in a very clear ‘you’re blatantly a little bit mad’ move. ‘I know you’re super into this whole “I need to get the visa on my own merits” thing, and you know I think that’s awesome, right?’

‘Right.’

It was awesome. I was awesome. Take that, Lawrence.

‘And I know you don’t want Alex to ask you to marry him just to get the visa, right?’

‘Right.’

At least we were clear on that.

‘But you do love this dude?’

‘Correct. I do love the dude.’

‘And he loves you.’

‘I believe that to be the truth.’

‘So just ask him. People don’t meet in the rain trying to jump in the same cab these days, they meet online, they get engaged on reality TV. They hook up with their friends and they get knocked up. They get married because they need a visa. When and where he puts a ring on your finger isn’t important, as long as he loves you.’

‘That is the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard,’ I said, slapping her hand off my leg. ‘You will never have bedtime story privileges with my kids.’

‘Be real hard to tell a bedtime story to kids in England.’ She raised an eyebrow then looked away. ‘No one’s arguing with the fact that you could get a visa another way, but there’s no need to make it harder for yourself. You don’t have anything to prove. Just ask Alex.’

‘Just ask Alex what?’

Two glasses of champagne appeared in front of me. Since he didn’t seem to be carrying anything else, I only took one. Begrudgingly.

‘Your beloved Angela Clark and I were just talking.’ Jenny beamed up at my boyfriend as she spoke.

‘About Christmas dinner,’ I squeaked. ‘I was saying Jenny and Sigge should come over to our place for Christmas dinner.’

‘Sure.’ Alex aimed his champagne glass in the giant Swede’s direction. ‘I will totally get into an eating contest with that guy.’

‘Dude, your waist is skinnier than one of his thighs,’ Jenny scoffed. ‘Are you kidding me?’

‘Oh, Jenny, Jenny, Jenny, you have no idea,’ I said, proudly wrapping an arm around Alex’s waist. ‘He’s got hollow legs. Honestly, it’s disgusting the amount he can eat and stay this thin.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll get real fat when I’m old,’ he replied, kissing me on the top of the head. ‘Good and fat.’

‘Awesome.’ I leaned into him and tried to envisage a porky Alex on a porch swing playing a banjo.

Totally hot.

Some hours and several glasses of champagne later, I wandered out of the front room, leaving Alex to protect my lovely friend Vanessa from the advances of his disgusting friend Craig, who had somehow found his way into the party. Facebook had so much to answer for. After a liberal application of lip balm and a tipsy spritz of Jenny’s Gucci perfume, I checked my phone. It was admittedly a slim possibility that anyone would have called to offer me a job at half-past eleven on a Saturday night, but you never knew. Shit. Three missed calls. All from my mum. I did a quick calculation on the time difference: the last call was an hour ago, making it three-thirty in the UK. I sobered up in a heartbeat and pressed redial. Cooling my warm forehead against the window, I stared out at the Chrysler Building, all lit up, well, like Christmas, and wished on every star I could see that everything was OK.

‘Hello? Angela?’

‘It’s me, Mum. What’s wrong?’ I closed my eyes and wished harder.

‘It’s your dad,’ she replied. ‘He’s been taken poorly.’

I closed my eyes as I tried to strike a deal to change my Christmas miracle.

‘What’s wrong?’ A million different scenarios were running through my head. Heart attack? Stroke? Had he fallen downstairs? Dad was fit and active for a man in his sixties, but you could never be certain. What if it was some horrible illness? I’d give him a kidney. A kidney for Christmas. Anything for my dad.

‘I don’t want you to panic – the doctor says he’s probably going to be all right,’ she went on, her voice pale and grey. ‘But basically he had a bit of a funny turn at Auntie Sheila’s Christmas do, so we had to take him into hospital.’

‘A bit of a funny turn? Are they the words the doctor used?’

‘Not exactly,’ she hedged. ‘But I thought you’d want to know. So you could come home.’

Home.

Before I could reply, I heard Dad’s voice in the background demanding to be given the phone. After what sounded like a relatively non-violent altercation, my dad’s voice came on the line.

‘Angela, I told her not to call you, I’m fine.’ Aside from sounding a bit tired and rough around the edges, he did sound like himself. I relaxed by one-eighteenth of a degree. ‘I’m just in overnight for observation. There’s nothing wrong.’

‘But what happened? What sort of funny turn? Do I need to come home?’ I wiped the tears away before they could ruin my mascara and tried to work out how I could manage to squeeze a flight back to the UK out of my meagre bank account. Flight prices in December were obscene. I had a better chance of someone lending me a private jet. Actually, Erin’s husband had a private jet. Maybe if I got really drunk, I could forget I was English and ask for a quick borrow.

‘You don’t need to come back for this – I’ll see you when I see you,’ he replied. ‘Really, I had something I shouldn’t have and, like your mum said, I had a funny turn. I’m fine.’

‘You’re allergic to something? Might I be allergic to something?’ Obviously, I was very concerned for his well-being. And a little bit about mine. ‘What was it?’

‘I don’t think you need to worry, really. You’re fine, love. Now, when are you coming to see us? Your mother is still insisting on buying the world’s biggest bloody turkey in case you decide to grace us with your presence for Christmas dinner.’

Hmm. Was it me or was he being weird?

‘Dad?’

‘Angela?’

‘What did you eat at Auntie Sheila’s that put you in hospital?’

‘We were just having a nice night in with Sheila and George and your Uncle John and Aunt Maureen came over,’ he explained slowly. ‘And, well, your Aunt Maureen had made some special cakes. For a laugh.’

‘Special cakes?’

‘Yes.’

‘For a laugh?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dad …’ It took a very long time for me to understand what he was saying. And then just as long again for me to accept it. ‘Were you and Mum doing space cakes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh dear God.’

The desire to go home and nurse my poor old dad to health transformed into a desire to go home and slap my stupid old dad around the head whilst tutting at my mother and shaking my head in disappointment.

When I was seventeen, my mum marched into Gareth Altman’s eighteenth birthday party, saw me standing next to Briony Jones, who was holding an unlit hand-rolled cigarette, and shrieked, ‘Angela Clark, I will not have a drug user in my house!’, then dragged me out by my borrowed Radiohead T-shirt. Which was subsequently thrown out because they were a ‘druggy band’. Explaining this to my then boyfriend was a bit tricky, but we were seventeen and the promise of a hand-job cured all. If only life was still so simple: I’d have a green card by now.

‘So let me get this straight. You’re in hospital because you ate too many space cakes and overdosed on marijuana?’ I just wanted to be clear.

‘I know, I know,’ he giggled. Brilliant. He was still high. ‘You’d think it was the Seventies.’

‘Dad, you know we don’t discuss anything that happened before I was born,’ I reminded him. As far as I was concerned, my parents came into existence in the early Eighties, my mother already pregnant with me and my father just a lovely, middle-aged Ken doll. They didn’t have sex and they certainly didn’t do drugs. He was really killing my champagne buzz. I was not beyond seeing the irony in that. ‘Just get lots of rest and I’ll call you tomorrow. When we will discuss the concept of “Just Say No”.’

‘Your mother wants to say goodnight,’ he said, giving me a huge yawn and ignoring my sanctimonious tone. It was a shame, really, because if I was being honest, I was quite enjoying it. ‘Call tomorrow, love.’

Even though my mum couldn’t see me, I took a moment to put on my best ‘Would you like to explain yourself to me, young lady’ face.

‘So, I’ve got to let your Auntie Sheila know if you’re going to be back for Boxing Day dinner at hers, because she’s buying the beef next week and needs to know.’

I was actually quite impressed at her attempt to get on with business as usual.

‘And obviously she’ll want to know how much weed to score,’ I added. ‘For dessert.’

‘Oh, very funny, Angela.’

‘Or will we be going straight on to the crack, what with it being Christmas?’

‘Angela, are you coming home or not? I’m sick of asking.’

‘I can’t.’ I tried to say it without whining, but it was difficult. ‘The flights are so expensive. Next year, I promise.’

I didn’t feel like explaining that next year I could be back for good. She didn’t deserve a shot of Schadenfreude: she would just love to hear all about my general failure as a human. I hadn’t been entirely honest with my parents about my professional status for the last few months, and by ‘not entirely honest’, I mean I’d been flat-out lying.

‘Oh, Angela Clark, you worry me sick,’ she moaned. ‘All the way out there, no money, spending Christmas on your own.’

‘I’m not on my own,’ I replied. ‘And I’m not broke.’ Only half of that was a lie. Pretty good going for a conversation with my mother.

‘Of course, this boyfriend of yours. When are we going to be meeting him? Is he back from gallivanting around the world without you?’

‘He was on tour, and you’ll meet him when you meet him,’ I said. The sound of Jenny shrieking in the other room reminded me I wasn’t in the middle of a very odd Nineties anti-drug after-school special but actually at a party. ‘I’ve got to go, I’m at Jenny’s – we’re having a Christmas party. Without any drugs.’

There was no way I could know that statement was true.

‘Fine, you go off and have your party and I’ll sit in the hospital with your father. Don’t worry about us.’

I paused and counted to ten before I spoke. ‘He’s not dying, Mother, he’s as high as a kite.’

‘No, it’s fine. I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Love to Jenny.’

And she hung up.

I looked out at the busy Manhattan street below me. How was it that my father was in hospital after having an adverse reaction to a vast quantity of an illegal substance of which my mother had also partaken, and yet I was the one being made to feel like the irresponsible teenager? I watched someone come out of Scottie’s diner across the street and my stomach rumbled. Brilliant. I had sympathy munchies.

Only ten minutes in real time had passed since I’d left the room, but that equated to about three hours in party time. There were at least another dozen people squished into the front room, perching on windowsills and poking their heads into the fridge, and no one was where I had left them. Instead of finding my lovely friend, my wonderful boyfriend and his regrettable band mate on the sofa, it was populated by some very drunk male models and the man who swept the lobby every other morning. He seemed to be enjoying the male models. Who knew? The apartment wasn’t big enough for me to lose anyone, so if they weren’t in the front room and they weren’t in the kitchen, that left the bathroom or my old bedroom. Sure enough, while the rest of the flat was overrun with beautiful strangers, my old bedroom was populated with all of my friends. Erin and her husband, Thomas, Vanessa, Sigge, Alex and Jenny were all draped across the bed, laughing like loons. It was a fairly wonderful sight.

‘What did I miss?’ I asked, forcing my way into the throng. Everyone shuffled up and rolled around until we all had our own bit of bed. ‘Why are we in here?’

‘Because I just remembered I hate everyone I invited,’ Jenny said with delight in her eyes. ‘So we’re hiding.’

‘In that case, I propose we go over the road and get some chips – I’m starving,’ I said, resting my head against Alex’s chest and trying not to purr as he ran his hand through my hair. ‘I just talked to my mum and dad. Booze won’t be enough – it’s time to bring out the big guns.’

‘Ooh, I want a chilli dog.’ Jenny kicked me from across the bed. ‘Are they good? Are they coming over?’

‘Dear God no.’ Perish the thought. ‘My dad is in hospital because they went to a party and he got stoned and had a “funny turn”, and my mum is my mum. Apparently weed has absolutely no effect on her whatsoever.’

‘Your parents are awesome,’ Vanessa said to the ceiling.

‘My parents are dickheads,’ I replied.

‘Is he going to be OK?’ Alex asked.

‘He is.’ I was suddenly sober and shattered. There was only one cure.

‘Let’s get you something greasy,’ he said, sliding off the bed and holding out a hand.

‘I love you.’ I let him pull me off the bed. I wanted chips. I wanted chips so badly.

‘Angela?’ Sigge’s tone was innocent. ‘Were your parents at a swingers’ party?’

His question was not.

I turned to Alex with pursed lips and a glare that meant business. ‘I need to be eating right now.’

‘We have to do gifts before we leave.’ Jenny bounced up off the bed, bumping Thomas onto the floor and Erin onto her face. ‘Wait right here.’

‘Presents?’ I looked at Erin and Vanessa, alarmed. ‘We’re doing presents?’

Quite aside from the fact that I hadn’t bought any presents yet, it wasn’t Christmas, and I had very strict rules about opening presents before the twenty-fifth. This was only acceptable if the gift giver was going to be either out of the country or dead by Christmas morning. Clearly Jenny didn’t fall into either of those categories. In theory.

‘You and I aren’t doing gifts,’ Erin yawned. ‘If that helps. I didn’t get you shit.’

‘Appreciated.’ I mentally took her Marc by Marc Jacobs scarf out from under the tree and put it back on the shelf. And then mentally took it off again and put it back under the tree with my name on it.

Jenny sailed back into the room carrying a small blue chequebook-shaped box wrapped in silver ribbon. Since a chequebook would be a fairly odd gift, I assumed it was something small and wonderful. Possibly shiny. I immediately forgot my rules and snatched it out of her hands. Christmas could do terrible things to a girl’s manners.

‘So, I know you’ve been super-stressed lately,’ Jenny started explaining as I tussled with the tightly tied ribbon. ‘And I was like, what would totally chill Angie out?’

Massage vouchers? A weekend away in the mountains? Lots and lots of drugs? No, that would be from my mum.

‘And I thought about the things that help me when I’m freaking out. The places that make me feel like Jenny again.’

Uh-oh. Pole-dancing lessons? Tickets to Vegas? Lots and lots of drugs?

‘And I came up with this. It’s going to be the shit, doll.’

I wasn’t sure about ‘the shit’, but the fevered look in Jenny’s eyes scared me. Everyone was silent while they watched me give up and rip the ribbon from the box with my teeth, because I’m so classy, and tear into the box.

Meep.

Inside the box was a copy of Gambling for Dummies and three plane tickets.

‘Vegas, baby!’ Jenny bounced up and down on the bed. ‘Me, you and Erin. Girls’ weekend away, just a total, awesome blow-out. We’re going to go crazy. No over-thinking, no panicking, no worrying. Just fun. It’s exactly what you need.’

‘It is?’

It was?

‘Totally,’ she said, landing on her arse right next to Vanessa’s face. ‘We’ll get drunk, we’ll dance, hang out by the pool, go to the spa. It’ll be awesome. No one needs to get on the pole like you do, honey.’

‘Yeah, Ange,’ Alex contributed. ‘You do need to get on the pole.’

I could have punched him, but I was all Rocky’d out for one week. Instead, I took a spectator’s stance and watched as Vanessa pushed Jenny off the bed and onto the floor, right on her backside. She did have it coming.

‘And when Jenny’s finished trying to kill us all, I have a client opening a store in the Crystals, so there is going to be some intense window shopping going on,’ Erin said. ‘And don’t worry, I won’t let her make you pole dance.’

After a moment of fear had passed, I started to smile. I was more concerned that it wouldn’t be a case of ‘making me’ so much as ‘stopping me’. I’d always wanted to go to Vegas, always. It just sounded so fabulous: all girls in feathered headdresses serving elaborate cocktails to shady blackjack players while Frank Sinatra belted out ‘Strangers in the Night’ on stage. Somewhere, I was semi-aware that these days, Vegas was more Kim Kardashian knocking back jello shots while P. Diddy set his iPod to shuffle in the DJ booth, but still. Surely there was still a good old glamorous time to be had somewhere on the Strip?

‘So.’ I held up the tickets. ‘When do we leave?’

CHAPTER SIX

When Monday rolled around, I was all business. Being the lovely, loyal girlfriend that I was, I waited until midday for Alex to wake up before I callously abandoned him and headed out to Bedford Avenue for a bagel. I wasn’t entirely heartless; I did leave a note.

After I’d woken up, cleaned up and successfully dressed myself, I’d decided today would be the day when I put everything right. So what if my parents were car-key-party-throwing junkies? So what if my visa was about to expire? So what if I hadn’t got a proper job? As long as my dad stayed off the meow meow and out of hospital, I could cope with their extracurriculars. And as for the visa-slash-job drama, I was on top of it. So on top of it that I’d cracked open a brand new notebook, bought a new pen and set up shop in the living room. I was going to work out what made me an extraordinary alien if it killed me. Just as soon as I’d finished writing my Christmas list. And my Christmas shopping list. I looked around my workspace – it was missing something. In fact, it was missing everything. I needed to go out and buy vast quantities of food and some magazines to motivate me. And pad out my wish lists. Nothing incentivized me like the allure of the latest It bag or a massive packet of Haribo.

Joy of joys, the terrible weather had broken and it was a clear, cold, beautiful day in Brooklyn. The hipsters of Williamsburg were still as colourful and ridiculously dressed as ever, swathed in neon scarves, Moon boots and giant furry hats. Their heavy black-framed glasses were a constant. It was reassuring. I dug my hands deep into my pockets, trying not to look into shop windows; each one was more tempting than the last. But I was strong. And, more to the point, hungry. I powered down the uneven sidewalks, past the Music Hall where I’d seen Alex play one time, past The Cove where Alex had seen me sing drunken karaoke lots and lots and lots of times. Oh, memories.

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