Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2017

Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2017

Cover illustration © Bree Leman

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

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

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008236816

Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008236830

Version 2017-07-24

Dedication

For everyone who has been on this journey since the beginning …

I heart you.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

I Heart Your Questions!

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

‘Angela?’

I looked up from a swamp of unfinished magazine pages to see my assistant loitering in the doorway.

‘Cici?’

‘You told me to let you know when it was seven,’ she replied, tossing her icy long blonde hair over her shoulder. ‘Because you can’t use a clock like normal people.’

‘It’s seven already?’ I said with a groan, sweeping all the pages up into a messy pile in front of my computer screen. I ran a hot hand over my forehead, into my own hair. My dirty blonde, very messy, and past-the-help-of-dry-shampoo hair.

‘See how the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the seven?’ Cici replied slowly, pointing to the massive clock on my office wall. ‘That means seven o’clock. Ninety minutes after you stopped paying me, for anyone who might be taking notice of that kind of thing. Not HR, obviously, since they went home hours ago.’

‘Shit,’ I muttered. ‘I’m going to be late.’

Turning off my computer, I grabbed my Marc Jacobs satchel from the new coat stand I’d bought for my office. All that was missing now was a fold-out bed and a potted plant then I’d never need to go home. I paused for a second, wondering whether or not I could fit one in the corner. Maybe if I moved the coat stand …

Cici shrugged, her face perfectly even. I couldn’t decide whether she looked so expressionless because she’d had really great Botox, or because she genuinely didn’t give a shit. In my heart, I hoped for the former, but after years of working together, my head assured me it was the latter.

‘You should go home,’ I told her as I stuffed myself into my jacket, the sleeves of the cropped cashmere jumper I’d nicked from the fashion cupboard bunching up around my armpits. ‘Thanks for staying late, I really appreciate it.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ Cici didn’t do ‘grateful’ unless it came with a hashtag. ‘I’m leaving now, I have a date.’

‘Me too,’ I muttered. Casting a quick look in the mirror on top of my filing cabinet, I grimaced at my wayward eyeliner and sad, sallow skin. Had I been outside at all today? ‘And we’re totally going to miss our reservation.’

‘But – you’re married?’ she replied, looking confused.

‘You can still go on dates when you’re married,’ I explained, licking my ring finger and swiping at my undereyes while Cici gagged in the corner. ‘It’s not forbidden.’

She looked at me, completely scandalized. ‘Does Alex know?’

‘The date is with Alex,’ I sighed as I gave up on my face. I’d fix it on the subway. ‘He’s leaving tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’ She frowned, clearly disappointed at the loss of potential drama. ‘Whatever.’

‘OK, great, see you in the morning,’ I said, flying out the door as fast as my high heels would carry me. Which wasn’t really all that fast, if I was being entirely honest.

‘I’m sorry,’ I shouted, the front door hitting the hallway wall with a bang. ‘We had to pull a feature and I had to write a replacement and I lost track of time. Just let me get changed and we can leave and—’

‘Or we could stay in?’

All the lights were out and my living room glowed with the light of a hundred tiny candles. He must have used an entire bag of the little Ikea tealights. I made a mental note to tell Jenny that yes, one human could need all those candles in one lifetime. The curtains were drawn, music played softly, and in the middle of the room was my husband, Alex, in all his worn jeans, faded Cramps T-shirt and barefoot glory. This was not a man who was dressed for the Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare.

‘But it’s your last night,’ I said, dropping my coat and bag to the floor and stepping cautiously across the room towards him. Do not set yourself on fire, do not set yourself on fire, do not set yourself on fire … ‘We’ve waited months for this reservation.’

‘That’s true,’ Alex took me in his arms and brushed my messy hair away from my face. ‘So, I guess I could go put on a suit, get on the subway, pay four hundred bucks for some fancy dinner – and come home still hungry – or I could just stay here with you?’

He rested his forehead against mine and smiled. I smiled back. Even now, he still gave me butterflies.

‘Not a tough choice, babe.’

‘But what are we going to eat?’ I whispered, the rumbles in my stomach threatening to eat the butterflies. ‘We haven’t got anything in.’

‘It’s all taken care of,’ he said, nodding across the room. ‘I am a man of many talents.’

Taking my hands in his, he led me over to our little dining table. It had been laid with more care than I thought possible, white linen tablecloth, proper napkins, single red rose in a miniature glass vase I was almost certain he’d borrowed from upstairs, and the classiest touch of all, two chilled bottles of Brooklyn Brewery’s finest lager with the tops already popped. The doorbell rang and I immediately started for the door. It was an old habit I just couldn’t seem to kill – what if it was post? Exciting post?!

‘I got it,’ Alex said, leaping nimbly through the candles and answering the front door.

I vaguely heard a muffled exchange while I stood by the table, unfastening the little buckles on my shoes and taking it all in. Ten weeks. He would be gone for ten weeks. No more kisses or romantic dinners à deux until November. Not that I was mad or sad or anything, other than extremely happy for my beloved husband. Honest. Only, I couldn’t remember the last time things had been so easy. All my friends were happy, my parents were off on a cruise somewhere mobile phones didn’t work, my job was going well, and things between Alex and I were perfect. Well, he was leaving me for months on end to go travelling around South East Asia but hey, what married couple didn’t go through that on your average Wednesday? No siree, no problems here.

‘Dinner is served.’ He opened the door with his foot and then kicked it closed behind him, two huge flat boxes in his arms, still steaming from the cool evening air. ‘Get your ass sat down.’

‘Pizza!’ I clapped, delighted, all my worries about how much I was going to miss him devoured by the growling in my belly. If he wasn’t the best bloody husband of all time.

‘One porkypineapple for me,’ he confirmed, moving the rose from the table to the kitchen top to protect it from the massive pizza boxes. ‘And one disgusting tuna sweetcorn, specially made for m’lady.’

‘You got them to make me a tuna pizza?’ I gasped as I pulled back the lid and inhaled. ‘Alex!’

Truly, this was a tremendous gesture of love. There were approximately fourteen thousand pizza restaurants in New York City and not one of them offered a tuna pizza on their menu. Even the places that sold tuna sandwiches as well, flat out refused to put canned fish on a plain cheese and tomato pizza. I’d been living in this country for six years and I still couldn’t understand why it was the biggest possible transgression a human could make. Buy a rifle in the supermarket? Oh, OK. Empty a can of tuna onto a margarita pizza? No bloody way.

‘I still don’t understand why America refuses to embrace it,’ I said. Who needed a seat at the chef’s table when you had an entire tuna pizza in front of you?

‘Because it’s gross?’ Alex suggested, settling down in front of his own enormous pie. ‘And you should be ashamed of yourself?’

I shook my head, peeling one massive, slightly floppy slice off the bottom of the box, pinching the edges of the crust with my thumb and forefinger then folding it in half. Alex watched approvingly. He’d make a New Yorker out of me yet. As soon as he got me to give up the tuna.

‘Firstly, they have it in Italy, where pizza comes from,’ I said with a mouthful of cheesy goodness. ‘And secondly, you’re defending the eating habits of a country that puts cheese in tins and aerosol cans. You can’t say squirty cheese is an acceptable food and then deny a woman her tuna pizza.’

‘Easy Cheese is a basic American human right,’ he replied, swiping a stray smear of tomato sauce from the side of my mouth with his thumb. ‘I get it, you can’t understand. You were brought up on toads in holes and spotted dicks, it’s practically child abuse.’

‘Ooh, I could go for a bit of spotted dick for pudding,’ I said, still chewing my pizza. ‘Have we got any custard?’

‘You’re disgusting – and I love you,’ Alex replied. The grin on his face turned wistful as he watched me eat across the table. I felt my cheeks blush and wiped the corners of my mouth with the back of my hand.

‘Do you think they have Easy Cheese in Cambodia?’ I asked.

‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘That’s kind of the whole point of going. Get away from the Easy Cheese for a little while, try something new.’

‘But I thought you loved Easy Cheese?’ I said, pulling a piece of sweetcorn off my pizza and popping it into my mouth, avoiding his gaze. ‘I thought Easy Cheese was the best thing ever.’

‘I do love Easy Cheese,’ Alex picked up his chair and moved it around the table until we were side by side, ‘more than anything, but my mind needs a break, though not from Easy Cheese. In a dream world, you know I’d take Easy Cheese with me.’

I paused to chew and swallow.

‘Just to be clear, I was using Easy Cheese as a metaphor for our relationship,’ I said, wiping my fingers on my napkin.

‘Really?’ Alex’s denim-clad leg pressed against mine. ‘I was definitely talking about Easy Cheese.’

I looked over at my husband’s sweet, smiling face and bright green eyes and tried my best to look happy for him. He had been planning this trip for almost a year and I knew he was doing his best not to get too excited in front of me. We’d debated going travelling together but there was just no way. For one, I had what my mother would refer to as ‘a proper job’ and couldn’t just nick off for months at a time and expect said proper job to be waiting for me when I got back. Alex had the time and the desire to spend weeks on end living out of a backpack. He was a musician, a proper one, in a band with a record contract that went on tour and sold records and everything. Well, he used to go on tour and sell records. Stills hadn’t played any big shows in a couple of years and record sales were slowing down at an incredibly alarming rate. Bloody Spotify. He needed this trip and I knew it, I wasn’t going to ruin our last night together by playing the ‘poor me’ card.

‘There’s still time for you to change your mind, you know,’ Alex said, nursing his beer. ‘This time tomorrow we could be on a river beach in Laos. This time next week, we could be checking out temples in Myanmar, next month dancing at a full moon party in Thailand.’

‘You know that I would if I could,’ I whispered, staring at his perfect features. His full lips, his sharp cheekbones, his shiny black hair that had obviously seen shampoo in the last forty-eight hours. ‘You know I’d love it more than anything, but asking for two months off at work would basically be the same as handing in my notice.’

It was a complete and utter lie. Two months of nothing but Alex Reid, all to myself? Yes, please. Two months of living out of a backpack in dirty clothes, without telly or online food delivery? I just couldn’t see it. The closest I’d ever come to roughing it was an abbreviated weekend at Reading Festival when I was seventeen and even that ended with my dad picking me up on the Saturday afternoon after I’d caved and tried to use the toilets. I hadn’t seen the inside of a tent since.

‘You could just quit,’ Alex stage-whispered into my hair, one arm snaking around my waist. ‘You could just leave.’

‘I really wish I hated my job,’ I replied, sliding my hand along his cheek. ‘And having a home. And food. And things.’

‘You do love things,’ Alex agreed with a theatrical sigh. He squeezed my hand in his and my engagement and wedding rings pressed sharply against their neighbouring fingers. ‘And I guess someone has to hold down a steady job. Looks like I’m stuck with Graham.’

Just because I would rather perform laser hair removal on myself than spend two months living out of a backpack did not mean I was fully OK with his going on this trip without me. Sure, I could play the supportive wife for a while but I’d seen Eat Pray Love, I knew what happened on these adventures.

‘You’ll barely notice I’m gone,’ he said, picking up a piece of tuna pizza and sniffing it with great suspicion before taking the tiniest of bites. He looked to be struggling far too much for a man who was about to spend several weeks subsisting on flash-fried insects, but whatever, all the more for me.

‘You’re going to be so busy with work and I know Lopez isn’t going to leave you alone for more than two minutes while I’m away. And I’m gonna call you all the time.’

‘You don’t need to convince me,’ I promised and the butterflies fluttered back into life as he ran a finger along my jawline, brushing against my bottom lip. ‘I’m glad you’re doing this. You’ve wanted to go forever, I know.’

‘It kind of feels like now or never,’ he agreed. ‘There’s no tour, no record to promote. And I won’t be able to do a trip like this once you’re barefoot and pregnant.’

I almost bit his finger off.

‘There’s only one of us who’s barefoot, right now, and I really hope neither of us are pregnant,’ I replied, my voice just ever so slightly shrill. ‘Unless there’s something you want to tell me?’

‘I didn’t mean right this second.’ He laughed at the look on my face with all the ease of someone who didn’t have a uterus. ‘I only meant, I won’t be able to take off on a trip when we do decide to have kids. If we decide to have kids.’

‘If,’ I repeated softly. I wanted to commit to a ‘when’ but it still seemed like such a huge leap into adulthood. I still couldn’t time my trips to the toilet properly when I was wearing a romper – how was I supposed to know how to raise a child?

‘I’m glad you’re going,’ I said, forcing certainty into my words. ‘It’s just, you’ve never been away for so long before. I’m going to miss you, that’s all.’

‘I’m going to miss you too,’ he said. Alex grabbed hold of both sides of my chair and turned it around to face him. ‘I’m going to miss you every minute of every day.’

‘That’s clearly an exaggeration,’ I replied as my heart began to beat just a little bit faster. His hands were still holding on to the seat of my chair and he leaned in towards me. He pushed my hair out of the way and pulled gently at the neck of my jumper, kissing my shoulder, my collarbone, my throat. ‘You won’t miss me while you’re asleep.’

‘I will,’ he protested, whispering right into my ear. I shivered all the way down to my toes. ‘I’ll dream about you every night.’

‘Well, that’s just ridiculous,’ I said, gasping as he pulled me out of my seat and into his lap. ‘You can’t control your dreams. You dream about whatever’s in your subconscious.’

‘Then let’s give my subconscious something to remember,’ he said, taking off my jumper and tossing it onto the settee. ‘We’ve got twelve hours.’

‘I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge,’ I replied as I yanked his T-shirt over his head and ran my hands down his tight, taut back. ‘You’d better set an alarm.’

Closing my eyes, I tried to concentrate on being right where I was. What good would it do to worry about what might happen? Alex would go, Alex would come back, and it would be fine. Everything was exactly how it should be, exactly at that moment. Now, all I had to do was keep every single thing in my life exactly the same, forever.

How hard could that be?

CHAPTER ONE

No one likes a Monday, especially a Monday that starts with an all-departments senior staff meeting that was scheduled last minute on the Friday before and takes place in the only windowless meeting room in the entire fifty-two-storey building. It looked as though the whole company had been herded in and they hadn’t even provided pastries. Something drastic was definitely about to happen and they didn’t want us to have our mouths full when it did. It was a huge mistake – everyone knew bad news went down better with a croissant.

‘How come we’re in the misery room?’ Mason asked as he slipped into the seat next to me. ‘Are they worried we’re gonna jump?’

‘It would be a nice day to be outside,’ I said, gnawing on the end of my biro. Not nearly as tasty as a Danish. ‘I just want to know what’s going on.’

‘You don’t know anything?’ He raised an eyebrow and crossed his massive legs.

‘Nothing at all,’ I replied, entirely innocent for once.

As well as being practically a giant and my best friend Jenny’s boyfriend, Mason Cawston was also a fellow Spencer Media employee. He was the deputy editor of Ghost, the men’s monthly, and I knew why he was asking me if I had any idea what was going on. I’d founded Gloss five years earlier with Delia Spencer. As in Spencer Media, as in our employer. Our friendship meant I was usually pretty good with the goss, but not this time. There had been rumours flying around our twelfth-floor office for weeks and I’d been desperately fishing for details but the only solid thing I’d managed to unearth was a dastardly scheme to get rid of the free donuts in the canteen on a Tuesday. It was definitely upsetting, but I couldn’t imagine losing out on one free Krispy Kreme a week was a good enough reason for Delia to be dodging me – and she definitely was dodging. Alex had been gone for almost two months and I hadn’t managed to pin her down for so much as a happy hour cocktail, not even once. Something was officially up.

‘None of the rumours I’ve heard have been reassuring,’ Mason said, raising his eyebrows. ‘And it’s never a good sign when they drag people in first thing on a Monday. The last time this happened, people went back to their desks and they were gone. Literally gone. They literally removed their desks from the building.’

‘They do tend to do all their best firing on a Monday,’ I agreed, beginning to feel increasingly anxious. All right, so she hadn’t been around for cocktails and gossip, but Delia would have clued me in if the company was planning to fire the entire editorial staff. Wouldn’t she? An image of someone rifling through my office and loading my carefully curated stationery collection and imported packets of Quavers into a cardboard box flashed through my mind.

‘I wish they’d just get on with it.’ I slouched back in my chair and twisted my wedding ring on my finger, glancing nervously around the room. No one looked pleased to be there. ‘McDonald’s only serves breakfast until 10 a.m. and if I’m going to be out of a job, I want to be into an Egg McMuffin as soon as humanly possible.’

Mason let out a half laugh before noticing my entirely serious expression and covering it up with a cough.

‘As long as this isn’t a mass cull,’ he said as the lift doors dinged open and the final lot of editors marched through the door. ‘I was hoping you might be able to help me with something.’

‘If I can,’ I said, hesitant. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be of service to my best friend’s boyfriend but I was ever so lazy and now had a serious hankering for an Egg McMuffin. ‘What’s up?’

He opened his mouth to speak but before he could say a word the door to the meeting room closed with a bang and I looked up to see Delia and her grandfather, Bob Spencer, the president of Spencer Media, followed by a gaggle of harried-looking assistants clutching iPads who quickly lined the walls of the packed room, blocking all the exits.

‘Good morning, everyone.’

I sat up straight and flashed Delia a small wave and a big smile, receiving nothing but a tight nod in return. Not a good sign. Slumping back down in my seat, I noticed she was wearing trousers. Delia never wore trousers to work. She was a woman who strongly believed in the power of a pencil skirt and once told me her very fancy, very old-fashioned grandmother only ever wore trousers during the war and had forbidden her and her sister from donning a pair of trews except if they were up against the same circumstances. Unless Delia and Bob were about to declare war on Anna Wintour and invade Condé Nast, I had a terrible feeling that this was not going to be a positive meeting.

‘I’ll get right to it; I’m sure some of you have heard rumours already so we figured it was best to make our announcements to the entire senior team at once.’

Bob didn’t even wait to get to the lectern, instead delivering his speech as he strode up through the centre of the room. Delia followed before taking her place, standing shoulder to shoulder with her grandfather in her shit-kicking ensemble. They both looked sombre, Bob in his regular charcoal grey suit and white shirt, Delia sporting her smart black trousers and a scarlet silk top. It was perfect, you wouldn’t be able to see the blood. I wracked my brains for the last time I’d seen Bob in the office and came up blank. Not that he hung out in the Gloss office or staff canteen opposite all that often, but there were usually stories of unfortunate encounters in the lifts or the general feel of a haunting whenever he was around. Everyone was terrified of Bob Spencer, except for his wife and his granddaughters. I’d seen salesmen in the fanciest shop on Madison Avenue run and hide when Delia walked through the door, afraid her grandfather might be close behind, but no one was more afraid of him than his employees. Most people said there were two ways to manage people, with a stick or with a carrot, but Bob had found a third: by scaring the living shit out of them. So far, it seemed to be working in his favour.

‘We have some major changes to deal with today,’ he declared, slapping his hands on the lectern and loosening the bladders of everyone in the room. I looked over at Mason and he gave me a tight, supportive smile. I fidgeted in my seat, determined not to break into GCSE science class giggles. I hadn’t been this on edge since the Strictly Christmas Special.

‘So, I’ve been thinking,’ Mason hissed into my ear. ‘It’s about Jenny.’

‘Can we talk about it after?’ I asked. I very much wanted to be paying attention if we were all about to be made redundant. It would be extremely embarrassing to have to ask HR to explain it over again while I was being removed from the building. He shuffled around for a second before shaking his head and leaning over to whisper in my ear, ‘I’m going to ask Jenny to marry me.’

‘Oh my god!’ I shouted, spinning around in my seat to grab hold of his hand. ‘That’s amazing!’

Every single member of the Spencer Media family turned to look at me at the exact same second.

‘I mean …’

Opening and closing my mouth like an awkward English goldfish, I couldn’t quite manage to find my words. Instead, I thrust Mason’s hand into the air, clasped in my own, and cheered.

‘Yay, change!’ I said happily. ‘Change is good! I mean, choose change or stagnate and die!’

Mason yanked his hand out of mine and clamped it over his face.

‘I choose the sweet release of death,’ he whispered behind his hand, shuffling his seat away from mine.

‘Of course …’ Bob cleared his throat at the front of the room while Delia tried not to smile. I sat back in my seat, doing my best to ignore the hundred or so pairs of eyes burning into the back of my head. ‘Thank you for your support, Angela.’

We had a complicated relationship, me and Bob.

‘The media landscape is not what it was ten years ago. Not even what it was just three years ago,’ the big boss stated to a crowd of unsettled faces. ‘We know this. It may be a little premature to declare print is dead, but it certainly isn’t in rude health, and if we want to succeed, we need to be at the forefront of the media industry, not playing catch-up. I will not stand by and watch our publications flail and die like fish out of water. We should be setting the standard, not waiting to see what happens next.’

I bit my lip as I nodded in agreement, along with everyone else in the room. Mason was going to propose! Jenny was getting married! Flailing and dying! And something about fish?

‘The new Spencer Media begins today. Right after this meeting, a press release will go out detailing our new corporate structure, starting with changes at the very top of our leadership team. With that in mind, I’d like to take this opportunity to announce my official retirement and the appointment of my successor, effective immediately. Please welcome the new president of Spencer Media, Delia Spencer.’

An en masse gasp was hastily drowned out by polite but enthusiastic applause as everyone in the room rose to their feet and clapped. I couldn’t believe it. Jenny was getting engaged, Delia was taking over the entire company, fish were flailing and dying. Not even two minutes ago, I’d been planning to drown my feelings in reconstituted egg and now this was officially one of the best Mondays on record ever, narrowly beaten into second place only by the Monday I’d seen Jake Gyllenhaal on the subway. He was eating a sandwich.

Bob gave Delia a brief, workplace-appropriate mini-hug and stepped off to the side, gesturing for her to take centre stage. My heart swelled and it was all I could do not to jump on my chair and whoop. As far as scary announcements went, this was one of the best. I was so proud of her, I could have wept. As Delia stepped up to speak, I watched ten years slide right off Bob’s shoulders. And was he smiling? Truly this was a day for the ages.

‘Thank you.’ Delia inclined her head graciously and silenced the clapping without even trying. The woman was an enigma. How could someone be just as comfortable standing in front of a hundred people to casually announce she was taking over a multimedia empire as she was singing karaoke in front of four very drunk Chinese gentlemen on the Lower East Side on a Tuesday night? Although to be fair, there couldn’t be that many people who regularly did both of those things. I flicked at my eyelashes to fight off a stray tear; she was my very own Wonder Woman.

‘My grandfather started this company with one newspaper almost forty years ago and now we are home to over one hundred magazines, eighty websites and twenty-five podcasts that are part of twenty global brands, reaching consumers all over the world.’ She broke off to smile and at least fifteen of the men in the room got a semi. ‘To stay at the top of the global media market, we must not be afraid to make changes. It’s not enough to maintain, we must always be developing, always looking forward. And that often means making difficult choices.’

Huh? I looked around at the fading smiles on my colleagues’ faces. That last bit didn’t sound nearly as fun as the part about the podcasts.

‘Beginning today, I will be restructuring our divisions to foster more progressive and creative brand development,’ Delia said, still smiling.

I pulled my sleeves down over my fingers and chewed the inside of my cheek. No big deal, it was just a lot of management speak, nothing to be worried about. Delia wasn’t Bob, Delia cared about people, not just money. Although she did like success. And it wasn’t as though she hated money. Hmm.

‘Instead of separating our brands by print, online and broadcast, we’ll be working in streamlined brand groups. Our women’s brands will all work together, our lifestyle brands, our men’s brands. We will streamline our business models and foster a new sense of synergy through content creation to create new opportunities to reach our readers wherever they are.’

‘Content creation?’ Mason whispered. ‘Synergy?’

‘Isn’t that the name of the computer in Jem and the Holograms?’ I whispered back.

‘After this meeting, we’ll be separating you into your brand groups and your HR manager will go over the new structure.’ Delia spoke with unquestionable authority. This was not a request, this was an order. ‘And I’ll be scheduling some time with all our editors individually over the next couple of days, to talk through any questions you might have and hopefully hear some great ideas about how we take Spencer Media forward.’

I looked down at the grinning T-Rex on my chest and for the first time since I’d bought it, regretted the decision to wear a bright red dinosaur jumper to work.

‘Now, I’m going to hand over to Peter, our vice president of HR and he’ll detail the breakout groups.’ She looked over at her grandfather, who gave her a nod and, against all laws of gods and men, flashed her the finger guns. Bob Spencer, doing the finger guns? Was it possible I’d fallen over and banged my head on the way into work? ‘Thank you, everyone, I’m very excited about the future of our company and that future begins right now.’

Considerably less enthused applause clattered around the room, spurred on by the iPad-clutching assistants who quickly opened the exits for Delia and Bob and immediately locked us back in the second they were gone. As soon as the doors closed, the sound of applause was drowned out by panicked whispers and the clacking of acrylic fingernails against smartphone screens.

‘Holy shit,’ Mason exhaled. ‘Restructuring and streamlining? This is not good.’

‘But Ghost is doing fine,’ I said, chomping down on the end of my pen until there was nothing left but a chewed mess. ‘And Gloss too. We’ll be OK.’

‘Yeah, but what about Belle?’ He nodded across the room to where the editor of Spencer Media’s flagship monthly fashion magazine was sat staring at the wall, ashen-faced. ‘Their circulation has been dropping for months. What if streamlining actually means folding?’

‘Delia loves Belle,’ I said, certain it was safe. ‘There’s no way she’d fold it. She started at Belle.’

‘Not to make myself unpopular, but this is Delia Spencer, the new company president, not Delia Spencer, your friend,’ he replied with an uncomfortable smile under his gingery beard. He had an excellent beard. ‘So many magazines have gone in the last few years. And Ghost isn’t doing that well.’

‘So, you were saying something about proposing?’ There was nothing like forcing a change in subject when you didn’t want to deal with reality. ‘Mason, this is so exciting.’

All the tension washed off his face and his eyes glazed over as he dug his phone out of his pocket.

‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while but this is Jenny we’re talking about, I want to get it exactly right,’ he explained as I clapped along in delight. ‘It’s almost the anniversary of when we met so I was going to ask Erin if we could go back up to her house upstate, the place we met? I want to do it there. You know Jen better than anyone else. What do you think about this ring?’

Flicking around at the screen for a second, he pulled up a picture of a beautiful ring. Yellow-gold band with a cushion-cut diamond nestled between two baguette-cut sapphires. Very sophisticated, very elegant. Completely wrong.

‘It’s stunning,’ I said, twisting my own emerald engagement ring around on my finger. ‘But no.’

‘No?’ Mason looked down at the phone as the smile fell off his face. ‘What do you mean no?’

Switching on my own phone, I opened my emails and tapped in Jenny’s name.

‘It’s in here somewhere,’ I muttered, poking my tongue out the corner of my mouth as I searched. ‘Wait, yep, this is it.’

Clicking on a link, I held up the phone triumphantly.

‘She sends me this about every three months,’ I said as Mason blinked at the Tiffany Embrace engagement ring and took the phone out of my hands. ‘And she’s been sending it every three months for the last five years. This is the ring. This is Jenny’s ring.’

Underneath his beard, I could see he’d gone awfully green. It was a diamond-studded platinum band with a huge brilliant cut diamond, surrounded by a halo of yet more diamonds. There were so many diamonds involved, it looked fake but according to the price tag, it most definitely was not. I figured I’d wait a while to email him the cost. From the look on Mason’s face, he wasn’t ready to learn how much Jenny’s eternal love went for. Or the matching wedding ring she wanted to go with it.

‘For real?’ he asked.

‘For really real,’ I promised.

‘If that’s the one she wants, that’s the one she’ll get,’ he said, recovering himself slightly. ‘You don’t happen to know her ring size?’

‘Five and a half.’ I slowly removed my phone from his vicelike grip. ‘That is also included on her email. I’ll forward you the details.’

He paused and took a deep breath. ‘She is going to say yes, right?’

I bit my lip to stop my smile. He looked so nervous, I could hardly stand it.

‘Of course she’s going to say yes!’ I leaned across my chair to wrap him up in a hug. ‘But just to make sure, let’s definitely get that ring.’

‘So then, they got a ten for their samba but I really didn’t think it was as good as the American smooth.’ I screwed up my nose as I tossed two Sour Patch kids into my gob. ‘Sometimes I don’t even know how they work out the scoring, I really don’t.’

‘Yeah, that’s a drag.’

‘It’s just not fair, you know? When everyone else is working so hard, he’s so obviously the judges’ favourite. I get annoyed.’

‘I know you do, I know you do.’ On a grainy Skype feed, Alex looked over his shoulder at the bustling marketplace behind him. ‘So now I’m all caught up on Dancing with the Stars, you want to tell me what’s really going on over there?’

‘How’s Myanmar?’ I asked, cheerfully popping another handful of sweets. ‘That’s where you are, isn’t it? Looks beautiful. When was the last time you had a shave?’

‘It’s amazing, and probably two weeks ago, and now seriously, tell me what’s going on,’ he ordered.

‘Just some changes at work.’ I tried to sound as casual as possible but I’d never been good at putting on a brave face. ‘They’re shifting some stuff around and I’m getting a new boss. Instead of a print division and a digital division, they’re putting us all into brand streams. Which I’m sure I’ll understand by the time I meet with Jo tomorrow.’

‘Jo?’ Alex scratched at his new scruff.

‘Jo Herman. She’s the new director of women’s brands,’ I recited through a mouthful of chewy sugary goodness. ‘Gloss is in good shape, I’m not worried.’

‘I see,’ he said calmly. ‘Is that your first bag of Sour Patch Kids today?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘No, it is not.’

‘I can come home.’ Alex held his hand up to the screen of his phone until I could trace the concentric circles of his fingerprint on my laptop. ‘There’s only a couple of weeks left and I think it’s very clear I could use a shower and a shave.’

A good wife would have immediately told him not to be so silly. A good wife would have thought about how excited he was the morning he left, how happy he was every time I spoke to him and the undeniable joy in each and every one of his postcards. But I did want him home. I hated that he’d been away for so long, I hated waking up in a big empty bed every day then tripping over his slippers every single morning because he wasn’t there to wear them. I hated cooking alone, eating alone, and then doing one person’s dishes. But that was more to do with the fact Alex always did the dishes.

‘Angela?’

‘No, don’t be silly. You’ll be home soon anyway,’ I made myself say. I might have been imagining it but I could have sworn he looked relieved. ‘Where are you off to next?’

‘Thailand,’ he replied. ‘Shawna’s friend told us about this amazing beach called Koh Kradan. No ATMs, no roads even. They shut it down half the year but it just opened, so we should be some of the first people to visit this season. We’re going to head out there tomorrow, kind of a last fling, you know? Before we’re back to a New York winter. And then you know it’ll be spring and we’ll be off touring the festivals. Did I tell you? We got an email from the label and they want us to play like, thirty dates across Europe. Graham is so psyched.’

‘Not even home and you’re already planning to leave me again,’ I smiled. It was good to hear him excited about getting back to reality, even if that reality was nicking off on tour all summer. ‘Good riddance, that’s what I say. Why even bother coming home in the first place?’

He laughed, knowing I was teasing. I would never tell him, but really, I was relieved. You’d think being married to a boy in a band would bring in the big bucks but over the last couple of years, the money had really started to fade away. Alex had always been good with his finances so things weren’t exactly hard, but between streaming services and general piracy, the only way for Stills to make real cash was by touring and flogging T-shirts. Drunk people at festivals bought lots of T-shirts. Drunk people at festivals were my favourites.

‘The place we’re going is literally deserted, so don’t freak out if I can’t call for a week or so,’ Alex added, immediately making me freak out. ‘I’ll email if I can, but if not I’ll shout when I’m back in Bangkok and let you know my flight details.’

‘That’s fine,’ I replied, overcompensating by adding about fourteen syllables to the word ‘fine’. ‘You’ll be back before you know it, just go and enjoy yourself. Don’t worry about me.’

I sounded more like my mother every single day.

‘I like worrying about you,’ Alex said. His lopsided smile shone through the screen. ‘That’s my job.’

‘Your other job is to get me a present,’ I informed him, returning his happy expression. ‘A really nice one.’

He laughed and scraped his hair back from his face, showing off the tan line around his forehead. ‘Consider it done.’

‘And it’s probably best you’re not around anyway,’ I said. ‘Mason is going to propose to Jenny and I don’t know if New York is ready for the attack of that bridezilla.’

‘Ahh, man, that’s so great!’ He looked truly pleased to hear the news. ‘I’m so pleased for them. Tell them congratulations from me.’

I loved how much he loved my friend. Honestly, he was such an amazing human being, he made me want to throw up. That, or I’d finally found my limit on eating Sour Patch Kids, and that seemed unlikely.

A brisk knock on the door of my office made me look up. It was Cici, tapping at her Cartier Tank watch.

‘I have to go,’ I said with a sad sigh, reluctant to say goodbye. ‘Meeting time.’

We tried to talk as often as we could but between the time difference and Alex insisting on travelling to countries where WiFi was not their strongest suit, it had already been five days since I’d last heard his voice and now I wasn’t going to hear from him in over a week? I felt another pang of pukiness as he resigned himself to me signing off with a nod. I loved him so much, I wanted to vom.

‘I’ll try to call you again before we leave for the beach,’ he promised. ‘And I’ll be home before you know it.’

‘I love you,’ I said, ignoring an impatient Cici who was busy sticking her fingers down her throat. ‘Have you got plenty of snacks?’

‘I ate crickets yesterday,’ he said with a completely straight face. ‘And Graham ate a boiled baby chicken still in the egg.’

‘OK, I’ve changed my mind, you need to come home,’ I ordered as he started laughing. ‘I love you, Alex Reid.’

‘I love you too, Angela Clark,’ he said, his face relaxing into a smile. ‘I’ll talk to you later if you haven’t overdosed on candy.’

I blew him a kiss, logging off my computer with one hand and emptying the sour sweets into my mouth with the other before beckoning Cici into the office.

‘Sorry,’ I said, holding a hand over my full mouth. ‘Alex.’

‘He’s still on his gap-year adventure?’ she sniffed and brushed non-existent crumbs off the chair on the opposite side of the desk before sitting down. ‘I hope you got him vaccinated against Ebola and HPV before he left.’

‘Didn’t you go on a spiritual journey around India a few years ago?’ I reminded her, trying to remember which vaccinations he’d had before he left. ‘And HPV is an STD, I don’t think you can catch that from travelling around South East Asia.’

‘No, you catch that from boning skanks,’ she replied, studying her glossy pink fingernails. ‘But I’m sure he’s definitely not doing that.’

‘Did you want something?’ I asked.

‘I did, I do.’ Cici combed her long blonde hair over her shoulder, the mirror image of her twin sister, Delia. It still unnerved me, how two genetically identical humans could be so different. On one hand, you had Delia, superhuman media mogul and now president of the company. As generous and gracious as she was ambitious, Delia always put the people she loved first. And on the other, you had Cici, a woman so concerned about the wellbeing of others, she once convinced an intern to take her new sleep medication for a whole week because she was worried it was making her gain weight. It turned out it wasn’t but it did give the intern night terrors so that was something fun to report back to her doctor.

‘I’ve been your assistant for, like, ever,’ she began and I bit my lip before I could reply. As if I needed reminding of that.

‘And I know I only got the job because my grandpa owns the company and my sister basically forced you into taking me on …’ She waved away the facts as though everyone found their jobs in the same way. ‘But I’m good, and you know I am.’

‘Yeah, I mean apart from the constant abuse and borderline bullying of the entire team,’ I said with a nod, ‘you’re the best assistant I’ve ever had.’

I didn’t bother mentioning the times she’d had my luggage blown up, sabotaged a press trip to Paris, fired our managing editor on press day (despite the fact she didn’t have the authority to fire anyone), semi-kidnapped my goddaughter or even the fact she was the only assistant I’d ever had.

Didn’t seem necessary.

‘I know there are going to be changes with the new company structure and I want to be considered for something new,’ she announced with the indisputable confidence of someone whose twin sister now ran the company her grandfather owned. ‘I want a bigger role, Angela, I’m ready.’

Sometimes, her born-and-bred Manhattanite assertiveness still made my meek British skin itch.

‘I’m not entirely sure what you’ve heard about the new structure,’ I replied, scanning my inbox to see if a company-wide announcement had gone out since this morning’s meeting but there was nothing. I was sure it wasn’t due to be announced until the end of the day, Bob always liked to avoid distracting the worker bees while there was honey to be made. Cici was getting insider information and it didn’t take a genius to work out where it was coming from (which was a relief, since the last IQ test I’d taken on Facebook had yielded less than impressive results). ‘Nothing’s been confirmed yet and I don’t think there are going to be any staffing changes, to be honest, at least not at Gloss.’

‘Yeah, I guess you should probably talk to Dee Dee. Or Jo,’ she said as she pushed up out of her seat, flicking her eyes around my office. ‘I’ve done my time here, Angela, it’s only fair.’

‘You work at a fashion magazine in Manhattan, Cici,’ I pointed out, trying not to sweat over her little name drop. ‘You’re not doing twenty-five to life at Rikers.’

Even through my concern, I took a moment to congratulate myself on my knowledge of New York’s prison system. And to think Alex said watching all those Law & Order marathons was a waste of time.

‘Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference,’ she replied. ‘I really feel like my assisting days are behind me and I’d appreciate your support. I’d hate for us to be working against each other on this.’

‘Well, I’ve enjoyed our talk.’ I stood up behind my desk while Cici picked up the giant neon Troll doll on top of my filing cabinet and turned it over in her hands before setting it right back down and wiping her hands off on her wine-coloured midi skirt. It was Prada. I knew because she had told me. ‘And I’ll think about it. Like I said, I don’t think there will be any roles opening up soon and we don’t have the budget to create anything. Do you think you’d want to work at any of the other magazines?’

The audacity of hope.

She looked back at me as though I was mad.

‘I feel like Gloss is my baby,’ she said with a shrug as she walked towards the door. ‘I wouldn’t feel right anywhere else. I’m sure you, me and Jo will figure it out.’

I stared after her as she closed the door gently and tried my hardest to work out why everything she said always sounded like a threat.

‘Gloss is my baby,’ I muttered, opening a drawer and pulling out an emergency bag of Monster Munch. ‘Why don’t you go and tell Jo that?’

That was me, Angela Clark, super-mature, adult-extraordinaire, and absolutely, 100 per cent, winning at life.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Never have I needed this more than I do today,’ I said, chucking back half my cocktail-in-a-teacup in one go. ‘Honestly, the day I’ve had.’

‘Um, OK?’ the waitress raised an eyebrow, clearly out of fucks to give and it was only ten past seven in the evening. ‘Can I get you anything else?’

‘Three more of these, please.’ I pointed at my half-empty cup. ‘For my friends. Who are on their way. Not for me.’

‘Girl, no judgement,’ she replied. ‘You do you.’

‘Still not entirely sure what that means,’ I admitted quietly as she disappeared down the dark narrow bar. ‘But I’ll try.’

Even though I was twenty minutes late to The Dead Rabbit, I was still the first to arrive. It was a while since we’d been there and it was nice to sink into a comfy corner seat in the dimly lit upstairs bar. In days gone by, Jenny had been a big fan due to its proximity to Wall Street, Wall Street bankers and Wall Street bankers’ wallets, but since she had settled down with Mason we hardly ever ventured this far south in Manhattan. Even though they didn’t live together officially, she spent almost every night at his Gramercy apartment, and her room in our old Murray Hill two-bedroom was little more than a glorified wardrobe.

Sipping the rest of my cocktail at a more dignified pace, I thought back to my Mason conversation that morning. Even though I was so excited for him to propose to my bestie, I knew keeping the secret was going to kill me. In general, people didn’t tell me things they didn’t want other people to know – case in point, Delia’s taking over Spencer Media and reorganizing the entire business on the sly. I had a hard time keeping schtum: whether it was due to excitement, extreme tiredness or straight-up idiocy, I was not a safe space for secrets. But this time, I was 100 per cent going to hold my water. For two months. Two long months. Emptying the rest of my drink, I pushed the teacup away and stared off into the distance.

He probably shouldn’t have told me.

‘Hey, sorry we’re late.’

Jenny and Erin blew into the bar in a cloud of perfect hair and expensive perfume. I surreptitiously stuck my nose into my own armpit to make sure my Dove was keeping up its twenty-four-hour freshness claim before Jenny hurled herself at me for a hug.

I pasted a bright smile on my face and clamped my lips together.

Don’t tell Jenny about the proposal, don’t tell Jenny about the proposal, don’t tell Jenny about the proposal.

‘Are you OK?’ Jenny asked.

Don’t tell Jenny about the proposal.

‘Maso— mais oui,’ I replied with a flourish to back up my sweet French save. ‘Yes. Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I be?’

She didn’t look entirely convinced but she didn’t ask any follow-up questions either. That went down as a win in my book.

‘We had a meeting across town and I thought it would never end,’ Erin said, explaining away their lateness and almost taking my eye out with her razor-sharp blonde bob. ‘Traffic is a bitch tonight.’

‘You could have taken the subway,’ I suggested. ‘No traffic down there.’

Erin and Jenny looked at each other and exploded into laughter.

‘And that’s why you’re the funny one,’ Erin smiled, shrugging off her oversized Burberry pea coat and dumping her Hermès Birkin on top of my MJ satchel on the spare chair. My bag slid to the floor sadly, ashamed to be in the presence of something so superior. Jenny grabbed it from the ground and passed the offending article back with a disapproving frown.

‘You’re still using this?’ she asked, pulling a lip gloss out of her own studded leather Alexander Wang duffel. ‘Angie, you must have like a thousand bags now, you have to let that thing go.’

‘You’re confusing my bag collection with yours,’ I told her, stroking the soft, supple brown leather. ‘Anyway, I love this bag. I think it gets better with age.’

‘It doesn’t, you should ditch it,’ Erin assured me. ‘Nothing does really. Red wine and George Clooney are literally the only exceptions to that rule.’

‘We’ll end up burying you with that thing,’ Jenny sighed as I cradled my bag in my arms to shield it from Erin’s cruel but worryingly accurate statements. ‘Sometimes I think all my work with you was for nothing.’

‘Give me a break,’ I begged as the waitress reappeared with our cocktails, ‘I’ve had a shitty day and my brain isn’t up to it.’

‘Same here,’ Erin said, clinking her teacup against mine. ‘I’ve been up since three – TJ has some kind of bug and I spent half the night stripping beds and cleaning up baby puke. And you know if he has it, Arianna’ll have it by tomorrow.’

‘To the glamour of motherhood,’ I said, clinking her back. ‘Cici announced she’s been my assistant for long enough and wants a “bigger role” at Gloss. Also, they’re completely restructuring the company and everyone is on the chopping block, which I probably should have mentioned first, so ha-ha, I win. Worst day in forever.’

Jenny peeled off her tight black sweater to reveal a low-cut black T-shirt and every man in the bar turned and looked.

‘Mason emailed me about the restructure,’ she said as she crossed her toned legs. If you got up and went running every morning like Jenny did, you could have legs like that, said the little voice in my head. I drowned it with another sip of my cocktail. ‘You’re overreacting. They haven’t announced any closures yet.’

‘The fact you added a “yet” on the end doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence,’ I told her. ‘It’s just unsettling.’

‘Not as unsettling as that demon spawn twin, Cici,’ Jenny corrected. ‘Surely you’ve put up with her for long enough? It’s time for her to disappear.’

‘The worst part is, she’s not actually wrong,’ I admitted, washing away the words with a mouthful of gin. ‘Most assistants move up after a couple of years and she’s been with me for three. As much as it pains me to admit it, she’s good at her job, even if her people skills are still, you know, a bit rough.’

Never had there been such an understatement.

‘I only wish she wanted to move to another magazine, I know the rest of the team would like to see the back of her.’

Erin stretched her arms above her head until her shoulders clicked. ‘I don’t know how you sit in an office with that woman every day. I’d rather have an underfed hyena outside my office. Do you keep a loaded gun in your desk?’

‘She is an underfed hyena,’ Jenny replied for me. ‘If not worse. Remember that time she threw out all the shoes under your desk?’

‘She thought I wanted to donate them to the homeless,’ I said weakly. ‘She said she was trying to help.’

Jenny blinked in disbelief. ‘Really, Angie? She thought you wanted to donate Chanel ballet pumps to the homeless?’

My stomach clenched tightly with the pain of loss and I took a sip to their memory. The worst part was, I was still paying off that credit card bill.

‘I read about the restructure – we sent Delia congratulatory flowers, of course. You don’t really think they’re going to close any magazines, do you?’ Erin asked, nervously clicking her fingernails. Erin owned a PR agency, the PR agency worked with the magazines, the more magazines closed, the more difficult her life became.

‘Gloss is doing fairly well,’ I said, repeating the same story I’d told a thousand times over already that day and hoped I’d start to believe it soon. ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine.’

Panicking would get me nowhere, I reminded myself. Listing all the magazines that had closed over the last three years would not help, I reminded myself. Imagining myself sat on the floor outside a Burger King with a sign that says ‘will work for nuggets’ was entirely unproductive.

‘So, I had a shit day, Angie had a shit day …’ Erin looked at Jenny. ‘Anything to add, Lopez?’

‘I’m breaking up with Mason,’ she replied casually, holding up her cup for a toast. ‘So yeah, cheers.’

I stared at her across the table. Now my deodorant really had some work to do.

‘What?’ Confusion crumpled Erin’s delicate features. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘No,’ Jenny replied simply. ‘I’ve been thinking about it and he really isn’t leaving me with much of a choice. So, I’m going to end it.’

‘Is today National Everyone Make Dramatic Statements Day?’ I asked, putting my cocktail down so I could fully and soberly concentrate on my best friend. ‘Because if it is, I missed a memo. What do you mean you’re breaking up with Mason?’

Jenny rolled her eyes as though we were the ones being irrational.

‘We’ve been dating for almost three years,’ she replied, all calm and rational and entirely unlike herself. ‘He knows I want to get married, we’ve talked about getting married but nothing has happened. I told him back in the spring that I wanted to get engaged this summer, and if he didn’t propose, I was going to have to end it. He hasn’t proposed. How long am I supposed to wait?’

‘You told him he had to propose or you’d dump him?’

I just wanted to be clear before I began screeching louder than an exceptionally miffed dolphin.

‘Yes.’

Exceptionally miffed dolphin noises are go.

‘That’s not very romantic, is it?’ I asked, my mind and my words racing. ‘You can’t break up with Mason because he hasn’t met your deadline, what happened to an old-fashioned courtship? What happened to waiting?’

How could I tell her she couldn’t finish with him because he hadn’t proposed, because he had just told me he was planning to propose, without telling her he had just told me he was planning to propose? Just thinking about it gave me a headache.

‘No, she has a point,’ Erin said, resting her hand on top of Jenny’s and giving it a reassuring squeeze. ‘This is New York, you’ve got to put your cards on the table right away. Some guys are happy to date forever and never seal the deal. I told Thomas I wanted to be engaged within six months of things getting serious, that’s how it is here, Angela. You were lucky to catch Alex when his light was on. Most of them need an ultimatum.’

I opened my mouth to argue but all that came out was a squeak.

‘You have to play the game,’ Jenny agreed. ‘It’s not easy out there.’

‘Especially when you’re over thirty,’ Erin added.

Everyone looked down at the table and took a drink.

‘I’m going to tell him tomorrow,’ Jenny said, nodding to herself. ‘I really don’t think he’ll be surprised. We’ve been seeing less and less of each other lately; maybe it’s better to kill it before it goes sour. Maybe this is what he wants and he daren’t admit it.’

‘Just like a dude,’ Erin agreed, clinking her cup to Jenny’s. ‘Ghost away and hope they break up with you.’

‘But Mason isn’t ghosting you,’ I protested. ‘You love him and I know he loves you.’

‘And sometimes winning means knowing when to lose,’ Jenny replied with a sad smile. ‘I do love him, but I want to get married, Angie, I want kids. And I’m not getting any younger. If he’s not going to give me those things, I’ll find them somewhere else.’

I looked over at Erin for support but she looked away. Yes, she was happily married now but after two divorces, a failed engagement, and two difficult pregnancies that only came about after inordinately expensive help from the magical Dr Laura, Erin wasn’t the first person to look to when you wanted someone to support your Happily Ever After rationale.

‘But what if you gave him one more chance.’ I was getting desperate. Jenny wasn’t terribly good at sticking to her resolutions, she was forever making huge statements and hardly ever saw them through but there was a resignation in her voice that I did not like the sound of. ‘I mean, when you tell him, he might propose. Maybe he’s just waiting for the right time.’

‘If he proposes after I tell him I’m breaking up with him, it’s gonna feel like he’s only doing it because I’m forcing him into a corner,’ she argued. ‘I gave him six months to decide whether or not he wanted to be in this for the long haul. I can’t keep waiting around or I’ll wake up one day and realize I’m forty. No offence, Erin.’

‘None taken,’ Erin replied. ‘I’m in my forties, that’s a thing. I might look amazing but it’s still a thing.’

‘Which self-help book are you reading right now?’ I demanded, turning my back on Erin. She was not helping in the slightest. ‘Is this Oprah? Did Oprah tell you to do this?’

‘I’m not reading any self-help books,’ Jenny mumbled into her drink as I waited for the inevitable follow-up. ‘I got it from a podcast.’

‘And podcasts are very wise but they’re not right about everything,’ I said firmly. ‘I really think you need to give it more consideration, one more week.’

‘Angie, it’s November already,’ Jenny stressed. ‘I told him six months ago. What exactly am I waiting for? My ovaries to shrivel up and fall out my vahine?’

‘They can do that,’ Erin confirmed over the rim of her teacup. ‘I’ve read about it.’

‘No, they can’t,’ I said, pressing a hand against my stomach. There was that sick feeling again. ‘You’re both being ridiculous. This is why people complain about the American education system, you know.’

‘I appreciate where you’re coming from, Ange, but I’m not asking for opinions.’ Jenny tossed her head, slapping the man at the next table in the face with her enormous hair. ‘I’m just letting you know.’

Bugger. Bugger bugger bugger bugger. I tapped my fingertips against my thigh as she studiously ignored me. The conversation was officially over.

‘So,’ Erin blew out a deep breath as I stared across the table at my best friend. ‘Did anyone else catch Dancing with the Stars last night?’

Three cocktails later, I rattled through my front door, dropping my satchel on the floor and peeling off my coat as I ran for the bathroom. I’d been desperate for a wee for the last three subway stops and sitting on the train outside the 9th Street station for fifteen minutes while the MTA got someone’s phone off the tracks had not helped in the slightest.

Making it to the bathroom without breaking my neck was almost as impressive as making it through my day without self-medicating. For the first two weeks of Alex’s trip, I’d done such a good job of taking care of the apartment. I put dirty clothes in the wash bin and I put clean clothes back in the wardrobe. I put dirty dishes in the dishwasher and I put clean ones back in the cupboard. I ate proper meals at proper meal times, slept in my bed, and limited myself to two episodes of This Is Us per evening. But that was a long time ago. Now the place looked like a crime scene. Empty cups and takeaway cartons gathered in tiny huddles at either end of the settee and empty crisp packets had been carefully smoothed out and stacked up on the coffee table next to all of Alex’s letters and postcards. And, if you looked very carefully, you could actually follow the trails of socks, shoes, jeans, several bras and the odd pair of pants all the way around the apartment and see where I’d been. David Attenborough would have had a field day.

I leaned back against the toilet cistern and stared wistfully at the beautiful roll-top bath that had won my heart when we first moved in. If only the day could be saved by a soak in the tub.

‘Couldn’t hurt to try,’ I reasoned, waddling across the room with my jeans still around my ankles and turning on the taps. I missed Alex, but part of me loved living alone, even if I was reverting to some kind of wild, pantsless animal.

Leaving the rest of my clothes in a puddle by the side of the bath, I grabbed Alex’s robe from the back of the door and toddled into the kitchen, looking for something to eat. Food was not love and it could not solve my problems, but it was delicious, and we hadn’t really eaten a proper dinner so snacks felt justified. I’d emailed Mason on the way home, asking if we could meet tomorrow after work to discuss DumpGate, or rather so I could convince him to bring Operation Proposal forward and head any dumpings off at the gate. There was no need to tell him exactly what Jenny had said; all I needed to do was encourage him to put a ring on her fourth finger before she flipped him off with the middle one. Naturally, I’d suggested we conduct this conversation at Tiffany.

And then I remembered.

When Louisa and Grace had come to visit for my birthday, they’d brought one of those massive slabs of Galaxy you can only get at the airport and, after eating half of it the second they left, then throwing it right back up two hours later, I’d made Alex break it up into little bars, wrap them in freezer bags, and hide them from me. I was almost certain there was still one left, wedged in between the ceiling and the top of the kitchen cabinets. For the first time in my life, my lack of restraint was about to pay off.

‘I should take up parkour,’ I muttered, hurling myself onto the kitchen top and wobbling upright. The belt of Alex’s dressing gown swung around my knees as I felt along the top of the cabinets, hoping against hope that the chocolate would still be there. And only the chocolate. The last thing I needed was another nasty surprise, especially something cockroach-shaped.

Or washing-machine shaped.

Just as my fingertips hit Galaxy pay dirt, a deafening crash thundered through my ceiling, blowing up a world of dust and dirt. Coughing, blinking, and clinging to my kitchen cupboards – and the chocolate bar – for dear life, I waited for the literal dust to settle, my heart pounding in my chest. There, not six feet away from me, was a washing machine, sat right in the middle of my kitchen. And while we did need a new washing machine, I really would have preferred it if one hadn’t just crashed through my ceiling from the apartment above.

‘Angela?’

I looked up through the smoky hole to see Lorraine and Vi, the couple who lived upstairs, staring down at me with their hands covering their faces.

‘Are you standing on the kitchen counter?’ Vi asked, peeking through her fingers.

‘Did your washing machine just come through my kitchen ceiling?’ I replied, gripping the Galaxy more tightly than ever before.

‘Um, sorry about that,’ Lorraine pushed her clear acrylic glasses frames back up her nose as she spoke. ‘Are you OK?’

I rubbed a layer of dirt and dust from my face and looked at the hand holding on to the chocolate bar. I was shaking.

‘Absolutely fine,’ I assured them. Stiff upper lip and all that. ‘Are you both all right?’

‘That was really intense,’ Vi gripped Lorraine’s arm tightly. ‘I came in to see what the noise was and there it was in the middle of the kitchen and I’m thinking, what is the washing machine doing in the middle of the kitchen? And then boom! Jesus, what if it had exploded? What if I’d fallen through the ceiling too?’

‘Yeah, I was quite surprised as well,’ I replied. ‘And, you know, right underneath it.’

‘Should we call someone? Do you need to go to the hospital? Is it going to blow up?’ Lorraine suggested, looking at Vi for confirmation. Vi looked at me and I looked back. Lawyers, both of them. Degrees from Harvard. And as much good in a crisis as a pair of chocolate teapots.

‘I think I’m all right and it’s pretty late.’ And I’ve had four cocktails, I added silently. ‘No one died. Maybe we can sort it out in the morning?’

‘Yeah,’ she agreed with a sigh of relief. ‘That sounds good. We’re like, sorry?’

I was still stood there, frozen on the kitchen counter and not entirely sure if I was going to be able to get down. I wasn’t quite sure what the proper etiquette was for when someone’s washing machine fell through your kitchen ceiling but I was fairly certain it should include at least one cup of tea.

‘Angela?’ Vi said.

Ahh, here’s the offer of tea. I smiled graciously at the redhead above.

‘Your robe is kind of open.’ She waved her hand awkwardly up and down her body. ‘Just, so you know.’

‘OK, thanks,’ I said, yanking it shut and tying the belt in a tight knot under my boobs.

Both women slowly backed away from the gaping hole, leaving me perched on my dusty kitchen top, chocolate bar in one hand, cupboard handle in the other. I stared at the washing machine embedded in the floor, surrounded by broken tiles, rubble and shards of shiny wet floorboards with soapy water slowly leaking out around the somehow still intact glass door. Even though my kitchen had been destroyed, and even though I clearly could have been killed, all I could think about was what was in the washing machine and did the girls need it for the morning?

Very, very, very slowly, I clambered down from the kitchen top, careful not to stand on anything stabby, and tiptoed back into the bathroom, checking my heart rate on my Fitbit as I went.

‘Would you look at that, it’s up,’ I noted as I turned off the taps. Instead of fighting with my hastily tied belt knot, I yanked Alex’s robe over my head and tossed it on top of my day clothes before stepping into the hot water, opening the freezer bag and pulling out the bar of milk chocolate. I sank into the bath and let my hair soak around my shoulders before chomping down on the Galaxy. There was no time to break off individual squares, this was an emergency.

‘Still,’ I said to absolutely no one. ‘At least tomorrow has to be better than today.’

CHAPTER THREE

The Tuesday morning team meeting was usually a pretty pleasant affair. After the madness of Monday when we sent the magazine to print, most people were either too exhausted or too hungover to kick up much of a fuss. And most importantly, I always brought donuts. Even as the editor, I was not above bribery.

Megan, my senior beauty editor, took the seat beside me and grabbed a delicious-looking, pink-frosted donut. I reached out to nab one before they were all gone, but before I could reach the box, my stomach turned. I hesitated. Too many cocktails and an entire bar of Galaxy was not a balanced meal but I was so hungry. Why hadn’t I got bagels? Or pizza? Or pizza bagels?

‘Have you heard the latest?’ Megan asked.

‘About Britney and the dancer and the box of cupcakes?’ I asked. ‘I refuse to believe it. Unless it’s true in which case, it’s amazing.’

‘No, about The Look,’ she peered around us and leaned forward with a furtive frown. ‘Sophie says one of the girls at Belle heard the new brand manager tell the editor that it’s closing.’

I felt a wash of something cold and icky run all the way from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

‘My first job in New York was on The Look,’ I whispered urgently. ‘They can’t close it, The Look is an institution.’

Megan’s eyebrows flickered upwards in agreement and she held a hand over her mouth as she chewed. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s only a rumour but it’s awful. Still, I know this is terrible to say but better The Look than Gloss, right?’

It was terrible to say but it was even more terrible that I was thinking the exact same thing.

‘Spencer has got off so lightly with mags closing,’ she said, swallowing a bite of donut. ‘Condé Nast, Hearst, Bauer – they’ve all folded big titles. I guess we should have seen this coming.’

‘I say we don’t worry about it until we know what there is to worry about,’ I said, turning my rings around my finger underneath the table. ‘I’m almost certain the people at Vegan Parent Quarterly should be more worried than us or The Look.’

Personally, I still wasn’t convinced that VPQ wasn’t a front for some kind of underground meth operation, but Delia insisted it was a real publication. The world was a strange and confusing place sometimes.

‘You’re right,’ Megan nodded in agreement. ‘We shouldn’t stress out so much, they’re only rumours right now. Do anything fun last night?’

Drank too much. Ate too little. Listened to my best friend being a complete tool. Almost died.

‘Nope,’ I replied shortly. ‘You?’

‘I had a date,’ she grinned. ‘Tinder finally came up with something decent.’

‘How was it?’ I asked, sipping slowly from a tiny bottle of water.

‘Not terrible,’ she replied brightly. ‘I know my bar is set kinda low but I liked him, he was nice. Not a serial killer.’

‘Not a serial killer is about as low as you can go,’ I said. ‘But yay.’

‘Probably shouldn’t have gone home with him,’ she replied, weighing up the decision on her face as I tried to hide my matronly shock. ‘But that whole not sleeping with guys on a first date is a myth, right? It doesn’t really make any difference, not if he likes you?’

‘I feel like we have published that article more than once,’ I assured her. ‘All you can do is what’s right at the time. And, you know, use several methods of protection.’

‘Thanks, Mom,’ Megan laughed before stopping short and biting her lip. ‘Um, do you need me for this meeting because I kind of need to run out to the drugstore?’

‘Go,’ I ordered. ‘Now. Leave the donut.’

Leaving her laptop and the rest of the sugary pastry on the table, Megan bolted for the door just as Cici appeared, long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and, for some reason, heavy-framed black glasses on her face. She turned her nose up as Megan ran by, slipped into the meeting room and closed the door behind her.

‘Why are you wearing glasses?’ I asked as she took Megan’s seat, pushing her colleague’s computer and breakfast into the middle of the table.

‘I’ve worn them before,’ she said, turning her phone to silent. ‘I wear glasses.’

She definitely hadn’t, and she definitely didn’t, but I didn’t have the time or the energy to investigate Cici’s weirdness today.

‘Hey guys, can we get started?’ I waved to the team assembled round the table. ‘Lots to get through.’

I was proud of my magazine. I’d come up with the idea for Gloss with the help of my friends – a cool, fun weekly magazine we gave away for free across New York City, and after five years of my literal blood, sweat and tears, it was now a real, live actual thing that was distributed all across America. Not bad for a British girl who had arrived in Manhattan with a weekend bag, a credit card, and no bloody idea what she was doing. Every time I saw someone reading it on the subway, I felt myself smiling – even if the celebrity on the cover had been an absolute nightmare, even if getting it to print on time had taken years off my life, it was still a kick. Gloss really was my baby, and like the parents of most five-year-olds, I’d lost more than one night’s sleep over it. But like almost all the parents of most five-year-olds, I wouldn’t have changed it for anything. I loved the team, they were all hardworking, dedicated, and while I wasn’t about to offer any of them a kidney for shits and giggles, they made me love coming to work every day.

‘First, I want to say how brilliant this week’s issue is looking – loving your work, people.’ I paused so they could all clap themselves and smiled while I silently wondered whether or not people applauded their own achievements in British magazine offices. ‘Next, the Channing Tatum interview. Someone’s going to have to go out to LA to do it.’

The entire table put up their hands.

‘Really?’ I eyed Jason, the managing editor. ‘You want to go to LA to interview Channing Tatum even though you’ve never conducted an interview in your life?’

‘I’m not that interested in the interview part but I would like to hang with Chan,’ he replied. ‘And I am very happy to go to LA in order to make that happen.’

You and me both, I added, noting down names and silently lamenting the fact I couldn’t just assign the job to myself. Being the boss was shit.

‘Also, there’s the Balmain feature to think about,’ I said. ‘We’re going to be working with Belle on this one so it’s going to be short notice but, short notice in Paris so not too much of a compromise. Sophie, you’re good for that, yeah?’

The fashion editor nodded, jigging her shoulders up and down in a happy little chair dance.

‘Do I get to fly first class?’ she asked, giddy as the proverbial kipper. ‘I love it when they give you the little pyjamas on the plane.’

‘I’ll buy you a pair of pyjamas and we’ll save ten grand on the travel budget,’ I replied. ‘Or I can go to Paris instead? Save you the bother?’

She pouted and shook her head.

‘Thought that might be the case. Right, super exciting, we’ve got a phoner confirmed with Irene Kim for the My Social Life column …’ I crossed off the points as I went. There was so much to keep track of and my brain felt like a Christmas pudding: only any good when covered in booze and just about ready to be set on fire. ‘She’s in Seoul, at the moment, and the call is set for four in the afternoon, her time.’

‘What time is that here?’ Sophie asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, pulling out my phone to check the world clock. ‘Oh. Three in the a.m.’

The entire table flinched at once.

‘I know, but she’s a really good get,’ I pressed, as convincing as possible. From the looks on their faces, I was not very convincing. ‘And she’s got amazing social media; it’ll make for a great column – she isn’t doing a lot of press.’

‘I would, but I’ve got the Bobbi Brown launch first thing,’ Sophie said, piling regret into her voice even if she wasn’t able to wipe the smirk off her face.

I looked to the entertainment editor. She shrugged, all apologies. ‘I’m covering the Andrew Garfield premiere tonight and who knows how late that will go. I’m heartbroken, though, I love Ileen.’

‘You mean Irene,’ I corrected with a sigh. ‘Fine, I’ll do it.’

Classic. Everyone else gets to fly to LA and Paris and I get to wake up in the middle of the night to interview a model about her Snapchat. The joys of being in charge.

‘OK, this is a fun one. You know Generation Gloss is coming up.’

For the past three years, we’d hosted an interactive reader event at the Market Design centre in Manhattan. A weekend of panels, makeovers, tutorials, meet and greets and general shenanigans that were made all the more stressful by the hangover everyone always had after the opening-night party.

‘The event is all taken care of, but I need someone to manage the party,’ I said, and offered the team a pleading smile. Every year previously we’d handed the whole thing over to an events production company but this year, unless there was an events production company that enjoyed working for literal peanuts, that was not an option. Yay, budget cuts.

‘We’re keeping the costumes so everyone needs to dress up as something,’ I said, scanning my notes. ‘Nothing says circulation increase like Kanye West in a toga.’

Jason shuddered at the end of the table.

‘But who doesn’t like organizing a party? It’s all but done, to be honest, I just need someone to take over now it’s a couple of weeks away, liaise with the sponsors, secure VIPs. All the fun stuff. Any volunteers?’

Silence. Either everyone had a mouth full of donut or the entire team had decided their job was done once they’d congratulated themselves on last week’s work.

‘Really, no one?’ I tried again. ‘Who could turn this down? Celebs, fashion, big massive piss-up, there’s even a free frock in it for you. Seriously, no one?’

‘I’ll do it.’

Oh, sweet baby Jesus, no.

Cici looked at me, blinking behind her clearly non-prescription lenses. Her eyes were enormous, it was all very unnerving.

‘I’ll do it,’ she repeated.

Well, bugger me backwards, Bob.

‘You … it’s … you want to?’

I tried to make eye contact with anyone else at the table and got nothing. What a bunch of absolute arseholes.

‘I said I’ll do it.’ She tapped her fingernails against her phone, two tiny red spots blooming in her cheeks. ‘So, can we move on?’

‘Let’s move on,’ I nodded, flicking my pen against my notepad and trying to work out how to make it look as though every single member of my staff had suffered mysterious accidents in the same week. ‘Thanks, Cici.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she said, almost smiling.

Taking a deep breath, I looked back down at the agenda, attempting to focus. If this was karma’s idea of making things up to me for the Monday I’d had, karma had a very dark sense of humour.

Later that afternoon I was drowning in admin, the least exciting part of my job. You never saw Miranda Priestly going through everyone’s expenses and yet, here I was, trying to work out whether or not I’d get fired for allowing my news editor to expense three muffins. A knock at the door drew my attention away from the pile of Starbucks receipts and up to a tall, obscenely handsome man, glaring at me through the glass.

‘So help me god, if you’re a stripper …’ I stood up, pulled my skirt down and scuttled over to let him in. ‘I warned you about this last time, Lopez.’

‘Angela?’ he asked in a crisp, clean voice.

‘Yes?’ I nodded, scanning him for a boom box, bottle of baby oil or Velcro strips on the seams of his trousers. They seemed sturdy enough.

‘We have a four thirty,’ he replied, stern features relaxing into an almost smile. ‘I’m Joe Herman, the new director of women’s brands.’

The smile on my face went blank and my lips pressed together until they were nothing more than a thin, pale line in the middle of my face. Joe? This was Joe? Joe was a man? A giant, handsome man? And definitely not a woman or a stripper?

‘Shit,’ I said sweetly. ‘I mean, yes, of course we have. Come on in.’

Flinging the door open, the reinforced glass hit my filing cabinet with a sickeningly loud crack just as Joe stepped into my office.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ I insisted, skipping past him in my high heels so I could clear some space on my desk. ‘It won’t break. We changed it to reinforced glass after the second time I smashed it. Now, can I get you a drink or anything?’

Joe shook his head, considered the two seats in front of him, and reluctantly sat down.

‘That’s a coffee stain,’ I said, watching as his eyes lingered on the other empty seat. ‘We’re going to get it cleaned. Someone spilled coffee yesterday.’

Someone quite clearly meaning me.

‘I’m not interrupting anything?’ Joe asked, pulling an iPad out of a handsome leather briefcase and ignoring my explanation entirely. ‘I’m still getting to grips with the scheduling system here. My assistant has had some trouble synching my calendar with everyone else’s.’

‘The calendar system is a bit rubbish,’ I fibbed as I checked my schedule, which I had never, ever once had a problem with. ‘Sometimes things don’t copy over, but you’re not interrupting at all.’

There it was, clear as day in the schedule: 4.30 p.m. – meeting with Director of Women’s Brands, JHerman@spencermedia.com. Nowhere did it mention that JHerman was a Joseph and not a Josephine. That would have been good information to have.

‘Sorry, we’re always a little bit hectic around here. Or I am at least, everyone else is great. I’ve been a bit scatty this week, actually. The other morning I couldn’t remember if I’d left my straighteners on and had to go back home to check, and of course I hadn’t, but you know how it is.’

I gestured towards his perfectly straight, swept back blond hair. There was no way it was behaving that well without help; the humidity gods of New York simply wouldn’t allow it.

‘I don’t straighten my hair,’ he said quietly.

‘Of course not, sorry,’ I replied. What a liar. ‘Not that there would be anything wrong with it if you did.’

‘But I don’t,’ he repeated.

‘Noted,’ I nodded. ‘Sorry.’

‘Please stop apologizing.’

‘Sorry, I mean, of course. Yes.’ I sucked in my bottom lip and took a deep breath in. ‘Sorry.’

He dispensed with his starter smile and opted for a more professional semi-grimace.

‘Angela.’

‘Joe.’ I clicked my fingers and pointed at him with the double guns. If it was good enough for Bob Spencer, it was good enough for Angela Clark. ‘Shoot.’

‘So, Gloss.’ He crossed his legs, his perfectly tailored, charcoal grey trousers straining against some impressively chunky muscles. Not that I was looking. Well, yes, I was looking, but only in the sense that I had eyes and because he was sat in front of me, not because my husband had nicked off on a two-month, long-distance vacay and sometimes you’re only human, goddamnit, and really, they were very big legs and—

‘Angela?’

I looked up to see him staring at me across the table. My beloved, if poorly ageing Alexander Skarsgård poster rolled its eyes at me from its spot on the wall behind him.

‘Sorry, I thought there was going to be more to the question,’ I said, snapping to attention. ‘Gloss, that’s us. We’re really excited about the new strategy.’

If there was one thing I’d learned about corporate life in the last few weeks, it was ‘when in doubt, bullshit’. I’d originally been introduced to the concept as ‘fake it ’til you make it’ but I soon realized it wasn’t so much faking it as talking whatever absolute shite the other person wanted to hear until they went away and left you alone.

‘But you don’t know what the new strategy is yet,’ Joe replied.

Well, he had me there.

‘We’re still very excited.’ I looked longingly at the door, wondering how upset Delia would be if I just kicked off my Choos and legged it. ‘About the whole new strategy brand extravaganza.’

My new boss continued to stare at me across the desk while tumbleweeds blew through my empty brain. Of all the times for the voice in my head to decide she had nothing to say.

‘You’re English.’ Joe uncrossed his legs and something that could have almost passed for a real smile appeared right above his chiselled jaw. I wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question, so I just smiled back and gave half a nod. I didn’t want to scare him off if he’d decided to play nice.

‘My girlfriend is English,’ he continued. ‘But she lives here now, obviously.’

‘I wonder if we know each other,’ I replied while giving myself a mental telling off for assuming this insanely well put together man with incredible hair and no wedding ring, who was in charge of the women’s brands at Spencer Media, must be gay. There had to be at least one perfect-looking straight man, if only to make all the others feel terrible. ‘It feels as though every British person in New York is connected in some way or another, even if it’s just from devouring fish and chips with your bare hands at A Salt and Battery twice a year.’

We looked across the desk at each other for a long moment and I imagined what kind of a woman would snag a man like this.

‘Probably not?’ I said, shaking my head and sitting back in my chair.

‘Probably not,’ he agreed. ‘But back to Gloss.’

This is all going to be fine, I reassured myself as he flicked around at the screen of his iPad. The magazine is in good shape, you’re doing a good job. They actually said that, at your last appraisal: you’re doing a good job. No one knows how much stationery you steal, or about that time you followed Chris Hemsworth for fifteen blocks after Mason tipped you off that he was coming into Ghost for an interview. No one knows.

‘I hear you’re doing a good job,’ Joe said, still flicking through his notes.

SEE, my brain shouted, IT’S ALL OK.

‘But Gloss is a small part of a big machine,’ he went on. ‘I’m sure you’re already expecting to hear this, but there are going to be changes in the next couple of months.’

‘Changes?’ I replied. ‘What kind of changes?’

‘The kind of changes that take us from the third most profitable media company to the first,’ he stated. Dear god, Joe Herman was a confident man. ‘And those kind of changes aren’t always popular.’

‘No,’ I agreed, my knee bobbing up and down underneath my desk, my black tights catching every time. ‘I suppose they aren’t.’

‘But this isn’t high school, we’re all adults,’ Joe said. ‘No one is here to be popular.’

I was, I wanted to say. I was there to be popular. Being popular was great, as I was certain he already knew. There was a distinct air of Captain of the Football Team about this man.

‘My job will be to look at how our brands can work more closely together to maximize our workforce.’ He held his hands out in front of him and then clasped them together to reinforce his point. ‘We have three separate women’s brands with three entirely separate editorial, sales and marketing teams, talking broadly to the same audience, Belle, Gloss and The Look. That doesn’t make sense.’

‘It makes sense to me,’ I replied. ‘People don’t only read one magazine.’

‘People barely read magazines at all,’ he argued. ‘You’re aware of how quickly Gloss’s online readership is growing versus your print numbers?’

I swallowed and shuffled myself upright in my seat. Why hadn’t I prepared for this meeting? Apart from forgetting I had it altogether, why didn’t I have all the latest numbers in front of me? One minute I was signing off receipts for manicure dates with Beyoncé, and the next I was fighting for the future of my magazine. This was not how I’d planned to spend my Tuesday afternoon.

‘Next week we’ll be announcing a consolidation of the marketing teams,’ he announced. ‘Instead of having one team per mag, we’ll have one team per brand stream.’

‘You’re going to make people redundant,’ I said slowly.

‘Certain positions will be eliminated,’ he replied. I felt as though I’d stepped into a bucket of ice water. People I knew were going to lose their jobs, six weeks before Christmas. It was like the first hour of a Lifetime movie without the happily-ever-after resolution tacked on the end. And I should know, I’d seen every single one of them.

‘Once the new marketing team has been established,’ Joe added. ‘We’ll be doing the same thing with the sales teams.’

‘And then the editorial teams,’ I guessed. He nodded and my knee crashed into the underside of my desk, knocking over my pencil pot. I righted it with trembling hands.

‘Nothing is confirmed,’ Joe said, resting his hands on his knees and graciously looking away as I calmed myself. ‘And we don’t want to worry anyone at this moment in time, so this conversation will be strictly confidential.’

‘I wasn’t about to call everyone in to announce the good news,’ I replied, full of fire for my magazine, for my team. ‘My people are good, Joe. They’re creative, they work hard. You won’t find better people doing what they do anywhere in this building or anywhere else in the city.’

It took me a moment to realize my voice had risen, I was half out of my chair and the entire team was watching through the glass walls of my office. Pushing my hair behind my ears, I cleared my throat and sat back down. Joe leaned forward and a full, wolfish grin appeared on his face. He had fantastic teeth. The utter bastard.

‘I heard you were passionate about what you do,’ he said. ‘And I heard you have a great staff at Gloss, so there’s no need to go to war just yet. I won’t lie, Angela, I like passion and I like balls. That attitude is going to serve you well in the new Spencer Media.’ Joe’s eyes lit up as he spoke and I was suddenly very, very worried. ‘Gloss doesn’t have the heritage of Belle or the familiarity of The Look but it is a fresh and vibrant brand. With you, I see growth potential. My job here is to prune the dead wood and encourage new buds and I already know I don’t need three mags in print with three full editorial teams and three editors to run three very similar outlets.’

Oh shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. Shit.

‘Is Gloss a bud or are we dead wood?’ I asked, my brain completely blank. I’d never been much of a gardener, as the dead succulent on my windowsill would attest.

‘Gloss is a branch on the Spencer Media tree,’ he corrected, ‘that will either flower and bloom or wither and die.’

Such a reassuring man. Clearly Delia had employed him for his gentle way with words.

‘I’m meeting with all the editors in my brand stream this week.’ He flipped at his iPad and raised his eyebrows. ‘And then I’m out of town for Thanksgiving. I’ll schedule a follow-up meeting with you as soon as I’m back so we can discuss my strategy.’

‘Fantastic,’ I said with altogether too much enthusiasm for someone who felt as though they’d just been slapped across the face with a four-day-old kipper.

‘I have to say, I was very curious to meet you.’ Joe reached across the desk and took my hand in an absurdly firm handshake. ‘You didn’t take a traditional route into this job and you seem to be excelling. I know Delia has a tremendous amount of faith in you.’

It should have been a compliment but instead, it felt like a question. A massively unsettling, wanky, unanswerable question.

‘Hopefully I’m not too much of a letdown,’ I replied.

He cocked his head in agreement and I almost vaulted across the desk to knock him out. He was a monster. A horribly attractive and impressively tall monster.

‘Let’s get that follow-up in the diary,’ he said, still squeezing the life out of my right hand. ‘Great to meet you.’

‘You too,’ I managed to half stand and almost smile at the same time and it felt like too much of an achievement. ‘Looking forward to our follow-up.’

Like a hole in the head.

Considering my words with a nod, he released his handshake, leaving white indentations across the back of my hand that turned red as I flexed my fingers. I watched him walk out the door and close it carefully behind him, counting to ten before I picked up the phone.

‘Hey, what’s up?’

Jenny answered on the first ring.

‘Are you busy after work?’ I asked. ‘I need a drink.’

‘Yeah, I can be done by six if I hustle,’ she replied. ‘You want to get dinner?’

‘There can be food,’ I said, my skin prickling from head to toe. ‘As long as there is alcohol.’

Jenny made an unconvinced sound down the line. ‘We got drinks last night.’

‘Yes, we did,’ I replied. ‘What’s your point?’

‘Fair,’ Jenny acknowledged. ‘Meet at the St Regis? I’m sure it’s nothing a martini can’t fix.’

‘Let’s hope that’s true,’ I confirmed, suddenly aware of the seven staffers peering through my glass door. ‘Gotta go, see you in a bit.’

I hung up the phone and waved everyone in.

‘Was that the new boss?’ Megan asked. ‘The new brand director?’

‘They put a man in charge of women’s brands?’ Sophie, the fashion editor, looked confused. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘What did he say?’ Jason gnawed on his thumbnail as he spoke. ‘Are there going to be cuts?’

‘Um,’ I squeaked. ‘Everything’s fine?’

‘Then why were you jumping out of your seat and shouting?’

Trust Megan to expect truthful answers. Why couldn’t she accept my sugar-coated lies like everyone else?

‘He said he could get me tickets to a secret Taylor Swift show,’ I told her, not quite managing to meet her eyes as I spoke. ‘Everything’s fine. There’s no news, which, I’m reliably informed, is good news.’

Jason pouted. ‘My friend Stevens who works in sales says they’re going to close five titles by the end of the year.’

‘Your friend added an “s” to the end of a perfectly good name just to look more interesting on Grindr,’ I replied, concerned that an assistant in the sales team had better insider knowledge than I did. ‘So, let’s not give him more credit than is due. I’ll fill you all in properly at the team meeting in the morning,’ I promised. Another lie, I’d clearly be dodging the facts for as long as humanly possible. ‘But there’s nothing for any of you to worry about. He actually said a lot of nice things about Gloss. So, the best thing we can do is keep everything as it is. We’re doing such a good job, let’s keep that up.’

I watched as they filed out of the office, all relieved giggles and sighs. At least it wasn’t a complete lie; there wasn’t anything for them to worry about at that exact moment. There was at least a good week before they needed to start shitting themselves.

Until then, the only person who needed to worry was me.

CHAPTER FOUR

The St Regis was a great choice for an emergency after-work drink. It was a fancy hotel with a classy bar that made you feel like you were either a very important person or a very expensive call girl, depending on which boots you might be wearing at the time. Nothing terrible could happen at the St Regis, it was altogether too swanky for that, they simply wouldn’t allow it. There was something about necking a twenty-five-dollar cocktail that made the rest of the world disappear, leaving just you, your booze, and an extortionate credit card bill to take your mind off whatever troubles you’d trotted in with.

‘It’s six ten,’ Jenny greeted me, pushing a French martini down the bar and tapping her wrist where a watch was not. Jenny never wore a watch. She claimed to have an innate ability to tell the time, but I suspected it had far more to do with the fact that she never went more than fifteen seconds without looking at her phone.

I hopped onto the bar stool next to her, wondering for the first time how appropriate my outfit was for the venue. A corduroy dress with a stripy T-shirt underneath was great for a fashion mag, but not all that wonderful for the King Cole bar of the St Regis. The two older gentlemen in three-piece suits certainly didn’t seem to share my appreciation for Free People’s finest work.

‘I had to finish proofreading an article about the psychology of nail shapes,’ I said, smiling to myself before turning back to my friend. ‘Did you know that almond-shaped nails mean you’re more likely to be faithful?’

‘What do these say about me?’ she asked, flashing ten Chanel Rouge Noir stiletto-shaped nails in my face.

‘That you’re a sweet homebody who is good with animals and children,’ I replied, ferreting around in my handbag for my phone. Alex hadn’t been in touch all day and I didn’t want to miss him if he called.

‘Not that I’m complaining about a two-night back-to-back Angelathon,’ Jenny said, admiring her nails before she wrapped them around the stem of her cocktail glass. ‘But what was so bad about today that called for emergency drinks? Did you get busted photo- copying your ass again?’

‘That was one time,’ I said defensively. ‘I was just curious. And I still had my tights on, so it barely counts.’

She raised an eyebrow and supped.

‘I met my new boss today,’ I explained, gripping the base of my martini glass and twisting it around in shiny circles.

‘And it was amazing and he loves you and he’s already given you a promotion and a raise and every other Friday off?’

‘Exactly that,’ I agreed. ‘Except the opposite.’

She gave me a quizzical look. ‘So, you have to work every other Friday?’

‘Keep your fingers crossed I keep working at all,’ I said, pressing my fingers into my temples. ‘We had a really fun, confidential meeting where he basically told me he’s going to sack about half the staff, just before Christmas. Delia has hired the Grinch and given him complete authority over my magazine. A mean, tall, super-handsome, impeccably dressed Grinch.’

‘He’s hot?’ Jenny asked.

‘Not the point,’ I replied. ‘But yes. And it doesn’t help.’

‘Shit, doll, I’m sorry.’ She reached over the bar and swiped a little glass bowl of snacks. Truly, she knew the way to my heart. ‘That sucks. I just figured you wanted to lecture me about my decision without Erin here to back me up.’

‘Well, since you mention it …’ I slipped my phone into the pocket of my skirt so I wouldn’t be tempted to spend the entire night looking at it. Just like Jenny was at that exact second. Just like Jenny always was. ‘You know I love you and I am Team Jenny all the way, but are you really, really sure this is the best idea you’ve ever had?’

‘Best ever,’ she nodded, taking the olive out of her drink and pulling it off the toothpick with her teeth. ‘Like, even better than that time I invented that keychain with a phone charger attachment.’

‘You didn’t invent a keychain with a phone charger attachment,’ I reminded her. ‘You superglued your keyring to a phone charger and then you loaned it to someone in a bar, forgot about it and had to call a locksmith at 3 a.m. to get your locks changed.’

A flicker of remembrance crossed her face before she went on chewing her olive. I turned green as a wave of nausea washed over me. I hated olives, all briny and green and evil. I liked my martinis the same way I liked my bread and my cheese, so French they should be wearing a beret.

‘Did I?’ she replied, knowing full well that she did. ‘Whatever. I was worried about it but now I’ve made my mind up and I know it’s the right thing to do. Lisa Vanderpump says if you’ve told a guy what you want and he won’t give it to you, it’s time to move on.’

Puffing out my cheeks, I counted to five before I opened my mouth to speak. I wanted to count to ten but there was just no way.

‘If Lisa Vanderpump told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?’ I asked. Jenny paused for a moment while she considered the question.

Her phone sparked into life on the bar before she could answer me and she pounced on the illuminated screen.

‘Expecting a call?’ I asked.

‘No one in particular,’ she said, pushing it away with a sigh as the screen flickered back into darkness. I couldn’t help but notice she still had the photo I had taken of the two of them kissing on New Year’s Eve as her wallpaper. Maybe there was still hope. ‘Like I said, things haven’t been the same lately. He’s hardly ever available and he’s distant when he is there. I’m telling you, Angie, I have to end things before he does.’

And maybe there was literally absolutely no hope at all.

‘Please don’t rush into it,’ I begged, sloshing my untouched drink all over the bar. For twenty-five bucks, you wanted a generous pour but my mum still gave me half a cup of tea at a time when I was at home, so there was little to no hope of my picking up a full martini glass without a fair amount failing to find my mouth.

‘He’s going through a lot of stuff at work, trust me. Things are crazy right now, with the new brand managers, all the rumours flying around. He’s worried he’ll be out of a job soon, that’s not exactly ideal, is it?’

Jenny narrowed her dark brown eyes at me.

‘Since when were the two of you BFFs?’ She slid her neat and tidy glass away from the pool of vodka, pineapple and Chambord that was slowing spreading across the bar. ‘I thought you hardly ever even saw each other?’

‘We don’t,’ I said, mopping up my mess with a napkin under the watchful eye of a waiter. ‘But I know how stressful things have been at Spencer lately. For everyone. And I know I sound like a broken record but he’s such a good person, Jenny, and is it just me or are his arms getting even bigger?’

Try as she might, she couldn’t help but smile at the mention of his giant biceps.

‘They are,’ she confirmed. ‘I measure them every week.’

‘You’re a match made in heaven,’ I replied, grabbing another handful of napkins. ‘Really creepy heaven, but still …’

‘Let me get that for you.’ A not-at-all-impressed waiter came over with a clean cloth to clear up my spillage, just as my phone buzzed against my thigh.

‘Ooh!’ I leapt out of my seat and held it in the air. Jenny raised an eyebrow while the two older gentlemen further along the bar audibly tutted in my direction. ‘It might be Alex,’ I stage-whispered in apology. ‘Give me a second. Don’t dump Mason until I’m back.’

I ran-walked out of the bar and into the hotel lobby, pressing the green button as I went.

‘Hello?’

‘Angela?’

It wasn’t Alex but it was a man, leaving me momentarily stumped. Literally no men ever called me on the phone unless they wanted me to donate to their charity or my dad needed to know how long to microwave a baked potato and my mum was out with the WI.

‘Speaking,’ I replied with great reluctance. Once they had your name, it was so much harder to tell them you didn’t want to give twenty dollars a month to help rescue dogs or the New York Philharmonic or whichever political candidate was complaining the loudest this week.

‘It’s Mason, I’m outside the store, where are you?’

Bugger. I’d completely forgotten about my plan to meet Mason. Here I was listening to Jenny explain why she wanted to dump him and all the while I was supposed to be helping him buy her an engagement ring.

‘I got stuck in the office,’ I fibbed, looking back over my shoulder at Jenny, who was, predictably, flicking through her phone. ‘But I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘I hope it’s soon enough,’ he answered. ‘I’m pretty sure the security guard is about to make a pass at me.’

Hanging up, I walked purposefully back to the bar. Jenny could always tell when I was lying so this was going to be awful.

‘Hey,’ I picked up my bag from the floor without making eye contact, ‘so, I need to run back to the office. I’m so sorry, I completely forgot.’

‘But I just ordered another drink,’ she said, pointing at the stoic bartender. He shook his cocktail shaker in confirmation. ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘It can’t,’ I said. She looked annoyed but not as though she was about to go nuclear. ‘But I can come back if you want to wait?’

‘What’s going on?’ she asked sharply. ‘What could be such an emergency that you have to go deal with it right now?’

‘Uh, Kris Jenner has announced she’s running for president,’ I rambled, putting my phone on the bar and dropping my bag on the floor while I fought my way back into my Topshop biker jacket. ‘We’ve got to change the cover story. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Twenty tops.’

Jenny propped her elbow up on the bar then rested her chin in her hand as I struggled with my outerwear.

‘You OK, hun?’ she asked calmly.

I leaned in to kiss her cheek then turned and ran.

‘Twenty minutes, tops,’ I shouted again as I left.

The doorman gave me a curt nod as he held open the main doors and I peeled out onto 55th and took a right on Fifth Avenue, dodging tourists as I ran the whole block up to Tiffany. Panting, I came to a sweaty halt in front of Mason, swiping strands of hair away from my forehead as I caught my breath.

It was the perfect crime.

‘That was fast,’ Mason said with suspicion as I held up a finger, waiting for my breathing to calm down. I really was out of shape. Sometimes, it wasn’t enough for your jeans to fit, I told myself. First thing Saturday morning, I was going to rejoin the gym. Probably.

‘I ran,’ I explained, choosing not to worry as to whether or not Jenny had bought my story. By the time I got back, she’d be three martinis deep into her evening and wouldn’t care in the slightest. ‘Let’s do this.’

‘You’re sure this is the right ring?’ he asked as I sailed through the door with all the confidence of a woman whose friend was about to spend thousands of dollars on diamonds while she excused herself and used their lovely toilets.

‘I could not be more sure,’ I said, guiding him directly to the lifts at the back of the store. This was not the first time I had made this trip. I was fairly certain Jenny had played tapes of exactly what to ask for while I slept back when we had been roommates. The knowledge was just there, as certain as the sky was blue.

‘Which floor for you both this evening?’ The elevator attendant smiled warmly, clearly presuming Mason and I were a couple. I wasn’t sure if it was the massive grin on my face or the light sweat that had broken out on his forehead, but we definitely looked like two people shopping for a massive rock.

‘We’d like the engagement rings, please,’ I said, my tone triumphant. Even though this ring wasn’t for me, I was beyond excited. This was Jenny’s dream and I got to play a part in making it come true.

‘Wonderful,’ he replied, hitting the button for the second floor. ‘Do you know what you’re looking for or is this an adventure?’

‘Oh, we know,’ I replied. I’d never felt so good about buying something that wasn’t for me. ‘We know exactly.’

I threw Mason my biggest grin and he returned it with a shaky smile of his own.

‘Have fun,’ the attendant said as we arrived at our floor with a ping. He added a wink just for me as I stepped out onto the glorious showroom floor. ‘And congratulations.’

For six thirty on a Tuesday night in November, Tiffany & Co. was surprisingly busy. Multiple couples hovered over display cases with wide eyes and feverish expressions. Credit cards hovered in mid-air, and everywhere I looked, bright, white ice sparkled under the specially designed lights.

‘It’s over here.’ I led Mason over to the glass counter that held the Embrace rings. It had been a couple of months since Jenny and I had ‘popped in on our way past’ but the rings hadn’t moved. I imagined the risk of fifty thousand dollars falling into a crack in the floor or half a mill getting hoovered up by the cleaners really wasn’t worth that hassle. ‘This one.’

And there it was.

Jenny’s ring.

Bold, bright, and almost obscenely sparkly, it was La Lopez herself in jewellery form.

‘Good evening.’

A shortish, baldish, pleasant-looking man appeared behind the counter.

‘Is there anything I can show you this evening?’ he asked with an encouraging expression.

‘We’d like to see the half-carat Embrace,’ I said, pointing at the glass but not quite touching. It wouldn’t do to leave fingerprints in Tiffany. ‘Right, Mason?’

‘Yep,’ he squeaked. ‘We would.’

‘A beautiful ring,’ the assistant said as he opened the cabinet and reached inside to gently pull out the display tray. ‘This really is one of my favourites. Such a glamorous option, a truly romantic offering for an elegant woman.’

He stopped to take a breath and consider my plum-coloured corduroy pinafore dress and stripy T-shirt ensemble.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I said, looking down at my own toddler-inspired outfit. ‘It’s not for me.’

‘Quite,’ he replied before placing an almost identical, only slightly larger ring beside the first. ‘Just for size comparison, this is the one-carat version of the same ring. It’s still quite tasteful, perfectly suitable for daily wear. Slightly larger central stone.’

There was nothing slight about it. The new ring looked like something Barbie might have worn around her dream home. Even Elizabeth Taylor would have said it was a bit much.

‘I think we’re fine with the first one,’ Mason gulped.

The assistant nodded. ‘Is there anything else I can show you?’

‘No,’ Mason replied.

‘Yes, please,’ I countered. ‘Have you got anything that’s really massive?’

Mason elbowed me in the ribs as he stared at white diamonds on black velvet.

‘Not for you,’ I replied, eyes glazing over at the pretty things in front of me. ‘While I’m here, I might as well.’

The shortish, baldish assistant amiably opened up neighbouring cabinets and laid several giant rocks out on a separate tray. Mason continued to eyeball Jenny’s ring but made no attempt to touch it. Even though I’d seen it a million times, Jenny had never allowed herself to take the ring out of the cabinet. We only ever looked at it from behind the safety of the glass. Up close, it was even more stunning than I remembered. The central diamond sparkled under the store’s lights while the halo of smaller stones shimmered with a subtlety that belied the fifteen-thousand-dollar price tag.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ I whispered, as I slid a two-carat canary yellow solitaire onto the little finger of my right hand. ‘She’s going to be so happy, Mason.’

I held my breath as, very slowly, a huge smile broke out underneath his beard. He looked at me, and I realized there were tears in his big manly eyes. ‘This is it, this is the ring. It’s Jenny’s ring.’

As soon as he said it, I began to well up.

‘Oh,’ I sniffed, scratching my cheek with an enormous sapphire as I wiped away my own tears. ‘Mason, she’s going to be so happy.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, draping his arm around my shoulders. Given his ridiculous lumberjack build, he had to reach down quite far to give me a half hug but I wrapped my arm around his waist as the assistant gave us one happy nod and silently disappeared to fetch a ring box. ‘Part of me can’t believe I’m actually going to do it, but as soon as I saw the ring, I knew it was right. I want to ask her right now, I don’t even want to wait.’

‘Don’t wait!’ I agreed, tears streaming down my cheeks at the thought of the proposal. ‘Do it right now!’

‘I’m going to call her.’ Mason wiped his eyes with the back of his ringless hand and pulled his phone out of his pocket. ‘Maybe she can meet me for dinner, she’s probably still at work.’

‘No, I know where she is!’ I reached up to snatch the phone out of his hand. ‘She’s right next door, we were having a drink at the King Cole bar before I met you.’

Mason looked at me, confused. ‘I thought you said you were at work?’

‘I did but I lied,’ I said happily. ‘I forgot I was meeting you and I went to meet her but then I told her I had to go to work and – and none of this matters! Let’s go and do it now, her hair looks nice and she’s just had a manicure. She’ll be ecstatic.’

‘OK.’ Mason ran both of his hands through his sandy hair then threw his arms out wide. ‘I’m doing this! I’m going to propose to my girlfriend!’

Before I could object, he grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me off my feet, twirling me around in a circle.

‘Oh, steady on,’ I said, grabbing his shoulder with one hand and clapping the other over my mouth. ‘I’ve been feeling a bit gippy all day.’

Slowly, everyone on the shop floor began to clap.

‘Whoo!’ yelped one overly enthusiastic man in a backwards baseball cap across the way. ‘Congratulations!’

‘Oh no,’ I said, mortified. Whether it was sheer embarrassment or the fact a man was wearing a backwards baseball cap in Tiffany, I couldn’t be sure. ‘Oh, Mason, put me down.’

‘Yeah, Mason, put her down.’

Still holding me hoisted three and a half feet up off the floor, Mason turned to reveal a decidedly unecstatic-looking Jenny Lopez.

‘What the fuck is going on?’

‘Jenny, I—’ Mason, startled, seemed to have completely forgotten what he was doing in the most famous engagement ring shop in the entire history of the world. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Duuuuude, busted.’

Backwards Baseball Cap Man gasped on the other side of the store and I realized everyone in Tiffany & Co. was watching us.

‘What am I doing here? What are you doing here?’ Jenny demanded. Her face was almost the same shade of red as her nails and her hair was wild. She was furious. ‘Angie left her phone on the bar so I was going to take it to the office but when I followed her out, she didn’t go to her office. She came here. To meet you.’

‘You followed me from the bar?’ I scrunched my eyebrows together, perplexed. ‘How did it take you this long to find us?’

‘Because I had to pee on my way up here, OK?’ she yelled, hurling my phone at me. ‘Someone left an entire martini on the bar and I paid seventy-five dollars for three drinks. I knew you were lying to me – tell me what the hell is going on!’

‘Jenny …’ Mason dropped me like a bag of hot dog shit and I stumbled forward into the glass counter. Before she could say anything else, he dropped to one knee and everyone in the shop held their collective breath. ‘I have something I want to ask you.’

Behind him I gestured wildly for her to come closer but she didn’t move. The fury in her eyes began to shift into wide-eyed shock and her red cheeks faded to white.

‘I’ve been thinking about this for the longest time,’ Mason went on, inching closer to his girlfriend, still on one knee. Even kneeling he was almost as tall as I was. He really would be a handy person to have around if you needed something getting down off the top of the wardrobe. She had done well. ‘Since I met you, my life has changed completely. You make the bad days better and you make the good days fantastic – and I need you to know how much I love you.’

‘Oh.’

Jenny looked up at me as she realized what was happening. From my spot at the counter behind Mason, I gave a nod so big I thought my head might drop off.

‘This isn’t exactly how I’d envisioned it,’ Mason said, ‘but you are the most exceptional, intelligent, ridiculous, beautiful and incredible woman I have ever met and I want to spend the rest of my life beside you.’

He really was very good, I thought, tearing up again as I trained my phone’s camera on Jenny’s face. Impressive proposals were one of the upsides to dating a professional writer.

‘Jenny?’ he reached out and fumbled on the counter for the ring. ‘Will you …’

‘Yes?’ she said, manically combing out her hair with one eye on my phone.

Mason opened his mouth to seal the deal but instead of saying ‘Will you marry me?’ he barked like a wounded sea lion and keeled over, huge, rolling sobs shaking his giant shoulders. Jenny looked at me with fear in her dry eyes. There was a chance this wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined this going down.

‘Mason?’ I said, poking him with my toe. ‘You all right there?’

‘I’m just so happy,’ he choked out each word in between a fresh wail. ‘Jenny, I want to ask you, will you … will you?’

Just as I thought he was going to get through the sentence, he rolled over again, tears streaming down his face and getting lost in his beard before they pooled into a stain on the front of his plaid shirt. For the want of a comprehensible sentence, he held out the ring and squealed.

‘I will,’ I mouthed at Jenny over the top of his prone, checked form.

‘I will!’ she said, rushing towards him and skidding to the floor on her knees to plant a kiss on his lips and, most importantly, get the ring on her finger.

‘Congratulations!’ I shouted, circling around them with my phone, still recording the perfectish moment while all the staff and customers breathed a group sigh of relief and began a round of thunderous applause. It was like something out of a very expensive, slightly odd, fairy tale.

‘Dude!’ yelled Backwards Baseball Cap Man. ‘Sweeeeet.’

‘Yes, congratulations,’ the assistant added, while Jenny and Mason continued their celebratory make-out session on the floor of Tiffany & Co. ‘Will sir be paying with cash or credit?’

‘Oh, it’s credit,’ I said, handing him the credit card Mason had left on the counter before slowly removing all my borrowed baubles. Who walked around New York with thousands of dollars in cash on them? And were they currently in the store and looking for a new British friend? ‘Thank you so much for your help.’

‘Not at all,’ he replied, smiling at the newly engaged couple. ‘It looks perfect on her. I’m so glad he decided to go with the one-carat ring, so much more impactful than the half carat.’

I bit down on my lip as my eyes opened up, saucer-wide at the sight of the half-carat ring still on the counter. Down on the floor, Jenny was laughing deliriously, staring at her own left hand. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell he was getting it off her finger now.

‘What’s the price on the one-carat ring?’ I asked as the assistant quickly and carefully put everything away. ‘Just out of interest.’

‘That one is actually 1.18 carats, and will be twenty- one thousand five hundred,’ he replied without looking up from the task at hand. ‘Plus tax.’

There was that nauseous feeling again.

‘Worth every penny,’ I said, snapping another photo. It would be nice to have as many as possible before Mason saw the price tag and had an aneurysm. ‘It’s a fairy tale come true.’

‘Angie!’ Jenny crawled over to me and hauled herself upright. ‘I’m engaged!’

‘I know!’ I replied, watching Mason sign for the ring without reading the slip. Wow, that was going to be a rough day when his credit card bill came in.

‘My wedding is going to be perfect,’ Jenny whispered, glittering eyes locked on her dream ring. ‘Just you wait and see.’

And for some reason, I couldn’t help but think it sounded more like a threat than a promise.

CHAPTER FIVE

When a washing machine crashed through my ceiling a week earlier, it had been somewhat disconcerting. But now I had become oddly used to squeezing past the hunk of Hotpoint determined to get between me and my breakfast cuppa.

Right after they completely destroyed my kitchen, Lorraine and Vi had promised they would have it all sorted out before the weekend, but after a failed attempt at trying to pick it up and drag it out to the street on our own, I’d been living with what could have passed as modern art to some people, and a huge hole in my ceiling, for more than a week. On Sunday morning they’d lowered down a basket of pastries and, after that, it was fair to say I wasn’t nearly as upset about the situation as I could have been.

‘Good morning!’ Vi called through the Hello Hole as we’d christened it. I waved back and grabbed a Tetley teabag out of the pot and tossed it into my travel mug. You could take the girl out of England, etc. ‘Sweet outfit. Big day at the office?’

‘Trying to make a good impression.’ I flipped the ends of the black ribbon I’d tied in a bow around my neck and prayed the white silk shirt wasn’t a mistake. ‘Do I look presentable?’

She squatted down to take a closer look and I gave her a quick twirl.

‘Very nice, the shirt is smart, the skirt is sexy, everything’s working for me,’ she gave me a thumbs-up and I poofed up my little black mini. ‘Great getaway sticks, lady.’

‘And now it’s black tights season again and I don’t have to shave every day, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them,’ I replied, returning her thumbs-up as the kettle boiled.

‘And if all else fails, you can just spill water on your blouse and call it a day,’ Vi suggested. ‘Your boss is a dude, after all.’

‘Note to self, buy water,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m sorry it’s taking so long to get everything figured out.’ She pulled at the hem of her Harvard T-shirt as she folded over to sit on the floor. ‘Lorraine’s brother’s best friend is a builder and he specializes in restoring townhouses and period places. I’m really hoping he can come and take a look tonight.’

I poured boiling water from the kettle into my travel cup and swished the teabag around until the water was more or less brown before removing the bag and tipping in half a pint of milk. My mother would have died if she could see what passed for tea in this house these days.

‘Any chance he’ll be able to clear this out?’ I asked, tapping the washing machine with my black Saint Laurent pointed pump. ‘If I’m honest, a great big washing machine in the middle of a small kitchen is more of a problem than the Hello Hole.’

Naming the gaping chasm in the ceiling had probably been a bad idea. It now felt more like something from a Nineties sitcom than a potential structural disaster.

‘You’re telling me,’ Vi sighed. ‘I’ve got Lululemon leggings in there – no way I’m going to be able to save them now. I guess it’s better not to try and force it open, though, right? In case it explodes or something?’

I chose not to tell her how I’d spent fifteen minutes trying to jimmy the door open with a butter knife three nights earlier. It was late, I couldn’t sleep and curiosity had got the better of me. Bloody thing would not budge.

‘Well, it is a washing machine, not a nuclear bomb, but I think we should probably leave it alone,’ I said, sipping tea as weak and feeble as I was.

‘I’ll text as soon as I know when the builders can start.’ She rolled upright and waved through the hole. ‘Have a great day and show that boss man who’s really boss.’

‘It is actually him,’ I replied with a wave of my own. ‘He’s been quite clear about that.’

‘Eurgh, patriarchy,’ she muttered as she vanished from sight. ‘Catch you later.’

‘I wish I was a lesbian,’ I mumbled, staring up into Lorraine and Vi’s beautiful kitchen. There was an actual herb garden in the window box. The only thing in our window box was pigeon shit. ‘I wonder if there’s a course you can take.’

‘There is,’ Vi shouted, apparently still in her kitchen. ‘But they’d make you leave your hot husband and I know for a fact he does all the cooking in your house.’

‘Noted,’ I called back, my cheeks flaming red as I barrelled out of the kitchen and towards my front door. ‘Thanks, Vi.’

Park Slope was one of my favourite parts of New York and not just because I lived there. It was post-Halloween and pre-Thanksgiving, meaning the giant cobweb decorations and animatronic skeletons were gone but the pumpkins remained. Every single stoop was covered in gourds, plastic, ceramic and even some real ones. If you’d left real pumpkins on the doorstep in my village when I was growing up, someone would have lobbed them through the neighbour’s greenhouse by the next morning – we just wouldn’t have known what else to do with them. The streets all round mine were wide and tree-lined and all the houses looked like they’d come straight out of a Woody Allen movie, usually complete with a neurotic man chasing a much-too-good-looking-for-him younger woman to boot. There was the odd modern concrete block dotted here and there, but, for the most part, our neighbourhood was all elegant brownstones and townhouses. It looked like the New York I knew from the movies. That was the strange thing about my city, even if you’d never stepped foot in the place, you already knew it by heart. The skyline, the streets, the parks and the subways, New York belonged to everyone.

Sipping my tea as I walked down to the 9th Street subway station, I let myself dream of buying a townhouse all to ourselves one day. Our apartment was one of two in the building; we had the ground floor and the basement while Lorraine and Vi had the top two floors. Maybe if I didn’t get fired, I’d become the editor of Belle

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