She waited for Jenny to respond but when our personal shopper-slash-interrogator shrugged and moved on, we both let out a sigh of relief.
‘You know the last time someone turned up on New York’s doorstep with zero notice, it was this chick.’ Jenny pointed at me before adding a silver studded T-shirt to the growing pile in my arms. I had a feeling she was trying to keep my hands busy so I wouldn’t be able to get involved in any potential violence. ‘And we all know what that was about.’
‘Hmm.’ Louisa appeared terribly interested in a charcoal crop top, decorated with a diamanté studded skull. Not something I would have chosen for her myself, but …
‘So tell me,’ Jenny continued, suddenly stepping right into Louisa’s face. ‘What’s going on?’
For one impossibly tense moment, I had no idea what was going to happen. Louisa’s pale skin turned flame red and she started to vibrate. Either she was about to turn into the Incredible Hulk or …
‘Tim is cheating on me,’ she wailed at the top of her lungs. And with that, she began to weep hysterically, falling to her knees, clutching Jenny’s ankles. ‘He’s having an affair.’
A startled-looking shop assistant froze beside me, eyes wide open, while the rest of Bloomingdales whispered amongst themselves.
‘Excuse me.’ I held out the clothes in my arms. ‘I was wondering if you could start a room for us.’
Two minutes later, we were safely installed in a private dressing room with a very strong pitcher of mimosa, far from the main shopping floor. Apparently, having a nervous breakdown in the middle of Bloomingdales had its perks. Jenny, having switched from bitch mode to fierce protector, had all but carried Louisa into the changing rooms, giving anyone who looked at her the evil eye, while I apologised profusely to everyone we passed. Not that I thought we really had anything to apologise for but because I was English.
‘Lou, are you OK?’ I knelt down in front of the crumpled blonde mess that used to be my best friend, and poked her arm gently. I didn’t know where to start. ‘Do you want to go home?’
She didn’t move or speak or even sniff. I knew first-hand how exhausting a good two solid minutes of hysterics could be, so I sat back on my heels and looked to Jenny for advice.
‘Here, drink this.’ Jenny handed Lou a very full glass of booze before turning to the nervous-looking assistant who hovered at the door. ‘We would like to try on all of your clothes,’ Jenny instructed. ‘Like, everything. Theory, Marc, Vince, Maje, Sandro, Equipment, Current/Elliott … you get the idea? I want sequins, I want sparkle, I want leather pants, denim, dresses and everything in the store made of cashmere.’
‘What sizes?’ The girl was visibly shaking.
‘Like, a six? A six.’ Jenny looked at me for confirmation. ‘Sixes, eights if they run small. We’re gonna buy a shit-ton of stuff so if you could make sure we get the good stuff and not the shit over at the front end of the floor, that would be awesome.’
‘I’ll be right back,’ the shop assistant replied, backing away uncomfortably. Poor cow.
Jenny joined me on the floor with her own glass of fizz and gave me a ‘here goes’ glance. ‘You’re gonna feel better when you tell us what’s been going on,’ she promised. ‘And you’re gonna feel even better than that when you drink that mimosa.’
Louisa nodded softly and pushed her hair behind her ears before sinking the drink on command. She took a deep breath, wiped a finger underneath each eye to smear away some of the runny mascara and held her glass out for a top-up.
‘It’s my fault,’ she said with a hiccup. ‘I should have seen it coming. It was just like you and Mark. Everything was fine and then one day, I woke up and he wasn’t there.’
‘He left?’ I pushed myself up to my feet, ready to run all the way to England to punch Tim Smith in the face. ‘He walked out on you and Grace?’
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ Lou wrinkled her nose, looking all crumpled and small. ‘He just wasn’t
there
anymore, you know? Physically he was but mentally, he was somewhere else. So I thought about it and it all made sense. Late nights at the office, Saturday at the football, Sunday at tennis. Tennis, Angela. We both know what tennis means.’
‘Well, for me, tennis meant my ex was boffing his mistress,’ I agreed. ‘But it doesn’t mean Tim is cheating on you. Tim loves you. Tim is a good person and not a snivelling, coward of a shit of a man. And Grace, he would never do this to Grace.’
‘She’s right,’ Jenny cooed, rubbing a soothing hand up and down Louisa’s back. ‘Maybe he’s not cheating? Maybe he’s just an inconsiderate shit who needs his ass kicking?’
‘I read his texts,’ Lou whispered. ‘Yesterday morning, before he went to work. And there were all these messages from a woman called Vanessa. I don’t know anyone called Vanessa.’
‘That doesn’t mean he’s having an affair,’ I said, clutching at every straw I could find. This couldn’t be happening. I refused to believe that perfect Louisa and lovely Tim could possibly be in this situation. ‘That just means he’s getting texts from someone called Vanessa. I bet it’s someone at work.’
‘And I bet she’s fat,’ Jenny added. I rolled my eyes and ignored her best attempt at comfort.
‘Whoever she is, she’s texting my husband in the middle of the night, putting kisses at the end of her messages and talking to him about stupid bloody man stuff that I don’t know anything about.’ She took a tiny sip of her second mimosa. ‘What kind of woman texts a man about golf and her car’s engine and sends him pictures of a round of shots?’
‘To be fair, it doesn’t exactly sound like she’s trying to seduce him,’ I said with careful diplomacy. ‘I mean, a text about golf isn’t the same as a picture of her tits, is it?’
‘No, it’s worse,’ Jenny said. ‘That’s some sneaky girl shit, Angie.’
‘Yes!’ Louisa exclaimed, pointing at Jenny. ‘She’s all “ooh, I’m just like one of the boys except I’ve got boobs and exciting parts where you can put your thing, and did I mention I’m so much more fun than your wife?”’
‘Oh yeah.’ I often forgot about those girls. Or at least I tried to. Toxic.
‘I bet she plays computer games and always eats bacon sandwiches and loves football and even though she has beautiful, long hair and Bambi eyes, she never, ever wears make-up.’ If nothing else, Lou had already perked up a bit. ‘Because make-up is for girls and she’s just one of the lads.’
‘Even if he’s texting this
woman
,’ Jenny said, spitting out the word as though this Vanessa’s gender were questionable, ‘he might not be doing anything. Maybe he’s just going through a shitty patch and didn’t know how to talk to you. Have you tried to talk to him?’
‘Talk?’ Louisa smiled weakly at herself in the massive mirror behind us. ‘We don’t talk. What time will you be home? What do you want for dinner? Say goodbye to Grace for me. That’s it. He’s never home and I’m
always
home. Last Friday, he didn’t come home at all.’
‘But he had a reason, surely?’ This was not looking good for Tim.
‘He was on a stag do with some boys from the office and he text to say he was so wasted he was going to stay in their hotel room,’ she said. ‘But how likely is that? Bunk down with the boys in a Travelodge or just get in a taxi and come home? The next day he was a wreck.’
‘Because he really was hungover?’ I suggested.
‘Because he was guilty,’ she corrected. ‘He’s a guilty, lying shit. I can feel it in my bones, babe, I know it.’
And then it was time for hysterical tears, round two. Jenny and I sat back on our heels and looked at each other without anything more helpful to say. This really couldn’t be happening. Louisa and Tim had been together since we were kids. They were that really annoying couple who always finished each other’s sentences, held hands wherever they went and, most annoyingly of all, seemed to genuinely like each other all the time. I knew things had been harder since they’d had Grace, because when was adding a baby to the mix easy? But this just seemed so unlikely. Tim wasn’t a cheater. Tim didn’t have the balls to be a cheater.
‘So what did he say when you said you were coming here?’ I asked, hoping to stem the sobbing. ‘Did he freak out?’
‘Well …’ I spotted a fleeting look of sheepishness run across her face before she quickly replaced it with righteous indignation. ‘I haven’t told him, have I?’
‘LOU!’
Jenny beamed with pride and nodded with approval.
‘Damn right, girlfriend,’ she said, clapping.
‘Oh, you stop it.’ I slapped her hands away. ‘You really cannot get away with saying “girlfriend”. And she needs to tell Tim where she is.’
‘I text him to say we were going to my mother’s for the night,’ Lou said. ‘He doesn’t know we’re here. It was all those texts. I’ve known for ages something’s been going on and I’ve been so miserable and then I read them and they went back weeks, Ange. All I could think was that I needed to get away and obviously I couldn’t go to my mother’s.’
‘Well, obviously,’ I admitted. She might as well have gone to my mother’s.
‘And I just wanted to see you. I knew you’d make me feel better.’
I softened, just for a second, and the sobbing began again. It was quieter this time, sadder. ‘I really don’t know what to do,’ I said, stroking her hair as the dressing room door opened and the petrified-looking shop assistant pushed in a rack of clothes, waved a disembodied hand at us and closed the door again, without even entering.
‘We’ll fix it,’ Jenny promised without any actual way of knowing whether or not that was possible. ‘You did the right thing, Lou Lou. Let him see how he likes being home without you and Gracie for a couple of days. He’ll rethink his situation.’
‘I guess.’ Lou tried to look hopeful but failed.
‘But she needs to tell him that she’s gone,’ I pointed out, ‘or he won’t know that he’s supposed to miss her.’
‘I gave someone else some advice once,’ Jenny said, pushing herself up to her high-heeled feet and browsing the rack of clothes pulled by our invisible friend. ‘It’s OK not to be OK. You’re going through some stuff, it’s not all going to feel better when you wake up tomorrow. And that’s not your fault.’
I bit my lip and watched, my heart breaking for my best friend, while Jenny picked out a pair of leather leggings, just like hers.
‘And the person who took that advice turned out OK, huh, Angie?’
‘What?’ There suddenly seemed to be an awful lot of PVC in this changing room. ‘You gave someone advice?’
‘You. I gave you advice.’ Jenny looked less than impressed. ‘Maybe you didn’t turn out so good after all. Did someone drop you on your head this morning? Lou Lou, try these on.’
Louisa took the leather leggings and blanched. I couldn’t help but smile – after everything she’d just told us, the thing that threw her was a pair of bloody trousers.
‘We’ll give you a minute,’ I said, taking Jenny’s hand and yanking her out of the changing room. Lou nodded, looking a little relieved, and took another sip of her mimosa. If Jenny had been right about anything, it was that the booze seemed to make things better.
‘I can’t believe that asshole,’ Jenny hissed once we were safely back on the shop floor. ‘I ought to cut his balls off.’
‘If it turns out he is cheating on her, I’ll hold him down while you take the first snip,’ I replied. ‘With a pair of rusty barbecue tongs. But for now, we just need to calm her down. We can’t go back to Grace with her in this state.’
‘Shopping is totally calming.’ Jenny held out her hands, as if I hadn’t noticed we were still in a store. ‘We’ll work this out.’
‘Fine, but I think we should just give her ten minutes on her own before we go charging back in there telling her what’s what.’
And by we, I of course meant Jenny.
‘Whatever. I’m going to pee.’ She fluffed out her ponytail. ‘And then I’m going to buy shoes. Any shoes. Coming?’
I looked around at all the racks of Christmas party dresses and felt my fingertips begin to prickle.
‘I’m going to see if they’ve got this jumper I wanted for Alex downstairs,’ I said, exercising previously unforeseen self-control. I wasn’t sure I liked it. ‘See you back here in ten minutes?’
‘Ten minutes,’ she agreed, flouncing off to the ladies’. Jenny-less, I pressed the down button on the lift and stopped, stock-still.
What if Tim really was cheating on Louisa?
The thought hadn’t actually occurred to me before that moment. Obviously he was in her bad books for a good reason but in all honesty, I just assumed he was being a bit shit and a bit stupid. What if he was having an affair with this Vanessa woman and Louisa nicking off had just given her all the more time and freedom to get her feet under Louisa’s beautiful modern country table. It wasn’t as though Tim would be the first husband to cheat on his wife after their baby was born. I could imagine how left out he must feel, how hard it must be for him not to be her entire world after getting all of her attention for the last fifteen years. And he had some great role models to turn to – my ex had been one of his best friends and his affair had turned out just great. He was engaged to the woman he cheated on me with, everything had come up trumps for him. Perhaps there was more to this than I wanted to believe.
The men’s department wasn’t quite as busy as the women’s floors but there were plenty of harassed-looking gents trailing their partners and patiently lifting their chins while jumpers and shirts were held up against them for consideration. Shopping anywhere in New York in December was a trying experience but I loved coming to Bloomingdales any time of year. In spring it was full of bright colours and the hope of summer, in summer it was a delicious swirl of air conditioning, and in winter it was all sparkly party dresses, giant Christmas trees and happy shoppers. The season of goodwill concentrated into a single store. Even when the queues were long and I had to wait ten minutes to go to the toilet, there was something about Bloomies that always put a smile on my face and it wasn’t just the 10 per cent tourist discount I always got, even though I’d been living in the city for years. Trusty British driver’s licence.
‘Hey, Angela?’
I was happily stroking a preppy blue on blue striped jumper, wondering what kind of sexual favours I’d have to trade Alex to convince him to wear it, when I heard a voice I recognised.