‘And I already have a real estate agent looking for townhouses,’ James added. ‘Even a couple in Brooklyn.’
‘But don’t get your hopes up,’ Jenny warned me. ‘I kind of have my hopes set on the Village, maybe near Erin.’
‘Wherever the best schools are,’ James replied in a see-how-serious-I’m-taking-this voice. ‘Only the very best for our baby.’
It was all too much. Completely and utterly overloaded, I edged my way to the arm of the sofa and sat down, drinking my coffee in silence. It would have been wonderful news, Jenny had the man she’d always dreamed of – handsome, intelligent, rich and desperate to give her a family. Except he loved cock every bit as much as she did.
‘I know you weren’t one hundred per cent behind this,’ Jenny said, letting go of her baby daddy’s hand and coming over to the sofa. ‘But that was before James. This really is what I want, Angie. And uh, we were talking about it before you got here, there’s something else.’
‘Can I?’ James jumped up, all six feet something of him blocking the bright, bitter sunshine out of my eyes. ‘Can I ask her?’
Jenny nodded and took hold of my non-coffee-holding hand.
‘We want you to be the godmother.’ James pushed his way onto the sofa behind me and threw his arms around my neck. ‘And Alex to be the godfather.’
And that was when I burst into tears.
‘Oh lord, Ange, can you not?’ Lou ran to pull the bedroom door to as gently as possible. ‘If Grace hears you, she’ll start and then I’ll never get her to sleep.’
‘I’m. Sorry,’ I choked, letting James take my coffee away and Jenny rub my back. Every part of my body was giving up on me. There was nothing to do but sob. I could feel my common sense giving up and packing its bags too. I mean really, what was the point? ‘This isn’t OK.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ Jenny soothed, holding me close while James patted the top of my head. ‘It’s fine. You’re emotional, that’s fine. Maybe we should have waited to tell you. I’m sorry, I’m just so excited. And you know you and Alex will work this all out. You always do.’
‘I’m not sorry for crying.’ I wriggled out of her arms and shook my head away from James like an awkward pony. ‘I mean this, this isn’t OK.’
Apparently pointing manically at the two of them wasn’t clear enough.
‘You can’t have a baby with James,’ I wailed. ‘You don’t know him, you don’t love him. You cannot have a baby.’
‘Do we really have to go through this again?’ I recognised Jenny’s expression. It was the same one she pulled whenever she had already made up her mind but knew that she was making a mistake. I’d seen it a couple of times this week but not on Jenny, on Grace. It was the same expression she made when she reached for a biscuit when she’d already been told no. ‘If you can’t be happy for me, Angie …’
‘It’s just like that time you wanted that Hermès Birkin.’ I was clutching at straws but I had to try to explain what I meant in a language she would understand. ‘Remember? You were saving and saving and you got halfway and then you couldn’t be arsed to save anymore so you bought a knock-off and pissed all the money away. But you weren’t happy with the knock-off, not really. You still really wanted that Birkin.’
‘Do you have a point you’re trying to get to?’ she asked, clearly making an effort to control her temper.
‘This baby idea, it’s a knock-off.’ I stood up and pulled my hair into a ponytail, securing it with an elastic band I pulled off a pile of paperback books on the coffee table. ‘It isn’t what you really want but it’ll do. For now.’
‘So you tell me, Professor Angela,’ Jenny began, her voice saturated with sarcasm. She didn’t like it when other people psych 101-d her. ‘What exactly is it that I really want?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said, grabbing the stack of self-help books. ‘
The Five Love Languages
,
Eight Weeks to Everlasting
,
Getting the Love You Deserve
. What do you think?’
‘Oh, I forgot, it’s so easy to find a relationship,’ she snapped back, standing up, inches away from my face. ‘All a girl needs to do is hop over the pond, grab ahold of the first guy she meets and then cry and mope when he tells her he wants to have a baby.’
‘That’s not how it was at all,’ I replied, refusing to budge. ‘And you know it wasn’t.’
‘Oh sure,’ she said with a sour smile. ‘Alex was the second guy, right?’
‘Maybe you wouldn’t have such a hard time finding a boyfriend if you hadn’t wasted so long knocking off a married man,’ I suggested. ‘Heard anything from Jeff lately?’
‘Please can you stop arguing,’ Louisa begged us. ‘You’re both saying things you don’t mean and you’re going to wake Grace.’
‘We wouldn’t be able to wake her if she was in England, where she lives,’ I pointed out. ‘Would we?’
‘Don’t you start on me.’ She stepped away from the door, her voice hushed but just as serious as mine or Jenny’s. ‘You’re totally out of order and you know it. You need to calm down.’
‘And you need to call your bloody husband,’ I shouted at Lou before turning to Jenny. ‘And you need to fucking grow up. A baby isn’t a toy, it’s not this season’s accessory. What are you going to do when he gets bored of playing daddy and you’re all on your own with a baby and no boyfriend?’
‘Hey.’ James started to speak but was silenced by three knife-like stares. ‘All right, never mind me.’
‘Jenny’s not asking you for anything,’ Louisa said, practically running to Jenny’s side. ‘I haven’t asked you for anything. We just wanted you to be a friend.’
‘And instead we got a selfish asshole,’ Jenny added. ‘What a fucking surprise. It’s all about you.’
‘So I’m not allowed to have problems because I’m married?’ I asked the two girls. James was still sat on the arm of the sofa but was staying absolutely silent. ‘Because that makes my problems less valid than yours?’
‘Your problems aren’t problems,’ Jenny spat. ‘In fact, the only problem that you have is yourself. Maybe that’s my problem too. And Lou Lou’s. And Alex’s.’
‘Fine.’ I threw the stack of books in my arms onto the hardwood floor with a clatter. On cue, Grace started wailing in the bedroom. ‘I’ll just get out of your way and then you won’t have a problem in the world.’
‘Good!’ Jenny shouted.
‘Good!’ I shouted back, stomping out of the apartment and slamming the front door.
Well, that went well.
It was bitter on the street but I was so angry I could barely feel anything. People were drifting up and down Lexington, most of them carrying shopping bags, all of them staring at their feet or their phones in a hurry to get somewhere. Everyone had somewhere to go except for me. I leaned against the building, my first real home in New York City, and stared blindly, trying to calm myself down. I could sit in Scotty’s Diner for a while but I couldn’t face the thought of food, coffee or the company that it would offer. I hadn’t lived in this neighbourhood for two years and I still couldn’t walk through the doors without getting twenty questions. There was the W hotel bar nearby but I wasn’t dressed for it. I wasn’t really dressed for anything but lying face down on the sofa and waiting for my mum to make it all better. Which just went to show you how dire things had become.
As my temper faded away, all I felt was sad and tired. I wanted to shower and then I wanted to sleep but going to the new apartment didn’t feel right and I definitely couldn’t pop back upstairs and ask Jenny if I could hop in the bathroom for half an hour. Which only really left me with one option. Well, two if you counted the gym at the office but really, who did?
New York got dark much earlier than London and the sun was already beginning to set when I reluctantly stepped out of the bathroom and into the empty living room at four in the afternoon. Wrapped in the pathetic excuse for a towel I had bought from Duane Reade on my way over (along with shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and all of the peanut butter M&Ms I could carry), I turned on the kitchen spotlights, hoping no one on Kent Avenue was especially interested in staring up through our curtain-less windows. The place looked huge without our furniture, and other than the tragedy of our air mattress, that now took pride of place in the middle of the living room, the place was completely bare. The wooden floors were much dustier than I remembered and I could see four round impressions where the feet of the sofa had been. Evidence of so many happy hours in front of the TV and under Alex. I rifled around in the Duane Reade bag looking for the very sexy pair of white cotton Hanes knickers I had purchased. I knew no one could see into the apartment, not really, but I still didn’t feel great walking around with my arse hanging out. I wasn’t Donald Duck.
Hopping up onto the kitchen top, I pulled out a bottle of full-fat Pepsi (desperate times, etc.) and opened the first bag of M&Ms, mindlessly popping them into my mouth one after another and staring out into space. It was Saturday evening in New York City and there were a thousand stories being told outside that window. Downstairs, in the fancy organic wine shop, someone would be stocking up for a dinner party. Across the water, girls all over Manhattan would be choosing outfits and trying to decide whether or not they could walk in their high heels for more than a block while boys would be sat watching sports with their hands down their shorts, vaguely wondering whether or not they were going to get lucky later that evening. Oh, the romance. And somewhere, a couple of blocks down from the Chrysler building and a few longer blocks east of the Empire State, Jenny and James and Louisa were going about their evening without me. Probably together. Probably happy. I sipped the Pepsi, letting the bubbles burn before shoving in an entire handful of M&Ms. Who was I trying to kid with this one at a time nonsense?
I didn’t expect to hear from Jenny or Louisa, not yet, but I was starting to get upset that I hadn’t heard from Alex. Only I could start a day moving into a gorgeous new home and end it wearing a pair of supermarket knickers in an empty old flat that looked like a crack den. I hopped down off the counter, taking my snacks with me, and collapsed onto the airbed.
‘Merry bloody Christmas,’ I said to the ceiling.
The ceiling. Christmas. Alex’s Christmas present.
In all the rush of the move, I’d completely forgotten about the book I’d stashed in the air vent. Pouting, I stared up at the slightly skewed vent cover and contemplated my options. We’d taken the stepladder to the new apartment already so unless I wanted to go knocking on neighbours’ doors, that was out of the equation. The airbed wasn’t going to be much cop in getting up to the ceiling, which really only left one option. Rolling off the airbed, I stood under the vent cover and stretched my arm out to the kitchen worktop. It wasn’t far at all, I could reach it easily.
‘Piece of piss,’ I convinced myself, clambering up onto the marble counter with all the grace of a drunk cat.
My bare feet seemed to cling to the cold surface, which was slightly reassuring, and before I could think better of it I tiptoed over to the edge, pushed the cover off the vent and reached my arm up into the air duct.
‘Please don’t let anything have crawled in here and died,’ I prayed to the empty apartment. ‘Or have crawled in here and lived.’
I couldn’t feel anything furry, squelchy or bitey but I couldn’t feel anything padded envelopey either, at least not within my reach. Left without an option, other than waiting for my sanity to return, I gritted my teeth, reached both arms into the air vent and dragged my sorry self up. There was no wonder you only ever saw people in prison movies doing pull-ups – you’d have to have an awful lot of time and very little to do to make that seem like fun. I pulled my T-shirt down over my bare belly and shuffled along the metal vent, blinking until my eyes adjusted to the silvery darkness. There was a vague chance that this was not my brightest idea ever. Eventually I spotted the envelope, just a couple of feet beyond my grasp, and propelled myself forwards until I could grab it. If I weren’t on my own, half-naked with no genuinely safe way of getting back out of the vent, it might have been fun. But I was so it wasn’t. With the envelope secured, I began to back up, trying to work out how to get back to the very edge without the T-shirt riding right up to my nose or falling twelve feet to the floor. I let my feet find their way back out the hole and kept pushing backwards, waiting to feel the counter underneath my toes. And waiting. And waiting.
Hmm.
‘Right,’ I mumbled, my concern echoing into the vent, my non-existent stomach muscles tensing. ‘I can’t feel the kitchen top but I can’t go any further without having to drop down.’
I really hadn’t thought this out well at all. If I dropped in the right spot, I’d only fall a couple of feet onto the counter. If I missed, it was about ten feet down to the floor. Was that bad? Would I break something if I fell ten feet? And of course there was always the glorious proposition of falling half onto the counter, half onto the floor and breaking my neck in the process. I didn’t love the thought of that. And so I did nothing. I pushed myself back into the vent, just far enough that my stomach was flat against the cool metal, and waited for something to happen. Other than me panicking. That was already happening.
‘Maybe I should try to get into someone else’s apartment,’ I wondered aloud, swinging my legs back and forth. ‘I’m sure the man next door hasn’t got a gun.’
But he had already left for the holidays, the annoying voice in my head reminded me. Gone off to Vermont to see his family. Someone in the building was baking and the delicious smell of cake only served to remind me that I’d eaten nothing but two handfuls of peanut butter M&Ms all day. I had, however, drunk quite a lot of Pepsi and pretty soon, whether I liked it or not, I was going to need a wee. I couldn’t even read Alex’s book – it was too dark to make out the words on the page. Well, wasn’t this a fantastic way to spend a Saturday night? Half-naked, starving and desperate for a wee in an air vent. I had two choices – I could cry or I could do something.
The tears came before I’d even thought what that something could be.
I had no idea how long I’d been dangling out of the ceiling when I heard the key in the lock but it was long enough for me to have considered crawling far enough in to have a wee and then crawling back. I’d decided against it on the grounds of not knowing whether or not the vents sloped up or down. I immediately tried to shuffle my entire self into the ceiling but the passage was narrow, what with it not actually being made for a person, and panic made me even clumsier than usual.